AvTalk Episode 232: Duplicate waypoints led to NATS outage

AVT 232 Transcript
EPISODE 232
[EPISODE]
[0:00:08] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 232 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How are you?
[0:00:19] IP: Hello, Jason. I am exhausted. How are you, sir?
[0:00:23] JR: Good. You don't sound exhausted. You're rather upbeat and actually moving
pretty quickly today.
[0:00:29] IP: Yeah, it's been a busy couple weeks, been a busy day. Lots going on. Trying to get
a lot of things done around Chicago, so that I and you can head to LA this weekend. When the
podcast comes out, we might both be on an airplane.
[0:00:48] JR: That's true. No, I will not be. I'm flying out tomorrow, Thursday, so I will already be
in LA.
[0:00:55] IP: I hope you're off the plane by that –
[0:00:56] JR: I hope my flight is not 24 hours delayed. But you know what? Maybe it will be. I
don't know. We'll talk about some issues with the 777 –
[0:01:03] IP: United issues. Yeah, 777 and United. Yeah.
[0:01:07] JR: Yeah. I'm excited about it. Didn't make it to Cranky Dorkfest last year. Was last
there in 2021. Yeah, looking forward to it. There was a bit of some disappointing news earlier
today, and that was wiped out by some –
[0:01:21] IP: We took care of that.
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AVT 232 Transcript
[0:01:22] JR: Happy news. Yeah. I don't know who made some phone calls, or who did what. In
the run up to Cranky Dorkfest, Cranky Flier, Brett Snyder put out a little tiny blog post saying,
“Hey. Unfortunately, LAX’s runway 24R, which is the runway closest in and out that basically
goes right over our heads will be closed starting the morning of the Dorkfest, lasting all the way
through January and that would be really disappointing, since you'd still see airplanes, but
they'd be a bit farther away. Then all of a sudden, a couple of hours later, all the NOTAMs
disappeared, and apparently, the runway closure is delayed by a few days, which –
[0:02:01] IP: A few days. Yeah.
[0:02:02] JR: - squeak in there and see airplanes. It was originally supposed to close last week,
then this week, and now we're squeaking in. I don't know. I highly doubt we had anything to do
with it, but I'll take it.
[0:02:13] IP: Again, we will take credit. Probably not where credit is due, but we will take the
credit.
[0:02:17] JR: Oh, no. It is not due at all.
[0:02:21] IP: Yeah. Dorkfest is coming up this weekend. We hope that we will see a bunch of
you who are hopefully listening to this episode of the podcast on your way to LA, if you're flying
in, or the night before you drive over to the airport. Hopefully, we see a bunch of you there.
Jason, I'm a little disappointed that I'm going to Dorkfest, though, because I have conflicting
avgeek interests, excitements.
[0:02:44] JR: What could possibly be more important than Dorkfest? A two-hour come as you
are, or don't event.
[0:02:51] IP: Yeah. I mean, I'm absolutely looking forward to, but I'm slightly disappointed that I
need to delay the project that I could start tomorrow, Thursday, but then would have to
immediately leave. That, my friends –
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AVT 232 Transcript
[0:03:07] JR: Are you building the Concorde Lego model?
[0:03:10] IP: Is Lego Concorde.
[0:03:11] JR: I figured that's where you were going with that.
[0:03:14] IP: Yes.
[0:03:15] JR: Bring it with you.
[0:03:17] IP: Oh, can you imagine? It's so big. Yeah. We're going to have, if you don't watch our
YouTube channel, but only listen to the podcast. You're missing out, because there's a lot of
great content over there. You should check out our YouTube channel, which is
flightradar24.com, all spelled out. In a week or so, there's going to be a fantastic video of the
building of the Lego Concorde, as well as some history as we walk through it, we'll look at some
of the cool facts and features of the actual Concorde as we build through the Lego Concorde. I
hope you'll all join me for that one. I'm really looking forward to starting that. But I'm holding it in
until next week, so that I can go to Dorkfest and have fun with hopefully, many of you fine
people who are listening to this podcast. Jason, we have the week’s news to get through first.
[0:04:12] JR: A lot of it.
[0:04:12] IP: Can we do it? Can we do it?
[0:04:14] JR: Yeah. We can do it. It's going to take a while.
[0:04:16] IP: Yeah, it'll just take a while. We began the week with an outage in the UK that
affected all flights in UK airspace –
[0:04:30] JR: Which we did talk about last week.
[0:04:32] IP: Tune from UK airports. We discussed that we would be awaiting the initial report
from NATS about what exactly happened. What happened is orders of magnitude more –
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[0:04:53] JR: Interesting.
[0:04:53] IP: I don't even know what the term – Interesting is not the word I was going to use,
but it's a much more polite word, so we're going to go with that one.
[0:05:01] JR: Yeah. I’m just impressed that NATS just a week later managed to publish an 18-
page, very thorough, very comprehensive preliminary report. I don't see what they could really
add in a final report later, but this is a well-formatted, very comprehensive report. What the hell
happened?
[0:05:21] IP: What happened was, let's take a step back. There are waypoints around the world
that are not necessarily physical. Some are physical objects, like radio beacons, or airports.
Then others are just made up five-letter points with a latitude and a longitude. They are
scattered throughout the world. They are inputted into flight plans, so that the air traffic
controllers and the pilots know where a flight is planning on flying. We're going to go from
Waypoint Charlie to Waypoint Goofy, to Waypoint Wacky, to Waypoint Cheese. I'm pretty sure
all of those are actual waypoints somewhere in the world.
[0:06:10] JR: We're going to have to map that out and put that in the show note, see what that
flight path would look like.
[0:06:15] IP: Yeah. There you go. What happened was, the waypoints are supposed to be
unique, much like the IKO addresses for individual aircraft are supposed to be unique. But there
are some duplicate waypoints. If there are duplicate waypoints, what's supposed to happen is
that they're supposed to be geographically separated from each other by a long way, so that
bad things don't happen. In this case, a particular flight was operating not even to or from a UK
airport, but the two waypoints were part of that flight plan and they had the same name. The
system just said, “Nope.”
[0:07:03] JR: Freaked out. These two waypoints, by the way, were 4,000 nautical miles apart.
They weren't even close. I guess, the odds of a flight overflowing UK airspace that just happens
to route through both of these waypoints is just astronomically unlikely. Obviously, hasn't
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AVT 232 Transcript
happened before. The system that NATS uses here was in place since 2018 and it hasn't run
into such a situation until then. There's a bit more detail in this. We'll link to the report.
[0:07:34] IP: Yeah. The report's very detailed.
[0:07:36] JR: Into a lot of the details on how flight plans are inputted, how the workings between
NATS and Euro control and the airline and user works, all sorts of fun abbreviations, like
FIPSRA and ADIX NAS. I know that one. National airspace. It’s that. That's easy. It's really
interesting that the cascading failure here was that the system kept trying to fail over to the next
logical thing saying, “Oh, we found an entry point, but we can't find an exit point out of UK
airspace, so let's look at the next waypoint. Oh, that doesn't make any sense, so let's do the
next thing on basically, the flow chart. What do we do in this unexpected situation?”
The system got so far down the list of, no, no, no. None of this makes any sense that it had a
basically, a critical failure, what they called a critical exception, was it? I'm probably getting the
term wrong, but no, no, it is a critical exception, which basically means, I don't have any
program for this. I don't know what to do next. I'm going to stop doing everything, because I
don't know what's going on. In this case, there are two completely independent redundant
systems. Within 20 seconds, the primary system net says, had this critical exception, failed over
to the backup system, which did the same exact thing. Within 20 seconds said, I also don't know
what's going on. I'm checking out for the day. Basically, both systems went into a failure
maintenance mode where they would not process any additional flight plans. That was that.
Interestingly, NATS says they have a four-hour buffer of flight paths, basically. Meaning, if
there's any critical exception failure like this, normal flight can continue for a buffer period of four
hours. This issue took so long to figure out, troubleshoot, test a temporary fix and actually
reboot the system that they exceeded that four-hour buffer period and actually, ended up having
to start taking flight plans manually, which is why they had to reduce the throughput through
their airspace, which led to a total number of cancellations on Monday the 28th of exceeding
1,500 with more, of course, canceled the following days.
They do say that this number is in addition to the delays of flights in the 28th of August, of the
5,500 flights that did operate in the UK airspace. 575 were delayed as a result of the incident. A
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lot of delays, cancellations, it took BA the better part of the week to catch up on all its canceled
flights and inconvenienced passengers. But NAT says it has identified this exceptionally rare
circumstances and has patched everything up, so this particular issue will not happen again.
[0:10:33] IP: Yeah. The actual full report, I mean, it's, I guess, technically a preliminary report
still, but it is quite in depth. I will note that they say, to continue, I guess, using the acronym, the
FIPR SAR subsystem has operated, this is the system that takes in the flight plan data, has
operated continuously since October 2018 and processed over 15 million flight plans.
[0:10:57] JR: That's great.
[0:10:58] IP: That's a fun number.
[0:10:59] JR: Until it’s not. Yeah.
[0:11:00] IP: Well, I mean, yeah.
[0:11:01] JR: It's just interesting to see this kind of analysis, because usually when we hear
things like this, usually the cause is like, “Oh, power supply failed and our really shoddily built
backup failover system didn't work, so the whole thing just shut off.” How many times have we
heard and seen that before? But this is a really thorough investigation to an absurdly rare
software glitch. I'm surprised they were able to figure that out so quickly. But good on them for
doing that. Hopefully, this never happens again.
[0:11:33] IP: Yeah. I mean, what a, I guess, fun way to learn that this particular thing exists. Not
great, but really interesting report to read. It shall be listed in the show notes. Moving on, good,
sir. We go to Niger, or we don't, but we can overfly it again, because it's back open.
[0:11:57] JR: That’s good news.
[0:11:58] IP: That airspace. Yeah. It's great news, especially for long-haul flights that are
transiting through western Africa, north-western Africa, I suppose, on their way to southern
Africa from Europe, or vice versa. That takes a long detour away. Still some issues on the
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AVT 232 Transcript
ground following a coup there, but overflights have indeed resumed. That's a bit of good news.
Jason, do we go leisure carriers in Europe? Or do we go, what happened to United? Where do
we want to go next?
[0:12:32] JR: Let's go with leisure. Let's change it up a little bit.
[0:12:34] IP: All right. Leisure carriers in Europe for a $1,000.
[0:12:37] JR: Daily double. Wow.
[0:12:38] IP: It is the – I'm betting the ranch. We are discovering Discover Airlines this week,
which as Jason will explain momentarily, can you book them yet at all?
[0:12:50] JR: Kind of.
[0:12:51] IP: What is Lufthansa doing?
[0:12:53] JR: Well, that's a difficult question because nobody ever knows what the Lufthansa
Group is doing strategically. That's a big mystery. In this specific case, the airline formerly known
as Eurowings Discover, which launched in 2021, has for some reason rebranded to Discover
Airlines. I don't know why. I will say, I like the livery. It is Eurowhite, but the tail art, I think, is
interesting. I think you agree as well.
[0:13:20] IP: Yeah. I said, it reminds me of 1960s Miami.
[0:13:23] JR: Yeah. There you go. It's nice. It could be a lot duller, so I'm happy to see that. I
don't know if anyone actually understands why this airline exists. I understood when it was
Eurowings Discover. Oh, okay. It's some weird pilot, or cabin crew segmented union reason
thing to exist. We used to see city jet operate Lufthansa A340-300s. I thought this was the same
thing. In this case, they look like they have their own differentiated brand outside of Eurowings,
outside of Lufthansa. But if you go to the Discover Airlines website, you really, really have to dig
to find out where they even operate to, because it's a smattering of short haul within Europe and
a few North American and I think even African destinations on A330s.
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I mean, you can book Discover Airlines, but you just have to happen to find it, because its own
website just redirects you back to the Lufthansa booking site. If one of your routes that you're
searching for on the day you happen to be searching for lines up with a Discover Airlines
departure, good for you. You end up on Discover Airlines, instead of Eurowings, or instead of
mainline Lufthansa. The whole thing is just a little weird. If they're really going all in on this
independent brand of Discover Airlines, I would have expected an independent booking flow,
where you can actually search for flights operated by that airline. I just don't really know what
they're getting at it. It reminds me of a less insulting version of Joon, the Air France thing –
[0:15:03] IP: Less insulting version of Joon.
[0:15:06] JR: Less insulting in that they're not lying to you about what they are. They're not
claiming to be a rooftop bar, or some other stupid analogy. It's an airline. They know it's an
airline. They have their own brand, so it's not insulting me. But it's very similar in that you don't
really go out of your way to book Discover Airlines. You search for a rent on a date, and if they
happen to be operating, you end up on them. It's similar, but thankfully different.
[0:15:31] IP: My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong. Jason or listeners,
podcast@fr24.com. My understanding was that when Eurowings Discover was founded, it was
to be the long-haul component of Eurowings, because you would – Eurowings was the low-cost,
I want to go from Munich to Palma, or Munich to Sardinia, or whatever, Frankfurt to Canary, or
whatever, the traditional leisure destinations. Then Eurowings Discover would be, you would go
out and discover the world. You would go to Windhoek, or you would go down, or go to Miami,
or LA, or whatever, but on a low-cost airline. Now, the first Discover Airlines aircraft is an
A320neo.
[0:16:22] JR: Yes. It's flying to some interesting places, I guess that you can discover. But then,
they also fly to Philadelphia, which is not exactly a place that I think many people go to
Discover. That’s probably a business-centric route, if I had to guess. I don't know of many
Europeans that say, “I want to go to Philadelphia,” and take a nonstop flight there. They fly to
Zimbabwe, Victoria Falls, which is interesting. Again, that –
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[0:16:46] IP: That would make sense to me.
[0:16:48] JR: These were Eurowings flights, and it's not like Eurowings is not flying long haul.
They still have a very large A330 fleet. I guess, what Lufthansa is trying to do here is compete
directly with Condor, which is interesting.
[0:17:03] IP: Okay. Sure. I mean, why not compete on all the levels?
[0:17:09] JR: I don't know.
[0:17:10] IP: I don't know either. We'll figure it out. All right, here's one that was fun, because
somebody said, “Hey, I got a question for you.” I said, “I think I can get an answer.” As it turns
out, we got an answer. Yesterday, Tuesday the 5th of September, United Airlines said, “We're
having a problem. We need to stop.” And so, they did. They stopped all of their flights. They did
so via FAA issued ground stop. That led to a podcast listener ready and going, why? Why can't
United just say, “Hey, don't take off. We're not taking off. We're having a problem. You can't go
anywhere.”
We reached out to an air traffic controller and that person provided a very helpful and succinct
answer to that. Here we go. “In the circumstances where a company’s means of
communications have been compromised, or something needs to happen quickly, it's much
more expedient and effective to have air traffic controllers communicate the ground stop. Since
with just a few keystrokes and clicks, the message can get out to every air traffic control facility
nationwide in a matter of seconds.” It might take hours depending on what's happened to reach
individual air crews, if the airline was trying to do it themselves.
[0:18:28] JR: If they can do that at all. If their systems are down, maybe they can't even do that.
[0:18:33] IP: Exactly. When the airline requests the FAA ground stop, that gets put into the
national air space system and the air traffic controllers say, “Hey, guess what? You're not going
anywhere.”
[0:18:42] JR: Yeah.
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[0:18:43] IP: Then they can always say, “If you need details, call your office.”
[0:18:46] JR: Yeah. This is not an uncommon thing. This happens all the time during
thunderstorms, or snow, or anything, even a terminal issue where the airline says, “Oh, crap.
We're out of gates. We can't take any more inbound aircraft.” They will have the FAA issue a
ground stop only for that particular airline, only to that airport. Again, it's just easier to have the
FAA stop every departure from every conceivable origin point if you can't accept any more
aircraft than doing it yourself. Not uncommon, but it was a very good question.
[0:19:20] IP: Yeah. When I saw the question, I was like, “I think I know the answer. I have the
beginnings of an answer, but let's get it right.” Thank you to the air traffic controller. It was nice
enough to answer that question. You know who you are. Those air traffic controllers, they're shy
and microphone shy, but they know things. I don't think they're microphone shy. They sit behind
a microphone all day, which is why I think they're like, “I've got enough of that. I've had enough
of that.”
Let's head much further south than we've been today, all the way to Australia and talk about my
good friend and yours, Jason, Alan Joyce, who is now the ex-CEO of Qantas Group, because
he retired a few months early.
[0:20:05] JR: Yeah. There were some fairly negative headlines going on in Australia recently,
and we have a quote here –
[0:20:12] IP: That’s generous.
[0:20:13] JR: Yeah, that’s generous. On 31st October, the merge at the airline had allegedly sold
seats on thousands of flights between May and July 2022 that never took off. The Australian
competition and consumer commission is suing the airline for false misleading, or deceptive
conduct that affected thousands of travelers. I think there was also a very hefty fine that came
into effect here. Alan Joyce, who was already ready to retire in two months from now, said, “You
know what? I should go now.”
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[0:20:42] IP: I should go. I'll see myself out. And see himself out, he did. He announced, I think,
on the 4th of September, 3rd of September, that his last day would be the 5th. As of the 6th of
September, Vanessa Hudson is now the new chief executive. She's the current Chief Financial
Officer of Qantas. That moves forward things a few months, but no huge change in who's going
to be running the airline, or no huge change in plans about who's going to be running the airline.
[0:21:11] JR: No.
[0:21:12] IP: Yeah. The issue with the selling, the seats on the canceled flights is a big one.
There's also a big deal with the flight delays, Qantas flight delays, the cost of tickets and the fact
that the airline made a record annual profit, an underlying pretext profit of nearly 1.6 billion US
dollars, 2.5 billion Australian dollars. Joyce said, “It's time for me to go. I will see you all later.
Goodbye.”
[0:21:43] JR: Okay.
[0:21:44] IP: I don’t know if that’s a direct out, but yes. And chased by a bear in this particular –
[0:21:49] JR: Wait. They have bears in Australia?
[0:21:52] IP: They've got everything in Australia. If it can kill you, it's in Australia.
[0:21:55] JR: That's true.
[0:21:55] IP: I assume. I don't know.
[0:21:56] JR: That's true.
[0:21:57] IP: Joyce out, Hudson in. Let's see how things go.
[0:22:01] JR: Okay.
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[0:22:02] IP: Okay. Turkish Airlines, which was supposed to order 9 trillion new aircraft all in one
fell swoop, maybe during the Paris Air Show, has said, “No, we're just going to buy a dozen, or
so aircraft every month for the next 50 years,” it sounds like.
[0:22:21] JR: Yeah, interesting. Just last month, Turkish ordered four Airbus A350-900s. It said,
“You know what? No, we're not done. We miscalculated. We want 10 more.” Now bringing up
their total number for that aircraft type to 40. Okay.
[0:22:37] IP: That's a lot of aircraft.
[0:22:39] JR: That's a lot, but not nearly as many as everyone thought they would order. Maybe
next month, they'll order another 40 and they just keep doing that every month, until they get to
a billion.
[0:22:49] IP: I mean, just keep it going. It's like, the question of, would you want me to give you
a million dollars, or do you want me to give you a penny and I'll double it every day? It sounds
like, Turkish is taking the penny and doubling it every day.
[0:23:00] JR: Okay. It's one way to do it.
[0:23:02] IP: If anybody ever asks you that, you want the penny.
[0:23:04] JR: Yes.
[0:23:05] IP: You want the penny and you want it to double. That's the answer to that question.
If you're listening and were thinking, “I don't know,” it's the penny. Trust me.
[0:23:12] JR: Well, only if you’re planning to live a long time, I guess, right?
[0:23:13] IP: Compound interest would be your friend. It does not take long. It does not take
long.
[0:23:18] JR: We'll have to do the math.
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[0:23:20] IP: Jason, you can do the math on your flight tomorrow and you can tell everyone at
Dorkfest.
[0:23:24] JR: That flight’s not nearly long enough for that kind of math.
[0:23:26] IP: You’ve done that math. Then you're doing it wrong. Let's go to Russia now, where,
wait, AerCap got a settlement from Aeroflot? What is happening?
[0:23:37] JR: Part of a settlement from part of the aircraft that were illegally seized and taken by
Russia. In this case, AerCap actually received a payment of 645 million dollars from a Russian
insurer in full settlement for 17 aircraft and five spare engines. That seems to just be scratching
the surface of the amount of aircraft that were taken by Russian Airlines. In this case, it's strictly
the Aeroflot Group, meaning Aeroflot and its subsidiaries, of which there are a couple, I think.
just 17 aircraft, which scratches the surface of the probably tens of billions of dollars owed for
hundreds of aircraft that are still out there in Russia.
I am rather surprised that anyone, be it AerCap, or GE, or anyone, was able to get any
settlement. I'm not going to say quickly, but I would have expected this to drag on for a decade
easily. It seems like, we're actually on track to see some of this money back to the rightful
owners of these aircraft rather quickly. AerCap says, it still has a separate 3.4-billion-dollar claim
against “all risks.” Don't know what that means. Insurers. This comes from Flight Global, by the
way. Including a 908-million-dollar claim relating to these 17 aircraft and five engines, so the
overall claim falls to just 2.75 billion.
[0:25:10] IP: Oh, chump change.
[0:25:10] JR: This is just 17 aircraft we're talking about. There are hundreds of aircraft out
there. Yeah, I'm surprised that any lessor was able to get anything back. For those wondering,
the payment back to AerCap was approved, I guess, by all necessary entities. There's no
sanction issue here. That's good news for them.
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[0:25:34] IP: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they seem to be happy and I'm glad they were able to get
some money back.
[0:25:40] JR: Yeah, from the insurer in this case. Aeroflot didn't pay anything. The insurance
company, I guess, did. Yeah. I guess, they're happy to get it from anyone.
[0:25:51] IP: I mean, take what you can get at this point. This one, I'm not sure if we talked
about it when it happened. I don't think so, but –
[0:26:01] JR: I don't think we did. I don't remember it.
[0:26:03] IP: There's a final report out now on a Nordwind A321, that this story also from Flight
Global doing some great Russia reporting this week that we're happy to share on. Nordwind
A321, which executed a go around with over 100 system failures after a hard landing. A 100
failures were communicated by ACARS after the A321 smashed into the runway, nose gear first.
The aircraft pitched down just before landing, struck nose gear first, hard enough that two of the
inertial reference systems and one of the flight augmentation computers failed immediately. That
led to a loss of heading, pitch, roll and speed information on the captain's side. The damage
was so severe that all of the remaining data was out of alignment, because the aircraft struck so
hard.
[0:27:08] JR: Then like with the, oddly, with the NATS failure, the last remaining computer
looked at the data coming to it said, “No, no. None of this looks right.” Then it just shut off. It just
stopped processing data. What was coming to it, it determined was unreliable, rightfully so.
[0:27:24] IP: The A321 reverted back down to direct law. There were hydraulic failures. They
were using visual guidance and standby instruments. They decided to make a low pass at the
airport. They tried to do that. Then one of the hydraulic systems lost complete pressure. They
were having smoke warnings, but because of the loss of the hydraulic pressure, the smoke
warnings went away, because all of the smoke causing hydraulic fluid left the aircraft. They
couldn't select full flaps. They could do slats. They confirmed that the landing gears were
extended. They tried another approach. There were more problems. This is just one thing after
another.
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They finally, finally were able to bring the aircraft down safely. They touched down too slow and
too hard and stopped on the runway. That said, there were no passengers on the aircraft. It was
just seven crew members. This would be, I think, a much, much bigger story had there been
passengers on the aircraft, which is why I don't think we heard about it, or talked about it when it
initially happened.
[0:28:40] JR: Yeah. I don't know if you mentioned, but this actually happened way back January
10th, 2020.
[0:28:46] IP: Yes, yes.
[0:28:48] JR: More than a while now at this point, and this report's coming out, which is good.
But wait, Ian. There's more, also from –
[0:28:54] IP: It gets better.
[0:28:55] JR: - Flight Global. Wow, these guys are crushing the Russian aviation news.
Although there were no passengers, or cargo on this flight. Obviously, they conducted a
thorough investigation. In interesting twist, and I'm going to quote here, “Russian investigators
have not been able to determine whether a deliberate attempt was made to erase the cockpit
voice recorder of a Nordwind Airbus A321 after a hard landing by fitting it into a different aircraft.
This is very interesting. The recorder was in this aircraft, which by the way, was VQBRS. I'd be
very interested, Ian, to see if this aircraft is still flying, or what its status is. But basically, what it
goes on to say that the approach is unstable, blah, blah, blah. There were all sorts of failures.
Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee says, both the flight data recorder and cockpit voice
recorder went in place when the inquiry permission inspected the A321. But when the cockpit
voice recorder was initially read, the data retrieved indicated that the erase button for the
recorder had been pressed in the cockpit. They say that over two hours and four minutes of
information was obtained from the recorder, but after decoding, the trace of the flight in question
was found to be absent. Instead, there was a recording of a different flight involving another
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Nordwind A321, VPBHN, operating the opposite route on January 11th, the day after the
accident. Very, very interesting.
They say, the inquiry found that both the cockpit voice recorder and data recorders were
repeatedly removed between the accident aircraft, the warehouse of maintenance and the
second A321, where both jets were parked down in Turkey. I guess, it's not uncommon, or not
out of the ordinary that a piece of equipment like a cockpit voice recorder, or data recorder
would be swapped between aircraft. Though, the timing here is oddly suspicious, but they
unfortunately were not able to determine whether or not it was erased on purpose in some effort
to defeat the investigation. But sure, it seems like they tried to figure that out in Russia.
[0:31:05] IP: Interesting. I'm now looking at photos from a Turkish aviation news site,
AirportHaber, and they have photos of the landing gear in the cabin.
[0:31:16] JR: That's not something –
[0:31:17] IP: Top of the landing gear is in the cabin.
[0:31:19] JR: I think it's safe to assume that aircraft is not flying anymore.
[0:31:22] IP: No, it's not. It was damaged beyond repair.
[0:31:26] JR: It was broken up at the incident location in Turkey in October 2021, according to
planespotters.net. No, it's not flying.
[0:31:32] IP: There you go.
[0:31:33] JR: I have not seen that picture. Please, share it with me when we're done.
[0:31:36] IP: I will both share it with you and we'll link to this in the –
[0:31:39] JR: Oh, I see it now.
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[0:31:41] IP: There it is.
[0:31:41] JR: That's not supposed to be there.
[0:31:43] IP: No. Check the show notes for that one.
[0:31:46] JR: Wow.
[0:31:46] IP: Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That landing gear is in wrong spot.
[0:31:51] JR: Oh, sure it is.
[0:31:52] IP: Speaking of things on the wrong spot, this was an interesting one. Because on the
face of it, it looked really bad. Then when you dig into it, you're like, “All right. I wouldn't have
done that.” That's not the choice I would have made, but it seems like the weather was okay. I'm
referring to Ethiopian Airlines going full Leroy Jenkins into a super typhoon landing in Hong
Kong, flying into the middle of the super typhoon hours after everyone else had been like, “Now
we're done.” Left Hong Kong to fly another day. Ethiopian came in and said, “Yeah, weather
looks fine. We can make it.” And they did.
[0:32:28] JR: Yeah. They did. They didn't even have a go around. This is not the part of the
story that's especially noteworthy, because, okay, if the weather is within limits of this aircraft
and the crew feels like they're up to it, sure. Nothing wrong with that. Where the story gets more
interesting. Ian, go on.
[0:32:45] IP: You know what, Jason, I don't really know how this story gets more interesting
than this, because I already said Leroy Jenkins. Where are you going with this, sir?
[0:32:53] JR: This isn't the interesting part. The interesting part is that the little bit of a scandal
where getting in is one thing, but getting back out is the more, I would say, challenging thing and
something they should not have attempted. They flew into Hong Kong in the middle of the super
typhoon, which I mean, I get, the passengers can get into Hong Kong and wait out the rush of
the storm before moving on. But what they did not do and what they needed to do and what
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AVT 232 Transcript
they should have done was canceled, or at least delayed significantly the return flight out of
Hong Kong. They did not do that.
There are many news reports that say, passengers tried calling, or emailing, or whatever to try
to switch flights and they said, “Nope, flight's going. You cannot change your flight. You better
find yourself a way to Hong Kong Airport,” which in the middle of a super typhoon, not
particularly easy, because I think even the airport express train had stopped running. It's a
hazard. You don't really want to be out in a super typhoon, because it's a super typhoon. You
don't go outside. Not only were they putting the passengers at risk here, but also, of course, any
of the ground crew that had to service the aircraft were put in potential danger here. But it really,
to rub salt in the wound here, passengers were only informed at 10.08 and 10.15, either by
email, or by airport monitors that the 10.40 PM fight was canceled.
All these poor passengers had to schlep all the way out to an airport in the middle of a super
typhoon, only to be told less than an hour before departure that their flight was actually
canceled. Just not great. Why I bring this story up is because Ethiopian in my eyes and I think
many others and probably in every passenger's eyes, they screwed up. They should have
offered flexibility, or delayed the return flight. But they really doubled down on their response on
Facebook saying, that the typhoon was far away by the time they landed. That is not true.
[0:34:48] IP: “Far away.”
[0:34:50] JR: Far away. We have radar and things that can prove where the aircraft was when it
landed and where the storm was. It was very much there. Of course, remember, it's a super
typhoon. That means, it could get demonstrably worse in a very short amount of time, which I
think it did, and that's why the return flight was canceled. They say, that they really doubled
down and say, the report that some media which stated the fight landed at Hong Kong in the
middle of a super typhoon was absolutely incorrect. Well, of course, it's correct. That's a fact.
That is what happened.
Yes, the flight was in acceptable limits, but then the weather deteriorated and the return flight
was “closed for operations.” Then the flight was postponed by 24 hours, which is what should
have happened in the first place. Instead of just apologizing and saying, “You know what? We'll
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learn from this. We probably shouldn't have tried to operate this flight in the conditions. We're
sorry. We're going to give each passenger 2,000 Sheba miles, or whatever. I think that's what
Ethiopian uses.
No. They doubled down, called everyone else stupid. Said, “Everyone else is wrong. We're
right. The situation was just against us.” No, you did the wrong thing. Just admit it. Really makes
me wary of booking an Ethiopian flight, if they were so inflexible that they wouldn't rebook
passengers in the middle of a super typhoon, where the entire city was closed, except for
Ethiopian. End of rant.
[0:36:11] IP: Yeah. We'll leave it at that. We're going to China. Actually, we're going to the desert
southwest in the United States, because a half your financial report from China Southern
Airlines confirms that they are done with the A380. We already knew this, because they had
already parked the planes in California, but now it's officially official, because it's in a financial
report. The final two of six A380s operated by China Southern Airlines, the only A380 operated
to continuously operate their A380s throughout the pandemic. They never stopped flying them.
They are now, I think, the third A380 operator to say, “We are done for good. It's officially official
and no more.”
B-6139 and B-6140 are parked in Mojave. Both arrived on the 21st of December, 2022. Now it's
financially official, which I guess makes it officially official. China Southern's out of the game. Air
France is out of the game. Who am I missing among A380 operators?
[0:37:21] JR: HiFly? Kinda, sorta, right?
[0:37:25] IP: I guess. Yeah, I guess, that would be the case. I believe, everyone else is
operating at least one of the A380s. Yeah. Sad to see them go, but there it is.
[0:37:39] JR: Not terribly surprising, but at least they gave the A380 one last real hurrah at the
end through all of COVID. Again, the only airline to not ground the type, for some reason, kept it
going the whole time. That was nice.
[0:37:53] IP: Yeah. What is going on in Mexico?
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[0:37:56] JR: Nobody knows.
[0:37:58] IP: Is the government trying to make things so bad that the airlines give up? Are they
trying to make the airport miserable? Are they trying to make Aeromexico miserable? I –
[0:38:09] JR: It's all of it.
[0:38:09] IP: - do not understand what is happening here, and I don't understand why.
[0:38:14] JR: Well, Aeromexico has the same questions. This Aeromexico press release comes
to us by a friend of the show, Ed Russell. Hey, Ed, Ned, see you later. See you at Dorkfest.
[0:38:25] IP: See you at Dorkfest.
[0:38:26] JR: See you at Dorkfest. Yeah. But Mexican authorities want to further reduce Mexico
City's main airport, the legitimate one, the one where all the airlines and people are further from
52 movements an hour, all the way down to 43. As Ned puts it, Aeromexico has questions. I
quote here – I don't quote here, but I'll get to that point. But this is already a further reduction.
Last year, operations were moved down from 61 to 52 per hour, and that will be 52 to 43. That's
a big reduction in capacity at what's supposed to be Mexico City’s main airport. Aeromexico
would really like to know why this is happening, how it's supposed to operate as an airline with
this. Will this be the last time something like this happens? Probably not.
[0:39:18] IP: Yeah. This is affecting other things as well, because a few weeks ago, I think. No,
I'm sorry. This goes back to the end of July. Technically, weeks ago, but about six weeks ago
now, the US was like, “We're done with the Allegiant Air Viva Aerobus joint venture, because we
don't know what's going on down there. We don't understand what's happening here with the
Mexico City Airport. We're not even going to bother reviewing this, because it sounds like things
are going to change by the time we get to the end. Whether or not we approve something or
not, it won't matter by the time we get through all the paperwork.”
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AVT 232 Transcript
[0:39:57] JR: Yeah. Aeromexico goes on to say, the measure will affect passengers using the
airport, of course, industry employees and the attraction of new investments that depend on
having a legal certainty and adequate air conductivity, which is they're very much trying to get
across here, “Hey, stop screwing with Mexican aviation, because you're screwing us up. We
might not be an airline anymore if we don't know if we're going to have a hub airport, so cut it
out.”
[0:40:23] IP: I'm not one for conspiracy theories. Although, we'll talk about that in a couple
episodes, future from now. But this seems to me, if you wanted to slowly dismantle Aeromexico,
death by a thousand cuts, this would be great way to do it.
[0:40:43] JR: But why? Why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense.
[0:40:47] IP: That one I can’t help. Maybe, I mean, is it some sort of weird like, hey, reviving
Mexicana? Or does that go along with –
[0:40:53] JR: I don’t know. If you want to do that, just rebrand Aeromexico.
[0:40:56] IP: Right.
[0:40:57] JR: Mexicana. I don't know.
[0:40:59] IP: Or just, Fun Mexicana, and let them compete, which is what they're going to do
anyway, which is just still bizarre to me. None of this makes any sense. I think what this brings
us to is that we're going to have to talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about, as
far as the holistic picture of aviation in Mexico, and figure out what in the world is going on.
[0:41:21] JR: Yes. I want to go back one step. The former A380 operators, Hi Fly Malta, Air
France, China Southern, Malaysia Airlines.
[0:41:32] IP: Malaysia.
[0:41:33] JR: And Thai Airways are all former operators of the A380.
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AVT 232 Transcript
[0:41:38] IP: Yes. I suppose, Thai does now count as a former operator, since they haven't
operated them in a very long time.
[0:41:44] JR: Well, they're all for sale for sale.
[0:41:44] IP: And for sale now. Right, right.
[0:41:46] JR: If you want one, you can buy it. You can be the next former operator of an A380.
[0:41:52] IP: You too can be the next former operator of the A380. I like it. I don't really have a
transition on this one, so we'll just say that –
[0:42:00] JR: Speaking of formally existed.
[0:42:02] IP: There you go.
[0:42:04] JR: That's the question of all the best. But Go First, the Indian airline we've talked
about many times recently, who currently is postponing flights until, let's see, if they pushed it
out again. Ah, yeah, the most recent date that they will definitely be resuming flights on
September 10th, definitely going to happen. It's going to be a lot more difficult now that IATA has
yanked its airline code, the G8 code that used to be, I don't know, operated by, or used by Go
First, has been withdrawn, recalled by IATA. It really seems unlikely that Go First is going to be
operating again anytime soon. If it has to go out there and recall its recalled IATA code, doesn't
seem particularly likely. Another nail in the coffin for the unfortunate death of Go First.
[0:42:59] IP: Yeah. I mean, once you stop operating, it's really hard to get going again. It doesn't
seem like they're going to do it.
[0:43:07] JR: I don’t know what triggers IATA to recall its issued code. I assume it's, well, the
checks stops coming, so we're taking our code back. If you're getting down to the point where
you’re not paying IATA, you have really scraped the bottom of the barrel for things you are not
able to financially keep up with. Yeah, that's probably not a very good sign.
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AVT 232 Transcript
[0:43:30] IP: Well, good luck to them. We wish them all the best. Speaking of not having any
money and wishing them luck, remember how last week we mentioned, hey, there might be this
new airline that's an old airline, but it's coming back, but it might not be coming back and who
knows what’s wrong with them?
[0:43:47] JR: Yeah, I do. I wish we didn't talk about it, because I have a personal policy of not
talking about stuff like this, because 99 and a half times out of 10 out of 100 – well, you know
what? No, I'm going with 99 and a half times out of 10. It's that positive for me that these things
don't happen. Somehow in a week, the real launch of –
[0:44:05] IP: But this one's a new record.
[0:44:07] JR: “We're coming. We're coming back. We got a plan to – ah, crap. We’re out of
money.”
[0:44:11] IP: If we haven't talked about it last week, we never would have been able to talk
about it.
[0:44:15] JR: It was like a week when they rebranded, they went out with all these plans –
[0:44:18] IP: Mid-August, they come out of nowhere.
[0:44:20] JR: - to relaunch. Then this week, they're like, “You know what? Actually, we don't
have any money. Never mind.”
[0:44:25] IP: “At the current stage, there is no practical option to move forward in the immediate
future.” This is the best sentence ever. The company that wanted to be an airline has exhausted
the funding that it had, “far more rapidly than anticipated.”
[0:44:44] JR: Oh, yeah?
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AVT 232 Transcript
[0:44:45] IP: Where did they spend their money on? They had four Instagram ads and a couple
of pictures.
[0:44:50] JR: It is a very good question. I'm not sure, but if I were, I don't know, some financial
investigator, or the IRS, or someone, I would probably be looking into this even though –
[0:45:03] IP: You'd be looking into that?
[0:45:04] JR: Yeah. This isn't an IRS jurisdiction thing, but –
[0:45:07] IP: Whatever the UK version.
[0:45:08] JR: - whatever the counterpart there is, somebody should probably look into this,
because if a dollar was spent, it was spent almost certainly in fraud, because this was a new
record for stupid airline reboots.
[0:45:20] IP: That was just – Oh, I'm glad we talked about it last week, so that we could talk
about this this week.
[0:45:25] JR: What a way to close.
[0:45:27] IP: On that note, we are done with episode 232 of AvTalk. Jason's off tomorrow on
Thursday, so he'll already be in LA by the time you listen to the podcast. I will be in the air as the
podcast hits your ears, and we will hopefully see many of you this weekend. If not, we will talk to
you next week. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:45:50] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2023 AvTalk 24