MIRIAN SARISHVILI: RED INK - THING WHAT IS MISSING IN OUR LIFE!
Mirian Sarishvili, Managing Partner at VIP AVIATION (Georgia)
From BLACKLIST.AERO: With this article by Mirian Sarishvili from VIP Aviation (Georgia), we begin a series of materials written by people from the world of aviation. People who actually have something to say. The editors of BLACKLIST.AERO may agree or disagree with the opinions of these authors. But we are absolutely sure that the thoughts expressed in their articles will resonate in your minds and hearts.
In this article I want to talk with aviation society about double standards, in aviation and general in our life. You can find the definition of double standard in various literature, dictionaries or internet sources. Taking into account different circumstances, its definition can be different, but all of them are united by one idea, a rule or principle which is unfairly applied in different ways to different people or groups.
This article is not dedicated to any specific person, organization, state or private agency. This article is dedicated to all the people who will assume that I am referring to him/her in this article.
I, and many people around me, if were asked what they think about double standards, they will all unanimously say that it is unacceptable, that it is immoral, that it is destructive, and yet if we know these, why is there a double standard existing, or who is implementing them?
To this question, I and probably everyone who reads this article will say that the double standard is implemented by various governments, transcontinental corporations, large and small organizations, which can directly or indirectly determine someone's fate. In short, double standards are carried out by anyone but not us, not ordinary consumers, anyone but not me.
Perhaps you will hardly find a person who admits that he/she supported his friend at school in spite of fact that he/she knew that his/her friend was wrong, but the desire to protect his loved one was so strong in him/her that he irresponsibly sided with him/her, and cheated a completely blameless person, harassed him, bullied him, or even inspired him that it didn't matter if he was right or not, he was left alone with his truth only because you didn't want to be on right side, you just decide to be on your friend side. Perhaps a similar case is more argumentative when the desire for such protection concerns a family member, sibling or parent. Personally, I remember the first such case from my childhood, when one of my neighbors violated agreed game terms, because the tennis accessories, we were playing with, were his, and if we did not allow his sister to play without queue, he would take the rackets and tennis ball. Perhaps I would never have remembered this case if not this article...
In this case, there is probably nothing unusual, and many people around us have done something similar and have done it more than once. I don't know if this case fits into the definition of double standards for others, but from today's point of view, it was a case of double standards, when one person, at the expense of speculating with his own resources, violates the rules of the agreed game and according to his own wishes, gives another person an advantage, which the other person did not allow us to do.
I can cite countless instances of double standards from my own personal life at various stages of my 41 years of life, but I believe you will have many similar ones too, and it would take us far away from the main point.
Double standard in the World!
Double standards are especially visible when it comes to developed and developing countries, for example the decision of a number of European countries to completely ban internal combustion engine cars from 2035 and switch to electric car. Such type of change is really good, but we live in a world where the ecosystem maintained in only one corner of the world is essentially ineffective for the earth and our world, it was proved by COVID19, which started in Wuhan and completely changed two years of our lives, locked us up, shut us down and showed us that taking care of the world is the only way to take care of ourselves, and not the other way around.
It is essentially the fault of double standards that the world, with its inadequate actions in Africa, Asia, South America, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Serbia, Chechnya, Ukraine and almost anywhere on earth, has actually put us in danger of a third world war in Ukraine, but we cannot feel it until a bomb falls in our homeland, in our hometown, children and innocents will die as they died in Abkhazia, Bucha, Iraq, Mariupol, Israel, Gaza or many other places all over the world whose pain is not considered as our own pain. Such a statement may seem inappropriate to someone, especially if we start from the title of the article, but I and each of us must admit that for decades we were little bolts who, with our own weakness and silence, didn’t stopped the tragedy that surrounds us today.
To avoid double standards and the potential corruption that results it, the "developed" part of the modern world has come up with a series of standards, agreements against money laundry, a set of nonsense agreements that actually set out written instructions on how to behave without being accused of double standards or engaging in corruption, a detailed guide if how he/she be able to destroy a number of businesses or people with white gloves and all this under the auspices of protecting ephemeral values.
Everything that I mentioned above, we all know very well, although it is difficult to reveal it to ourselves, it is even more difficult to talk about it out loud. All of this, has become so much a part of our daily life that we feel uncomfortable talking about it transparently and as we don't feel it at all.
Now to my main point, how double standards affect aviation.
Aviation, like any other field as a live organism develops and moves forward every day, technologies, infrastructure, frequency and geography of flights is increasing, types of structurally involved companies are changing, everything, every ware and always changes, but not double standards, approaches that over the years, it is unchanged for all the structures involved in it.
A short list of things we don't talk about and it's around us every day:
1. Normally announced tenders, for handling, fuel or any service, when it is already known in advance who will be the winner of tender before the announcement of the tender. It doesn’t matter what efforts you have made you are not actually considered. Or you to show that everything is transparent you may be invited on interviews, you will present a lot of documents, filed up unlimited number of papers, but suddenly you find out that they don't even checked your offers properly. It is just a formality to avoid being accused of participating, promoting or establishing unfair play or in double standards,
2. Cartel deal between aviation monopolists, when service price is determined in advance and it is impossible to change anything despite attempts,
3. No harsh game rules, when not all structures are allowed to act and work on equal principles, price policy of discounts and benefits, adjusted not to the volume of work, but to mutual familiarity.
4. Ensuring monopoly conditions for the daughter companies, putting other companies in an artificial and unequal position of access to the market,
5. Loyalty acquired by various financial instruments, which gives a real basis for double standards everywhere and in everything.
This is just a small list of the types of double standards what we see in aviation, it can be the operator, the fuel supplier, the airport or any other service provider. Double standards, the preservation of which has no rational basis except friendly relations between particular individuals, no matter what and how you propose to a specific decision-maker, everything depends on his personal relationships.
Double standards and aviation exhibitions!
Numerous aviation exhibitions dedicated to all segments and directions of aviation are held around the world. If you ask any organizer, participant or listener of these exhibitions, conferences, they will all unanimously confirm that this is the best way where all participants of the industry can meet, connect with each other, a place to discover new perspectives and opportunities, but rarely you will find those who directly will say that each exhibition has turned into a place to show off one's financial capabilities, to compete for individual well-being, and in fact is the most visible example of double standards when the practice of benevolence generally recognized at meetings and most of this meetings do not bring any concrete results either in the short term or in the long term. You often come across such situations when double standards turn into real hypocrisy.
Double standards and dodgy payers.
With the examples given above, is making clear that double standards, not separating the bad from the good, gives us the actual result that we do not considering the problems of companies working in aviation, and if one bad payer goes to work with another supplier, we provide them with the same service as to a reputable company. All this giving birth to the global problem as dodgy payers, day by day in aviation there are more and more companies that accumulate huge debts and simply disappear. Almost everyone may think that it can happen to anyone but not with him/her but actually it is happening with us. Traditionally there are cases when companies simply collect debts, go to bankruptcy, then establish new companies and so on endlessly. I can cite many similar business models as an example, but you can see more of them on the international register of defaulter companies on www.blacklist.aero, this is truly first attempt to fight against double standards and dodgy payers.
This article should not be understood as if this problem is somewhere far away, and it does not concern us, or double standards are only problem of developing countries, this is a problem that has appeared all over the world.
And again, we all, those people who contributed to the formation of double standards have the opportunity today and now to change the world around us, to give up the double standards, to give everyone, the aviation market.
Now about red ink, I want to finish my article with joke what I get from internet and it is referred to Slavoj Žižek: “from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by censors, he tells his friends: “Let’s establish a code: if a letter you will get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter, written in blue ink: “Everything is wonderful here: stores are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, movie theaters show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair — the only thing unavailable is red ink.”
Each of us need find the red ink, find power in our self and say the truth, nothing, but the truth…
This is a time to be on bright side with red ink ….
As the administration of the Global Aviation Register of Defaulter companies BLACKLIST.AERO found out, the company iFUEL AG falsified numerous photos of fuel trucks and other airfield equipment with IFuel logos for use in advertising campaigns.
Yesterday, HARMONY JETS put out an official letter to their counterparties, in which they tried to at least somehow fend off my article published two weeks ago. As you remember, I flew to Malta in order to clarify the facts that shed light on why HARMONY JETS flights can be cancelled at any time. And therefore, the company developed a special scheme that allows them not give back the money paid for the flight to clients.
There is a certain wicked irony in the fact that a company that signed the Three Cases Declaration two years ago and committed itself to fight systemic defaulters has itself become a Three Cases Defaulter. But if the signing of this Declaration was originally an attempt to avoid the pressure of the BLACKLIST.AERO administration on its own debts, then there is nothing strange about it. As I said before participation in the Three Cases Declaration is not an indulgence from non-payments.
In order to understand why companies like HARMONY JETS can do what they do with impunity, I had to fly to Malta. So to speak, “to the stomping ground” of these crooks. Only on the spot was it possible to find out who was covering them - by their active actions or deliberate non-interference. And at the same time to understand why HARMONY JETS flights are cancelled, and their aircraft remain on the ramp.
