“Freedom is going to become the rule…”

Season 20201 June 20202 min read

With these words the Prime Minister yesterday announced phase 2 of the easing of lockdown. The CNFAS statement immediately spelled out the consequences for our activities:

From 2 June, all flights are possible, with no distance limit within France but no crossing of borders, in strict compliance with the health rules.

There will be a final phase in three weeks to take stock and adopt new measures. The health emergency now gives way to the social and economic emergency. This crisis will have terrible long-term effects. As we wrote at the very beginning of lockdown, it would be a mistake to neglect leisure activities in this context. A whole economy of clubs, companies, professionals, manufacturers and events is directly affected. The parachuting federation, for example, estimates the loss of activity for its organisations at a minimum of five million euros.

In concrete terms, the Ministry of Transport's aid to all the aeronautical federations is about two million euros a year. That is a very modest sum when set against aeronautical activity as a whole. For several years the federations have had to rely on other resources, and FFPLUM in particular has a low dependence on public money. But a drastic cut in an already tight context would have deep effects on the quality of training, on the level of safety, and on young people's access to our activities, who we know will be hard hit. It is even in this kind of crisis that the State has often pursued a recovery policy that could accelerate the necessary transitions.

As for the image of light aviation in public opinion, the activities grouped within the CNFAS have nothing to be ashamed of: free flight, electric flight, light modern combustion engines gradually replacing an ageing fleet, considerable efforts on noise; widely accessible and popular activities (think of the Coupe Icare). It is often the ageing of infrastructure (largely abandoned abruptly by the State) that conveys an outdated image of certain activities, but the modernity of our host sites is progressing thanks to local players.

The Secretary of State for Transport and trained pilot Jean Baptiste Djebbari has appointed MP Michaël Nogal to propose a recovery plan for aviation. It would be desirable that, like boating, which has a strong bond of solidarity with the merchant navy, "pleasure aviation" not be sidelined in certain decisions, because when we talk about the future, it is very often through our "leisure aviation" that vocations come and the world of tomorrow is built.

The federations' mobilisation continues so that freedom is increasingly the rule!

Have a good weekend

Happy flying!