AvTalk Episode 349: How do you forget about a 737?

AVT 349 Transcript
EPISODE 349
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 349 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, once
again with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How are you?
[0:00:21] IP: I'm well, sir. How are you? Welcome back, after being away.
[0:00:26] JR: I was away. I am back. My brain doesn't know which time zone, or where I am. I
am exceedingly tired. Turns out, when you get older, jet lag becomes even more of a monster
that you just can't run away from. I'm going to get through this podcast, but it's not going to be
easy.
[0:00:44] IP: We believe in you. Welcome back.
[0:00:46] JR: It makes one of you.
[0:00:48] IP: Welcome back. Welcome back. Getting back into the swing of things. You were
gone for about two weeks. We had fake Jason on episode 347.
[0:00:59] JR: Oh, that sounds like Jeremy to me.
[0:01:01] IP: Yup. Yup. We had fake Jason. He did his best. Then last week, my new colleague,
Daniel joined us for an episode. Now, Jason, you are back from Seoul, or South Korea,
generally, and Japan, generally.
[0:01:16] JR: Yes, yes.
[0:01:17] IP: Anything to note from your travels, good sir?
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AVT 349 Transcript
[0:01:21] JR: Yeah. Again, I've been banished back to Dulles, unfortunately. The travel keeps
on coming. Hopefully, this is the last of the year. But that was a lot of fun. I hadn't been to Seoul
since I attended IATA AGM in 2019. It had been a minute. But really, really just ate our way
through South Korea and Tokyo. We had a great time with Seth Miller, who we talked to a
couple weeks ago. We summed up how we got there. We got there very different ways.
Thankfully, on the way home, I was able to do a cash upgrade to business on the way home
through Tokyo to New York on American, which was fine, I guess. It wasn't JAL, it wasn't ANA,
but it was a fly flat seat. I was happy. Always looked forward to my, which has become an
annual trip to Asia now. Not super excited to be home, but it was a great trip.
[0:02:17] IP: Well, welcome back. Welcome back. I made it back to Chicago, much more easily
than I made it to Stockholm. We didn't talk about this last week, but I decided that I was going to
fly out of Chicago on the day that we had our first proper Chicago snowstorm in more than two
years.
[0:02:41] JR: Chicago O’Hare is an airport famously known for competent snow time
operations.
[0:02:47] IP: Well, what was really interesting about watching everything and enjoying my delay,
that ended up being a four-hour delay getting out of the airport, was seeing how well things
were actually running when things were running well. It was a tale of many terminals. There
were clearly things that were happening, not where I was, that were going very well. Snow
clearance, de-icing, things of that nature. Then sitting at T5, it became a air traffic control
special, where you had to park planes somewhere, but then you had to make the decision about
which planes were going to be parked in front of which other planes. It was one of those things
where we needed – so, I was flying SAS. And so, we needed Etihad to push back, so that Iberia
could take that gate, so that SAS could move forward, so that a United flight could pull behind it,
so that a Delta flight could come off a gate, so that SAS could go in.
[0:03:49] JR: Of course.
[0:03:50] IP: It was like watching, it was like, you know those puzzles where it's a square pieces
and there's one missing thing you have to make the picture.
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[0:03:56] JR: I can never. I can never.
[0:03:58] IP: It was like playing that, but with airplanes.
[0:04:00] JR: It's just unnecessarily complicated at O'Hare, since all international fights, I’m
pretty sure, have to go into T5, right?
[0:04:08] IP: Exactly.
[0:04:08] JR: You have all these months going in there.
[0:04:09] IP: For at least the next couple years. Yeah.
[0:04:11] JR: Then you got to drag them out of there and tow them elsewhere, which just
unnecessarily complicates everything and makes everything so much more difficult. It's just,
that's got to stop at some point, but I hope they've got a plan, right?
[0:04:24] IP: The plan is in place. They're building. The construction is happening. It's on its way
to – the global terminal is in slow progress, but it's there. Eventually, you will just land and
depart from a terminal if you’re flying internationally. It's a miracle. It's coming soon. That was
going out, but much easier coming in. On the other hand, while I was flying back from
Stockholm, I was keeping up on the news coming out of India. we talked about this last week.
[0:04:57] JR: Oof. It’s not great.
[0:05:00] IP: Not great. We talked about this on last week's episode, a partial reason behind
why the meltdown of Indigo happened. But to recap, there were new rest duty requirements for
flights that went into place at the beginning of the month. But Indigo's operations survived until
they were hit by poor weather. Then the lack of planning on how to run a low-cost operation with
minimal rest periods in the face of new regulations and bad weather hit home. They ended up
canceling thousands of flights, and things just got worse from there. Because not only did the
airline screw up, they screwed up very publicly, at a time, the Indian Prime Minister was playing
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host to Russian President Vladimir Putin on an international stage, making a statement. The
Prime Minister then has to turn his attention to a low-cost airline, which has massively screwed
up not only its operations, but the spill over into other operations, because now these other
airlines are struggling to deal with all of the passengers that are going, “I had an Indigo flight,
and now I don't know what to do.”
[0:06:26] JR: Ouch.
[0:06:28] IP: The government did a couple things. One, they got rid of the regulations for now.
[0:06:34] JR: Well, that's a great way to respond to putting regulation in place. When a private
entity can't handle it, just scrap the safety regulation you put in place. I don't like that at all.
[0:06:45] IP: Yeah. Exactly.
[0:06:45] JR: That is something to react to it, but I don't love tossing out the new safety rule you
just put in place. It’s not great.
[0:06:52] IP: Again, it's not like this happened without warning. It's not like the government,
something happened on Tuesday and the government on Wednesday said, here are the new
rules. This happened over years, and in phases. This is just the second phase of the rules going
into effect. At the moment, Indigo has been granted an exemption from Indian regulators.
They're going to review Indigo's ability to manage their schedule periodically, improve
operations and their crew rest period. And they have to have a 30-day plan to achieve full
compliance with the new rules on the flight duty limits.
[0:07:32] JR: Correct me if I'm wrong, but this change of rules in India just brings India up to
basically, the rest of the world's standard here. Is that right?
[0:07:40] IP: Yeah. I mean, for the most part, there's nothing –
[0:07:43] JR: Particularly crazy here.
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[0:07:44] IP: - onerous about these rules. I mean, they have some local peculiarity. But for the
most part, they're industry standard rules. I mean, this affected Indigo's operations specifically,
but not their wet lease operations, because those were already operating under even more
restrictive rest rules. Nothing that other airlines around the world haven't already
accommodated.
[0:08:07] JR: Right. I think that's what is so stark about this particular case with Indigo is that
every other airline in the world with the same regulations figured this out. Indigo, it's not like this
is some over the top, onerous regulation being put in place in India. This is just normal stuff.
[0:08:22] IP: No. It's not like pilots need to rest for a week after. It's not like, each pilot needs a
week of rest and some spa treatment between flights. That's not what we're talking about.
[0:08:34] JR: No, that's the kind of thing that only a U.S. airline pilot union can get worked in to
the contract.
[0:08:39] IP: Good for them then. What the Indian Civil Aviation Ministry also did was cap fares
on domestic flights writ large, as airlines struggled to deal with the fallout. Those caps were
quite a bit higher than normal pricing, but they were capped nonetheless. Indigo was also
ordered to cut its schedules by 10%. As of yesterday, the 9th of December, they had previously
earlier in the week been ordered to cut schedules by 5%. This takes it a bit higher. As of today,
the 10th of December, it seems that the situation has stabilized. The schedule cuts along with
the changes that the airline is making have allowed them to service all of their destinations, if
not all of their frequencies. Things look like they're moving in the right direction. But the upper
management of Indigo has a lot of explaining to do and they're going to be held to account, it
seems, by the DGCA and possibly India’s parliament.
Moving to the U.S., we now have a prime integrator for the ATC modernization effort, known as
the brand-new air traffic control system, or the BNATCS.
[0:10:01] JR: Oh. Rolls right off the tongue.
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[0:10:04] IP: Right. Right.
[0:10:05] JR: Say it again?
[0:10:06] IP: BNATCS.
[0:10:08] JR: Oh, okay. It's going to change. Tell me what is a prime integrator for ATC
modernization? Because it sounds —
[0:10:17] IP: It sounds fun is what it sounds. Peraton has been selected as the Prime Integrator
for the ATC modernization, meaning that they have the job of keeping every single entity
working on the ATC modernization effort, on track, under budget, on time, all those good fun
things. Peraton is a former division of what is now L3 Harris. They have experience in this
respect. They've worked on air traffic control before, but they have not done FAA related air
traffic control modernization efforts, which they say helps them come in from the outside and not
make some of the same mistakes as those who have come before it.
[0:11:07] JR: How would they know they're making those mistakes if they've never participated
in something like this before? I guess, that's one way to root out mistakes.
[0:11:16] IP: Yeah. I mean, this is all part of the $12.5 billion, what FAA Administrator Bedford is
calling a down payment on the future. In the announcement this week, Bedford said that this is a
down payment and 20 billion dollars more will be needed over the course of this effort to bring
US air traffic control up to, I guess, state of the art is what they're going for. The first priorities,
Jason, of the new prime integrator will be transitioning the air traffic control system’s remaining
copper infrastructure to modern fiber and establishing a new digital command center.
[0:12:02] JR: Ooh, digital command center. That's a lot more fun sounding than an analog
command center, which actually, I like the sound of an analog command center a lot better.
[0:12:13] IP: It does sound less fun. However.
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[0:12:15] JR: It does sound less fun. But isn't the transition of copper wire to fiber and whatever
else, hasn't that been ongoing for forever?
[0:12:22] IP: That's been ongoing for a very long time. But this first priority will be to finish that
job. There's remaining infrastructure that needs to be transitioned. They're going to do that first,
establish a digital command center and then go from there. There are all sorts of upgrades
across the air traffic control system that are planned. We've talked about those in previous
episodes. This organization, Peraton, will be the organization running the show, and the one
answering directly to the FAA and the DOT. We will, I'm sure, hear more from them soon.
[0:13:01] JR: Good luck to them.
[0:13:03] IP: In news that has been years in the making, Spirit AeroSystems is no more. The
sale of the component parts of Spirit AeroSystems to Boeing, Airbus, and a few other third
parties has finished. Boeing is now responsible for its own destiny, again, before it spins them
off at some point in the future after this round of consolidation. Airbus has taken its work
packages and a 400 and some odd million-dollar payment for its trouble, and will go off and
continue to build things like, A350 fuselages, A220 wings, and other assorted components,
bringing that stuff in-house. Boeing's big prize here is the 737 line. Spirit produces, or did
produce before it is Boeing again, the majority of the 737 fuselage, along with a variety of other
components for Boeing's other aircraft.
Now that they have completed this acquisition, they continue on the march of reducing traveled
work, increasing quality, making sure that aircraft are built on schedule, and hopefully, move
forward into the future. However, that doesn't mean that Boeing's going to launch a new aircraft
project anytime soon. Speaking on the 2nd of December, Boeing's CFO, Jay Malave, said, “The
market has to be ready, the technology has to be ready, the Boeing company has to be ready.”
He finished the quote saying, “We don't believe any of those factors have been met in any way.”
[0:14:55] JR: Wow. Okay. None of those factors. The technology is not even ready for a next
gen aircraft that –
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[0:15:01] IP: Technology is not ready. The market's not ready and the Boeing company is not
ready. No one's ready.
[0:15:06] JR: I feel like, the market has been saying it's been ready for quite a while now.
[0:15:10] IP: Well, I feel like, we've reached the point where the market's no longer ready. I
mean, the market may have been ready.
[0:15:15] JR: We've come full circle that the market was ready, but it's been so long that the
market said, “You know what? What we were ready for, we don't want it anymore. So, come up
with something new.”
[0:15:23] IP: Pretty much. I think that's where we're at as far as this go. That'll be interesting to
see how that language changes. I'm going to be looking to see how that discussion evolves.
Now that we know that the check marks are the market, the technology and the company. Now
that we have those benchmarks, I'm going to be looking to see how that language changes over
time. It'll be really interesting to see how Boeing starts talking about the market and what the
market needs and the technology. I think the Boeing company being ready, I think the Spirit
acquisition is a big part of that. I think the continued march towards remembering how to build
aircraft is an important part of that. I think it's really interesting that those are the three
benchmarks that they laid out.
[0:16:05] JR: That's the tricky part. I know we've talked about that one extensively is, does
Boeing remember how to build a new aircraft? We've talked to Jon Ostrower about that in the
past, and it's still a very legitimate question, especially now if they have to start over and think
about new technologies and things that may not even exist at this point. It's going to be a long
run before we get to the point where Boeing is ready to do something. But this is progress, I
guess, the right direction.
[0:16:31] IP: This is progress. I would say, right direction. Absolutely. Let's go back to Europe
and talk about an acquisition that I didn't think was going to happen, because I thought a
different acquisition was already a done deal. I thought that LOT had said, “Hey, we're going to
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take over Smartwings and Czech Airlines.” Everyone said, okay. Then Turkey's Pegasus said,
“We'll take it.” And so, they shall? I guess.
[0:17:03] JR: There's a lot of these massive acquisition, but someone else whoops in for an
acquisition at the last minute, kind of thing going on. What was it? With Warner Brothers right
now, with the Netflix buyout and then Paramount, of course, coming in and saying, “Oh, no.
We're going to hastily take over instead.” There's a lot of that going on now. But this one,
Pegasus is not who I expected to be swooping into to snatch up anyone, let alone Smartwings.
[0:17:28] IP: Yeah. I mean, the fleet commonality is nil. I mean, Pegasus’s operation is –
[0:17:33] JR: No, no, no. They got a little Airbus, I guess.
[0:17:37] IP: Right. I mean, they're mostly Airbus. You've got Smartwings operating a Boeing
fleet. You have some overlap in network, but it's just a different animal. I'm finding this very
interesting to get my heads around.
[0:17:53] JR: Yeah. You say Boeing fleet, but does this include the part of Smartwings that's
really CSA with the A220s that I've won, not all that long ago?
[0:18:03] IP: I mean, it includes everything, as far as I know.
[0:18:06] JR: Both those ends. Both CSA and Smartwings, which is, I still don't really quite
understand the difference, if there is any, because I know it was a holding parent company that
actually owned the brand. Pegasus just consumed all of it.
[0:18:22] IP: I think so. I mean, we're still finding out exactly how this is going to work, because
not only is Pegasus taking them over, they're taking them over via a new Dutch subsidiary,
because of ownership rules. You have, I guess, enough directors within the company with dual
citizenship that allow them to operate this new subsidiary, so that they can own the EU airline.
It's one of those things where there's a lot of paperwork involved and who knows exactly how
this is going to shake out? Again, this is brand new and none of the approvals have been met.
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The deal could look very different by the time it actually closes. Who knows? LOT might get to
use its, ‘we bought Smartwings banner’ yet.
[0:19:08] JR: Just store it in the basement, until you need it. It's not going to hurt anyone.
[0:19:12] IP: There you go. Let's go back to the US and talk about Spirit Airlines, because they
announced this week that they're cutting more aircraft. This came out of an agreement through
the bankruptcy court between IT and International Aero Engines, which is the half, or portion
maker of the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engine. In that agreement, they said they're going
to give Spirit 140 million dollars in compensation for prior losses related to the GTF engine
inspections, repairs, and off-wing time, because of the A320neo and A321neo fleet.
What we found out from Spirit is that they will end up with approximately 28 A320neo family and
78 A320 CO family aircraft for now. They also said, they could go as low as 88 total aircraft.
[0:20:10] JR: That's crazy.
[0:20:11] IP: Down from 230 something?
[0:20:14] JR: Yeah.
[0:20:15] IP: 234, I think, at max.
[0:20:16] JR: The order is for plenty more coming. Spirit was still taking quite a number of
A321neos up until very recently. This is a mere shadow of its former self.
[0:20:27] IP: Yeah. Spirit is also canceling planned pilot furloughs. That's according to Reuters
reporting, saying that because enough pilots have left on their own, they don't need to furlough
those pilots anymore.
[0:20:40] JR: Sometimes problems just work themselves out. We didn't solve the problem. We
let it work itself out. At the same time, our friend Seth Miller has uncovered that Spirit has
agreed with American to sell coveted gates back to American for 30 million dollars for
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preferential access to gates, just gates G8 and G10, through September 2027. That's quite a
chunk of change, but you only get to do that once. You get rid of those gates, you don't get them
– Can't have them back and you can't sell it again. 30 million dollars for gates at O'Hare,
American really wants them. At this point, Spirit probably doesn't need them all that bad. They
really are selling off pretty much anything that they don't need at this point, which was the plan.
[0:21:28] IP: Yeah, exactly. That sale comes as American hunts for any foothold to regain share
at Chicago after being pounded for years by United. I think that's a really interesting – we'll see
how much it helps American, but it'll be really interesting, because those two gates sit in
between United's operations, which is actually quite interesting now, as United has continued to
expand its gate presence.
[0:21:54] JR: As long as American doesn't forget about these gates after it pays for them, and
has them taken away and redistributed to United. America has got to really learn its less than to
keep better track of its assets, so they don't get taken away and given to its competitors.
Because this 30 million dollars is not nothing, but they probably didn't want to have to spend
that. That's a whole other conversation.
[0:22:16] IP: Yeah. Exactly, exactly. In Qatar news, this is one of those things where I don't have
a good explanation for it, and I'm just bringing it up to maybe get someone to email us with a
good explanation. Qatar Airways CEO is out. Badr Mohammed Al Meer, gone. New CEO –
[0:22:37] JR: Hadn't been there all that long.
[0:22:39] IP: Hadn’t been there very long. After Akbar Al Bakr had been there for decades.
[0:22:44] JR: You still don't really have a good idea of what happened to him. He just
disappeared one day. Then I believe, the CEO that they put in that they're now punting, he was
the CEO of the airport, I believe, right?
[0:22:58] IP: Yeah. He was the chief operating officer at the airport. Hamad Ali Al-Khater is also
the new CEO of Qatar Airways, and is also the now former Chief Operating Officer of the airport.
It's just a pipeline.
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[0:23:12] JR: Yeah, there's clearly a line of succession there. Yeah, that reign of CEO at Qatar
that didn't feel like there was much impact from this new CEO. I don't know why. We don't know
why he's suddenly out, but maybe he was a little too quiet. I don't know. Didn't seem to be
making all that much in the way of waves at Qatar.
[0:23:33] IP: We're used to the person who runs this airline being very shouty.
[0:23:36] JR: Yes. We're talking about making waves. The prior CEO made tsunamis. We over-
corrected a little bit in that direction. I don't know.
[0:23:44] IP: Perhaps.
[0:23:45] JR: We'll never know. We'll never truly know.
[0:23:47] IP: But you can email us at podcast@fr24.com if you know, or maybe just have an
idea. Because at this point, who's to say?
[0:23:55] JR: Sure.
[0:23:56] IP: Jason, in an effort to make things slightly less confusing when traveling through
Paris, Charles de Gaulle is renaming its terminals. But I'm still confused by the map.
[0:24:10] JR: Yeah. There are a few things in the world, more confusing than coming into CDG
at 4.42 AM, jet lagged off a US origin transatlantic fight, and figuring out where exactly you are
in De Gaulle, and where exactly you need to go. Because the terminal naming is in art. The art
was just really taken to the extreme at CDG between terminals. I mean, they all started with T,
but then you had T2G, T2EM, T2F, T2EK, T2C, 22 – It repeated. If you went from T2A to T2B,
you would think that was really easy, but it turned out to not really be that easy. The plan is to
move everything to a much more rational terminal is one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven,
except terminal five is two buildings that are not connected while terminal – part of terminal five
is actually connected to terminal six. I don't know. It's an improvement. It doesn't fully solve the
problem, but it's again, a step in the right direction.
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[0:25:18] IP: There you go. All right. Next time we're passing through, we'll figure it out and see
what happens.
[0:25:22] JR: No. No. We're still going to get on the wrong bus, and we're still going to get on
the wrong train and the wrong escalator, and I don't know. It's one of the most confusing places.
The transfers aren't terrible, but I feel like a lot of people were just confused over the years by, I
have to go from T2E to T2G and I don't know. But I'm happy they can at least rationalize it.
[0:25:43] IP: Do I need to take the train, the higher balloon.
[0:25:46] JR: Right. Rationalization is, just say, terminal one through terminal seven and we
could take it from there. We'll figure it out.
[0:25:52] IP: There you go. When we talk about aviation accidents and incidents, we often talk
about how there's not one thing that caused the problem. That for something to go wrong, things
have to build up over time. A recent Australia Transportation Safety Board report really puts that
into light. What happened was a Qantas 737 departed with the wrong weight and balance
takeoff calculation. Nothing bad happened.
[0:26:30] JR: Not saying that has not happened before.
[0:26:31] IP: Yeah. It did not result in any accident, or any injuries, but just one of those things
where it was from the get-go, things just built up. This 737 was originally flying from Perth to
Sydney. There were storms in Sydney, so the aircraft diverted to Canberra. Then, once they
were on the ground, they decided that they will refuel and then they will take off and try and
make it to Sydney, because the storm has passed.
[0:27:03] JR: All sounds good up into this point.
[0:27:05] IP: Yup. Passengers were allowed to disembark, because 17 of those passengers
onboard the aircraft, were trying to get to Canberra anyway. So, they said, “Okay, yeah. Go
ahead and get off the plane and hey, we're here already.” Then, because this was a new flight,
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they needed to create a new flight in the Qantas system. As part of the creation of that new flight
–
[0:27:31] JR: By new flight, you mean Qantas flight one, now it's Qantas flight one alpha, or
something like that.
[0:27:38] IP: They just needed to go through the backend system for how Qantas dispatches
the flights. As part of that, they are called customer journey leads at Qantas. That person
committed a mistake. They entered the wrong aircraft code into the flight diary and they said
that it was a 717.
[0:28:05] JR: This was a year ago. Did they still have 717s in the fleet? They did, right?
[0:28:10] IP: Yeah. What happened there is that that aircraft, because of the switch from 737 to
717, the system that they have immediately offloaded 11 business class passengers and 40
economy passengers, because of the reduced capacity from aircraft to aircraft.
[0:28:30] JR: It just booted passengers off the flight.
[0:28:32] IP: Exactly. Exactly. This was a typo that was immediately noticed by that person.
They had a supervisor come over. They unlocked the flight and they went about everything, but
they didn't look at the weight and balance calculations. Because the passengers had been
offloaded, the weight of the aircraft had been reduced. Now, what the passengers loaded back
in, that wasn't updated. The system thought that the aircraft was about 4 tons lighter than it
actually was. Throughout this process, there were multiple times where people that were either
dispatching the aircraft, or flying the aircraft said, “I'm not sure that this is right.” But no one ever
just called it quits and said, okay, what is actually wrong?
[0:29:33] JR: Ooh, they came so close. I wonder how many people looked at it and said, “This
doesn't look right.” And just, what's the old saying? If you see something, say something and not
pull that out. Yeah, things only – protections and costumes and warnings only work if you
actually act on them.
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[0:29:48] IP: Yeah. They actually figured it out, but then they couldn't get a hold of the captain.
The captain finally gets the load sheet and they believe that the reduced passenger figure is
correct. But –
[0:30:05] JR: Because it's not out of the realm of possibility.
[0:30:07] IP: Right, right. But there had been a mistake and that they actually had more
passengers than they thought. They take off and the captain says that the jet was slightly slow
to accelerate, but they didn't experience any control difficulties. They were taking off, they get up
to about 15,000 feet and they get an ACARs message that says, “Hey, the load sheet was
incorrect.” They enter a holding pattern, recalculate everything, and then they're off to Sydney.
[0:30:35] JR: Okay. All's well that ends well?
[0:30:38] IP: Now, Qantas introduced as part of the let's make sure this doesn't happen again,
there is a requirement for a physical passenger headcount if there's any discrepancy identified
between what the load sheet should say and what other weight and balance information says.
They've expanded their procedures for communicating in flight safety critical information.
[0:31:02] JR: Good. Good. Good.
[0:31:03] IP: Basically, we need a way to get in touch with you before you depart.
[0:31:07] JR: Excellent. Good stuff. Love precautions put into place. After a mishap, learning
your lessons and putting procedures into place, so that doesn't happen again. That's the best
possible outcome.
[0:31:16] IP: Let's get towards the end of the episode now where we talk about Lithuanian
cigarette smuggling balloons. Or I should say, Belarusian cigarette smuggling balloons wafting
over into Lithuania. Lithuania has declared this to be a true national security issue. As part of
dealing with that, the commercial side of part dealing with that, the government is trying to
incentivize nighttime flights to move to Knaus, away from Vilnius. Local aviation authorities in
Vilnius are suspect about this saying, well, if they can move that far, why not go to Riga, or even
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further away? We'll see if any airlines actually do this. But it's interesting that they're trying to
solve this problem on a number of different fronts, albeit my idea of just putting up a giant net
along the border has not been taken up yet.
[0:32:12] JR: That’s just the solution, is just make the flights go elsewhere. That doesn't seem
like a solution.
[0:32:19] IP: So, it can't impact. This would only, I guess, be at night. Elsewhere, Malaysia says,
it is resuming the search for MH370. This is the latest search effort. Ocean Infinity, which signed
a contract back in the fall, will begin, or resume its deep-sea search at the end of December.
They will search for MH370 along the bottom of the ocean for a total of 55 days. But those days
won't all be in a row. They'll be dependent on availability of the ships, as well as weather.
Obviously, you can't tow deep sea sonar in extremely rough seas. Good luck to them.
[0:33:01] JR: Do we know why this came up? Why now? Why is this coming back up?
[0:33:05] IP: They decided that they wanted to continue to pursue the search. Malaysia said
that they're committed to continuing to search for the aircraft. They reached this agreement and
they said, okay, you've got the tools and we'll pay for this and go out and do it.
[0:33:25] JR: All right. Can't argue with that, can we? I hope they find it this time.
[0:33:29] IP: I hope they find it. Other bittersweet news, as far as aircraft are concerned, the
Samaritan's Purse DC-8, the last US registered DC-8 operated its last mission at the beginning
of November and getting that confirmation now. They flew to Jamaica with relief supplies for
Hurricane Melissa victims. The Samaritan's Purse folks are replacing their DC-8 with a 767.
Truly modernizing.
[0:34:00] JR: I mean, when you're coming from a DC-8, yeah, I guess. Are there any other
active DC-8 operators left in the world, or was this it?
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[0:34:10] IP: There are. No, there are a few DC-8s still operating. If you are a Miami airport fan,
you can usually catch the, I believe, it's Skybus Jet Cargo DC-8. There are a few others flying
around the Caribbean Latin America. I think that's it at this point. I will double check and see.
[0:34:33] JR: It had to be Miami. It's always Miami. I think we've talked about this before. Of
course, if there's a DC-8 left in the world flying, it's going to be Miami, or Columbia.
[0:34:42] IP: Absolutely.
[0:34:44] JR: Or Columbia to Miami.
[0:34:45] IP: There it is. We got there in the end. Jason, I've forgotten things before. My watch, I
forgot my wallet a couple of times, left my keys in the car. That's annoying. I mean, not all like
on the same day. But what I've never done is forgotten about a 737 I owned.
[0:35:04] JR: Well, you've never had the opportunity, Ian. If you had a 737, I mean, maybe you
can forget it.
[0:35:10] IP: Possible. Possible. Well, if anyone wants to give me a 737 to see if I lose it, let me
know. This is Air India. They owe more than $100,000 in fees and charges related to a 737-200
freighter that they forgot in Kolkata, since 2012.
[0:35:33] JR: It could have only been Air India.
[0:35:37] IP: The best part about this is the aircraft isn't even there anymore.
[0:35:41] JR: Well, where is it?
[0:35:42] IP: It was auctioned off and trucked away to be used for maintenance training.
[0:35:47] JR: I mean, forget being air worthy, but do they at least know where it physically is?
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[0:35:50] IP: Yeah, yeah. They know where it physically is. It turns out, that as part of getting rid
of this aircraft, they looked at the records and then went to Air India and they're like, “Hey, you
owe us $110,000.” Air India said, “We didn't even know we owned this aircraft.” I guess, it was a
different iteration of Air India, way before the airline was privatized.
[0:36:14] IP: This is way, way, way before privatization. The aircraft had been parked in 2012. It
had been just sitting in the grass. In the middle of November, they sent a truck to pick it up and
haul it away, so that they could use it for maintenance training. The airport was like, “Hey, do
you guys want to pay your bill, maybe?” They said, “For what?” They said, “The aircraft that
you've had parked here for over a decade.”
[0:36:48] JR: I mean, yeah. You should pay your bills, especially when that comes to 737-200
freighters, but this doesn't surprise me in the least. Air India has had a lot of airplanes over the
years. Not exactly the most well managed airline in the past. This has happened before, it will
happen again.
[0:37:07] IP: We close the show saying, blue skies to former Lufthansa Chief Pilot, Jürgen
Raps, who, I think if you're an avgeek, you've seen some of his videos on Pilots ITV. He was a
major force in German aviation specifically. Was a wonderful man and just did an incredible
amount for pilots at Lufthansa and in Germany, writ large, and was one of the first pilots certified
on the A380 and just absolutely loved that aircraft and gave a passionate speech when he found
out that Airbus was going to cease production of the A380. We'll put a link in the show notes to
some of his media work that we've seen in the past, and some of the really great videos that are
out there, and some of the tributes that have come in to Captain Raps. A giant in the aviation
industry that has passed away at the age of 74.
With that, we say goodbye from episode 349. Jason, welcome back. I hope your jet lag abates
and you're a much sure footing for our next episode.
[0:38:28] JR: I hope so, because the next episode, we get to start our episode number equals
aircraft jokes again.
[0:38:36] IP: Exactly. Exactly.
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[0:38:37] JR: I look forward to that.
[0:38:38] IP: Stay tuned for that next week. We'll be back with episode 350 then. I am Ian
Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:38:47] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2025 AvTalk 19