AvTalk Episode 333: Whinging about windowless window seats

AVT 333 Transcript
EPISODE 333
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 333 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How was your week?
[0:00:19] IP: It's going really well, Jason. Do you know why it's going really well?
[0:00:22] JR: Why? I know, I know, because the kids are back in school.
[0:00:26] IP: The kids are back in school.
[0:00:28] JR: See, I knew it. I can hear a difference in your voice. You sound well rested.
[0:00:36] IP: I don't know if I'm more well rested, but I'm certainly enjoying the return to
normalcy around here after the crazy days of summer. We had a good summer, and now I'm
ready for fall. I'm also counting down the days to Dorkfest. Less than a month away. I'm excited
about that.
[0:00:55] JR: How did that happen?
[0:00:56] IP: If you're planning, I know. If you're planning on joining us in Los Angeles on the
13th of September, be sure to RSVP to Dorkfest. There's no cost, there's no tickets or anything,
but you can't win the raffle prizes this year, unless you RSVP in advance. So, do that, and we'll
see you there in less than a month.
The should have been an incredibly serious accident, but miraculously wasn't list grows longer,
thanks to the final report issued for the Marathon Airlines flight that was operating on behalf of
Air Serbia in February 2024. This was an E195 operated by Marathon Airlines departing
Belgrade, or trying to depart Belgrade. They did so many things wrong, trying to get this aircraft
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off the ground. They, I mean, the pilots did so many things wrong that it is truly miraculous that
no one was injured.
[0:02:13] JR: There were so many opportunities to not do the wrong thing, and all were either
ignored, or just, I don't know, willfully ignored here?
[0:02:23] IP: The captain of this aircraft does not come off in a good light.
[0:02:28] JR: No.
[0:02:29] IP: In any shape or form.
[0:02:31] JR: If I recall correctly, Air Serbia terminated a partnership with Marathon Airlines,
almost immediately after this incident.
[0:02:37] IP: They sure did. They sure did. Here's what happened, to refresh everyone's
memory. The aircraft overran the end of the runway during the takeoff roll, collided with the
localizer antenna, had a tail strike along a long length of grass after the end of the runway, and
ripped a giant gash in the fuselage, the left fuselage, just forward of the wing route, as well as
the wing route fairing, the wing itself. There were all sorts of damage to this.
[0:03:22] JR: It was another one of those incidents that proves that the Ejet family is past
history of just being an absolute unit, an absolute tank that can take just about anything.
[0:03:31] IP: Yes. Here's what happened before all that happened. The investigation found that
the aircraft lined up at the wrong intersection. That was the first part of it. They entered the
runway at Delta 5, when they should have entered the runway at Delta 6. Entering the runway at
Delta 6, as they were supposed to, would have provided them with 2,300 meters of available
takeoff space. Entering the runway at Delta 5, left them with only 1200 meters of takeoff space,
less than the distance required for the aircraft.
[0:04:23] JR: If only they had realized their error before they started the takeoff. Oh, wait. No.
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[0:04:28] IP: They didn't even realized that error, Jason. They didn't need to realize their,
because ATC said, “Hey, maybe don't do that. We don't think it's going to work. You can turn off.
You can taxi again, and you can try the right intersection.” The captain then said, “We've got
plenty of runway, and I'll recalculate this.” However, he recalculated it wrong. The first officer
noted that it was wrong. The captain said, “It's fine. We're going to do it anyway.” Throughout
the report, it's noted that the captain exerted, displayed superior attitude and exerted pressure
on the first officer.
Then, they go from the wrong intersection, way overweight to for a successful takeoff there. It's
not like they said, “Oh.” Or, I suppose this really rests on the captain’s shoulders. It's not like the
captain said, “Oh, we're short on the runway. I will use all the available power I have to get us off
the runway.” Oh, no, no, no.
[0:05:50] JR: Yeah, let's do a nice derated thrust takeoff, and it'll be fine.
[0:05:57] IP: That's exactly what they did. As they accelerated down the runway, they eventually
realized, “Hey, this probably isn't going to work.”
[0:06:08] JR: Yeah. Apparently, the report says that among the many discrepancies when they
took the wrong taxiway and were supposed to be taking off from runway 30 left at the D6
intersection, they changed their calculations to be the opposite direction, 12 right at the Delta 5
intersection, which apparently, would have given them plenty of available runway for takeoff,
2,266 meters. They were more than 1,000 meters off here. This was never going to work. What
really brings it all together for me is that the crew should have been intimately familiar with this
airport. They were operating for an airline on behalf of the airline based at that airport, so they
were in and out of here, presumably, all day every day. They should have known just
instinctively, without even having to plug into the box to find out what their available runway and
weight is that, hey, this isn't right. This can't work. Literally every opportunity to prevent this
incident from happening, unfortunately, was not taken up on.
[0:07:14] IP: Yeah. Even more that had gone wrong is the crew didn't perform a departure
briefing. They had significant discrepancies in the performance data between what the aircraft
could actually do and what they assumed the aircraft could do. They did not notice those errors,
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because they didn't do the departure briefing. There was no cross-check to catch any of those
errors.
[0:07:50] JR: No. It's a textbook example of CRM, crew resource management, not breaking
down, but seemingly not being applicable, whatsoever.
[0:08:00] IP: The report is also interesting for what happened after the aircraft somehow safely
returned to the airfield. The aircraft, which had smashed through the IOS array, had a fuel leak.
Instead of isolating the aircraft, because it was leaking fuel, they had it parked at a gate.
[0:08:27] JR: I mean, not great. Maybe they didn't know the extent of the damage, but –
[0:08:34] IP: Okay. The crew did not know the extent of the damage. That is true. But the ARF
crews that were there surely saw the fuel leak. The report discusses some improvements that
can be made to their emergency responses. Oh, great. Those, to their credit, have already been
placed.
[0:08:58] JR: Good luck all around, when seemingly was everything was against the odds of
there being a positive okay outcome here. Not great. Didn't know that last bit. That was not in
the article I had read.
[0:09:13] IP: Yeah. Thankfully, I was able to get the report, which is in Serbian only, translated
into English. Yeah, I will put a link in the show notes to the report, as well as the photos that are
from the report. Those are thankfully, self-explanatory, if you have a moment to look at that. In
more recent news, a Nora ATR operating for Finnair, that aircraft came out of maintenance and
was set to fly again. Unfortunately, it's going right back into maintenance.
[0:09:55] JR: For probably longer than it was in maintenance for previously. Turns out, when
you don't set the parking brake and the engines are, in this case, quite literally turning, anything
in the way, it's going to going to cut right through and then destroy itself in the process.
[0:10:11] IP: Like a ground power unit, perhaps.
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[0:10:13] JR: Yeah. Well, now we know what's inside a ground power unit. It turns out, just like
a diesel truck engine.
[0:10:18] IP: Yeah. I mean, that basically, yes, what it is. Now they're also down one GPU,
because of this particular incident. It'll be interesting to see. The preliminary indications are that
the parking brake was not set when the engines were on, which led to this particular incident.
Thankfully, no one was injured. There was no damage to the interior of the cabin, thankfully. It'll
be interesting to see what this report lays out in a bit more detail and how this all occurred. We'll
keep an eye out for that one and come back to it.
Last week, we said we hoped that the Air Canada flight attendants strike would be averted
before it occurred. That was not the case. However, it is over in time for us to discuss the
results.
[0:11:07] JR: Well, sort of over.
[0:11:10] IP: Sort of over. Air Canada flight attendants went on strike, or announced their
intention to strike. This was something that, maybe Jason, you've got an opinion about this,
because I'm describing the situation, Air Canada flight attendants announced their intention to
strike at 12.30 AM. At 1, the airline locked out the flight attendants. There were certainly partisan
reasons for describing what was happening as either a strike, or a lockout, depending on which
side of the labor aisle you wanted to take. I was trying to accurately describe the situation. I
thought that strike was the way to go, because that's what happened first, but there was some
disagreement. I'm wondering if you have any input on this.
[0:12:02] JR: It's like saying, “You can't fire me, because I quit.” Kind of that same dynamic. It
was going to happen anyway, but Air Canada, I guess, pulled the trigger first.
[0:12:12] IP: I don't know. In any case, the two sides went away and then Air Canada said,
“We're canceling our flights and shutting down the airline as from this point on.” The government
said, “Flight Attendant Union, get back to work. This strike is, we're basically forcing you back to
work.” The flight attendants said, “No,” and defied that order to get back to work. The strike, or
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lockout, whichever we're calling it, lasted then three days before the two sides reached an
agreement early Tuesday morning on the 19th of August.
Air Canada is working its way back to being an airline. First flights went out yesterday afternoon,
Tuesday afternoon after they reached agreement on Tuesday morning, though the airline is
going to be all sorts of bad news for the next couple of weeks as things get back into it. This is a
tentative agreement that the Flight Attendant Union still needs to vote on.
[0:13:20] JR: Given how overwhelmingly in favor of a strike flight attendants, what was it like?
Like, 97 and a half percent, or something.
[0:13:26] IP: No. I think it was 99.7%.
[0:13:29] JR: Yeah. Astronomically, improbably high number. It's going to be very interesting to
see if the flight attendants, if the union members vote in favor of this deal. This felt a lot less of
just an isolated flight attendant go on strike at airline situation, to much more of a movement in
Canada that it really got a lot of play and that people were really behind the flight attendants
here in a way that you don't ordinarily see in a labor dispute. That it became a symbol of pay
inequality and employees wanting to get what they think they deserve and they do deserve it. In
a lot of cases, flight attendants are ridiculously underpaid.
The strike itself really seemed to get more legs and more play than a strike ordinarily would
have. Maybe that's because Air Canada is basic, or a near monopoly in Canada. If you're flying
internationally and you're flying on a Canadian airline, it's almost certainly Air Canada. Air
Canada does not have a stellar reputation with the Canadian people. It was very interesting to
see how involved just ordinary people got in this and backing the flight attendant. At this stage,
the airline is certainly resuming operations, but there's still, from what I'm hearing, a lot of what
Air Canada is calling illegal job action in that flights that ordinarily at this point would have
resumed are not resuming, or being cancelled, because some flight attendants are still not
reporting to work, or calling out sick, or they're just not showing up.
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Things are still pretty dicey at Air Canada right now. I'm not super hopeful they're going to vote
in favor of whatever contract the Union cooked up, but this one was just overall a lot stickier of a
strike than we typically see in an airline.
[0:15:22] IP: I think one of the big factors that influenced the attention that was paid to this
particular strike was the fact that Air Canada's flight attendant union was arguing for ground pay.
I think a lot of people that heard that said, “Wait, what?”
[0:15:39] JR: Which is not the norm for the industry at all.
[0:15:42] IP: No. I think most people outside the industry –
[0:15:46] JR: Don't know that.
[0:15:48] IP: - assume that when flight attendants are working for the airline, they're being paid.
I think that's just a general, kind of how the world works assumption. Then when confronted with
the fact that no, flight attendants, generally speaking, at most airlines are only paid once the
aircraft door is closed. Then that comes as a, that just doesn't seem fair. I think that's where the
weight and the attention for this came from. To that end, the agreement includes ground pay,
and to note the previous agreement that Air Canada was offering the flight attendants union also
included ground pay. This agreement would include at least 60 minutes of ground pay for the
time before each flight at a rate of 50% of the flight attendants’ hourly rate, and that rate would
increase at 5% per year for the life of the contract.
Separately, standard pay increases of 12% for flight attendants that have been working for Air
Canada for less than five years, or 8% for those who have been with the airline for five or more
years would take effect immediately, and then those base pay rates would also increase 3% in
the second year, two and a half percent in the third year and two and three quarters percent in
the fourth year of the contract. We'll see if they vote on that, or vote positively on that. They still
need to vote on the contract. But the article that I read in, I think it was the Globe and Mail, said
that the contract, what the flight attendants were voting on is only the pay increases. It's not the
ground pay. I guess, that doesn't require a separate vote on their part. All that said, WestJet,
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which is basically the other half of Canada's air transport system, their flight attendants have a
contract that expires later this year.
[0:18:07] JR: They've got real good precedent now to get whatever those guys got.
[0:18:13] IP: this will be interesting to see, if does the ground pay stop in Canada, or does this
become something that expands to other airlines that do not offer their flight attendants pay
when they are working on the ground. An interesting time to be part of airline labor relations,
although when is it not, Jason? When is it not?
[0:18:36] JR: That is true. But it is not often that we see the threats of a strike actually culminate
in an actual strike and then government mandating that those employees return to work and
those employees saying, “You know what? No, we're not going to do that.” I say, kudos to the
Air Canada flight attendants for defying that order and making it a movement that the Canadian
people really got behind and seeing the union members, the flight attendants here really
representing your ordinary employee, that they don't want to be told by the government to get
back to work when they don't have a fair deal. Good for them.
[0:19:14] IP: You know what's not good?
[0:19:16] JR: So many things. You got to be more specific than that.
[0:19:19] IP: Booking a window seat and having a window –
[0:19:22] JR: What? I love window seat. Oh, no window seat. Yes.
[0:19:27] IP: Yeah. The no window-window seat.
[0:19:29] JR: I have fallen for that trap before. It is not enjoyable. We're not talking about a 787
where the flight attendants, after all the nice glowing things we just said, when the flight
attendants lock out the windows, so you can't adjust the dimming and you can't see out the
window. No, we are talking about when there is physically no window in a particular row, and I'm
really thinking about 737s was row 11 or 13 typically.
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[0:19:58] IP: Well, there's the famous 11A on Ryanair, and thereabouts on any other airline
offering the 737 as part of its fleet. What's interesting here is that United and Delta are now
being sued not for having an air conditioning duct in the side of the aircraft that keeps most
people onboard alive. No, that's not why they're being sued.
[0:20:24] JR: You need those. That’s good.
[0:20:26] IP: They're being sued because they charge extra for those seats and label them as
window seats, and don't tell anyone that there's no window there. The argument that the
plaintiffs are making is that why on earth would I spend extra money to book a window seat
specifically that doesn't have a window?
[0:20:48] JR: When the airline is specifically calling it a window seat. Ian, I am I am uniquely
qualified to chime in on this particular answer.
[0:20:55] IP: You are.
[0:20:57] JR: I work a lot with the data behind the scenes to power shopping displays that
would tell passengers whether or not there is a window in that particular seat. Like most things,
there are legacy systems and issues in place from sometimes displaying that information. But I
would say to whoever is suing United and Delta, good. This is something that the airline should
be held accountable for, because the infrastructure and the data and the displays to say that,
“Oh, no. This is a window seat, there is no window,” it exists. Some airlines, like you mentioned,
Ryanair actually do do that. If you go to ryanair.com, you select seat 11A, it will show this seat
does not have a window. Ryanair is very upfront and replying to people on social media that,
“Hey, we told you so. This is your fault.”
But the ecosystem doesn't always work out the way you would hope. There are codes that are
called pattice codes. I don't remember what pattice means at the moment, but they are industry
standard codes, and there is several codes, actually, for windowless window seat, something
along those lines. The problem comes when airlines either outright don't code that information,
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or they code it improperly, or they use a custom code that nobody knows what it means, or
those codes in the distribution ecosystem just get dropped somewhere.
I looked at a case recently, I think it was United where one major distribution system showed the
code for windowless window seat, but the other one did not. I don't know why. There are a
whole host of reasons for that particular case, but the infrastructure exists to do this, there are
limitations, there are issues, but if it's a big enough issue it can and should be solved by the
industry, because there is nothing worse than ending up in a windowless window seat, but to
market a seat as a window seat and charge potentially hundreds of dollars for it when it turns
out, there is no window there, that's not great. We should as an industry be better than that.
[0:23:08] IP: Jason, when I saw this I knew that you were going to have insight and I'm grateful
for that.
[0:23:13] JR: Fantastic. Look, I can even find the code for windowless window seat, and it is
control F, window, not, so code four, because four is not a window seat. Here we go. Window
seat without window is code WA. There's also window seat without window 1W. These codes
exists. AIATA and all the other parts of the ecosystem have thought about this and there are
standards for this, but you know what a standard is if people don't follow the standard? It's
useless and a waste of time. Hopefully, more airlines will play nicely and follow the standard and
encode these things, so people don't end up in a windowless window seat.
[0:24:01] IP: Well, we talked about this a few weeks ago and now it has come to pass. Turkish
airlines has offered to acquire a minority stake in Air Europa for approximately 300 million euro,
so about 350 million dollars. We don't know what percentage stake that offers them, but we do
know that is a minority stake. We expect this deal to close, subject to standard governmental
approvals and whatnot within six to 12 months. This was after everyone else said, “All right,
we're done with Air Europa.” Turkish said, “We think we can make this work. Here's 300 million
euro.”
[0:24:45] JR: Okay. I'm glad they found someone to give them some money. This has been
going since before COVID.
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[0:24:52] IP: This has been going on a decade, about a decade. I mean, which is which is just
crazy to me how long it has taken to get here and we ended up with Turkish Airlines, which I
don't think anyone expected six months ago, let alone five years. Whatever. Good luck to them,
and hopefully, they can do something good with the money.
Speaking of money, go look at Norse. They said this week that they're looking at full year
profitability for this year, mainly because they're giving half their fleet to Indigo. But hey, it's
working.
[0:25:29] JR: Great. They’ll still be around when I try to fly them next month.
[0:25:33] IP: Exactly. They have six, wait, a total of 12 787-9s. Six of those are going to be
leased to Indigo, as it begins its aggressive long-haul expansion in anticipation of its own long-
haul aircraft on delivery. The other six will continue to fly directly for Norse. Then, they said
something extremely interesting to me. They said, “Aircraft are too expensive to buy and they're
too expensive to charter, so we are just going to stay where we are.”
[0:26:16] JR: Okay.
[0:26:18] IP: I'm very interested in that.
[0:26:21] JR: Yeah. I'm happy for Norwegian.
[0:26:23] IP: This is smart. This is smart.
[0:26:25] JR: For all of the, let's just say, crap we have given Norse Atlantic over the years of
saying, this is just Norwegian with a different paint job, with the same planes and the same
interior and the same throw a dart at the map route network. They've cracked the code. Just for
the most part, don't actually be your own airline and just have airplanes that other people use.
Also, run a little operation of your own. That was not what Norwegian did, so Norse is indeed
something else. Proven us wrong.
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[0:26:57] IP: Yeah. To that point, PLAY is also in the late stages of transitioning into its not old
Norwegian and not old WOW. They are completing their transition from Icelandic-based
transatlantic connector between North America and Europe, into a European holiday destination
airline. They've almost moved everything out. They're going to keep a few aircraft in Iceland, but
those aircraft are going to be operating on behalf of other airlines, so that is them saying, “Okay.
That business model didn't work, and we're switching.” It seems to be working for them. Good
for all of them, finding a way to make this work.
[0:27:48] JR: Less convinced in PLAY’s transition here. This was pretty much scrap your entire
business model and just move everything over to mainland Europe, where there is still a ton of
competition. I mean, PLAY is no Jet2holiday. They've got a very, very highly competitive market
to deal with here. Whereas, Norse is just giving up half its fleet for cash, which is probably much
better. Come on cash.
[0:28:15] IP: Well, as long as we're talking about cash, we might as well talk about Allegiant,
because they've lost a bunch of cash, so much so that the pilots union is looking to hold a no
confidence vote against the management and board of directors to try and get rid of them. They
say, “Years of repeated failures, poor strategic decisions and reckless spending have threatened
the long-term health and stability of the airline.”
[0:28:46] JR: Things like, opening up their own resort in Florida that I think they've actually
taken their branding off of already. Things like that.
[0:28:56] IP: They have sold that to Blackstone and they lost 500 million. They also had a
NASCAR team.
[0:29:04] JR: I mean, who doesn't have one of those?
[0:29:05] IP: Well, I mean, that's true. Yeah, the pilots union at Allegiant is looking to hold a no
confidence vote to get rid of management and the board of directors. In the first half of the year,
Allegiant lost 33 million dollars. Not a huge loss, but mounting.
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[0:29:23] JR: Yeah. Allegiant is firmly an ultra-low-cost carrier. But seemingly, the only one even
analysis is based from JetBlue, to Southwest, to Spirit, to Frontier that has paid no attention,
whatsoever, to the premium of vacation of low-cost and ultra-low-cost flights in the US, where
passengers want something better than their minimum. Allegiant has seemingly, at least
externally done absolutely nothing to acknowledge that. Allegiant is today as it was five years
ago, minus some very old mad dogs. They're all Airbus now, and I guess, there are some MAXs
as well, but Allegiant has bucked that trend and apparently, probably not have done that. If
everyone else is doing something and chasing that revenue, maybe you should be doing that,
too.
[0:30:17] IP: Or just not starting a hotel.
[0:30:21] JR: There's that. Apparently, they still offer Allegiant stadium football fan packages,
whatever that might be. That's the Vegas stadium, right?
[0:30:30] IP: I believe so.
[0:30:31] JR: Okay. They're still not out of the distractions entirely, but oof, not great.
[0:30:38] IP: Oh, what fun. We'll keep an eye on this one to see if this goes forward and if
anything changes. This story comes to us from Ukraine and is, it just gets more bizarre the more
that I read about it.  wasn't going to share this one, because I was like, oh, this seems like a
documentation for some parts. I was like, okay, not super interesting, because it's just a couple
of old 737s. But no, it gets better, because you end up with models of fake CFM-56 engines.
Here's what happened.
[0:31:15] JR: What?
[0:31:15] IP: Trans Air Congo sent a pair of 737s, a 737-300 and a 737-500 to Kyiv in
December of 2021 for scheduled heavy maintenance. Well, three months later, Ukraine was
invaded by Russia.
[0:31:41] JR: I remember that.
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[0:31:44] IP: Their plans were interrupted. Both of the aircraft were damaged, because they
were at Hostomel Airport, they were damaged in the initial invasion when Russian forces were
trying to take the airfield. After Ukraine was able to reestablish control, they found that a large
number of the parts that had been taken off the aircraft as part of the maintenance were now
missing. Jason, including the two CFM-56 engines that came off the 737-500.
[0:32:23] JR: Well, where did those go? You can't just sneak those out in your pocket. You've
got a pretty big pocket to hide those. Where would they go?
[0:32:34] IP: You've heard the Johnny Cash song One Piece at a Time. I rest my case.
[0:32:37] JR: Oh, no.
[0:32:40] IP: The employees that are under investigation submitted forged certificates for the
decommissioning of the aircraft in order to clear customs. The engines were replaced by fakes
that had fake serial numbers inputted in an attempt to bypass the customs declarations for the
real engines.
[0:33:08] JR: How fake are we talking here?
[0:33:10] IP: Who knows where these are?
[0:33:12] JR: I mean, how fake were the decoy engines? Were they Legos, or just some old
engines they have?
[0:33:18] IP: No, no. They were basically like, we built it up enough to make it look like an
engine. But the moment that you actually look closer, then 5 feet away.
[0:33:29] JR: Oh, so like Boeing did with the original 787 rollout.
[0:33:31] IP: Yes, yes.
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[0:33:32] JR: Basically. Don’t look too close, because it's not a real airplane.
[0:33:35] IP: I was going to go with the town in blazing saddles, but I like yours as more
germane example.
[0:33:41] JR: More on topic.
[0:33:43] IP: Yeah. The 737-300 also cleared inspection with fake documents. The engine –
[0:33:52] JR: Wait. So, nobody knows where these engines are?
[0:33:55] IP: Well, no one knows where the engines from the 737-500 are, but the engines from
the 737-300 are likely in Odessa, in a warehouse. There's an investigation going on in Kyiv to
find out where these things went.
[0:34:12] JR: Well, they're always in the last place to look.
[0:34:16] IP: That'll be an interesting thing to see. To close out the show, I tried to be funny on
social media.
[0:34:23] JR: Never. Never do that.
[0:34:26] IP: And it backfired. It backfired in ways that I did not expect, because I didn't know
how many clickbait weather sites there.
[0:34:36] JR: What? That's a thing?
[0:34:38] IP: That's a thing. There apparently, are these storm-chasing clickbait weather sites.
[0:34:45] JR: What did you do? What did you do? Tell me what you did.
[0:34:50] IP: Here's the thing. I should have been much more specific in my questioning of what
was going on, because Spirit Airlines, they flew into the geographic area of the storm. At 37,000
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feet, they were likely over the top of the storm. They were also on the southwest side of the
storm, which puts them in the weakest wind area. That said, the flight path in the vicinity of the
hurricane was highly unusual, because it's not like they flew through straight shot. It's not like
they were on a path on an airway. They knew where they were headed. This path took them
away from the center of the storm. Then, basically swung them directly into the center of the
storm before they made a 90-degree turn out of the storm. I have questions about why that flight
path exists in the first place. I made the joke, “Did Spirit take up the hurricane hunter mission?”
[0:36:02] JR: Okay. Not a unique joke, and the first time. We've heard that one before, but –
[0:36:06] IP: Not a unique joke. However, it got picked up in two different directions. One by
these aforementioned weather clickbait sites, which I – oh, the Internet gets worse and worse
and worse. But I also got a lot of angry mail from pilots, dispatchers and things like that,
explaining the science of no, they're not flying through the storm. That's why hurricane hunters
are flying at 10,000 feet, not 37,000. They were likely over the storm, over the storm props, etc.,
etc.
I'm less interested in that discussion, because that wasn't what I was trying to say, but I am
interested in this flight path itself. I'll put a link to the flight in the show notes. If anyone has any
idea why this flight path occurred, I'd be very interested to know what happened. If you're a
Spirit pilot, or dispatcher and you’re listening, fill us in, please.
[0:37:06] JR: Yeah. Looking back at the post, which I did not see the other day, that they went
to the outer edge of the hurricane and made a gradual left turn for not the edge of the hurricane.
But again, making another U-turn. A very strange, not direct path to where they were going. But
Ian, if I have learned anything about airplanes and hurricanes is that when you take a picture of
airplanes doing things around hurricanes, they get traction. A call back to what was that? 2018,
when there was that delta flight going to San Juan?
[0:37:42] IP: Yes.
[0:37:44] JR: Blazing hurricane. But that was an actual legitimate race. They were trying to beat
a hurricane. In this case –
© 2025 AvTalk 16
AVT 333 Transcript
[0:37:49] IP: Yeah, they were in between the two bands.
[0:37:53] JR: It was quite impressive. This case, it was just a weird flight path. Not sure why
they would do that. But again, those pilots and other people who yelled at you, hurricanes don't
have that high at top, so it is perfectly fine and ordinary to fly over them. You just don't usually
see flights doing zigzag patterns over them, because you want to spend as little time as
possible over them. So, if you have an emergency or whatever, you can land somewhere that
isn't experiencing –
[0:38:20] IP: In a hurricane.
[0:38:21] JR: Yeah. That would be nice. But I'm just happy it was you for a change, getting
some flack, and not me.
[0:38:29] IP: And not you. Fair enough, fair enough. All right. Jason, I will let you get back to
whatever meetings and things you've got going on this week in Washington. I thank you for
taking time out to record this.
[0:38:45] JR: Oh, yeah. We didn't talk about that. How that? I tried to fly down to Dulles again
and yet again, it did not happen.
[0:38:52] IP: Well, let's save that discussion for next week. We'll see if you make it.
[0:38:55] JR: No. I never will talk about it again. I'm taking Amtrak.
[0:38:59] IP: Fair enough. All right. This has been episode 333 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik,
here, as always with –
[0:39:08] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2025 AvTalk 17