Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Final Blog!

Here we go, Last blog!

So, at the beginning of this semester my career path game plan was to finish up here at Eastern Michigan University in the flight program, to start flight instructing then move on to a regional airline for a while and hopefully end up at a legacy airline, just like most of the flight program here at EMU.

Throughout the semester what I want to do has stayed the same and some of the guest speakers such as Mr. Wall and Mr. Coogan both from Delta Airlines that came to class has just made me want to do that more!

This semester I would say my favorite blog topic was the one about Comair because I have spent a lot of time in the Cincinnati airport (former Comair headquarters) since I was a small child and have flown on at least 50 of there flights. I always had a dream of one day working there but obviously those dreams are over. My least favorite topic was the EU ETS one because it just turned into a huge argument about whether we should be green or not.

I would say out of the guest speakers we had this semester I retained the most information from Mr. Coogan and Mr. Wall because they are both doing exactly what I want to for my last career stop!

As far as after graduation my plans for professional development is to fly as many different aircraft that I can get my hands on, build a whole bunch of flight experience, and maybe one day get an online masters degree though Embry Riddle but it will most likely I will only do that if it is required for a job I am applying for.

Happy Holidays!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

EU Emission Trading Scheme

This weeks blog topic is about the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) this is a process developed by the European Union to reduce carbon emissions. We are going to explore what ever this is.

The EU Emission Trading Scheme is set up between the individual states in the European Union, the way this works is each year the states are allocated a certain amount of "allowances" for carbon emissions that can be emitted in each state, one allowance is equal to one ton of carbon emissions. The incentive to the system is in the case that the state does not use all of its allowance it is able to sell the remaining allowances to states that screw up and use more than their allowance. (Further information located here)

This system seems like a great idea to reduce the overall carbon emissions being released form the European Union however the United States and other countries are opposed to participation in the Emission Trading System because of the strain it puts on the American commercial airline operators in the area of the European Union. Since January foreign air carriers have been forced to buy EU ETS credits in order to pollute the Europeans air however they will not have to pay until next year (See more). Even with all of the opposition from the United States, China, India, Russia, and other large countries that operate aircraft in the EU officials in the EU are standing by there choice to enact ETS. The EU officials have made statements regarding a worldwide potential ICAO operated emission reduction system for aviation.

As stated above the air carriers will not have to pay for these EU credits until next year and until then ICAO has been tasked with creating a new carbon emission reduction system that will probably also result in unnecessary credit purchases. Personally I think that the solution to this issue should be no solution. I think that many American air carriers have already proven how difficult it is to make it financially without government aid and I think this will just make it even more difficult.

As I previously stated I don't think that there should be any solutions to carbon emissions for the aviation world, if they care so much about carbon emission start somewhere else before you nickle and dime air carriers that are already hanging on by a thread.