AvTalk Episode 360: War shuts down Middle East airspace

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EPISODE 360
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to Episode 360 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Ian, you jinxed it.
[0:00:19] IP: I did. I'm sorry.
[0:00:21] JR: You did. You did. I merely alluded to the fact that there was the potential of
possibly having the chair of the NTSB on this week. You just set it outright, and you know you
can't do that.
[0:00:34] IP: I tempted the wrath of the thing high atop of the whatever, and look where we are.
Yeah. Sorry.
[0:00:42] JR: What we mean to say is that interview is postponed, once again. Turns out that
Jennifer Homendy is a busy person in a busy, important position, and sometimes things
unbelievably, more important than us come up.
[0:00:56] IP: Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Just other things.
[0:00:58] JR: Yeah. We don't know why. Yeah. Other things come up. It's not telling how
important they are. But hopefully, we will be able to reschedule in the near future this time and
get that interview finally conducted. But not for lack of having everything else to talk about.
[0:01:16] IP: Oh, boy.
[0:01:16] JR: You mentioned last week, hey, should we talk about the ramp up of all the US
military aircraft and equipment going to the Middle East? We said, “Ah, no. Nothing's happened
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yet. So, we don't really have anything to talk about.” Something's happened, and now we have
something to talk about.
[0:01:31] IP: Yes, indeed.
[0:01:32] JR: As it relates to commercial aviation.
[0:01:35] IP: Let's get into it. What has happened so far, on the morning of February 28th, the
US and Israel launched a coordinated set of attacks on Iran, which led to Iranian response,
which then cascaded into a region-wide shutdown of commercial air travel. Airspace in Iran,
obviously; Israel; also, obviously; Iraq, pretty obviously all shut down, but also Syria, Kuwait,
Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Then a partial shutdown of Saudi Arabian
airspace. What are we actually talking about? At the moment, so we're speaking on Wednesday,
March 4th, this could all be not closed, or it could be more closed by the time we get to Friday
when the podcast comes out. This is just where we started and where we are now.
Iran totally closed. The FIR is completely closed. The NOTAMs lists a variety of things for
Tehran, but my favorite NOTAM right now is that Iran cautions that the potential for the
extension of conflict over high seas within the Tehran FIR, in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea,
“As the result of security reason.”
[0:03:00] JR: Yes. I mean –
[0:03:01] IP: Accurate.
[0:03:01] JR: - kudos for telling it how it is, I guess, right? Can't fault them for that.
[0:03:06] IP: Iranian airspace is closed. Iraqi airspace is also completely closed, for maybe not
necessarily obvious reasons. The reason that Iraqi airspace is closed is because it sits directly
between Iran and Israel, where there are missiles, drones.
[0:03:21] JR: It's not somewhere you want to be.
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[0:03:23] IP: Yeah. You don't want to be operating commercially there. We've seen that in the
past and it hasn't been good. Iraq's airspace is completely closed. Israel's airspace is
completely closed, except for the flights that they are allowing. At this point, there's very limited
traffic coming out of Tel Aviv. There are a few commercial flights a day. El Al is operating some
services to places in Europe, so right now, Athens is one of them. Budapest is another, as well
as cargo flights to and from Tel Aviv. The United States military is also basing some aircraft out
of Tel Aviv. The airport's active, just not generally and commercially.
[0:04:06] JR: Yeah. Well, some cargo flights are sneaking out as well.
[0:04:08] IP: Right, right, right.
[0:04:09] JR: One just launched actually, going over to Belgium, only very late. But cargo
flights, cargo pilots, they sometimes are not thought of as human and it's fine for them to
operate. I'm sure they are well aware of the situation, but cargo for the most part seems to
always be on the side of, well, let's just see what happens.
[0:04:30] IP: Yeah. Well, boxes don't mind bumps, but they do mind ballistic missiles.
[0:04:33] JR: They do. They really do.
[0:04:35] IP: Jordanian airspace was partially closed for a time. Then it went to a timed closure.
It was closed, basically overnight for a few days. Now it is pretty much open without restriction.
Syrian airspace was closed completely. Now it is closed completely, except for flights to and
from Aleppo. Those flights need to follow very specific routing into and out of Aleppo. Kuwait,
Bahrain, and Qatar airspace remains completely closed. Air space in the United Arab Emirates
is a bit of a patchwork of special security areas. But what has happened now is that they've
carved out what they're calling safe zones, where aircraft can arrive and depart from Abu Dhabi,
Dubai and Sharjah along very specific routings and arrive from very specific routings as well.
That has allowed Dubai and Abu Dhabi to restart some limited operations, and when I say very
limited operations –
[0:05:48] JR: Very, very limited.
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[0:05:51] IP: Dozens of flights out of the normal more than 1,200 daily flights at Dubai alone.
[0:05:59] JR: Yeah. I don't really understand how they're able to restart flights out of Dubai into
a much, much lesser extent Abu Dhabi, as this is one of the first times, if not the first time we've
seen actual commercial passenger terminals and airports impacted by this ongoing conflict. I
believe, Kuwait and one of Dubai International's terminals were actually hit by rockets and took
damage. How they're getting these flights in and out of Dubai safely, or at least they say safely, I
have no idea, because the airports themselves have taken hits by rockets. None of this really
makes sense to me. But if you want to get out of Dubai, or if you want to get out of Abu Dhabi,
there are very, very few number of flights that I don't even know how you book.
[0:06:44] IP: Yeah. You would have to have booked it before. Emirates says, “Don't call us, we'll
call you,” is basically how they're operating these flights right now. They're saying, “In no way,
shape, or form, should you come to the airport, unless we have directly contacted you and said
you have a seat, you can come to the airport.” Just because the situation is so fraught.
[0:07:06] JR: Yeah. If you had been booked on pretty much any other airline, you're out of luck,
as I don't think any airline other than Emirates and Etihad have operated any flights. Of course,
both these airports are quite large and the airlines themselves have flight crews stuck and
stranded there. As there were many, many flights on the way to the region when the conflict
began, that turned around and went back, either diverted elsewhere, or diverted all the way
back. We might have some new entrance for world's longest return to point of origin. I think an
Air Canada flight had an 18-hour air return. Not great. But it's not like anyone gets advanced
notice of, “Hey, we're going to start that war at about 6 p.m. tomorrow. So, if you plan on flying in
or out, get it done before then.” No. This happened without any notice, of course, and there
were a full day’s flight schedule operating on the way to the region that had to either park
elsewhere, or return. Oof, that's a long day.
[0:08:09] IP: Yeah, absolutely. Dubai has seen an increase in traffic today. I'm looking at the
departures today. Mostly flydubai flights, actually operating out of Dubai. There have been some
repatriation flights operated by Smart Wings. We'll get to that in a moment. Aeroflot is operating
out of Dubai, and we've got, let's see, Air India, FitsAir out of Colombo in Sri Lanka, so that's
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interesting. Uzbekistan Airways, Iraqi Airways, Middle East Airlines, Air Arabia, Cyprus, and then
obviously, a lot of Emirates. Slowly, slowly ramping up to accommodate more and more flights,
but still nowhere, nowhere near normal.
On February 26th at Dubai, there were 1,240 total movements, split nearly evenly between
takeoffs and landings. That number on the 28th of February, the day that the war started, that fell
to 674 total movements, so about 50%. March 1st, nothing. March 2nd, there were 20 total
movements at Dubai International. Yesterday on Tuesday the 3rd, we ramped up to 83 and on
Wednesday today, so it's already Thursday morning there. Wednesday total, local time, 161
movements at Dubai International. Just a little over 10% of normal.
Things are nowhere near normal there. Where things are busier than normal, though, is in
Oman, where Muscat has become the hub for repatriation and evacuation flights, because that
airspace remains open. We have seen a dramatic increase in business jet activity out of
Muscat. It's working on the data now, but it's so many flights. There have also been repatriation
and evacuation flights operated by smart wings. Enter Air out of Poland, British Airways, Air
France, KLM, Lufthansa, British Airways is operating a total of three flights over the next three
days, and all of those have sold out as you can imagine. Just a massive amount of disruption.
How disruptive is this? At the major airports in the affected countries where airspace has been
closed or severely restricted, we're talking roughly 3,400 flights a day, hundreds of thousands of
passengers each and every day. That's just the major reports. That doesn't include all of the
flights, all of the airports. That's just the major reports. It's an immense amount of disruption.
The longer this goes on, the more disruptive it's going to be. Because then, we're going to start
talking about how is this affecting not just schedules and where the aircraft are and things like
that, but how is this affecting the ability of these airlines to continue being airlines?
In a lot of these cases, most of these airlines have government backstops that they can look to
in the event of continued disruption and things like that. But it still becomes a very, very difficult
place to be. That's one of the things that we're going to be keeping on over the next week, two
weeks, however long this lasts.
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[0:11:41] JR: Yeah. Especially Etihad and Qatar Airways and Emirates, they're going to be fine.
But some of the smaller airlines in the Middle East, like Oman Air, Kuwait Airways, they don't
have the kind of massive financial backing as the ME3 do. They're just going to have to weather
it out and hopefully, they can, because we have no idea how long this will last. It could be, you
know what, I was going to say, it could be done by the time this podcast comes out, but I don't
think there's even a slim, remote chance of that happening. This is a very different conflict than
we saw last time where the US hurled some rockets at Iran and Iran hurled some rockets back.
No. This is as close to if not a full-scale war as there could possibly be. The aviation industry
really outside of Russia and Ukraine hasn't seen anything this disruptive, or unknown. How long
is this going to last? We have no idea.
It's not like Ukraine is the massive commercial aviation hub, the global hub that the Middle East
has become. This has far-reaching consequences. Pretty much every country in the world. I
don't know if there are any countries in the world not served by Qatar, Etihad and Emirates. If
not, they probably don't have much service to begin with, but this is very far-reaching, not just
for people going to or from the Middle East, but of course, connecting through the region to get
from A to B via Middle East. This is going to be a problem for a long time, unless you happen to
be booked on one of the fifth freedom flights, which is an interesting little quirk to this story, isn't
it?
[0:13:12] IP: Yeah. I think, at some point, you have to do all that you can just to keep the airline
moving. In some cases, that means flying from Newark to Athens.
[0:13:25] JR: Over and over.
[0:13:27] IP: Or wherever you can. Yeah. Interestingly enough, the fifth freedom flights that
Emirates operates are mostly still running.
[0:13:34] JR: Yeah. There's a good chunk of them, somehow I'm just learning exist. Miami to
Bogota, Athens to Newark, Milan to JFK on an A380. These aircraft all would have, during
normal times, continued on to Dubai and rotated elsewhere in the global network. They are
essentially, at this point, cut off from the rest of the world. All these, for instance, A6-EUB right
now is an A380 doing nothing, but flying between Milan and JFK. There are a couple 777s that
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are, again, tied to the Bogota-Miami route. I think there's one between Sao Paulo and Rio de
Janeiro, a 777. That's, again, just going back and forth. Best to operate what you can. Just that
must be a very weird feeling to be booked only on, let's say, JFK to Milan on Emirates thinking
like, “Oh, no. My flight's going to be canceled. My vacation's ruined.” But actually, no. This A380
is just operating completely on schedule without any issue, as long as it just doesn't try to
continue on to Dubai. Very interesting quirk to this story.
[0:14:37] IP: Yeah. I think it's worth noting that these aircraft are just basically taxis now
between different cities that you wouldn't normally see them just operating back and forth.
[0:14:47] JR: Also, the flight and cabin crews. I'm not exactly sure how exactly it's working with
their flight and cabin crews. They must have multiple crews on the ground in their fifth freedom
locations, because I haven't seen so much as a delay, let alone a cancellation. Here you have
an Emirates flight and cabin crew that normally globe trots to every corner of the world. Now all
they're doing is Newark to Athens, and back and forth and back and forth. Hopefully, not forever,
but that's an interesting twist of fate.
[0:15:16] IP: Huh. All right. I didn't think about the cabin crew aspect of it earlier. Let's talk now
about some of the other effects and we'll start with diverted flights. There were hundreds of
flights in the air to and from airports that almost instantaneously closed. There were some long,
long diversions.
[0:15:43] JR: Yeah. We alluded to some, but do you actually have some numbers of maybe the
longest diversion? Because there were a lot.
[0:15:51] IP: There were a lot. We had the longest, I think was the Air Canada diversion, but
then we also had Emirates from San Francisco making it all the way to Europe and then saying,
“Okay. Nope, we're going to Munich.” There were also a few that turned back from the US. I
mean, overall, the longest, I think was over 16 hours. Just really, really not great.
[0:16:18] JR: Yeah. At least this Air Canada flight, AC56, made it from Toronto all the way to
over the middle of Ireland, before turning around and heading all the way back to Toronto. That's
a long way. I feel like I saw longer than that.
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[0:16:33] IP: I'm not sure.
[0:16:35] JR: No way to know.
[0:16:35] IP: Which one did you see?
[0:16:37] JR: I don't know. Maybe that was the longest. I don't know. Two transatlantic
crossings for the price of one ticket. That's something, right?
[0:16:44] IP: What more could you ask for?
[0:16:45] JR: Oh, someone.
[0:16:46] IP: If we track down that long one, we'll stick it in the show notes. I'm sure we've got
someone who can figure that out. Outside of diversions, Air India is once again, just suffering.
They are one of the most affected airlines that's still operating flights, because of their inability to
operate through Pakistani airspace. They can't take advantage of the northern corridor. The
southern corridor, it is. Now that they can't use Iranian airspace, they're going through Saudi
Arabia, which means that a lot of their Westbound flights that weren't already making fuel stops
are now making fuel stops, and some eastbound flights as well. Just not a great situation to be
in for Air India, especially.
[0:17:34] JR: Yeah. I can see the flight to Toronto, stopped in Vienna. The flight from New York
to Mumbai, hey, it's actually making it nonstop. That's good. But the flight to Newark stopped in
Rome. Yeah. If an airline that just really can't catch a break, it also had some flights. We were
just speaking a moment ago about diversions, but maybe it was yesterday, the day before, so
that would have been Monday. There were a number of flights that took off, bound for Dubai,
because they have a narrow window, I guess, and then something changed, so they diverted
back to India. Then something changed again, so they rediverted back towards the UAE. What I
would give to hear the passengers’ reaction to, “Sorry, folks. We can't continue on to Dubai. It's
not safe to do that. We're turning back to India.” Then an hour later, “Well, folks. It's not
dangerous in Dubai anymore, so we're going to turn around and continue on.” Just what is the
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mindset of the passengers at that point, who think they're returning to India only to turn back
around again, because it's magically safe now. I don't know. This whole situation is just
preposterous to me right now.
[0:18:42] IP: That's a good word for it.
[0:18:43] JR: Yeah. It's the only one I got.
[0:18:45] IP: Air India, though, isn't the only airline that could potentially be impacted by lack of
access to Pakistani airspace. We were already going to talk about this particular thing after last
week's show, because Afghanistan and Pakistan have come into active conflict.
[0:19:05] JR: Again.
[0:19:06] IP: While there have been no NOTAMs issued and the airspace warnings remain as
they were previously, it does have the potential to increase the risk and perhaps, lead to the
potential closure of transit of Afghanistan and Pakistan by international overflights. That would
take out one of the only remaining links between Europe and Asia, as far as international air
traffic is concerned.
[0:19:39] JR: Very little left. I guess, there's that corridor that goes through Saudi Arabia and
transit Omani airspace, but that would be it. It’s, believe it or not, pretty crowded there already.
[0:19:48] IP: Right. At the moment, there's the northern corridor A and northern corridor B, and
then there's the southern corridor. The northern corridor A is the one that passes through
Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and then splits off further north and goes through Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, and into China. Those are flights that are generally flying to northern China, as well
as Japan and South Korea. Northern corridor B goes through Turkey, Azerbaijan, then turns
south, heads through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Those are flights that are
going obviously, to India, as well as places like Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, etc.
The southern corridor has mainly been used for flights that are coming from Western Europe,
and those are flights are transiting through Egypt, Saudi Arabia. Many flying to airspace that is
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now closed trying to land at places like Dubai, or Doha, or Abu Dhabi, and then some traveling
on through into India and other places in Southeast Asia. We're down to two and a half ways to
get from Europe to Asia and vice versa, which is not great, given that one of those ways is also
a potential conflict zone.
One of the other effects that we've seen of all the airspace closures are air defenses against
GPS-based weaponry. That's resulted in a lot, a lot, a lot of funky GPS spoofing artifacts that
we're seeing on FlightRadar24. There have been aircraft that are flying perfect circles at 10
knots at 36,000 feet. There have been aircraft that have been riding scribble signatures on their
air routes in between places like Oman and Saudi Arabia. Just an overwhelming amount of GPS
jamming and spoofing taking place right now in the region. Something that we're certainly aware
of. One of the ways that we're trying to mitigate that as much as possible is by we now calculate
MLAT on every position, or every signal when we can, and default to MLAT when an aircraft is
being jammed or spoofed.
[0:22:22] JR: Hey, Ian. What's MLAT?
[0:22:24] IP: I'm getting there.
[0:22:25] JR: Oh, okay. I mean, I thought you forgot. Not everyone knows everything like you.
[0:22:31] IP: We're getting there. We calculate MLAT when aircraft are experiencing GPS
spoofing, so that when aircrafts can't send their position to us, we calculate it for them. Here's
what MLAT is, Jason. MLAT takes multiple receivers. In our case, we need at least three
receivers to see the aircraft at the same time, so that we can calculate the position of the aircraft
for that aircraft, without relying on GPS-based ADS-B position data, which in a lot of cases,
especially in Saudi Arabia, south of the UAE right now is erroneous. We calculate the position
using multiple receivers, the time difference of arrival of the signal from the aircraft to multiple
receivers. That lets us do things that calculate MLAT.
The higher the aircraft is in real life, the more likely we are to be able to calculate MLAT. That's
why when you look at Dubai right now, or Abu Dhabi, you're seeing aircraft where the flight path
looks normal, perfectly normal, until about six and a half thousand feet. Then it gets a bit more
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difficult. Then once the aircraft gets below the jamming, or gets close enough to the receivers in
the city, we're calculating MLAT back again, or we're getting better ADS-B data. It's a constant
battle to try and get the best track possible in the face of significant GPS interference.
[0:24:08] JR: Yeah. One thing I find particularly interesting is you can take a look at the GPS
jamming map that FR24 has published. You can see past date, February 26th, the whole region
is green, including up into Iran, where there is coverage. No issues. February 27th, all green.
February 28th, a lot of the Middle East, Qatar, UAE airspace turns red with high interference.
March 1st, of course, the interference levels ramp up, but the low interference green, happy
areas, they virtually disappear, not because there isn't jamming there, it's just there's no data,
because there are no airplanes.
[0:24:45] IP: No data.
[0:24:46] JR: There's no airplanes to track, whether there’s interference or not. I'm sure if we
could source data for Iran, the whole damn thing would be red. But there's just no aircraft there,
so we can only assume it's probably a lot of interference. But that level of jamming and spoofing
over the UAE and Qatar and the rest of the Middle East is not normal, at least up until February
28th, where actual combat started. Now pretty much everything you see is maybe it's real,
maybe it's not. Maybe they're not there at all.
[0:25:19] IP: One of the things to point out is that the reason for this GPS jamming and GPS
spoofing is to counter GPS-based weaponry that is attempting to use a global navigation system
to guide itself to blow something up. One of the ways that you can counter this is by jamming, or
spoofing the GPS signal. That has second-order effects on commercial aviation, which is what
we're more concerned with. But that's why GPS is being interfered with in these locations.
[0:25:55] JR: Yeah. Don't know if it's working or not. If it is, that's great. I guess, things could be
a lot worse than they are now. But by the looks of it, it's not doing all that much, other than
making it a pain for us, I guess. I don't know.
[0:26:12] IP: The law of large numbers. I don't know how effective it is and maybe somebody
else can write that report. The last thing that I want to talk about in regard to what's happening in
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the Middle East right now is where the spill over into commercial aviation outside of the region
becomes most important. That is oil and jet fuel prices. At the moment, the price of oil and the
price of jet fuel is rising without limit, so to speak. We've seen the price of jet fuel almost double
within the past few days.
[0:26:53] JR: Whoops.
[0:26:55] IP: That's not great. That's not to say that most airlines don't already have jet fuel
contracts in place, but spot prices are rising very quickly.
[0:27:02] JR: Those don't last forever.
[0:27:04] IP: Exactly. The Strait of Hormuz is blocked, which prevents a lot of oil and gas
coming out of there. But any time there's a supply shock, you're going to see ripple effects even
if you're not necessarily taking that fuel from that location. That is certainly something that we're
going to be paying attention to. How does the rising price of oil, the rising price of jet fuel impact
how airlines are pricing their tickets. Because at some point, if not today, if not tomorrow, but at
some point, those price increases are going to come to your ticket price as well.
[0:27:40] JR: Yup. Whether you want it to or not.
[0:27:43] IP: Let's leave the Middle East for now. I'm sure we'll be back next week. Other things
are in fact happening in the industry.
[0:27:52] JR: No.
[0:27:54] IP: Earlier this week, a United Airlines 787 returned to Los Angeles shortly after
takeoff, because of a “engine issue.” That engine issue has not been described further by the
FAA, nor has it been described further by United Airlines. However, there was a small fire
involved. The aircraft took off at 10.43 AM and landed back at LAX by 11.19, so they did not get
far. Unfortunately, as we have seen many a time, multiple passengers had not only their carry-
on baggage, but kitchen sinks, one passenger had a mule, it was just, where do people get
these things, Jason?
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[0:28:37] JR: I don't know. When I first read this story, I automatically assumed, oh, this must
have been a 32-year-old 767, because United. Of course, it is. But no, I was shocked to see it
was a 787. The video we saw of the evacuation was very calm, very slow, probably because so
many people right there in the video didn't just have a backpack. They had a full-on roller board
with them, which is just insane. I hope the flight attendants were fogging passengers on their
way out, smack them over the head for slowing evacuation down. I didn't see any reports of any
injuries. But, yeah.
We've seen a couple of these evacuations recently, a JetBlue A320, again, Newark, involved
Newark, returned to Newark and evacuated between the two runways and shut everything down
for a couple of hours. I didn't see any video out of that, but these happen. You always think
these events can't possibly happen to me, and I'll never be on a flight with this. But it happens
quite a bit.
[0:29:36] IP: Yeah. Everyone was safe. No reported injuries. And the FAA is investigating. Now
–
[0:29:45] JR: We get to Chicago. Yes.
[0:29:48] IP: All the way home to me to Chicago, because United's been hitting American over
the head, and Americans been trying to get its arms outside of its sleeve barely.
[0:29:58] JR: Actually, I think it's been more like, United is grabbing a hold of American's arm
and using it to hit American with its own hand. Stop hitting yourself. Quit hitting yourself.
[0:30:07] IP: Quit hitting yourself.
[0:30:09] JR: It feels more like that to me.
[0:30:11] IP: It's been real rough for American. What's happening here is that United and
American have been in a schedules race to operate as many flights as they possibly can in
Chicago, because for a long time, American didn't really pay attention to its Chicago hub. United
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did and ended up being able to take over a bunch of gates that previously belonged to
American. American said, “Hey, you can't do that.” There was a lot of back and forth. It turns out
that yes, United could.
Then what American did is they went and scheduled a ton of flights. Then United said, “Okay,
we can do that, too.” And scheduled even more. Last week, late last week, the FAA stepped in
and said, “Okay, there's no way that you are going to even be able to operate a portion of these
and keep them on time and keep this airport moving. We are going to figure this out and come
up with a number that works for everybody.”
[0:31:22] JR: Oh, you're getting the full Newark treatment. That's not good for anyone.
[0:31:25] IP: Yes. American has put out a letter that blamed United for “Reckless scheduling.
Operating flights, “well beyond what it can operationally handle.”” That comes after United CEO,
Scott Kirby basically said, “We're going to schedule as many flights as it takes to bury them.”
“We are not going to allow them to win a single gate at our expense. We are going to add as
many flights as are required to keep our gate count the same in Chicago.”
[0:32:00] JR: Yeah. I feel like we say this every week, but Brett Snyder in Cranky Flier has a
great writeup about the impending Chicago O'Hare gridlock. They say, on any given half an
hour, the FAA says, you can operate about a hundred movements at O'Hare. In the past last
year, there were very few half hour slots, where the schedule went over that 100 limit. In the
upcoming July, or I guess, really summer 2026 schedule, it's pretty much the entire day where
that 100-operation threshold is broken, which means if there's a cloud over Peoria in the
morning, that's it for O'Hare. There's no recovery. There's no slack built into the schedule. If
there's a two-hour delay at the beginning of the day, that's going to stagger all throughout the
entire day. There's no chance to recover. That's just not good for anyone, because then you end
up like Newark, and no one wants to be Newark. No one wants to be Newark.
At this point, Brett goes on to say, well, this is probably exactly what United wanted to load the
schedule with the flights it knows it was never going to operate, only to come and have the FAA
come in and say, “Guys, you got to reduce your schedules.” Well, okay. United's going to reduce
its already overly inflated schedule, and so will American, and United will come out on top still at
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the end and operate a still chaotic, overcrowded schedule. But More than American, which only
matters to the bean counters at United and American. I don't think anyone else cares about this,
but we care –
[0:33:36] IP: I'm not going to get a five-time daily flight to Traverse City.
[0:33:41] JR: Yeah, or Kalamazoo, or Lansing or any of these other cities that don't need five
daily service. Looking at you, Milwaukee. That's way more than five. It's got to come down,
because if there's going to be a single storm cell anywhere in the Midwest, O’Hare is going to
be a disaster more so than usual. Even though you have 19 runways, it's not going to help.
[0:34:02] IP: We need more runways.
[0:34:04] JR: We need more runways. That's true. You need a runway that goes all the way to
L.A., so you never have to take off.
[0:34:11] IP: We're working on it. Let's go back to 2024.
[0:34:16] JR: Oh, no. Please, no.
[0:34:20] IP: When a LATAM 787 experienced an inflight upset.
[0:34:24] JR: Oh, this is the one they bank, like mechanical something, or something, right?
[0:34:29] IP: Right. Something happened. There was a sudden altitude decrease, and then a
concurrent increase. As it turns out, it was in fact the fault of a flight attendant, who leaned on
the back of the captain's chair. The rocker switch that controlled the movement, the forward and
aft movement of the captain's chair wasn't covered. Flight attendant leaned on that seat and the
pilot went forward, the yoke went forward, the plane went down.
[0:35:08] JR: Why did it take so long to learn this? I feel like this would have been immediately
knowable.
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[0:35:12] IP: Yeah. We knew this a while ago, and I actually think we talked about this a while
ago, but now we have a final report that lays it out in detail with, we've got computer generated
graphics of the 787-pilot seat. We've got rocker switch and cap imagery that's circled and erode
and it's a much longer report than I thought it would be. But hey, we needed to know how
exactly how this happened. Unfortunately, one of the cabin crew members on the flight was
needed to be hospitalized, because of the resulting in-flight upset. But this is not the first time
this has happened. You're supposed to use an adhesive to fix that cap in place, so that you can't
do what this flight attendant did. Unfortunately, that adhesive was not used on this particular
cap.
[0:36:07] JR: I feel like a lot of modern issues with aircraft this are caused by the stupidest little
things. Like, oh, this switch that moves the pilot's chair wasn't protected and it was pressed and
the pilot was pushed into the yoke, or pilot spilt a drink on the console and the engines turned
off, or just these complete – we've weeded out so many things that could go wrong, that the only
things that seem to go wrong these days are the absolute stupidest dumbest things that
nobody's ever thought about before, but to somehow find a way to keep happening.
[0:36:42] IP: Yeah. Well, the next time somebody does something stupid, we will bring it to you
here first.
[0:36:48] JR: Not saying that the flight attendant was stupid. The design is stupid.
[0:36:51] IP: No, no. The sequence of events.
[0:36:53] JR: Yes. The sequence of events is stupid. But, yeah. It's just miraculous that that's
happened multiple times.
[0:37:00] IP: At the moment that we are recording, there is a very special aircraft in the air.
Lufthansa's 747-8i is in the air wearing its brand new 100th anniversary livery. I'm very excited to
see this one.
[0:37:18] JR:  It's good.
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[0:37:19] IP: I'm very, very excited to see this one.
[0:37:22] JR: It looks good. I think it is possibly the best one yet.
[0:37:27] IP: It's my favorite of the renderings so far and I'm really looking forward to seeing it.
[0:37:32] JR: Oh, no. There are actual pictures of it today. Lufthansa put out a press release.
[0:37:36] IP: Not in the air.
[0:37:38] JR: Oh, in the air. I see.
[0:37:39] IP: That's what I'm excited about.
[0:37:41] JR: Oh, I see. I see. Well, we have pictures today from on the ground in San
Bernardino, California, where it is taken off 47 minutes ago as of recording. But I love how
simply into this Lufthansa is. It's not just, oh, we're painting some aircraft and here they are. No.
This press release that they put out today, the 19th of these press releases, but it's a 747, so it's
more special, it celebrates this. It says, not just that it happened and then it's on the way home.
It says that this aircraft is scheduled to land on the airport center runway, clearly visible to
spotters, journalists, and fans. They give you the exact time and the registration and how to
track the aircraft. Clearly, there was a lot of thought and a lot of planning ahead and they want
people to see it. It's not just the thing that they did for a press release. No, they're saying, go out
and see this thing. It's even going to land on the airport center runway in Frankfurt for the most
possible visibility. You'll have to see it.
[0:38:41] IP: I do love to see it. As we were talking, the first photo just came across on jet
photos.
[0:38:47] JR: That was quick.
[0:38:48] IP: And it looks so good.
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[0:38:49] JR: Can I see it?
[0:38:51] IP: I just sent it to you. It looks so good. It'll be in the show notes. It'll be in the show
notes.
[0:38:57] JR: Yeah. That looks really good. The 748 is the perfect proportion for this.
[0:39:04] IP: We were working in Germany this week with Lufthansa on a separate project and
they said, “Hey, what if you stuck around for an extra day and then you could be air side for the
arrival?”
[0:39:14] JR: I don't remember getting that invite.
[0:39:18] IP: Gabe's there this week. He will be air side to capture the arrival of this aircraft
tomorrow morning. I'm very excited to see that. That link will also be in the show notes and you
can watch that, because I'm super excited. All right, let's get to the last few things on the show
and we will be off and call this another great episode. There's hope for the MAX 10, maybe, sort
of. We now see that a new, eventually, to WestJet 737 MAX 10 is flying. That aircraft first flew
when, Jason?
[0:39:57] JR: A long time ago. What I can tell you is that Boeing has eight MAX 10s on the
ground, and I'm pulling this quote directly from Air Insight, who put a great article and that first
raised this. Apparently, the oldest aircraft first flew 1,720 days ago on June 18th, 2021. That
aircraft destined for United is obviously still on the ground. We are now at the half decade mark
between first flight for this aircraft. Now, who knows how long it could be before this particular
frame is delivered? The fact that a WestJet max 10 is up there doing something is good news,
because they have a lot on order, like nearly a 100, I think, which is crazy for WestJet. I think
they might have the most vested interest in the MAX 10 at this point, more than anyone else.
[0:40:50] IP: Let’s hope they get their aircraft. Elsewhere, we have Lufthansa Technik
celebrating the completion of its 1,000th Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engine overhaul. A
1,000 down.
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[0:41:05] JR: So many more. So, so many more to go. They've pulled out all the stops. They
have so many different facilities and they wanted everyone to know that they have overhauled
1,000 Pratt & Whitney GTF engines, and it seemingly hasn't made a dent at all.
[0:41:21] IP: Well, one at a time.
[0:41:24] JR: Progress is progress.
[0:41:25] IP: Progress is progress. Last but certainly not least, because now you know where to
avoid these aircraft next. It looks like China Southern has found a buyer for its much unloved
787-8, and it sounds like it's Thai Airways?
[0:41:44] JR: Yeah, maybe. People are putting some bits and pieces together. Flight Global
says that Thai Airways confirms plans to lease 10 787-8s. A couple bloggers put together, well,
hey, wait. Where could those possibly come from? Oh, well China Southern just got rid of 10
787-8s to a leasing company, and that same leasing company apparently leased them out to
Thai Airways. Hey, more terrible teens, I believe, for Thai Airways. They'll take care points from
anyone at this point. But these are true terrible 787-8s that nobody, not even China Southern
wants. Do you know how old? Are these some of the absolute original, were these actual terrible
teens?
[0:42:26] IP: You know what? I don't know if these are actual terrible teens.
[0:42:30] JR: If not, they are very close to it.
[0:42:32] IP: Yeah.
[0:42:34] JR: I don't believe they have any Dash 8s in their fleet anymore. Actually, no, they are
not terrible teens, but they're in the 30s, 40s, 90s and 100s. They're not the oldest, but they are
far from the newest Dash 8s.
[0:42:49] IP: They're not the oldest, but they're not the newest for sure.
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[0:42:52] JR: No.
[0:42:52] IP: Okay, fair enough.
[0:42:53] JR: These airplanes were back when China Southern was putting fin big tidal livery on
the side 787, because they were so proud to take delivery of these aircraft, but they ain't so
proud anymore.
[0:43:04] IP: Well, maybe they'll be proud again one day.
[0:43:07] JR: Sure.
[0:43:08] IP: Well, Jason, I'm proud of you and I'm proud of us, because we made it to the end
of the show. Let's hope that next week, the news is a little bit better. But even if it's not, we'll be
here to talk about it. This has been Episode 360 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here as always
with –
[0:43:31] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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