CAPA · 01:30
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of news articles on the CAPA - Centre for Aviation website mentioning the word strike has been noticeably below previous levels. The number of strike articles in 2025 was lower than in any year since 2009, when CAPA - Centre for Aviation began monitoring it, with the exception of 2020 and 2021 when COVID-19 was at its peak and aviation activity was severely curtailed. This measure, which can be seen as a proxy for aviation labour militancy, still rises and falls broadly in line with airline industry operating profit margins. However, it has undergone a structural reduction in the midpoint around which the annual number varies. The conclusion seems to be that aviation labour groups will still claim a greater share of industry profits when margins rise, but not as much as forcefully as they once did.
CAPA · 01:15
The old post-Soviet era Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has been slow to jump on any air transport bandwagon and certainly not any that relates either to developing managed hub and spoke operations or privatising airport facilities. But changes are now taking place with airports like Tashkent (Uzbekistan) envisioning a central hub role and extensive privatisation in place already at Almaty (Kazakhstan). In Azerbaijan, one of the CIS states closest to Europe, the President called in 2025 for an increase in privately managed airport infrastructure to help drive tourism growth beyond three million annual tourists and to disperse visitors more widely. Now the government has formally granted permission for state owned civil airports to be managed by private partners, while not surrendering ownership. Organisations from Asia Pacific and the Middle East are already sniffing around Azerbaijan and other CIS countries, where substantial deals have already been cut. But no one invests in