AvTalk Episode 284: When protection doesn’t protect you

AVT 284 Transcript
EPISODE 284
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to Episode 284 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here as always,
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. Welcome to the official, unofficial end of summer.
[0:00:22] IP: The official, unofficial end of summer, it is here. The weather is maybe changing
slightly. We're definitely seeing signs of fall. But you wouldn't know it based on how high airfares
are these days.
[0:00:37] JR: That's true. But according to all of the airlines in this particular hemisphere,
summer is over, and it's done. It's behind us. It was amazing and successful. All the flights were
on time. None of the flights were canceled. Just ignore all the ones that were. Now, it's winter.
[0:00:54] IP: Oh, great. Cool. I'm glad we cleared that up. Yes, there was the rash of PR notices
from at least US airlines today, touting how well they did over the summer, whether or not they
did all that well. But touting how well they did. So, yes.
[0:01:13] JR: One of them came in from United touting, let's see, where did this email go?
United Airlines end of summer, August operational stats. And they mention how six out of seven
of their hubs in, I guess, prime cities, they write number one for on-time departures of the
summer months. I have a feeling I know which one of their major hubs.
[0:01:35] IP: Six out of seven, you say.
[0:01:38] JR: Was a disaster and continues to be a disaster even after the unofficial, official end
of summer. For those who haven't pieced it together, that would be Newark. It's a continual
disaster forever and always. Now aided by, I don't want to say incompetence on the FAA's part,
but definitely an own goal on the FAA's part a couple times this week.
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[0:02:02] IP: This has not gone well, is what we're saying. This transition of TRACON
responsibility has just not gone well.
[0:02:08] JR: No. We didn't intend to talk about this.
[0:02:11] IP: No, but we've set ourselves down this path.
[0:02:15] JR: Yes, we have. So, we talked about this before, that the FAA moved all of the
controllers for the Newark sector airspace down to Philadelphia, which is fine in theory, but in
practice, their link to the radar data that they now are piping in remotely to Philly Center keeps
breaking. Even if that breaks for five minutes, it screws up the entire day for Newark. That
affects every downstream flight for every flight that is trying to leave Newark, whether it's going
to South Africa or Ithaca, the return flight is going to be delayed however long it takes for that
airplane to get there.
There were a few times in the last week where Newark had upwards of 50 aircraft waiting to
depart and they were only pumping out an aircraft about every two and a half minutes. So, they
had each taxiway, each one of the parallel taxiways to the departure runway, which I think was
four left, lined up with aircraft in a way that like, I hope all of the pilots on board those flights
were like giving a round of applause as these aircraft between them, like throttled up and rolled
down the runway and took off. I've just never seen anything like that. Let's hope they can figure
it out, because it has gone poorly.
[0:03:29] IP: So, we bring up Newark because what we were going to talk about at the
beginning of the show, for just a second, and before we started recording, I'm trying to convince
Jason to come out for Dorkfest next week in LA. So, I prodded him to look at some flights, and
Newark is by far the cheapest option. We surmise because no one wants to go there.
[0:03:54] JR: Yes, fares are like half of what they are out of JFK, which doesn't historically buck
to trend because there are far, far, far more flights at JFK to the West Coast. Out of Newark, you
have United, which has the majority of flights, you have a couple of Spirit flights, and I think
JetBlue is ending its flights, and also like a couple of token Alaska flights, and that's it. Usually,
it's far more expensive to fly to Newark, but now, I guess people are wary of Newark, and they
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don't want to book it. I, too, am afraid of my flight exactly a month from today out of Newark.
May have made a mistake on that one.
[0:04:30] IP: Well, I hope that all of these issues have been resolved, or at least lessened by
then. But if you are looking for something to do next weekend and you don't live near Newark
and you live near a port that seems to be working these days. I will be out Los Angeles with
Brett Snyder from Cranky Flier, all the good folks from NYC Aviation, and whoever else shows
up. It's always a fantastic time out in LA. We're going to do the raffle that we always do during
Dorkfest, so between 11 and 1.
We'll be out there eating cheeseburgers looking at planes and giving away things, Flightradar24
subscriptions, some t-shirts, and some other good stuff as well. So, if you're looking for
something to do next weekend, or if you're going to be there, just let us know. Email at
podcast@fr24.com. Love to meet up and see you. Unfortunately, it looks like because of
Newark's dysfunction, Jason won't be joining us this year and I'm a bit sad.
[0:05:34] JR: Yes. Sorry. I made it last year. I'm not going to make it this year. I'll be riding some
trains here in New York, which is super interesting to a very select group of people. No LA for
me this year.
[0:05:44] IP: I guarantee that there's some audience crossover between train –
[0:05:48] JR: Undoubtedly.
[0:05:49] IP: – podcast listeners and aviation podcast listeners, for sure.
[0:05:54] JR: Yes. Not the topic of this podcast, but I'll be missing it. When I wanted to book
ahead of time, it was just too damn expensive. But now it's not, and it's too late for me to book it
because I've got other plans.
[0:06:04] IP: Okay. Let's move on to this week's news. We start in Hong Kong. A Cathay Pacific
A350 on its way to Zurich returned to Hong Kong after something broke. They held for a while,
they dumped fuel, and they landed back in Hong Kong safely, and they said, there's something
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wrong with the engine. Then, they took the engine apart and found that one of the fuel lines
inside one of the Trent XWB-97 engines was broken. So, Cathay said to themselves, “Hey, let's
see, because all of these aircraft have the same component, let's see if any of our 47 other
A350s are affected. It turns out that fuel lines in 15 of its 48 A350s spanning the A350-900 and
the A350-1000, are in fact affected.
They technically grounded the fleet, though I don't think – I think this was one of those things
where they landed, they looked at them, if it needed to be fixed, they've taken it out of service.
They've canceled a few dozen flights through today, Wednesday, September 4th, and there are
another dozen or so flights scheduled to be canceled through the 11th of September.
So far, 6 of the 15 have been put back into service and 9 will be back in service by the 7th. Sorry,
another 11 flights through September 7th. I had it backwards initially. So, good to know that
these things are easy to fix and being put back into service. Reuters is now reporting that both
Airbus and Rolls don't seem to be seeing this as a fleet-wide issue, though we don't know why
that is yet.
[0:08:06] JR: No. We do know that apparently JAL had been inspecting its fleet as well, but we
haven't seen any widespread cancellations or grounding of its aircraft, and no other airline
operating the A350 has had any sort of widespread issue. So, we'll have to wait and see to see
if this was an installation error by either Airbus or Rolls-Royce, or if this was some mishap that
happened during routine maintenance and inspection specifically to the Singapore Airlines
aircraft. But thankfully, this does not seem to be a widespread issue that will see the entire
world's A350 fleet grounded. I would be pretty shocked by that, since there are a lot of them out
there that have certainly gone through some pretty heavy checks since introduction.
[0:08:52] IP: Yes.
[0:08:53] JR: Thankfully, this seems like just an isolated, very quick thing. Not quite as quick as
United grounding its 321 Neo fleet because of a no smoking sign.
[0:09:04] IP: A lighted placard, but no.
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[0:09:06] JR: But still a pretty quick grounding nonetheless.
[0:09:07] IP: Yes. So, good to see that this seems to be easily understood and easily fixed.
Russian investigators have released their preliminary report on the Gazpromavia Superjet that
crashed back in July. The preliminary report is in-depth in its scope –
[0:09:31] JR: Lengthy.
[0:09:31] IP: And very lengthy. An 88-page preliminary report dealing with a lot of the flight data
recorder data and a thorough timeline of what happened and how it happened. As Jason and I
were reading through a report, which is only available in Russian, so we were using machine-
translated text here. So, hopefully getting the gist of it. But I think we've understood the rough
outline of what's happened here. It's not dissimilar to the two 737 MAX MCAS-induced crashes.
[0:10:15] JR: Now, you can hear Ian is very carefully choosing his words, as we don't want to
make any comparisons that may not be true. But at first glance, reading this report, reading the
translation of the report and looking at the photography and everything, it is very similar to the
outcome of MCAS, which caused the crash of two 737 MAXs. But what's interesting, most
interesting to me, I think, is that the SSJ, that the Sukhoi Superjet 100 was flying for eight years
before the MAX had its first flight.
So, this isn't a case, as some people have said, as, “Oh, the Russians copied MCAS.” No, it's
still not the case where it's the other way around, but the Superjet is actually quite a bit older
than the MAX. Its first flight was May 19, 2008, not introduced with an airline until 2011 when I
believe the MAX had its introduction with an airline in 2016. So, the Superjet is actually an older
aircraft than the MAX. I don't know if most people know that. But Ian, what did we learn from the
translation of this very thorough report? What did its MCAS-style system do?
[0:11:32] IP: So, this is, I should say, it's the result. Jason, you brought this up before we started
recording, which I think was a really good point. The function of the crash was not similar to
MCAS. The result certainly was. What we learned from reading the report is that this all starts –
so the beginning in the end, I should say, are very similar to the Ethiopian Flight 302 crash,
where the angle of attack sensor is providing bad information to the air data computers.
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And because of that, the aircraft does things that it shouldn't do. That's the broad outlines. The
angle of attack sensors here from the preliminary report, what we're learning, were installed
incorrectly.
Because of that, there was a deviation between the true angle of attack for the aircraft and the
angle of attack being reported to the computers by those particular sensors. So, there were two
of four sensors that were replaced on this particular aircraft during the heavy maintenance.
Remember, the aircraft crashed on its first flight post-heavy maintenance.
So, what happened was that the angle of attack sensors were telling the aircraft's computers
that the angle of attack was much, much higher than it was in truth. What that did for the
computers was tell the computer system that is part of protecting the aircraft, that it needed to
trim down, trim the elevator down, so that the nose would go down and not stall the aircraft.
What that had the effect of doing was forcing the nose down and leading, partially, if we're
reading their preliminary report correctly, partially because of an overspeed, including an
overspeed of the aircraft, because the auto throttle was disengaged and the throttles were set
nearly full because of the combination of the elevator pitching the nose down, and the speed
increasing, that pitch down became unrecoverable by the pilots, even though they were pulling
back full on the sidestick.
[0:13:59] JR: So, in this case, we had a computer system basically nullifying the inputs of the
fly-by-wire side sticks that the pilots were telling the aircraft to do and the aircraft's computer
was saying, “No, I'm not going to do that. That will put us in an unsafe condition.” Whereas
MCAS was a very different situation. It was a very mechanical situation where the aircraft knew,
“Oh, no, the one angle of attack sensor I'm relying on says we're in a dangerous system. I'm
going to mechanically spin the trim and push the nose down.” Whereas the flight crew in that
case just had to turn off that electronic system.
In this case, with the SSJ, apparently this had happened previously just days before the fatal
accident, where there was maintenance done, angle of attack sensors were replaced, and the
same issue had occurred. But in this case, the flight crew had switched to a backup flight data
computer, or flight computer system, and it was getting the correct information and it was able to
– the flight crew was able to stabilize the flight and they were fine.
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Unfortunately, in this case, the flight crew did apparently, it's hard to tell from the translated
report, but in this case, they did not switch over to the backup computer. We don't actually know
if that would have had the intended outcome of saving the flight, but it is a very different
situation, but very similar situation from MCAS, where this is a computer system doing computer
things to override the flight crew or prevent the flight crew from making inputs, whereas MCAS
was a much more mechanical situation, I think is the best way to put it.
[0:15:46] IP: Yes. There was a lot going on kind of crossways between the angle of attack
sensors, the pilot side stick inputs, and the position of the throttle. Because of the overspeed,
the computer was also saying, “I need to slow this plane down.” To do that, it tosses up the
spoilers. But because it tossed up the spoilers, pulling back on the side stick, the aircraft loses
lift. So, the aircraft is actually able to climb again when they started pulling back on the side
stick. They were able to arrest that climb.
But the aircraft stopped the climb and began to descend again after the overspeed spoiler
protection. Then, because the aircraft pitched up and increased its angle of attack, the angle of
attack protection function came back again. So, even though the crew is doing its best to climb,
the aircraft is saying, “No, I think that I am going to stall and I need to put my nose down.”
[0:17:01] JR: Yes. Pretty remarkable. There's a lot of similarity, but a lot of difference to the
MAX crashes and the MCAS. It's a lot to take away from this situation.
[0:17:12] IP: Yes. I think that this goes through. This isn't to say, I don't want people to go, “Oh,
the Russian.” No, this was an aircraft that was designed for an international audience and
operated by multiple operators outside of Russia for quite some time.
[0:17:31] JR: Into US airspace. Interjet.
[0:17:34] IP: Into US airspace, yes.
[0:17:35] JR: Before Interjet ceased to exist, fluid, I think to San Antonio, at least in the US,
maybe Miami. CityJet operated it on behalf of some airlines in Europe as well. I think Brussels
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Airlines even, it operated on behalf of. They had high hopes for this aircraft, and thankfully it
took a very long time for the very exact and unlikely and strange combination of events to occur
and to occur in a deadly way, very delayed after introduction to service as opposed to the max,
where it was not immediate, but very close to the introduction to service of that aircraft here.
This took over a decade, well over, a decade and a half before it ended up becoming, I guess, a
known issue with this aircraft. Now, it doesn't matter as much for the rest of the world, since the
SSJ really isn't going to be operating anywhere outside of Russia or Russia's allies, I guess. But
yes, very unfortunate chain of events leading to this crash.
[0:18:37] IP: Yes. This is just the preliminary report. So, we await the final report to see what
else we learn. The final note on this is there's a picture of the flight data recorder and the cockpit
voice recorder included in the Pavilion Report. If you had any doubts about the forces that those
recorders can withstand, I suggest looking at those pictures.
[0:19:07] JR: If you had any doubts about the resiliency of modern electronics, you might want
to take a look at what the NAND flash chips on the data recorder look like and realized that they
were able to pull the data off these things. It's absolutely remarkable to see the images of the
damage presented right next to the data from the damaged chips in those pictures. It's pretty
incredible. I guess I want to applaud the Russian authorities here for putting out a really, really
immensely detailed, thorough, and quick preliminary report, because I know we've seen some
preliminary reports in the past that said this thing happened. We'll issue a final report eventually.
I don't want to point any fingers at China and the China Eastern crash. I think that was in 2020,
but this was pretty comprehensive, I'd say.
[0:20:00] IP: Yes. Yes, absolutely. We'll put a link to the report in the show notes and we'll see if
we can get an official English translation somewhere. But usually, that waits for the final report if
it comes at all.
This next story was sent in by multiple people, including a few pilots who were rather upset to
learn about this. We've discussed it a bit at Flightradar24. Obviously, our developers know a bit
more about the mechanics of this, but they wanted to learn more about what known crew
member was. Because remember, we're based in Sweden, and they were wondering what
known crew member was.
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So, it turns out a few researchers discovered a vulnerability in the known crew member system,
which is, as well as the cockpit access security system, which allows known crew – I mean, it's
a well-named program. People who are crew members –
[0:21:02] JR: And they're known.
[0:21:03] IP: – are part of this program, who are known, become part of this program and allow
those people to bypass security, or not bypass security, but go through a special lane. They
discovered a vulnerability in how the database works, basically allowing them to add anyone
they want to the list. I'm very, very, very much oversimplifying this here, and also modify existing
known crew members. So, there are a variety of ways that someone with malicious intent could
use this vulnerability. Thankfully, the people who discovered it are not malicious in their intent,
did report it to the Department of Homeland Security, which says it has since resolved the
vulnerability. However, the TSA, in its infinite wisdom, instead of saying thank you, was kind of a
jerk about it.
[0:22:05] JR: Hey, you'd never want to be a jerk to white hat hackers. They're your friends.
They're the good guys. You don't punish them.
[0:22:13] IP: So, they responded with an incorrect statement on the vulnerability. Then, when
they were called out on that front, they backtracked and basically deleted the things from their
website that made them wrong.
[0:22:26] JR: Oh, okay.
[0:22:27] IP: But thankfully, the vulnerability has been addressed. You cannot in fact add
yourself to the known crew member list and fly without going through security. So, that's good
news.
[0:22:40] JR: Yes, sure.
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[0:22:41] IP: We talked about Brussels wanting to ban a variety of aircraft from flying to the
airport generally. Then, we also talked about a more recent move which wanted to see the triple
seven freighter banned from flying to Brussels. That just didn't make any sense.
[0:23:05] JR: That didn't make any sense at all.
[0:23:08] IP: Enough people said, “Hey, that doesn't make any sense,” that they've backtracked
on this. FlightGlobal has some interesting reporting that goes deep into, and I think I've said this
on the program before, but one of the truisms is that all politics is local. As it turns out, part of
this was the minister who made the decision, lost his election, and was trying to stick it to the
opposition party before he was out of office. I like that that level of petty is involved in –
[0:23:46] JR: Chicago style.
[0:23:47] IP: – major decisions. Yes, Chicago. and I appreciate that. This particular minister's
response was, “No, this is all about environment and noise issues and things like that.” But it
doesn't sound like the 777 is going to be banned from Brussels anytime soon.
[0:24:05] JR: Yes, especially since the article states that, because of that move, if they ban, if
they were to ban the 777F, it would just be replaced by smaller, older, and noisier aircraft, which
I assume would be the 767. I think DHL has a bunch of those in its fleet. That would be a weird
thing to do, not quite as a sensical move that I think their neighbor to the north in Amsterdam,
they banned a whole bunch of aircraft. You probably talked about that about a year ago, but
those were old aircraft.
[0:24:37] IP: That was a great list.
[0:24:37] JR: That was a great list because it involved things like the 707.
[0:24:42] IP: Yes. I think it actually banned the Comet.
[0:24:44] JR: It banned the Concord. The Concord is never going to fight Amsterdam ever
again. But that was a list of banning older aircraft. This was banning one of the most modern
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fighters out there, while not banning the older stuff that would have to forcibly replace it. It kind
of reminds We also of what I think Tel Aviv tried to do by banning the 747 outright when there
was no clear replacement. Fun. I love when politics get involved in aviation and has no idea
what they're doing.
[0:25:13] IP: None of it makes any sense. I absolutely love it.
[0:25:17] JR: The best kind of politics.
[0:25:18] IP: The best kind of politics. I don't know if this particular story is necessarily political,
but It's one of those where I think we all saw it coming, which is a major airline comes up with a
catchy, fun, branded, low-cost subsidiary. They paint a couple of planes. They send them out
into the world, and it does not work.
[0:25:45] JR: I don't know if this is any of that because OTT Airlines is not fun. It's not different.
Not anything like a TED or a song or a whatever. This is OTT Airlines, the offshoot of China
Eastern Airlines that operated exclusively, I believe commercially, the Comac ARJ21. It is now
being folded into China Eastern proper after being in February 2020. Great timing, by the way.
[0:26:18] IP: Oh, yes.
[0:26:18] JR: So now, China Eastern proper will operate the ARJ21. I think, I don't know if we'll
ever know this for sure, but OTT airlines almost certainly existed exclusively to operate the
ARJ21, so it didn't have to be a part of the China Eastern fleet. I feel like maybe they're being
told, “Hey, you need to operate this in your actual airline, not this other thing.”
[0:26:49] IP: Oh, I appreciate that. Okay, so it is political, is what we're saying.
[0:26:53] JR: Yes, probably. It did look good next to the C919s, sure.
[0:26:58] IP: Yes, there you go.
[0:27:00] JR: Why not. A happy family. Happy Chinese family.
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[0:27:03] IP: Perfect. Speaking of happy families, as of September 1st, SAS has officially joined
SkyTeam. The airline, which is a founding, was a founding member of Star Alliance, is now a
member of SkyTeam. Good for them. They're continued to, continuing, I should say, emergence
from bankruptcy and a restructuring process and making big changes alongside of their Air
France KLM investment. All of this makes sense. Still a little salty. Judging by Jason's sigh
there, I think he probably is too.
But on the bright side, you can now fly from the northernmost regularly served commercial
airport to the southernmost regularly served commercial airport on the same alliance.
[0:27:59] JR: That's great. I look forward to cashing in 5.2 million sky miles for the ability to do
that. That's where the bitterness comes in.
[0:28:12] IP: We should do an episode on just how awful airline frequent flyer programs are.
[0:28:18] JR: Some of them more awful and others.
[0:28:21] IP: They're really awful.
[0:28:21] JR: Yes, I don't want to talk about it.
[0:28:24] IP: Okay, maybe we shouldn't.
[0:28:25] JR: It makes me sad that I have so many miles with Delta and they are virtually
worthless.
[0:28:30] IP: Virtually, Jason. Virtually. A place you could use your miles, I suppose, is Virgin
Atlantic. They're going back to Ghana and to Saudi Arabia for the first time. So, this is new
routes coming out of Virgin Atlantic coming out of London, making up for the fact that they need
a place to send their planes now that they're no longer flying to China. So, they've got new
planes coming into the fleet. They've got routes that they're ending, and, well, they're going to
go make money in Africa and Saudi Arabia.
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[0:29:04] JR: Okay. Wasn't there an offshoot of Virgin at some point, like Virgin Nigeria? Wasn't
that a thing at some point?
[0:29:11] IP: Was it?
[0:29:13] JR: I feel like it was, I mean, we can probably look this up, but Virgin Nigeria. I don't
know. I feel like it was a thing.
[0:29:20] IP: Air Nigeria. Air Nigeria was a 50-50 joint venture.
[0:29:25] JR: Yes. They had a logo and everything. Virgin Nigeria. Okay, it was a thing. Yes, it
was a real thing. A long time ago, by the way.
[0:29:33] IP: Yes, this was not recent history. They ceased operations in 2012. So, there you
go. Hey, fact-checking on the fly. Good for us.
Let's go to India, where Vistara is going to become Air India on the 11th of November. Beginning
on the 12th of November, tickets will no longer be bookable on some Vistara flights, and that will
phase out over time as Vistara gets folded into Air India proper. Air India proceeding apace with
its revitalization. They, over the weekend, last weekend, conducted their first A350 service to
London. So, beginning long-haul service, two out of three services to London from Delhi will be
operated by the new A350s. Good for them and looking forward to seeing the continued
changeover.
[0:30:27] JR: Yes. A lot of people will be sad to see Vistara go, but if Air India keeps doing what
it has been doing and bucking a lot of the expectations of, “Oh, this will be a disaster,” it won't
be a disaster. Everything so far has seemed to go pretty well. Maybe we're still in the
honeymoon phase of their taking delivery of new aircraft. What could possibly go wrong? But
integrating another airline like Vistara, that is no small feat. So good luck. If you happen to be
flying what was a Vistara route on November 11th. It could be fun. It could also be completely
ordinary.
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[0:31:06] IP: Let's hope for the latter. Today, we learned that Wizz Air will put its first A321XLR
on the Milan-Abu Dhabi route, which will make it the longest route in the Wizz Air network.
Average flight time currently, because the routes currently operated by Etihad, the flight time is
roughly six hours, little under six hours. So, it will take you longer to get there on Wizz Air's
A321XLR. But as part of the PR today, Wizz Air says that tickets will be 70% cheaper than
Etihad’s.
[0:31:46] JR: I mean, it'll be a lot cheaper, but also it is a very different experience being on a
Wizz Air aircraft for upwards of seven hours, as opposed to an Etihad, whatever, aircraft for
about six hours. I guess it's individual priorities. If comfort and a free meal and entertainment
and Wi-Fi and legroom and I don't know, all the other things with a full-service airline mean
anything to you? You'll probably want to stick with Etihad. But if you want to go on the cheap,
hey, now you got an option too.
[0:32:21] IP: There you go. Over the weekend, actually this happened on Monday, which is still
technically our weekend because we were off on Monday.
[0:32:29] JR: It's a three-day weekend.
[0:32:31] IP: It was a three-day weekend. It wasn't a weekend for the folks who were busy
repossessing Nicolás Maduro's Falcon 900.
[0:32:40] JR: All right then. Well, apparently the quote from the Justice Department was this
morning, the Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13
million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for Nicolás Maduro and
his cronies. That's an actual quote from Attorney General Merrick Garland, which I just love
anytime you can somehow work the word cronies into an official US government quote. That's
pretty amazing. But the reg of the aircraft is a bit different. It is T7-ESPRT. That's a long
registration.
[0:33:20] IP: Yes. It's got spirit.
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[0:33:23] JR: It's got spirit, but now it's got a lot of red tape, let's say. I don't think it's going to be
going anywhere for a while.
[0:33:28] IP: No. I mean, if the same thing happens to that Falcon that happened to the 747 that
they seized, it's going to get chopped up.
[0:33:38] JR: Oh, that's too bad.
[0:33:39] IP: It is too bad.
[0:33:40] JR: It's a nice-looking aircraft. I can't even find any information on how old it is,
because every time I just look up the registration, it just goes to articles about the aircraft. But
yes, I'll take it.
[0:33:56] IP: Sure, why not?
[0:33:56] JR: Send it to Newark.
[0:33:58] IP: You'll never see it again.
[0:34:00] JR: No, too bad.
[0:34:01] IP: Okay. In good news to close the show. Jason, do you remember when we first
started talking about the LAN and TAM merger?
[0:34:11] JR: No, I'm pretty sure that predates the podcast.
[0:34:16] IP: It predates the podcast. So, in 2012, LAN completed the takeover of TAM and
became LATAM, which I think on a very early episode of the podcast, and I apologize if this is
not true, but I really want it to be because it's kind of amusing to me and I'm going to get a
chuckle out of it. You had the on-air realization that the combination of LATAM is both a
combination of LAN and TAM and is an abbreviation for Latin America.
© 2024 AvTalk 15
AVT 284 Transcript
[0:34:47] JR: That doesn't ring a bell. I can't tell you you're wrong because that would have
been like seven years ago.
[0:34:57] IP: So, for a while, they operated as independent airlines. Then, a few years after that,
they merged the operations and the branding of the airline to become LATAM. Now, I think, what
are we, eight years after that happened? They finally finished painting the LAN fleet into LATAM
livery.
[0:35:21] JR: I mean, sure. If you’re not in a hurry to repaint the aircraft, it takes about, they
take about eight years between paint cycles. So, I guess that about checks out, doesn't it?
[0:35:32] IP: Yes. They just weren't in a hurry. That's for sure.
[0:35:36] JR: Yes, they were not in a hurry. But I'm looking back to see if I can find any of this
and I'm looking through our show notes. Apparently in episode 136, Azul at some point wanted
to buy all of LATAM. All of LATAM. Wow, that would have been interesting. At some point in the
past, Delta bought some A350s from LATAM after buying 20% of LATAM. LATAM's got a lot of
things going on, but I don't ever remember all that moment you're talking about.
[0:36:01] IP: I wanted it to be true.
[0:36:03] JR: Maybe it is.
[0:36:04] IP: Maybe it is. I don't know. If you remember that episode, email us at
podcast@fr24.com and I'm going to think it's true anyway, regardless of what evidence to the
contrary is found.
[0:36:15] JR: That's fine.
[0:36:15] IP: Yes. This has been Episode 284 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here as always
with –
[0:36:24] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
© 2024 AvTalk 16
AVT 284 Transcript
[END]
© 2024 AvTalk 17