AvTalk Episode 192: He fought the wire and the wire won

AVT 192 Transcript
EPISODE 192
[EPISODE]
[0:00:08] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 192 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. How's your week going, Ian?
[0:00:19] IP: Better than yours, apparently.
[0:00:22] JR: Yeah. It's been a week.
[0:00:22] IP: We were chatting before we hit record. If we'd recorded that, it probably – No. It
definitely would not have been a family friendly podcast. I'm glad we got that out of the way.
[0:00:35] JR: Yeah. A long week. It's only Wednesday. Dealing with some work stuff. There's
COVID in the household. I don't know if I'll be able to take my trip as planned this weekend. I've
got you to talk to you. We've got a long list of things to discuss. Things are happening in the
industry. They're mostly positive for a change.
[0:00:53] IP: Yeah, this was a mostly good – Mostly good news week.
[0:00:56] JR: Yeah. Longest list in our show notes that we've had to discuss in a very long time.
[0:01:02] IP: That's true. That's true. There's a lot going on.
[0:01:03] JR: I have to scroll to a second page.
[0:01:06] IP: There’s scrolling involved. This is unusual. Last week, we played our first listener
contestant trivia game. Thank you to our mostly willing participants, Kira and Gani who played
so well. We did make a small error, or I should say I made a small error.
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[0:01:23] JR: What did you do?
[0:01:25] IP: It's not what I did. It's what I did in the future. The question was, what ocean does
the longest four-engine passenger flight flyover? The answer as of tomorrow is the Indian
Ocean, because what I did is I looked at – I checked to see which of the longest four-engine
flights are operating. I looked. I saw that Emirates had their Dubai-Auckland flight operated by
the A-380. Noted it down and went on from there. What I failed to note was that it's not yet
operated by the A380, because it starts operating on the 1st of December tomorrow. A slight
mistake there. Didn't affect the outcome of the game, so that's good. Just wanted to put that out.
The correct answer to my futuristic self as of, well, as by the time this podcast comes out, the
correct answer is the Indian Ocean. The Arctic Ocean would be the correct answer up until
Friday with Emirates’s Dubai-Los Angeles flight. I'm sorry.
[0:02:30] JR: You have been warned, Ian. That is your first and only warning.
[0:02:34] IP: Not this week, we're not going to play. But we are going to play in future weeks.
I'm organizing. We've had such a tremendous response that I'm organizing a way to get
everyone together, so that we can make the game flow a little bit more smoothly and make sure
that as many people get to play as possible. What we'll probably end up doing is having some
special shows, or special segments, where we just have the trivia game and people can listen to
those either as the back half of a normal episode, or as special episodes of the podcast outside
of us talking about what's happening in the commercial aviation industry, and things of that
nature. That is the update on the AvTalk trivia game for the moment.
Next week, Jason alluded to it, we will be in Stockholm, if all goes well for Jason and if things
continue to go well for me, we will be in from Stockholm episode. We'll talk with some folks in
the office about some of the great things that we have coming up. There's some things that I'm
really excited about. If you're a close follower of our Twitter account, you may have seen a few
of those previewed, if you were looking closely and thought, “Hmm, that's interesting.” We'll talk
more about that next week, so listen for that on next week's show.
Now, to this week's news, which brings us to, I guess, in the end, good news that no one was
seriously injured, which is very surprising, given what happened.
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[0:03:55] JR: No one directly injured. Though, I wondered – well, I guess we'll get to this, but
wonder if the resulting power outage ended up with any injuries. I don't know. But no one on the
aircraft, or on the ground was injured. But Ian, what happened?
[0:04:08] IP: A Mooney M20-J was on its way from White Plains down to Gaithersburg. As it
approached Gaithersburg, there are high tension wires, or I'm not sure what you could call them
otherwise, but power lines that are on those really, really tall towers. Not the ones that go from
house to house.
[0:04:27] JR: High-voltage transmission lines.
[0:04:30] IP: There you go. High-voltage transmission lines. The aircraft was lower than it
should have been on approach and hit the wires. Not clipped them. Not struck them and the
aircraft continued on. No. Full-on aircraft carrier into the wires, stopped mid-air, being held up by
these transmission lines. Just absolutely –
[0:04:59] JR: Again, it was one of the those defining Twitter things, where just information just
kept trickling out really quickly, but there's just this Mooney dangling from high voltage power
lines. Ironically, power was actually on in the immediate area of the incident, because those
lines carry high voltage power to other places, but it was just surreal to see this aircraft dangling
and getting reports that the pilot and the passenger were fine.
[0:05:26] IP: Yeah. They suffered non-serious injuries. They were in the aircraft after it struck
the lines and became entangled in lines for quite some time, because they had to get the power
company out there with special equipment. Because these lines are very high up in the air. They
had to ground the aircraft. Then they had to secure the aircraft, so that when they opened the
door to get people out, they wouldn't fall. Then they finally got them out and took them off to the
hospital. Just an incredible story about they weren't seriously injured.
[0:05:56] JR: Thankfully, the actual structure of the tower, I guess, didn't – These things are
more sturdy than you would think. There's one of these in my home neighborhood where the
driver of a car drunk, or lost control, took out an entire leg of one of these towers, and the thing
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barely budged. Car was not great, but the tower stood. This one in particular, I think looking at
pictures, had a steel pole up the middle of it, because it also hosted some cellphone equipment.
It was lucky in that it was probably also structurally more sound than some others, because they
had other equipment on it. I do wonder if that helped keep the tower upright and if this would be
a very different conversation had it not been for, I don't know, Verizon, antennas or T-Mobile
antennas, or whatever.
[0:06:43] IP: I mean, again, I'm no structural engineer. But I'd be impressed, wither way,
whatever happened. The interesting thing here, so the pilot has not said much, I think, wisely on
his part. It's clear that the aircraft was flying too low on approach to the airport, which is the
federal approach is not far, or the aircraft was not far from the end of the runway. These
transmission lines are relatively close to the airport, but the pilot was obviously flying too low.
The ADS-B data that we have says, they were flying at 1,100 feet.
Now, we have to remember that 1,100 feet to ADS-B data is not 1,100 feet above the ground.
That's 1,100 feet above mean sea level at standard pressure. To get to the above ground level
altitude for the aircraft, you have to correct standard pressure into local pressure, then you have
to understand the elevation of the ground where the aircraft is flying, and then you have the
altitude above the ground. Correcting for that, from 1,100 feet to correcting for the standard
pressure at the time and the elevation of the ground, it puts the aircraft at about 200 feet above
ground level, which is about where the wires are.
[0:08:03] JR: Yeah, not great. I wonder how much the NTSB investigation will echo what you've
discovered there. Did I read that air traffic control actually reached out to the pilot several times
saying, “Hey, you're too low”?
[0:08:15] IP: I didn't see that.
[0:08:17] JR: I thought I read that.
[0:08:17] IP: But I would not be surprised. I know there were questions about his intentions and
what he was up to. I would not be surprised if they did.
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[0:08:25] JR: Anyway, they're fine, I guess. They were treated for hypothermia, since they were
dangling in an unheated aircraft for the most of a day.
[0:08:33] IP: Quite some time.
[0:08:36] JR: While it was not all that warm out. Again, I can't substantiate this, but somebody
on Twitter replied to me and said, this has actually happened there before. I don't know to what
degree, or if it was as severe as this, but oh, makes you think.
[0:08:48] IP: I know there were concerns that these wires and approaching this particular
airport, there had been issues before. But I don't think anyone's ever gotten –
[0:08:56] JR: Dangled up in them. No one's ever attempted an aircraft carrier style landing on
them.
[0:09:03] IP: Very, very Microsoft Flight Simulator-esque.
[0:09:05] JR: Yes. Don't do that.
[0:09:06] IP: In this event. No. Let's move on from this and talk about what's happening in
Toulouse and Munich this week. The second Airbus Summit is taking place. Last year, we
attended the first Airbus Summit, in last September, and we did a behind the scenes tour of
what Airbus was working on. This year, weren't able to attend, because schedules just didn't
work out for a variety of reasons, unfortunately. But they are broadcasting the summit and you
can follow along. By Friday, when the podcast comes out, you'll be able to go back and look at
everything that's happened in the week.
On the first day, a few interesting things came out. The progress of Airbus’s hydrogen power
solution, or possible hydrogen power solution is moving forward. We're getting a little bit more
information about their hydrogen-powered fuel cell engine that's going to be mounted externally
to the A380 flight test aircraft, MSN001, by 2026 will be flying with a hydrogen fuel cell engine
attached to the rear fuselage. That's not new information. Airbus has detailed more of the
information about what that's going to look like and the actual nature of this particular engine.
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They're going to use stacked hydrogen fuel cells. That will go on to, or inside – the tank will go
inside the A380 and then the engine will be mounted externally. That'll be something to look out
for. I know people are going to get a look at that, I believe, later this week, as a mockup.
[0:10:50] JR: Yeah. Airbus is still planning to flight test some of these new hydrogen engines on
Airbus MSN, A380 MSN1, I think, in 2025, so a couple years from now. Very excited to see that,
but a few of the highlights. The Zero E fuel cell engine. I just said, the A380 MSN1 will flight test
in actually 2026 around there. Obviously, to support this Airbus is building the first liquid
hydrogen refueling center in Toulouse by 2025. There was also some other assorted, less
interesting, sustainable aviation fuel, as I put it on Twitter earlier today. Interesting that they're
still looking at fuel cell, rather than very cold, liquid hydrogen, or is it liquid when it's very cold?
[0:11:36] IP: No, it's liquid.
[0:11:37] JR: It's liquid. Liquid hydrogen, but fuel cells is different, right?
[0:11:42] IP: What's going to happen is the liquid fuel will go from the tank into the engine,
where it becomes gaseous, mixes with oxygen, and then that powers – The fuel cells convert
the hydrogen into electricity.
[0:11:53] JR: Okay. Yes, Airbus has a very nice video about this exact process, basically. It's
very interesting. You should watch it and Ian will put a link to that in the show notes, I’m sure.
[0:12:04] IP: I will absolutely do that. Yeah, like Jason said, the most interesting stuff so far has
been in the hydrogen information. The SAF stuff is, I guess, good, because A, we're still talking
about it and moving things forward, because we're talking about producing more of it and
moving the goalposts to more and more SAF produced. The key, obviously, of course, is how is
it going to be produced? What are the feedstocks for that? Less information on that, but I'm sure
that will become more apparent shortly.
[0:12:34] JR: Yup. Interesting that Airbus spent the entire first day of the Airbus Summit,
basically, only focusing on next generation propulsion, be it hydrogen. Electric was mentioned, I
believe, but Airbus is not so much in the electricity camp for propulsion, and also sustainable
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aviation fuel. Have to ding them a little bit for being fair that they operated the A350 eco
demonstration flights from Toulouse to Munich, to then demonstrate how eco-friendly it was.
Probably be more eco-friendly to not operate at all, that fight. I just thought that was funny, but
interested to see what day two has for Airbus.
[0:13:12] IP: Yeah. Airbus has day two of the summit in Munich. I'm not sure what huge benefit
they got out of that. I'm going to reserve judgment until tomorrow, whatever happens tomorrow.
If whatever happens tomorrow isn’t great, tomorrow being Thursday, then, yes, I completely
agree with you. If whatever they have cooked up for tomorrow is really great, well, then why
didn't they just do the whole thing in Munich? It's one of those things. They have a plan. I'm sure
seems a good plan to them. I will reserve judgment until then. Yes, I agree. It seems like, it was
a flight just to have a flight. Although, we did get a decent look at the Airbus MPs on the A350,
the new production standard with the slim sidewalls. I think Jon Ostrower posted a photo of.
[0:13:58] JR: It is indeed a little slimmer.
[0:14:00] IP: It is indeed a little slimmer. Who knew?
[0:14:02] JR: Yeah. They also demonstrated, I believe, on that flight, their continuous descent
approach into Munich and they claimed it save 35% fuel, which is an astronomically high
number. There are those in the industry that on that flight that claim that seemed a little bit high.
But okay, 35% is a lot. Now replicate it in reality on every flight.
[0:14:25] IP: 35% compared to what, I guess?
[0:14:27] JR: I don't know.
[0:14:28] IP: Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll look into that one then. Yeah, it does seem like a high – I
hadn't seen that. That seems like a very high number. Okay, time for not-so-great news. The
engine that is slated to power the 777-9 is not attached to the aircraft any longer, because
something happened and they had to send it home. Boeing took the GE9X engine that suffered
as yet an unknown issue to us. They took it off the test aircraft. They took it off N779XW, which
had been the only flying 777x testbed. There were four test aircraft built. 779XW had been the
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only one flying. After a flight on October 6th, they discovered something wrong with the engine.
They sent it back to GE’s facility in Ohio.
Tim Clark, the President of Emirates has, which is a 777-9’s lone customer has said that we'll
know something on December 6th. He didn't say how he knew that, but we assume that he's
getting that information directly from GE and Boeing. The question at this point is, is it
something that's design related? If so, that's really, really bad. Or, is it something that was
production related, and that's just bad?
[0:15:48] JR: Yeah, regular bad. I’m quoting here from the Aviation Week article, which is
quoting Tim Clark. “Engines are being stripped down, because they blew up.” That is a direct
quote, allegedly, from Tim Clark, which is not good. Again, we have not seen the engine. I don't
think anyone's posted any images of it. It didn't actually explode or anything, because we almost
certainly would have seen that. Something very not good happened with this aircraft, which is
good that happened in flight testing, this extremely long in duration flight test program for the
777X aircraft. Whatever happened here, Boeing did not meet this right now.
[0:16:30] IP: Yeah. GE says that the issue was a temperature alert was observed and the
operator shut the engine down normally. Engineering investigation of this engine continues. I
think, Tim Clark is using blew up liberally there. We'll see exactly what the issue is. If the
problem is design related, the GE9X has already had some design related delays. If the
problem is again, design related, that pushes things beyond the 2025 window that Emirates is
targeting now. At some point, if I remember, I have to say, okay, when you get the plane, maybe
I'll think about ordering more. But we've been waiting around for years already.
[0:17:10] JR: It seems like, we're heading into the territory where the first 787s and first A380s,
when they were delivered, they were so behind schedule that when they were finally delivered
and accepted by airlines, the interiors were already a generation behind, because they had
already come off the factory line, they had already been specked out, the interiors installed.
They sat for years and years and years. You ended up with United 787s coming off the line with
several generation old entertainment systems that they already had to rip and replace. They
didn't do it immediately, but really seems like the 777X is heading down that line. Just look at
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Lufthansa. They introduced their new, or they introduced the concept of their new business
class seat for the 777X, seeming like a decade ago. It's not coming anytime soon.
[0:17:55] IP: No. Hopefully, it was a production issue, or something that is easily resolvable and
they can put the engines back on the aircraft and continue flight testing. Let's stick with Boeing.
This is good news, if it goes through for Boeing. The 737-7 and Dash 10 MAX are not yet
certified. As we've talked about a bunch of times in the past, if they're not certified, basically by
the end of 2022, they need to be equipped with crew alerting systems.
[0:18:29] JR: Which is not going to happen.
[0:18:30] IP: Which they're not going to be certified by then, so it's certainly not going to
happen. Senator Maria Cantwell, this week is circulating draft legislative language as part of the
defense authorization bill that would remove that requirement from the 737-7 and 737-10 that
would allow Boeing to certify them as they currently are working towards. This is something that
we thought was going to happen. There was previously, Senator Wicker introduced an
amendment that is still alive, but doesn't seem like it's being considered much anymore.
Cantwell’s amendment is interesting, because it includes additional provisions. It removes the
timeline from the MAX 7, MAX 10 certification. But it then says that you have to include, Boeing
has to retrofit every MAX 8 and MAX 9 with the technology developed for the MAX 10, which is
the third angle of attack sensor, which is a software sensor that basically compares the values
between the two physical sensors and says, well, if one of them disagrees, then that's not –
we're going to exclude the erroneous data and go with the more logical data.
Then there's also the ability to silence the stick shaker if it activates erroneously. Those two
things would need to be retrofitted onto all MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft. That would bring, if this is
included and passed, that would bring the US into line with EASA. The European Union's
requirements, as well as Transport Canada's requirements for retrofitting all the MAX aircraft
with those two pieces of technology.
[0:20:20] JR: Yeah. I like this. I have no notes. This is good. I hope this goes through. It's clearly
evident that Boeing has no appetite, or intent to add the EICAS system to the 7 and 10. That's
just not a reality that's going to happen. It's also not a reality where they're just not going to
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produce and sell these aircraft. To me, this seems like the right balance of legislative
workarounds and getting done what needs to get done. Remember, this is going back to, I think,
2020, a Trump era mandate that aircraft need to have – or was it 2018?
[0:20:54] IP: This was passed in 2020. This was the law that was passed in response to the
MAX crashes and criticism of the FAA’s oversight of Boeing certification of the mess.
[0:21:07] JR: It was a 2020 Trump era decision, which I think was the right decision. It was a
good call to do that. I don't like that we're weaseling our way around it, but whoever would have
thought that we'd be in this position with the 7 and 10 are still not certified? I don't think anyone
saw that coming.
[0:21:23] IP: Well, yeah. I mean, COVID certainly didn't help.
[0:21:26] JR: I don't think you can blame this one on COVID. At least not much of it.
[0:21:30] IP: Part of it stems from being unable to operate a lot of the flights that Boeing wanted
operate to get them certified.
[0:21:37] JR: Some of it, yes.
[0:21:39] IP: There's a lot of other things that go into that, too. I will quote this from Dominic
Gates’s great article in the Seattle Times, which we put in the show notes. “Cantwell said her
limit tells airlines, you have to make these retrofits and Boeing has to pay for them.” There you
go. That makes the airlines happy as well.
Moving on. This is, I think, great news for Singapore Airlines. Good news, I think for everybody,
hopefully. The plan now is for Air India and Vistara to merge. The Tata group controls both Air
India, as of recently, which we talked about in a few episodes ago. Then Vistara, which is their
joint venture airline between Tata and Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines owns 49% of
Vistara at the moment.
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Singapore Airlines will invest 250 million dollars in the merged company and receive a quarter
25.1%, to be specific, interest in the merged Air India-Vistara. Tata will control the other 74.9%.
This sets up what – I'm not sure. They haven't really said whether or not they'll keep the two
airlines separate, as far as airline naming and things like that go. The idea is to set up Air India
as a much stronger competitor domestically to Indigo, which is just has over 50% market share
in the domestic market. Then allow a revitalized long-haul airline outside of air India's core
flights to grow as well. We've talked about it a couple of times in the past recently, about a
rumored very large order coming from Air India up to 300, and I think 75 aircraft is what they're
targeting, split between narrow body and wide body jet. That could be coming soon as well, but
no one really knows if and when that's going to happen and how it's going to go exactly.
[0:23:40] JR: Sorry. I'm a little distracted trying to book a flight, suddenly now that availability
popped up. Very, very paused right now.
[0:23:46] IP: Very on brand.
[0:23:48] JR: Yeah, very on brand. I was disappointed to see Vistara go. I think we discussed
this before, so I won't harp on it. They were looked at in the last few years since their startup is
the premium option in India, if you didn't want to deal with Air India. Really, the issue with Air
India wasn't really the domestic operation. It was the travesty of the long-haul operation.
Hopefully with new management, new blood there, new money, they can undo the very stained
last couple decades of history at Air India and turn it around to be the airline it really should be,
because it should be a world-class airline, especially in a country with that population and that
much potential, they can do better and hopefully they do.
[0:24:29] IP: This is good news on top of terrible news. Euro Control has set up a voluntary fund
for states that have lost revenue due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We talked about this
extensively as we were talking about airspace bans and things like that back in late February,
early March. What we're seeing now is that revenue hit coming after eight, nine months to air
and navigation service providers that would normally be charging extensive fees to aircraft flying
over their airspace, no longer seeing those aircraft fly over their airspace. You're in control
setting up a fund to distribute funds to air navigation service providers to make up for that
shortfall, as well as loans to certain ANSP, so that they can continue operating and make their
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budgets. Because they still have to operate. They still have flights and they still have to maintain
safety regulations and things like that. But the revenue coming from overflights is just down
dramatically, because all of the other airlines are flying around their airspace to make sure that
they can avoid Russia, or aircraft that would normally be flying over from Russia are no longer
allowed in the airspace, so they're not providing revenue anyway.
[0:25:54] JR: Yeah. I had not heard this before I read it in our show notes. This is a really good
thing that they're doing. I wonder where they got – maybe not got the idea, but who started this
idea. Where did this come from? Because yeah, this is overflight revenue for some countries is
a huge source of revenue. There are some countries that probably a non-negligible amount of
revenue coming into the federal government is from overflight permits. This is really interesting.
I would love to dig into the numbers of what country took the biggest hit, what country is going to
get the most revenue from this fund? It's a really interesting idea.
Because like you said, Ian, countries that may not be getting the large overflight revenue that
they would have in the past, they still need air traffic control for other flights and flights within
their country and Euro Control can't have an operator in a country to suddenly say, “We're
bankrupt, or out of money.” This is a good idea. Not too often, you get an idea that just say,
“That's a good idea, and they should do it.”
[0:26:51] IP: It won't surprise you to learn that Ukraine is the –
[0:26:55] JR: I am not surprised.
[0:26:57] IP: - the biggest loser of funding for overflights. Moldova is a close second. They're
getting, I got to call it a grant, I guess, of nearly 50 million euros. Then Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
and Poland will take a loan from Euro Control member states of, they're both 46 million euros.
Both almost 50 million euros. That is being used to cover “staff and training costs,” as well as
any other cost needed to ensure operational readiness and continuity when air traffic recovers.
Good on them.
Now, we've got a bunch of basically, flight following stuff to talk about to round out the show.
Some interesting orders, some interesting deliveries and some fun news, I think that Jason's
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really excited to share. We'll start with Korean Air taking delivery of its first A321neo, which is
not hugely notable, other than the fact that the inside of the plane –
[0:27:54] JR: It's not blue.
[0:27:55] JR: - is not blue. I guess, that's the biggest news there.
[0:28:00] JR: Wait. What were you going to go with?
[0:28:01] IP: I was just going to say it has the new revamped interior.
[0:28:06] JR: No. I don't care about that.
[0:28:07] IP: Layout.
[0:28:08] JR: Yes, I literally did write the article about this, about their new interior and that it is
vastly better than narrow bodies that, I guess, it's replacing, or adding to. It has properly flat
seats and seatback screens and the works, but it's not blue. It looks like any other airline. I'm on
the fence here. I don't know about you. But when I see that blue on an inside of a Korean
aircraft, I know it's Korean. There's no doubt that you're flying Korean. I don't always like it,
because I think the blue, the light blue looks cheap on some of their products, but they took the
soul out of the blue interior.
[0:28:42] IP: This is a very interesting argument, because your own argument –
[0:28:44] JR: I’m arguing against myself. I know. I know.
[0:28:46] IP: Yeah. You really are.
[0:28:49] JR: You didn't even catch my pun. I'm so disappointed.
[0:28:51] IP: Oh, I missed it.
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[0:28:53] JR: They took the soul out of the interior of the aircraft.
[0:28:56] IP: Oh, boo.
[0:28:56] JR: I had to repeat it, because you didn't hear it. It works on some of their aircraft. But
on some of them, the light blue looks cheap. Some of their products are not world-class. They're
not the greatest. Our friend, John Walton, wrote a very long article about this, but it's an odd
shift, seemingly out of nowhere that they did this. I guess, it's probably the first interior for the
possibly combined Asiana-Korean Air. It's probably the first shot at a unified interior in the future,
the blue. Maybe they don't continue with the blue. I don't know. Yeah, as you can see, I'm clearly
conflicted about this.
[0:29:37] IP: Well, while Jason works through his feelings, let's talk about something that I have
strong feelings about. That's the penultimate Boeing 747 has been delivered to Atlas Air.
[0:29:50] JR: But not in Atlas livery, right?
[0:29:54] IP: Atlas-ish Air livery. This particular aircraft, an 862-GT is the first of two aircraft that
are operated by Atlas Air. The capacity is wholly leased to Kuehne + Nagel. They get their name
on the side of the plane, at least on this first of two. The second of two is going to be the last
747 ever produced. I really hope that they at least have some special livery, acknowledging the
fact that it's the last one ever. If they don’t, I'm going to be very angry.
[0:30:38] JR: What do you put on that aircraft? I don't know. What could you possibly grace the
final ever, ever, ever in history 747 with to really bring it home? That's a lot of, I don't know,
nostalgia, a lot of history to be painted on that last aircraft, but I've got a bad feeling about it.
[0:31:00] IP: Yeah. Probably end up looking like any old other 747.
[0:31:03] JR: If nothing has leaked by now, it's probably because there's nothing to leak.
[0:31:08] IP: Well, I mean, they haven't painted it yet, as far as I'm aware. The last one has not
yet flown. It's still in production. As of right now, the 747 is still in production. In the coming
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weeks, that will stop. Atlas Air also took the first 777 that it's operating for MSC Mediterranean.
That's also in an Atlas Air adjacent delivery. I guess, be on the lookout for that one. Let's see,
what else? Oh, Comac has now in its hands, the C919 production certificate, so they can make
planes.
[0:31:43] JR: That’s good. They’re want to make airplanes.
[0:31:45] IP: They are no longer not allowed to produce the planes. They have that certificate
and they can get going. The first one is now in China Eastern livery. That is supposed to be
delivered, well, by the time the podcast comes out this month, it'll be delivered in December at
some point. Then we'd go to New York because Jason, it turns out every airline that doesn't
already fly between New York and Paris is starting New York and Paris flights next year.
[0:32:12] JR: That's true. Maybe Norwegian will give it a shot again. Already, we have JetBlue
had already announced, they're going to fly – that will be their next European destination, JFK to
CDG, I believe. Now, Norse Atlantic will fly JFK to CDG. We're getting the good airports here.
We're not even getting the other airport. Fares have absolutely bottomed out. I don't know. I can
go to Paris for cheaper than I can go to Boston on Amtrak these days, at least offseason. But it
is another one of those routes, that's just a bottomless pit of demand. You can put however
many fights on it a day you want and there will be people who want to book it. At some point, the
flights are going to be not quite profitable. They'll still be filling them, but they're not going to be
profitable. I guess, we'll see what Norse has to say about this.
They're looking a little more like Norwegian every time they announce one of these routes. I
don't actually know anyone that's flown Norse personally. I know people who flew Norwegian,
but I don't know how popular they are.
[0:33:12] IP: I think, you think Clapper’s flown Norse.
[0:33:14] JR: He flew the maiden flight to JF – That doesn't count.
[0:33:19] IP: Okay, fine. Let's stick with JFK, because SAS is going to fly the A321LR from JFK
beginning in January. I'm not sure why.
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[0:33:31] JR: Well, yeah. It's a head scratcher. Had me scratching my head for a while there.
[0:33:36] IP: They have to figure it out.
[0:33:37] JR: Yeah. Well, no. But SAS is one of those Newark airlines and well, I should be
flying them in a couple of days. I have to go all the way to Newark. I don't like going all the way
to Newark. I'd rather go to JFK. JFK is one of the most sought controlled airports, so you can't
just pop into JFK and say, “I'm here. Give me a gate.” The flights are quite late. I think in the
summer, they operate out of JFK, almost at midnight. They're not exactly well timed. It's on a
narrow body, which is fine on the shorter transatlantic flights to Ireland and maybe the UK, but
all the way to – the SAS is hubs in the Nordic Region. That's quite far for a 321. I guess, they
did it back in the day with 737s at a Boston. Do you remember that?
[0:34:19] IP: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wasn't that the all-business class configuration?
[0:34:23] JR: It was mostly business. There was some economy on it, some of the time.
[0:34:26] IP: Oh, right. Right, right, right.
[0:34:29] JR: Some of the time. It wasn't always like that. Yeah, so there is precedent for this.
For JFK, I guess, they want people from Long Island, or the boroughs of Long Island. I get it.
For an airline that's coming out of bankruptcy can't seem to get airline pricing right, like they're
always too damn cheap. This seems like an odd focus. I'd imagine that they could use that
321LR to do something like, farther down into the sun destinations of Europe. I guess, if they
think they can eke more profit at JFK. If they want to give us more service, sure, I'll take it.
[0:35:06] IP: All right.
[0:35:06] JR: All right, but they're operating at a T7. T7 doesn't have a long life left and we'll get
to that in a minute, I guess.
[0:35:14] IP: Well, let's get into it now. Tell me more about T7.
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[0:35:17] JR: I added this at the last minute, but JFK T7 was British Airways’s home for
decades and decades. It was the British Airways terminal, their home away from home. It was a
historic terminal, in the regard that British Airways went through many phases of the modern
aviation industry at that terminal. They introduced the 747 there, the Concorde, the A318. It saw
the birth of airline alliances. Now British Airways has, by the time this podcast comes out, fully
moved from T7 into T8, American’s bustling One World hub at JFK, along with Iberia will be
moving over, Jal will move over next year. That just all came out this week. It's the end of a very
long, very historic era for British Airways at JFK T7. I'm happy to see them get a new home that
isn't a terrible, old terminal. It makes room for others, like SAS to come on.
[0:36:15] IP: Yeah, I will miss the nostalgia, but I'm not sure I'll miss T7.
[0:36:19] JR: No. By far, the largest carrier there now is, I guess, Alaska Airlines who doesn't
have a very large presence there to begin with. It's like a zombie terminal, which T1 also is, or
used to be. T7 is now the zombie terminal. Or if you don't have a home in another terminal, you
just end up there. It's going to be weird not having British Airways there. I don't know what
they're going to do with their huge lounge space. Maybe I can rent part of it out for an
apartment. I don't know.
[0:36:46] IP: There you go.
[0:36:47] JR: They’re not do anything else with it.
[0:36:49] IP: All right, closing out we've got an E-195 E2 order, five firm orders. I mentioned this
only because the undisclosed customer is an airline with exciting new plans for future growth,
which –
[0:37:04] JR: Wow.
[0:37:05] IP: All right.
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[0:37:06] JR: Wow. Yeah, not much to go on. I hate these press releases, where they don't tell
you who the airline is. They don't even tell you the region that this airline is based in. All we
know is some airline with exciting new plans for future growth wants five E-195 E2s.
[0:37:21] IP: Is going to buy airplanes.
[0:37:22] JR: That's great for them.
[0:37:24] IP: Then the last bit of news is, I think Jason's favorite. He's been bugging me for
months, like when is this going to happen.
[0:37:31] JR: I didn't forget about it for nine months or anything. Nope.
[0:37:35] IP: No. What is going on with this particular plane, Jason?
[0:37:40] JR: TF-ISH, or more precisely, TF-ISH, which spells out TFISH, which is funny for a
moment. We'll get into that in a moment, but Icelandair cargos first 767 converted freighter, I
believe. We knew it was coming for months now. We saw it go into the shop. Now, we see it
come out of the shop in full new Icelandair livery. This one in flaming hot pink livery, I guess you
would call it. I don't know. They moved to this new livery where they have a bunch of different
colors. This one, Icelandair, there’s an Icelandair blue and cargo and the, I don't know, racing
stripe, whatever on the tail is a hot pink.
[0:38:17] IP: It's like, what they did is they took the four-pack of highlighters that you can get on
the school supply list.
[0:38:22] JR: That's it.
[0:38:23] IP: They just went, “Okay, paint that color on the tail and it'll be fine.”
[0:38:26] JR: Yeah. I just noticed a little rainbow coming out of the aircraft on this first picture
we're getting. Yeah, interesting. TF-ISH. TF-ISH. If you're not getting the joke, it's because
Icelandair cargo probably mostly just moves fish around from place to place.
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[0:38:42] IP: I assume, fish and sweaters.
[0:38:44] JR: Fish and sweaters, the primary exports of Iceland. Good on them for having some
humor on the registration. It’s not quite as humorous as the old Wow Air ones were. Do you
remember that?
[0:38:54] IP: Those were good. Those were good.
[0:38:54] JR: Those were good. Those are gone. TF-ISH, out delivering fish to an airport near
you soon.
[0:39:01] IP: There you go. Before we go, if you listen to the podcast on a regular basis, you
may or may not know that we also have a corresponding YouTube channel, where there's some
great stuff. This week's video that just came out that our colleague, Gabriel Lee, was fortunate
enough to put together is the North Pole route that Finnair has been flying from Tokyo to
Helsinki over the North Pole, and he was granted access to the flight deck to film that particular
flight. The video that he has produced is just really, really great. If you have a chance, head over
to our YouTube channel, click the link in the show notes and watch that particular video,
especially, because I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm not jealous at all that he got to do that. No,
sir. No, sir. No, sir.
[0:39:47] JR: No. It's not coming through at all.
[0:39:51] IP: But it is a really great video and you should check it out. Until next week, when
hopefully, both Jason and I are in Stockholm together, this has been episode 192 of AvTalk. I am
Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:40:06] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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