AvTalk Episode 278: Gary O’Donnell, A321XLR head of program

AVT 278 Transcript
EPISODE 278
[EPISODE]
[0:00:08] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 278 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Ian, how happy are you that you are traveling this week in the
US?
[0:00:25] IP: I honestly don't think that I could be any happier than I am, that I was not traveling,
especially Friday, Saturday, or Sunday of this week.
[0:00:35] JR: Or Monday, or Tuesday if you happen to be at Delta Pass. We're getting a little
ahead of ourselves. But how are you otherwise?
[0:00:42] IP: We'll get there in a minute. You know what? I mean, I'm okay, all things
considered. A little coming out of a hidey hole after what happened last week. I thought this was
going to be a much different show. I thought that we were going to go full in on Farnborough.
We had some great stuff lined up and still do, but we're just going to talk about a bunch of other
stuff first.
Later in the show, we're going to talk. Well, my colleague, Chris Lomas sat down with Gary
O'Donnell who has led the Airbus A321XLR Programme from the beginning. They chat about
the A321XLR receiving EASA type certification, what went into that? What leading an aircraft
program is like? And where the A321XLR goes from here, now that it has been certified by
EASA and looking forward to delivery to the revised launch airline, Iberia, later this fall. That's
coming up later in the program.
[0:01:44] JR: That's exciting. It's been a long time since we've had in interview, and we're
coming in hot with this one. This is a particularly good opportunity here.
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[0:01:53] IP: Absolutely. Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing Chris and Gary's conversation
later in the show. We'll tie that into what's going on at Farnborough right now. Let us rewind to
Friday.
[0:02:05] JR: Which feels like an eternity ago at this point.
[0:02:08] IP: I just want to point out that Friday, so we're recording on Wednesday the 24th of
July. Friday the 19th of July was 12 years ago.
[0:02:18] JR: At least. There's no way to prove how long it's been, because your computer
might still be broken, so you can't pull up the calendar. We have no way to know. But what
happened here was –
[0:02:28] IP: Unknowable.
[0:02:30] JR: Unknowable. Early Friday morning, a company that I have never heard of before,
and you've probably never heard of before, but a lot of corporate IT security outfits have heard
of before called CrowdStrike. I'm sure you've heard this story a million times by now.
CrowdStrike released an update to its IT security software, which led to the great blue screening
of death. Every sector in almost every part of the world that isn't sanctioned away from having
this company do its IT security, which I guess Russia, and I don't know, some other countries
lucked out in this case, but there were impacts across every sector from aviation to 911 call
centers, to railroads, really anything that was Windows –
[0:03:20] IP: Anything running windows.
[0:03:22] JR: - and use this technology came to a halt. That doesn't mean everything stopped.
Some airlines either didn't use Windows for the core of their technology, or some airlines may
not have had automatic updates turned on, and were able to, thankfully, fly under the radar, in
this case, so to speak, and they weren't impacted at all by this case. What happened is the
CrowdStrike is basically an IT infosec piece of software that's layered on top of Windows that
has very, very high-level access to what's known as the kernel in Windows. This update, a very
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minor update, apparently, or a very minor flaw in this update went wrong. That sent anything
Windows-based with the software that received that update into an unrecoverable boot loop.
When you have all of your systems, like these major airlines do, based on Windows and that all
stops, the entire operation comes to a stop. It's not just the gate agents’ computers stopped
working, or the flight information screens stopped working. It was the core technology of the
entire airline operation that stopped working. Once they figured out what had happened, they
had to figure out and get directions on how to resolve that, which apparently was very time
consuming, very involved to get these core systems operating.
Some airlines were able to recover a lot faster than others. American, Delta, United, at least in
the US all had major impacts on Friday morning, but most of them were able to do what they
needed to do to get the operation back to some semblance of normal. Other airlines, mainly
Delta, could not get a hand on the situation and things snowballed out of control, and have just
recovered today on Wednesday, July 24th, where Delta's operation has finally stabilized.
[0:05:22] IP: Yeah. What made this particularly bad for Delta was that Delta's crew scheduling
system was taken offline. That has previously happened to another airline, Southwest. Two
things went really wrong for Delta here. One, it took their crew scheduling system offline.
Because of how long it took to re-enable all of these computers, because each computer, each
box had to be done manually. You had to go in, delete a line of code, and restart the machine for
each machine. I was actually talking with my friend earlier in the week, who works in IT for a
very, very large healthcare provider.
[0:06:08] JR: Buy them a drink.
[0:06:10] IP: He did not have a good weekend, because he spent his entire weekend working.
He works on servers. Thankfully, he just had virtual machines and was able to do things
virtually, but it was still very time consuming. He had teams going floor by floor in hospitals
around the country, rebooting individual machines.
[0:06:27] JR: That's what made it so much more complex for airlines, because yes, there are
servers that run things, like crew scheduling and aircraft tracking. Down to the individual airport
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level, there is way more behind the scenes running Windows on little PCs than you would think.
Pretty much every single sign in display and touchpoint that has any technology embedded in it,
apparently, runs on Windows. Every single one of those little devices, a human being has to
physically go to this machine and fix it, which is not something – I don't know if that's ever
happened before, realistically? Probably not.
[0:07:05] IP: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guarantee there's going to be 20 years from now,
there's going to be a screen in an airport somewhere that still has the blue screen of death from
these weekends.
[0:07:16] JR: Absolutely. Globally, there will always be a screen somewhere displaying to the
public, a blue screen of death as a result of the CrowdStrike update.
[0:07:25] IP: A living museum.
[0:07:26] JR: Because there are some machines that companies will just deem, this thing is too
remote, it's not important enough to physically send a human being out there to fix. It lives that
way forever now.
[0:07:37] IP: The other thing about Delta's issues is an issue that Southwest didn't really have
to deal with, because if you're a Southwest pilot, you fly the 737. For the most part, if you're a
Southwest pilot, you can fly pretty much every single Southwest plane. If you're a Delta pilot,
that's not true at all. Delta's fleet complexity is so much greater than Southwest's, that even
getting this system back online wasn't enough. Even getting the system talking to the other
systems that allowed the crew schedulers to have a full complement of pilots and a full
complement of flight attendants for each flight, that wasn't enough, because then you have so
many pilots and flight attendants who have to work specific aircraft out of position. That's why it
took so much longer.
That's not to say that it's not worth investigating why it took so long. The Department of
Transportation has announced that it's definitely looking into what happened, more so along the
lines of, “Why didn't you take care of the passengers like we told you you had to first?” But we'll
get to that in a moment.
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Delta's operations, like Jason mentioned, have started to recover, stabilized today. Yesterday
was the first inkling of success that they had, they had turned the corner, but it sure seemed like
over the weekend, they were going to have to reset the entire network. For everybody's sake,
I'm really glad that that's not what had to happen.
[0:09:12] JR: It came damn close to it. I mean, there were moments over the weekend where
you've refreshed the cancellations for Delta's operation and it would just jump by 100, and then
100 again and then 100 again. It was not a good situation. It's going to take a long time for them
to clear the backlog of passengers and bags who people keep telling me, I didn't get where I
was going, but my bag did four days later, even though they know I never made to my
destination. How do I get my bag back? I don't know. Someone's going to have to figure that
out, but it's going to take a long time.
[0:09:47] IP: Oh, boy. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Let's talk about Delta's communications regarding –
[0:09:55] JR: What communication?
[0:09:56] IP: Okay, that was easy conversation.
[0:09:58] JR: Yeah. You would think that Delta would have taken some learnings back from
Southwest's meltdown in 2022 into 2023. Seemingly, that did not happen. I don't know if Delta
was too arrogant about the situation, or thought, “We’re Delta. We’re better than the
competition. We don't need to lower ourselves to the degree that Southwest did.” Of course, that
is not true. Delta's customer service was apparently quite poor throughout the situation. Lines of
hundreds of people deep, core technology failing even when the systems were brought back up.
Passengers were just simply unable to rebook themselves, or cancel.
Or, I think, Brian Summers reported that his family was flying on Delta. Even though he knows
all the tricks in the book as someone like him would, he wasn't able to rebook his family,
because there was phantom availability that you see it's there, you go to book it and then it
disappears before you can actually get it to confirm. Really frustrating time for passengers, and
the releases that Delta was putting out really never took any responsibility for this issue beyond
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saying, due to the CrowdStrike issue and because of the CrowdStrike issue, and because of a
third party vendor technology issue, without ever saying, “Yeah, the technology went out, but our
own systems were unable to coop and unable to recover for days, unlike American, unlike
United, unlike all of our other peer airlines.”
Literally, around the world, Delta was the only airline of this size with lingering issues this long,
they just never really apologized. Finally, today, on Wednesday afternoon, they relented about
reimbursing passengers for alternate travel and hotel expenses. But that took days and days
and days to do. They went about it really poorly. Just conflicting messaging on their website
about whether or not they would actually cover stuff like that. There's not a dedicated portal to
submit expenses, like Southwest did back in 2023. Just overall, really an unimpressive
response from an airline that's supposed to be this premium brand, that just days before this
incident in its earnings report, which was quite good, said that, “The Delta brand is strong. Our
passengers are loyal, because they know we're reliable. They know they can trust us.” It turns
out, when push comes to shove, none of that was actually true, which is really disappointing.
[0:12:33] IP: Yeah. I mean, Delta's, and we've talked about this rather recently, Delta has
positioned itself as the premium airline. They've gotten into this upward spiral with United, where
each is arguing that they are the premium airline in the US. When push came to shove this
week, where were they as the premium airline?
[0:12:58] JR: Well, their CEO right now is in Paris at the Olympics, which is a hotly debated
topic today, whether or not Ed Bastian should have done that. I mean, the airline is in a very
fragile state. There are still passengers not where they're supposed to be. There are probably
tens of thousands of bags, definitely not where they're supposed to be. Personally, I think that
sends a really poor message that the job is not done. Your entire company has been stretched
thin, stressed out there on the front lines, helping passengers with limited capabilities. Before
this disaster of operations is really behind them, their CEO is off at the Olympics.
Granted, Delta is a major sponsor, but did he really have to get out there for the opening
ceremonies and opening day? Could he have not delayed it a bit further and just gotten out
there, even if just ceremonially get out there and help some passengers on the frontline be
visible, because he has not been visible at all, whatsoever, which was a major critique of
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Southwest's C-suite during its own meltdown. It's just another case here of Delta seemingly
having learned nothing from the Southwest meltdown, not all that long ago. Really just
disappointing across the board.
[0:14:14] IP: Yeah. I think that it's absolutely worth mentioning that Delta's frontline employees
have done a fantastic job.
[0:14:21] JR: Whether or not they wanted to, they weathered the storm, and they helped out
their passengers, because that's their job, and that's what they did. What their CEO was doing
behind the scenes? I don't know, presumably something, but nothing in the public eye, which is
just not good.
[0:14:36] IP: Yeah. We've mentioned Southwest a couple of times in the show already, but let's
talk about what happened, well, 10 days ago now.
[0:14:44] JR: Again? I feel like, we have to replace the bi-weekly Boeing bungle with the bi-
weekly Southwest, what did they do now segment.
[0:14:52] JR: The same thing they did before, which is incredible to me. Again, there's an
investigation that will hopefully get to the bottom of why this happened. It could be entirely
different reason. What happened is very much the same as what happened in Oklahoma, which
is very much the same as what happened in Hawaii, which is a Southwest Airlines flight flew
way too low for where it was supposed to be. The FAA is currently investigating this incident that
occurred on the 14th of July, when Southwest flight 425 was on approach to Tampa International
Airport in poor weather, and it flew as low as 150 feet, 4.8 miles from the runway threshold.
That's according to the Granular ADS-B data that we downloaded and processed after the fact.
The pilots conducted a go around and ended up diverting to Fort Lauderdale. Then the flight
returned to Tampa a short time later after spending some time in Fort Lauderdale and landed
without incident. When they were flying over the north side of the Campbell Causeway, on
approach for runway 10 at Tampa, you're supposed to be at roughly 1,200 feet. They were at
150 feet.
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[0:16:13] JR: I'm pretty sure there are some ships out there that are taller than 150 feet. That's
really concerning.
[0:16:21] IP: I mean, this again was caught by air traffic control and a low altitude alert that they
received in the tower. They said, “Southwest 425, check your altitude.” They did, thankfully. Air
traffic control asked, “Are you going to go around?” Then Southwest, “Yeah, we're going to go
around.” They went around and then went to Fort Lauderdale. Weather at the time was poor, but
I'm not sure that comes anywhere close to explaining why they were at 150 feet, nearly five
miles from the runway. To that point, the FAA has opened a wider investigation of Southwest,
something that I think Jason's been calling for for weeks now.
[0:17:09] JR: Not just me. I don't think it's just me, but there's been –
[0:17:12] IP: But you’re the only other one on the podcast is what I'm saying.
[0:17:14] JR: That's true. If not me, then you.
[0:17:16] IP: You have not been alone in your request.
[0:17:21] JR: As this came up, there have been reminders of other Southwest and since, like
the flight that almost came a little too close to the LaGuardia Tower. I totally forgot about that
one. That wasn't all that long ago either. It's just been overwritten in my brain by these other
events that keep coming up. There is something rotten at Southwest. This is not just a sporadic
thing every couple months. This is a string of very close calls, very close together that is very
alarming.
Yes, I have been calling for increased oversight of Southwest, just like the FAA did with United,
not all that long ago. My question was, what would it take to get this increased oversight of
Southwest like they had for United? Because that was unprecedented. There was no checkbox,
or saying, “Okay, if you have this many events of this severity, we're going to have increased
oversight.” It just happened. I was wondering why wouldn't this happen for Southwest?
Apparently, someone at the FAA was paying attention and said, “Yeah, maybe we should look
into this, because this is not good.”
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Southwest keeps coming a breath away from a major tragedy. In this case, again, if not for an
alert air traffic controller, noting that this flight was too low, and if not for the radio frequency, not
being blocked to transmit to the flight saying, “Hey, altitude alert. You're too low,” because there
was a very chatty exchange leading right up to this transmission saying, you're too low, this
could be a very different story. Things should never be getting that close so many times,
especially with this very, very short frequency between incidents. It's just too much.
The quote is that the FAA has increased oversight of Southwest Airlines to ensure it is
complying with federal safety regulations, and agency spokesperson said to the Wall Street
Journal, who first reported it. Then the FAA goes on to say, safety will drive the timeline. What
we don't know is if this is the same level of scrutiny that the FAA assigned to United, which was
actually quite severe at the time, which limited United's ability to induct new aircraft into the fleet
and also, open new routes, which actually ended up in them canceling a few routes outright for
the summer season, which is a big deal. We'll have to see what, if anything, the FAA is going to
do with this increased oversight.
I welcome it. I know Southwest welcomes it. No one wants these incidents to be occurring like
this, but I'm glad somebody is finally paying attention, or at least if they were paying attention
before telling the public, “Hey, we've been paying attention to this the whole time, we're going to
do something about it.”
[0:20:00] IP: Yeah. I mean, to me, it seems like, this is a very good step for the FAA to take,
given the fact that it seems like the increased scrutiny of United came from, in my mind, less
serious incidences.
[0:20:19] JR: Oh, far less serious incidents. The United incidents were really spurred by the
media and public reaction to the media reports, because things kept happening on video. The
notorious video of that wheel, or the tire bouncing off of, I think it was the 777 leaving from LAX.
Had that not been caught on video, it would have been a nothing burger, and no one would
have cared about that. But things kept happening on video. Then, of course, there was, I think
they – one of their crews drove a 73 MAX into a ditch in what was it? Houston?
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[0:20:52] IP: Houston?
[0:20:53] JR: Which is not good. Not good. You shouldn't do that. But things kept happening,
but they were little maintenance things that kept piling up on top of each other. On the other
hand, Southwest is, their crews keep almost flying perfectly good airplanes into terrain, which is
not good. That is a much bigger deal. It's harder for the public to get upset about it, because
they can't see it, it's harder for them to get upset about it. Thankfully, these things are coming
out into the public. We know they happen. I guess, the question is, what else is happening that
we don't know about? That's what the FAA is going to be looking.
[0:21:26] IP: There you go. Today in Kathmandu, a Saurya Airlines CRJ-200 crashed shortly
after takeoff. This aircraft was not tracked by FlightRadar24 via ADS-B, though we did receive
some MODE-S data from the aircraft. Video from the airport shows the aircraft taking off and
then immediately rolling to the right before crashing after the end of the runway on the east side
of the runway there. Initial reports indicate that 18 people were killed. One person survived the
crash, the captain, who was taken to the hospital. There have been reports that this was a test
flight of sorts.
[0:22:10] JR: That rain all sorts of questions, though.
[0:22:13] IP: Yeah, looking at the list of who is onboard, I don't know if that's the case. I wonder
if there was a distinction being made between a charter flight, or something. We're going to
follow this one a bit more closely to see if it was, in fact, a maintenance flight. That just seems
erroneous reporting to me.
[0:22:30] JR: Yeah. There's even just a few hours ago, there's reports coming out of local news
media saying, the plane was in route for a complete engine check at the maintenance hangar at
another airport, but what were 18 people doing onboard a flight like that? I don't know. This is
exactly what the investigation will look into. What we do know is that apparently, this was not a
commercial flight, so there were not commercial passengers onboard this aircraft, but still 18
people is tragic. That's awful.
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[0:22:59] IP: We'll keep an eye on this. The Nepalese investigators do a very good job,
unfortunately, because they're often busy.
[0:23:07] JR: Yeah. Kathmandu is no stranger to incidents.
[0:23:11] IP: We'll keep an eye on this one and have more in the coming weeks.
[0:23:14] JR: Let's change the tune.
[0:23:15] IP: Absolutely. Let's completely shift gears. After a good long while of what's
happened over the past few days, talk about what we were going to talk about in the first place,
which is pretty much all good news. Let's shift gears and go to the UK and talk about
Farnborough. We're going to start with the A321XLR certification, which happened just before
the beginning of the air show. My colleague, Chris Lomas sat down with Gary O'Donnell, who's
the A321XLR program head to chat all things about Airbus's longest-range single-aisle aircraft.
We'll be right back with Chris and Gary.
[CHRIS AND GARY]
[0:24:02] CL: Gary, first of all, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us. It's been really
interesting to hear more about the XLR and your experience of leading that program. You're
ahead of the A321XLR program. Firstly, tell me a little bit about what that looks like day to day.
What do you actually do?
[0:24:18] GO: Okay. Yeah. And thanks for the interview. My role really spans everything from
the initial spec of the aircraft and the supporting the sales, right through to developing the
aircraft, developing the industrial system, which is the factories, the jigs, the tools and
supporting the team to develop the entry into service, the customer support areas. Then at the
end of the day, I have to make sure that the engineering drawings are delivered to the
production sites. The production sites have the means and the tools to build the aircraft and all
the components. At the end, to be able to get that certified and deliver it to the customers in a
good way. Really, it's the full 360 span of everything that's needed to develop a program.
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[0:25:04] CL: Great. What does the certification and the entry to service the XLR mean to you
personally, having seen that journey from start to finish?
[0:25:13] GO: For me, I've been in a very lucky position, because I started the development of
the XLR right from day zero. Right from the initial question, if we could do something with the
321 to make it fly longer. After, for me, six years, because we did a study for a year before we
launched it. Six years of my life, I've seen everything from the initial ideas right through to
having this aircraft certified. Along the way, and the bit that really motivates me is every week,
every meeting, working with teams from all over the world to face difficulties, find solutions to
the problems and have the little wins every week.
The big milestones, like first flight certification, first delivery are very, very important to me and
the business. To be honest, I get more joy and motivation from our dealings every single week
with all those people, engineering suppliers, industrial certification, everybody, customer
support. It's a huge, huge milestone. It's the end of a long journey. It's bittersweet. You're
finishing those great relationships and great discussions. On the other side, you've got the
sense of accomplishment of something huge that you've really taken an aircraft development
from zero to delivery.
[0:26:29] CL: Absolutely. You mentioned there some of the difficulties you faced. We’re really
interested to hear about some of those. What were some of the challenges that you come
across in this process, particularly in terms of, first of all, of achieving the certification and then
perhaps, going forward to entry to service?
[0:26:45] GO: Yeah. When we launched the aircraft in 2018, we had spent a lot of time looking
at all the previous developments that Airbus has done and looked around the way the industry
worked. We took a very proactive view on how we launched the aircraft in terms of, we had
some strong values around collaboration with everyone who needed to be involved. That
needed some sharing overall transparency, including really early engagement with the
authorities and making sure the team were quite balanced, well-being, mental health, physical
health.
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We used the project to instill a lot of strong values in the way we work, which was fortunate,
because not so long after that, we had COVID. We developed this aircraft through COVID. From
one week to the next, the team disappeared back to their homes, right across the globe. We
had to operate for some months in that mode, before we could get our offices into a way to
accommodate the teams safely back in different groups at different times. That was completely
unforeseen, of course. But trying to develop an aircraft and not slow down so much during that
period was very, very interesting.
Then midway through our development, we had a change in strategy from the certification
authorities, the airworthiness authorities, both in America with the FAA and EASA. We had to
pivot, whilst we had aircraft in the fall flight test ready to take off. We had to really pivot and
understand how do we now completely adapt, keeping our collaboration transparency and the
willingness to make sure we do the right thing and absorb that. Then we had the war in Ukraine,
which had a big impact to a lot of our businesses, a lot of the factories could be built, several
factories as part of the XLR. We had a huge amount of jigs and tools which are made of steel.
The supply chain got hugely disrupted. I think we've been tested numerous times on this
project, and I think it's a testament to how the team came together at the start with the values
and this closeness and this openness that we were able to ride over the top of some of those
things with huge support from our very senior management to keep the XLR moving. Any
aircraft development is tough. You face a numerous technical issues that you have to manage
every day. But then, with the XLR, we had those global issues on top, which we’re putting extra
pressure on our back. I think to be at the situation where we're now certified is a huge, huge
testament to the way the teams work, as well as their technical skill.
[0:29:22] CL: Absolutely. Interesting to hear how those supply chain issues don't just affect the
components that go into the aircraft, but the components that build the aircraft as well. Really
interesting perspective. Of course, to hear that you're probably, I think, the only manufacturer
from start to finish there, who's developed a design throughout the pandemic. Really interesting
to hear. The aircraft's now certified. We're mere probably weeks away from the first flight with
Iberia, which we're very excited about. What will you and the team be focusing on in that time
and run up to the first flight?
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[0:29:52] GO: I've got four key objectives in the way I manage the project. The first one is we
have to make sure that everything is fully certified. We have the certification, the type
certification of the aircraft behind us, but we still have a lot of customization mods for that the
airline need. We have other aspects that we need to certify, a lot of detail parts after the type
certification before EIS. We still have the certification. In front of us, we have of course, the Pratt
certification, which comes towards the end of the year.
Depth and cert and engineering is still a very strong activity that we need to continue to polish.
The second workstream is making sure that all of the industrial activities are finalized, which
means that all the little lessons, all the little fixes, which are not affecting the aircraft, but affects
the efficiency of the production system, we have to fix those and seal them in documentation
and make sure that the process runs smoothly.
Then the third part, which is maybe the biggest part for entry into service is making sure all of
the customer documents are there, the flight manuals, the repair manuals, etc., etc. We have
thousands of those documents to make sure we transfer to the airline. Then the fourth one, for
me, the first delivery to Iberia is a big event, but I've got hundreds of aircraft to build. I've got a
number of factories that I need to finish in order to ramp up. The biggest challenge for me is the
ramp up.
I'm making sure that all of the engineering learning is done, that all of the manufacturing
processes are very mature, that all of the customer documents for all of those future airlines are
ready, and then we need to keep the machine moving. The EIS is a big event, but it probably
takes 20% of my focus today, because everything else for the future ramp up and the success
of all those extra airlines is still a huge amount of work.
[0:31:49] CL: You're always looking for the next step. You're always planning two, or three steps
ahead.
[0:31:53] GO: At least, yeah. My job is to really, number one, enable and support the team to do
the job today. But mostly, to look and anticipate the next year, the next two years to make sure
that anything that could go wrong, we test it in a test center today, and that could be building
physical mock-ups of new things that are coming to make sure that they're very, very mature
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and the operators, the production operators have the chance to play with it before we drop it into
the main shop floor. Always looking forward.
[0:32:23] CL: Just then, actually a question, whilst I think of it on the documentation side of
things, you mentioned there's thousands of these documents. First of all, interesting, what are
those documents actually contain? I know there's a lot there, but what are the really important
things? Are they mostly digital, or do we still have to legally provide a lot of paper documents
actually?
[0:32:43] GO: They're all digital from our side. Then it really depends on the airline what they
want to receive. Some do take paper. We do work with a lot of paper, and it's one of our ongoing
workloads to make sure that we convert everything to digital. It's not so much the being able to
create it digitally, it's already happened for years. It's been able to embed it in an airline,
because those documents, if you think maintenance manuals are one of the key documents,
which basically, like with a car, or anything you buy, any product you buy, you get your
instructions of use. The maintenance and the operations manuals are very important.
We then have the most technical specialist manuals, like the structured repair manual. If an
airline has a problem in service, there needs to be clean documentation of what you can and
cannot do. Of course, we support this from our base to make sure that we can support those
discussions. There's flight ops manuals, there's the operation of the aircraft from the pilot's
perspective. Every single thing that you can consider to run an airline is documented, including
the crews, etc., etc.
Yeah, we have to make sure that for each one of those changes, for each one of those
documents, we run a complete set of tests, of dry runs, of simulations to make sure whenever
we release those manuals and then base our training on those manuals that everything works
smoothly. It's a huge, huge document chain.
[0:34:07] CL: What kind of simulations are we talking about there, in terms of, I guess,
preparing for every eventuality when the aircraft is in service? Can you give an example of what
do those simulations might look like and how you run that?
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[0:34:18] GO: If I give a good example of the maintenance manuals. In order to have a
maintenance manual of something that's fresh on the axle, or the rear center tank, or a different
access area, we have to give the maintenance crews direction on the right tool to use, and we
need to make sure that those tools are capable of being easily accessible to the fastener, or the
part that we're trying to fix. We need to make sure that the weights of the parts are not too
heavy for the maintenance teams to be able to handle and lift and position.
What we do for that, we have a lot of 3D simulations, augmented reality, virtual reality that we
use in our test areas to make sure that before we have built the aircraft, virtually, we can go
through the ergonomics, the human factors of how to fix the aircraft, so that before we design it,
we know it can be maintained. Those simulations are very, very important before we freeze our
design to make sure that in service for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, that the maintenance crews can still
operate comfortably to do the job.
[0:35:22] CL: Fantastic. Having to think about the, now more on the passenger side of things,
we're talking about putting a bunch of people on an A321 and flying them long haul, on an
airframe which has just traditionally been used for a short to medium-haul routes. Do you think
passengers are going to notice any difference being on that aircraft for that length of time?
[0:35:42] GO: I think, one of the main differences, I think, people will see, I get the pleasure of
working with most of our airlines, if not all, on the layout that they're putting in the cabin. When
you walk onto a normal single-aisle aircraft, you're expecting to see a pretty standard single-
class layout for most people, and you know what you're getting. Whenever we look at the
majority of the airlines that we have show the XLR to, and you see some videos online of
American Airlines from what they're offering, we can see the same for Iberia, our first customer,
they're going to see a very nice business class, premium economy class, and the economy
class that they are used to today, even the same economy class they see on a 330neo.
The one thing we can't do in developing a single-aisle aircraft is by definition, we can't put two
aisles in it. We can't have a wide body with two aisles. The one main difference is compared to
a 330, it's a single aisle. In terms of thermal comfort, the comfort the passengers will see, it's the
same as we have on a 330. In terms of the seat, when you're actually sitting in your seat,
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economy, premium economy, or business, it's the same as you're going to see sitting on a 330.
You'll just have less people beside you.
In terms of the services that the airlines are planning to offer, it's very similar to a 330. This is a
baby 330, and it's the big sister of a 321LR. We're really servicing that gap, that transition for
airlines, so they can go from a single-aisle seamlessly up and touch a 330. On one side, we
don't want the passenger experience to be significantly different than another long-range Airbus
aircraft. On the other side, because it's a single-aisle, they'll notice those premium situations on
a single-aisle aircraft.
[0:37:31] CL: That homogeny between the 330 is really interesting. Essentially, you look at it as,
as you said, the biggest sister of the LR and the baby A330. I think that's a great way of
exacting it, yeah, the passenger experience. Finally, the XLR is frequently tipped as a game-
changer in terms of long-range, narrowbody capability. What impacts do you think the XLR will
actually have in practice on the market in the short to mid-term?
[0:38:02] GO: For me, as the program manager, I see the XLR as a machine that can be used
by airlines for transporting people. That's really my objective. What we've tried to do in
designing that aircraft is to make it as flexible as possible. I think we'll get three, maybe three
different types of use. We'll get the airlines who are growing new routes, and they're going to try
routes into places that are long-range, that maybe a 321LR cannot reach, but maybe so far,
they're not fully confident that they have the passenger volume to go for a 330, or a 350. They're
able to take these long-range routes on an XLR and then have the test, have the growth for
bigger volumes in the future.
I think, for me, this is one area, and this is going to be very, very big for the XLR. We see a lot of
the airlines we're talking to in different regions of the world are talking about opening up routes
into areas that they simply cannot fly today, because they can't justify it. This is one area. The
second area, I think, will be for some airlines, they'll have the flexibility of a long-range aircraft
that in the winter can fly skiing, or can fly to specific areas. In the summer, they can pivot and fly
to hotter climates. This flexibility of being able to fly different routes in different seasons is also a
big area.
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Then you have then, really, and it's about flexibility again, I'm going to say the same word. It's
about airlines who know their routes, but they can fly the XLR on a two, on a four-hour journey,
or they can fly it on a 11-hour journey. They have a machine that really can stretch short-range,
as we do today, right up to long-range. Having that machine in your fleet gives you a lot of
confidence and a lot of support that it can stand in, where something else can't operate, it can
stand in, but in itself it can be a real strong workhorse with multiple turnarounds per day.
[0:39:56] CL: Great. Really flexible products overall. Well, Gary, it's been fantastic to talk to you.
I think we're all really excited to see the aircraft into service, which we're eagerly anticipating
with Iberia very soon. It's been fantastic to talk to you. Gary O'Donnell, Head of the H321 XLR
Programme. Thanks for speaking to us.
[0:40:16] GO: Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much.
[END OF CONVERSATION BETWEEN CHRIS AND GARY]
[0:40:24] IP: Welcome back. Now that the A321XLR is certified, the next step is getting
onboard. Delivery is scheduled for later this fall. Hopefully, we'll get a date soon. Then Jason,
we're going long haul –
[0:40:38] JR: To Boston.
[0:40:39] IP: - with Iberia. To Boston. Yeah, so the first routes aren't necessarily XLR specific
routes, but it looks like they could go even further.
[0:40:49] JR: Well, it's not even the originally intended airline, let alone anything that really
leverages the capabilities of this aircraft. But for those of you, I know there are a few of you out
there saying, “Transatlantic on a narrowbody aircraft. Bah, no way. That's uncomfortable.” I
retort by saying, shut up. It's fine. I've done it. I flew JetBlue earlier this year on not an XLR, but
an LR, from Amsterdam to New York. It's fine. It's no different than a widebody. It's fine. If the
price is right, you will deal with it. I don't see how 33 on a narrowbody is any worse than 343 on
a 777, or what are – okay, it's worse than 242 on an A330, but it's not bad. You'll be fine. You'll
survive. If I did it, you can do it.
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[0:41:43] IP: All right, there you go. Let's look at some orders from this year's Farnborough air
show.
[0:41:49] JR: There were a lot. I did not see this coming.
[0:41:53] IP: It seems like we’re going to be in a lull, but nowhere near even the low, low tally of
the 2022 Farnborough air show, and not even in the same universe's last year's Pairs air show,
but still some healthy numbers.
[0:42:07] JR: I'm just going to say, Boeing came to play.
[0:42:10] IP: They did indeed.
[0:42:11] JR: Unexpectedly dominated the Farnborough air show. We don't know what the
commercial deals are here. We don't know if Boeing was giving these aircraft away for free, or
buy one, get 10 free, maybe. But whatever they did, it worked. Boeing cleaned up. Airbus was
barely and also ran in this air show, which is a real weird role reversal.
[0:42:33] IP: It certainly is a change from the past few air shows and the biggest
announcements. Boeing taking a full, more than 60% of the total number of orders. Airbus
taking just a third.
[0:42:47] JR: Also, ATR was there.
[0:42:49] IP: We'll talk about them in a little bit in the context of competition. The 787, the big
winner so far with orders for 50, the 777X, also picking up some orders. Interestingly enough,
this was part of a large previously undisclosed order.
[0:43:09] JR: Our favorite airline. Undisclosed airline.
[0:43:10] IP: From our favorite airline. Undisclosed That's Qatar Airways picking up 20 more.
Some things that we already knew about, including Japan Airlines, firming up some orders, but
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also, some new orders from Japan Airlines. Korean Air taking some 777Xs, as well as some
78710s. National Air Cargo becoming a 777-freighter operator with four lux air picking up a
small handful of 737-10s, eventually. Virgin Atlantic definitely camping into the Airbus order book
with further A330neo options.
[0:43:52] JR: That was my favorite. Virgin Atlantic announced an order for seven A330neos,
while on an A330neo at Farnborough, which is pretty cool. I mean, how often do you announce
orders for an aircraft, while you're on that same aircraft? That's pretty cool.
[0:44:08] IP: That should be the standard, Jason.
[0:44:10] JR: It should always be the standard, especially for aircraft that haven't yet been
delivered to anyone. Unfortunately, the 777X was not able to attend this year's Farnborough air
show.
[0:44:20] IP: Then Berniq Airways, which is a Libyan airline, becomes the first Libyan A320neo
operator with a firm order for six A320neos. A scattering of orders, some very interesting orders,
but nothing huge. Turkish saying that it's not going to order another six billion planes anytime
soon, because they're working on engine pricing. Look for that one in the future. We're
recording on Wednesday, so you never know, there could be a Thursday surprise. But very
likely that we've seen most of the orders come through, and Boeing coming out well ahead of
Airbus in this year's Farnborough air show.
[0:45:05] JR: Yeah. Really unexpected. Some other interesting orders, Drukair ordering the
A321XLR, the freshly certified A321XLR. I guess, they'll be embarking on long haul operations.
That's not just a new aircraft order, but an entire new, I guess, business model for that airline,
which is pretty cool.
[0:45:24] IP: Yeah. Let's see, what else happened at the air show? Embraer, not big on the
order book this year, but big on the updates.
[0:45:34] JR: Yeah. The E195-E2 has had a few changes. Not the hottest selling aircraft, and
we'll get to that in a moment. But the E195-E2 specifically has had its range boosted from 2,600
to 3,000 nautical miles, which opens up some interesting possibilities for that aircraft. The new
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max take off wait for that aircraft is 62,500 kilogram, which combined with the lower fuel burn of
its engines provides this range improvement, which is pretty cool. They're also reporting 10%
improvement in geared turbofan engine time on wing, which is, I don't know, the bare minimum
we expect at this point. Yay. That's cool.
Most interestingly, is that Embraer out of nowhere announced the E2 enhanced takeoff system,
which is an automatic takeoff system that they say, produces a more precise and efficient
rotation moment and flight trajectory, reducing the required field length and pilot workload.
Meaning, more payload, more range from challenging airports. They give an example saying
that the E2 departing, let's say, from London City would have an added 350 nautical miles,
which could be interesting. But then, the image that they provided of the enhanced takeoff
system, which is basically an auto takeoff system in action, sure looks like it's putting that
aircraft into a dangerously steep climb, potentially stalling the aircraft. I'm sure that is not to
scale, but it was a really weird image to show off. I don't like it.
[0:47:19] IP: I get what they were going for.
[0:47:22] JR: But that picture should probably be to scale.
[0:47:24] IP: Yeah, like show me what the difference is. Is there an 18-degree climber? Is it
higher than that? Is it lower than that? How does this work? If it is to scale, that's more
frightening than I think them just putting a bad image together.
[0:47:38] JR: But I'm excited to be onboard an aircraft that pulls a 45-degree climb. That could
be fun.
[0:47:45] IP: Right.
[0:47:45] JR: Why not?
[0:47:47] IP: Having been on an aircraft that has climbed at 45 degrees, you're not getting out
of your seat, I’ll tell you that.
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[0:47:52] JR: No, that's fine. That's fine. We'll get to cruising altitude that much quicker, so I
can, I don't know, get some peanuts, or whatever in Embraer E2 airline serves. Meanwhile, on
the other end of the spectrum at Embraer, the E1 is getting some love, because the airlines in
the US cannot quit the E1 for seemingly ever at this point, since the E2 is too heavy for US
regional airlines. The E1 continues to be turned out at ridiculous rates, and they are making the
E1 look a lot more like the E2 on the inside. On top of adding additional seats on the E2, the E1
will also mimic the E2 in terms of much larger bins, so they'll have a one-to-one overhead bin
ratio, as well as mood lighting. Isn't that nice?
[0:48:42] IP: The mood lighting, I could take a leave, I suppose. But the bins thing, now you're
speaking my language.
[0:48:48] JR: Yeah, that's nice. Having been on a couple of E175s recently, they are remarkably
the same now as they were 20 years ago. I'd imagine Embraer didn't think it would still be
churning out the E1 forever, like it seems to be destined to be doing. It's good that they're going
back and really giving the venerable E1 some love, because it's not going away anytime soon.
[0:49:15] IP: We talked about Boeing's multiple orders and growing order book at Farnborough.
What we should also mention is flydubai's unorder, anti-order? Protest letter.
[0:49:33] JR: flydubai did not order any aircraft at Farnborough this year. I guess, wanted to get
in on the action and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We see things are going
really well for Boeing here at Farnborough. But let's just remember, things are not going so well
for existing customers who were expecting deliveries of aircraft.” They put out a press release
during Farnborough on July 22nd. The headline reads, “flydubai's expansion plan stunted by
extensive delays in Boeing's aircraft delivery schedules.” The subhead says, “The Dubai based
carrier announced that no new aircraft are joining its fleet for the remainder of the year, following
the latest update it received from the manufacturer. The carrier are set to review its expansion
plans due to the ongoing delivery delays.”
All the aircraft that flydubai had taken this year were apparently, actually supposed to have been
delivered previously. flydubai will take no new aircraft this year. It's going to have to rethink its
network plan and possibly cancel some routes outright. It ends by saying, “flydubai urges
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Boeing to honor and renew its commitment to meet its delivery obligations.” Not too often you
get an airline, not just putting out a press release saying, “Hey, Boeing. You're screwing up
really badly,” but also, to really rain on their parade during the air show. That's bitter, and I like it.
That's good stuff.
[0:51:00] IP: Someone is very, very upset.
[0:51:02] JR: I mean, I'd be upset. If you were a passenger of flydubai, you should be upset,
too.
[0:51:10] IP: Let us wander our way back across the ocean and visit New York, which is soon to
become –
[0:51:16] JR: I live there.
[0:51:18] IP: - in a certain way. Jason, explain why if you're flying through New York this week,
you might be in for some headaches.
[0:51:29] JR: Well, specifically Newark. If you're a passenger who flies through Newark, often,
you're probably saying, “So what? That's already the case. This is already what happens.” Well,
the FAA's New York Center N90 has been chronically, or New York TRACON has been
chronically understaffed for years. Part of the solution at the FAA to remedy that was to move
Newark's airspace over to Philly's Center, where apparently, staffing is a bit easier. This has
been back and forth. Chuck Schumer, the Senator had gotten involved and stopped that for a
while. But it now seems like, finally, this coming weekend, Newark's airspace will be reassigned
to Philly.
A pilot for one of the airlines that does a lot of flying in and out of United, sorry, in and out of
Freudian slip there, in and out of Newark. Come on, if we're talking about Newark, we're talking
about United. They have some information saying that this coming weekend, July 27th, that
transition will finally occur from New York Center over to Philly. It may not be super, super
smooth. Newark gets constrained a lot quicker than the rest of the New York airports, but that
may be even worse during this transition for “near term.” That could mean anything, days,
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weeks, months, don't really know. But while other New York airports are doing fine right now,
Newark may be in not great shape. When the weather here takes a south turn, Newark could
really be in bad shape for the coming future.
I reached out to the FAA for a comment to confirm this and asking after them asking, “Who are
you and why are you emailing us?” They have not yet responded to my clarification request. It
does seem like this is finally happening, which in the long term will be good, but there will be
near term pain for Newark passengers. Maybe fly out of LaGuardia the rest of the summer.
[0:53:33] IP: Nothing really new for frequent travelers at Newark.
[0:53:37] JR: It's finally happening.
[0:53:38] IP: Deeper pain.
[0:53:39] JR: Yeah, deeper pain for long-term gain, hopefully, is the plan.
[0:53:43] IP: There you go. Let's close the show by going across the city into JetBlue's home
turf of –
[0:53:51] JR: LaGuardia Queens.
[0:53:52] IP: New York, JFK. They are just not going to fly a whole bunch.
[0:54:01] JR: They're also going to fly a whole new bunch of stuff. JetBlue's been in not great
shape recent years, since the court struck down the Northeast Alliance operation with American
and then struck down the Spirit merger. JetBlue's had to make some moves and it's had to
make some moves pretty quickly to get back to profitability and figure out what it wants to do in
the new reality. Some of that involves starting up service at Islip. Today, it was announced that
they will actually spin up a lot of new service out of Providence and Manchester, New
Hampshire. Also slash and burn some cities entirely.
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JetBlue will be entirely closing Charlotte, Minneapolis, San Antonio, Burbank, Tallahassee,
which it just started flying, I think, in January of this year. Palm Springs and one of the
Caribbean islands. I can't remember which one exactly. This is a slash and burn announcement.
Actually, they didn't announce this. The announcement was all about, “We’re expanding service
in the Boston region with Manchester and we’re increasing service from Western New York, the
bread and butter out of Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester.” They didn't actually announce
publicly these full-station closures, but things leak pretty quickly. It's pretty shocking to see major
cities, like Boston to Charlotte, Minneapolis, San Antonio. They're gone entirely Burbank as well.
I think JetBlue served Burbank for decades at this point, but not anymore after October of this
year.
[0:55:38] IP: It's a big adjustment. I mean, some interesting new services and a lot of new
Northeast flying, and a lot of what seem extraneous routes going away in extraneous cities.
[0:55:51] JR: If by extraneous, you mean, no more intra-West Coast flying, which is really
what's happening here, which is probably good. But man, airlines like Alaska have really turned
up the heat on JetBlue. They have retreated back to the core operation of Northeast US to
Florida and the West Coast. Let's see if that brings them back to profitability. I hope so.
[0:56:16] IP: Good luck to JetBlue. We will have a final update at Farnborough next week. My
colleague, Chris, is there during the show this week. He's going to put together some things and
we'll find out if anything more happened after we hit stop on the recording button, which always
happens. We'll see what else goes on the rest of this week.
This weekend, I've said it in the past couple of weeks, but this weekend on Saturday, I'll be up at
Oshkosh. Feel free to drop us an email at podcast@fr24.com, if you want to meet up at
Oshkosh on Saturday, if you're going to be there, and then we'll start looking forward to what's
next for the rest of the summer and into fall. For now, this has been Episode 278 of AvTalk. I am
Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:57:03] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2024 AvTalk 25