AvTalk Episode 231: Investigation, what investigation?

AVT 231 Transcript
EPISODE 231
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 231 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. How's it going, Ian?
[0:00:21] IP: It's going great, Jason. It’s going great.
[0:00:23] JR: You've had an interesting week. I'm not going to say why, but you've had probably
a very interesting, stressful week.
[0:00:30] IP: Yes, this week has been extremely stressful. But I will say, that that stress has
been lifted a little. I mean, there's still a lot to do, but it's been quite the week. But things are
looking up in the world, and so, I'm glad to record the podcast with you today, rather than
yesterday, because I just probably would have been shaking out of my seat with stress, and it
would have been a very different podcast.
But we have a very good show for you today. It's not as good as last week's show, because
Jason and I are still very pleased with how our conversation with Charles Duncan went. We
both had such fun, and it was so nice to have such candor and openness, which both mean the
same thing, from an airline executive. It's rare to have that from someone who is both very
knowledgeable about the industry and their business, and willing to say those words and do
those things into a microphone. I think we had such a great conversation. If you haven't listened
to last week's episode yet, please, go back and do that.
[0:01:40] JR: Yes, if you skipped last week for whatever reason, maybe skip this episode –
[0:01:43] IP: How dare you?
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AVT 231 Transcript
[0:01:43] JR: - and go back and listen to that one instead. I'm sure this episode will be great,
too.
[0:01:47] IP: That's not what we want.
[0:01:49] JR: This one will be great, too. But last week, definitely go back if you did miss that.
My dad texted me earlier and said, “The president was incredibly good in engaging.” For a
second, I thought, we didn't talk to Biden. But, oh, right. He's talking about the podcast –
[0:02:01] IP: That president.
[0:02:02] JR: - last week. Yeah, this particular president of an airline was incredibly good to talk
to and engaging. I hope we have another interview like that sometime soon.
[0:02:12] IP: They just had on Monday, the podcast came out on Friday and on Monday, and
Jason, I think we can take credit for this. On Monday, a large shipping company, Scorpio
Shipping bought 10% of their stock, making a large investment, saying that they were
impressed by what the airline was doing. I think it's safe enough to take credit for that.
[0:02:32] JR: Clearly, this is our doing. Where's our commission?
[0:02:35] IP: They listened to the podcast and did some research over the weekend and then
bought 10% of Norse's stock. That's exactly what happened for them.
[0:02:41] JR: Good for them. I think that's exactly what happened. We're due a finder's fee, at
least. We'll be looking for that cheque.
[0:02:49] IP: It's in some mailing.
[0:02:51] JR: It's in the belly, along with a bunch of salmon on Norse 787.
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[0:02:55] IP: Norse. It's in one of the salmon. Jason, shall we start this week's news with a
follow-up from last week in Russia? Or should we go straight to the UK and what happened
earlier this week? Dealer's choice.
[0:03:09] JR: Let's go to the UK, who –
[0:03:10] IP: All right.
[0:03:11] JR: - was just starting off probably their biggest holiday bank weekend. I've been told,
it's closely aligned with the Labor Day weekend here in the US, where it's just one of their
outright, biggest getaway weekends and it didn't go so well, if you were trying to get anywhere
in or out of any airport in the UK, I think.
[0:03:31] IP: Yeah. Because the flight data processing system, which is the system that, among
other things, processes flight plans for all flights into and out of UK airports that are managed by
NATS, which is the Air Navigation Service Provider for the UK. That system went down for
many, many hours on Monday. A big enough headache that a large chunk of flights were
canceled and I think – I don't know if it was all flights in the UK after about 9 a.m., but nearly all
flights in the UK after 9 a.m. were at least significantly delayed, if not outright canceled.
[0:04:16] JR: Yeah. There was never a total grounding of flights. There were diversions, I
believe.
[0:04:21] IP: Correct.
[0:04:23] JR: Very long list of delays and cancellations, but it wasn't like what we've seen in the
past with the FAA a couple of times recently, where they just had to shut the whole thing down
and block all departures. This was more of a delay in basically, the bandwidth of flight plans they
could process since the automated systems were not working. They had to plan flight plans
manually, which is a lot more time consuming. Instead of maybe 30 flights departing an hour
from Heathrow, they could only do 10. Those numbers are making those up, but you get the
idea.
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[0:04:54] IP: Right. We've seen this happen before with certain airlines. It's happened with BA
before, where they had to process everything on paper by hand. It's happened with Southwest
where they were doing paper tickets and paper boarding carts, and other airlines from time to
time that this has happened before. To quote NATS, a release from yesterday on Monday's
failure, “Initial investigations into the problem show it relates to some of the flight data we
received. Our systems, both primary and the backups responded by suspending automatic
processing to ensure that no incorrect safety related information could be presented to an air
traffic controller, or impact the rest of the air traffic system. There are no indications that this was
a cyber-attack.”
Something happened. I'm sure, NATS is working on a full report that is due to the UK's transport
ministry on the 4th of September. We should know more next week about what exactly
happened. But as we know now, it was not – or they're telling us it wasn't a cyber--attack.
They've also said, that it won't happen again. It sounds like, they've identified what happened
and are fixing it. It's a shame they didn't do that before it happened, but these things, this is how
these things go.
[0:06:10] JR: These things happen. Yeah. It's not great. I mean, good and bad here that the
system was able to identify that there was some faulty data coming to it in the form of flight
plans and said, “Whoa.” Well, this doesn't make sense in both its primary and backup systems
properly stopped processing flight plans, because you wouldn't want to approve flight plans that
are dangerous in some way, or don't make any sense.
[0:06:34] IP: You can't fly an A380 to London City.
[0:06:35] JR: You could try, but only once. It's a good thing that it stopped –
[0:06:38] IP: That’s what I used to tell people. You can land anywhere once.
[0:06:42] JR: That's true. It's a good thing that it stopped processing that data, but bad that
apparently, it was able to happen and took so many hours to identify the failure and get things
back in operation. But many lessons were learned, I'm sure. Many, many conference calls will
be held and a software patch will be out one day to prevent this from happening again.
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AVT 231 Transcript
[0:07:05] IP: Yeah. Effects still occurring a few days on, based on all of the people that were
affected and trying to rebook them and re accommodate them, but things that are moving much
more smoothly now. We turn our attention now back to Russia for follow up on the crash of the
Embraer that was carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin and nine other Wagner Group, or a number of
other Wagner Group employees, comrades. I'm not sure what you call a private military, as well
as flight crew and a flight attendant. That aircraft crashed last Wednesday.
The flight data recorders have been recovered by the Russian investigators. But as of now,
Brazil has said that Russia will not open an IKO annex 13 investigation. An annex 13
investigation would allow the air safety investigators from the country for the state of
manufacture, which in this case, the aircraft is an Embraer, so it would be Brazil, as well as the
manufacturer of the engines. In this case, it's Rolls Royce USA. It would allow those parties, as
well as investigatory bodies from many of the nationalities of people onboard the aircraft to
attend the investigation and take part while Russia led the investigation.
Russia, for its part, the Interstate Aviation Commission says that it will not open an investigation
under annex 13 at this time. They're not legally obligated to. This is interesting to me. I didn't
know that because it's a purely domestic flight, they are not legally obligated to open an annex
13. There were no foreign nationals and it was a domestic flight. They're not obligated to open
an investigation under annex 13. That, I did not know, but I'm learning from the Brazilians who
are explaining how disappointing this is to their investigatory body, because their interest in this
is, well, we want to figure out why the Embraer crashed, because we believe this to be a safe
airplane. If there's something wrong with the airplane, we want to know.
Reuters reports that 802 Embraer regional jets are built on the same platform, have been built
on the same platform as the Legacy 600. It's important to them to know whether or not this was,
in fact, did something happen, because of the aircraft, or did something happen to the aircraft. I
mean, we talked about this last week. We really don't like to speculate.
[0:09:47] JR: But.
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[0:09:48] IP: But it seems to me that it's safe to say, given who was on board the aircraft, their
history with the head of the Russian government, recent history with the head of the Russian
government, it seems to me that the likeliest explanation for all of this is not a mechanical failure
of the aircraft itself.
[0:10:10] JR: No, but I'm sure Embraer would love to be able to say that this had nothing –
[0:10:14] IP: Absolutely.
[0:10:15] JR: - to do with the aircraft being Embraer. It's unfortunate that they'll never get that
opportunity, because there's never going to be an investigation. They're never going to say what
happened, unless they outright lie about it, let's be honest. Russia seemed to had no interest in
doing any investigation, because we saw merely hours after the crash, they were tractoring
parts of the aircraft out, which we know in any investigation, you preserve the evidence. You
keep it in place. You don't just start clearing the rubble and moving on with your life. Everyone
knows what happened.
[0:10:46] IP: I mean, we should be clear what tractoring means. Some of this came down in a
wooded area and they attached it to a very large tractor and just dragged it through the woods.
[0:10:54] JR: Yes. I was being very literal by saying tractor. There's a tractor being there. It is a
literal tractor that they were hauling –
[0:11:01] IP: Different tractor.
[0:11:02] JR: - pieces of the aircraft. Yeah. We all know what happened here, whether it was a
missile strike, or a bomb planted onboard, it doesn't matter. They're never going to say and
Embraer can’t – I think they're going to be okay here. I think they can write this one off as
external factors.
[0:11:17] IP: Yeah. We’ll see what the effect on the relationship with Brazil is, but I don't think
this is really something that they were pinning their hopes on, that they would be a party to this
particular investigation. Right after we hit stop on the recording last week, our good friend, Jon
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Ostrower at the Air Current, did one of those things where he broke news and then we had to
say, we just recorded the podcast. We'll have to talk about it next week.
In this particular instance, Jon broke the news that Boeing and Spirit Aerosystems are dealing
with a fresh quality issue on the 737 MAX. This particular issue affects the rear pressure
bulkhead on the 737 MAX 8. Only some of the 737 MAX 8. This particular issue involves what
they're calling snowmen that –
[0:12:13] IP: That sounds nice.
[0:12:14] IP: It sounds nice, but it's not. Double drilled holes, basically, that end up looking like
tiny snowmen. That Boeing says, does not create an immediate safety flight issue, but it's
something that needs to be fixed on the identified parts and the ones that have not yet been
delivered needs to fix before they can be delivered. If they've been delivered, they need to be
addressed. What I didn't know about this particular part is why it only affects some of the 737
fuselages, and that's because this particular part comes from a subcontractor to Spirit and
comes from multiple suppliers, and therefore, one of the subcontractors to the subcontractor
didn't do quite a good job as they should have, and so that's affecting Spirit’s deliveries to
Boeing, which is affecting Boeing's deliveries to customers. Now the question becomes, can
they deliver as many aircraft as they wanted to in 2023? Boeing's delivery goal was 400 –
[0:13:12] JR: The answer is always no.
[0:13:15] IP: No. Yeah. Boeing's delivery goal was 400 to 450 737s this year. Assuming you
take into account all of the 737s that they've delivered so far this year, they would need to
deliver between 30 and 40 per month for the rest of the year to meet that goal.
[0:13:32] JR: Yeah. I think what is most concerning here in Jon's report is that these fuselages
passed quality inspections at Spirit before heading out to Boeing. But the article states that in
some cases, there were aircraft with hundreds of misaligned and duplicated holes. This isn't one
drill slip and a hole was actually accidentally turned into a snowman. There are apparently,
hundreds of misaligned and duplicated holes on single airframes, which is just how at this point
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in the building of the 737, a half a century old aircraft at this point is drilling holes in something
as critical as the rear pressure bulkhead, or the fuselage still eluding Spirit here.
This should be down to such a science that such a mistake to make once is next to impossible.
But to do it hundreds of times on a single fuselage, what the hell is going on at these
companies? I don't understand this at all.
[0:14:30] IP: That was my takeaway. Not that it's such a serious issue that it's a safety flight
issue, which Boeing says it's not, but that after all this time, we're still finding fresh ways to not
get it right. Is it, I guess, and certainly this is a question that Spirit’s hacking themselves. Is it an
issue with this particular supplier? Is it something that they're doing? Is it something that
someone did? Then obviously, how did these passed quality inspection?
[0:14:57] JR: That's a great question. Here we are 56 years, more than half a century after the
first flight of the 737, with over 11 and a half thousand of these aircraft built, they can't drill the
holes in the damn thing right? In my eyes, this is inexcusable. It's just absurd that such mistakes
can still be happening. I think some deep, serious conversations need to be happening between
Boeing, Spirit, and I guess, its sub, or maybe sub-sub-contractors at this point, because this just
doesn't make any sense to me. To fill in the holes with fasteners, or whatever seems like
something maybe you do once, but to do it on so many aircraft and do this incorrectly so many
times, I don't understand it.
[0:15:45] IP: I'm sure we'll learn more right after we hit stop on the recording on this podcast.
[0:15:49] JR: Oh, for sure.
[0:15:50] IP: If we do, we'll talk about it next week. Earlier this week, and by earlier, I mean
yesterday, on the 29th of August, the Federal Aviation Administration introduced a new urgent
airworthiness directive that relates to the Boeing 777. It's to prevent fuel tank fires, which
sounds pretty important to me.
[0:16:11] JR: You want to prevent those. Those are important to prevent. You don't usually hear
urgent, unsafe condition. Those are not terms that the FAA uses all that often.
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[0:16:21] IP: Yeah. What this deals with are fastener cap seals on the inside of the fuel tanks.
The FAA says that those fastener cap seals are “a critical lightning protection feature.”
Particularly true for the center wing fuel tank, which typically contains flammable fuel vapors,
more frequently than the main wing tanks. Boeing sent out a service bulletin in 2021, but that
included incorrect information, which seems to be why this is an urgent fix, because there was
already a bulletin to address this condition, but there was incorrect information in that service
bulletin.
This is where the urgency comes from, because we were already supposed to have this fixed.
More to the point, this takes effect on the 15th of September and gives airlines 30 days from the
effective date to determine whether or not their cap seals need to be replaced. This is all going
to move pretty quickly once the airworthiness directive takes effect.
[0:17:27] JR: Yes. The FAA says, if these seals are not replaced properly and the associated
fastener has poor electrical bonding to the airplane structure for any reason, the fastener may
spark during a lightning strike and cause a fuel tank explosion. Wow, that escalated quickly
towards the end of that. Yeah. I have a couple triple 777 flights before this AD goes into effect.
That's nice. Hopefully, we don't fly through any storms. Yeah. This one's a doozy.
[0:17:53] IP: Again, it's not to say that all of these aircraft are unsafe. It's to say that there could
be an unsafe condition and you need to check your fuel caps, fuel fastener caps.
[0:18:02] JR: Yes. Flight Global reports that 291 affected US registered 777, including 200, 200
LR, 300, 300 ER and 777 freighters are affected. Interestingly, though, 777s lacking a certain
fuel tank are exempt. Not sure what fuel tank that would be. Maybe tail fuel tank. I'm not even
sure if the 777 has a tail fuel tank, but apparently, there are some versions of the 777 that are
not impacted by this.
[0:18:28] IP: All right, then. Well, Jason, that's your homework. Figure out which 777 are not
impacted by this.
[0:18:34] JR: All right then.
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[0:18:35] IP: Shall we turn our attention to aircraft orders, aircraft routes and new, old airlines?
[0:18:43] JR: We should.
[0:18:44] IP: All right. Right after we hit stop on the recording last week, I think we just picked
right back up where all the news happens as soon as we hit stop.
[0:18:52] JR: Oh, yes. This was right after an hour after we stopped recording.
[0:18:55] IP: Yeah. Yeah. Qantas announced that it is going to order more 787s and A350s and
retire its A380s, beginning in 2032.
[0:19:07] JR: Fiscal year 2032. Which who knows what –
[0:19:09] IP: Yes. Sorry. Well, it's Australia. it might be 2079. I don't know.
[0:19:14] JR: There's no way to know.
[0:19:16] IP: Impossible. Absolutely impossible to know. A380 retirement date is from around
2032, near 2032. The airline will take 12 A350-1000s, another dozen Boeing 787s, split between
8-10s and 4-9s. Yeah, that was the order. That was the new aircraft and out go the A380s.
[0:19:40] JR: Yeah. The 787s are in-line to replace the A330 fleet at Qantas, which they say the
average age of that fleet will be 21-years-old at the time the replacement program starts in fiscal
year 2027. These deliveries are still way off in the future. I'm assuming the A350-1000s will be in
direct replacement for the 10 A380s, which is interesting, because the A330 fleet at Qantas is
not that old. Typically, airline stretch a lot older than that. Yeah, it's interesting that we have the
full spectrum of Qantas international fleet planned out here for at least another 10 years.
I love how Qantas names all of their aircraft orders after something. In this case, it has named
this particular international fleet renewal as Project Fish, I believe. They say, in honor of Sir
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Hudson Fish, who co-founded the airline and was managing director when it commenced
international flying in 1935.
[0:20:38] IP: Fantastic.
[0:20:39] JR: That's just good to know.
[0:20:40] IP: They do like to name things, don't they?
[0:20:42] JR: They do. I like it.
[0:20:44] IP: You know what name I like?
[0:20:45] JR: What?
[0:20:46] IP: Mr. Raccoon.
[0:20:48] JR: Ah. You mean, Mr. Porter?
[0:20:50] IP: I mean, Mr. Porter, the Raccoon. Sir Porter. Is he Sir Porter?
[0:20:54] JR: No. You're thinking of Sir Turtle. Cayman Airways. Turtle.
[0:20:57] IP: Oh, right, right, right, right.
[0:20:59] JR:  Mr. Porter has not been knighted, as far as I know. He's still a mister, not a sir.
[0:21:05] IP: Who knows what he's been up to?
[0:21:06] JR: Those are my two top favorite airline fictional mascots. Mr. Porter is a very classy
raccoon, and unfortunately, he's going to one of the least classiest places that their new E195-
E2s could operate to, which is seven routes to Florida. Did you like that? Did you like that one?
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[0:21:24] IP: The routes from Toronto and Pearson – That was good. That was good. The
routes from Toronto Pearson Airport, because these are the E195-E2, and they cannot fly to
Toronto City's airport on the island. They are going to Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Miami,
Orlando, and Tampa. Then from Ottawa, they will fly to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. These are
the family fun express routes, and they're going all in.
[0:21:52] JR: I believe, Porter had a route to maybe to Tampa, I want to say in the past on the
Dash 8s, which I always thought was a very excruciating –
[0:22:01] IP: I thought it was to Hilton Head.
[0:22:03] JR: Something like that. I don't remember exactly where, but they had a Dash 8 flight
to the deep south of the US, which was just Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach.
[0:22:11] JR: There it is. Myrtle Beach. Way farther than you would really probably want to be
on a turboprop. But now that they've got these new E195-E2s, or will have them, it opens up a
whole new – it's really a new airline coming online here. It's a very different strategy with a very
different route network than anything Mr. Porter has indulged in in the past.
[0:22:30] IP: Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing Mr. Porter on the E195-E2. I assume he flies
on every flight.
[0:22:36] JR: One day. Every flight.
[0:22:37] IP: Or something like that. Okay. Here's an interesting one. A few years ago, Monarch
Airlines, the British holiday package carrier went bankrupt and stopped operating in spectacular
fashion at the time, and I think still is the largest repatriation, peacetime civilian repatriation
effort in the history of the measurement of such things. There were lots and lots of people
affected as the airline went bankrupt overnight. I mean, with some warning, but almost no
warning.
[0:23:12] JR: Not a whole lot.
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[0:23:13] IP: Not a whole lot of warning. Now a new investment group is back and Monarch is
maybe coming back. But it's weird because it's like, people are out there trying to pretend that
they're also Monarch and the true Monarch and the real Monarch and there's different
competing Monarch accounts and it's all very – the whole announcement was just bizarre.
[0:23:37] JR: I'm not paying too close attention to this until there's something more tangible,
more real. I mean, I get bringing back a brand name that was likable and widely recognized.
Maybe that is Monarch. Maybe this is a good brand to bring back. But after the collapse of
Monarch and then Thomas Cook, I guess, is avoid to fill in the UK holiday space.
[0:24:02] IP: Yeah, that package holiday.
[0:24:04] JR: Yeah. I’m surprised, the likes of easyJet and Ryanair haven't absolutely gobbled
up whatever happened in that void. If there's room for one more, let's hope they do better than
Redway.
[0:24:15] IP: Oh, boy. I think that's certainly a different – maybe they would have been better
with package holidays.
[0:24:19] JR: Maybe.
[0:24:19] IP: Yeah. Who knows? Yeah. The goal as I understand it is to get their AOC and begin
operations sometime in 2025. We'll see. The plan right now is with Airbus A320 aircraft. No idea
where they're coming from, how they're going to get them, but that seems to be the plan. We'll
follow this and talk more about it when there's a real aircraft involved and there's an AOC to be
had. Just something to, I guess, follow along with.
[0:24:47] JR: Keep an eye on.
[0:24:48] IP: Yeah. The JetBlue-Spirit merger is under threat, both from the United States
Department of Justice and via private lawsuits. There is a group of travel agents and other travel
professionals suing JetBlue to stop its merger with Spirit. There were some court filings last
week that were redacted improperly, that gave us an interesting look at the plans for the post-
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merger activities of the two and soon to be one companies if things go through. JetBlue says,
“No, these aren't our plans. You misinterpreted our internal data and then said something that
we didn't say.” The response from the lawyer who made the improper redactions said, “I'm just
having setting out numbers based on what your CEO has said themselves.”
What happened was is the improper redactions showed that JetBlue plans to increase fares
from Spirit's current fares between 20% and 40%, or 24% and 40%. That seems to fly in the
face of, this will be good for consumers. You should let us merge. Again, JetBlue has said,
“That's not what we said. You're taking our internal deliberations out of context.” It would be
interesting to see how that plays out in court based on the improper redactions. Also, if that is
anywhere near accurate, I can't see how that doesn't strengthen the Department of Justice's
case against JetBlue.
[0:26:31] JR: Yeah. JetBlue is apparently not all that happy about this mis –
[0:26:35] IP: That's an understatement.
[0:26:36] JR: - redacting, I guess. They have asked the judge for “serious sanctions against the
lawyers who are soon to block the merger.” I mean, maybe that happens. Maybe it doesn't, but
we'll keep an eye on it. This has been a rollercoaster of a thing that happened in the last week, I
guess. We'll see if those sanctions happen or not, or really probably don't care about that. It was
a lot of fuel to rile up people against the merger. It certainly works, whether or not it's true. Only
time will tell.
[0:27:10] IP: there's certainly a lot of that to go around. Speaking of time, American Airlines has
been fined 4.1 million dollars for violation of the US Department of Transportation's tarmac delay
rules. This particular fine is, if not the largest, then one of the largest ever handed out by the
Department of Transportation.
[0:27:35] JR: I believe it is the largest, yes.
[0:27:38] IP: Yeah. Dozens of flights stuck on the ground for long periods of time, without letting
passengers off. The tarmac delay rules, which came into effect a few years ago – probably more
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years ago than I think they came into effect, but it feels like just a few years ago, three hours on
domestic flights without providing – You can't keep anybody on an aircraft for more than three
hours, without providing them an opportunity to get off the aircraft.
Most of these delays were at Dallas Fort Worth. Then, let's see, the breakdown of the fine is of
the 4.1 million assessed, 2.05 million will be credited to the airline for compensation provided to
passengers on the affected flights. American Airlines says, that the delays were because of
weather and we've apologized to customers and then they go on to talk about how they try and
make things better. That's a big fine and good that American compensated the passengers,
even though perhaps, they weren't legally required to, because these were weather issues.
[0:28:40] JR: Yeah, not legally obligated to. I would still much prefer these fines go to the
passengers, rather than the government. Probably just going to waste it anyway. Really wish we
had an EU 261 equivalent here in the US, where at least, maybe just four tarmac delays, those
fines went to the passengers, rather than the government. That just seems like, it's such a direct
thing that could happen that yes, passengers in this case were directly inconvenienced by the
airline, or their operations or whatever. Why can't that fine be directed to the passengers that
just makes – or at least 50%, something like that. I don't know.
Yeah. American wins the award that no airline wants to win for highest ever tarmac
compensation. Though, I have a feeling we're going to see quite a number of those handed out
in the New York area this past summer when there were some meltdowns at LaGuardia.
[0:29:36] IP: Well, we'll see. Where do we go next? We go supersonic, or soon to be
supersonic. Boom has received the airworthiness certificate for its XB1 demonstrator aircraft.
This is the scaled down pilot-only demonstrator for its eventual overture supersonic transport
aircraft. The first flight of the XB1 was supposed to happen in 2020. Was announced in 2020.
Was supposed to happen in 2021. Events ensued, and so they are targeting sometime in the
future for first flight of the XB1. They've been doing taxi tests, but we don't yet have a date for
the first flight. But at least now, they have their awareness certificate, so it's coming soon-ish we
hope. Be interesting to see. I don't think we have much to say beyond that, other than hey, when
it happens, we'll track it.
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AVT 231 Transcript
What about an adults-only cabin? We got a few emails about this from listeners who wanted us
to talk about this. I looked into it and this is Corendon Airlines is going to introduce an adults-
only cabin on its A350 fleet, which is joining the airline starting for the winter. They're going to fly
five times a week to Curacao and they will have an adults-only cabin in the front of the aircraft,
where there will be adults only. I don't know how many more different ways to say that. This isn't
new. It's not novel. There are other airlines that do this. Jason, I think Scoot is one of the others
that’s consistently had this particular kind of product.
[0:31:14] JR: On a 787. Yeah.
[0:31:15] IP: It'll be interesting to see how that goes.
[0:31:19] JR: We talked about this a little before the show that this isn't new, novel, unique, or
whatever. This has happened with plenty of airlines over the years, but I think, Ian, you said
that, yeah, they're probably doing this to stir up some excitement and news hits for its A350. It
worked, because I did not know that they were getting A350s anytime soon, so mission
accomplished PR firm, or internal comms, or whomever. I am now aware that this airline is
getting A350s.
[0:31:44] IP: Let me step back. They're not getting A350s. They're using World2Fly’s –
[0:31:50] JR: Oh, whatever.
[0:31:50] IP: - A350s.
[0:31:52] JR: They're going somewhere new that they couldn't go before.
[0:31:54] IP: But it sounds like, they're going to be, yeah, going to be Corendonized, if that's a
word. It could be a word now. Jason, you thought this was pretty cool and then you sent it to me
and I said, “Yeah, that's pretty cool.” What's going on in Singapore at Changi Airport?
[0:32:09] JR: Again, not novel, not unique, isn't something that has not been done before. That
was a double negative, but you get it. Changi’s installed some automatic jet bridges. Or maybe
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AVT 231 Transcript
not automatic. Not yet. They are push button jet bridges. Typically, today, when a fight blocks in,
or is blocking out there is a human being on basically, a joystick that has to manually maneuver
the jet bridge, which as many of you have experienced in the past, Ian, I know this includes you
many times that lasting feet moving the jet bridge can somehow be the most frustrating, time
consuming piece of an entire journey.
It is not an easy thing. I'm not saying that this is due to incompetence, or just bad driving. These
are heavy, big machines that you're driving with a joystick and a couple buttons. Getting it right
takes a lot of practice. But man, does this ever seem like the thing that can and should be
automated. If an airport like Changi is doing it, gives me hope that other airports can do the
same thing. In this case, a ramp worker actually enables the jet bridge on the ground by just
turning a key and pushing a button and the system uses all sorts of door detection, lasers,
sensors, things, I'm sure there's all sorts of beeping and booping and the jet bridge just
automatically aligns with the doors and that's that.
I hope that this is a success and that it is rolled out to every airport everywhere immediately, so
we can weed out that last annoying 10 feet that somehow seems to take forever. Also, it will
probably – let’s be realistic. When this does become commonplace, I'm sure we will see fewer
incidents of jet bridge slamming into cowling, or into the wing, or shearing off the door of the
aircraft, or whatever. Yeah, that'll be nice.
[0:34:03] IP: But if that were to happen to a particular subset of A320s, you could still get off the
plane.
[0:34:09] JR: Yes. But how? It's a long drop without stairs attached to those aircraft.
[0:34:15] IP: Well, how about you put stairs in the aircraft, Jason?
[0:34:19] JR: Again, not novel, not unprecedented. If you've ever flown Ryanair, you have
almost certainly boarded a 737 using the built-in air stairs. Or, if you've been lucky enough to fly
in a Boeing business jet, you may have boarded that way, too.
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AVT 231 Transcript
[0:34:34] IP: Boeing business jet? If any US government officials are listening and you're
regularly flying on C40s, then same deal. Yeah, Airbus now has – they've installed and there
was video this week from, I think it was from inside the final assembly line in [inaudible
0:34:51] of air stairs on an A320. Slides in underneath the L1 door. Then when you want to use
them, they press a button, the door slides out, stairs come out, fold down and away you go.
[0:35:07] JR: Yeah. I learned a lot about that this week, apparently, the earliest models of the
A320 did – the A320-100 did include this as an option from the factory. I think some of the early,
well, predecessor to BA aircraft had these, maybe some of the Air France models as well,
maybe the Air India models, this was a thing that, I guess, just not a lot of airlines picked up, so
Airbus discontinued it and it is now available on the Neo. I think through third parties, because
Lufthansa Technik is tagged in this, so this might be just under thing –
[0:35:42] IP: Proof of concept, or ACJ maybe.
[0:35:43] JR: Maybe not a proof of concept, but yeah, for the ACJ, it is definitely an option. I
don't think you'll be seeing this coming to any commercial airlines and apparently, the A320 door
is quite a bit higher than it is on the 737. It's a lot of just extra material, extra weight to get that
door, or the ladder in that aircraft. We'll post a link to the video, because it's just weird to see.
The ladder is actually at a pretty steep angle as well. I think much steeper than the 737, so you
probably wouldn't want to use this, or passenger boarding for a commercial flight. But sure, is
interesting to watch.
[0:36:19] IP: Yeah. All right. Well, the video is linked in the show notes. We close the show with
not quite breaking news, because it happened yesterday, but it's important. It's huge. It's the
biggest story that you're going to read, or listen to in the next 38 seconds. The new Superjet has
flown for the first time.
[0:36:44] JR: You got to put a little asterisk there though, because there's –
[0:36:47] IP: New-ish.
[0:36:48] JR: There’s a complication isn’t there. What's the complication?
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AVT 231 Transcript
[0:36:51] IP: I don't know if it's a complication, but it's certainly an asterisk, because the new
“Superjet” is still fitted with the same engines designed by the French. The production versions
of the SSJ New, or the SJ100 as it is now being called will have the Russian built PD-8 engines,
but those have not yet been fitted to this particular aircraft. It's a Superjet. It took out almost all
of the parts that weren't crafted by companies outside of Russia. Now, it's nearly Russian. I
suppose, it's a Russian glider with French engines.
[0:37:33] JR: All right. That's something. Good luck to them and getting the Russian version of
those engines, because it sure seems like they’re going to need it at this rate. It doesn't seem
like the sanctions necessitating this for happening in the first place are really going to happen
anytime, or be lifted anytime soon. But, I guess, it's good for them that they got all of the other
avionics and all of the other systems, hydraulic, whatever homegrown at this point. Because
remember, that the Superjet, its selling point, its big, big selling point was that it was not a
Russian aircraft, that it was an internationally sourced aircraft built in Russia. That is very much
not the case anymore.
[0:38:15] IP: No. No. It is not that. We'll see who buys it, or who's told to buy it.
[0:38:22] JR: Yeah, there it is.
[0:38:24] IP: Let’s see. Next week is Dorkfest. Jason and I will both be there. Many of you have
emailed to say that you are going as well. That's next Friday. It begins next Friday. Dorkfest is
actually on Saturday –
[0:38:40] JR: Saturday morning.
[0:38:40] IP: - the 9th. Saturday morning, the 9th. 11 a.m., in the park across the street from the
in and out at LAX. There's the NYC Aviation event at the H Hotel rooftop on Friday night. If
anyone's going to that, I believe I will be in attendance for a little bit at least. Then I'll be around
all day Saturday and Sunday morning. If you are planning on coming, by all means, stop by, say
hello. Don't be shy. We would love to talk with you and see you there. I hope many of our
listeners will be joining us in LA for the weekend.
© 2023 AvTalk 19
AVT 231 Transcript
[0:39:16] JR: All right. Looking forward to it.
[0:39:17] IP: Yeah. Me too. It's going to be a nice time. For now, we say goodbye. This has
been episode 231 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:39:30] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2023 AvTalk 20