AvTalk Episode 291: They strike on

AVT 291 Transcript
EPISODE 291
[EPISODE]
[0:00:06] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 291 of Av Talk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:15] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. What's up?
[0:00:17] IP: Hello, Jason. Where are you joining us from today?
[0:00:20] JR: I am unexpectedly in Istanbul at the moment.
[0:00:24] IP: As one often does, you know?
[0:00:25] JR: Yeah.
[0:00:26] IP: The unexpected arrival in Istanbul.
[0:00:29] JR: Of course, the unexpected trip that I did not know I was taking until about two
days before I left in business travel, but it was my first time flying Turkish Airlines. First time to
Turkey or Istanbul as a whole, actually. I'm actually happy to be in business travel for a change.
[0:00:45] IP: There you go. Well, I know the backstory to all of the shenanigans that went on to
get you on to that flight and make everything work. I'm glad it all worked out. I'm glad you made
it. I hope you're having a nice time. Because of Jason's presence in Istanbul, we're recording
before the largest story of the day breaks in a couple hours. It's Wednesday, yeah –
[0:01:10] JR: You’ll hear about it anyway.
[0:01:12] IP: We're going to record and put in the podcast two brief stories. One of them will be
correct. It's Wednesday, October 23rd at just a little past eight in the morning here in Chicago,
just a little past four in the afternoon in Istanbul. That means that Boeing machinists are
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currently voting to either accept or reject the latest proposed contract offer from Boeing. Boeing
raised the base pay rate for the currently striking machinists to a 35% raise over the four-year
life with contract. The union leadership felt that this latest offer, which was not the last best and
final offer issued on the 25th of September, so almost a month ago. But this new last and maybe
best and maybe – final offer.
[0:02:03] JR: Aviation industry.
[0:02:04] IP: Exactly.
[0:02:04] JR: The last final boarding.
[0:02:06] IP: It's always the 30-minute rolling delay. They're voting well now. Voting will continue
a few hours after we have finished recording. Here's story one. The machinists approved the
contract and will return to work shortly, accepting a 35% raise from Boeing, moving the
company out of its Meyer and moving forward. We wish the machinists and Boeing the best of
luck. That was story one.
Story two. The Boeing machinists have rejected the contract. The strike will carry on. Things are
definitely not looking up for Boeing. That was story two. Pause for transition. Because Boeing
reported its third quarter earnings today. They lost a ton of money.
[0:02:54] JR: If you want to measure a ton of money, a ton would be approximately six billion
US dollars, which I think qualifies as a ton like –
[0:03:04] IP: Literally, ton – more than a little ton.
[0:03:06] JR: Yeah.
[0:03:07] IP: Depending on what denomination of bill you're using.
[0:03:10] JR: Yeah. Six billion US. That is a lot of money.
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[0:03:15] IP: I actually did the math recently on this for purely unrelated having children
reasons. they ask weird questions. But if you wanted a million dollars in nickels, it would take 10
standard dump trucks.
[0:03:26] JR: Oh, thank you. According to that math. How many dump trucks of nickels did you
–
[0:03:31] IP: A lot more. Oh, you would need all of the dump trucks.
[0:03:35] JR: Okay.
[0:03:36] IP: Boeing lost six billion dollars in the third quarter of 2024 on revenue of $17.8
billion. This is also the first time that we have heard from Boeing CEO in length. He is giving
remarks. Well, we're going to hear from him. He's giving remarks at 7:30 AM, pacific time, which
is about an hour from now. But we have those remarks ahead of time. We know that he's going
to say that Boeing is at a crossroads. He's going to say that trust in the company is eroded.
True. They're saddled with too much debt. True. We've had serious lapses in our performance
across the company, which have disappointed many of our customers. True. I would expand
that to disappointed everyone.
[0:04:22] JR: Everybody, from airline customers down to, you know, actual flying public by way
of canceled flights and airplanes not existing, but then he goes on to say, by the same token, we
have great opportunities ahead. Our company backlog is roughly half a trillion dollars, but you
only get to cash in on that half a trillion. You can actually deliver the things that customers have
presumably bought. We have a customer base that wants us and needs us to succeed. That is
very much true. We have employees who are thirsty to get back to work to the iconic company
they know, setting the standards for the products that we deliver. A quote here, it goes on.
[0:05:03] IP: Yeah.
[0:05:03] JR: My mission here is pretty straightforward. That's a good way to put it, I think.
[0:05:08] IP: It's straightforward. It ain't easy, but it's straightforward.
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[0:05:11] JR: It never said it was easy. They never said this was easy. They break it down to
requiring four particular changes. In order, they need a fundamental culture change in the
company. It's really great to see that as not a mention, but the number one mentioned. First and
foremost, a culture change at the company, which is something that people have been saying
for years, that Boeing has largely given lip service to saying, “Yeah, the company culture has
changed. Believe us. Take our word for it.” We all know to this point, that has been a lie, that has
not been true. It still needs to be fixed and addressed.
Second, we must stabilize the business. Third, we need to improve our execution discipline on
new platform commitments across the company. Fourth, while doing the first three, we must
build a new future for Boeing. We'll talk a little bit more about what a new future for Boeing does
and more importantly, does not mean.
[0:06:11] IP: Yeah. I want to go back to the point three and just lay out what he's talking about,
which is everything. Because the improve our execution discipline on new platform
commitments, nothing Boeing has done recently in the past few years, has frankly worked.
[0:06:29] JR: No, and that ranges from aviation all the way to military –
[0:06:33] IP: The moon.
[0:06:34] JR: To space, to literally in space, where just this past week, another Boeing-built
satellite exploded, which is not great. You don't want satellites to explode. That was one that
actually provided in-flight connectivity to airlines over Africa and the Asia region. You might
actually feel a direct impact of that, even if you didn't know that not only did Boeing build
satellites, but they have a recent history of going Kerpoof in space, which is not good.
[0:07:03] IP: Yeah. That's the straightforward, as Ortberg says, task at hand. He goes on to say
that he's got an outside-in view of Boeing, because he's worked with the Boeing supply chain for
the last 20 years. Combining that with being at the top of the Boeing organization now, he says,
the culture change starts at the top. They're going back to basics. I mean, none of this is
groundbreaking. There's no aha, why didn't we think of that? He talks about going back onto the
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factory floors, into the engineering labs. Need to know what's going on “not only with our
products, but with our people.”
[0:07:39] JR: It almost sounds a little like, Winston Churchill's speech of we shall fight them on
the beaches, or he's basically saying, we'll fight them on the factory floors and then in the back
shops and in our engineering labs. It's a weird way to frame it, but he is – I feel like, they're
going to war on themselves in every possible way that they can.
[0:08:00] IP: Yeah. I mean, it's not groundbreaking, but it just makes good sense. Point two,
stabilizing the business. That seems the strike may end today. “We've been working feverishly
to find a solution that works for the company and meets our employees’ needs.” He talks about
resetting the union relationship, which maybe got off to a rocky start with Stephanie Pope's first
best, last take it or leave it shenanigans, and talks about task of restarting the factories and the
supply chain. Much harder to turn it on than it is to turn it off. And so, he talks about safety and
quality management systems. He goes on to talk about understanding that they need to get
back to basics in order to get the FAA to sign off on increasing their production rates if they're
going to move forward.
[0:08:49] JR: Yeah. Increasing the seven 73 production rates, which is above and beyond what
they already can't achieve. They can't even achieve, if the strike would end today, they wouldn't
even be able to hit the current production rate, let alone the future increase 737 production rates
up to, and possibly including the line up in Everett that we’ll see one day maybe.
[0:09:10] IP: Yeah. None of this is earth shattering. It's not groundbreaking. It's just good sense.
I guess, up until now, Boeing leadership has been unable, or unwilling to do the work. It remains
to be seen whether or not Boeing will in fact do the work this time around. I really hope that
they're serious this time.
[0:09:30] JR: Well, they have to. They do not have a choice at this point, because what is going
on at Boeing is leading to 6-billion-dollar quarterly losses and that can't be sustained. Forget
long-term, short-term. This can't go on. At this point, it's either you fix it, or something so
dramatic at Boeing has to come up that the company’s either broken up, or changes form
entirely that this really does seem like the last opportunity to right the ship. This statement that's
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going to be read during the earnings call really does seem to acknowledge that, “Hey, my
predecessor sucked at his job. Didn't do any of the things that they said they were going to do to
fix the culture, to fix production, to fix management, to fix all the things that,” in their word, “were
festering. It's now or never really.”
[0:10:16] IP: It is in fact now or never. Hopefully, when we get to the fourth quarter earnings,
we're talking about a much different story. In Kelly Ortberg’s words, “A large ship that is slowly
turning around.” Good luck, and we hope to have a very different conversation in a few months’
time.
[0:10:32] JR: Yeah. But one thing we know is not now or never. It's either going to be later, or
never is the development of a new airplane at Boeing. I'll quote the statement today. “Boeing is
an airplane company. At the right time in the future, we need to develop a new airplane, but we
have a lot of work to do before then.” There it is. There's your confirmation that the 797, or
whatever comes next for Boeing, it is either so minutely under development right now, or not
under development at all, and won't be coming in the near future, until they do all of the things
that we've been talking about here, which we don't know how long that's going to take. It could
be years before Boeing officially launches a new aircraft program, or at this rate, maybe never. I
hope that's not the case. But they're definitely putting any rumors, or speculation of a new
aircraft program at Boeing to bed right now. It's not happening for the time being.
[0:11:30] IP: All right, let's move on. Jason, we're going to head to Austin now, where last week,
an American Airlines 737 and a Cessna R-182 Skylane came dangerously close as the
American flight was preparing to land in Austin. The Cessna was traveling westbound at about
2,000 feet, while the American 737 was preparing to land. As the American 737 was lining up for
the runway 36 left, so flying due north, lining up for the runway, the Cessna turned due south
directly into the path of the American 737.
[0:12:09] JR: Not great.
[0:12:11] IP: Not great.
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[0:12:11] JR: Not great that the shenanigans in Austin usually happen on the ramp and on the
ground, not in the air, but this is –
[0:12:16] IP: Yes. This happened in the air. The 737 received a TCAS resolution advisory. They
climbed, they turned right. The TCAS resolution advisory put them into conflict with a third
aircraft that was in the area. The controller asked them to get out of the way, and everything was
over in about 30 seconds. Proving once again, that TCAS is one of the most incredibly,
incredibly wonderful safety tools in the history of aviation.
[0:12:46] JR: Yeah. Never really thought about what happens when there's a third aircraft in the
mix, as there was here. It seems like TCAS was limited in this instance to avoiding a
catastrophe between two aircraft, but maybe not a third. I guess, it's good that air traffic control
was on top of their game in this situation. But things seem like they're bad enough that maybe
we need to figure out a new version of TCAS that can take account of everything around them.
[0:13:13] IP: Yeah. I don't know if – the TCAS RA induced a loss of separation, but not as yet a
risk of collision, if that makes sense. They got inside the outer bubble, but they didn't get to
where they were actually going to hit each other. Thankfully, that didn't happen. The Cessna
was not talking to the approach controller, even though they were not in airspace where they
were obligated to be on frequency with the approach controller.
However, the wisdom of flying in congested airspace near an airport, where you have aircraft
that are using the approach, where you are flying, it seems to me like it would be a wise
decision to check in with the controller anyway, even if you're not obligated to.
[0:14:00] JR: Yeah. Or maybe the FAA needs to rethink everything about Austin. From the
ground management, to the airspace around the airport, it seems like, things are bursting at the
seams there, and not particularly the safest situation. Maybe it's time for the FAA to take a
closer look at what's going on there.
[0:14:20] IP: Perhaps, it is. But I want to get some informed opinion on this. If you're a pilot,
whether or not you would be flying a Cessna, or the 737, or if you're a controller and you're
listening to the podcast, because I know there are a few, email us at podcast@fr24.com, and let
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us know what you think about this. I understand that the Cessna was not obligated to be talking
to the controller. But as someone who sees what's happening in an aerial view, I just don't see
the wisdom of not checking in. Email us at podcast@fr24, if you've got some thoughts on that, if
you can offer some wisdom. I always appreciate wisdom anywhere I can get it.
Speaking of not a whole lot of wisdom, Indian Airlines have been hit by a spate of hoax bomb
threats this month. I think we're nearing five dozen flights that have had bomb threats, either
called in, or posted online. There were the initial spate of threats, then there were some
teenagers who were copycatting the initial threats. Those teenagers were found quickly and
have been, I don't know if they've been arrested, or what happens to juveniles in India when
they are caught making hoax bomb threats, but they have continued. Some of the worst ones
have been a Air India flight from, I think we talked about this last week, from Delhi to Chicago,
where they diverted to Iqaluit, and then they were taken onward by the Canadian military.
Another one later in the week happened in London, where the RAF scrambled a typhoon.
They've happened all over India. They've happened in Singapore. It continues. No real end in
sight. Yesterday, Tuesday, October 22nd, there were six squawk 7700s in a span of 30 minutes.
[0:16:06] JR: Wow.
[0:16:07] IP: Not great. Please, if you happen to be listening to this podcast and you know
what's going on, cut it out. Cut it out. Though, I really hope that no one who would be doing this
is listening to our podcast. Hey, Jason?
[0:16:20] JR: Yo.
[0:16:21] IP: Remember when we talked about the one merger that made sense a while ago?
[0:16:25] JR: You must be talking about the Boeing-Airbus merger.
[0:16:28] IP: That's exactly what I'm talking about.
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[0:16:30] JR: The only way that makes – No. That's right. I think you're talking about Frontier
and Spirit.
[0:16:36] IP: I am. Remember what happened after we talked about the merger that made
sense?
[0:16:40] JR: Yeah. Something terrible happened, where JetBlue tried to extremely overbid
successfully and knocked Frontier out of the running for Spirit, only then to have it turned down
by the courts. Now, both airlines are in trouble, and Spirit is fending off chapter 11 with all sorts
of extensions. What's old is new again. Frontier is apparently, according to the Wall Street
Journal, looking to reengage with Spirit.
[0:17:08] IP: I mean, we said at the midpoint, I want to say, of all of this, that the real winner in
all of this was going to be the lawyers and the investment bankers.
[0:17:18] JR: It’s always them.
[0:17:19] IP: The only airline to come out of this in halfway decent shape is going to be Frontier.
That seems to be the case.
[0:17:27] JR: If this goes through, yeah, Frontier would presumably get Spirit for a much lower
cost than originally. Spirit’s in a much worse position now.
[0:17:35] IP: We will give you $1 for all of these A320neos.
[0:17:39] JR: I mean, that's a pretty good deal. Also, the landscape has changed quite a bit,
since Frontier originally went after Spirit, where both airlines have gotten upmarket a little bit,
because the majors have not cracked the code against LCC, or ULCCs, but they've figured out
how to compete better. Now, it's a very different landscape with Frontier and Spirit, both offering
no change fee, no cancel. They both have some premium products that they're differentiating
now. It's a different landscape, but it's very much the same situation. Here we are all over again.
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[0:18:15] IP: This is preliminary talks. It could come to nothing. It could come to something. We
don't know. We have no idea at this point. But definitely, what's old is new again. Jason, it was
not a great week to be taxiing an aircraft in Chicago.
[0:18:34] JR: I mean, it's never a great time.
[0:18:36] IP: I mean, it's never –
[0:18:37] JR: - aircraft in Chicago.
[0:18:39] IP: It was particularly bad this week, or last week, actually.
[0:18:44] JR: In the same spot, twice, I think.
[0:18:45] IP: In roughly the same spot. Yes.
[0:18:47] JR: What happened?
[0:18:49] IP: Let's go with the first incident. This was a American Airlines 787, taxiing on
October 17th, behind an Air France A350, which becomes important in a moment, because a
baggage tug towing ULDs, so the unit load devices that go in the belly of the aircraft, was towing
a few of those. They were empty, which means that they're rather light, which means that if you
drive behind an aircraft that's applying power to its engines, those are going to come off. In this
case, they were blown directly in to the engine of an American 787, or one of them was.
[0:19:36] JR: Not great right now. Not a great, particularly that aircraft, not a great time to have
to get spares for –
[0:19:41] IP: No.
[0:19:42] JR: - right now.
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[0:19:44] IP: No. This is not certainly not the first time this has ever happened. There's a great
photo that I'll put in the show notes from 2009 in Los Angeles, a Japan Airlines 747, not only
sucked the ULD into its engine, but it got stuck there. That's certainly not the first time this has
happened. Then, a few days later, the exact same – well, not the exact same thing, but a very
similar situation happened to a JetBlue aircraft. Flight 811 from Boston, landed in Chicago on
time, and then got struck by a luggage container.
[0:20:23] JR: Was it the same situation, where a tug was tugging it across the taxiway and it got
sucked in, or was it just something was left where it shouldn't have been?
[0:20:31] IP: That is unclear. It sounds like, it was just less of a sucking into the engine and
more of a hitting of the engine. We'll see how that happened, but not great. Not great at all.
Watch out for the ULD devices if you're taxiing an aircraft around Chicago this week. Where
should we go next? Let's stay in Chicago headquarters and talk about the fact that United is
gobbling up any A321neo if possibly can.
[0:20:59] JR: Which we knew. We knew it was coming, but it's nice to see a plan come to
fruition, even if it wasn't the plan all along.
[0:21:06] IP: Right. Late last week, and announced in United's third quarter earnings this week,
United signed “definitive agreements with multiple unnamed aircraft lessors to lease 40
A321neo jets, that are going to start being delivered in 2026, and those deliveries will run
through 2027.” Anywhere they can. Anybody who has an A321neo slot, they are taking it.
[0:21:36] JR: Yeah. I really feel like, I should have gone back a few years, scrapped some
money together to take up a few 321neo slots, just to hold on to them, to resell them for twice
the value.
[0:21:46] IP: Yeah. I mean, I wonder how much that would cost.
[0:21:49] JR: Is that a thing speculative aircraft manufacturing slot?
[0:21:53] IP: Sure. What do you think lessors are?
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[0:21:56] JR: Yeah, but they intend to lease them out.
[0:21:59] IP: Oh, you mean like, entirely, where people buy oil futures and then have absolutely
no intention of actually buying the oil?
[0:22:05] JR: Exactly, exactly. Then one day it comes and you, “Oh, no. What do I do with all
this? I'm losing all my money.” In this case, there's always a customer for this stuff.
[0:22:13] IP: There's always a customer. Yeah.
[0:22:13] JR: Right now in this market. I wonder if that's actually a thing.
[0:22:16] IP: Call Airbus and say, how much would it take to get a slot and find out? Okay. Well,
that's new aircraft. Here goes old aircraft. Qantas is ending 717 operations this week. The last
flight is going to be the 26th of October. The list of 717 operators is dwindling mightily.
[0:22:37] JR: Yes. But thankfully, one of them is Delta and Delta will probably operate those
aircraft forever.
[0:22:43] IP: Forever.
[0:22:43] JR: I think they're still actually bringing them all online back from being parked during
COVID. They're either all back now, or almost all back in service. If you're a 717 fan, I wouldn't
worry about it too much.
[0:22:56] IP: You've got time. Then Czech Airlines is ending operations entirely, kind of. The
Czech Airlines brand will cease operations this weekend. The last flight is also on the 26th of
October. Then they're going to fold everything into the parent company, Smartwings. Czech
Airlines is 100 years old. One of the oldest continuing operating airlines in the world. Sadly, they
will end branded operations this weekend. Sad to see, but unfortunately, in their case, it was
partly external factors, but also, partly gross mismanagement on their part.
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[0:23:40] JR: According to Wikipedia, Czech Airlines is actually the fifth oldest airline in the
world, behind KLM, Avianca, Qantas, and Aeroflot at the time, or whatever incarnation of
Aeroflot there was, and was the first airline in the world to regularly operate jet-only routes,
between Prague and Moscow. There's a lot of history to this brand. Another Star Alliance loss
here, not that I think it's a particularly big loss. I'm pretty sure –
[0:24:08] IP: They were down to one aircraft.
[0:24:09] JR: - more than make up for that. Yeah, just sad to see any airline brand this storied
bite the dust.
[0:24:17] IP: Absolutely. PLAY airlines, the Icelandic leisure low-cost carrier is shifting its
business model away from the Icelandair model of connecting passengers between North
America and Europe through Iceland, and moving to a more point-to-point leisure-based warm
destination tourism and people who want to go to Iceland for tourism kind of thing. They're
adding a Maltese AOC, so that they can operate throughout Europe more easily. All of that is
going to begin about mid-2025. They've seen the landscape shift under their feet and they've
said, “Hey, we're going to change with it. Instead of trying to make this work. We don't want to
wow anybody. We just want to continue to play.”
[0:25:05] JR: I get it. I see what you did there.
[0:25:07] IP: There you go.
[0:25:08] JR: I see what you did there. Icelandair, I'm sure, is breathing a heavy sigh of relief.
Yet, another competitor defeated.
[0:25:16] IP: There you go. ITA Airways, which Lufthansa Group is in the process of gobbling
up, the Italian government has released what they're going to need to do in order to make all of
that work. Our good friend, Ned Russell, comes to us with some reporting on what the remedies
are going to be. That includes what we pretty much assumed is easyJet getting a ton of slot
pairs in Milan. 15 slot pairs. Air France looks like, it's going to get a pair, a pair of pairs. Then
British Airways will get five pairs. This is according to Leonardo [Bebri? inaudible 0:25:58],
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Italian reporter who does great work there. He's reporting that the British Airways is going to get
five slot pairs for “long haul” concerns, which is interesting to me.
[0:26:09] JR: Yeah. We don’t really know what that means. I can't expect BA to spin up an
Italian subsidiary for long-haul flights. Not really sure what that means. Unless, you consider the
UK, not Schengen, therefore, long haul. Cool. That could be something. I don't know.
[0:26:26] IP: We'll fly the long way to get there. Maybe that's what they mean.
[0:26:31] JR: We'll find out one day.
[0:26:32] IP: It'll shake out further. This is a story that I think we all knew was coming, because
there wasn't really a way around it, but it's still just, if it wasn't so dangerous, it would be
laughable. Russia has begun the process of creating a certification system for all of the fake
parts that it's making for foreign aircraft. Basically, they're saying, “We want to certify all of the
uncertified parts for the Boeing and Airbus aircraft that we kept, that were on lease, that we now
can't get genuine parts for.”
[0:27:15] JR: Okay. At least they'll be able to track and figure out where these parts are and
what exactly they are and how they were made, rather than it just being the Wild West of
counterfeit gray market parts. Maybe that's some good.
[0:27:30] IP: The funny thing is, is that the quote from the Russian government says that,
“Considering the shortage of foreign-made spares, it can be concluded that the alternative
spares market will actively develop, cautioning that a gray market of unauthentic components
could otherwise emerge.”
[0:27:45] JR: I'm pretty sure we're already there.
[0:27:47] IP: Like, what?
[0:27:49] JR: Yeah.
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[0:27:49] IP: You're a few years late to the party, guys.
[0:27:52] JR: Hey, at least they're acknowledging it at some point.
[0:27:57] IP: Fine. All right, Jason, we don't like to talk about things that aren't quite real yet, but
things seem to be getting quite real with the FAA approval of what they're calling the powered lift
category. This is the FAA's new rule for what we've called eVTOLs, what has generally been
called air taxis. This final rule is for the qualifications and training that pilots must have to fly
these aircraft. All of these things, like operational requirements, minimum safe altitudes,
visibility, all of these requirements go towards what standards these aircraft will have to meet in
order for operations. Then we get to actually building and certifying the production aircraft. It's
an interesting thing to be talking about now that the FAA's finally issued their rules. We're still
not close to certifying any of these aircraft yet. But the FAA says, they put all of these rules into
place because “existing regulations did not address this new category of aircraft, which can take
off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane during cruise flight.”
The rule provides a comprehensive framework for certifying the initial cadre of powered lift
instructors and pilots. There you go. I'm excited, because we're going to get through all this
technical stuff. Then people are going to see these things flying around and go, “Absolutely not.
Do not want.”
[0:29:40] JR: Yeah. I mean, the FAA administrator put out, I think it was a post on Medium
today, talking about nice to see direct talking to the people through a post like that. It was
interesting to see how they liken this to, “Yeah, we're going to do it. We're going to figure it out,
just like we did for drones and unmanned aerial systems, where this thing came out of nowhere
and it needed to be regulated. Then we did it. Now it's mostly fine.” The same thing needs to
happen here with air taxis, or eVTOLs, or whatever. We want to get out ahead of it. It seems
like, they're actually doing that.
[0:30:15] IP: Yeah. We'll link to the FAA announcement, the rule and the Medium blog as the
FAA calls it. Jason, let's end the show with one of the longest running sagas of airlines that a
zombie airline? I think it's safe to call it a zombie airline at this point.
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AVT 291 Transcript
[0:30:34] JR: What's the state after being a zombie?
[0:30:36] IP: Ooh, that's a good question.
[0:30:38] JR: I think it's a zombie in purgatory.
[0:30:41] IP: Jet Airways, which operated up until 2019, then had a group try and resurrect it in
2021, or beginning in 2020. Then by 2021, the court that was in charge of the dissolution plan of
the original Jet Airways agreed to a resolution plan. That was three years ago. They've been
limping along since then, because no one's gotten paid. No one's done what they said they
were going to do. Creditors are angry. Ownership transfer has been stuck in multiple courts. The
Indian Supreme Court last week said, “Never mind. We're not going to say anything.” Just held
over a decision whether or not this airline is ever going to get off the ground.
The lawyers for both the creditors and the consortium trying to get it off the ground say that the
resolution plan has failed miserably. Everyone agrees that this is a complete failure. But the
consortium that's trying to get the airline off the ground says that the banks just want to liquidate
Jet Airways and get any money they can out of it, rather than seeing any success here, which I
mean, if I'm the banks, I don't believe that they're ever going to get the airline off the ground,
and I want my money back, at least as much as I can. It'll be interesting to see how long this
drags out, because we could be talking about this 10 years from now, where, again, it's the
lawyers and the investment bankers that are the real winners here.
[0:32:16] JR: Yup. I don't see anyone else potentially winning with this right now. Hey, we love a
good story that just keeps on coming up every 30 episodes or so.
[0:32:26] IP: Jet Airways not dead again yet. Jason, I'm going to let you get back to your
Istanbul adventures. Safe travels.
[0:32:37] JR: Thank you. Thank you.
[0:32:38] IP: We will see you when you're back in the US next week. Next week, we have what I
think is going to be an amazing guest. I already think he's amazing. But I think he's also going to
© 2024 AvTalk 16
AVT 291 Transcript
be an amazing guest on the podcast. Next week, we are talking with Max of Airplane Facts with
Max. I'll put a link down in the show notes to his video content over on Instagram and TikTok,
which is just, if you like airplanes, if you like Lord of the Rings, it's just so, so good. We're going
to talk with him about airplanes, a little bit about Lord of the Rings, and just an all-around great
time. Tune in next week for that episode.
Until then, this has been Episode 291 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:33:25] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2024 AvTalk 17