AvTalk Episode 319: What’s old is Newark again

AVT 319 Transcript
EPISODE 319
[EPISODE]
[0:00:08] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 319 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How are you doing?
[0:00:20] IP: I'm doing well, Jason. It's a beautiful day here in Chicago and I'm doing well. How
are you, sir?
[0:00:26] JR: I'm great. I'm home. I can see the sun again. we've had some terrible weather. I'm
just happy that we're finally up to episode numbers that are the same number as some
airplanes we all know love and fly.
[0:00:38] IP: This is true.
[0:00:39] JR: 319. I love a good 319. They're hard to find these days, but maybe one day we'll
get to some Boeing numbers.
[0:00:45] IP: There you go. If we keep at it long enough, we can. Although, there's some Boeing
numbers coming up fairly soon, if you go back far enough.
[0:00:53] JR: Yeah. I guess, if you want to. You want to take a dip into history, sure. Why not?
[0:01:01] IP: Last week, you were on the road in DC and you came to us from what was
charitably be described as a wet paper bag, so we apologize a little bit for Jason about last
week.
[0:01:12] JR: The audio was that bad?
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[0:01:13] IP: It wasn't that bad. There was one person who was very upset about your audio. I
thought it was –
[0:01:19] JR: I was told that the microphones on my MacBook Pro are studio quality, so please
direct your hate mail towards Tim Cook.
[0:01:27] IP: There you go. You then did a bit more flying that wasn't necessarily work-related,
but a little bit more fun. We can play the Johnny Cash song, Hey Porter.
[0:01:40] JR: Yeah, my first time flying Porter, I got a taste of all two of their aircraft types, the
Q400 and the Embraer E195-E2. Man, are those two very different, very, very different
experiences. I don't think I've ever been on an airline where two aircraft are so dissimilar from
each other. The Q400, which by the way, I have not been on a Q400 or any turbo prop for that
matter in a very long time. Q400s are a rare breed. I think that in North America, at least the
only operators are at this point in Canada that I know of. During COVID in 2020-2021, they put
some new seats on board those Q400s and man, are they rock hard. Not a fan of those seats.
[0:02:27] IP: They're bus bench level seats.
[0:02:30] JR: No. No. That's an insult to bus benches. This is worse. Porter operates those
aircraft in some not short flights. They used to fly them all the way down from Toronto down to
Florida, I think. I don't think they still do that, because the E195-E2 is a thing now. Now that, that
was my first time on an E2 and that was a nice ride. I very much enjoyed that, even if there were
only 37 passengers on my flight, because I flew with a friend of the show, Ned Russell, on the
third day of operations on their new LaGuardia route. That was nice.
[0:03:04] IP: All right. Well, welcome back.
[0:03:06] JR: Enjoyed that. Thank you.
[0:03:07] IP: I'm glad you had fun. Yeah. No, the farther – I'm checking the route map right now.
Yeah, they used to – I think it was Myrtle Beach that they would fly the Q400 down. Now, that is
no longer the case. I'm wondering what their longest Q400 route is now.
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[0:03:25] JR: It almost doesn't matter what their longest route by distance, or block time is,
because I guarantee, the longest time you're going to spend on that aircraft is a flight out of
Newark. We'll get to that, because Porter does operate to Newark –
[0:03:38] IP: You sure will.
[0:03:39] JR: We’ll get why, how to tie that in.
[0:03:41] IP: We sure will.
[0:03:42] JR: An E2, I was talking to one of the pilots before the flight and he came up from the
Q400, is now on the E2. According to him, it is night and day of a difference. I said, “Well, the E2
is probably day and the Q400 is night, right?” He goes, “Yes.”
[0:03:59] IP: That's the same conversation that we've had with pilots on the A220 at airBaltic
over on a YouTube channel where we've done a few videos with airBaltic, where a lot of their
pilots are former Q400 pilots, and then airBaltic transitioned over to the A220. Those pilots are
like, look, the A220 is just, it's an entirely different way of flying compared to that Q400. It's
interesting to see it come through with the E195-E2.
[0:04:24] JR: Yes.
[0:04:25] IP: Okay. Shall we stick with a little bit of domestic stuff and just wish everybody a
happy real ID Day?
[0:04:31] JR: It's finally, really, actually here. I am as shocked as you, Ian. I never thought we'd
get here.
[0:04:38] IP: I'm flabbergasted.
[0:04:39] JR: I cannot believe it.
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[0:04:41] IP: I honestly thought that they would delay it until, just IDs didn't exist anymore, and
there was some biometric scan that everybody went through and that's just how they did things,
and we didn't have ID anymore.
[0:04:52] JR: That is today. That already exists. Pre-check.
[0:04:55] IP: No. I mean, for everybody.
[0:04:56] JR: Oh, for everyone. Yeah. I mean, for a very select number of people, that is a
thing. You can get all the way on an international flight, without ever showing anything, which is
crazy.
[0:05:03] IP: Isn't it so great?
[0:05:05] JR: It is great. When it works, it's really nice.
[0:05:07] IP: Oh, yeah. When it works. I don't want to be the guy that gets all the way on the
flight to a foreign country, and only at that point realizes, I don't have my passport, because
nobody ever checked it. That would be embarrassing. Just anecdotally, looking across some of
the security wait times at the New York airports here, nothing looks that out of the ordinary. The
terminals that are bad typically are still bad today, and the terminals that are good are still
typically good today. Either people got the message, or I don't know, I guess, maybe it'll be fine.
[0:05:40] IP: They did say they were going to have some non-real ID compliant mitigation
measures for folks who don't have a real ID to travel. For everyone who doesn't know what
we're talking about, good, first of all.
[0:05:53] JR: Good for you.
[0:05:55] IP: Second of all, so the US mandated that in order to do a couple things for our
purposes, air travel, but also, enter federal buildings and courthouses and things like that, you
need to have what they call a real ID, which is basically a –
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[0:06:09] JR: At most, a fake ID, which you used in college to get alcohol.
[0:06:13] IP: There you go. Which has enhanced security measures and the like. That deadline
finally went into effect after, I don't know how many delays. I mean, I honestly don't know how
many times they do it.
[0:06:22] JR: The important context here is that the real ID mandate was put into place in the
wake of 9/11. That should give you an idea how long this has been in the works.
[0:06:32] IP: It's been a while. It's now in place and you need one to travel, except that you
don't, because they said if you don't have one, you can still get on the plane, and so on and so
forth. We'll keep an eye on this, but it seems like, because they're enforcing it, but not sort of,
they kind of are. Nothing has been –
[0:06:50] JR: Clear as mud. Just like every other TSA procedure regulations. None of it matters.
It varies person to person, security lane to security lane.
[0:07:00] IP: This is true.
[0:07:01] JR: Go with the flow.
[0:07:01] IP: This is true. This is very, very true. Okay. Let's go international, because we've got
a bunch of things happening around the world. I won't say, none of it's good, but most of it's no
good. We'll go to India and Pakistan first, where last week, we talked about Pakistan closing its
airspace to Indian aircraft and increasing flight times and adding trip times for Indian aircraft.
India responded with a reciprocal ban, closing its airspace to Pakistani aircraft, which had in
absolute terms much smaller impact, impacting only a few flights, I think, four round trip flights
by Pakistani Airlines to Kuala Lumpur.
Then, yesterday, on the 6th of May, India conducted strikes against what it termed terrorist sites,
or terrorist related sites in Pakistani controlled Kashmir, which then led to airlines saying, “Okay,
we're done.” Most but not all international air traffic leaving Pakistan. There have been a few re-
roots throughout the week already, where some airlines have taken a step back and said, “You
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know what? Even though we're not banned from flying at Pakistan, even though there's no
prohibition from flying in Pakistan, we're just not going to do that.”
Looking at British Airways, except for the flight that goes to Islamabad, but all the British Airways
flights that go to India that normally fly through Pakistan don't anymore. Swiss flying around. Air
France flying around already this week. ITA Airways and the like. But airlines like Singapore
Airlines, Thai, Eva, those airlines had been continuing to fly through Pakistan, through India
onwards to their destinations. That stopped yesterday, not because the airspace is necessarily
closed in its entirety, though there are extensive NOTAM closures on airways within Pakistan.
The problem being here, Jason, is that partially those airways are the ones that are most
traveled, so it creates a logistical problem. Then, also, the ones that are open adds another 90
minutes for some flights to make it through.
[0:09:24] JR: We are seeing some impact. I'm looking at Air Canada, who, after canceling a
number of flights has up-gauged and added an additional flight, but those flights now have to
operate via Frankfurt due to the added time between Delhi and Montreal and Toronto. Those
flights are now having to stop in Germany for a crew change and additional fuel. Man, really feel
like we're running out of airspace in that particular region. Really, dispatchers are having to
thread the needle and they're running out of, I don't know, places to put that needle.
[0:09:57] IP: Yeah. I mean, you basically had two main corridors. You have two main corridors.
Now, you have the northern corridor, which takes you, if you're trying to get between North
America, or Europe, and Asia. You've got the Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and
the northern route that takes you through southern Kazakhstan. Or you have the southern route,
two southern routes, depending on how your airline feels about flying over Iran or Iraq. Or you
can head even further south through Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We've talked about these things
before and the compression of airspace.
This is not without precedent. This has happened before where Pakistan shut its airspace
entirely in 2019. These things are not without precedent, but it's never good when this happens.
It's certainly not good now, given all of the additional airspace restrictions that have popped up
since that, where airlines are already avoiding so much airspace in the region. It's something
that hopefully, won't expand. We're still seeing some international traffic traveling through
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Pakistan. Etihad is still running their flights to China and Japan and South Korea up the western
spine.
Obviously, flights to and from cities and Pakistan are still operating. Some have been canceled,
but many are still operating. Then, I mean, I guess we'll just see how this plays out. It sounds
like, neither side wishes to escalate further, though that's never a guarantee that it won't
happen.
[0:11:36] JR: Yeah. Fingers crossed that cooler heads prevail. Not that aircraft over flight rights
and ability is really the end all be all. It's just what matters to us in this very specific industry
niche. Really hope this doesn't escalate for a whole lot of other very much more important
reasons.
[0:11:55] IP: We shift Southwest a little bit to Sanaa in Yemen, where last week a missile was
launched towards Tel Aviv and actually struck the airport property. There has been multiple
missile launches toward Tel Aviv. This missile in particular actually struck the airport property.
Israel responded by basically destroying the Sanaa Airport, and along with it, three Yemenia
Airbus aircraft, an A330 and two A320s.
[0:12:35] JR: Probably aircraft they could not really afford to lose.
[0:12:39] IP: The airport had been closed for years, and had then fairly recently as of last fall,
just reopened as a maintenance base for Yemenia. The interesting thing here is that throughout
the civil war in Yemen, there's been a fight over for among other things who controls the airports
and where the fleet is going to be based. Yemenia bifurcated their fleet and had a fleet based in
Sanaa, and then also a fleet based out of Aden. The A320s out of Aden are still operating to
destinations like Cairo and other regional places, but the A330 and A320s, plural, that were in
Sanaa are no more, at least according to the photos that I'm looking at that show them very
much on fire and collapsed on the ground.
[0:13:27] JR: Yes. I would not expect those aircraft to fly ever again.
[0:13:31] IP: Airbus's AOG team is good. I don't think they're that good.
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[0:13:35] JR: They're not Delta.
[0:13:36] IP: They're not Delta. Oh, they could fix anything.
[0:13:40] JR: They can.
[0:13:42] IP: we'll keep an eye on this. Tel Aviv Airport has been operational. Some US and
European carriers have canceled flights, or extended flight cancellations to Tel Aviv, but the
airport has remained operational as this back-and-forth bombardment continues. We're keeping
an eye on this to see what happens next. Let's come a bit closer to home and talk about
Newark.
[0:14:09] JR: Oh, Newark, Newark, Newark. What are we going to do with you?
[0:14:12] IP: Well, here's the problem, Jason. It's Newark.
[0:14:16] JR: Well, that's a great summary of this segment. Onto the next.
[0:14:22] IP: Where do we want to start with this? Because we can talk about the TRACON
issues.
[0:14:26] JR: It all stopped in the early 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan fired all the air
traffic controllers and life never recovered. Honestly, actually.
[0:14:36] IP: I think that goes back even probably even before that. I mean, that's certainly a
large contributing factor. The pack of strength is certainly a large contributing factor here. For
those that don't know, Newark Airport is located in New Jersey, very near New York, just across
the river –
[0:14:55] JR: You could also refer to it as New York/Newark.
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[0:14:59] IP: Yes. Then there's JFK and LaGuardia and all sorts of private traffic. Think
Teterboro and Morristown. Then, that's before you even throw in any of the helicopter traffic.
[0:15:10] JR: And the other airports. You forgot about Westchester and Islip and all the other
actual passenger airports.
[0:15:17] IP: Yes.
[0:15:17] JR: We're a busy city.
[0:15:19] IP: You're a busy city and you find people have, for some reason, decided to put that
many airports that close together. Then designed an airspace construction that on the best of
days is mind bogglingly complex and on the worst of days, just doesn't work.
[0:15:38] JR: Yes. Those worst of days has basically been the last two weeks, let's say.
[0:15:44] IP: As part of that, the workload on air traffic controllers for years has been near
impossible.
[0:15:52] JR: Yeah. These air traffic controllers that work the New York air space, they should
be candidates for sainthood.
[0:15:58] IP: And there’s no shortage of YouTube videos of people who work New York traffic
control, doing their job. I'm always in awe of their ability to move that many aircraft and do it
safely. There comes a point when you need to start doing something about this. The FAA has
done not very much. What it has done is said, “Okay, we're going to move the responsibility for
Newark approach to Philadelphia.” Jason, can you summarize what that was all about?
[0:16:35] JR: Well, the thinking was, hey, the New York TRACON is understaffed. It doesn't
have a very good pipeline in the training academy, and people don't really want to go there,
because the cost of living in New York is really high, and turns out, the pay scale for air traffic
control is not as high as it should be. They thought, “Hmm. What if we moved Newark and
Teterboro airspace down to Philly, where the staffing level is higher, because it's the lowest in
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the country in the New York center.” Philly has a higher staffing level, more candidates in the
training pipeline, so it'll work out. We'll have additional people there and more trainees on the
way. Well, that might work in the long run.
Basically, all they've done right now is transplanted, I think, 22 air traffic controllers from the
New York TRACON down to Philly TRACON. That's it. In the long term, maybe this plan will
work, because you cannot just take someone from Philly TRACON and sit them down at a
Newark sector and say, “You do Newark now.” It doesn't work that way. Like you said, Ian, it's
very congested, very highly skilled airspace that you have to be trained on for a long period of
time in order to qualify to do those positions. You can't just take someone from Philly and put
them in a Newark seat. It doesn't work that way.
Right now, what we have is a situation where you've taken a select number of the New York
TRACON air traffic controllers, put them in Philly and given them really crappy equipment that
breaks down a lot. Surprise, surprise, that hasn't gone well.
[0:18:05] IP: No. The most recent breakdown was on the 28th of April, when the radar went out
and the radios went out. So, that pilots couldn't talk to a traffic control, air traffic control couldn't
talk to the pilots that were on the TRACON frequencies. The TRACON controllers couldn't see
what was happening. This is at least the third time something like this has happened within a
year. That creates some impetus for change.
The FAA, or the DOT has said it is implementing a number of changes to speed up the airspace
modernization program and ensure that this type of technology breakdown doesn't happen
again. Really, the deal is with the technology here, the issue, and why we're not seeing this
issue elsewhere is basically, Philly Center doesn't actually have the radar data, and I assume
the radio data from New York TRACON, and all of that data that is going from the radar issues,
the antennas and all that that's going to New York TRACON and then is remotely piped in to the
Philly TRACON, where the Newark controllers are in Philly. Then that data is all coming through
New York. That, apparently, is the link, the weak link in the chain here that keeps breaking
down.
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Whether they are losing all connectivity with the remote feed to New York, or there's added
latency, which is also an issue, that is really what the issue is here is that the radar data doesn't
actually get directly fed to Philly. It goes to New York, where those controllers are supposed to
be. Anytime that latency increases, think about if you've ever played a video game and you're
lagging out and suddenly, something happens and you don't really know what happened and
suddenly, you're dead. That's not a good situation when you're controlling air traffic and that
can't work. The system, I guess, for a lack of a better term, shuts off when it detects that the
latency has spiked, or the connection has dropped entirely. That's how you end up in a situation
from what we can tell that the controllers suddenly have no control over their sector.
[0:20:16] IP: We haven't even talked about the fact that right now, Newark's main runway
shutdown for construction.
[0:20:22] JR: Yes. As we talk about in aviation, nothing ever happens because of one particular
thing. One artifact here. Basically, what's happened in the last couple of weeks is that we have
these air traffic control shortages. We know that, because 20% of the already very minimal
number of air traffic controllers at Newark are on leave. We'll talk about that in another second.
On top of that, one of Newark's two main runways is completely closed right now for another
month and a week or so, for preplanned scheduled maintenance, or rehabilitation of that
runway. Then, we've had some really crap weather here the last couple of days.
You have understaffing of the controllers, equipment malfunctions for those controllers that
remain, a runway that is closed, and bad weather just made it a situation that Newark cannot
function properly as an airport. At the best of times right now, it has one and a half runways in
use. For a long period of the last couple of days, the last week really, they've been down to a
single runway, which is just not going to work.
[0:21:28] IP: Yeah. I mean, it's untenable, feels like a good word for it. We have Newark's
largest customer, shall we say, not happy about this, obviously. Scott Kirby of United Airlines has
some ideas. One of those ideas is to limit the number of flights, which seems like it makes
sense, return Newark to a level three slot-controlled airport, okay, modernize the ATC system,
sure, and fully staff Newark air traffic control. Easy stuff, easy stuff.
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[0:22:06] JR: Sure. No big deal. Won’t take years to –
[0:22:08] IP: Shouldn’t take much time at all.
[0:22:09] JR: For the record, Newark was previously, up until 2016, a slot-controlled airport just
like JFK, just like LaGuardia, just like DCA. When 2016, they lowered it from slot-controlled to, I
guess, schedule constrained, and there's a set number of flights that can operate, but often, that
number is exceeded. It's not great. I understand why United would call for resuming slot controls
at Newark as it would benefit United much more than any other airline. Sounds good, but that's
not going to happen overnight. Neither is increasing the staffing, or fixing the technology, or
really doing anything. It's not going to work overnight.
[0:22:49] IP: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what the FAA does about capping the number of
flights that are allowed to operate, and if they can do anything short of reverting it back to a slot-
controlled airport.
[0:23:02] JR: Yeah. They'll have to take down the number of flights per hour, or per day. To be
fair, the FAA knew this was going to be a problem with the runway closure. They knew the
number of flights scheduled exceeded the capabilities of Newark under most circumstances.
This was expected. But when you add on top of that, the bad weather and then the air traffic
control shortages, everything compounds and it's a much worse situation in reality than what
was planned for. In the short term, today on Wednesday, May 7th, the FAA laid out some actions
that they're going to take, including three new high bandwidth telecommunication connections
between New York based stars and the Philly TRACON. That's basically some redundancy for
that remote data.
Replacing copper telecommunication connections with updated fiber technology. It's unclear
what kind of copper technology they're using here. I hope it's not analog, plain old telephone
system copper wire, because that would –
[0:23:55] IP: It's plumbing. It's copper plumbing.
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[0:23:57] JR: Oh, I knew it. I knew it. It's just a series of tubes. They will also be deploying a
temporary backup system to the Philly TRACON for more redundancy during that move to fiber
optic networks. They don't explain what that temporary backup is. But if you've been paying
attention, you might have a couple guesses what that might be, but we won't get into that.
[0:24:17] IP: We'll see when they actually announce it. Yeah.
[0:24:19] JR: Then establishing a star's hub at the Philly TRACON, so that would remove the
leaning on the New York Center for that data and the radar data would go directly to Philly
without having to route it through New York, which would be a tremendous help, because that
seems to be the weakest link. Then, of course, the last bullet point is increasing controller
staffing. Yeah, of course. Currently, there are 22 fully certified controllers with 21 controllers and
supervisors in training.
However, we know that at least 20% of those 20 certified controllers are out on leave right now.
It is not a good situation. Pretty much means that everyone's going to work six days a week.
Nobody can take any time off. Nobody can do anything, other than work. That’s going to take a
real toll on these people. It’s not great.
[0:25:10] IP: Yeah. It catches up with people.
[0:25:13] JR: What doesn't help is Scott Kirby's inflammatory comment from last Friday, which
has been, I’m not going to say, walked back, but almost doubled down on today. Last week, on
May 2nd, Scott Kirby put out a message to his customers as a CEO of United Airlines. I'll quote
this one sentence. “Unfortunately, the technology issues were compounded as over 20% of the
FAA controllers for EWR walked off the job.” I like Scott Kirby. I think he's a bright guy. I think
he's done great things for United. But that comment to not say that off the cuff in an interview or
something, but to write that in a message to your customers and have all sorts of people in your
internal machine approve that and publish that, man, that's just really think they're going to
regret saying that. I can't imagine them winning any friends in the air traffic control union right
now, because those EWR controllers did not walk off the job. They took leave after experiencing
a number of traumatic events on the job, where all of the aircraft they were controlling suddenly,
they couldn’t control.
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[0:26:22] IP: Disappeared.
[0:26:23] JR: They disappeared. It is their job to safely move those aircraft through the
airspace, and they couldn't do that. I can't even imagine the stress caused by controlling a
dozen aircraft and then suddenly, not controlling those dozen aircraft. That has got to take a
mental toll on anyone doing this job. To say, they walked off the job. Scott Kirby, you really got to
pick your words better than that next time. You’re not going to win any friends in the industry
talking like that.
[0:26:51] IP: No. Absolutely not. Let's talk about some other airlines. We have an inkling of
glimmer of some good news here with the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engine issues with
JetBlue saying, “We only have 10 planes on the ground right now.”
[0:27:11] JR: You know things are dire when you're saying, “We only have 10 airplanes with
broken brand-new engines.”
[0:27:18] IP: The expectation that JetBlue had at this point in the year and throughout the rest
of the year was that it would have in the high teens, would be the number of grounded aircraft.
They're down to 10 on the ground. That's great news. But –
[0:27:32] JR: You're taking our sprinkle of good news and peppering in some bad news. Is that
what's happening here?
[0:27:39] IP: Pratt & Whitney machinists in Connecticut are now on strike. They voted down a
deal with Pratt, that they say, doesn't go far enough to satisfy their demands. 3,000 workers
represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which is the
same union that went on strike at Boeing and Textron Aviation last year. The union says that
Pratt and Whitney, “failed to adequately address the membership's top concerns about wage
and retirement security and offered nothing to improve job security.” They are on strike and it
doesn't sound like the negotiations are going to move forward anytime soon.
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[0:28:22] JR: JetBlue might be happy with that 10 number, because it sounds like it could go up
in the very near future.
[0:28:27] IP: Yeah. Hopefully, they can come to the table and strike a deal soon. Otherwise, the
increasing uncertainty in the aerospace supply chain will get even more uncertain.
[0:28:38] JR: Cool. Cool, cool, cool.
[0:28:41] IP: In a continuing trend, Canadian Airlines are reducing flights to the U.S. with
WestJet joining the mix now saying, “A downward shift in trans-border travel demand has led
them to reduce the number of flights on nine routes.” Some of these are being pushed back,
instead of starting now-ish. They're being pushed back until June. Some are being held back
until October, while others are just being reduced in frequency. It's a fluctuating mix of how
airlines are dealing with this, but we now have pretty much all major Canadian Airlines saying,
“We're reducing the amount we fly to the US with Air Canada, WestJet, and Porter as well.”
[0:29:23] JR: Yeah. I guess, it's very localized city by city. I guess, more leisure-focused
destinations are going to be impacted, because here in New York, every Air Canada flight I have
seen, or been on recently has gone out completely full.
[0:29:36] IP: Yeah. Exactly.
[0:29:37] JR: That checks out to me. It's going to be market by market. Don't read into me
saying earlier that my Porter flight to LaGuardia had 37 passengers on it, because that was a
three-day-old route. I'm doing my best to offset the downward trend here, because I just spent
the last two weekends in Canada. Going back again in June. I'm doing my best.
[0:29:54] IP: There you go. This aligns with what we've been seeing from other low-cost and
leisure carriers, where the demand pullback, especially over the summer, is really hitting airlines
that cater to folks who go on vacation once a year. Those routes that WestJet is reducing, or
cutting, and some of the other routes that we've seen really lends itself to the fact that these are
vacation and holiday destinations for folks who don't fly a lot. That demand is just evaporating.
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AVT 319 Transcript
[0:30:32] JR: Yeah. I can't imagine that the bottom has fallen out here, because if passengers
booked their flight months ago, they're probably still going. But if they're now booking for travel
two months from now, the situation could be pretty different come in the middle of the summer.
[0:30:48] IP: It's definitely going to be interesting to see what forward look like over the next 30
to 60 days. Even further out in time, Icelandair reports that it is phasing out its 767s by 2029.
[0:31:03] JR: Oh.
[0:31:05] IP: Yeah. Oh, that's fine. This is the important news, Jason. It won't replace them with
another wide-body.
[0:31:12] JR: Oh. I mean, there really aren't any that Icelandair could probably want of that. I
mean, never say never. I mean, maybe the 787-8 could be a good fit for Icelandair one day,
right? Maybe.
[0:31:27] IP: One day. Maybe.
[0:31:28] JR: One day. I mean, the 76s are relatively new in the Icelandair world. Those have
only been in service since what? 2017? Something along those lines?
[0:31:38] IP: They say they're getting back to the routes. They say that they're getting back to
doing what they do well, which is operating narrow body aircraft more efficiently to points further
east and further west than anyone in their competition can do. Good for them.
[0:31:54] JR: Yeah.
[0:31:55] IP: But don't look out for any wide bodies after 2029. It's pretty much A321LRs, XLRs,
and Boeing MAX 8s and 9s from here on out.
[0:32:06] JR: Yup. We'll see what the future holds, but I love Icelandair 76s. They're just so
comfy.
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[0:32:12] IP: It's like riding in a Cadillac. It's just a squishy, comfy seat.
[0:32:17] JR: Yes.
[0:32:18] IP: This is a story that popped up last week that we didn't have time to talk about,
because you were in between meetings when we recorded the podcast.
[0:32:24] JR: That's true.
[0:32:25] IP: I felt that we absolutely needed to discuss this, if only because I like
complimenting the Flight Global headline writer every once in a while.
[0:32:31] JR: When we see a headline this good, we can't just let it go.
[0:32:35] IP: The headline here is, Sweden Loses out to LA After Heart Transplants Operation.
[0:32:41] JR: Ah, get it.
[0:32:42] IP: I do get it. For those that are going, “What?” Heart is the manufacturer of a hopeful
electric hybrid aircraft. It was the ES19. Now it's the ES30, the 30 standing for the number of
passengers that that aircraft is supposed to carry when it's certified, hopefully, by the end of this
decade. They were based in Gothenburg, Sweden. We actually visited them, went and saw the
whole thing. We'll put a link in the show notes to that video over on our YouTube channel, and
they were cruising along. Then last week, they announced that we're moving from Sweden to
LA, because that's where all of the people who are giving us money are.
[0:33:25] JR: It seems like, I don't know, launching operations, or something like this in LA
seems like more opportunity than Sweden. As much as I love Sweden, I'll be there in a couple
of weeks, LA just seems the right place for it.
[0:33:39] IP: Yeah. The reason they're moving is that the funders of this particular aircraft are
mostly based in the US. The company, Heart, is actually technically a US-based company and
has been for a while. They created an American parent company that was controlling the
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Swedish company. This thing has been in the works for a while, but now they are, in fact,
moving out. Lots of folks in Sweden are not very happy about that, feeling baited and switched, I
guess –
[0:34:07] JR: We’re the incubator. It's okay.
[0:34:10] IP: Yeah.
[0:34:12] JR: We acknowledge the work that you've done.
[0:34:14] IP: But they're off to LA now. Let's see, some other airline news that we didn't get to
last week that I thought was worth discussing. PLAY Airlines, which began as a Wow 2.0, but
then said, “Nah, it's not working. We're going to figure something else out.” They're refocusing
on leisure destinations. Now, they're also refocusing on leasing out their aircraft to other
carriers. This is where it gets fun. PLAY is Icelandic based, but they set up a Maltese AOC and
put a bunch of aircraft on that AOC.
[0:34:46] JR: As one does.
[0:34:49] IP: That Maltese division is going to damp lease 10 A320neo family aircraft to the
Maltese division of Ukrainian-based SkyUp Airlines.
[0:35:00] JR: What's Ukrainian based SkyUp Airlines going to do with it?
[0:35:04] IP: Well, they're going to operate out of their Maltese division.
[0:35:08] JR: Oh. What are they going to do with those?
[0:35:10] IP: Just do leisure stuff around Europe.
[0:35:12] JR: Oh, okay. That’s nice.
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[0:35:13] IP: SkyUp has been operating, because they obviously can't fly in Ukraine, they've
been doing other things. Yeah, they've been doing other things. PLAY is going to have seven
aircraft in its own operations this summer, much less transatlantic flying, much more flying
Europeans down to Gran Canaria, Azores, things like that. SkyUp is basically going to do the
same thing in PLAY aircraft, but as SkyUp.
[0:35:36] JR: PLAY, who hasn't been able to make it work in the North America to Europe world
transferred some of its aircraft to a Maltese division, to then transfer it to the Maltese division of
Ukraine SkyUp Airlines, who will then use those aircraft to do stuff in Europe, not touching
Ukraine. Yup, that all checks out.
[0:35:59] IP: That all checks out.
[0:36:00] JR: Somehow, money will be made.
[0:36:02] IP: Somehow. Let's see, what else did we miss last week? Oh, we can talk about
“Etihad's A321 XLR first-class cabins.” I'm using air quotes here, because they're first-ish.
[0:36:14] JR: First-ish. Yeah, this is a real first-world problem here. With aircraft like the 321
XLR, or LR, even just regular 321, and a lot of other wide-body aircraft, airlines have phased out
first class in favor of something called business plus, which is the business class seats in the
bulkhead. The first row of the cabin typically have a bit more space and you can customize and
do a couple of fancy things. This is pretty widespread now from airlines from JetBlue to Condor
to Air France. It's a bit all over the place. But it is just the seat in the business class cabin.
Somewhat, Etihad had the thought of, “Huh. Why don't we just sell it as first class and call it first
class?” It'll really just be the business class seat with a couple of extra tweaks and things, but
we don't even have to put a divider between business class and first class. We could just call it
first class. John Walton over at Runway Girl Network has a very good analysis and take down of
this, but it's just a very odd choice. I guess, if you include all the ground services and the
chauffeur and the caviar –
[0:37:19] IP: I think that's really what this is all about.
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AVT 319 Transcript
[0:37:21] JR: That’s the play, I think. Plus is hard to sell, since it's not a fare. But if you're going
to go all the way to sell this first class, you should probably make it first class and at least put a
curtain there to separate your first-class passengers from the business class peasants.
[0:37:39] IP: Let's go the other way and talk about air taxis, kind of. We've got high frequency,
low – I wouldn't say low frills. But just people that are on the road a lot, they need high
frequency traffic. Jason, we used to call these certain things, but we're not allowed to call them
that.
[0:38:02] JR: We're not allowed to call them that anymore. You could call it whatever you want,
as long as you don't call it a shuttle, Ian.
[0:38:08] IP: Okay.
[0:38:08] JR: Don't call it a shuttle. To be fair, United, who we're talking about here, never called
its route between, as far as I'm aware, between New York and Chicago, a shuttle. That was for
the Americans and the Deltas of the world. Somehow, in the year 2025, United now operates 15
daily trips between Chicago, O'Hare and New York, LaGuardia, and that's damn near a shuttle
level frequency if I've ever heard one. But they don't call it a shuttle. Now they're taking its
operation at O'Hare and guaranteeing, and I'm quoting here, guaranteeing that those flights will
depart out of Gates B1 to B8 in Chicago. Those are very close to security and very close to the
United clubs, which are all very shuttley things to do, but don't call it a shuttle, Ian.
[0:38:59] IP: Okay. I won't.
[0:39:01] JR: I would love to see someone bring back the shuttle, because shuttles died during
COVID, or they were death by a thousand cuts, where they cut this, they cut that, and
eventually, during COVID, the shuttle disappeared. It wasn't sunset. There was no last shuttle
flight. There was no media, no press release. It was just, they're gone now. That was a big part
of New York aviation for decades, where the shuttles between New York, Boston, D.C., and to a
lesser extent, Chicago. But they're gone. I don't know, United's one step closer to bringing back
a shuttle, and I'm here for it.
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AVT 319 Transcript
[0:39:37] IP: More shuttles. That's what we need.
[0:39:39] JR: More shuttle, more good.
[0:39:42] IP: Before we go, the fourth Boeing 777X flying test aircraft is, in fact, flying again.
This is the first time that WH004 has flown since November of 2021. You can track that as
November 779XZ. With that, Jason, that's episode 319 of AvTalk. Thanks, everyone, so very
much for listening. If you like the podcast, you can comment on the episode either on the
FlightRadar24 blog, or Spotify has built-in comments if you listen to the podcast there. You can
also leave us a rating, or review wherever you listen to this podcast, whether that's Apple for a
good chunk of you, Spotify for another good chunk of you, or a smattering of other podcast
players for the rest of you. We thank you all very much for listening. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as
always with –
[0:40:41] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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