AvTalk Episode 211: It’s volcano time

AVT 211 Transcript
EPISODE 211
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to Episode 211 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:15] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Happy Wednesday to you, Ian.
[0:00:18] IP: Happy Wednesday to you, Jason, and happy volcano day.
[0:00:22] JR: Oh, no. Not again. Where is it this time? What is it doing? What flight is it
impacting? How can I see it in the app? Where can't flights fly? Is it coming here? Give me all of
the details. Is it Iceland again? Because we won't tolerate that anymore from them.
[0:00:37] IP: It's not Iceland.
[0:00:39] JR: Oh, okay.
[0:00:40] IP: But it looks like, it's about to start affecting transpacific flight.
[0:00:45] JR: Interesting.
[0:00:46] IP: This is the Shiveluch volcano in Russia, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The one
that erupts and I don't want to say frequent basis, but it has erupted and has been caused for
concern before.
[0:00:59] JR: Cranky.
[0:01:00] IP: It's a cranky volcano. This time, it's erupting and the ash cloud is in fact impacting
flights. It hasn't halted transpacific traffic by any stretch of the imagination. This is an interesting
situation, where natural processes and geopolitics are getting in the way of aviation, or
impacting aviation in a major way. Because the volcano is located on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
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AVT 211 Transcript
If the eruption goes east, it impacts more flights than if the winds had carried it west, but the
prevailing winds are carrying it east. It's hitting the jet stream, so it's starting to impact a lot of
flights.
I know we were talking before we started recording. We were looking at some of the routes that
would go directly through there. It's an interesting breakdown between which aircraft are able to
route around the issue at the moment and which are having to either make fuel stops, or seeing
flights canceled. I know we were talking about some –
[0:02:03] JR: Or go right over it.
[0:02:04] IP: Or go right over it. Yeah. As the case may be, as the ash cloud hasn't quite
reached all the flight levels yet. If you're interested, you can take a look at where the ash cloud
is and where it's going to be as forecasted by the volcanic ash advisory centers over the next 6,
12, and 18 hours. We've got those polygons plotted on the map, if you go into the weather
section of the app, you can tap volcanic eruption. Then that'll appear and you can tap the
volcano logo where the volcano is and you'll see where the ash cloud is, both where it is and
where it is predicted to be.
This could get worse if the ash hits the jet stream in any way, shape, or form to where it really
impacts flight routes, because the transpacific flights, just as the transatlantic flights do, they
really take care to fly inside the jet stream as much as possible on the eastbound to both save
fuel and time and then fly outside of it for the westbound to not have headwinds. Like I
mentioned before, the big thing here is that none of this would be an issue if Russian airspace
was still available to 99% of these flights.
Flights that are operated by basically, Chinese airlines at this point, from North America to either
elsewhere in Asia, mainly just China or Hong Kong, you have those flights using their ability to
operate through Russian airspace to just go around. 99% of flights that are not able to transit
Russian airspace now can't do that. They're having to either move their flights to make a
technical stop elsewhere and then fly very south, or just fly over it for the time being.
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AVT 211 Transcript
[0:04:02] JR: Yeah, at least from the US East Coast, a lot of the, or most of the flights if they're
able to, are taking a more southernly route. There's an interesting look at a pair of flights from
United out of Newark. One of the flights goes to Narita, the other goes to Haneda, basically the
same place. One of them is operated by a 777-200, the other by a 787-9. The 787-9 can take
that southernly route and add more than two and a half hours to flight time, but still make it non-
stop.
The 777, unfortunately, just doesn't have the legs and has to make a tech stop in San Francisco
today. I wouldn't be shocked to see that continue at least for the near term, or for additional
flights if the ash cloud continues rising up into the jet stream. That's certainly what the forecast
looks like it's going to be doing in the near term.
[0:04:57] IP: The eruption’s ongoing. There's observed ash up to flight level 380. That's
definitely within the –
[0:05:06] JR: 380, or 280?
[0:05:09] IP: 380.
[0:05:10] JR: That's much –
[0:05:11] IP: The forecast. Yeah, yeah. The forecast is moving things up to 380. Over the next
six, 12 hours. By Friday, this could be a much bigger story than we are making it. We wanted to
talk about it today, so that we could say that we talked about it. You fine people, when you're
listening to the podcast on Friday when it comes out, are already well informed.
[0:05:30] JR: Excellent service we're providing.
[0:05:32] IP: We do try our best, most of the time. Moving on from there, because there's not
really much more to say, we'll hopefully not have more to say about this next week. Hopefully,
the eruption calms down. Hopefully, the ash dissipates and hopefully, flights aren't majorly
affected. If we're talking about this next week still –
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AVT 211 Transcript
[0:05:51] JR: We got a problem.
[0:05:52] IP: - it's probably a rather unfortunate situation. In news that is probably surprising to
no one, Aeroflot has sent an aircraft to Iran for maintenance. This is one of the first things that
we discussed as it relates to civil aviation after Russia invaded Ukraine. The biggest issue that
the airlines were going to face was how do they maintain their aircraft? What do they do when
they can no longer cannibalize their own aircraft for easy repairs and spare parts? What
happens when these aircraft need heavy maintenance? C-checks. D-checks. What then?
Well, we've gotten our first clue. Aeroflot sent an A330-300 to Tehran for maintenance. They've
contracted Mahan Air to carry out the maintenance. This is A330-300 registration, new
registration RA7700. It's the former, or really still, because the registration technically hasn't
been cancelled, VQ-BBS. It's in Tehran, since the beginning of April now for heavy maintenance
on the landing gear. Mahan operates a collection of A340-300 and A340-600s. Iran Air operates
A330-200s. They picked up a pair in that –
[0:07:18] JR: Very brief window.
[0:07:19] IP:  Yeah, a brief interregnum in between sanctions, when they could order and take
delivery of brand-new Airbus aircraft and they took advantage of that while they could, and now
they're back under sanctions. Iran has a long history of being able to service aircraft. I don't
know if it's surreptitiously, because they do it out in the open, but they definitely have the ability
to bust through the sanctions.
[0:07:44] JR: This is all just about Iran having the experience in keeping these Airbus aircrafts
alive, despite sanction. Russia is obviously quite new to this, so I understand this move. They're
taking the aircraft to someone who they know in this exact set of circumstances has been able
to, more or less, keep its aircraft flying, despite all of the odds working against them. Maybe
Mahan Air, almost certainly, really has the means to acquire the parts they need to keep this
A330-300 alive and well and flying. I guess, in this case it's an A330, as opposed to an A340
from Mahan Air. But this was an inevitable move. Where else are they going to take these
aircraft to? Maybe Venezuela, possibly?
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[0:08:29] IP: No, Venezuela takes their aircraft to Iran.
[0:08:32] JR: Okay, so there you go.
[0:08:34] IP: Mahan does the heavy maintenance on [inaudible 0:08:36] A340.
[0:08:38] JR: Iran is the world’s one-stop shop for all your sanctioned, busting aircraft part
needs. It makes sense that I don't think anyone, didn't see this coming, but it also cements the
fact, once and for all, that these aircraft will never fly for a Western airline ever again. If they're
even allowed into Western airspace ever again, I think it's still a valid question. These aircraft,
when they were operating within Russia for that interim period in the beginning, yeah,
questionable. Maybe there were some paperwork and legality issues, but now they're actually
doing possibly heavy maintenance on these aircraft in Iran. I can't see these aircraft operating in
the West again. Yet at the same time, Iran Air does it. They fly to cities in Germany, so I'm very
unclear about how that works, actually.
[0:09:29] IP: Just another thing that's adding to the long list of questions about what happens
after the war. Unfortunately, I don't really think we're close to answering any of those questions
at this point.
[0:09:40] JR: Unfortunately, not. No.
[0:09:42] IP: Keeping in line with a similar theme, AirBridgeCargo, which has basically paused
all operations, because it was a majority Boeing 747 operator and a big one at that, not having
the ability to really fly anywhere and not really needing a whole lot of domestic 747 freighter
capacity internally, they just closed up shop. Now they're reopening shop. This one I did not
expect. I did not see this one coming.
[0:10:15] JR: Not only did I not know that AirBridgeCargo had suspended all operations, even
though they possess a good chunk of the world's entire 747-8 fleet, I did not know that there
were IL-96 freighters in existence. Apparently, AirBridgeCargo is going to wake up out of its
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year-long slumber and operate alone, probably nearly 30-year-olds Soviet era freighter, so that's
fun.
[0:10:41] IP: I saw a tweet a few weeks ago of an IL-96 freighter with no vertical stabilizer
coming out of paint. I was like, “Huh. Did they just convert that?” I went and I looked up photos
in the jet photos catalog. Sure enough, there's old early 90s IL-96 freighters. Then when you
look closely, here's the thing I don't understand. The cargo door is so close in front of the wing, I
would love to see how they actually load this thing.
[0:11:17] JR: Carefully.
[0:11:19] IP: Very, very carefully. I really don't understand how they can safely load cargo into
this aircraft using that cargo door, because it is so close to the wing. When you mount the
engines, these pictures don't, it doesn't have engines mounted on it, because it just came out of
the paint shop. How does that even work? I really want to see.
[0:11:38] JR: Do you happen to know if these were purpose-built freighters, or were they
passenger converted aircraft? I don't know. I really have no knowledge on a freighter version of
this aircraft, which is fascinating.
[0:11:51] IP: You know what? I don't know. That's a good question and one that I'm going to
have to look up. Because yeah –
[0:11:58] JR: There’s no information out there. This is the IL-96 T variant, the freighter version,
but there's just barely anything out there, because very few frames were ever produced of this
particular variant of an already somewhat rare aircraft. Yeah, I don't know.
[0:12:16] IP: I'm looking at the images right now and I'm seeing a few windows where the exit
doors are, but not any other – I'm looking for the window plugs, like the telltale sign of
conversion and I'm not seeing those. I think these are purpose-built freighters?
[0:12:33] JR: Interesting.
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[0:12:35] IP: Yeah. I'm looking at the interior now. This looks like a purpose –
[0:12:39] JR: Oh, I see what you mean now, too. I'm looking at, or attempting to look at one of
these pictures. Freight door is curiously close to the wing box and the engines there.
[0:12:50] IP: We'll put a link in the show notes, so that in classic Russian aircraft serialization,
the aircraft that we're looking at and we'll put a link to the tweet that shows the airbridge cargo
new livery, but also, the historical Polet flight livery and in the interior picks. This is serial number
97693201003.
[0:13:10] JR: Oh, of course. Yeah. Well, I'm looking at 97693201001 right now, operating for
Polet Airlines in 2009. Yeah, that door is why would they design this aircraft like that if it's a
purpose-built freighter? I don't know. Could explain why it wasn't very popular.
[0:13:32] IP: Well, there's that. Anyway, look for those domestically and Russia soon-ish, I
guess.
[0:13:38] JR: Or Iran.
[0:13:39] IP: Maybe. Yeah. Maybe, there you go. Sticking with Russia and the invasion of
Ukraine, this happened late last week. It was in the newsletter last week, if you get our weekly
newsletter. If you don't, you should sign up and we'll put a link in the show notes, because I'm all
about cross promotion today. In any case, the former director of Antonov in Ukraine has been
charged, basically, with part of it is negligence, because he forgot to, or just didn't renew the
insurance policy on the Antonov An-225. But is also being charged on the basis of the fact that
the Antonov An-225 was technically airworthy and could have been flown to Leipzig in Germany
before the invasion. There were plans to do it. They could have done it, but this guy didn't sign
off, and so it didn't happen.
Now, he's been charged by Ukrainian prosecutors with being a jerk, but there are legal
implications in this particular case. But basically failure, dereliction of duty and causing losses
based on the fact that he didn't renew the insurance policy. They didn't get reimbursed for the
aircraft.
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[0:14:56] JR: Yeah. Not renewing the insurance policy. That's not great. We have to remember
that at the same time, this was not the only aircraft unexpectedly stranded in country. I mean,
we just talked last week about a 737 that just now made it out of the country. There are still
more from other airlines. What was it? Wizz Air still has a few aircraft there?
[0:15:16] IP: Wizz Air still has a three, I believe.
[0:15:19] JR: Three of them? This is not a unique scenario here. Other airlines were still
operating right up to the red line and they made the wrong call and those aircraft are still there.
They may never come home. Unfortunately, in this case, it's the An-225, the one and only. It no
longer exists. It was destroyed. But it was not the only aircraft that was unfortunately there and
stuck there, but it sure was a target, unfortunately.
[0:15:43] IP: It was a target and it was destroyed, and it didn't need to be that way.
[0:15:49] JR: No, unfortunate. Couldn’t they have taken one of the Wizz Air 320s?
[0:15:53] IP: One of the 320s.
[0:15:55] JR: Take all three. We don't need them. Take all three. Give us back the 225.
[0:15:59] IP: If only it worked like that. Speaking of A320s, it is Q1 order and delivery season.
Both Airbus and Boeing have reported their deliveries for the first quarter of 2023. For the first
time in a while, Airbus delivered fewer aircraft than Boeing over the period of a quarter.
[0:16:24] JR: Wow. Good for them.
[0:16:26] IP: Not by a ton, but still fewer. Airbus delivered 127 total aircraft in Q1. Boeing
delivered 130. Not a huge spread, but still important enough to mention.
[0:16:38] JR: Significant. Yeah, Airbus had a truly terrible quarter, to somehow decrease its
deliveries quite sizably from the first quarter of 2022, when everyone is grappling with all sorts of
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supply chain issues from A to Z. Then somehow, to be able to deliver fewer aircraft this first
quarter in 2023, that's mind-boggling a little bit. Here we are. Airbus managed to deliver 10
A220-300s, two A319neos. I guess –
[0:17:12] IP: To Tibet Airlines.
[0:17:13] JR: That’s fun. 45 A320neos, 59, 321neos. Seoul A330-200 MRTT, that's the multi-
role tanker transport thingy. Five A330-900neos.
[0:17:27] IP: That's the MRTTT.
[0:17:29] JR: Yes. Only five A350s.
[0:17:32] IP: Only five.
[0:17:33] JR: Only five. That is really not great for Airbus. Meanwhile, on the Boeing side, 113
737s, one final, forever, the last 747 was delivered. Sad. We'll never see a one, or anything next
to that number, except zero again. One, 767, four 777s, and 11 787s, despite all the odds of all
the issues Boeing has had recently with the 78, they managed to deliver 11 this quarter. Not
terrible.
[0:18:05] IP: Yeah. The numbers would have been higher, had 767 deliveries not have been
paused. Those were the commercial numbers, by the way, for Boeing. Airbus and Boeing split
things up differently. Airbus includes in its commercial deliveries the A330 MRTT, because they
deliver an A330-200 frame from Airbus commercial, and they deliver it to Airbus Defense and
Space, where it is then converted into the MRTT. Boeing purpose builds the KC-46s separately
from the 767 freighters, and so they reported differently. Both the 767 freighter and the KC-46
variant deliveries of both were both paused partially during Q1, because there were additional
quality issues. Those have been resolved and deliveries of the 767 are once again proceeding.
Boeing, at this point, pretty much firing on all cylinders.
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[0:19:06] JR: Yeah. First time that's happened in quite a while. Good luck to them. I hope they
can keep this up, because it seems like any time they hit a stride, something happens and one
of their lines goes down.
[0:19:17] IP: I hope not. Don't say things like that.
[0:19:21] JR: I mean, past history has really repeated itself quite a number of times recently
with Boeing. Let's hope they've figured it all out. They have accounted for all of their
screwdrivers. Nothing is left behind in any of these aircraft and they can start pumping out the
737s and 78s. Maybe even one day, a 777X, maybe.
[0:19:41] IP: Maybe.
[0:19:41] JR: Not today, not tomorrow. One day.
[0:19:45] IP: Let's flip it over to the orders. Last week we mentioned, while we were recording,
French President Emmanuel Macron, was enroute to China, we thought there might be a big
aircraft order. That turned out to not really be the case. It was more a recommitment of existing
orders and reaffirmation of existing business. The one big bit of news that really came out of the
visit was that Airbus will open a second final assembly line at its Tianjin final assembly area.
That will give them two lines for the A320neo family in Tianjin, which will help them get to a rate.
I still can't believe that they're going to be producing this many aircraft a month. Hopefully, by
2026, 75 A320neo family aircraft per month.
[0:20:34] JR: Yeah. That line in Tianjin, that's a doubling, I think, from 12 to 24 aircraft per
month. I'm plucking that off the top of my mind, but I think that's correct. That's a lot of aircraft
for the Chinese market and I guess, the Asia market as a whole, but it really quashed any
rumors and speculation that Airbus was possibly going to open up a final assembly line in India.
That seems just exponentially unlikely at this point. It just makes so much more sense to double
down on a facility they already have up and running for a long time now. I guess, we'll probably
never see at this point wide bodies produced in the Tianjin facility. It's just going to remain
strictly –
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[0:21:10] IP: I mean, they have the A350 finishing.
[0:21:14] JR: But not final assembly line.
[0:21:15] IP: Not final assembly. Yeah.
[0:21:17] JR: It’s like, they’re getting out for assembly line, where you go out and you put the
seats onboard and you put the paint on. Maybe not the paint, but all of the interior fittings can
happen there. That's an interesting one. 75 aircraft a month. But it seems like every time Airbus,
or Boeing gets up to one of these theoretical numbers, if we're going to produce X number of
fantastical rate of these aircraft, something happens and they just don't reach it. Maybe this
time, maybe 75 can actually happen.
[0:21:45] IP: We shall see. Elsewhere on the Airbus order front, Airbus made sales of four A350
freighters to an undisclosed customer.
[0:21:57] JR: That's nice.
[0:21:57] IP: Congratulations, Jason. I assume it was you.
[0:22:00] JR: Yes. I will be landing them and storing them at JFK. Yes. Definitely. I hate these
announcements. We should make a rule to never talk about undisclosed orders.
[0:22:10] IP: Okay.
[0:22:10] JR: I don't like it. Disclose yourself. Tell us who you are.
[0:22:14] IP: Disclose yourself. Fair enough. This is a very, very, very disclosed order. This is
Icelandair's big announcement that is, well, not surprising at all. There's not really any other
option for the airline at this point.
[0:22:30] JR: Boeing has seen to it to make sure that there was no option in this particular
market.
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[0:22:38] IP: They have ordered 13 firm and 12 options for the A321 XLR. The airline will also
try and lease. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to, four A321 LRs in the meantime, as it
begins replacing, it's 757 fleet. This still leaves the 767 in need of replacement. That'll be
interesting to see what Icelandair does eventually on that front. They need more capacity and
they need to replace the size of the 767. How they do that? That will be the interesting question.
[0:23:17] JR: Nobody knows.
[0:23:20] IP: Nobody knows yet. But this answers the 757 question.
[0:23:23] JR: Yeah. These XLRs, they are way off in the future. I think they said, they are going
to start taking delivery in 2029. Yeah. I guess, the 73 Maxes and 75s will be around in
Icelandair’s fleet for still quite some time, because 2029 is just when I think when they start
taking delivery of these aircraft. They are planning way out in advance, seemingly.
[0:23:45] IP: I mean, good for them. I mean, delivery slots of the 320 family are hard to come
by.
[0:23:51] JR: That's a good point. Yeah. Better get your orders in now.
[0:23:54] IP: I mean, they could probably move them up a bit if they really wanted to. Yeah, I
mean, if the 757s are going to be around for that long, good for them. It'll be interesting to see
what happens when Boeing eventually does announce whatever the next new aircraft is they
start building in the next decade.
[0:24:13] JR: It won't be before 2029. Even though this seems like it's so far away, 2029, at that
point, Boeing likely still will have even announced, maybe they will have announced their intent
to start publicly announcing an aircraft, but they will still probably be years away from a
competitor to the 321XLR. Wow. I haven't really thought about it like that before that, even
though this is so far out, Boeing will still have nothing to show.
[0:24:40] IP: It'll be a while.
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[0:24:42] JR: I think it's the right call. Who am I to judge? Wow.
[0:24:48] IP: I'm going to leave that there. I'm going to leave it there. Last week, we talked
about Go First and their A320neo fleet and how some of the aircraft are facing a repossession
threat, because they've basically stopped lease payments on them, because most of the aircraft
are in fact, grounded, because of the Pratt and Whitney gear turbofan engines. Prior to that,
we've talked about airBaltic and how they're wet leasing aircraft from a variety of sources for this
summer season, because they, too, are having issues with their Pratt and Whitney gear
turbofan engines. airBaltic this week said, that they have been waiting 386 days for A220 engine
repairs. That's a lot of days.
[0:25:28] JR: That's a minute.
[0:25:31] IP: Flight Global looked into just how many GTF-powered aircraft are stored. 147
A320neo family aircraft powered by the GTFs are in storage. That breaks down to a 101
A320neos and 46 A321neos, or about 12% of the entire A320 family GTF fleet. The A320neo
family jets powered by the CFM leap engines, 4% grounded.
[0:26:07] JR: Wow.
[0:26:08] IP: A pretty big difference. A220 fleets are also affected. 14% of the 250 A220s
already delivered are currently parked. Three dozen aircraft on the A220 side and almost a 150
on the A320neo side. Not great. A third of airBaltic’s fleet, Air Tanzania has three of four A220s
in storage and Egyptair has seven of 12 A220s.
[0:26:40] JR: Wow. Something's got to give here. This can't continue like this forever. I'm sure
they have their best and brightest, smartest working on this around the clock. This seems like
an issue that just will not go away.
[0:26:52] IP: To be clear, a big part of this is not just the fact that the engines are an issue,
though that is a big part of it. A big part of it is also the fact that there aren't enough parts the
supply chain is stretched incredibly thin and there aren't enough qualifying people to actually
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make the repairs. We're still in that perfect storm of technical problem needs a technical
solution. The technical solution needs to come from people. There aren't enough people to
provide necessarily the precise technical solution that is needed. Then you need to source parts
and then you need to install the parts. There's a funnel at every single one of those that's
holding this back. It's just really all shining a spotlight on how bad the supply chain has gotten
and continues to be. I mean, things are improving, but it's still bad out there.
[0:27:49] JR: Yeah, not great. I would love to actually, maybe we can contact Gavin for this.
He’s our resident numbers person, but maybe he can put together some numbers on how is this
compared to the new engine technologies of the past? Or are there really this level of prolonged
issues with aircraft offline for years at a time? I don't think so. I mean, we all know of the issues,
the original Pratt and Whitney engines had on the 747, but Joe Sutter saw to that that that would
be resolved before the aircraft entered into service. This just seems crazy at this point.
[0:28:23] IP: Yeah. I mean, one has to wonder how much of this is supply chain and
maintenance personnel issues and how much of it is in fact, the engines. I mean, it all –
[0:28:35] JR: We’ll find out eventually. Time will tell.
[0:28:39] IP: Yeah, time will tell. Let's do some route announcements. We'll do some follow-up
from some stories we did last week, and then we'll call it an episode. Jason, I know you don't
like to talk about things before they have actually happened, but in this case, it leans into the
conversation about how terrible this will be, if in fact it goes off as it's planned. We talked about
this a few weeks ago, JetBlue secured slots for Amsterdam that I think they themselves at the
time quoted as not commercially viable, I think was the phrase.
[0:29:16] JR: Commercially questionable, I think they said.
[0:29:17] IP: Commercially questionable. Well, they've announced the tickets. But as you noted,
you can't book the flight yet.
[0:29:24] JR: No. Well, they put out a very nice press release saying, “Hey, we're going to fly
New York to Amsterdam late this summer and also, probably Boston later.” You know what's
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really helpful to book flights is, well, first of all, the availability to book the flights and second of
all, potential schedule, knowing when the flight operates –
[0:29:43] IP: Interesting. Interesting.
[0:29:43] JR: - the fares for a route. I would like to know how much I have to pay for this flight.
That would be good.
[0:29:48] IP: Tell me more. Tell me more.
[0:29:49] JR: Yeah. We know the aircraft. JetBlue will use an A321LR. That's nice. Beyond that,
we know absolutely nothing. We don't know when we can book the flight. We don't know when
the flight will operate. We don't know how much a flight will cost.
[0:30:01] IP: Excellent.
[0:30:02] JR: People were speculating that this is bluffing, that they're going to announce
they're going to do it, but they're not really going to do it, but they're going to announce it,
because they've been backed into a corner. They've been given these slots and they have to do
something, maybe. But maybe, we'll see by late summer, they change their mind and don't
actually operate a commercially questionable flight that leaves at 1.40 a.m., or something like
that to Amsterdam. I don't really understand this one. It doesn't seem like Amsterdam is the
route that has bottomless pit of demand, like London does.
[0:30:33] IP: It's not Paris.
[0:30:34] JR: It’s not Paris. It's not London. But I do understand wanting to break up the
duopoly of basically, KLM Delta owning the New York to Amsterdam route. But man, give us
something. Give us a date that the fight might operate, or potential fares. I don't know, anything.
Or come back. Don't leave us alone.
[0:30:53] IP: Or, just be done with it. Last week, we talked about a court ruling issued in the
Netherlands against Schiphol Airport and the Dutch government saying that they hadn't followed
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AVT 211 Transcript
the proper procedures to announce flight cuts at Schiphol. This was a lawsuit filed by a number
of airlines led by KLM that said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. We've got great
planes, the best planes. We've got sustainable aviation fuel coming out of our ears. These
planes have brand-new engines. We can totally meet all of these climate goals that the
government has set without cutting the number of flights.” The judge said, “Okay, yeah. That's a
solid argument. You can't cut the number of flights, because you didn't follow the proper
procedures before announcing the cuts.” The government has now said, “Yeah, we're going to
appeal that.” Because they say, the proper procedures for all of these cuts would take until 2026
to go through and we don't have that kind of time.
[0:32:01] JR: Only Boeing has that time to think about what it's going to do in the future.
[0:32:05] IP: I mean, yeah. Mark Harbers, who is the Minister for Infrastructure and Water, has
said that they're going to appeal against this ruling and take it to a higher court. We'll see back
and forth how far this goes. My familiarity with the Dutch judicial process is thankfully, very
limited. I'm going to do a little bit more research into how this case could go, because it does
have some pretty big impacts in fact, the court says no, airlines, the cuts are going to happen,
that's tens of thousands of flights going away per year at Schiphol Airport.
[0:32:41] JR: Yeah, definitely okay with what I talked about last week about not having
confidence of booking a flight through Amsterdam anytime soon, because it is just very
unknown what the future is of that KLM super hub right now. I don't want to mess with it.
[0:32:55] IP: Yeah, I don't think there's really anything more to think of at this moment. I'm not
sure how long the process will take. They haven't appealed yet. They’ve just said they're going
to. We'll see what happens in the next round of the judicial process.
Last week, we also mentioned poor Air Vanuatu. They have a 737 that is broken and as part of
the supply chain issues and them being very remotely located far away from any easy to reach
MRO, they were forced to cancel a bunch of flights, losing well over a million dollars. To that
end, they have now leased a 737-800 from Air Nauru and they're back in the air with their sole
jet aircraft still on the ground. They are flying again with a wet lease.
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AVT 211 Transcript
[0:33:44] JR: Good for them.
[0:33:46] IP: This was an interesting one that I was surprised by. Air Lingus is bringing back
their – so they had five in the fleet, three released, two were owned outright. They're bringing
back the two A330-200s that they own. That's EI duo and EI DAA, are both coming back.
Talking about this just jogged my memory about the goofy thing that happened a few weeks ago
now that I don't think we talked about too much, but where there was some weird Wikipedia
article edited to say that Delta, or was it Delta was picking up all of the ex-American A330s?
[0:34:29] JR: Oh, jeez. Yeah.
[0:34:30] IP: See, it was just a goofy thing. Maybe Air Lingus –
[0:34:32] JR: That one’s real.
[0:34:34] IP: - wants to, yeah, this one's real and maybe Air Lingus wants to pick those up,
because they are 200s.
[0:34:39] JR: Yeah, these aircraft in Air Lingus' fleet, they were always the oddball runt. They
have a good number of A330-300s and these 200s were just there, occasionally grounded,
occasionally put back into service. They were grounded, looks like mid or late 2020, very
expectedly. Surprising to see them put back into service. Yeah, maybe we should go update and
not put any sourcing and any reference into Air Lingus' Wikipedia page saying, “Yeah, they've
taken all of American’s old A330s.” Which actually would be a much newer aircraft than these
A330-200s at Air Lingus. These are not new aircraft. EI DAA is a healthy 22-years-old, while EI
DUO is just about 16-years-old. they have EI GEYs, also just about 22-years-old. These are not
new aircraft. When these were grounded, I thought these were gone for good. Apparently,
there's a little bit of life left in them.
[0:35:43] IP: I mean, they own them, why not fly them?
[0:35:46] JR: Yup. As long as they're airworthy and they might as well make some money.
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AVT 211 Transcript
[0:35:49] IP: There you go. Finally, we've talked over the last couple of weeks about the new
Flightradar24 open beta. If you haven't checked that out, go do so. Flightradar24.com/openbeta.
It's available on web only right now. All of the features that are available will eventually be
coming to the apps and future releases. This week, we released a new feature in the filters that
I've wanted for a really long time personally. I'm really excited that we made it work and we were
able to release it. It's a new routes filter.
Before when you filtered to airports, say you filtered Chicago O’Hare out and JFK in, you were
getting all of the flights leaving Chicago and all the flights coming into JFK. With the new routes
filter, now you get just the flights that are going in between the two airports.
[0:36:41] JR: That’s nice.
[0:36:42] IP: You can filter with multiple airports on both the from and to side. You can do all
Chicago airports to all New York airports and see what's there. The cool thing, at least as far as
I'm concerned, is that you can also filter like you can with the airport filters now on country. You
can see all of the flights coming from the US to the UK, everything going from Japan to
Australia. If you create multiple filters, you can do some fun things looking at the density of
domestic traffic around the world. That's something that I've been having a little fun with lately.
If you haven't checked out the new beta version of the flightradar24 website, you should go do
that, because I mean, I know I'm biased, but it's really good. I'm really, really proud of all the
work that our product folks and our developer folks and our design folks have been working on
and tolerating a ton of internal feedback from me and others, as well as –
[0:37:43] JR: The most important kind of feedback.
[0:37:45] IP: Yes. All of the great feedback we've gotten from our users so far that's already
made the site so much better just from having beta testers. Really appreciate that from
everyone who's checked it out. If you haven't checked it out, go do so. Jason, that's episode
211.
[0:38:04] JR: That was a good one.
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AVT 211 Transcript
[0:38:05] IP: All right. If you liked episode 211, or if you didn't, why don't you head over to
wherever you listen to your podcast and leave us a rating, or a review? It definitely helps other
people find the podcast, is a big push and we really appreciate having your feedback as well. If
you want to talk to us about something, or if you have a suggestion for a future episode, or a
topic, email us at podcast@fr24.com and we look forward to hearing from you. I am Ian
Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:38:39] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2023 AvTalk 19