AvTalk Episode 285: How much cocaine can you fit in a Gulfstream?

AVT 285 Transcript
EPISODE 285
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 285 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Ian, you told me that there's a lot to talk about today before we
started recording. Is that still the case?
[0:00:23] IP: I mean, I hope so. Otherwise, it defeats the purpose of doing a podcast.
[0:00:28] JR: Here we thought it would be a quiet end of summer week. Nope.
[0:00:33] IP: It wasn't, isn’t. It's only Wednesday. Some of the biggest news that we're talking
about probably won't happen until early Friday morning, right before the podcast comes out.
We're going to talk about some things. We're going to make some assumptions, and some what
ifs. Then next week, we'll come back and talk about whether we got it right, or got it wrong. But
we'll get to that a little bit later. All else being equal would have been the top story this week,
talking about Boeing and the IAM's tentative labor agreement and possible vote to accept the
agreement, or strike by the rank and file. We go to Atlanta first, where the good folks taxing
aircraft in Atlanta, I believe the technical term for this, Jason, is a whoopsie daisy.
[0:01:20] JR: I think you might find that in a couple handbooks. Yeah.
[0:01:23] IP: Yeah. We'll check the ICAO library just to make sure. Thankfully, no one was
injured when a Delta Airlines A350 struck an Endeavor Air operating as Delta Connection
CRJ-900 in Atlanta on Tuesday morning. That collision with the right-wing tip of the A350 striking
the tail of the CRJ-900 resulted in the tail of the CRJ-900 falling off. Yeah.
[0:01:54] JR: That's different. The A350 wasn't taxiing at an abnormally high rate of speed.
[0:02:01] IP: 12 knots.
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[0:02:02] JR: 12 knots. Not crazy. Not Southwest speeds by any measure.
[0:02:07] IP: Not Southwest speeds.
[0:02:09] JR: I guess, the 350 just has so much more mass that the tail section of the CRJ just
noped out of the situation, which is surprising to me because this is not the first time, probably
not the last time a CRJ will be assaulted by a widebody aircraft. The most famous case of this, I
think, is from 2011, maybe, where the Air France A380 rammed a Comair, also operating as
Delta Connection CRJ-700 back in the day, and flung the CRJ. I think it rotated 90 degrees.
[0:02:48] IP: It spun it right around.
[0:02:48] JR: It spun it. But the tail didn't fall off. In this case, the exact opposite. The CRJ held
its ground, didn't really move, but the whole tail assembly –
[0:02:59] IP: The whole tail just popped right off. Just popped right off. Just fell right over.
[0:03:04] JR: Yeah. Okay. I think it was an 11-year-old CRJ-900. Not the oldest out there, not
the newest by far, but they ain't making any more of these. I do wonder if Delta is going to fix
this. We've seen them fix a great number of very interesting looking things in the past, but the
entire tail assembly of a CRJ.
[0:03:30] IP: You get to the point of diminishing returns. I made this joke yesterday on the
Twitters about, if anyone can fix it, it's Delta TechOps. Also, there's, while Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries does offer OEM support for the CRJ series, I don't know if they offer quite that much
support. Plus, you got to think that with the tail completely off, there's internal damage that's just
pretty bad as well.
[0:03:58] JR: I’m sure there is almost certainly some structural damage to the airframe as well,
more than we can just see from the tail, because that's quite a bit of forces to completely
dislodge it. Thankfully, Delta TechOps is just a taxi on down the taxiway, and they do –
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[0:04:14] IP: Yeah. Just tow it over.
[0:04:16] JR: They do service pretty much anything, up to and including both the CRJ and the
A350 that caused the incident here. We shouldn't say caused the incident, because we don't
know who's to blame here, or if any one party is to blame, because Ian, you told me that there's
some interesting circumstances that led to both of these aircraft being in that position.
[0:04:39] IP: Right. What happened was is the CRJ was taxiing for departure on Atlanta's
runway 8 right, which is on the north side of the airfield, is part of the north runway complex.
They had taxied taxiway echo, which is parallel to runway 08 right. Then they had taken a right
turn on hotel, which is basically the full-length taxiway. 295, which was the A350 was also on
echo behind the CRJ. They had told air traffic control that they needed a moment to work a
problem. They weren't specific over the radio what that problem was, they asked if they could
hold on echo. Gown controller said, “No, keep going echo short of Victor. I need to basically get
you out of the way of the departing aircraft, and then we can swing you back around.”
It looks like, the CRJ did not pull all the way up to the stop bars before runway 8 right. The A350
being rather largely wing-spanned, clipped that tail. Interestingly enough, and this was Ben
Bear, who's an Atlanta native and has spent a lot of time following aircraft at Atlanta brought up
the fact that the A350 was on the north side of the airfield because of closures on the southern
runway complex. This aircraft would normally depart from the southern runways, departing from
the northern runway yesterday because of those runway closures. That aircraft normally isn't
there.
It seems like, there's a bunch of different factors playing into this. Lots of questions about where
the aircraft were exactly and the NTSB, which is investigating. I'm sure we'll sort all of that out to
figure out how we can be better about driving airplanes around the airfield.
[0:06:35] JR: Yeah, every time there's an incident like this on the ground, I'm always just
amazed that your base model car still has sensors all over to tell you if you're going to back up
into the garage, or a pole, or a tree, or whatever, but aircraft still, they don't have anything. They
will let you taxi into a brick wall and not tell you you're going to do that. It's just one of those
things that you would think every time these happen that maybe Honeywell will come up with
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some sonar radar-based thing in the wing, so they could provide a warning to pilots to say, “Hey,
stop it. You don't have the wing clearance you think you have here.” But no, still not a thing.
[0:07:14] IP: I mean, and the question has been asked at least of me a few times in the past
day, don't they have cameras? They do, but the cameras on the A350 don't cover the wingtips.
The forward-facing camera on the rear of the aircraft mounted in the vertical stabilizer does not
cover all the way to the wingtips, which you think you could put two cameras in there and make
one wide angle, and there you go, but who knows if that would have actually solved the issue
here, because they were working a problem.
Maybe the first officer was head down trying to resolve the problem, and that's what they were
working on, or who knows what's going on. Thankfully, Jason, we have, hopefully, I think, the
cockpit voice recorder, because it wasn't overwritten this time.
[0:08:03] JR: They didn't get too far.
[0:08:05] IP: Hopefully, that shed some light on what was happening on the flight deck of the
A350, and then the flight data recorders give us the precise location of where they were relative
to the stop bar. Because remember, the positions that we get via ADS-B are super helpful, but
they're also where the GPS antenna is on the aircraft, which is usually the forward fuselage, and
not necessarily taking into account how far back the aircraft stretches from where that GPS
position's being taken. Yeah, we'll wait for the NTSB report to learn more on this. But very good
to see that no one was injured other than the CRJ-900 and the A350.
[0:08:42] JR: Very injured. You can be sure, I'm going to set an alert for that aircraft, so the next
time – I want to know what it's up to. Because if you're a wagering person, I'd say, it's probably
going to fly again.
[0:08:56] IP: I mean, I will take that after we finish recording, whether or not there's a friendly
wager involved in there, but we'll see. The preliminary report by Brazilian investigators on the
Voepass ATR crash came out late last week. It's in Portuguese only, so I did my best to use
tools available, such as the fine machines in the computer box to translate this. It makes sense
to me, based on comparing the machine translation versus the text presented by the –
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[0:09:33] JR: Context.
[0:09:35] IP: - the Brazilian investigators in Portuguese. Just a note, as we discuss, this is
machine translated.
[0:09:41] JR: But you're taking this so seriously, that – Make the noise, Ian. Make the noise I
picked up on earlier.
[0:09:47] IP: I printed it out.
[0:09:48] JR: Paper. He printed it out and highlighted. That's how you know we came prepared,
because he used the actual paper and a printer, which I get you have a printer, which is
interesting. What did you print? What did you learn?
[0:10:02] IP: The reason that I printed it is because there are two timelines within the report,
and having paper was very helpful in jumping back and forth between the two, and
understanding what the report is getting at. Because there's a timeline of events and of things
that the aircraft is doing. There's also a timeline of what the pilots and air traffic control were
communicating to each other, and why, which I thought was interesting, and we'll get to that in a
moment. Starting with the timeline, they walk us through what the aircraft was doing, and what
the aircraft systems were telling the pilots throughout the flight.
The aircraft takes off at 14:58.05 from the runway. It's in the air. 14 minutes later, the pilots turn
on the anti-icing. You've got propeller anti-icing one and two were activated. Then, a few
minutes later, as soon as they cross flight level 130, which is where the SIGMET warned them
the ice would be. We're expecting ice at this point. There is an active SIGMET for icing. The
electronic ice detector connected to the centralized crew alert system displays an alert. they
say, “Hey, there's icing.” A few seconds later, they activate the airframe deicing.
I'll stop here for a second. We talked about airframe deicing in the context of the ATR when
Steve Giordano was on in episode 281. A few weeks ago, we talked about how the ATR and
turboprops generally have deicing and anti-icing. Just to recap, there's electronic anti-icing,
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which is basically surfaces on the aircraft are heated, so that ice can't stick to them, and then
there's deicing surfaces, so places on the aircraft where you have, in the case of the ATR,
pneumatic boots, which expand and break off any accumulated ice. They turn on the airframe
deicing, and this is where we start to get with things – we get a first inkling that something could
possibly go wrong with this flight.
At 15:15.42, so about 17 minutes after they've taken to the air and after they've flown into icing
conditions, a single chime alarm was heard in the cabin. The crew then commented about
receiving a fault message on the airframe deicing. Now, the preliminary report that the Brazilian
investigators put out includes checklists for what to do in icing conditions and what to do if there
are things like, faults with the deicing. If there is a deicing fault, and again, we don't know
exactly what this is, but the deicing fault checklist for the ATR says, if they are in icing
conditions, the action is to leave and avoid and turn the deicing of the airframe off. Well, that
didn't happen.
[0:13:10] JR: I don't believe they ever left the deicing scenario, did they?
[0:13:14] IP: No. They were in icing conditions for much of the rest of the flight, if not the whole
flight. The electronic ice detector showed an alert. The alert stopped showing, then it showed
again, then it stopped showing. It goes on and off six times.
[0:13:30] JR: That's something I wanted to point out. When we talked to Steve, I had mentioned
that not all aircraft have the capability to tell pilots that, “Hey, there's a buildup of icing going on.”
This aircraft did, and it does seem to have been operating at least to some degree to tell the
pilots, “Hey, there's icing building up on the wings, or critical surfaces.” It wasn't just a situation
where the pilots would have had to look out the window and observe it. This aircraft was telling
the pilots, “Hey, there's ice buildup. You got to do something about it.”
[0:14:00] IP: Right. On the ATR, on this specific ATR, there are two pieces of technology.
There's the ice evidence probe, which is a piece below the front-left windscreen, which is
designed to be the first thing to accumulate ice and the last thing to have no ice on it. You are to
believe that you are in icing conditions if that probe has ice on it. There's also on the underside
of the left wing an electronic ice detector, which is exactly what it says. It's electronic. It detects
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ice. This is all happening. The electronic ice detector is displaying an alert. It's going off. It's
coming on. So, they turn on and off the airframe deicing.
Then they're getting towards Sao Paulo. They start contacting Sao Paulo approach, and they
want to begin descending. Sao Paulo approach says, “No, you need to stay up where you are at
17,000 feet.” At 16:18.41 with a speed of 191 knots, the cruise speed low alert was displayed.
Again, they've helpfully included what to do, the checklist, what to do if you get the cruise speed
low. If you're in icing conditions, you monitor it and you monitor the speed. Okay, that's fine.
Nothing terrible yet. Then they say, “Can we descend?” Sao Paulo approach says, “No, you
need to maintain your altitude at 17,000 so far,” because there were two flights that were in
conflict below them at 15,000 feet. They were waiting to descend before those two flights were
cleared. At 16:19.28, with a speed of 184 knots, the degraded performance alert is displayed.
We're talking about three stages of alerts. There's cruise speed low, degraded performance, and
then increased speed. Those are in order of severity.
[0:15:59] JR: This is the aircraft putting every warning it can, short of a stall warning saying,
“Hey, something's going on here. You need to take action.”
[0:16:08] IP: Yes. Things are bad.
[0:16:09] JR: What happened now?
[0:16:10] IP: Things are bad.
[0:16:11] JR: You're not stalling. Not yet.
[0:16:12] IP: They could worse if you don’t do something. The cruise speed low is a blue
message. “Hey, be aware of this. You need to keep an eye on this.” The degraded performance
alert is an amber message with a master caution alert that indicates a significant performance
degradation of around 22% to 28%, induced by a significant increase in aerodynamic drag. We,
at this point, believe that that is icing, resulting in a drop in cruise, indicated airspeed of around
15 to 20 knots, below the speed that's being computed by the aircraft performance monitoring
tool, so what the aircraft thinks it should be cruising at. That happens.
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What you're supposed to do when you get a degraded performance and the checklist for that is
maintain above the icing bug plus 10 knots. There's a speed reference when in icing conditions
that the pilots set. That's a base speed where the icing bug goes. It's a little bug on the speed
dial, on the indicated airspeed dial, they manually enter. For this flight, as discussed by the
pilots and in the preliminary report, that's 165 knots. The aircraft is saying, you should be
maintaining 165 plus 10. It is recommended to accelerate to 165 plus 30, okay. The checklist
says, “We think you should be at 195 knots, or greater. Monitor your indicator of speed and
vertical speed and amend your flight path.” That did not happen. They continued.
This is where we get to the second in command mentioning “a lot of ice.” Then they activated
the airframe deicing for the third time. They were cleared to proceed directly to position SANPA,
maintaining flight level 170. The air TC had said, they would give them clearance to descend in
two minutes. Crew confirmed that message. That was the last time the air traffic control heard
from the crew. They began a right turn at 16:20.50 towards SANPA. At 16:20.57 during that turn
with a speed of 169 knots.
Remember, we've gone down from 191 when the first cruise speed low was mentioned, 184-
degraded performance. Now we're down to 169 knots indicated airspeed. The increase speed
alert was displayed. At the increase speed alert, you want to accelerate to the icing bug plus 30
knots, so 195 knots in this case, and go through the severe icing procedures. Unfortunately, 12
seconds after that increased speed alert was displayed, control of the aircraft was lost. The
aircraft entered in a normal flight attitude, rolling 52 degrees to the left, 94 degrees to the right,
undergoing a heading change in a clockwise direction of 180 degrees, then reversing that
heading change to a counterclockwise flat spin, spinning five times before impacting the ground.
I printed this out, because I was translating it paragraph by paragraph. As I was reading it, in my
mind, the crew had multiple opportunities to address what seemed to me to be very important
warnings. As the preliminary report notes, the crew was well equipped with training, especially in
icing procedures on the ATR. The report, in addition to containing a lot of extremely valuable
data about what happened, in my mind, certainly only raises more questions about why it
happened. This is one of those preliminary reports that just as you read through it, you get more
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and more concerned about what was happening, what was being done to keep this aircraft in a
safe condition. I'm very keen to see the final report when it finally comes out.
[0:20:21] JR: Yeah. Especially interesting to me is the flight data recorder graph they put out,
that charts out all of the different warnings, the airspeed, the altitude, the angle of attack, all in
one graph. At the very end of the flight, you could see that the increased speed warning was on.
The degraded performance warning was on. The cruise speed low warning was on. The master
warning was on. But they didn't seem to take much action in reaction to that. At the same time,
you can see the readout of the ice detection system is pretty much pegged at the end of the
flight, but they didn't turn on the airframe deicing, until towards the end of the flight and until the
last couple minutes, or the last seconds, and then they actually turned it off and turned it back
off again. I'm going to be really interested to see in the final report, if that's a part of the training.
Do you not keep the airframe deicing system on for too long? I mean, if we're flying a 737, you
don't want to keep it on too long, because the engine might explode, until it's redesigned. In this
case, it was turned off while the ice detection system was still reporting, there was ice being
detected. I'm really unclear why the airframe deicing system would have been turned off. But the
graph really spells out a dire situation towards the end of the flight, where everything was going
wrong, but nothing was being done to prevent a crash here at the end.
It's really a confusing read towards the end of it. Getting the final report will be really, really
informative, I think, to see what they think happened here. Was there any procedure they
weren't following that maybe was incorrect? Or just what happened here? Because the aircraft,
in contrast to last week, when we talked about the Sukhoi Superjet, automatically, basically,
taking control of the aircraft and ending up in a crash, because it wanted to prevent something it
perceived as being dangerous. The opposite happened here, where the aircraft was correctly
perceiving a dangerous situation, but couldn't do anything to actively prevent a crash from
happening. Here, unfortunately, a crash did occur, even though the aircraft was doing seemingly
everything it could to prevent it from happening.
[0:22:40] IP: Yeah. I think, for me, understanding what, and I'm sure the investigators are
looking into this, because they've said as much at the end of the report what their future focus
is. What factor did that possible fault in the aircraft deicing system have on how the aircraft
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reacted to icing conditions? Then, if there was a fault in the aircraft deicing system, why did the
pilots feel that they could continue flying into icing conditions?
[0:23:14] JR: Why did they do so at such a high altitude? I think was also mentioned in the
report that, what were they at? 17,000 feet? I think the report questioned why were they at that
altitude? Why wouldn't they try to fly at a lower altitude, where the ambient air temperature
would be higher?
[0:23:29] IP: We will have to wait for the final report.
[0:23:33] JR: It's going to take a while. As far as preliminary reports, again, like we discussed
last week, this one was extremely in-depth and detailed, which is nice to see.
[0:23:43] IP: We now move to the Pacific Northwest, where Boeing and the IAM have a
tentative agreement as of right now when we're recording Wednesday, September 11th. The
podcast comes out on the 13th of September, and they will either have a ratified agreement and
a contract for the next four years, and we'll move on from there. Or 33,000 of Boeing's
machinists in the Pacific Northwest in Washington and Oregon could be on strike.
[0:24:16] JR: Oh, that's a big difference.
[0:24:17] IP: That's a big difference. The deal was a big deal in and of itself, because the
money was on no deal and a strike. The betting man's money amongst analysts was there
would be no deal. I think the average guesstimate of how long a strike would go is two to three
weeks. Well, there was a tentative deal reached between Union leadership, and Boeing that
included a 25% increase in average pay over four years, lower medical costs for machinists,
increased retirement contributions from Boeing and reduced mandatory overtime.
The big piece that a lot of people also latched on to was a commitment from Boeing to build the
next new airplane in the Pacific Northwest. I'm going to put this in flashing neon, if that project
was launched during the life of the contract, which would take us from 2024 to 2028. Previous
Boeing CEO, Dave Calhoun, said that they would be launching the next new airplane, when
Jason?
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[0:25:29] JR: Someday, eventually, maybe, or not.
[0:25:31] IP: In the next decade, which would take us beyond the window of this particular
contract. I'm not sure what that means, as far as commitments from Boeing, but it's in there.
Voting is Thursday, the 12th of September, so yesterday if you're listening to this when the
podcast comes out. From what we've seen so far, it looks like, next week's episode will be
Jason and I talking about how long we think the Boeing machinists are going to be on strike.
[0:26:00] JR: Yeah. Initial reaction from the union members here doesn't seem entirely positive,
though it's hard to gauge these days, what's real on social media and what's a Russian bot
trying to stir up nonsense. From the people that we can verify are actually real and actually work
for Boeing and actually get a vote, it doesn't seem great so far. In a letter published to its
members on its site, IAM says, “We have achieved everything we could in bargaining short of a
strike. We recommend acceptance, because we can't guarantee we can achieve more in a
strike. But that is your decision to make and is a decision that we will protect and support no
matter what.” I find that to be an interesting statement saying, “Hey, this is the best we're going
to get. But if you feel like a strike is going to get you more, go for it.” Feel like, it's going to
happen.
[0:26:56] IP: The way I feel the wind blowing, I think we're talking about a strike and we'll know
when the podcast comes out this week, whether or not we were right. I think it'd be interesting to
note a few things here about what a strike would be, or how we would get to a strike and then
what could possibly impact that. Two-thirds of the machinist union must vote against the deal in
order to strike. Otherwise, the deal is approved.
If 65% of the machinists vote to reject the deal, the deal still gets approved and the contract
comes into force. That's an interesting thing, I think, to keep in mind, even if there are a very
large number of upset rank and file union members, it might not be enough to go to strike. The
other thing that I read today from a Reuters report was that roughly half of union members have
fewer than six years of experience at Boeing. That's twice the number from pre-pandemic
levels. I think that's very interesting, because a lot of the union efforts were geared towards
younger workers. A lot of family policies and a lot of things that are focused on long-term
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employment from a younger workforce, which I thought was very interesting. Younger folks, their
impact is going to be felt much more this time around. It'll be interesting to see on Friday what
happens, or late Thursday, I guess.
[0:28:36] JR: No idea how long a potential strike could last. It could be a day, could be a month,
could be longer, nobody knows, but it could very well impact your travel plans. If Boeing's
workers go on strike and they can't deliver the aircraft airlines are expecting, maybe that flight
you booked this upcoming summer doesn't happen. You should probably pay attention to this,
because unexpectedly, it could impact you, the airline passenger.
[0:29:04] IP: Definitely down line. A strike that could impact you if you're flying to Canada in the
next few weeks is Air Canada. Air Canada pilots could be on strike, as soon as September 18th.
5,200 pilots representing pilots that fly for Air Canada proper and Air Canada Rouge voted to
authorize a strike by 98%. 98% of pilots voted and 98% voted yes last week. They have until the
15th of September to reach an agreement with Air Canada. It sounds very much like, that's not
going to happen.
After that, it's possible for either side for the union to issue a 72-hour strike notice, or the airline
to issue a 72-hour lockout notice. That would begin what Air Canada has gone full court press in
PR this week as a slow three-day concerted wind down of its operations. They've come up with
a plan, because they say, “We saw what happens when other airlines go on strike and shut
down operations immediately. We've got a plan for a 72-hour wind down.” But that could impact
almost 3,700 weekly flights across Air Canada's passenger and cargo units. I guess, of note, we
should say that regional operations for Air Canada, so feeder  airlines would continue to
operate, though that's only 20% of Air Canada's operation, and nearly all of those folks end up
connecting onto Air Canada prime flights. I guess, that's not really a not much consolation, but
this sounds like, it's also heading to a strike here.
[0:30:57] JR: Yeah. Don't know what the end result will be here, but if reports are right, Air
Canada pilots make way less than their American counterparts at Delta, American, United. If
they think a strike is what it's going to take to get up to par of the other pilots in North America,
so be it. Good for them. That's why they have the legal right to strike and I hope they get what
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they want, though I hope they can get it without having to go on strike. That would be the best of
both worlds, wouldn't it?
[0:31:31] IP: It really would. Let's keep everybody moving and in the air. Moving on, moving out,
Southwest Executive Chairman and former CEO, Gary Kelly. After meeting with the folks at
Elliot Management last week, Gary Kelly announced that he is resigning as executive chairman
of Southwest Airlines, effective next year, after next year's board meeting. In fall of 2025. He'll
be around for a whole another year. But six members of the board of directors are resigning
after this November's board meeting. Elliott gets a little bit of what it wants. Six of 15 board
members are leaving in November. Southwest will appoint for new directors, potentially
including some of those that have been proposed by Elliott Management. The top line here
though is that Bob Jordan, who is CEO, gets to keep his job for now.
[0:32:30] JR: For now. There is a lot of change coming to Southwest. More change is coming in
the next year and a half than has probably ever come to Southwest. Hopefully, it's positive
change. Hopefully, it's all change that will be beneficial to the passenger. But man, this is a lot of
change real quick.
[0:32:53] IP: Is it? Relatively speaking, is it quick? I mean, relatively speaking, it is quick.
Southwest has moved, I don't know if glacial is the right term, because I've seen glaciers move
pretty quick. I'm pretty sure they beat Southwest to some of these changes. I'm pretty sure most
glaciers have already installed power in their seats, or whatever.
[0:33:16] JR: Or extra leg room. Yes, but it is a lot of change that Southwest is catching up to
the rest of the entire world at this point. I think, Elliott, the investment group does bring a lot of
solid points. I don't know if I would agree with the way they're going about making those points,
but it has finally lit a fire under the asses of Southwest to do something to compete with the rest
of the industry. You can't just rest on your laurels and say, “Oh, we have open seating in like,
peanuts.” Okay. Great. What else you got?
[0:33:57] IP: Got anything else?
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[0:33:58] JR: It's a lot of change catching up to the rest of the industry very quickly. They're not
all that fast. But the amount of change Southwest is doing in this short amount of time is, let's
just say, I talked to a few people within Southwest recently and they're all very busy right now,
let's say. They've got a lot of decisions to make. They are all doing the best they can, let's say,
but it's a lot of change and a lot of in an unexpectedly short time frame, let's say.
[0:34:30] IP: Yeah. I think one of the biggest concerns that I think I have and maybe Jason, you
share, is that if there's so much change in such a short window, there's a lot they can probably
get wrong. If they're rushing through this as a way to fend off, basically having their executive
leadership team kicked out by activist investors, then what happens long term? Because the
one thing that Southwest has done well over the years is long-term thinking. It served them well,
until it didn't, because they were thinking too long and thinking too far back into the past.
If you swing that pendulum too far in one direction, what happens then? I think, one of the other
concerns is that as activist investors, Elliott Management is out to make money and get out.
Whether or not their ideas are good, whether or not their ideas are – because some of them are.
Whether or not they come with a slate of board of directors that seems very well equipped to
make changes to the airline, which they do. How long will they give the airline to implement
those in a way that makes sense for the customer and in a way that makes sense for the people
at the airline before they say, “We want our money and we're going home”?
[0:35:48] JR: Yeah. Not all changes will be good. Right now, what they're focusing on, I think is
largely good for the passengers, thinking about things like, USB ports and extra legroom
seating, and oh, my God, overnight flights. Can you imagine that? It took until the year 2024 for
Southwest to offer overnight flights, which is just wild to think about that, that I'm pretty sure
every other airline in the world offers this, but Southwest didn't offer until 2024. Longer term,
you're right, Ian. It might not all be good for passengers, if they play with that bag policy.
Suddenly, two bags fly free becomes one bag flies free. Then in two years from now, it can be
no bags fly free. Then what's the benefit of Southwest? Why would I book Southwest? I don't
know.
I hope they don't go too far in the direction of more money, more good for Elliott, and then I hope
they keep some of what makes Southwest, Southwest around. Not that I care. I don't fly
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Southwest, but I know a lot of people do and have a lot of heart for the brand. Hopefully, that
sticks around.
[0:36:59] IP: Fair enough. Where are we going next? We're going to Europe and well, mostly
Europe, but other places too, because last week we talked about the Cathay Pacific A350-1000
issue, in which they had contained in-flight fire and a commanded in-flight shutdown of one of its
Trent XWB-97 engines. This was the middle of last week. Late last week, the European Union
Aviation Safety Agency required, issued an emergency airworthiness directive requiring
inspections of the fuel manifold main fuel hose on all in service Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97
engines. That is the engine that exclusively powers the Airbus A350-1000 series.
Interestingly, there were three sets of engines, or three criteria timelines for when things needed
to be done by within three days, within seven days, or within 30 days, of September 9th was the
effective date. Most of the affected engines should be done by the 16th of September. 87 Airbus
A350-1000 aircraft in service with eight airlines around the world. Qatar Airways tops the list at
24. Cathay Pacific and British each have 18. Virgin Atlantic has 12. Etihad and JAL have five,
and Air Caraïbes has three, French bee has two. Not a huge number of aircraft and the
inspections don't seem to take very long at all. While they need to get the aircraft on the ground
to take a look at them, it doesn't seem like it takes too much time to have a look at the fuel
manifold hose and make sure it's where it's supposed to be.
[0:38:48] JR: Yeah, at least we know a little more about the situation now. We now know it's not
a widespread issue, or something that would end up in the entire A350 fleet grounded. This is
going to be a blip in the timeline.
[0:39:01] IP: Exactly. Not even too many canceled flights. That's good. Today, in a joint release,
the United Kingdom, France and Germany said that they are revoking their bilateral air treaties
with Iran. This comes after those countries and the US and the European Union in general, say
that Iran transferred long-range drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine. They said,
“That's a red line we've got, as far as additional sanctions and these additional sanctions include
a ban on Iranian flights into the UK, France and Germany.”
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That affects Iran Air's flights to London, which are thrice weekly, Paris, which is two times a
week, and then in Germany, Hamburg, Cologne and Frankfurt all at two times a week. Iran Air
also flies to Italy and Austria. Those flights are not affected as yet, flying to Milan, Rome and
Vienna.
[0:40:04] JR: All right. Well, I guess he won't be seeing any Iran aircraft in the UK, or France, or
Germany in the near future. It was always interesting seeing those in Hamburg. The Iran Air
A330 is the few that they were able to get a hold of before they suddenly weren’t allowed to get
ahold of new aircraft again. I enjoyed seeing those, but hey, sanctions are sanctions, so
whatever.
[0:40:26] IP: That's what they're saying. Nothing has been put in place yet. They haven't said
when these will go into effect as the aircraft are still operating as of today, but we'll see what
happens over the next few days, or next couple weeks. Jason, I'm all out of Christmas present
ideas, because my 2.7 tons of cocaine that I had ordered were seized in Guinea-Bissau.
[0:40:49] JR: Wow. That's a big order.
[0:40:51] IP: I was trying to be generous for Christmas this year, and now I have no more ideas.
[0:40:54] JR: 2.7 tons. That's almost three times the amount of lead that Swiss is going to have
to put on its A330s, because it's first class that you had a –
[0:41:03] IP: We haven't talked about that, but that's just –
[0:41:05] JR: We haven’t. I think we just did now.
[0:41:07] IP: Oh, man. Okay. Let's finish talking about my cocaine. Then we can talk about –
[0:41:14] JR: Your confiscated cocaine.
[0:41:16] IP: My confiscated cocaine. Yeah. what happened was, is a Gulfstream G4 flew from
Venezuela to Guinea-Bissau, likely on its way to somewhere in Europe. Authorities have said for
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years, and I'm saying this all now, like I'm an expert in cocaine trafficking, but the things you
have to read, because airplanes are involved. Authorities believe that Guinea-Bissau has
become a hub on the cocaine trafficking route from South and Central America to Europe. They
got information and intelligence that this particular aircraft had cocaine on it. Sure enough, 2.7
tons later, they have seized the cocaine and the aircraft.
[0:42:06] JR: That's a lot.
[0:42:07] IP: That's a lot of cocaine.
[0:42:08] JR: That’s a lot.
[0:42:09] IP: That's a lot of cocaine. I guess, we can go back to talking about Swiss now,
because this is one of those things where I feel like, somebody should have thought of this,
because it's not the first time it's happened.
[0:42:20] JR: No, in the long running saga of how has the Lufthansa Group screwed up the
Allegris rollout, which is the rollout of the unified business class seat update for the Lufthansa
Group, it was revealed that there's been a bit of a miscalculation for the Swiss A330s that once
they do install this new first-class seating cabin, they will have to counterbalance the aircraft,
was it with 1, or 1.5 tons of lead ballast in the aircraft to offset the first-class seats being so
heavy in the nose of the aircraft, versus the lightweight economy seats in the back of the
aircraft. It's not super uncommon for aircraft to have to travel with ballast onboard, even down to
your little regional jets. You'll have to put some sandbags in the back of the aircraft. But to
permanently saddle an A330 with 1, or I think 1.5 –
[0:43:16] IP: It’s 1.5. Yup.
[0:43:18] JR: 1.5 tons of lead, for every flight, for the future of that aircraft, man, that really flies
in the face of everything the airline and the industry tries to say about being eco-conscious and
trying to cut emissions. At the same time, they're putting on first-class seats that are so heavy,
they literally have to fly around with tons of dead weight to counteract it. That's, whoops.
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[0:43:46] IP: Yeah.
[0:43:46] JR: It's just lead. It's not even something fun, like cocaine that you could sell with a
stopover in Guinea-Bissau. That's some synergy right there.
[0:43:54] IP: Now we've got some ideas here. Now, we're getting somewhere.
[0:43:57] JR: We're going to be on some list now.
[0:44:00] IP: We're already on a variety of lists.
[0:44:02] JR: That’s true. Cocaine is probably more marketable than lead. But Swiss in its
A330s will be now carrying around 1.2 tons less lead than cocaine on that one private fight,
apparently. Man, that's a lot of cocaine.
[0:44:20] IP: It's a lot of cocaine. I know. What else happened this week? Well, as we get to the
end of the show, a Beluga XL made its first ever visit to London's Heathrow Airport, carrying a
horizontal stabilizer for the British Airways A350, which had been stricken for months, because
of another taxi incident between the A350 and a Virgin Atlantic aircraft. They're installing the
horizontal stabilizer and getting that aircraft back into service finally. Speaking of finally, SeaTac
is back online.
[0:44:55] JR: Hey. I hope they can tell everyone what actually happened, because that airport
was crippled for –
[0:45:01] IP: Weeks. Weeks.
[0:45:02] JR: Weeks. I guess, they said, it was a potential cyber-attack. I guess, rather than
paying a ransom or whatever, they just cobbled back together their systems over a course of a
month. I think, just today they have said, “Oh, yeah. Everything's back online. Thanks for your
patience.” What?
[0:45:20] IP: Hopefully, we'll know more in the near future, because, wow, yeah, weeks.
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[0:45:25] JR: Yeah. Change of default passwords, folks. If your password is password, or
admin, you're doing it wrong.
[0:45:31] IP: It's time to update. Yeah. This weekend is Dorkfest. If you're going to be there, I'm
looking forward to seeing you at all of the events on Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday
morning, if you're still around. Stop by, say hi. I'll have plenty of FlightRadar24 goodies. I've got
some fun games we're going to play while we're there. That'll be, hopefully, exciting and
interesting and rewarding for those that want to play along.
Upcoming besides that, well, we'll see what next week brings, considering we thought this was
going to be an easy week. I am Ian Petchenik. This has been episode 285 of AvTalk. And I am
here as always with –
[0:46:13] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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