AvTalk Episode 356: Finally, a 25 hour rule

AVT 356 Transcript
EPISODE 356
[EPISODE]
[0:00:08] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 356 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Ian, you sound far away today. Where are you?
[0:00:21] IP: I'm thousands of miles away. I'm in Stockholm this week.
[0:00:24] JR: I knew I heard something different. What's in Stockholm? You wanted to get away
from the cold of Chicago, so you went to Stockholm, Sweden.
[0:00:33] IP: Sunny and warm Stockholm. Yeah, I traded minus 10 at home for minus eight in
Stockholm.
[0:00:42] JR: Hey.
[0:00:42] IP: But it's snowed all day. That's been fun.
[0:00:45] JR: In Stockholm? It's snowed?
[0:00:46] IP: It's snowed all day. Yeah, there's snow on the ground, outside of where there are
heated sidewalks and there are flurries all day. It was like a winter wonderland feel today. We're
enjoying the cold here. We're adding a member to my team this week. We've got a new member
joining. I've come to introduce him to FlightRadar24 and help him get settled and do all sorts of
fun FlightRadar24 stuff.
[0:01:17] JR: That's great. Your winter wonderland sounds nice, because we are very far past
that here in New York with our stage of winter and snow covering. We are no longer on
winterland, and I very much like to be where you are right now.
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[0:01:33] IP: It's just dirt snow now.
[0:01:36] JR: And it won't go away. This is the longest streak of below freezing we've had in the
Northeast for a very, very long time, and it is unpleasant here. Next week, I am traveling as well,
but I'm not going to Sweden. I am going somewhere much warmer than that, so I'm looking
forward to it.
[0:01:53] IP: Yeah, we'll hear about that when you're back. I'm already, I'm pre-salty about your
trip next week.
[0:02:00] JR: Well, everything here in New York is salty from the road salt, so it's fine. You'll
blend right in.
[0:02:07] IP: Perfect, perfect. Well, we've got a good show this week, not the least of which,
because things have happened that we get to talk about, both good and bad. We'll start with a
good thing that has finally happened.
[0:02:21] JR: An overdue thing, a very overdue thing.
[0:02:25] IP: Very, very overdue. This week, the FAA finalized its rule mandating 25-hour
recording space on the cockpit voice recorders.
[0:02:39] JR: Wow.
[0:02:40] IP: This is years, years in the making.
[0:02:43] JR: Years in the making, again, as we've talked many times, and so has the NTSB,
years in the making, not due to any technological, or really, even cost issue. Just simply
bureaucratic and a lot of handoffs and saying, “No, we don't want these reasons.”
[0:03:01] IP: Right. What we're dealing with is the old regulations only mandated two hours of
recording time for the cockpit voice recorders. Over the past few years, we've seen a number of
incidents where the cockpit voice recorder was overwritten, because something happened and
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the flight continued and it was longer than two hours. By the time investigators were notified of
the incident, there was no longer any audio record of what had happened. The NTSB has been
calling this out for years. The FAA finally got around to saying, “Okay. You know what? We've
studied the issue long enough. We're going to say we have the technology. We have the ability.
We're going to mandate 25-hour cockpit voice recorders for most aircraft.” That proposed rule
came out months ago. This week, they finalized that rule mandating 25-hour cockpit voice
recorders for any aircraft that was manufactured beginning in May of 2025, that's covered by the
2024 FAA Reauthorization Act.
[0:04:19] JR: Finally. Finally, finally. Very long overdue. Never should have taken this long. You
said, the NTSB has been going on about this for years, but I'm pretty sure at this point, it's
decades, not just years.
[0:04:31] IP: Yeah.
[0:04:32] JR: Mission accomplished, I guess. Good to know that it's already pretty much in
effect for new aircraft, who are already coming with 25-hour CVRs. I'd love to know how they
came to 25 hours and not 24 hours. I'm sure there's a many, many page analysis of that, just
needing that extra hour somewhere. Probably derived by maximum flight time from end of the
planet. That's actually interesting. Never really thought about that 25-hour number before.
[0:05:01] IP: We’re going to have to think about that some, and figure out where that 25-hour
number comes from. We'll do some research. Jason, thank you for volunteering.
[0:05:10] JR: Hey, Google, can you look into that for – No, it can't. Sorry. I don't even have to
plug it in.
[0:05:15] IP: Fair enough. The rule goes into effect. One thing that this – So, it's a bit tricky.
[0:05:22] JR: This is where it gets a bit muddy.
[0:05:23] IP: Yeah. One thing that this particular rule doesn't do is mandate the retrofit of
existing aircraft that would otherwise be covered by this rule to retrofit those aircraft, because
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the FAA says, the mandated retrofit of aircraft that would otherwise be covered by this act that
have already been built are covered separately under the act and therefore, don't need to be
included in this rule, because they're separately covered, and including them in this rule would
actually delay the implementation of the rule.
[0:06:03] JR: Hmm. Interesting.
[0:06:04] IP: That's thoroughly confusing and a bureaucratic nightmare. The long and short of it
is for most aircraft, and this includes all commercial aircraft, aircraft where you can buy a ticket
and book a flight, those aircraft by 2030 will have 25-hour cockpit voice recording technology.
[0:06:29] JR: Hooray. About time.
[0:06:31] IP: Better late than never.
[0:06:33] JR: Yes. There are other aircraft, smaller aircraft that have a bit of a longer runway, I
think, until February 2nd, 2029 for aircraft with a maximum certified takeoff weight of 59,524
pounds, or less. There's a bit of, again, flexibility. But any, practically speaking, any aircraft
you're buying a commercial ticket for, this will be included. Friend of the show, Seth Miller dug
into the regulatory filing and hold out actually one of the pages, I guess the NTSB provided data
to the FAA on all, or maybe not all, but many of the higher profile incidents and accidents, where
a CVR of a longer duration than two hours would have been helpful, up until 2018, which I
assume is when they started working on this, which just really goes to show how long it takes to
make laws happen in this country.
But it goes back, all the way to 2002 incident in the Philippines that apparently, I guess, these
were two separate incidents. One, a fight control malfunction during approach and another, an
abrupt maneuver due to ground proximity warning alert and elevator damage. Then there's
another one in 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18. We know we have heard
of many since 2018 as well. They are definitely keeping track of every single time a CVR did not
contain the critical information they would have needed, because the two-hour artificial limit
erased that data.
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[0:08:12] IP: Yeah. All in all, very good news that this is now in force.
[0:08:21] JR: Sure is. We'll take it.
[0:08:23] IP: Jason, a few moments ago, you mentioned that it takes a long time to make laws
in the United States.
[0:08:32] JR: If I put it that elegantly, sure.
[0:08:35] IP: That's normally true. But then, sometimes the president of the United States posts
on social media and everyone in the aviation industry goes, “What?”
[0:08:46] JR: Yeah. It's a good thing that the president posting on social media does not equal
law in any way, shape or form. Otherwise, the entire US aviation system would have been
thrown into absolute chaos at no moment’s notice earlier this week. What happened now?
[0:09:08] IP: Well, what happened was –
[0:09:10] JR: Or what didn't happen?
[0:09:12] IP: Yeah, what didn't happen was anything at this point. Nothing happened. What
could have happened had these words been taken seriously and literally is all Canadian-made
aircraft could have stopped flying in the United States.
[0:09:30] JR: What we mean is not literally stop flying, like if they were mid-air.
[0:09:35] IP: Not falling out of the sky.
[0:09:36] JR: Man, that would have been weird. I didn't know we had that technology.
[0:09:40] IP: Basically, grounded and unable to operate flights.
[0:09:44] JR: Because they were unceremoniously decertified.
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[0:09:48] IP: Decertified. Yes.
[0:09:49] JR: Which is, Ian, I'm not sure if you know this. Not a thing.
[0:09:53] IP: Yeah. I mean, that's never a good thing, when a thing that is not a thing could be a
thing, because no one knows what's happening. I think this illustrates a unique danger in
aviation policy at the moment, where we're seeing aviation safety policy by Fiat, and that's not a
good thing. What's increasingly even more of not a good thing is the amount of time and energy
that was then spent trying to understand what was actually meant by this. Because with some
clarification, it becomes a trade issue. Without clarification, it's a very, very large safety issue,
because we're not talking about – when we say Canadian-made aircraft, we honestly didn't
know what was being referred to. But if you take the broadest definition of Canadian-made
aircraft operating in United States, you're talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
aircraft operating everything from private flights to regional flights for major U.S. carriers.
[0:10:52] JR: Oh, and don't forget about the helicopters used by law enforcement and
medevacs and the military. Turns out, Canada is quite important to aviation in the U.S. Who
would have figured, two countries so adept at producing aircraft could have a lot riding on each
other's production?
[0:11:11] IP: Right.
[0:11:11] JR: Where did this come from? Should I just read the stupid post? I'm going to read
the stupid post.
[0:11:16] IP: I don't think we need to.
[0:11:17] JR: Okay. I won't read the stupid post.
[0:11:19] IP: We can put a link in the show notes, but I don't think we need to. Because I think
it's worth discussing where this came from. Where this came from is that Canada has been
taking its time, and we'll get to a why in a minute. Has been taking its time to certify Gulfstream’s
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newest jets. The newest series of Gulfstream jets is not yet certified in Canada. The only reason
that they're able to operate in the United States is because the FAA gave them a limited
exemption, so that they could finish full scale fuel icing testing in the G700 and G800.
[0:12:04] JR: Fuel icing, you say. Fuel icing, that thing that happened to that BA 777 at
Heathrow, where the fuel filter froze and then it crashed on the runway, just short of the runway.
That kind of problem?
[0:12:18] IP: That exact problem.
[0:12:20] JR: Oh, that's a problem. You want to make sure that doesn't happen.
[0:12:23] IP: Well, the issue here is that the FAA granted a three-year exemption that expires at
the end of 2026, so that Gulfstream could finish full scale testing to then certify that those
aircraft are not subject to unwanted fuel icing. A concern that I think is top of mind when you're
dealing with extremely cold climates, which most of Canada happens to be.
[0:12:54] JR: Yes. Somewhere at some point, somebody got in the presidency, or complained
that my Gulfstream, or maybe my company's new aircraft isn't certified in Canada. What are you
going to do about it? Because this hurts the American people. And in turn, the president decided
to hurt, potentially, couldn't actually do this, hurt all of the American people by essentially
grounding the majority of the US aviation system, because this would have shut down Breeze
entirely, shut down a good bulk of JetBlue's fleet, the entirety of Endeavour Air and any other
CRJs operating for United Express and American Eagle, and who knows what other aircraft? It's
almost like you can't just do that, because it probably has pretty wide-reaching impacts. But this
is where we are. This is the world we're in. This is the world, unfortunately, that has been voted
into office.
Thankfully, none of this came to pass. The potential 50% tariff on any aircraft sold in the US
from Canada, well, Airbus has already figured that out and that's why they make them here in
Alabama now, them being the A220. I think any A220 going to a US airline is now rolled out of
the Alabama facility and doesn't come out of Mirabel, I don't think. But this was just such a
stupid thing to have to follow through. Of course, nobody had any idea this was coming, so no
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one at the FAA had any idea. At the end of the day, it's a big nothing burger, at least for right
now. Who knows?
[0:14:27] IP: I think one of the things that I'm most concerned about here is that nobody at the
FAA knew anything about this. The FAA didn't have anything to say about this.
[0:14:38] JR: Yeah. Because you can't pass laws on social media, nor is this a law that the
president can even pass. This isn't a thing that can happen. But we look past that and just
pretend like he can.
[0:14:50] IP: Well, I think that's part of the problem. But I also think a big part of the problem is
that the FAA didn't know anything about this, and the FAA didn't say anything to that effect. They
just didn't say anything. I think that's one of the biggest problems here is that you have an
agency, a safety agency that's responsible for the certification of aircraft in the United States,
not saying anything, while a politician is making a safety decision, or purporting to make a safety
decision. I think that's what scares me most about this. Then, you have a lot of people walking
back and trying to say, “Oh, no, no. We meant new aircraft.”
[0:15:27] JR: No. No, he didn't. He said what he meant to say. It's just what he said is nonsense
and it doesn't work that way. Civilization cannot operate in such a way. Every time this happens,
it has to be walked back by people who could be doing more important things like, I don't know,
working out a law that implements 25-hour CVRs, and maybe that won't take 10 years next
time.
[0:15:49] IP: I still think it would take that long, but your point is taken.
[0:15:52] JR: Yeah. It will always take that long.
[0:15:54] IP: All right. Let's go to –
[0:15:57] JR: Heathrow.
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[0:15:58] IP: Let's go to the UK, where another Air India 787 is the subject of fuel cutoff switch
speculation. Thankfully, everyone's fine. The flight in question operated normally. Nothing
happened. We didn't really know about this until after the flight. Here's what we understand to
have happened. This is based on media reporting and the Indian Director General of Civil
Aviation's response to media reporting. Not response. I should say, their rejoinder on news.
[0:16:37] JR: Oh.
[0:16:38] IP: So, there you go.
[0:16:39] JR: That's how you know it's official.
[0:16:40] IP: Yes. On the 1st of February, Air India flight 132 from London to Bangalore was
operated by a 787-8, registration VTANX. While attempting to start the engines in London, on
two occasions, the crew observed that the fuel control switch did not remain positively latched in
the run position when light vertical pressure was applied. The third time, the switch latched
correctly and stayed there. Before moving on, they made sure that the switch was where it was
supposed to be, that the switch was latched into the run position, the engine parameters were
all fine. There were no warnings. They moved on. They kept a close eye on it for the rest of the
flight. After they landed, they handed in a defect report.
Air India then contacted Boeing. Boeing got back to them with recommended checks. Air India's
engineering group observed the following. “Both left and right switches were checked and found
satisfactory, with the locking tooth pawl fully seated and not slipping from run to cut off. When
full force was applied parallel to the base plate, the switch remained secure. When they tried to
push the switches down without lifting them and moving them over the tooth, they remained
secure.” However, and now I'm quoting again, “However, applying external force in an incorrect
direction caused the switch to move easily from run to cut off due to the angular base plate
allowing slip when pressed improperly with finger or thumb.”
[0:18:31] JR: That gets quite wordy at the end there, doesn't it? But then, it goes on a little bit
more. What else did they have to say outside of that quote?
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[0:18:41] IP: Based on Boeing's communication, the pawl to unlock force was checked on the
fuel control switch using the recommended procedure on the involved fuel cut off switch, and
the fuel control unit to be installed and fuel control cut off switch of another aircraft. In all cases,
the pawl to unlock force was found within limits and these inspections were carried out in the
presence of DGCA officers. Everything seems to be fine, as long as you follow procedures.
[0:19:07] JR: Yes. To that effect, the last line of this memo – no, I'm sorry, rejoinder on news
item says, “The airline is being advised to circulate the Boeing recommended procedure for the
operation of fuel cut off switch to its crew members.” Basically saying, just follow procedure. Do
the thing the manual says and you'll be fine. I have to say, we spent a few minutes before this
show this week just staring at the relevant area of the controls of a 787. There is also a video
circulating that this rejoinder on news item mentions, even though that video that we found isn't
even on a 787. It's not a 737. It also says, incorrectly, that 787 was grounded when it wasn't
maybe this aircraft was on the ground a little longer than usual as they took a look at it and
found nothing wrong. I don't know. I'm torn on this one that yes, the switch works as designed if
you follow instructions, but humans are known to be animals that do not always follow
instructions to the T. Of course, not everyone is going to do the right thing every time.
There does seem to be a sufficient number of protections in place to avoid the switch
accidentally moving from run to cut off. It is a little weird to me that the wording here that due to
the angular base plate allowing slip when pressed improperly with finger or thumb, I mean,
maybe that probably shouldn't be possible. Maybe there's a reason why it is. I don't know. I'm
not an engineer, but just weird that it's possible at all to me.
[0:20:37] IP: Yeah. I mean, and maybe this is one of those things where we go, “Well, we did
design this with this safety in mind. We did design this in a way that is maybe not foolproof.”
Maybe it's worth revisiting the design for the future. Or maybe Boeing says, “Look, this is how
it's supposed to work. You're not supposed to press it from the side, and you were never
supposed to press it from the side. Just follow procedures.”
[0:21:08] JR: Yeah. On the other side of that debate, the human beings operating the switches
are sitting off to the side, either to the right or left of this. You are not hovering directly on top of
it, unless you put your arm over it and then rotate your arm down in a 90-degree angle and lift it
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directly up towards the ceiling. The humans controlling these switches are sitting off to the side
at 90-degree angles. It would seem inevitable that some lateral force would be applied to these
switches and it's not going to be a perfect clean 180-degree pull away from the base of the
switch here. Yeah, maybe a revision might be due for this. But honestly, it seems like this part is
common across most Boeing aircraft. It doesn't seem like it'd be unique to the 787, but maybe it
is. I don't know. It seems like a lot to do about nothing, but maybe not. Too hard to tell for me
right now.
[0:22:06] IP: I would love to hear from someone with a bit more knowledge than I. If you're
listening to the show and you're going, “I know what's happening here,” please email us,
podcast@fr24.com.
[0:22:17] JR: No, no, no, no, no, no. They have to submit their own rejoinder on news item to
us.
[0:22:23] IP: Yes. Submit your own rejoinder on news item to podcast@fr24.com. Thank you.
[0:22:31] JR: There it is.
[0:22:32] IP: Let's head to Singapore, because this week is also the Singapore Airshow. Jason
and I are not there, where it's much warmer than it is where we both are, but there is some
news coming out of Singapore this week. Not any huge orders, but some interesting trickles of
aircraft.
[0:22:51] JR: Yeah. It's some good stuff out there. Tiger Air Taiwan disclosed an order. I guess,
it must have been a previous order if they're disclosing it for four A321neo. Yay, I guess. But
they get a little more interesting. Air Cambodia ordered 10 737 MAX 8 aircraft, which Boeing
would love you to know that it is the first order of the 737 MAX family in Cambodia. I guess,
yeah. Who else would have ordered it? I don't know if there are other Cambodian airlines of that
size that could order that aircraft, but good for them. Here's a one I didn't see coming. Air
Borneo ordered eight ATRs, which would be a split of five 72-600 and three 42-600s. That's
pretty cool. I think the coolest one isn't a passenger aircraft at all, because it hasn't been too
successful as a passenger aircraft, but there was an order for six firefighting variant of the C909.
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You don't hear much about that aircraft. But I think we covered quite a while ago about how they
were splitting out the C909 into a bunch of different variants that could do things, like firefighting,
or military work, or some other stuff. What else can a C909 do?
[0:24:13] IP: They were going to do cargo. I think there may have even been a combi variant
that they teased.
[0:24:19] JR: Yes.
[0:24:19] IP: All sorts of things. Trying to turn the C909 from a DC9 copy to a 737-200 copy.
[0:24:27] JR: Cool.
[0:24:28] IP: I think.
[0:24:29] JR: Yeah, sure. Why not?
[0:24:33] IP: Let's talk about some upcoming things as we move into the latter part of the latter
half of this decade. This was, I think, first reported by Jon Ostrower’s team over at The Air
Current last week, but comes into focus as the Singapore Airshow ramps up, where Airbus is
looking to garner enough pre-orders for an A220-500 variant to turn that aircraft into a reality.
[0:24:59] JR: Yes. The discussion of a stretched, again, version of the A220 has been going on
for years and years and years at this point. This would be a roughly, give or take, 180-seat
aircraft. Very comparable to the A320. But Airbus has struggled to get the A220 production at a
place where they can financially make this work either right now to get the number of aircraft out
there working, produced with working engines is also another thing we'll talk about in a moment.
[0:25:33] IP: We'll get there in just a second.
[0:25:35] JR: Yeah. But there has to be enough interest in a stretch of the A220 out there before
a company like Airbus would even get permission from its own board to go ahead and start the
work on doing that, knowing that there's someone else out there already doing this. Embraer
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with its E2 family of aircraft is also in this very market space. Maybe. Maybe we'll see it later this
year. Maybe we'll see it at the big annual Summer European Airshow. Remind me of Paris, or is
it Farnborough this year?
[0:26:03] IP: Farnborough this year.
[0:26:04] JR: Farnborough. Maybe we can see the A220-500 launched there. We don't know.
But it seems more real now than it ever has been.
[0:26:15] IP: Yet, it still doesn't seem real.
[0:26:18] JR: Yeah. Reuters is reporting the potential target carriers could be Delta, Air Canada,
Air France, since they already operate the A220. Unsurprisingly, all three airlines declined to
comment.
[0:26:30] IP: Very, very unsurprising there.
[0:26:32] JR: Yes. I would look forward to that.
[0:26:34] IP: As Jason mentioned, there's a wrinkle here in that the current A220 family among
other aircrafts are powered by an engine that has had trouble for some time.
[0:26:50] JR: That's one way to put it.
[0:26:51] IP: If you're thinking, oh, that trouble's almost over. Well, not quite.
[0:26:57] JR: No.
[0:26:58] IP: Also speaking out of the Singapore Airshow, Pratt & Whitney says that it expects
the GTF recovery to take place through the end of the decade.
[0:27:09] JR: Yes. The quote is, and I'm reading from a Flight Global article, “We feel confident
that by the end of this decade, we are going to be in a more normalized state for sure.” Sure,
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that was Pratt & Whitney President of Commercial Engines, Rick Deurloo on February 4th in
Singapore. He didn't say it'll be over. He said it will be, “a more normalized state for sure.”
[0:27:34] IP: Oh. Well, even better.
[0:27:36] JR: That's really hedging your bets. It won't be gone and over with and done with,
though it'll be a more normalized state. This has been going on forever at this point, and it will
continue to go on forever. He went on to say, “We see this fleet completely coming out of the
challenge of AOGs by the end of 2026.” I guess, that's good. By the end of this year, they'll have
enough engines to get all of the aircraft back in the air, at least for all the airlines that it hasn't
destroyed at this point, because there are a number of those. Yeah, do we believe them?
[0:28:10] IP: No comment.
[0:28:11] JR: No comment. Just like Delta.
[0:28:14] IP: Exactly, exactly. Let's wrap up our conversation about Singapore and talk about
something that I'm not sure it'll ever come to pass, but I sure hope it does, because it looks
really cool.
[0:28:27] JR: I didn't even know this was a thing, until I read it in the show notes. Now I agree.
Tell me about this thing, because it looks stupid.
[0:28:35] IP: But so cool.
[0:28:36] JR: It looks so doofy. What is it?
[0:28:39] IP: What it is, is Radia's WindRunner concept, which is a concept aircraft for an ultra-
heavy lift freighter. Think something along the lines of C5, or Antonov AN-124. This particular
configuration is a four-engine downward-facing winglet An-225 empennage, plus a Bulbous 747
was stung by a bee and is having an allergic reaction.
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[0:29:22] JR: Yeah. I think you summed it up well. You know that photo of the prop version of
the little tiny 747? It just looks like it's got this cockpit that sticks up out of nowhere and doesn't
look right? It has some of that characteristics, too. It's just got this little tiny, tiny little cockpit
hump that sticks out the top. It's just, man, I hope this thing becomes real. Because they claim
that you could just stick an entire wind turbine blade inside and ship it anywhere. You cannot do
that today with most aircraft.
[0:29:54] IP: Yeah. I mean, I get the idea here, because what they're talking about is being able
to replace, or fill some of that capacity that is not taken up by the An-124, allows this particular
aircraft to supplement the C5 and especially the C17s, where they can carry things like V22s
and just roll them on. I don't think this is going to happen, but I hope they at least try and build
one.
[0:30:31] JR: Yeah. Their website, the headlining image is a bunch of fighter jets being eaten by
the WindRunner. They claim 10X bigger cargo volume than a 777 enabled land on unpaved
landing strips. Okay, you can do, say anything you want, because it's not real. But then, they
really, really seem to be marketing this as an aircraft specifically for carrying wind turbine
blades, which is a very, I feel like, niche thing. But then, they have a bunch of pictures of why
you can't do this by truck, because there are bridges on the road and you can't drive through a
bridge if you have payloads that are bigger than the bridge. Here's this aircraft that can go
anywhere and do anything. They have this timeline of 4 am. Their day begins loading blades
into WindRunner. Then by 7 am, taxi and takeoff. Then, of course, there's a whole line of these
aircraft going out, not just one, but the entire hub is full of them. By 9 am, they're at cruising
altitude and they can fly up to 1,240 miles from a hub at an altitude of 41,000 feet.
Then by 10 am, they're landing on rough terrain, because this aircraft can land on semi-
prepared airstrip as short as 6,000 feet, something no other large commercial aircraft can
achieve, because those are real aircraft. They exist. This doesn't. By 11 am, you're unloading
the blades. By 2 pm, you're building your wind turbine and your day is done and you go home
and you crack open a drink and you do it all again the next day. I guess, you could also put a
bunch of chinooks and rocket boosters in there. I guess, the wind turbine blade is what makes
the most sense for this aircraft, because of the shape of it, where it tilts up towards the back of
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it, and so does a wind turbine. Maybe that's why they're going so heavy with the marketing for
that particular type of cargo.
[0:32:22] IP: I just have a question about why the aircraft takes off at about 7 am and reaches
cruising altitude at 9 am.
[0:32:28] JR: Well, it's only got four engines. If you want to get to cruising altitude faster than
that, you need six, like any very large aircraft should have.
[0:32:36] IP: Self-respecting twin vertical stabilizer aircraft. Fair enough.
[0:32:40] JR: Yes, of course, of course. They don't mention any engine, or anything like that, of
course, because it's not a real aircraft.
[0:32:49] IP: What they say is that they will use an existing commercial engine.
[0:32:53] JR: Oh, sure. I mean, they look like run of the mill. Scale is really difficult here,
because it's a very large aircraft, so the engines look really small in comparison. I don't know
from the renderings. These look pretty generic. Maybe they're, I don't know. I don't even want to
guess, because I don't know. Doesn't matter.
[0:33:10] IP: We don't know. We can make up whatever we want and say, they're going to be
GE 9Xs. Why not?
[0:33:17] JR: Ooh. That'd be nice. But hey, if this thing is real, I sure as hell want to go out and
see it, because it is the goofiest looking aircraft, but there's a real need for it. They wouldn't be
doing this if there wasn't a need for it, because there is certainly nothing else out there, even
remotely this large.
[0:33:33] IP: Yeah. It would be interesting to see if they can get this off the ground and at what
point things move around in the configuration and where things end up in the end. I think that'll
be the one thing to keep an eye on.
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[0:33:45] JR: Mm-hmm.
[0:33:47] IP: Well, let's go from things that don't exist to things that might not exist for very long
and talk about Spirit Airlines.
[0:33:54] JR: Oof. Ouch. That was a harsh transition.
[0:33:57] IP: I think it's harsh, but fair.
[0:33:59] JR: Harsh, but fair. Yeah, go on.
[0:34:01] IP: Spirit Airlines has done a number of things to reconfigure their business, but
they've also done some marketing things. Lately, they had that ugly sweater livery that they
painted on one of their aircraft. Now they're joining the ranks of Delta and United with trading
cards, that their pilots are being given to give out to passengers. You can now collect your very
own Spirit Airlines trading cards.
[0:34:29] JR: Hey, that's pretty cool.
[0:34:31] IP: Yeah.
[0:34:32] JR: Yeah. Mm. Okay. I don't think this is going to be the thing that saves Spirit, but it's
pretty cool. Nonetheless, I do particularly love that they have cards for aircraft that aren't in their
fleet anymore, like the A319. At least the card for those aircraft is in one of their old liveries, so I
guess, that's technically correct.
[0:34:53] IP: The best kind of correct.
[0:34:54] JR: Yeah. Odd to be handing out cards for aircraft that aren't in your fleet, because
you went through bankruptcy twice and shed those aircraft from your fleet, but keeping the
memory alive.
[0:35:04] IP: Well, you know what might save Spirit Airlines, Jason?
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[0:35:08] JR: Money.
[0:35:09] IP: Money. Not this amount of money, but every little bit counts. United is in the
process of purchasing two gates at O'Hare, from Spirit for 30 million dollars.
[0:35:21] JR: Hey, okay. United in its never-ending quest to absolutely crush American Airlines
by any means necessary, at Chicago O'Hare, continues with even more gates. Apparently, Spirit
would have probably given up in due course anyway, maybe next year. But if United can snatch
them up for the measly cost of 30 million dollars, that's a rounding error to United in this fight.
How many gates does that leave Spirit left with? I can't imagine they had many to begin with.
[0:35:53] IP: They do not have many left. Though, I mean, there are some common used gates
that they still have access to, but I don't know how many dedicated gates they have after these
divestment, because they've already gotten rid of a few.
[0:36:06] JR: They have.
[0:36:08] IP: It can't be that many. I don't have the gate allocation schematic in front of me.
Though, I do have it somewhere around, because United's number of gates just keeps going up
and up and up and up and up and up.
[0:36:21] JR: Yeah, I'm going to miss Spirit, especially in Chicago, since I've taken Spirit out to
Chicago on our hotdog run so many times.
[0:36:29] IP: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:36:29] JR: Because it seems so reasonable. But now I don't think it's even possible to do a
day trip on Spirit from New York.
[0:36:35] IP: That's sad. Well, let's continue to talk about United, because this is an interesting
one. Today has been a very interesting day for United.
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[0:36:45] JR: But also not an interesting day, which is good.
[0:36:49] IP: Yeah, in a very good way. Last week, they sent out a message that said, “Hey,
we're going to do a massive, massive technological upgrade to a bunch of our systems. We are
going to not make anything available to travelers. Not the app. Not the website. You're not going
to be able to pretty much do anything during this outage period.”
[0:37:15] JR: Nor will our employees, which is also the particularly interesting part.
[0:37:21] IP: Yeah. And to make sure that we don't impact anybody unduly, we're also going to
cancel a bunch of flights that are scheduled to depart during this outage period, while we do
these upgrades.
[0:37:36] JR: Yeah. This was interesting. During this outage, which lasted from 1.30 a.m. to 5
a.m. Central Standard Time, the airline essentially was offline. You couldn't book a flight. You
couldn't check in. You couldn't make trip changes. You, nor anyone that United could do
anything. Everything was frozen. This is not unheard of for an airline to do IT work overnight.
Sometimes it goes well and you never know what happens. Other times it doesn't go well and
you really know it happened. In this case, because it went through 5 a.m. Central, which is 6
a.m. Eastern, that's already into the beginning of the day. If you're in a situation where you're
operating a 6 a.m. bank of flights, but you can't check in for flights until 6 a.m., you can't operate
those 6 a.m. flights.
To give itself some cushion, United called, I don't have the exact numbers, but I think damn near
a thousand flights from its schedule today, because it wanted to give at least a couple hours of
hedging their bet time, I would say, in case it went a little long, or to give people time to check in.
There are routes that normally have a 6 a.m., 7 a.m., 8 a.m. flight and that there were none, I
think, from United in the air until 9 a.m. Eastern today, that weren't already in the air. Not
everything was grounded. Flights that took off before continued on. But when I woke up this
morning and looked at the map, there was not a single united flight over the continental United
States, which is nuts.
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[0:39:06] IP: Pretty incredible. The nice thing for United and anyone flying United today, or
trying to check in for flight, or trying to make changes to a flight, is everything seems to have
gone the way it was supposed to, and we didn't hear boo from anyone with problems.
[0:39:22] JR: Yes, of course, because as we've heard from our friend who went up to Chicago
to headquarters to pull an all-nighter and in case something went wrong, Corp comms would be
there at the ready. Thankfully, nothing did go wrong and they got to go home early.
[0:39:37] IP: Excellent.
[0:39:38] JR: That's the way you want it to be.
[0:39:40] IP: That's what we like to hear.
[0:39:41] JR: Yeah, not many IT upgrades completely take your airline offline. You really don't
want that to go wrong.
[0:39:48] IP: Yeah. hopefully we'll hear – We heard somewhat about what they were up to. Now
that it's done, hopefully, we'll be able to hear a bit more about what went into this upgrade, what
they actually changed, and what that means for the airline moving forward.
[0:40:03] JR: Yeah. United was surprisingly coy about this. I've heard various things, like
moving its internal shares reservation system to the cloud, or who knows with airlines, they have
so many antiquated systems. United is particularly good at slapping really nice coats of paint
over really old antiquated systems that seem to work pretty well. At some point, you got to take
the Commodore 64 offline and replace it with, I don't know, Pentium II, if we're going in an airline
speak. But progress is progress.
[0:40:34] IP: Progress is progress. Sometimes progress just means you're like everybody else.
In the case of Southwest Airlines, they're just like everybody else now.
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[0:40:46] JR: What a slick transition once again. Good job. In other major, major could go very
wrong things, Southwest has officially become like every other airline and had its very first
flights with assigned seats this week. It was fine.
[0:41:08] IP: Seats were assigned.
[0:41:09] JR: Yes. The world keeps spinning. The sun still shines. Birds still chirping. Yeah,
some people were a little disappointed in the end. Money is, at the end of the day, the most
important thing to a business. There was a lot of money being left on the table. Southwest, since
the beginning of this year, reconfigured all of its aircraft to have extra legroom seating onboard
and got that all implemented in time for the new world of assigned seating and boarding groups
and all that. It turns out, it's fine.
[0:41:43] IP: It's fine. You know what's not fine, Jason? Get left on a bus.
[0:41:47] JR: Oh, man. I mean, if you're on a normal city bus, you get to the end of the route
and you just get off the bus. But you're at an airport, you don't want to be left on the bus,
because that probably means that the plane has left without you. But that doesn't happen. That
can't happen.
[0:42:02] IP: It shouldn't happen.
[0:42:03] JR: It shouldn't happen, but it did happen. Where did it happen?
[0:42:05] IP: Well, it happened to Thai AirAsia passengers. They were left stranded, wherever
they were left stranded, because, of course, this page is refusing to reload. Now that I've moved
away from – yeah, tell me how Jason.
[0:42:22] JR: I got you. AirAsia, of course, a low-cost airline, was flying a very early flight in the
morning from Bangkok to Hat Yai. I don't know where that is. But it was an A320 with 136
people booked onboard, but only 113 passengers made it onboard, leaving the balance of 23
people not onboard. They were left on the bus, and the plane left without them. Only as this
article I'm reading from One Mile at a Time, which itself is the source the information from the
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Bangkok Post, a passenger onboard was very confused, because their travel mate who was at
the gate with them but on a different bus did not appear on the airplane and they said, “Huh,
that's weird.” The aircraft that already started taxiing, and this passenger said, “Hey, what the
heck is going on? Where's my friend, or whatever?”
Eventually, the crew realized, “Oh, yeah. Huh, something’s not right here.” They actually
returned to the gate, where they were able to confirm there's a busload of passengers that is
somewhere else and not onboard this aircraft. They eventually sorted it out and those 23
passengers were able to get on the aircraft and the flight did take off late. Something like this
shouldn't be possible, because the way bus gates work, and I'm sure everyone listening to this
podcast has been on a flight with a bus gate at some point before, but the passenger scans
their boarding pass in the terminal, or building, or wherever they are, they are logged as
boarded, they get on the bus. The bus goes to the airplane and passengers get on the airplane.
Then the all-important passenger count happens to make sure that every passenger, the exact
number that scanned into the flight is onboard the airplane. But for whatever reason, that did not
happen.
Apparently, there were two findings that one, the count did not happen, and that a ground agent
who was supposed to communicate with the lead flight attendant confirmed whether the aircraft
is ready for departure. Well, that didn't happen either. None of this should have been possible.
That's a new level of being inconvenienced by a bus gate.
[0:44:30] IP: I mean, can you imagine just sitting around on a bus somewhere on the airfield
and just watching your airplane leave?
[0:44:39] JR: Yeah. I mean, the details aren't 100% here, so we don't know if the bus had ever
left its point of origin at the terminal, or whether it was driving around on a detour, or whether it
was plain sight and the doors just didn't open and the plane said, “See you later.” Don't really
know. Apparently, the cabin crew just assumed that the missing passengers had simply missed
the flight and would catch the next one, which I guess, it's possible that 20-something
passengers could no show. But that seems like, you should.
[0:45:08] IP: The whole thing seems very odd. Very, very odd.
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[0:45:13] JR: Yes. AirAsia confirmed the incident and said, it attributed to coordination and
communication errors between staff and that they will tighten procedures by requiring cabin
crew and not just the ground staff to conduct a final headcount before pushback on flights using
bus gates, which it's AirAsia, so that's probably a majority of its flights.
[0:45:32] IP: I thought that whole statement was going to be whoopsie daisy.
[0:45:35] JR: Whoops, that happens.
[0:45:37] IP: Yeah. Let's get to the end of the show where we talk about things in quick
succession. Right now, we have two new special liveries for Lufthansa coming into the mix.
Lufthansa got its first of what I believe are going to be two retro-livery aircraft, an A321neo. That
aircraft was on delivery the other day and then didn't get to go where it was going, because it
was snowing in Frankfurt. We were watching it and I was hoping that somebody would get a
photo and then we started getting news from Frankfurt that no, Frankfurt Airport is closed.
[0:46:14] JR: Whoops.
[0:46:15] IP: That aircraft ended up in Düsseldorf. Eventually, made it onward. The 100th
anniversary livery A350 has also been redelivered after paint and is currently, as we record, in
the air on its first revenue flight on its way to San Francisco.
[0:46:32] JR: Oh, that's nice. It is such a looker, that aircraft. I'm really happy Lufthansa is going
so all out with these 100th anniversary logos. We've come a long way from when they
introduced, I think, the first A320neo in revenue service and it was just a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
sticker on the aircraft and they eventually sorted that out. But Lufthansa is doing good here.
Makes me sad that United has not, but I guess, they spent the fancy paint budget on two gates
at O'Hare.
[0:47:02] IP: I absolutely refuse to believe. Until I am told otherwise by Scott Kirby himself, I
refuse to believe that that is all they are going to do to celebrate the airlines’ 100th anniversary.
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[0:47:14] JR: I don't know, man. It's already February. If they're planning on doing something,
clock is ticking.
[0:47:19] IP: I'm just saying. I refuse to believe it until he tells it to me himself.
[0:47:23] JR: Okay.
[0:47:24] IP: Because, yeah. Anyway, they said they were going to do something, and if that's
the something –
[0:47:29] JR: They did something.
[0:47:29] IP: - they're going to do, ah, that's not something. That's a sticker.
[0:47:33] JR: It's nothing.
[0:47:34] IP: Anyway, tell me about Aer Lingus and Manchester, because it's an Irish airline
operating in the UK, but not anymore.
[0:47:42] JR: Yeah, don't worry about it anymore. Apparently, Aer Lingus on very short notice
will completely exit from Manchester, at least on its long-haul services that it did offer, I believe,
here to New York JFK and some seasonal stuff to Orlando, because, of course, everyone wants
to go from Manchester to Orlando. I remember back in the day where Virgin would have nine
aircraft on the ground from Manchester and Orlando, but very short notice. Aer Lingus
completely exiting the long-haul market in Manchester due to apparently, costs just simply being
too high staffing-wise.
This one's pretty rare. For a legacy airline like this, I guess you can call it Aer Lingus legacy
airline to just completely on extremely short notice just rug pull out from passenger and say,
“Sorry. Whatever you have booked before, you don't. We’re out of here.”
[0:48:32] IP: From my understanding, the pullout also has a lot to do with how the AOC is
structured and what type of requirements were involved. It was one of those things where they
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were either going to do it, or they were going to have to just cut it completely. It's really
unfortunate that they couldn't make this work, but it's one of those things where airlines try to
save money any way they can, and they were trying to save money through this structure of
subsidiaries and base launches and things like that, and it just didn't work for them. On to the
next thing.
[0:49:15] JR: All right.
[0:49:16] IP: There you go. Jason, speaking of airlines no more, Jetstar Japan is going to be no
more. Qantas is out.
[0:49:23] JR: Yes.
[0:49:24] IP: Something will come next.
[0:49:26] JR: Yes. Joining in the graveyard of Jetstar off-shoots, Jetstar Japan apparently,
Qantas has decided to sell its one-third stake after it's already done the same thing to Jetstar
Asia back in last year, because apparently, there's intense regional competition, high fuels, fire
costs, and things just didn't work out. Jetstar Japan will live on under a new brand name of
some sort with different ownership. Don't know what that brand is. I'm sure it will be something
nice, but it will not be the Jetstar brand, which has really been reeled back recently after Qantas
is refocusing on itself, taking some time to work on its own operation.
[0:50:10] IP: It's taking some me time.
[0:50:12] JR: Taking some me time to think about its lackluster of few years and really figure out
what it wants to be in its next 100 years of existence. But a part of that, apparently, won't be
international off-shoots of Jetstar brands, which is fine, I guess.
[0:50:27] IP: I mean, something will take its place.
[0:50:29] JR: Yes. Something always does.
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[0:50:31] IP: Well, last week, we said, hey, JetBlue's doing this really cool thing, where they
sometimes issue new special liveries. In this case, they're having voting, like they did for the
previous one, and you can vote. Well, I hope you voted when we told you to vote, because
apparently, voting is closed. They've made their choice, and the paint is already coming this
spring.
[0:50:58] JR: Yeah. It really makes you wonder if this was a real competition, if it's going to
move that fast, but maybe JetBlue can move that fast. I don't know. But they have already
picked the winner. It's actually not the one I voted for, which is too bad.
[0:51:11] IP: It's not the one I voted for, either.
[0:51:12] JR: No, too bad. But love a livery contest. Love how many special liveries JetBlue
has, especially one's featuring its unique – not unique, but it's destinations that make JetBlue
JetBlue. This one will look pretty damn good, I think, and I'm looking forward to see it.
[0:51:31] IP: There were no bad choices.
[0:51:33] JR: No, there were no bad choices. There were only good choices. It's just great that
JetBlue really tries to involve people in picking these liveries. Even if the winners don't win, just
the fact that they get their names out there as artists is pretty great as well.
[0:51:49] IP: Yeah. I think this is a great initiative. I think it's fantastic to have these special
liveries. I think it's fantastic to represent the culture of your destinations, and I think it's fantastic
to have your customers and just aviation enthusiasts generally involved in helping make these
choices. It's almost like an airline could do that for their 100th anniversary if they wanted to.
[0:52:11] JR: Ooh, bringing it back. Scott Kirby, pick up the phone. He needs to talk to you.
[0:52:17] IP: Oh, boy. We're going to get email, or what? I hope we get email. I hope I have
goaded Scott Kirby into emailing me and saying, “Fine, we'll do a special 100th anniversary
livery.”
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[0:52:27] JR: Maybe Scott Kirby will send you one of these coveted rejoinders on news items.
[0:52:33] IP: Ooh. I would love to receive a rejoinder on a news item from both Scott Kirby and
any one of our listeners. You can always email us at podcast@fr24.com. On that note, this has
been Episode 356. I am Ian Petcenik in Stockholm, here as always with –
[0:52:54] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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