AvTalk Episode 320: About that Qatari 747

AVT 320 Transcript
EPISODE 320
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 320 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik. Here as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Happy A320 podcast day.
[0:00:21] IP: Happy A320 podcast day.
[0:00:22] JR: We're going to continue this bit until we run out of numbers.
[0:00:25] IP: Well, give us two episodes. We are also joined today by our resident numbers
expert, Gavin Werbeloff. Gavin. Thank you so much for joining us today. We've got a lot of
numbers in this show.
[0:00:35] GW: It's good to be back. I was getting worried I wouldn't get to finish my sandwich
card.
[0:00:41] IP: Now, yeah, we're going to have to punch that card and get you a sandwich. We've
brought –
[0:00:44] JR: One Piece is still in business.
[0:00:47] IP: We've brought Gavin on today because we've got a lot of order information coming
at us fast and furious, thanks in part to a big swing through the Middle East by President Trump,
as well as some stuff that we've been digging into this week with regards to the announcement
that the United States might be accepting a 747 gift from Qatar. We'll talk about that in a little bit.
But breaking news, Jason, huge news coming out of the FAA today.
[0:01:18] JR: Huge, it was. It says what it says that the FAA met with airline representatives to
discuss Newark today, and they will look forward to continuing those conversations tomorrow.
Great. That's it. Those carriers include United, Delta, JetBlue, American, Alaska, Spirit, and
Allegiant Air. Apparently, one day was not enough to come to any sort of meaningful conclusion
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on what the hell do we do with Newark. They'll have to continue into tomorrow. Or possibly
some airline rush was supposed to travel down to DC and were flying out of Newark and simply
just didn't make it today. They'll try again tomorrow. The weather's not great on top of all the
other Newark shenanigans, so lots of flights canceled.
[0:01:57] GW: Yeah, I could go water skiing down the hill and by my house right now, there's
that much water.
[0:02:03] IP: I wouldn't advise that, but that's a good benchmark for how much rain has fallen.
[0:02:07] JR: Not a great day here.
[0:02:08] IP: Last week, we recorded last Wednesday, and then later that day and into the
following day, Secretary of Transportation Duffy made a variety of comments about what the
Department of Transportation and the FAA were going to start doing about the problems that
have plagued Newark and some of the immediate technological improvements and adjustments
that they are going to make to the TRACON in Philadelphia that is handling the Newark
airspace as well as some of the changes that they're going to make to flights at Newark itself in
order to hopefully mitigate some of these impacts that have been forcing delays and
cancellations and things like that.
I guess let's start with what the DOT is proposing for Newark itself, and then we can talk a little
bit more about the technological impacts. The DOT is saying that through June 15th, when the
runway construction at Newark is supposed to be done, Newark would –
[0:03:17] JR: Pauses for the summer because this stuff happens. This will kick back in in the
fall and it's going to be deja vu.
[0:03:26] IP: Right, deja vu all over again. This session of construction, this construction season
is set to pause for the summer. Newark arrivals and departures will not exceed 56 per hour.
Then between June 15th and 25 October, DOT says, with some exceptions, it will propose no
more than 68 flights per hour. The FAA is also going to ask the airlines flying into Newark to
voluntarily reduce the number of scheduled flights. Most of those airlines have already done so,
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including United, which I believe the number is steady at 35 per day about that United's
cancelling, though there have been variations on that theme. That will help. However, that still
seems to be more flights per hour than the airport can handle at the moment.
[0:04:19] JR: Depending on the weather, especially on days like today where they can't use the
crosswind runway, it is certainly well above Newark's actual capacity of being probably one of
the busiest single runway airports in the world. It just can't do that, especially when the air traffic
control situation in the TRACON brings staffing down to basically one and a half employees at
time. That is certainly not helping the situation. And you can't really plan in advance around that.
You can't make a flight schedule knowing that 16 weeks from now, the TRACON is going to
have one full-time air traffic controller and one trainee. This is just bad. We'll get to that in a
moment, but let's talk a bit about some of the technology issues, and I guess you could call
them patches that they've put into place.
Secretary Duffy of the DOT, because apparently the FAA doesn't exist anymore, and everything
comes from the DOT directly, to their credit, they have not gotten out in front of this, but they
have taken responsibility for the crap that has gone on right now. And that being not so much
the staffing that we talked about, but the extremely janky technology that's powering the move
of the air traffic control system from N90 in New York down to Philly. We talked about this a bit
last week, but there is some immediate bandages that the administration now is putting on the
situation, such as adding a single redundant telephone line basically between Philly and New
York TRACON because apparently their entire radio system depended on one copper phone
line working. And when that one phone line dropped for whatever reason, that's the ballgame.
That's it. That's not great.
They've already put one into effect as of three days ago. That'd be five days ago by the time you
were listening to this on release day. And they've actually already relied on that. I believe the
day after they put this redundant line into service, the primary line briefly failed for Newark and it
failed over to the backup line, which really makes a question, "Why wasn't that something that
was already in place?" We may never know. Those are questions for Secretary Buttigieg in the
Biden administration of past, which the current administration has no issues or qualms blaming
these issues on.
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And you know what? They're not really wrong, but there are lots of short-term immediate fixes
that they're going to try to do to shore this up by switching out copper wires and copper
connections for more reliable, hopefully, fiber connections. And then eventually, there's no
timeline for this, moving that data directly down from New York down to Philly Center. It's good
that they're taking responsibility for it. They're not just saying, "Well, this was the last admin's
problem, so the Democrats, this is their fault, and this is their legacy now." But they are
attempting to do something here. But everything at this point is a Band-Aid at best.
[0:07:12] IP: Yeah. Let's keep the conversation focused on Newark for just another second, and
then I want to expand and talk about what was announced last week as far as air traffic control
system-wide changes. The one thing that I want to touch on here is the FAA statement from
yesterday, the 13th of May, where they talked about controller staffing at Philadelphia TRACON
Area C, which is the group of controllers that moved from the Long Island facility down to
Philadelphia and is responsible for flights coming in and out of Newark.
[0:07:47] JR: In addition to the trainees who are now being trained on the Newark airspace as
well.
[0:07:51] IP: Correct. The FAA says that TRACON Area C has "22 fully certified controllers, five
fully certified supervisors, and 21 controllers and supervisors in training. 10 of those 21
controllers and supervisors are receiving on-the-job training. All 10 are certified on at least one
position in area C, and three are certified on multiple positions. This means they can work those
positions without supervision from an instructor. We have a healthy pipeline of controllers with
training classes filled through July 2026." I mean, that's slightly encouraging.
[0:08:32] JR: Yeah, this was the makings of the original plan was to bring these controllers
down to Philly where it's easier to staff up. But that takes years to do to train everyone up. And,
of course, they probably didn't account for 20 – what was it? 20 controllers going on short-term
leave due to the stress from the technology repeatedly failing them. They are down to the
absolute bare bones number of controllers that they can have operating this airspace.
And there were even rumors the other day that Newark, Philly TRACON Area C, would go
ATZ-0 because there just simply wasn't anyone available who was trained and certified on those
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sectors to work that night. And thankfully – what was it? They ended up with one fully certified
controller and one trainee working the overnight hours. They were one sick call or one
something happening away from essentially having to shut down the entirety of the Newark
airspace, which is just bonkers.
[0:09:27] IP: Yeah. It strains credulity that they would not have done more to ensure that some
of the most complicated airspace in the country.
[0:09:41] JR: Dare I say in the world?
[0:09:42] GW: Yeah.
[0:09:42] IP: Yeah. I mean, how this came to pass and why this wasn't seen as a crisis within
the FAA and within the DOT is something that I would like to know.
[0:09:55] JR: They waffled back and forth on this plan for years to bring controllers down from
New York to Philly. It even Schumer got involved in this trying to stop it at one point, but not
because of technology issues or anything like that. Simply because controllers didn't want to be
forcefully moved from their lives from New York down to Philly. But eventually they did ended up
doing this. But the FAA seemed just absolutely disgracefully underprepared that they really
thought they could just route this traffic down from the radar and audio data or the radio data
from New York to Philly.
And you know, it'll probably work over one phone, except phone lines go down. People
disconnect things, and stuff happens. What was it? One of them was the copper phone line
used overheated or something along those lines and then just stopped? Or at one point, the
technician accidentally unplugged it. I don't know. But to not even have any redundancy for this
is just asinine. And at least now the current administration is doing something about it because
they don't really have a choice, do they?
[0:10:50] GW: It's like they're stuck in AOL from 25 years ago, when we've got –
[0:10:56] IP: Did they run out of minutes? Is that what happened?
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[0:10:59] GW: I mean, a single phone line.
[0:11:02] IP: Is this like one of those things where somebody was using the radar and
somebody else picked up the phone?
[0:11:09] JR: Then you got to dial in to New York TRACON again. Oh, and then the phone line's
busy because mom's on the line.
[0:11:15] IP: I think we just dated ourselves.
[0:11:17] JR: Yeah. Half our listeners, I think, won't understand that reference. But they are
apparently looking to bring in fiber connections, which should be, in theory, much more reliable.
Though they keep in these press conferences saying, "We're going to bring in fiber and they're
going to be high-speed links," but then we have to slow the data coming in from those links so
dramatically that it's almost like a waste to have fiber. I'm not really sure what that means
exactly. That's kind of the feeling I get out of all of this is that there's concepts and there's ideas.
But other than making the connection better until they actually bring all that data down directly to
Philly, it's all just kind of –
[0:11:52] GW: Yeah, until there's a star system down there.
[0:11:55] JR: Stuff in. Put more and more lines into Philly and just kind of hope for the best,
which I don't have a better plan.
[0:12:01] GW: I get that the FAA goes, "Hey guys, we can't really use the sort of bleeding edge
technology that's available to consumers because we need it to be tested and redundant. But
come on.
[0:12:14] JR: Fiber is not cutting edge. I have had fiber powering my home internet for 20-plus
years at this point. And I know New York –
[0:12:21] GW: Well, look at you.
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[0:12:22] JR: Well, I know New York is a special region and we get things like that first. But to
still be relying on copper old school phone lines that get routed through the Verizon network is
just nuts. I have also heard a lot of people still going on about the rumors that, "Oh, the air traffic
control system is going to be handed over to Elon Musk, and it's all going to work over Starlink."
Other than the initial mumblings and rumors about that from months ago at this point, I at least
have heard nothing about that. Almost all of the messaging from the DOT and FAA has been
about moving to fiber and maybe connecting remote, like weather stations with satellite
connectivity.
[0:12:58] IP: And frankly, that makes sense.
[0:13:00] JR: That makes a ton of sense. Again, why isn't that something that has already been
done? I don't love the idea of using Starlink for literally anything, but if that's the best way to
connect to a remote weather site, then yeah, do that. But they are not connecting air traffic
control in route centers exclusively via Starlink. I imagine that is not even in the the cards here.
[0:13:22] IP: Let's take a step back and talk about what the DOT announced last Thursday, of
course, right after we recorded. This was the announcement by Secretary Duffy for what they're
calling a brand new air traffic control system, which is not really a brand new air traffic control
system. It's just the upgrades that they should have made along the anyway. And we'll talk
about that in just a second. But I want to talk about what they've announced and said they're
going to do.
Here's the critical actions that the DOT lists. Replacing antiquated telecommunications, new
fiber, wireless, and satellite technologies at over 4,600 sites, 25,000 new radios, and 475 new
voice switches. Replacing 618 radars that have gone past their life cycle, addressing runway
safety by increasing the number of airports with the Surface Awareness Initiative going up from,
I believe it's in the 40s or 50s now, up to 200 airports. Building six new air traffic control centers
for the first time since the 1960s and replacing towers and TRACONS. Installing new modern
hardware and software for all air traffic control facilities to create a common platform system
throughout towers, TRACONS, and centers. And addressing the challenges, and this is what
Jason just mentioned, that face Alaska by adding 174 new weather stations. All of these things
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are on timelines that range from we can do this by the end of the year to it's going to take three
to four years, they say.
[0:15:01] JR: Which is an extremely aggressive timeline. To complete all this work even in three
to five years would be miraculous.
[0:15:08] GW: But if they can actually appropriate all the funds to do it now as opposed to
leaving it at the mercy of the congressional budget process, I think that's a big step in the right
direction. Because we've been talking about our next-gen scene for 15 years.
[0:15:24] JR: There's the rub.
[0:15:24] IP: No. No. No, Gavin, you're wrong. You are wrong. And I'll tell you why.
[0:15:27] JR: Is it 20 years?
[0:15:30] IP: Yes. It's 22 years. The FAA has a great website about next-gen, and they have a
timeline of all of the next-gen milestones. And the first date that they have for next-gen
milestones is December 12, 2003, when Congress passed the Vision 100 Century of Aviation
Reauthorization Act, which established the Joint Planning Development Office to manage work
related to the "next-generation air transportation system."
[0:16:05] GW: What date was that?
[0:16:07] IP: December 12th, 2003.
[0:16:09] GW: Which I think might actually be 100 years to the day from the Wright Brothers'
first flight.
[0:16:16] IP: Indeed. There's the next century aspect of things.
[0:16:21] JR: And it might take another century to actually see any benefits of next-gen.
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[0:16:25] IP: To do this in four years – I mean, I hope, I hope that Congress gets its act together
and says, "How much do you need?" And they give them a number, and Congress says, "Okay,
but you need to actually do it this time." I mean, if they can do it in four years, I would be
amazed. I don't think it's even physically possible to get enough of this stuff together in four
years. I mean, building new air traffic control centers – physically building the buildings is going
to take a couple of years, let alone all the hardware and software that's required. 25,000 new
radios. I mean, figuring out which ones need to be replaced, where to replace them, and in what
order. I mean, all these things are amazing ideas that should have been done 20 years ago. But
they're still amazing ideas. If they can do it in four years, that would be incredible.
But the fact that they're talking about this and hopefully they can get this into Congress that it
needs to be fully funded. Like you mentioned, Gavin, it needs to be funded up front so that the
FAA doesn't have to come back and say, "Okay, we got to this point and ran out of money
because you either didn't give us enough or took it from what was our pool of money to do this
with and spent it on something else."
[0:17:40] GW: Yeah. We've been saying this is a multi-administration problem, but the FAA and
the DOT can only spend money on the things that Congress gives them money for. It's a multi-
administration problem that's been compounded by congressional budget dysfunction.
[0:17:56] JR: Fun.
[0:17:57] IP: It's a perfect storm, and it's stuff that is safety critical. I mean, this stuff is – it's
amazing to me that anyone in Congress is expressing surprise that any of this is happening
given how asleep at the wheel Congress has been to the needs of the national airspace system.
[0:18:18] JR: Yeah, usually congressional members are keenly aware of issues plaguing the
aviation industry because they fly way –
[0:18:24] IP: Long-haul flights out of DCA.
[0:18:26] JR: Fly way more than your average American. I don't know. It's just kind of surprising
that things have gotten to this point, but I guess that's what it is behind the scenes. If stuff keeps
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working just enough so that you could fly from A to B without disruption, I mean, maybe it
doesn't need anybody because it's working. And Newark has shown that, well, maybe that's not
the case anymore.
[0:18:49] IP: Yeah.
[0:18:50] JR: Of course, it had to be Newark.
[0:18:51] IP: Yeah. Let's leave Newark where it is and move on to India-Pakistan for a quick
update there. A ceasefire between India and Pakistan is holding. Traffic has resumed both in
Pakistan as well as transitory traffic by foreign airlines. We saw the first European airline move
through today. LOT has resumed using Pakistan Airspace on its Warsaw-Delhi flight. So I would
expect to see additional airlines follow suit, assuming all things stay the same. Thai Airways
went right back to it. Etihad is back, Emirates is back. I would expect to see more and more
airlines resume using Pakistan airspace to begin saving themselves the hassle. We'll know that
things have truly cooled off when the NOTAMs banning Pakistan from India and India from
Pakistan have been lifted.
[0:19:46] JR: Well, this is good news.
[0:19:48] IP: Yeah, it's moving in the right direction.
[0:19:49] JR: We weren't exactly too hopeful that things would get better when we recorded last
week, but they have.
[0:19:55] IP: They have.
[0:19:55] JR: Surprised. Happily surprised. This doesn't –
[0:19:58] IP: Cautiously optimistic.
[0:19:59] JR: Cautiously optimistic that things will improve. Gavin, we have brought you on the
show this week because you, as our resident numbers guy, we got a lot of numbers to go over.
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We've got to talk about IAG. We've got to talk about Qatar, and then also Qatar Airways. Yet
somehow, those are two different topics. Oh, also, there's the whole thing Air Force One and
Doomsday planes and all that. But let's start with your favorite airline group, the International
Airline Group.
[0:20:31] GW: Yes. My former second landlord and the former British Airways. They announced
a pretty sizable order for 32 787-10s for British Airways, which is in addition to the six option
conversions that have already been announced. 21 A330-900neos that can go anywhere
between LEVEL, Iberia, and Air Lingus.
[0:20:59] JR: I love those when an airline group orders 21 aircraft and they're just like, "We
don't really know which airline we're going to give it to. We'll figure that out later. But Paine's
going to end up on it at some point," which is kind of exactly what happened with the 321XLR,
where it was supposed to go to Air Lingus until it wasn't.
[0:21:14] GW: But that kind have had a little bit of –
[0:21:17] JR: There were some history. There was some background there. But again, it's going
to go to Air Lingus, or Iberia, or LEVEL, or somebody.
[0:21:23] GW: Six more A350-900s for Iberia. Six more A350-1000s for British Airways.
[0:21:32] JR: Wow. Wait, there's more.
[0:21:35] IP: And six 777-9s for BA as well.
[0:21:37] GW: Yes. Six option exercises for 777-9s. According to the IAG news release, the 12
A350s and 6 777-9 were all option conversions that were exercised in March, but undisclosed.
Undisclosed are allowed. The fleet continues to shrink.
[0:21:58] JR: Undisclosed.
[0:22:00] IP: Yeah, they are now disclosed.
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[0:22:02] GW: With the 32 and 21 710s and A330-990neos being fresh orders that were newly
announced. The interesting thing about the 787Xs for a number of reasons. In addition to these
32 and the six option conversions from a few months ago, all switching from Rolls-Royce
engines to GE, which is a big loss for Rolls-Royce, but given the issues that Trent 1000 has
had, in addition to BA Air New Zealand is their second tranche of 787s is getting GE engines as
is LATAM. There are a bunch of airlines that are moving in response to the reliability issues that
Rolls has had.
A weird quirk about the 12 first 787-10s for British Airways is that they were explicitly ordered
without the overhead crew rest compartment that provides a place for pilots to rest on longer
flights, which may sound odd until you realize that all of BA's GE-powered 777-200ERs also
lack crew rest and also have derated engines putting them on a roughly 4,800 mile range leash.
You'll see 787-10s and the GE-powered 777-200ERs go as far as Houston and Seattle, but no
farther. They won't –
[0:23:41] JR: I mean, they were like the New York shuttle bus, basically.
[0:23:44] GW: After BA retired all of its that 747s, yeah, they were. This is the first real big BA
order since COVID, where they, in one fell swoop, retired 25% of their long-haul fleet, 31
747-400s and 3 777-200 A-markets out of a long-haul fleet that was at that point 137 planes.
[0:24:07] JR: What all is said and done from this order, is that kind of the end of the last gen
aircraft at BA or, really, IAG as a whole? Will this end up seeing all of the older 777-200s and old
A332 and 300s gone from IAG? Is this when everything at IAG will be something at least that's
called modern or next-gen?
[0:24:30] GW: Probably. But the big question mark at least in my mind is what happens at
Gatwick with BA just because they're kind of growing that operation and there are quite a few
777-200 ERs that have had new premium economy and economy seats put in but are still
boarding the Yin-Yang business class of yesteryear.
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[0:24:54] JR: Well, we don't want to be too kind to passengers down at Gatwick. They know
what they get.
[0:24:59] GW: Yeah. But the other interesting thing, and this is sort of a BA has a tradition of
taking on maybe not the launch customer for the increased gross weight model, but one of the
first. The very first 777-200ER is still flying with British Airways. They took the very first A380
increased gross weight. And we have yet to see when the 787-10 increased gross weight model
will actually launch. Originally, it was supposed to go to Air New Zealand next month, but that's
sort of vaporware at this point and really haven't heard much more recently than John
Ostrower's article from just under two years ago talking about what the increased max takeoff
weight is going to do for the 787-10.
United has said that it will allow them to fly Chicago to Tokyo year-round, which is pretty long
legs. Those of us who spend time in the T2 data, which is supplied to DOT and only really
covers American carriers, I know I've been incredibly impressed with how much the 787-10 can
carry inside its performance envelope and how little fuel it takes to do that in terms of combined
passenger and cargo operations.
And now, the BA is going to be getting more of them and aren't going to be imposing their own
arbitrary range limits on them. I think we'll probably see them at places like LAX, and San Diego,
and Las Vegas, and maybe even as far as Cape Town. And we'll really be able to see what this
plane can do because it was really marketed as sort of a regional transatlantic plane. And other
than United, who flies them New York to Lviv, LA-Tokyo, Etihad, Singapore Airlines really have
them as almost regional. They'll max out at about 3,000 miles.
[0:27:03] IP: I mean, Singapore is literally calling it. They've literally called it a regional jet. The
cabin configuration is basically their version of a regional jet.
[0:27:11] GW: If only all airlines could have their –
[0:27:14] IP: Right.
[0:27:16] GW: That could be everyone's regional jet and not Jason's usual CRJ-550s.
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[0:27:20] JR: I wish. I don't even get those anymore.
[0:27:22] GW: Yeah. I think it's going to be very interesting to see as these 38 planes get
delivered, which should almost take care of BA's 777-200ER fleet in terms of fleet replacement.
It'll be very interesting to see what they do with them, where they take them, and sort of how
much they stretch the legs.
[0:27:45] JR: Let's change the topic quite dramatically here. I'm not sure what to make of this
transition because our show notes just say the Qatari 747 fam. If you live under a rock or you
don't have a phone –
[0:28:01] IP: Good for you.
[0:28:03] JR: Good for you. Please teach us your ways. But if you don't live under a rock,
you've probably heard the news that the US government, or maybe not even the US
government, but the Trump administration or Trump himself, I don't know, is looking at being
gifted a 747-8i BBJ with a VVIP interior from the Qatari government. And that would substitute in
as a temporary new Air Force One or something. Gavin, what the hell is happening here?
[0:28:35] GW: I think we need to go back to where we are in the Air Force One replacement
process. And we also know quite a lot about this particular plane because for anyone who was
born under a rock, there are not many 747-8is in existence.
[0:28:55] JR: Yes, there was a spat probably about 10 years ago where a couple of these were
bought by governments and configured as VVIP aircraft. And then turns out they're really
expensive and nobody really wants them. And Qatar has been trying to get rid of this one for
five years.
[0:29:11] GW: The Qatari's bought four.
[0:29:13] JR: Oh, I mean, sure. Probably one. Why not four?
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[0:29:16] GW: Exactly. Let's rewind a bit to January 2009, when the Air Force started really
talking in earnest about replacing the 747-200s that serve as Air Force One. And there are two
of them. They're 747-200s, but they have some of the 400 technology in them. They've got the
engines from the CF6s, the upgraded CF6s that went into the 747-400. The Air Force was
talking about how initially they wanted three planes to replace the two that were in existence for
more redundancy. They very famously opened it up to pretty much any four-engine plane. I think
we can safely rule out Ilyushin and the Russian manufacturers, it took Airbus all of three weeks
to say, "Yeah, we're not bidding with the A380." It would take another six years before the Air
Force officially selected the 747-8i as the replacement, the new Air Force One.
That takes us to 2015, and the process just kept on going and getting more expensive with very
little to show for it. At that point, President Trump was in office and he very famously made a
fixed price deal with Boeing for two X, what were intended for Transaero whitetails that were
sitting out in Victorville. Boeing was going to convert them into the Air Force One's spec. And
initially, the thought had been that they would be operational by 2024. That timeline kept on
getting pushed back, and the cost kept on going up.
[0:31:03] JR: For Boeing.
[0:31:04] GW: For Boeing. This was a fixed – I think at one point, Kelly Ortberg, I think in
February, was quoted saying that Boeing is going to lose about $2 billion on this, if they're lucky.
This was, I think, in January or February. And we also heard that the entry to service might be
slipping to as late as 2035.
[0:31:24] JR: Wait, I hadn't heard that until now. That's a – wow. Will there be a Boeing left by
2035 at this rate? That's a whole –
[0:31:32] GW: I will leave that to wiser people than me to prognosticate on. But simultaneous
with the Air Force One replacement was the replacement process for the E4Bs, the Doomsday
planes that carry the Secretary of Defense when he travels abroad. And also, I think one also
pre-positions with the president when he travels abroad to make sure that there are two
backups should they be necessary.
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This process was a much shorter selection process. And Sierra Nevada Corporation, which is a
– I wouldn't say they're not one of the primes, but they're a well-regarded, experienced defense
contractor, won the bid to build five 747-8is, also known as E-4Cs, for the Air Force, and they –
[0:32:25] IP: They also have a lot of experience modifying aircraft specifically.
[0:32:30] GW: Yes. And I believe putting in aerial refueling capabilities and do planes that didn't
used to have them, which comes into play with the E4Cs.
[0:32:41] IP: Because as we'll know, the requirements for the new Air Force Ones does not
include air-to-air refueling.
[0:32:48] GW: I think given where we've gotten to with fuel efficiency and the sort of under
payloading of Air Force One relative to what the airframe is capable of, I think that they realized
that that wasn't going to be a need, which is why it got taken out of the requirements. But Sierra
Nevada, obviously Boeing has shut down the line for the 747-8 and they needed to go out and
get some planes. They're buying five. Four have been delivered from Korean Air and we'll be
converting them to the E4C's specification. Even before all of this hoopla with this VVIP Qatari
747-8, there were seven, six owned and one more to be delivered, 747-8is that were at some
point in the process of being converted to US Air Force specifications.
[0:33:48] JR: But for the most part, those were passenger flying commercial aircraft that the US
government just bought because the airline was done with them.
[0:33:56] GW: Both the airlines stopped existing.
[0:33:57] JR: Or that. In this case, the Qatari 74 and the VVIP layout is an extremely different
situation. This is not an aircraft the government will be buying. It's not an aircraft that they'll be
converting, but they are going to have to convert it anyway, and it's not going to be free. Then
we're just going to go give it to the Trump library in four years.
[0:34:20] IP: That's where this whole thing breaks down for me.
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[0:34:22] GW: Right. Let's talk about the history of this particular aircraft, because it's very well
chronicled. Its first flight was on March 31st, 2012. It was delivered just under four weeks later,
and it went to Boeing Wichita for some work. And then in November of 2012, it was flown to
Basel in Switzerland for fit-out. The fit-out took two years and nine months, and it was delivered
to Doha in July of 2015.
It flew for Qatar for the royal family, for people adjacent to the Royal family. We're not really sure
who used this plane, or, I mean, I don't think it was official. And then in 2020, it was put up for
sale, and there was a pretty in-depth article by Tyler Rogoway and Joe Trevithick at the War
Zone about this plane when it was put up for sale. And it had a Qatari registration up to that
point until in late 2023, it was re-registered in the Isle of Man. We still knew very little about who
was flying it and who owned it. And that all changed in February of this year when it was, for
Valentine's Day, flown to Palm Beach International, where President Trump toured it, and then it
flew right back to Doha.
[0:35:48] JR: The old West Palm Beach to Doha line.
[0:35:50] GW: Exactly.
[0:35:51] JR: Who hasn't flown it?
[0:35:52] GW: I mean, there's Fort Lauderdale to Dubai, but I think that's a little more
commercially viable. And then it was flown to Boeing, San Antonio in April of this year, where it
is still sitting as far as I know. And then two weeks ago, there was reporting in the Wall Street
Journal that the Air Force was looking at buying the plane because President Trump was
unhappy with the delays and cost overruns to the new ones and listed L3 Harris as the
contractor who was going to do the conversion. That's a third major US defense contractor
converting an existing 747-8i to the Air Force's spec.
And then this weekend, everything blew up because there were quotes that it was being gifted
to President Trump personally or it was being gifted to the country. No one was sure. But that it
was then going to go to President Trump's library after he left office. And he would be able to
use it after he left office, which I don't think makes any sense to any of us given how much US
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taxpayer money will be needed to convert the plane from its VVIP configuration into something
resembling Air Force One.
Also, the operating cost, President Trump has a 757 that's his. I've seen estimates anywhere
between $10,000 and $15,000 an hour to fly that plane. I pulled up from form 41 data in the
DOT what Atlas Air, and Polar Air Cargo, and UPS – what it costs them per hour all-in to fly their
747-8Fs. And they're all coming in between $15,000 and $25,000 an hour. And those are for
planes that are operating 10 to 11 hours per day. The cost per hour goes down when they're in
service. And, oh, by the way, these airlines have their own maintenance departments who are
constantly turning over and doing line maintenance on these planes on routine intervals.
It says the last reporting I could find from about I think 2021-2023 is that it costs $186,000 an
hour to operate Air Force One. Even if we split the difference and putting it in $110,000 an hour,
that is enough to drain the bank account of any private citizen extremely quickly. The idea that
this is going to be a party favor for President Trump when he leaves office, that he'll fund its
operations on its own, seems pretty far-fetched to me.
[0:38:41] JR: Yeah. We'll wait to see when, or if we get some additional information on this, or if
it even happens at all. Maybe this is all to do about nothing.
[0:38:49] IP: I just want to bring up the other thing about, even if they do take the aircraft, even
if this is somehow gifted, not to President Trump, but to the United States of America. If Qatar
says, "Hey, if they pull a Statue of Liberty and say, "Here's a plane," and the Department of
Defense goes, "Okay, fine." There's no way they're not going to strip that aircraft down to the
bare aluminum skin. And even then, they might go further than that.
[0:39:19] JR: Which then makes your question, is this even any faster than just waiting for a
Boeing delivered aircraft. I really hope they're not just going to take this Qatari aircraft that's
been flying around or mostly sitting for the better part of a decade and just slap it into service.
The amount of work they should need to do to put this into service to act as what is essentially
an Air Force One, I can't imagine that's going to be a quick process. And if is a quick process,
that should raise all sorts of red flags about what's going on.
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[0:39:49] IP: I mean, the security concerns alone should make this a non-starter.
[0:39:55] GW: Right. And also, if we're being honest, Boeing is sitting on a 747-8i that was
intended for the Saudis, but the monarch who ordered it passed away and sat in Basel
Switzerland for more than a decade before going back to Boeing. If we are talking about other
more secure options, they exist.
[0:40:24] JR: They exist, but they ain't free because they ain't coming for free from a foreign
government.
[0:40:29] GW: Right. Quite honestly, the Qataris have been trying to sell this thing for five years.
There's a reason they haven't been able to.
[0:40:37] JR: I feel like I'd feel better if they just charged us like a dollar for it, like how Airbus
bought the A220. Like, "Let us buy it for a dollar. Don't give it to us for free. Charge us a dollar."
[0:40:46] IP: Maybe we could get some frozen orange juice futures, and that would be nice.
[0:40:52] JR: Speaking of Qatar.
[0:40:53] IP: Yeah. And actual money.
[0:40:54] JR: Yeah. More of the reason we have Gavin here is because Qatar Airways ordered
a buttload of Boeing airplanes today. Gavin, what did they order and why did they order them?
[0:41:04] GW: They ordered 30 more 777-9s on top of the 60 they already had on order. And
they ordered 130 787s, of which 10 came from the backlog of undisclosed airlines.
[0:41:20] JR: Oh, further whittling down our perspective fleet. That's not good.
[0:41:24] IP: Nuts.
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[0:41:24] JR: No. And on top of that, 50 options on top of the 130 and 30 for a total of 210
potential aircraft for Qatar, which already has a pretty sizable backlog, right?
[0:41:37] GW: I don't know where they're going to take them all.
[0:41:40] JR: Yeah, exactly. Where do these aircraft go?
[0:41:41] GW: We talked about British Airways. They had 137 widebodies across two airports.
Qatar's existing fleet is close to 200 widebodies, and they only have one home airport. Now,
let's say the first 777-9s replaced the existing 57 777-300ERs, and they've got 8 A380s that are
not going to be long for this world. Okay. That's still another 130 787s for growth, a mix of what it
appears to be 787-9s and -10s based on the pictures that were shown. We'll see if it actually
happens.
[0:42:27] IP: That's the interesting thing here is that there were no delivery timelines to date by
either Boeing nor Qatar.
[0:42:35] JR: Now, there aren't even any plans currently to expand Doha's airport at this point,
right? I think all the expansions that they were planning are done. That airport is, I think, done.
There's nothing else coming. Any aircraft they get, they're going to have to cram into the existing
airport or cook up another Expansion to the airport. And it's not like Qatar Airways has a trio of
other subsidiary airlines anymore. If Qatar Airways is taking airplanes, they're going to Qatar
Airways unless they plan on leasing them out to someone else, because that's possible.
[0:43:10] GW: I mean, they did buy Meridiana, which then got turned into something else that
I'm blanking on the name of and then got shut down.
[0:43:19] JR: Yeah. And there was Al Maha and other stuff. But these days, Qatar Airways is
essentially just Qatar Airways. I don't believe it has any subsidiaries. Maybe they're looking at
leasing these aircraft out, getting in line, prospectively, to lease them out in the future for other
airlines who are in need of aircraft. This is a lot of airplanes.
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AVT 320 Transcript
[0:43:38] GW: It's definitely is a lot of airplanes. I mean, also on top of that, it was announced
last week that they are going to be the launch customer for the Mammoth Freighter 777-200LR
conversions. Not to be confused with the 777-300ERSF, which I like to call the 777-WOOF,
because that's much just easier to say. These are ex-Delta planes, which is kind of ironic, given
the antagonism.
[0:44:12] JR: Some history there at all.
[0:44:13] GW: Between Qatar Airways and Delta.
[0:44:16] IP: They're all friends now.
[0:44:16] GW: Yeah. But they've got I think 28, 24 777-8 freighters on order as well. They're just
scooping up planes left, right, and center.
[0:44:31] IP: They're going to need to make that island bigger.
[0:44:33] JR: Yes. You know who else has a lot of airplanes on order, and it's probably going to
be pretty happy right now? China. Because, apparently, Boeing airplanes are back on the menu
for Chinese airlines. Again, for now. Check back in later.
[0:44:47] GW: Sure. They're going to send those 737s back to Hawaii from Renton.
[0:44:52] JR: But apparently, China has removed its one-month-old ban on Boeing deliveries
after some sort of, for right now, US trade truce. Yeah, maybe they will not have to remarket
those aircraft and they could just literally turn them – gas them up, turn them around and send
them back to China where they came from.
[0:45:13] IP: We're only flying them back if you promise to take the delivery when we land.
[0:45:18] JR: Here's the keys, and then they run away.
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[0:45:18] IP: Yeah, just toss the keys and go. Jason, you had a fun little jaunt this week as
United continues to host events in your living room.
[0:45:34] JR: I did tell them that the next time they have an event, they should just use my
building's common space because they keep coming closer and closer. And I literally walked to
this one. It was quite nice.
[0:45:43] IP: What were you there for? And why do I care?
[0:45:46] JR: I don't know if you care because I don't know if you fly United Polaris all that
often.
[0:45:50] IP: Everywhere I fly.
[0:45:52] JR: You might, being a Newark hostage, I guess.
[0:45:55] GW: Yes. United replaced British Airways as my other landlord.
[0:45:58] JR: Yeah, I'm sorry. Or maybe not. United is quite nice these days. But United here in
Brooklyn announced their new version of Polaris, which they're calling the 787 Elevated
Experience, which will be installed line fit on new, only new 787-9 deliveries coming later this
year, in service next year. Not all that surprising stuff. I mean, it's a brand-new version of Polaris
with your door and your suites and all that. But I think the icing on the cake of everything is that
every airline with these new business class is doing something different in the bulkhead seat
because those seats are just naturally bigger, they're roomier. But United is doing everything it
can to offer a first-class service again without calling it first-class.
And it's not just like you might see at Condor or JetBlue where they have a thing and it's a seat
assignment and they call it, either JetBlue Mint Studio or whatever the big seat up front. They
are doing completely differentiated ground service. If you book these United Polaris Studio
seats, you get to use global services on the ground. You obviously get the lounge access, you
get the ground transport between your gate if you have a connection. They're doing caviar, and
champagne, and different meal service, and pajamas, and playing cards, and different
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AVT 320 Transcript
headphones. It's basically the revival of international first-class for US Airline without calling it
first class. And yes, Gavin, I've realized Americans still has first-class on its 777-300ERs and
A321Ts. But let's not talk about those because they're about to undo that.
[0:47:39] GW: Well, what's interesting is that I don't know if American is officially unveiled their
version yet or they just got gazumped by United.
[0:47:48] JR: They got gazumped. I'm not sure the definition of gazumped.
[0:47:53] GW: Beaten to the press release.
[0:47:55] JR: Yes. Whatever American announced, United doubled down and absolutely
stomped American out. American has a very nice 789 premium product coming out, but it's the
little things of like American in its bulkhead seats. It's going to have this tiny, puny monitor that
kind of got mocked quite a bit after they announced it. And United's like, "You know what?
Screw it. We're going to put in the biggest of any US airline and it's like 27 inches of 4K
monitor." And they were not hesitant to call out American for not going the extra few miles that
United. It's a premium class war. And I'm here for it even though I'll probably never fly it.
[0:48:37] GW: The funny thing is that they're both using the same underlying seat, the Adient
Ascent, which has the sort of front row, first-class light, which United's going all out with. But
also, interestingly, the center pairs, you can choose between having the center pair facing
towards each other or facing away from each other. And apparently, according to United, facing
away each other is better for couples so that their heads are close together and they can speak
to each other more easily.
[0:49:11] JR: Yeah, it's really interesting that they put a lot of thought into it. It's going to be a
nightmare to kind of retail anywhere except on united.com, but that's my nine-to-five problem,
not my podcast problem, so I don't want to talk about that. But it really is interesting to see how
premium United is going way above American and even above Delta at this point.
That being said, all of these things can disappear at the snap of your fingers, all these soft
product things like the playing cards, and the different headphones, and the caviar, that could all
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be vaporware. It could be a thing they announced and never do. Or it could be a thing that they
announced and do and then slowly can die a death by a thousand cuts. We'll see.
[0:49:54] GW: Yeah. The interesting thing is those soft enhancements being a sort of extension
of business class mean they don't have to make a big commitment hardware-wise in order to
give them a shot. It's a risk-averse way to do it.
[0:50:10] JR: This will be a widespread thing on United eventually for many, many of their new
deliveries, but they're not refurbishing their old aircraft. It's going to be back in that weirdo
position where it's like there's United Polaris and there's United Polaris. And hopefully you're on
the latter.
[0:50:26] GW: The other thing that I didn't realize was that the existing Polaris seat, which is
based on the Optima platform, which was Zodiac, I believe, and is now Collins. To me, it's just
been merged and acquired too many times. I was surprised to see that in that forward cabin of
the 777-9, you fit the exact same number of seats, whether you're using the Optima or the
Ascent, which is a good thing because sort of the knock-on reverse herring bones is that they're
known for not being a space efficient. And so you can't fit as many of them into the plane. But
good on the Adient for solving that problem.
[0:51:06] JR: Yeah, seating manufacturers have gotten really clever on their seating layouts
and squeezing as many seats in as they can. I think Adient also renamed last week to Altitude
or something like that. But the battery in my keyboard just died, so I can't look it up. And that
means we've gone on too long and need to get to the speed round of this podcast.
[0:51:25] IP: We have reached the speed round.
[0:51:27] GW: The speed round is 40 more planes from unidentified airlines. Fleet United took
40 more A321Neos.
[0:51:37] JR: Hey, that's something. Wow, we are really dwindling on disclosed airlines.
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AVT 320 Transcript
[0:51:42] IP: We are. We are. To round out the end of the show, the ICAO Council has voted to
hold Russia responsible for the downing of MH17. This week, the Council of the International
Civil Aviation Organization voted that the Russian Federation "failed to uphold its obligations
under International Air Law in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17." The report
itself laying out how Russia did not uphold its obligations is not out yet. But ICAO says that will
be out for the next meeting of the ICAO Council.
Harkening back to episode 198 of this podcast, when we talked with the fine folks who make
organ transplant logistics work. We talked about some of the challenges of getting those organs
from the donors to the recipients. And the FAA's report, which was mandated by the FAA
Reauthorization Act on how to speed organ transplant transport and make it more efficient and
better on commercial aircraft, that report is out. It's a very lengthy report that goes into a lot of
things that can be done immediately that might take a little bit of time. And that probably won't
happen because they're just too difficult, but we're going to keep trying to see how well we can
do things. We'll put a link to the show notes to that report if that's something that you're
interested in following up.
And if you haven't listened to our episode where we discuss organ transplant logistics, do so.
It's probably one of my favorite episodes because I went in having no preconceived notion
about how that worked and learned an incredible amount and was just flabbergasted by what
goes into to making that process move.
Air Canada reported its earnings this week, and there's some uncertainty. "We anticipate market
conditions will remain unsteady with an uncertain economic outlook. Flights on Air Canada or
forward bookings on Air Canada to the US are down 5%," not the 70% that was previously
reported, looking at one other source. But Air Canada is basically flat in passenger travel or
down a bit. They are "prudently moderating our expectations and concentrating on controllable
factors such as cost management and strategic capacity adjustments to ensure strong
performance in key financial metrics". Long story short, we have no idea what's going to
happen, and we're doing the best we can.
[0:54:22] JR: Join the club.
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[0:54:24] GW: They're trying to siphon United traffic out of Newark by having people transit
Toronto, which works perfectly until Newark does a Newark.
[0:54:33] JR: Or LaGuardia does a LaGuardia. Yes. The concept of flying long-haul out of
Montreal or Toronto seems great until you hit your first nine-hour delay from La Guardia to
Toronto, and nothing works as planned. Great in concept, but traffic control seems to have other
plans in store for you here.
[0:54:54] IP: Let's see. We've got two more quick things. One, Vietjet is probably not going to
around for much longer. Court has said, "No, you need to pay your bills," and that's $180 million
that they don't have. It will be interesting to see what they managed to do to get around this, but
it could be that Vietjet is done for.
[0:55:18] JR: Yeah, that $180 million apparently stems from five years ago during COVID.
Vietjet just stopped paying the fees on its leases for a whole bunch of aircraft are only – actually,
not even that many. Just four aircraft, apparently, according to this Bloomberg article. And
apparently, that's really added up that Vietjet just wasn't paying. And apparently, there's kind of a
whole shell game going on here of where exactly the money is coming from for Vietjet because
they also have, I think, a massive backlog with Airbus as well, and Boeing.
[0:55:51] IP: Over 300 planes.
[0:55:53] JR: Yeah. It's a lot of planes. Hopefully, this doesn't unravel the entire ball that is
Vietjet. But they're not doing too great right now, especially since they apparently need,
according to this article, $45 million of unrestricted cash for day-to-day operations. If they don't
have $180 million to pay off these airplanes, that $45 million doesn't go too far.
[0:56:13] IP: Not great. And to end the show, we've got some livery news. JetBlue has a new
Dunkin' livery, which looks exactly what you would picture a Dunkin' livery to look like. It is quite
loud, and you're not going to miss it. That registration is November 643 Juliet Bravo. You can
see that. We'll put a link to that one in the show notes.
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AVT 320 Transcript
And then Emirates has just come out with a Courier Express livery, which I quite like. It seems
to me to be a riff on the A350 freighter contest-winning livery that came out when they revealed
that. It looks like ripped packaging paper on an A380. And I'm here for that.
[0:57:01] JR: Is this real? I can't find any images of it. I see stuff from like April 2nd, which
always makes me a bit suspicious that it's not real, but this is a real thing.
[0:57:10] IP: I'm looking at the aircraft landing in Johannesburg today.
[0:57:13] JR: All right.
[0:57:15] IP: That's Alpha 6 Echo Echo Tango.
[0:57:18] GW: When my daughter saw a picture of the Dunkin' Donuts jet, she asked me,
"Daddy, does it smell like donuts inside?"
[0:57:26] JR: Only one way to find out, Gavin.
[0:57:28] IP: If it doesn't, they've missed a huge marketing opportunity.
[0:57:33] JR: Yes. And also, apparently, the name of the aircraft is Brewing Altitude. Jet Blue
names every one of their planes. But Frank Petaini on Blue Sky says, "Hey, they should have
named it Jet Brew." Every one of their aircraft has jet in it somewhere, most of them do. And to
miss out jet brew, that's just a miss. Come on.
[0:57:52] GW: Yeah, that's an obvious miss if you think about it.
[0:57:55] JR: Right?
[0:57:56] IP: I wonder if there's a copyright somewhere where somebody's got Jet Brew. We'll
figure it out and get back to you.
[0:58:04] JR: No, we won't.
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AVT 320 Transcript
[0:58:06] IP: Gavin Werbeloff, our resident numbers expert, has joined us this week to talk
about so many numbers and so much more. Gavin, thank you so much as always for joining us.
This has been episode 320 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik. Here as always with –
[0:58:24] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2025 AvTalk 28