AvTalk Episode 163: The passenger landed the plane!

EPISODE 163

[EPISODE]

[00:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to Episode 163 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –

[00:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How are you?

[00:00:19] IP: Hello, Jason. I am doing all right. I’m muddling my way through the week. We've been dealing with quarantines and things. Thankfully, no one in our house is sick, but some people got sick in the youngsters’ classroom. They've been in quarantine the beginning of the week. That's been fun, because of course, this is a week where both my wife and I have multiple engagements with people outside of our own offices and therefore, have to appear to be professional. That's been a wonderful challenge to get around. Everyone is healthy, so small mercies.

[00:00:57] JR: That's good.

[00:00:57] IP: How are you?

[00:00:58] JR: I'm good. You and I have had very different week so far.

[00:01:01] IP: We have. I'm not jealous at all. I'm not jealous at all Not at all.

[00:01:06] JR: Are you sure? I feel a bit of insincerity.

[00:01:10] IP: Twinge. A twinge of jealousy.

[00:01:11] JR: Yeah. It doesn't sound right to me.

[00:01:13] IP: What did you do this week?

[00:01:15] JR: I left on Sunday and returned to New York today, but I was in St. Martin, of all places, for the past few days.

[00:01:23] IP: How was plane spotters paradise?

[00:01:26] JR: It was everything it's supposed to be. I have not been there since, I think, 2016. I've been there twice before 2014 and I think 2016. Not since the hurricane that absolutely obliterated pretty much everything on the island. They're still building back. I stayed at the ocean point, too, which is, I think is [inaudible 00:01:48] property, which is right by Maho Beach. I didn't arrange it or anything, but the room had a balcony that happened to look over the bay where the aircraft fly over and had a great view of the entire runway. Just walked out that way. It was nice.

[00:02:04] IP: I'm not jealous. I'm treating this as a reconnaissance mission on my behalf. You went down there, you check things out, you made sure that they’re rebuilding nicely. So when I eventually make it down there, I'm going to know what to do and where to go. I appreciate your efforts. That's how I'm spending this –

[00:02:25] JR: Yes. It was it was excellent. Not quite the same as the last couple of times I was down there, since the aviation industry has changed quite a bit since then. It's also fringe, off-peak season, so there's a bit less arrivals every day there. Gone are the days of the KLM 747 and the Air France June rooftop bar, A340 that’s gone. The biggest aircraft I saw was actually a KLM A330-300, which was nice. It wasn't a 200, but that was the largest aircraft I saw while I was there, which is nice. Gone are the days of –

[00:03:10] IP: You missed the queen. I mean, you missed the queen.

[00:03:12] JR: Gone are the days of jumbo jet at St. Martin and realistically, most other places.

[00:03:19] IP: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you had fun and I do appreciate you taking one for the team and going down there to check things out for us.

[00:03:25] JR: Yeah, I do it. I can. I'm happy to report back. Lots of good aircraft. Let's see. Who did I see? A couple of airlines I didn't even know existed. There was a, I think a Dominican airline. Maybe it was Dominican Jet Air operator with the Fokker F70, which is pretty fantastic. I haven't seen one of those in very long time. I think we discussed that pretty much the only other one’s operating are in Australia at this point.

[00:03:51] IP: Yeah. I mean, to get a hold of one, you have to pretty much go to – if you want to have a realistic – if most people want to have a realistic chance, you're going to need to head to Australia.

[00:04:04] JR: Yeah. I think there was an Air Caraïbes A330, which was a nice thing to see. Only came in once during the time I was down there. Everything else was pretty much an American 737, JetBlue A320, United 737. That was really the bulk of it. The one aircraft I did see, almost didn't see, because it came in on my last day there and diverted back to Jamaica after departing bound for St. Martin, but Caribbean Airlines 737-800. I think, the registration is 9YTAB. I was told, that was actually it's final day of commercial operations for that particular aircraft. That was nice that I was able to catch that.

[00:04:50] IP: Nice. That's always nice when you can catch a little bit of – accidentally catch a little bit of history. I like that.

[00:04:54] JR: Yeah. Don't know if it's going to be retired, broken up, or have a nice hole cut in the side and converted into a freighter, which I'm assuming is its fate.

[00:05:03] IP: Probably. Yeah.

[00:05:04] JR: I guess we'll see. I'm sure it'll be coming to an Amazon Hub airport near you soon.

[00:05:10] IP: Yeah, likely. It is Wednesday, the 11th of May, and we were recording a little bit later today. Because of that, it seems that breaking news has occurred before we began recording. It's so fresh. We don't really know exactly what happened. But a Tibet Airlines A319 suffered some fire runway excursion in Chongqing on departure. We're still seeing if we can pull any more data than the initial pass that we have, which wasn't much beyond a taxi out. Still breaking news just coming out. We're looking to it and we'll have a little bit more on next week's show. I just want to point out that this occurred before we started recording for once, so I can only imagine what's going to happen after we stop recording.

[00:05:59] JR: Yes.

[00:06:00] IP: We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

[00:06:02] JR: Yes. There is a new tweet coming out of China of 53 seconds ago that says, there were 113 passengers onboard. No fatalities. Several minor injuries, which is obviously, always great to hear. This is very preliminary information, but any preliminary information of that nature is welcome.

[00:06:21] IP: Yeah, absolutely. It looked like a number of people were safely evacuating the aircraft in the videos that made it onto social media so far. Hopefully, we continue to see the reports that only minor injuries. Moving on to what I thought we would lead the show with this week, because normally, without that breaking news this would lead this episode and probably nearly any other episode.

[00:06:43] JR: You can't really top this story.

[00:06:46] IP: I'm just going to quote the guy directly. This is a passenger on a Cessna 28 Caravan that's flying from Marsh Harbor to Fort Pierce in Florida, getting hold of air traffic control and saying, “I've got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”

[00:07:12] JR: Huh. One thing stands out is that for someone who has no experience flying an aircraft whatsoever, simply figuring out how to key the mic to transmit that message, that's an accomplishment in and of itself, I think.

[00:07:30] IP: Yeah. I mean, hopefully as part of this, they received some safety briefing and they were talking to the pilot beforehand. Usually, that safety briefing doesn't include, here's how to fly the plane in case I can't anymore. The passenger got a hold of air traffic control. Air traffic control said, “Hey, where are you?” The guy says, “I have no idea.” Then they figured out where he was. They talked him down and he successfully landed this Cessna caravan at Palm Beach on the runway. The video shows it. That’s a good landing.

[00:08:14] JR: This comes, the FAA says after the pilot flying initially became sick and fell, what they say against the controls, putting the aircraft into a nosedive in sharp terms. Not only did the passenger successfully land the aircraft quite well on top of that, but he actually recovered the aircraft out of a nosedive and sharp turn to then figure out how to communicate with ATC and then land the aircraft. The landing was so good that when air traffic control was talking to an American, I think it was an Airbus aircraft that had to delay its departure, or maybe arrival because of this, they did a double take when they were having a conversation saying like, ATC said, hold for that, says the passengers just landed the plane and they said, “Okay. We’ll hold here.” Then a couple of seconds later, the pilots of American go, “Wait, wait. Did you say the pilot landed the airplane?” Yeah, it was –

[00:09:11] IP: No, no. There was a passenger.

[00:09:13] JR: Or the passenger have landed the airplane. Sorry. It was such a good landing that even the commercial pilots of that American aircraft didn't think anything of it.

[00:09:22] IP: They were cruising along at 9,825 feet, and they're approaching the Florida Coast. All of a sudden, they did a 90-degree turn, but they did a 90-degree turn the long way. What is that? 270? They go from 9,825 feet. Max vertical speed is -11,584 feet in the 180, and then he pulls it up. This is assuming where the passenger gains control of the aircraft, climbing back at 9,280 feet, all happens very quickly. Pilot loses – slams forward on the controls. Passenger, I guess, yanks him off the controls and pulls it back up.

They make it back up to about 9,200 feet. At this point, they're talking between the air traffic controllers and this passenger who is now the pilot, and he manages to bring it over the coast, figure it out and then lines it up with the runway and lands. I mean, this is crazy.

[00:10:37] JR: There are a couple of circumstances here that aided the miraculous landing and that when the passengers got in touch with air traffic control, they ended up getting a phone number. They had a working cellphone and coverage and they were able to call air traffic control, I think, in West Palm Beach. Who they ended up talking to, one of the FAA controllers happened to be a certified flight instructor with experience on Cessna aircraft, which happens to be extremely valuable information.

They were able to print out, I think the instrument cluster and the controls for the Cessna and walk the passengers through what they would need to do, whether that flaps, or I'm sure there was landing gear for this aircraft. I think, it was a float plane. I think it.

[00:11:20] IP: It had previously been a float plane, but those had been removed prior to this.

[00:11:28] JR: Okay. Because some of the pictures I saw had float, some didn’t. They were able to very expertly guide this aircraft down to the ground. Just, again, one of those circumstances where everything lined up perfectly, including the aircraft on the central line of the runway.

[00:11:44] IP: This all happened in 40 minutes. The whole incident, from pilot losing the ability to operate the aircraft, to the passenger landing it, 40 minutes.

[00:11:55] JR: Pretty incredible. Also, these things happen. This is not the first time that FAA controllers have guided a passenger to land the aircraft. I remember several instances of this in the not-too-distant past. Unfortunately, this is not one of those very, very new aircraft that have the one-button push to auto-land the aircraft.

[00:12:19] IP: The Garmin auto-land.

[00:12:21] JR: Yeah. That would have been a really good use case for that. I don't think we've heard of an actual event of that happening just yet.

[00:12:27] IP: No, I don't think so.

[00:12:28] JR: Proof positive that such a thing is a very valuable button to be pressed. In some cases, you don't need it.

[00:12:42] I mean, obviously if it's me, I'm like, “Okay, I can do this. I'm going to go get my pilot's license.” If you're this guy, I don't know who this guy is. Does he say, “I'm going to go get my pilot's license”? Or does he say, “I'm done flying”?

[00:12:52] JR: Yeah. I’m done flying now.

[00:12:53] IP: I landed it on my first try. I'm done.

[00:12:56] JR: He was cool under pressure. We hear over that the ATC chatter that he has no flying experience, but he clearly had his wits about him and some aviation. He was able to call out, “This is my descent rate,” I think he said. He read out the feet per minute of the descent, or ascent. He clearly had some of the terminology. He knew what squawk code was. They asked him for the ident button on the transponder. There was, I think, a higher degree of knowledge and information than your typical airline passenger. At the end of the day, someone who has never flown an aircraft, I don't think it matters how much they know about the controls, but actually doing whole other things.

[00:13:42] IP: Yeah, exactly. I mean, more power to him. An amazing job. We'll put the link to the video and a link to the consolidated air traffic control recording in the show notes, because as with all of these recordings, it takes place over 40 minutes and there's only so much radio contact, especially because they were communicating over cellphones, where that was a big help to them landing.

Speaking of pilot training, this is a very interesting update and renewed possibility for changing how things work in becoming a pilot in the US, as well as addressing the overall pilot shortage that not is not only happening in the US, but it's also happening around the world. This is a US specific one, but it remains to be seen if something like this could work elsewhere. I'm referring to Republic Airways petition to the FAA to reduce the number of hours required by pilots that attend their program to receive their restricted air transport pilot certificate.

Normally, that requires 1500 hours of flight time. They're saying that their classes, training, etc., is rigorous enough that it puts them on par with military aviators and thus, only should require 750 hours of flight time. This would allow them to reduce the pressure on hiring qualified pilots, they say, because their pilots are coming through this program and are just as knowledgeable as military aviators and thus, don't need as many flight hours to have the same level of knowledge and experience that other pilots do, as far as the 1500-hour thing goes.
I think, this is a really interesting move. It seems to me that they're doing all they can to make this case. I mean, this was a really, really well thought out proposal, I thought. I'm not sure it goes anywhere, but they did their homework.

[00:16:19] JR: Yeah. Yeah. This comes in response to the 1500 hour rule, which was, I believe, put in place after the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, where the Dash 8 was on approach to Buffalo, and the pilots just didn't really seem to know what they were doing, or they were just fatigued to the point where they couldn't figure out what they were doing, and now we have had this 1500-hour rule for commercial for commercial pilots ever since. It's a very interesting proposal. I really need to read up on it before I come up with the determination. The reasoning sounds like it could be perfectly legitimate, right?

[00:16:59] IP: Yeah. No. I don't think they're off base here. See, this is what happens when you go on vacation. How dare you, sir?

[00:17:08] JR: I did not have a chance to read this very, very large briefing, while I was staring at airplanes.

[00:17:13] IP: It’s an in-depth article. In-depth petition to the FAA from Republic. The big criticism from the 1500-hour rule is one, it's an arbitrary hour. I mean, all numbers, essentially, are arbitrary in determining how many hours are necessary and which hours are for these things, and which hours count and things like that.

Their argument is, well, if we're going to pick an arbitrary number, let's develop our program to meet the other arbitrary number, which is the 750-hour rule. Then they have the ability to demonstrate that they are knowledgeable enough and skilled enough to meet this 750-hour rule, instead of the 1500-hour rule, because our program is so rigorous. I don't have the capability. I mean, this is a question certainly for the FAA. I don't have the capability to evaluate the rigorousness of their training program. If it is in fact as rigorous as they say it is, this seems to make sense to me as an easy way. I wouldn't say easy way, but a sensible way to reduce the pressure on coming up with as many pilots.

Obviously, this only helps Republic. It's certainly not enough. One of the things, and I'm moderating a conference this week, which will be over by the time the podcast comes out. We'll put a link to the show notes, if anybody's interested in that. One of the people that was talking with Steve Ehrlich, who is the chairperson of the Pilots Together Charity in the UK. That was formed during the pandemic to help raise funds, distribute funds and provide assistance to pilots in the UK that were made redundant as part of airlines’ response to COVID.

One of the things he's talking about is there's all of this money invested by pilots around the world, people who become pilots around the world, sometimes over a $100,000, £100,000, where they're spending all this money with the promised return that that job, the pilot career will allow them to pay back that training expense, and then also have a sound career and a sound job prospect throughout their career.

We get to this point where we're dealing with people who are investing so much. Then we said, “Well, there's a pilot shortage.” Well, there are a lot of things. We could do an entire episode and we should do an entire episode on the “pilot shortage,” because there are a number of people are – There's not a pilot shortage. There's a not paying pilots enough problem. Finding ways to make it easier for people who want to become pilots, to become pilots and ensure that they have skills and knowledge enough to safely operate the aircraft. If that can be done with fewer hours, because the hours are more intensive and more helpful to that training, I'm all for it.

[00:20:37] JR: Yeah. You had mentioned that this would only aid Republic in churning up more pilots. Presumably, this would also help any other US-based airline that has its own training program, like United does these days. I think, JetBlue maybe. I'm not quite sure. Presumably if this rule were changed, any airline with its own in-house pilot training certification program would benefit from this idea, where you’d cut the number of hours in half.

[00:21:08] IP: Yeah. They could somehow apply to say, our program is just as rigorous as this standard. Therefore, we should have X number of hours for the certificate. I don't see a problem with that. Certainly, there are people who do. What's interesting enough is that the pushback has been from the FAA, which seems to be a problem for Republic’s proposal. Also, airline pilot unions have said that the 1500-hour rule is important and there's a reason that it's there, and therefore, we should keep it.

They've been light on details, the pilots unions, they've been light on details, thus far. I think, they're still getting into it. The FAA hasn't really said much more. They've received the petition, so it'll be interesting to see what their response overall is.

[00:22:04] JR: Yeah, definitely. One thing to keep an eye on.

[00:22:07] IP: Speaking of the FAA, this was an interesting – a bit of reportage from our good friend, Jon Ostrower over at The Air Current, or I should say from Elan Head and Jon Ostrower, both of whom, we've had on the program separately, but not since Elan Head has moved over to the aircraft. When we spoke with Elan Head, we talked about eVTOLs. She told us everything we needed to know at that time, what they were, where they were going. One of the big things that we talked about besides the startuppy vaporware nature of some of these companies was the massive effort towards certification that was going to impact whether or not any of these companies ever got off the ground.

[00:22:56] JR: Yeah. A lot of certification timelines for eVTOL companies are about to soon need updating very quickly.

[00:23:05] IP: Yes. Now the reporting that Elan was doing, culminating in the article last week, was that the FAA is overhauling certification rubric that eVTOLs will be certified under. The eVTOL manufacturers were under the assumption that they would be certified under the small airplane certification rules that took effect in 2017. The FAA is now saying that they're going to certify eVTOLs as powered lift aircraft, which are the certification framework for things like, tilt rotor aircraft, like the Leonardo AW609, which is more akin to – think of a commercial version of the Osprey, or something like that, where they're not straightforward small airplanes. That could pose a very real and very difficult problem for these eVTOL manufacturers.

[00:24:21] JR: Yeah, especially this late in the game where there are several of these aircraft out there in flight testing, presumably in the certification process right now. Suddenly, what they were aiming for, for certification is going to be completely turned on its head seemingly overnight. More venture capital is probably going to have to be raised for some of these companies, or they're just going to go – I assume, they’re going to go bankrupt just trying to get these things certified. I don't think that's terribly a bad thing, honestly. These seem to be progressing way too quickly at this point.

Yet, another instance of the FAA really, really taking a close look at how it certifies things. This goes beyond Boeing at this point with the 787 and the 737 MAX. The FAA is really, really just taking a closer look at pretty much seemingly everything it does.

[00:25:15] IP: Yeah. I mean, we talk about pendulums. Certainly, the pendulum is swinging far, far, far into the regulatory enforcement and structure side of things. Very, very far away from the management delegation and delegated authority and certify your own planes. We trust you. That's gone. It is very clear that all of that is just gone. The FAA has decided that it is going to take a close look. You want to certify something that flies? Great. We're here to help. These are the rules and they are going to be very, very comprehensive, which I don't think is a bad thing at all. The abruptness with which this happened, that seems a little interesting to me. That is something that I hope Elan continues to report on, because I think that's an interesting part of the puzzle here.

[00:26:18] JR: Yeah. Like you said, this is a good thing. There were a lot of these companies all pushing very aggressive timelines with some very, let's call them, interesting aircraft in a space that at this point, does not exist. Any scrutiny they can put on these to really ensure that their safety, especially when we're talking about single pilot operation, or possibly no pilot operation.

I mean, just look at what we talked about earlier today. Anything they can do to make sure these things are truly going to be safe is probably welcome at this point, as long as the FAA actually has the personnel and the skills needed to actually certify these aircraft, which at this point, I'm not totally sure they do.

[00:27:08] IP: That sir, I feel like is another discussion for another episode. I feel like, we need to have Elan on the show now.

[00:27:16] JR: Yeah. It’s taking this long just to recertify the 787, I can't imagine how they're going to go through certifying what seems like an endless stream of eVTOls that pop up out of nowhere.

[00:27:29] IP: That's a good question, Jason.

[00:27:33] JR: No answer.

[00:27:33] IP: That's a good question. Well, that's the kind of questions we like to ask on this podcast.

[00:27:38] JR: Someone will know. It's not me.

[00:27:39] IP: Here's a question. No, here's an answer to a question I don't think anyone asked. Brazil's goal and Colombia's Avianca will join forces.

[00:27:51] JR: Avianca Colombia, just recently out of bankruptcy and gobbled up – who was it? We just talked for the past –

[00:27:59] IP: Viva.

[00:28:00] JR: Viva. Second week in a row we're talking about Avianca doing a thing.

[00:28:04] IP: Or moving through to the clip. They will form Abra group, so the open group. It will be controlled by Avianca and GOL. They will join forces, and the word synergy was used in no fewer than 267 places in the press release here. Abra which is styling itself as the pan Latin American network of airlines, they will form a group and all of these airlines will operate – not independently, but operate separately under the group.

[00:28:44] JR: They’re the Lufthansa group of Latin America.

[00:28:46] IP: It seems to be that that's what is happening.

[00:28:49] JR: Okay. Congratulations, South America. It seems like you're down to two airlines at this point, practically speaking. You've got the LATAM Group and the Abra Group.

[00:28:58] IP: Yeah. I mean, and then there's what? Aerolineas Argentinas just there.

[00:29:06] JR: They exist.

[00:29:07] IP: They exist. This would be a very interesting thing. The one thing I want to do is note that Abra will also own a non-controlling – I'm quoting the press release here, a non-controlling 100% economic interest in Viva's operations in Colombia and Peru.

[00:29:28] JR: I understood the words, but not the meaning of those words. How do you have 100% ownership, but not control of a thing?

[00:29:38] IP: Yeah. This is one of those things that I'm sure it makes financial and legal sense to people who are financial experts and lawyers. As an airline person and an aviation person, this does not make any sense to me. If you can explain how someone has a 100% economic interest that is non-controlling over something, by all means, email us at podcast@fr24.com and explain it to me, because I really want to know.

[00:30:09] JR: Yeah. We talked about this earlier in the day and it makes no more sense now than it did 12 hours ago.

[00:30:15] IP: It certainly does not. This will, according to the airlines, provide synergies upon synergies upon synergies to ensure lower costs, expanded routes, serving a population of over 1 billion with a GDP of nearly 3 trillion dollars. All that said, they didn't really explain how the synergies upon synergies will come about.

[00:30:38] JR: No, especially when you have – 

[00:30:39] IP: It would be interesting.

[00:30:41] JR: - two independent airlines operating independently of each other. How does that work?

[00:30:46] IP: We shall see.

[00:30:47] JR: Okay.

[00:30:48] IP: We shall see. Let us switch continents and go across the Atlantic Ocean and a little bit north. We're just mentioning the new Lufthansa group, South America. Let's talk about the actual Lufthansa group of Lufthansaville. The Lufthansa group purchased further state of the art long-haul aircraft this week, according to Lufthansa group. They will take 700 – 700. They will take 7.

[00:31:15] JR: Wow. That's an expansion right there. It's like a Southwest order or something.

[00:31:20] IP: Yeah. Southwest and Ryanair merging, didn’t you hear?

[00:31:25] JR: Synergy.

[00:31:26] IP: Yes. Synergies. I promise, we will not say synergy any more on the rest of this podcast, if we can help it.

[00:31:34] JR: No.

[00:31:35] IP: Seven Boeing 787-9s to compensate for the delayed 777-9 deliveries. I don't know how that's going to work, considering they can't take deliveries of 787s right now, but I trust that they will be able to take deliveries of 787s before 2025, which is when the now thrice delayed 777-8 will be delivered. This will happen.

[00:31:59] JR: Lufthansa says, these aircraft coming that they will take delivery of in some cases from in 2023 and 2024 were originally intended for other airlines in 2025 and 2026. That's pretty interesting right there that they'll be taking aircraft next year that weren't destined for delivery for several years from now.

[00:32:22] IP: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see where those aircraft come from, which airlines those aircraft come from and how Lufthansa puts those aircraft into service. Because as it stands now, if they do take delivery of these aircraft in this compressed timeline, we're looking at a number of, because they also have their initial 787 order on the burner ready to go, as soon as Boeing can begin deliveries of the 787 again.

You've got this additional delivery schedule polling from airlines that were supposed to take delivery in 2025 and 2026. This is going to be a big chunk of aircraft coming into the airline for all intents purposes, the same time. That'll be interesting to see.

[00:33:19] JR: Yeah. That's on top of other aircraft that Lufthansa has acquired from other airlines, like the Philippines A350s that it's just pressed into service just this past week, actually.

[00:33:31] IP: Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how Lufthansa does – how they get spread among the Lufthansa group and how they how they introduce those aircraft into the fleet.

[00:33:42] JR: Oh, and some A330s, I think, or A350s from Finnair ended up at Lufthansa Group's Eurowings Discover South. Lufthansa Group is a bit of a mess fleet-wise right now.

[00:33:53] IP: I think at this point, it's capacity, capacity, capacity, because airlines – and this goes into the thing we talked about with Republic and airlines parking fleets and letting pilots go and letting cruise go and all of these things, because nobody really understood at the beginning how things were going to go over the next year, two years, three years.

Now, we've got this wholesale change where airlines are saying, “Well, we parked these aircraft. We need to bring these aircraft back.” Lufthansa this week said, “Hey, we still have the A380 sitting around. If we have to use them –”

[00:34:31] JR: And A340s.

[00:34:33] IP: The phrasing that came out of Lufthansa, it was almost like a threat. It was weird.

[00:34:40] JR: “Deliver our aircraft when we need them. I swear to God, we will put the A340 back in service,” was pretty much the sound of it.

[00:34:45] IP: “Don’t make me turn this plane around.” It was very interesting.

[00:34:49] JR: Then somewhere, John Walton was very happy hearing this.

[00:34:53] IP: That’s okay. The other interesting thing is that the Lufthansa cargo will take seven 777-8Fs beginning in 2027. In the bridge years before that, Lufthansa will take three 777Fs, two leased ones will be extended. This is the interesting bit and I've had a conversation with a couple of people about where this one might be coming from. They ordered two new 777Fs, so direct from Boeing, right from the factory. One of the three that Lufthansa is picking up is flying with another airline, “Will be reassigned to Lufthansa cargo in the upcoming weeks.”

The language parsing, reading between the lines here is that this is a leased 777F that is going back to the lessor and then being reassigned within the coming weeks. We've had Gavin Werbeloff on the program, our resident numbers expert. His working theory is that this is the Airbridge cargo, the singular average cargo 777F that is going to go back to its lessor and then come to Lufthansa. I don't know if he's right, but the timing and the opportunity would fit, assuming they can get that plane out of Moscow and anywhere else.

[00:36:23] JR: Yeah, that's a big if.

[00:36:25] IP: That's a big if. This is an interesting order, because it's another large airline backfilling delayed aircraft orders. This is what we've seen over and over again, because of the aircraft that were parked, or stored, or discarded during the pandemic, or during the early days of the pandemic. Now airlines coming back and going, “Okay, we've got some delayed programs that we're dealing with, and now we have to start backfilling either with new aircraft orders, or finding aircraft that are existing somewhere in the world.” Looking at Lufthansa and the Philippine A350s. Finding those and putting those into service.

Along the same vein, Emirates said this week, they expected their 787S to be delayed at least a year, leading to further reliance on their existing fleet and delaying some of the drawdown of their 777 and A380 fleet. That'll be really interesting to see how that Emirates, especially given the size of their widebody orders, writ large the 787, the 777-9s, all of those. It'll be very interesting to see how that plays out as well.

[00:37:41] JR: Yeah. Remember, we just talked about this maybe last week, or a couple of weeks ago, but Boeing is ramping up capacity to produce more 777 freighters, the current generation, as a stopgap measure since they can't get the 777X out there, reusing that capacity to churn out more 777 freighters. It seems like Lufthansa jumped at that opportunity to order some additional.

[00:38:06] IP: I mean, might as well pick up a couple of them, given how strong the cargo market has been. On the other side, we'll see how strong the cargo market continues to be over the next couple of years to see if that was a decision worth taking. Again, the timelines on these things are so long that you have to take your decision with the information you have now and then hope that it all works out.

Speaking of taking decisions and then hoping it all works out, going back to crew shortages, this is an interesting one from easyJet. easyJet and some other airlines are taking out seats in their aircraft, so that they can fly with fewer crew. They have staff shortages, because of the density of their fleet. They are required to have a fourth cabin crew member. Their A319s, if they take out a row of seats, they can go down to three crew members. This is something that is not uncommon. What's interesting to me is that they're taking the seats out, rather than just blocking them. It was American Airlines used to block, I think, the middle seats on rows 16 and 17 in their 737-800 fleet to stay below that number, so that they can operate with three crew members. When they densify their aircrafts, they blew past that 150-seat count and therefore, it didn't matter anymore, so those block seats went away. That was a nice perk, while it lasted.

[00:39:45] JR: Yeah. We've seen things like this happen before, but they're typically well-orchestrated, well-planned out way in advance. Years ago, JetBlue did the opposite of what easyJet is doing now. Not the opposite, but they didn't just remove the seats, they reconfigured the cabins to actually have fewer seats on the aircraft to do the exact thing here, to have one fewer member of the cabin crew onboard, not because of an emergency response to crew shortages to reduce costs.

I guess, they did the math and figured, yeah, there are fewer passengers, but it's fine because it's fewer crew we have to pay. In that case, the physical seats were removed and every other row was granted some fraction of an inch of extra legroom. In this case, they're just physically removing the seat and there's just a gap at the back of the aircraft where there's just nothing. No seats. Just a gap.

[00:40:42] IP: I mean, I guess, any time you reduce the weight of the aircraft, you're reducing fuel burn and you're saving money. It's a dual-purpose thing. It's just interesting to me that this is going to be a long enough term solution that there they find it worthwhile to actually reduce the number of seats on the aircraft, rather than technically reducing the number of seats on the aircraft.

[00:41:05] JR: Yeah. Well, it’s good to see, because you introduced the topic by saying, taking orders and hoping things work out, which for some airlines leading up to this summer seems to have been the operational mantra. Let's throw things at the wall and hope it all works out for the best. It's good to see that some airlines are at least responding to it in rather creative ways to get some semblance of operational reliability back. This is a crazy way to have to do it, but hopefully, it works. Seems like it can't possibly hurt, except for the passengers will have to bump off those flights that now have three fewer seats.

[00:41:45] IP: Six.

[00:41:45] JR: Six fewer seats. Yeah.

[00:41:47] IP: A row. A row.

[00:41:48] JR: It's a trade-off.

[00:41:49] IP: It is a trade-off. Let's shift gears and talk about something that should not have happened, but did. Everything happened and everything went well in the end. This was a bit of a scare in Mexico City. Two Volaris aircraft were operating at Mexico City. One was on approach, Volaris 799 was on approach and Volaris 4069 was ready to depart. The Volaris 99 was cleared to land, while 4069 was still on the runway.

[00:42:34] JR: Not good.

[00:42:35] IP: Not good. Not good at all. The error was caught before anything terrible could happen. 799 went around and safely landed a short time later. Things went as they should, once the error was recognized. However, the aircraft came quite close to each other. They were not a safe distance apart, shall we say.

[00:43:07] JR: No. Shades of the Air Canada incident in San Francisco a few years ago, but much higher resolution video.

[00:43:14] IP: Yes. Link to the video in the show notes, as requested by everyone. We'll also put a link to the data in the show notes to show you what we're talking about. Thankfully, everything was okay. Everyone on both aircraft were okay. Both aircraft arrived at their intended destinations safely. We'll put a link to the video in the show notes and you can see what we're talking about. It's iffy.

[00:43:44] JR: Yeah. Moving some things around here, but let's continue on the theme of things that happened, but probably shouldn't have happened. Where do we go from here?

[00:43:53] IP: This is a fascinating one to me –

[00:43:55] JR: It is a fascinating one.

[00:43:56] IP: - because it's – where credit is due to the Virgin Atlantic. Because certainly, you never want these things to happen, but because Virgin Atlantic's training and certification requirements are above that of the CAA and the UK, they had to turn back. Because the FO had not yet taken the Virgin Atlantic test to allow to allow them to become operationally ready for their flights.

They have a pilot's license. They have all the certifications and qualifications. They are fully trained, etc., etc. But they hadn't taken a specific test that ensures that the pilots are ready for operational duty. There was a rostering error, because the captain that they were flying with was not trained on evaluating and conducting that test, the rostering error was discovered somewhere over Ireland and the aircraft turned around and came back. There was a short delay while they found another crew member and then they were off once again. A fascinating look at how regimented and specific pilot training is and how specific and regimented pilot qualifications are. Good on Virgin, I say.

[00:45:28] JR: Yeah. Definitely not something that should have happened, but really great to see that they would have [inaudible 00:45:28] at stake.

[00:45:33] IP: Well-handled. Well handled.

[00:45:34] JR: Yeah. Well-handled, and cooperated on mistake and recalled the flight, basically. They very easily could have and with no ramifications whatsoever, let that flight continue, but they opted not to.

[00:45:46] IP: Yeah. Let us move to the end section of the show to talk about wireless things. Well, actually, some wired things, finally, but we'll get there in a minute. Let's talk about –

[00:46:00] JR: This is still on the section of things that shouldn't have happened, but did anyway. We're still in the same section.

[00:46:08] IP: Fair enough. Tell me what's going on. I say, tell me what's going on.

[00:46:12] JR: Well, no one knows what's going on. That's the problem. Remember a few months ago when planes were going to drop out of the sky, because Verizon and AT&T were turning on that C-band 5G?

[00:46:22] IP: Yes.

[00:46:22] JR: Remember how that didn't really happen, but lots of paperwork prevented flights from operating and all that. No one really did their homework before they tried to turn it in and graduate. It turns out that today, the FAA had a meeting with some airlines and we don't have the results of this conversation, but it turns out that they do want to make a push to retrofit and ultimately, replace some radio altimeters that could be susceptible to C-band 5G. Again, this is the thing that should have been figured out several years ago and all the work should have been done before any of this was activated.

Things are still very much in limbo at this point. There are, it turns out, some altimeters that could be affected by C-band 5G, seemingly nothing that can't be overcome with some paperwork. This is still something that's going on. The current, I guess, the agreement on the network deployment limitations expires, I think, on July 5th. We could be running up against that deadline and just a couple of months from now.

[00:47:36] IP: Fantastic.

[00:47:37] JR: Yeah. I don't even really understand where we are today, because I was just at JFK, an airport that's supposed to have a C-band 5G buffer around it. I had great C-band 5G coverage Verizon all throughout the airport, so that's something. A terminal on the airplane at the gate, on the train, outside of the airport. I do not understand what is going on with C-band in relation to this industry. It doesn't make any sense.

[00:48:10] IP: Yeah. I mean, that's a good summation of it.

[00:48:13] JR: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:14] IP: Here's what does make sense. Southwest has finally seen the light.

[00:48:18] JR: No. What are they doing? Are they finally going to install Wi-Fi that works?

[00:48:25] IP: Yes, and – 

[00:48:26] JR: Okay. Are they finally going to install power – well, not power outlets, but USB ports?

[00:48:32] IP: They're at least going to give you the ability to charge your phone, or iPad. I suppose, you could charge your computer very, very slowly if you have a USB computer.

[00:48:42] JR: No. These will 60-watt USB-C port. Charge away.

[00:48:47] IP: Yeah. You're ready to go. Southwest is, and Jason can speak more to the Wi-Fi aspect of it. The power thing is something that has become a pet peeve of mine over years.

[00:48:59] JR: Not just you.

[00:49:00] IP: Well, not. Certainly, not just me. More so people that fly Southwest on a regular basis, or fly longer flights on Southwest on a regular basis. Going back years and years and years and years ago, I was at a Southwest media days when they introduced the new livery and they were talking about refreshing the cabin. One of the questions that I had was, okay, what are you going to due to the cabins? They’re like, “We're going to make it look pretty.” I was, “You’re not going to do power or anything like that?” They're like, “No, we don't need it. Our flights are short.”

At the time, the argument was people don't have that many devices. People can charge the devices in the airport, and our flights are short enough that when they land, they will have plenty of power to do whatever they want to do.

Well, lo these many years later, that wasn't even remotely anywhere near true anymore. Fine if you're flying from what, somewhere in California to Vegas, or something like that. Or intra Texas, I guess. Anywhere else, I mean, the staging is so long enough that you've gotten to the point where if you don't have a fully charged cell-phone with an external battery, you're probably going to – if you're using your phone as in-flight entertainment, you're probably going to run up against some battery limitation issues. They apparently finally agree with me and have decided that they're going to begin installing USB charging ports in the cabins.

[00:50:29] JR: Yeah, to a degree. There's some caveats here.

[00:50:32] IP: Caveat me, Jason. Caveat me.

[00:50:32] JR: Southwest being one of the largest airlines in the world currently with 734 aircraft, it's only going to be installing these USB ports on the 737 MAX fleet. They begin, I think they said later this year, this fall, they'll go back and install on the MAX 8s they already have, and then make future deliveries of the MAX. The nearly, let’s see, 7 – what is it? Nearly 700 NGs they have will not be seeing USB ports, which is a shame, because Southwest is actually been a pioneer of in-flight Wi-Fi. They had it very early on fleet-wide. They had gate-to-gate Wi-Fi, which was great. It has been a long and bumpy road for Wi-Fi in Southwest, and nobody has been particularly happy about the performance, but it's there and they also have extremely [inaudible 00:51:27].

[00:51:28] IP: At least in all Southwest.

[00:51:28] JR: Yeah. Least in all Southwest and they are streaming entertainment for free and they have live TV, but you can't plug in your phone and streaming on your own device on a five-hour flight, you're going to end up with a dead battery at the end. There's no way around that. It's good to see them finally acknowledge that, but. sad to see it limited to the MAX 8, to the MAX family of aircraft, only since that is really almost – I'm not going to say, an insignificant portion of the fleet. But at this point, it really actually is.

[00:51:56] IP: Yes, at this very moment it is – 92 out of 600, or – Yeah, 92 out of 760 total, 92 versus 666 NGs in the fleet. At this point, it is an insignificant number, but it's a significant change in the posture of the airline and one that I think is a long, long overdue.

[00:52:22] JR: Yeah. I mean even at this point, most mainline European airlines and even some low-cost European airlines have power USB, or even Wi-Fi available. Even airlines like BA, Air France, KLM, SAS, they have all done this at this point. It's pretty commonplace. Southwest is really one of the largest holdouts in the world. I'm sure this will be a much welcomed improvement.

At this point, also a very hard to pin down improvements. It's not something you'll be able to actually count on getting on your aircraft, especially with the amount of swaps they seem to have where they'll sell you a max flight up until the day of, where suddenly, becomes an NG.

[00:53:06] IP: The beauty of a consistent fleet.

[00:53:12] JR: Yeah. For most of their flights, unless it needs to be eTops, it really doesn't matter what you end up on.

[00:53:17] IP: This has been quite the episode.

[00:53:21] JR: Many synergies we had in this episode.

[00:53:27] IP: I promised we wouldn't say it anymore.

[00:53:29] JR: You promised.

[00:53:29] IP: Now, you've made me a liar. In any case, this has been Episode 163 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –

[00:53:41] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.

[END]