Airlines for Europe: number of trade bodies grown by Big Five from six to seven. Unity increased?

Europe has yet another airline trade body. It has been formed by Europe's three biggest legacy airline groups (Air France-KLM, IAG, Lufthansa Group) and its two largest LCCs (easyJet and Ryanair) to lobby European governments and regulators on airport charges, air traffic control issues and passenger taxes.

The six existing "airspace user associations" have already demonstrated unity on these matters through joint responses to the EU Aviation Strategy in Dec-2015 and Jan-2016. This leaves questions over the founding members' view of the new body's role relative to the old associations. Designed to increase the perception of industry unity, it avoids matters on which its founding members disagree, notably competition from Gulf airlines. Moreover, it has drawn a hostile response from the European airports' trade body, further highlighting divisions in aviation.

It is difficult to avoid the feeling that the new association changes little. Even its name lacks originality: Airlines for Europe, inevitably abbreviated for the digital age to A4E, is just an adaptation of Airlines for America. A4E will hope that A4A's loss of a key member (Delta) in 2015 is not a glimpse of its own future.