AvTalk Episode 276: Wait, who’s cleared for takeoff!?

AVT 276 Transcript
EPISODE 276
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 276 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How are you?
[0:00:19] IP: Hello, Jason. I'm well, sir. How are you?
[0:00:22] JR: Good. Melting a little bit.
[0:00:25] IP: A little warm in New York.
[0:00:26] JR: Yes, a little warm in the north east or really, I think the entire continent is
disgusting right now. I'm sure Chicago is not much better.
[0:00:33] IP: Today is not bad, but it's supposed to get a bit more humid and a bit warmer the
rest of the week. So, I'm not looking forward to that. I'm already looking forward to winter, in fact.
[0:00:44] JR: Yes. Yes. I am headed up north this weekend, to Canada. It's no improvement
there. It's just hot everywhere.
[0:00:52] IP: It's the same. It's just the same.
[0:00:53] JR: It's the same thing. Thankfully, the remnants of the hurricane and tropical storm
are passing through today, and tomorrow, and I'll just miss that, fortunately.
[0:01:01] IP: That's good. That's good.
[0:01:02] JR: Yes, it's going to be hot. Not as hot as Vegas the other day. What was it, like 123
degrees Fahrenheit. That is not okay. I didn't mean to talk about this, but there were –
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[0:01:14] IP: In aviation.
[0:01:16] JR: Some flights couldn't make it to where they needed to go. They couldn't take off
at, I guess that altitude, plus that heat, plus the runway length, they couldn't make it in. Some
flights couldn't make the nonstop. I think there was one particular flight, which I just happen to
see, which ended up getting picked up on airliners.net, I think. It was the LA to BWI flight, which
I spotted on the ground in Las Vegas, because apparently, they diverted there because some
sort of customer issue, I think. Then, once they were on the ground, in Las Vegas, they couldn't
make the nonstop with that aircraft all the way to Baltimore, so they had to stop. I think it was in
Wichita, where the crew timed out, which is just a really bad day.
[0:02:02] IP: Ouch.
[0:02:03] JR: Yes. So, there are real impacts. It didn't seem to be very widespread, but a
number of flights did have real world impacts.
[0:02:11] IP: We've talked about this before, specifically in the case of Las Vegas, where it was
too hot for Norwegian when they were operating long haul. They had a few issues where they
couldn't fly the return Vegas fights, because it was just too hot. So yes, I mean, nothing new, but
it sounds like it's only going to get worse. Today's high for everyone listening to the podcast
outside of the US –
[0:02:39] JR: And Liberia.
[0:02:41] IP: – and Liberia. Today's high temperature is 47 degrees. It's going to cool off this
weekend, where the high will only be 44 on Saturday and 42. For those listening in the US, 117
today, 112 on Saturday. So, good luck to those in Vegas and stay indoors or something.
[0:03:02] JR: They know what they signed up for.
[0:03:04] IP: There you go. Hey, let's get on to what we thought we were going to talk about,
which is the fact that the Boeing Corporation is soon to be a felon. Boeing has agreed to plead
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guilty to renewed charges, stemming from the US Department of Justice finding that they failed
to live up to their deferred prosecution agreement. So, that deferred prosecution has been
undeferred, dedeferred, and is now an agreement. Boeing says, "We can confirm that we have
reached an agreement in principle on terms of a resolution with the Justice Department, subject
to the memorialization and approval of specific terms."
[0:03:50] JR: Man, that's the way to put it. I don't think that's when an individual person
convicted of a crime in court gets to say. I'm pretty sure you enter your plea as a plea of guilty.
Boeing never said that word. They didn't have to come out right and say the words guilty. They
spit out some word salad, and apparently, that's sufficient.
[0:04:09] IP: Well, that's sufficient for a press release. But the US District Court for the Northern
District of Texas, which is the controlling court for this case has until next week, the 19th of July
to approve whatever deal the Department of Justice and Boeing have come to. We don't know
the specifics yet from the government, but there has been a lot of reporting around it. A few of
the things that we seem to know are that Boeing will have to pay the other 50% of the original
fine. So originally, they were fined just under $500 million dollars. They paid $243.4 million in
2021. Now, they will have to pay the other 50%. That's another $243.6 million.
They'll also have, and we talked about this last week, they'll have an independent monitor put in
place, but Boeing gets to choose, or at least preselect the possible independent monitors. So,
we'll see who those folks end up being. We do know that the Boeing board of directors must
meet with families of the 737 max crash victims from 2018. 2019. We also know that Boeing will
not have to do much other than that. There are no leadership changes mandated. There are no
new fines as far as we know. It just seems like kind of a continuation of the original agreement,
which was, I think, widely criticized both on this podcast and elsewhere. It seems like this plea
deal is also being roundly criticized elsewhere, and Jason, I'll open up the floor to say, and on
this podcast as well.
[0:06:01] JR: Yes, of course. This fine, it's not chump change, but I'm sure, Boeing could turn
over a few couch cushions and find a check to easily write out what they need here. I mean, at
least we have the moral victory here, I guess for the families of them getting some closure here,
saying Boeing is a convicted felon. It lied to people, it lied to the government, it lied to
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investigators, it lied to airlines, it lied to pilots, it lied to everyone possible. But I think that the
sweetest part of this, forget the monetary fine, because it doesn't go to the families, will be the
meeting with the board of directors. Where I'm sure, a lot of eye contact will be, let's say,
missing. I can't imagine that meeting is going to be anything but extremely awkward, but it is
certainly symbolic, and something they've wanted for a long time. And to be a fly on the wall
during that meeting, I'm not sure what exactly is going to happen there, but I can imagine it's
going to be interesting.
[0:06:56] IP: Yes. I would bet that there will definitely be a lot of missing eye contact.
[0:07:01] JR: Yes. It's something. I don't feel like anyone wins here. I don't think that's the goal.
It's just that the fine is just – you put it well here in the show notes, tiny fine. It's insignificant, it's
not enough to mean anything. I think we've already seen – what was it? Movies?
[0:07:17] IP: And don't take my word for it. RBC Capital Markets, quote, a limited financial
impact. Boeing made nearly $80 billion last year.
[0:07:27] JR: Yes. It's fairly insignificant. It's a blip on a spreadsheet somewhere, it doesn't
matter. I would have hoped to see a higher fine. I'm sure anyone on the families would have
hoped for a higher fine, because there are certainly higher fines for other less egregious things
out there in this country. But what is, I think most disheartening is that, even though Boeing itself
as a corporate entity is going to be deemed a felon, that too will have no real impact as they can
just – I think we talked about this last week. They can just get waivers for any potential
government contracts because Boeing is too big to fail. They can't not go through with
government contracts in the future. It may be a bit of a pain to secure new ones, a little extra
paperwork, but I'm sure they can rustle up the pens to complete that paperwork.
[0:08:16] IP: Yes. So, we'll stay on that next week to see it will happen. Well, maybe it'll happen
before we record next week, but it will definitely happen within next two weeks, whether or not
the judge affirms that plea deal. I suppose there's the outside chance that the judge could say,
"No, not good enough." That would be surprising.
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We now have the NTSB's preliminary report on what was initially described by the pilots as
Dutch roll on a Southwest 737-8 Max. This was a May 25th flight from Phoenix to Oakland. The
aircraft while it crews at 34,000 feet suffered what the pilot described as a small amount of
Dutch roll. "The roll was stable, more noticeable in frequency with only a slight amount of yaw.
Oscillations lasted only a few seconds and the autopilot remained engaged throughout the
event."
The NTSB has put out a preliminary report, which is I think, it's always interesting to see the
direction that an investigation goes. This one is a particularly interesting investigation. Because
after the flight, Southwest maintenance took this particular aircraft out of service, where they
noticed that a number of components in the rudder system were damaged. While replacing
successive components within the rudder system, they kept finding more damaged
components.
So, the NTSB has reconstructed a timeline of events, following this particular aircraft, and they
go back May 16th. So, this is nine days before the flight in which the pilots experienced some
Dutch roll. On May 16th, at about 17:15 Central Daylight Time, the event airplane was operating
as Southwest 621 landed in New Orleans. They moved the aircraft to a remote spot where it
stayed for the night. In the morning, the airplane was towed back to the gate and departed the
next day as Southwest flight 450.
During the evening, a big storm came through. The peak gusts of 73 knots was recorded at
23:36 Central Daylight Time, National Weather Service composite radar mosaic depicted a
Boeing segment associated with the squall line around that time. There were SIGMETs for
severe thunderstorms with tops up to 45,000 feet and multiple tornado warnings. We'll put a link
to the report in the show notes, so that you can see the radar mosaic and read through all the
facts and figures for yourselves as well.
But the NTSB, obviously, this is a preliminary report, so they don't say, "We think that this
caused it." But we can kind of look to say, "Oh, they've included this in the preliminary report,
this must be an important part of the investigation." Then, they go on to walk through, there was
maintenance conducted on the aircraft on the 23rd, where the airplane remained in Houston
overnight for a core check. The check was performed in the maintenance hangar, and one of
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the tests conducted during the maintenance check was an operational test of the standby
hydraulic actuation system, which included the test of the standby rudder power control unit,
which is one of the damaged pieces in the rudder assembly.
So, after this maintenance activity, that's when the aircraft started to experience rudder issues.
So, the NTSB has traced kind of step, by step, by step. I'm always fascinated how they do this,
and how methodical the NTSB is when they walk through an investigation. I have to give credit
to Southwest on this one too, because they did a very interesting thing. They didn't know if this
was a fleet wide thing. They didn't know if this was something that affected all 737 Max or
anything like that. So, they looked over the three-day period between June 17th and June 20th,
they conducted a fleet campaign and inspected each 737 Max in the Southwest fleet, 231
aircraft. They did detailed visual inspections.
But this is the cool thing, they also took the quick access recorded data for the entire fleet,
developed an algorithm based on the flight data recorder information for the event flight where
the aircraft experienced Dutch roll. And said, "Okay, algorithm. Look for any of the same
patterns in all of the QAR data to see what you can find." The NTSB reports that three aircraft
were observed to have small rudder oscillations, but without the associated rudder control
surface movements that were experienced by the pilots in this aircraft. They were taken out of
service and inspected with no additional findings found, and they're continuing to monitor the
QAR data. So, I thought that was really a great use of all of the digital data that is now available.
[0:13:27] JR: Yes, pretty high-tech for what is considered to be a pretty low-tech airline. So,
even though it may not seem like Southwest has all its ducks in a row technology-wise, clearly,
there's a lot more behind the scenes where they can really pull out the stops when they need to.
That's really cool to have a fleet-wide analysis like that to say, "Hey, did any of our other aircraft
in this timeframe do the thing this other airplane did?" No. This is actually, probably, I think what
we talked about last week or the week before that may get Southwest into a little bit of trouble
saying that this is a single aircraft issue. There are no other aircraft with this issue. Well, now we
know how they determine that by looking at this QAR data.
[0:14:05] IP: Yes. Well, that wasn't Southwest saying that. That was Boeing's chief engineer.
That's what the NTSB was –
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[0:14:10] JR: Yes. Yes. I got my facts mixed up there. I remember somebody said something
they shouldn't have, but almost certainly using the data that Southwest had provided them.
[0:14:19] IP: Right. If I'm the NTSB, and I'm preparing this preliminary report, and you as
Boeing's engineer says these things, well, we understand why you're saying them, but you're
still not allowed to say them.
[0:14:31] JR: No. No. Even now, knowing this, you probably still shouldn't say that, but it's really
cool to see this. What's less cool is the images that the NTSB also published alongside the text
here. Some pretty gnarly looking cracks in the assembly here, which don't look too great. It
really explains why this aircraft was taken out of service and flown back to Boeing to better
understand what happened here. Because this isn't like a little hairline fracture. This is
significant deformation of metal pieces to the point where you can see right through it, which is
not good. At least the bolts are there, presumably everything that we're supposed to be seeing
there is there. But there is a really significant deformation to the metal, and I'm sure Boeing
wants to figure out, why is this a thing.
[0:15:18] IP: Yes. I'm sure we'll learn more in the final report.
[0:15:21] JR: We go to Syracuse of all places now. Nothing happens in Syracuse.
[0:15:26] IP: Well, thankfully, nothing happened in Syracuse. But on 8th of July, so that would
be Monday of this week, a Delta flight departing Syracuse and an American flight. These are –
hold on, let me back up.
[0:15:42] JR: Endeavor and PFA flights. They look like Delta and American, but they're not.
[0:15:48] IP: I knew I was going to get an email from somebody, and rightfully so.
[0:15:51] JR: Yes. Pulled the mainstream media. I can't believe it.
[0:15:54] IP: I mean, I at least know what the airplanes look like.
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[0:15:57] JR: You also know that ready for the sky is not pilot or air traffic control terminology. If
you saw the mainstream news reports, you know what I'm talking about.
[0:16:08] IP: It should be. I'm sorry, it should be.
[0:16:11] JR: Delta flight one, ready for the sky.
[0:16:14] IP: That should be –
[0:16:14] JR: That's a lot better than cleared for takeoff, I have to say.
[0:16:17] IP: I mean, it's wrong, sure. If we're talking about news reports, we should be factually
correct. But I think that's a better thing to say.
[0:16:24] JR: Yes. As undecided, I think that was the worst, most factually incorrect aviation
story I've seen in mainstream media in a long time.
[0:16:37] IP: There were some issues there.
[0:16:38] JR: There were some issues and I'm dating that probably the next issue of that caliber
was probably the CNN thing. Or they say, "777 struggle to fly without fuel." Like, "Yes, all right."
[0:16:48] IP: Show me the lie, Jason. Show me the lie.
[0:16:50] JR: No lies detected. But this one was bad, this report was bad. But Ian, tell us what
happened because the event itself was also bad.
[0:16:59] IP: The event itself was also bad. Yes. So, the Endeavour flight operating for Delta
connection was departing Syracuse for New York, as a PSA flight operating for American Eagle
was arriving from Washington. The PSA Flight was cleared to land. At the same time, the
Endeavour flight was cleared to depart. In the air traffic control audio, which was captured by
liveatc.net, you can hear the surprise in the PSA crews voice says, "Who's clear to depart?"
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Because they're preparing to land on the runway. As soon as they chimed in with that, they were
instructed by the tower to go around, at which point they did. However, the Endeavour flight was
already most of the way down the runway at this point, and continued its takeoff roll.
Now, here's where we get in to some trouble, because that aircraft continued to take off, it
began to climb directly under the PSA flight. Both of these aircraft are CRJ 900, and the PSA
flight made a left-hand turn, the Endeavour flight made a right-hand turn and the aircraft began
to separate. At their closest point, they were approximately 650 or so feet vertically separated at
a nil lateral separation as they both flew the runway centerline, and then began to diverge. This
all came out because there was video captured by a Syracuse police officer's dash cam for
some reason, and it shows the flights. Obviously, the video itself compresses the distance for
reasons that we – and science that I don't necessarily have to get into here. But the video
makes the flights look closer than they are. However, they were close enough that this is an
incident and the FAA is investigating.
So, the video makes it look like the aircraft are going to crash into each other. That's not the
case. By the time that the departing flight arrived at the same altitude that the PSA Flight was at,
they were a mile apart. So, this was not a case of seconds from disaster, but the aircraft were
closer than they should have been. We're still parsing the [inaudible 0:19:25] DSB data, but it
does look like at least one of the aircraft received a traffic advisory. So, I'm trying to confirm that
now, and I'll have more on that next week's episode, once we have a closer look at that data.
But something to keep an eye on as these things seemingly continue to happen.
[0:19:44] JR: Yes, not great there. Kudos to the PSA crew for being alert, listening to the radio,
hearing that something was wrong, and doing something about it. Not sure why the Endeavor
crew just continued on with their departure, maybe they weren't instructed to do anything else
from the tower. I haven't heard the full live ATC recording. But thankfully, everything worked out.
I think, Ian, correct me if I'm wrong, but the minimum vertical separation and instance like that
should be 1000 feet, so they were well, well, under that.
[0:20:15] IP: I don't want to say for sure that that's the case, because there are certain criteria –
[0:20:20] JR: It's a little more complicated.
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[0:20:22] IP: Yes, when we're talking about terminal areas and things like that. But that's a great
question, and I think we can find out the answer to that from some of our air traffic control
friends. So, we'll do some research on that and talk more about this next week. Let's head to
India now where we have not one, but two Air India Express stories. Jason, would you like to do
fire or failure first?
[0:20:47] JR: Ooh. Well, we got to start with fire, because that catches your attention. Unless
you're in A320's flight management system or computer when, fire, no big deal. Don't even have
to tell the crew about it.
[0:21:00] IP: So, an Air India Express A320 as it was climbing out of Bengaluru on the 18th of
May, the crew heard a bang from the number two engine, which is a CFM56. They saw
"momentary faults" on the N1 speed and in the engines hydraulic system. They only found out
that the engine was in fact on fire when the cabin crew radioed up to say, "Hey, the engines on
fire."
[0:21:33] JR: That's not how you want to discover that, is to catch up for the cabin crew for
seeing something and saying something. I feel like they always do that in this situation, but
there probably aren't many instances of the flight crew learning that an engine is on fire from the
cabin crew. That is weird, and I'm sure all the investigating bodies here, including Airbus and
CFM will want to know why wasn't a fire warning triggered here. But thankfully, the flight crew
was able to get the aircraft back on the ground very, very quickly. I think the whole flight was
something like 18 minutes from up to down, which is pretty great. Very, very strange situation.
The AAIB reported with respect to the initial damage assessment that there was no evidence of
any damage to the aircraft or number two aero engine during visual examination. However,
during the borescopic examination of the engine number two, presence of magnetic chips on a
magnetic chip detector, metallic strands on number three, seven screen plugs filter were found,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, something went wrong here. But apparently, there was no visual
issue, which is just really, really weird. The whole scene here, the whole story is very, very
strange. But thankfully, all 179 passengers and six crew members were safely evacuated. That's
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a pretty healthy load for that flight. I didn't even know that Air India Express operated A320s. But
apparently, these used to belong –
[0:23:02] IP: These were the AirAsia India A320s.
[0:23:04] JR: Yes, that's fun I learned that. That's exciting.
[0:23:09] IP: So, Jason, it was less than 18 minutes. They were on the ground in 13 minutes.
[0:23:15] JR: Hey, that's even better. Pretty, pretty great. Excellent work by the crew and air
traffic control in the airport, and everyone getting that aircraft back on the ground. A fire that you
don't know is there, is a very obviously a very dangerous situation. So, good job for everyone
involved in that. Should we get to the other less good job?
[0:23:35] IP: Less good news. Yes.
[0:23:37] JR: Yes. Tell us about that.
[0:23:38] IP: Well, this one is also an CFM56 engine, but it's on an Air India Express Boeing
737-800. This is the report on a December 26, 2022 incident. VT-AYC took off from
Tiruchirappalli on a flight to Singapore, and the crew heard a thud sound, followed by a sharp
reduction in N1 speed of the number one left engine. Falling from 98% of N1 to 65%. The fuel
flow on that engine dropped rapidly, and the engine got very, very hot. Exhaust gas
temperatures shot up to 913 degrees Celsius.
[0:24:24] JR: Feels like Vegas in that engine.
[0:24:26] IP: Yes. Vibrations increased and the crew idled the engine. They diverted to Chennai,
no one was injured. But then, after landing and inspection revealed damage to the third and
fourth stage low pressure turbine rotors and stators with missing materials, and a lot of – this is
a quote, "Missing materials and a lot of broken pieces between the first stage stator and rotor." A
lot of broken pieces, I'm not –
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[0:24:52] JR: It's a technical term. You don't use that all the time.
[0:24:53] IP: That is the quote from the report.
[0:24:56] JR: But here's where it gets interesting. Up until this point, everything is kind of
normal, the crew in this case. They did good. Engine failure happen, the crew did what they
were supposed to do, what they're trained to do, and they got the aircraft down. Good job.
What the investigation takes exception too here is that, this should never have happened. The
DGCA found that CFM through its monitoring portal knew that there's something going on with
this engine, and you should probably take a look at it. CFM had issued a customer notification
report on the 20th of December, six days before the incident flight, warning of degraded
performance on the aircraft's number one engine. It goes on to say, and I'm reading a
summarization from FlightGlobal. Work was planning to follow up on the CNR, and other aircraft
maintenance items. But owing to aircraft movement changes and a lack of ground time, these
did not take place.
The DGCA, however, believes that there were two periods when the aircraft is on the ground
long enough for the work to have been conducted. In addition, they found that the myCFM
portal, which monitors engine health showed a series of alerts flagging the aircraft degrading
performance before the incident fight, but that these were missed by the carrier's maintenance
team. I'm quoting the quote from the article of the DGCA. "This implies that there is no proper
monitoring of the myCFM portal to analyze the performance degradation by the concerned
department. That's really troubling. These engines and aircraft in particular, spit out a ton, a ton
of data.
Airlines pay a pretty penny to have access to that data to prevent issues like this, and to have
your engine manufacturer in its portal to say, "Hey, there's something going on with this engine,
you should probably take a look right away." For the airline to just not do it is really not good. So,
the article says that the DGCA warns that further action may follow. Don't know what that will be,
but yes, not good to ignore warnings from your engine manufacturer, that there's something
going on and you should take a look right away, and then you just don't. Really makes you
wonder how long they would have gone with this aircraft before actually taking a look. But this
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event was back in 2022, so hopefully, a year and a half later at this point, there are refined
procedures in place to not let that happen again.
[0:27:18] IP: Yes. These portals are designed to yell at you if something is bad.
[0:27:25] JR: Having not had any dealings with the myCFM portal if it's anything like anything
else that I use on a day-to-day basis. Let's say, if I submit an expense report, and I forget the
date on something, there's a big red flashing triangle. That's just for a date. If your engine on an
aircraft is having serious issues, I'd imagine it's going to get your attention, unless you are just
straight up not looking at it at all, or just outright ignoring it. Both of which are very not good.
[0:27:55] IP: All right. Let's go to New Caledonia, shall we?
[0:27:58] JR: What?
[0:27:59] IP: Or maybe not right now, given the political situation. But we do have a report from
there, which some pilot actions seem to have resulted in a good ending. Jason, tell me more.
[0:28:12] JR: Sure. The flight crew of a Twin Otter on approach to, not exactly sure, up to
Pointe Vele Airport. I'm sorry, I probably butchered that one. On a cargo flight way, way back in
May 2021, if you can even remember those days. They were on approach, and they went to
increase the speed by 10 knots. The Twin Otter speed increased to 90 knots, descend through
400 feet. Again, reading a summary from those guys at FlightGlobal, they've got everything.
The captain retired at the throttle levers to idle. But then, when they advanced the throttles,
nothing happened. The speed kept reducing, the aircraft continued to slow. The captain made
several inputs to the throttle levers until they reach full power, but that seemed to have no effect.
Speed bled away down to 62 knots. At this point, you're approaching stall speed, which is 56
knots for this aircraft. That's when things got a little dicey. The pilots decided, well, we're going
to put the aircraft into a nose down attitude to maintain some sort of speed above 56 knots, and
they were able to basically aerodynamically get the aircraft down onto the runway undamaged
unharmed, which is really, really cool. Because we've seen some instances recently where
pilots may not be doing exactly what they should do. In this case, they did exactly what they
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should do. They put the aircraft into nose down attitude to prevent the stall, to gain airspeed.
Thankfully, they were close enough into the runway that they were able to do that and then just
happily end up on the runway.
Unfortunately, aircraft is not equipped with flight recorders. So, the inquiry relied only on crew
testimony, but seems like all is well that ends well, I guess.
[0:29:57] IP: Yes, I guess. Hopefully, they just fix the plane.
[0:30:01] JR: Yes. I guess so. They said that there had been four malfunctions related to engine
power problems on the ground in the past, but technicians were not able to reproduce those in
subsequent maintenance operations. Isn't that just a bug that you hate to hear, that this keeps
happening? But every time a technician gets on board to try to troubleshoot it, they can't
reproduce it. How many times has that happened to you?
[0:30:25] IP: All the time.
[0:30:26] JR: Usually, when you call like the cable company, and they come out and
everything's working. The moment they leave, it stops working again.
[0:30:32] IP: Exactly.
[0:30:33] JR: But, this time, it was on an airplane. But apparently, it happened in the air this
time. Thankfully, it was all good. But really, wanted to just read that story because it's just a nice
feel-good story about a pilot doing what a pilot should do and everything was okay.
[0:30:49] IP: I'll take it.
[0:30:50] JR: Okay.
[0:30:51] IP: I want to hear a story that I find almost unbelievable.
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[0:30:56] JR: Nearly unbelievable. Except it's happened before. But we're talking about Aer
Lingus' ongoing industrial action, I think is what they call it, by the pilots. Let's just call it a strike.
But Aer Lingus is so desperate, so, so desperate for lift at this point, that heat has turned to arch
rival Ryanair to operate some of its flights, upcoming. Well, by the time this podcast comes out,
it will have already happened. So, we'll have to actually see if it does happen, because
sometimes things change. But then, the schedule, it's there, you can book it right now. Aer
Lingus will turn to Ryanair to operate a pair of flights on Thursday and Friday of this week,
EI262, 263, 604, 605 to Birmingham and Amsterdam. Yes, I'm just kind of surprised that at this
point, Ryanair even has the spare capacity to do this, and that Ryanair wouldn't just gloat about
it on Twitter, incessantly.
[0:31:56] IP: I wonder if they put that in the contract.
[0:31:58] JR: No gloating on Twitter.
[0:32:00] IP: No floating on Twitter.
[0:32:02] JR: I mean, it's again, kind of a feel-good story. Arch rivals coming together to help
each other out? Well, I guess it's just Ryanair helping out Aer Lingus, but that is really a sign of
sheer desperation. Because it's high summer, and Europe, there isn't much excess capacity out
there from any airline to operate on behalf of Aer Lingus. But, it must pain Aer Lingus to call in
an arch enemy like this to help out. But hey, you love that spirit.
[0:32:31] IP: I mean, maybe Spirit could offer some planes.
[0:32:33] JR: No, they have none to spare.
[0:32:33] IP: They have no plates. Okay.
[0:32:36] JR: None to spare, we know that.
[0:32:37] IP: Fair enough. Jason, you and I are old. You know how I know this?
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[0:32:42] JR: So old because we could see that time is a flat circle.
[0:32:46] IP: Time is indeed a flat circle. And we're also old enough to remember when Middle
Eastern Airlines were going to ruin the future and fortunes of US carriers such as Delta, United,
and American. We've since seen United partner with Emirates, American and Qatar deepen
their relationship. This week, Delta said, "Sure. Why not?" If not all in, then about as close to all
in as you can get. New Saudi Arabian carrier Riyadh Air, so far to say that they want to form a
joint venture.
[0:33:32] JR: Yes. So, it's not even that long ago. You don't have to go that far back to see
Delta, and not just Delta, But the US three, American and United in a bitter war with the Middle
Eastern carriers. There's this video that we can link to from 2017, a 15-minute long internal
published externally video from Delta that just goes on about how the Middle Eastern carriers
have all these illegal state subsidies, and they're coming to kill you all, and it's going to be awful,
and they're going to take all our jobs. Now, in 2024, Delta is the last of the US three to come out
with some sort of relationship with a Middle Eastern Airlines. But this one goes well above and
beyond in like you said, what United has with Emirates and American has with Qatar.
This is more than just a Coachair and some Interlines, and we're going to have some frequent
flyer benefits between airlines. They're going for, and I quote here, "Subject to regulatory
approvals includes Interline and Coachair connectivity, as well as a deeper partnership
encompassing loyalty, customer experience, digital transformation, and broader aviation
services such as maintenance, repair and overhaul services, ground handling, and training. In
the future, the airlines tend to explore an immunized joint venture to further expand the
partnership to allow collaboration on network planning and growth in the region."
Reading this, knowing the past not too distant history about this is just kind of mind blowing.
That delta would be not just partnering with a Middle Eastern airline, and not just partnering with
a new 100% state-backed airline. But to this degree, it seems like basically it will be Delta, Air
France-KLM, and Riyadh Air in kind of the same vein here. It's a very unexpectedly deep
partnership.
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[0:35:30] IP: I think it's also worth pointing out that Saudi Arabian Airlines is a member of
SkyTeam.
[0:35:35] JR: It is, but a few people brought that up on Twitter this week. I'd like to also remind
listeners here that yes, Saudia is in SkyTeam, but it's like one of those other SkyTeam airlines to
Delta. They don't even have any codeshare agreements. I don't believe there are any Saudia
flights with the Delta code on it. And I don't think there are any the other way around as well. So,
while they may have like the base SkyTeam benefits, these are not two airlines that work closely
together at all. Kind of like American and Qatar before. American and Qatar both in one world
decided that they wanted to work very closely. Delta and Saudia are basically, they happen to
be in the same after-school club, kind of.
[0:36:21] IP: But they don't hang out at the same table.
[0:36:23] JR: No, no. They don't know each other. They're not even in the same grade. But this
is very surprising to see such a deep, deep integration planning to have such a deep integration.
So, delta will even plan on flying from somewhere in the US to Riyadh, which is not something I
would have expected to say a year or two ago. That's kind of crazy to me. But Delta will fly to
Riyadh at some point, and its passengers can connect on to wherever Riyadh Air ends up flying
and the other way around. When Riyadh Air flies to the US, those passengers can connect
onward on Delta to wherever it is Delta flies, maybe even Syracuse.
[0:37:02] IP: Yes, the old Riyadh, New York, Syracuse or Riyadh, Atlanta, Syracuse flights. Let's
stick with Delta and talk about, well, more than a dozen passengers who had to be attended by
medics because of – I'm not talking about like, it was a little off. Having seen the pictures, it was
not good.
[0:37:29] JR: I personally felt a bit nauseous for a little while after seeing those photos.
[0:37:33] IP: Just looking at the photo.
[0:37:34] JR: Just looking at it. So, this happened just after we recorded, I think, a Delta flight
from, I believe Detroit to Amsterdam returned to Detroit after some passengers became ill.
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[0:37:34] IP: Diverted to New York.
[0:37:48] JR: New York. Thank you. It was a Detroit-Amsterdam flight diverted back to New
York, where all good flights end. The news came out that, yes, there was wrong with the food
and passengers became sick. This is not terribly rare. This happens, passengers get sick, and
flights divert all the time. What was rare here is the state of the food served on board in
economy. A couple of the dishes were not just a little moldy, they were farming penicillin in that
galley.
[0:38:17] IP: It was pure science experiment.
[0:38:20] JR: It was bad. Apparently, enough people ate the extremely moldy food and became
sick. Before you jump to any conclusions, if you're been on a transatlantic flight, you know that
the cabin can get quite dark. It's not always easy to turn on the overhead light, and you just got
to poke around the dish hoping for the best when the blue mood lighting turns everything in front
of you kind of a shade of blue. So, I can understand how some passengers didn't notice the
food was a little fuzzier than it should have been, a little bluer than it should have been. But
wow, the amount of failures that had to happen to get that food on board and serve to
passengers. By no fault of the crew, because remember, the crew is not opening economy
meals. They put it in the steam ovens, they put them on the racks, and then they distribute them
to passengers, and passengers actually open the tin foil or whatever pack. So, this is of no fault
of the crew. But somewhere along the way the cold chain broke down or the cart with these
meals got locked in a cabinet or a closet for a week and somehow finds its way onto the flight
that good. A lot of things had to go wrong for that cart with very old food to be loaded onto an
aircraft. But just, maybe don't look at the pictures.
[0:39:39] IP: I guess we'll put these in the show – like if you have a strong stomach and really
want to see it, we'll link to the –
[0:39:46] JR: I wouldn't recommend it. But yes, wow.
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[0:39:49] IP: If you've ever left something out and it's grown mold like that, that's what
happened.
[0:39:54] JR: That's never happened to me, not to that degree.
[0:39:57] IP: Well, that's fair.
[0:39:59] JR: This was way worse than anything that It's coming out of my fridge.
[0:40:01] IP: Okay. Hey, we met at the end, but we're still talking about Delta. Jason, why?
[0:40:06] JR: Well. I heard you are a big fan of the CRJ-200. You are going to love the news
that Delta is bringing it back from retirement, because it has no choice.
[0:40:18] IP: Long sigh.
[0:40:20] JR: Yes. This has been rumored for a little while, but Zach Griff on Twitter published a
tweet, saying, this month, Delta will redeploy the CRJ-200 on a handful of SkyWest routes out of
Detroit and Salt Lake City. The CRJ-200 was unceremoniously retired at the beginning of this
year, but apparently, Delta/SkyWest needs more capacity. I think they were hoping to have
some 50 seats CRJ-550 conversions ready by now. But I guess, those are behind a little bit.
[0:40:52] IP: The first one just went into service last week on SkyWest.
[0:40:57] JR: They probably plan to have a little bit more because those are also 50-seat
regional jets, somehow. But yes, if you're flying at a Detroit or Salt Lake City on a SkyWest
operated Delta fight, you may find yourself on a CRJ-200. I am sorry.
[0:41:12] IP: That's just cruel.
[0:41:13] JR: It's unfortunate.
[0:41:14] IP: It's not unusual, but it's just cruel.
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[0:41:17] JR: Having spent a lot of time on Delta CRJ 200, I apologize on their behalf, you end
up on one. It's not a nice experience.
[0:41:25] IP: For everything that's about to happen to you. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Well,
that's episode 276. Just a few housekeeping reminders, let's see. Farnborough coming up. If
you're going to be the Farnborough Air Show, drop us a note at podcast@fr24.com. Jason and I
will not be there unfortunately this year, but my colleague Chris will be, so you can get in contact
with him directly. Or we'll put you in contact with him if you're going to be there and would like to
meet up. I will be up at Oshkosh on the 27th of July all day. Email us at podcast@fr24.com if
you'd like to meet up as well. I know there's a few of us already, we're trying to get a time
together. So, the more the merrier. Looking forward to seeing everyone up there. But for now, I
am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:42:20] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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