Airline Economics article

Airline Economics October-November 2020

Support leasing through the crisis

Formed in 2018, Aircraft Leasing Ireland's (ALI) core objective is to act as a single, coordinated voice on behalf of aircraft leasing companies based in Ireland. Over the summer, ALI has been delivering on that objective by liaising with the Irish government and the Ireland's Taskforce for Aviation Recovery calling for a number of actions to restart aviation services in the country. ALI has also organised webinars for members to assist with operations through lockdown, as well as continuing to engage with the government on extending double taxation treaties.

Speaking to Airline Economics in November, the new chair of ALI, Declan Kelly said that now the association was a recognised voice for the leasing industry in Ireland, he intended on using that position to push ahead with its ongoing work to digitise the leasing industry and further its contribution towards a more sustainable aviation industry.

"Now that we are clearly where we want to be, we want to look to the future of the industry and focus on digitalisation and sustainability" says Kelly.  "As an industry, we haven't really changed the way we do business for the past 20 years or so. We haven't embraced digitisation as an entire sector from how we operate aircraft to managing their aircraft transition to how they are parted out.  Likewise, decarbonising aviation and the whole sustainability initiative is something that the industry as a whole has been slow to get a grip on."

ALI has been a major proponent of the new digital aircraft trading platform, the Global Aircraft Trading System or GATS, which went live in June 2020, and the association is continuing to support the system as it is rolled out.  "GATS is only one of the points where the benefit of having a more transparent system that works better for everybody from the owner of the buying group, but also the community its feeds, to the law firms and ultimately the customer.  We have learned a lot from GATS on the benefits of having a centralised system but it's just the beginning of the digitalisation journey."

Read the full article here.