AvTalk Episode 289: The FAA doesn’t want headless pilots

AVT 289 Transcript
EPISODE 289
[EPISODE]
[0:00:08] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 289 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How's it going?
[0:00:19] IP: Hello, Jason. It's going well. The weather here is much nicer than the weather in
Florida, as I closely look at the radar. By the time the podcast comes out on Friday, Hurricane
Milton will have moved through from Tampa, clear across Florida, and I hope that the damage is
nowhere near what they are predicting so far.
[0:00:39] JR: Yes. It is also nice here. We'll eventually get, probably, the remnants of a
hurricane. We usually do. Maybe not this time, but I'm just happy. It's cool out. I was in Seattle
with our good friend, Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren over the weekend, so we did some non-aviation
related stuff, which was nice for a change of pace. Would you have guessed that this weekend
was my first ever flight on a 737 MAX 8? Two of them.
[0:01:03] IP: Well, how about that?
[0:01:04] JR: Yeah. Been on a nine before, but never an eight.
[0:01:08] IP: I would not have guessed that. That one surprised me. How did you find the MAX
8?
[0:01:14] JR: It was like the 800, but you take two of the zeros off, and bam, you got a MAX.
[0:01:20] IP: New plane.
[0:01:21] JR: Yeah. I mean, it was fine. It was United's MAX 8. It's got all their new stuff.
© 2024 AvTalk 1
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:01:25] IP: Which has the nice –
[0:01:26] JR: It’s got the nice interior. It's got the Wi-Fi that doesn't work. It's got the seat back
screens, which have movies, which is nice. I survived Newark, which is great. Got in and out
early, which is miraculous. All in all –
[0:01:38] IP: That’s after the terminal caught on fire.
[0:01:40] JR: That's true. It caught on fire after we left, and the fire was extinguished before we
returned. Amazingly, you almost wouldn't have even known there was a quite sizable fire at the
Starbucks in Newark Terminal A. I expected it to be like, char marks all over the place and
smoke damage, but either modern materials are really smoke resistant, or they cleaned up
really quickly, which isn't Newark's thing cleaning up quickly.
[0:02:07] IP: I'm glad you made that joke and saved me from having to make it, and then we get
–
[0:02:11] JR: Someone had to make it.
[0:02:12] IP: - all sorts of emails that the Chicago guy doesn't like New York, or whatever.
[0:02:17] JR: I mean, it’s Newark.
[0:02:17] IP: But I'm glad you stepped into that one.
[0:02:19] JR: Yes, but it was good. Good flight. I will say, seriously, the MAX is a very quiet
airplane, even sitting behind the wing. It's quite something.
[0:02:27] IP: Yeah. No. I was on it on the way to Dorkfest a few weeks ago, and I thoroughly
enjoyed that flight. Quite the different experience as far as acoustics compared to the old 757
still kicking around.
© 2024 AvTalk 2
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:02:40] JR: Oh, yeah. What I did not enjoy is only having two lavs in the economy in the back
of the aircraft. It was a scene back there. Really not great that the MAX 8 is really too small of
an aircraft to be doing long transcons like that in that configuration. The flight attendants confirm
they don't like it either, because it's just always a line. The last five rows of the aircraft, it's
unpleasant for everyone. Overall, it was good, but I assume United would have normally been
operating at this point a Dash 9, or maybe even a Dash 10, but they ain't got any of those. So,
they put in what they have, which is fine.
[0:03:18] IP: Yeah. Well, I'm glad it all worked out. It doesn't look like Boeing is going to be
building additional 737 MAX, or a bunch of other aircraft for a while, because the strike is
ongoing and talks again have broken down.
[0:03:35] JR: Things are going poorly. I believe Jon Ostrower has offered to have everyone
over to his house over some pizzas, to cool down and open dialogue, because –
[0:03:45] IP: Whatever works.
[0:03:46] JR: It's not going well.
[0:03:48] IP: Whatever works. I mean, I'm all for pizza at Jon's house. I would be fine strapping
them on a roller coaster together. I think that would be a good way to do things. There are a
variety of things that we could do to get the parties closer together, but it doesn't sound like,
we're even close to talking about an actual contract yet. Boeing has withdrawn the latest offer
that it made to the union, which the union says it made via the media. This was the one
announced, I believe it was the end of September, that was an improvement on the initial offer
that was voted down. The union says –
[0:04:29] JR: This was the last and final offer.
[0:04:31] IP: Yes. The union says that it stands ready to resume mediated, or direct
negotiations. Boeing says, “There's not really anything that we need to talk about right now.”
Yeah.
© 2024 AvTalk 3
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:04:45] JR: Okay.
[0:04:46] IP: Not a good update. Not a good update. But we'll keep you posted. Who knows?
We could be surprised by miraculous progress. Right, Jason?
[0:04:56] JR: Sure. I mean, you often see that happen. We saw it with Air Canada's pilots. We
saw it with the longshoremen that sometimes deals just happen, and you only know about them
when they happen. In this case, I don't think I'm going to be waking up tomorrow morning to a
deal in principle.
[0:05:11] IP: No. Certainly not. Speaking of Boeing, the New York Times is out today,
Wednesday, October 9th, with a report on, we're going back to MCAS. The report from the New
York Times is about an Ethiopian Airline's request for information following the first MAX crash.
After Lionair 610 happens, Boeing sends out updated information, telling airlines, “This is what
you should do if you notice MCAS is firing when it shouldn't be.” Ethiopian's chief pilot emailed
Boeing and said, “Okay. But what if this happens?” The situation that they laid out was rather
prescient, because the situation they laid out for Boeing was what happens if there are multiple
failures, including a failure with the angle of attack on the aircraft? What do we do then?
Boeing's response was, “Here's the memo we sent everybody. We can't talk about it, because
we're providing information to the Indonesian investigators.” There's a big but here.
[0:06:34] JR: Yeah. This is where it gets really concerning. I really can't believe we haven't
heard about this till now that here in October 2024, we're still learning new and particularly
distressing things about Boeing's behavior, leading up to and after the MAX crashes. Apparently,
Boeing was more than willing to discuss exactly the situation and what to do with US-based pilot
organizations. Apparently, the rules that Boeing thought were in place because of investigations
including the NTSB that prohibited them from talking to Ethiopian and directly answering those
questions. It was just super cool to give that information to American airline pilots, which is just, I
don't understand any of this. Apparently, the NTSB also says, this mischaracterizes the rule.
There would have been nothing preventing Boeing from directly answering the Ethiopian pilot's
question. That's really the gist of it here. It's extremely distressing to read about the past
behaviors of Boeing and just not answering direct questions from the chief pilot of the airline that
eventually led to the crash is just – it just hurts to read this.
© 2024 AvTalk 4
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:07:51] IP: I mean, I don't think we'll ever learn why Boeing thought that this was an
appropriate response. But I would love to hear the rationale here, why they believed. Because if
nothing else, it should be fixed if this were to ever happen again. If an airline comes with direct
questions about how to increase the safety of its operations, because one of your airplanes
experienced a catastrophic failure and they lay out a scenario and say, “Okay. What do we do if
this happens?” And you say, “We can't tell you”?
[0:08:25] JR: Yeah, not great. There's a quote here from a spokesperson from the Allied Pilots
Association, which also expresses the same concern here, who says, that spokesperson who
attended the meeting Boeing held with American pilots and who put several questions to Boeing
representatives himself said, and I quote, “Our meeting with Boeing covered the same
questions that the Ethiopian pilots were asking. It’s clear that they had the same questions we
had, but did not get the answers that we got from Boeing.” This is just all sorts of concerning,
especially since obviously, Ethiopian airlines had nothing to do with the first crash. There was
nothing that should have been preventing Boeing from providing all of that information. Why
would they be providing it to American airlines, but not a foreign airline? Really, really
concerning.
All of this comes to light, because apparently, the New York Times, I think they submitted maybe
a Freedom of Information Request for documents that are being used against Boeing by the
families of the ET302 crash in regards to the Justice Department investigation into Boeing's role
in both the crashes. They hope to, I believe the end goal here is to invalidate the plea
agreement that Boeing was given.
[0:09:40] IP: Yes, that's the goal of the families at this point is to force the government to
basically, get the judge to say, “No, that plea agreement is not going to work out for us.” Then,
the government will have to come up with a different plan from there. Let's talk about more 737
stuff. The FAA has finally issued its notices regarding the rudder assembly that was assembled
incorrectly and installed on a few hundred 737 aircraft. They issued a safety alert for operators
and a continuing airworthiness notice for international customers.
[0:10:23] JR: Operators, whatever.
© 2024 AvTalk 5
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:10:24] IP: Operators. Morale of the story, one for the US, one for international.
[0:10:28] JR: Yeah, you might remember this topic from last week when the NTSB issued a
scalding memo to the FAA saying, “What do you guys even do here anymore? Our preliminary
report has been out for months, and you haven't done a damn thing with it.” Well, the FAA has
finally done a thing with it, haven't they?
[0:10:44] IP: They have. They've basically issued continued airworthiness notification to the
international community is what I was looking for earlier. What they've done is issued these
notices saying, “This is the problem. This is the set of solutions that you can perform and go
from there.” This comes two weeks after the NTSB said, “Hey, you should do something about
this, because these things are still flying around.”
[0:11:14] JR: Yeah. That's probably too long at this point. The memo doesn't exactly require
much effort to put out and it probably should have been ready to go, but better late than never.
[0:11:25] IP: Yeah. I guess, we'll go there. The FAA has also issued an airworthiness directive
regarding 787 pilot seats. Jason, you flagged this one.
[0:11:37] JR: This one's fun.
[0:11:39] IP: I'm going to let you explain this, because it took a minute for me to understand
what was going on here. Let's preface it, because I don't want anybody listening to make the
same mistake I did. If you listen to the podcast in the past few months, we've talked a few times
about the 787 pilot seats in relation to the 787, where the seat was inadvertently moved and that
resulted in an accidental descent, because the pilot was pushed into the controls. That's not
what this airworthiness directive is about. This is different.
[0:12:12] JR: Yeah. The 787 pilot seats is just a really hot topic right now. This story comes to
us from Flight Global as many things do, and we'll, again, later in this episode. The US
regulators, which I assume to mean the FAA is ordering Boeing 787 operators to modify cockpit
seats to prevent, and I quote, “possible serious injury to the captain in the event of rapid
© 2024 AvTalk 6
AVT 289 Transcript
decompression.” What basically happens here is 787s from a lot of carriers, or maybe all of
them have armored cockpit doors to prevent any shenanigans from getting from the cabin inside
the cockpit. However, as we learn from the Alaska door blowout, the cockpit door has a
mechanism where part of it will basically blow out, so there isn't a pressure equalization issue
that the cockpit also needs to depressurize.
A part of the armored cockpit door blows out. But there is a very unlikely situation where if the
captain is in the full controlled rest recline mode of that seat, which is basically, imagine you're in
a car and you move your seat back all the way back and you want to take a nap, that's
essentially what is the case on the 787. But there is the case, extremely rare, that if a pilot is
doing controlled rest with the seat reclined all the way back and there is a rapid decompression,
there's a very small chance that a armored piece of door could fly off the door and strike a pilot
in the head, or face and cause and I quote, “serious, even potentially fatal injury,” which is bad.
What's worse here is the debate between the airlines and the regulators with the airlines saying,
“There is such a small chance of this happening. Let's just pretend like it's not going to happen
and go on with our lives. Because if we do what the regulators want, which is limit the seat's
ability to go into this full recline controlled rest mode, pilot fatigue could increase and that could
mean we have to supplement additional crews on board, which costs money. Instead of having
two pilots onboard, they could potentially have to have a third, or they would have to change the
route network, so a 787 wouldn't operate a particular flight and maybe another aircraft that
doesn't have potentially deadly flying pieces of armored door at hits.”
We're in this interesting place where airlines, particularly the article states, British Airways, Air
France and KLM argue that the modification would limit the seat recline and prohibit pilots from
achieving sufficient rest, while you have the regulators saying, “Yeah. Well, we don't want them
to die.” Then the airline saying, “That's probably not going to happen.” Interesting stalemate
here.
[0:14:57] IP: I have some questions here about the design of this particular door piece, because
I'm thinking through, and we will put a picture of the 787 flight deck in the show notes just to
give visual reference to this. Here's what I'm wondering about. If there's a piece of the door that
blows into the flight deck and could hit the pilot if the seats reclined all the way, it seems to me
© 2024 AvTalk 7
AVT 289 Transcript
that if the seat’s not reclined all the way, there's a decent chance that it can fly into the middle of
the flight deck and I don't know, hit stuff that the pilots need to not be broken. This just seems
like a poor design. In the event of a rapid decompression, would you not want all of the cockpit
to be roughly where it's supposed to be and not damaged by flying –
[0:15:46] JR: Yeah. That seems like a good idea. I guess, I'm not sure how you design around
that. Maybe go back and look at the 767, or the 777, because apparently, this issue is only
specific to the 787, but maybe that's because only the seats on the 787 recline in that particular
fashion, or to that degree, or lined up with the door. I don't know. Maybe let's fix the door,
instead of making pilots not rest anymore. Apparently, the FAA is not buying it. The article goes
on to say, that following analysis and evaluation of the fleet data, it is determined the risk to
pilots is, quote, “unacceptable,” and is not revised. It's directive. Air France and KLM suggested
using aid for accurate seat positioning, or procedures, and placards to limit seat recline. The
FAA said, “No. And we want to limit the ability for that seat to recline at all.”
This is a weird situation. I really would love to know what prompted this. I can't imagine this
happened, because we would have heard about it. What study was run to say, in this weird
situation where a pilot fully reclined, taking a break, and there’s rapid decompression and the
door blows open like this, it could hit him in the head and kill them. How did this come up?
[0:16:58] IP: Yeah, that's a really good question. This one, we'll do some follow up on, because
I have so many questions about the design of this particular door. Why does this condition even
exist? Okay. Yeah. Yesterday, well, I suppose early this morning on the 9th, the flight took off on
the 8th. Early this morning on the 9th, a Turkish Airlines flight diverted to JFK, because one of the
pilots became incapacitated. Unfortunately, he did not survive his medical incident. The aircraft
was traveling from Seattle to Istanbul when it was nearing the eastern coast of Canada up by
Bath and Bay ready to cross over Greenland when the flight turned south and diverted to JFK. It
sounds like, there was a relief captain and a first officer onboard. There were two pilots on the
flight deck during the whole of the flight, but the captain of the flight experienced a medical
episode and sadly, did not survive.
[0:18:01] JR: I hate to hear that.
© 2024 AvTalk 8
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:18:03] IP: There was an incident earlier this week, or late last week on October 4th, when a
King Air was landed by the passenger after that pilot experienced a medical event.
[0:18:19] JR: We've heard this story before, haven't we?
[0:18:22] IP: We have. In the not-too-distant past, there was a flight by, I think it was a charter
flight that was coming from the Bahamas and the passenger had to land that aircraft as well.
This was a case of, they were flying from Henderson near Las Vegas to Monterey in California,
and they turned back to Bakersfield and landed safely. You can see based on the flight path and
we'll put a link to that in the show notes, where the medical episode happens and then where
the passenger begins piloting the aircraft, because the lines go from straight to not so straight.
[0:19:06] JR: It gets a bit wiggly.
[0:19:08] IP: But they did a fantastic job piloting the aircraft and bringing it down. The aircraft
overran the runway slightly, ended up pretty much right at the end of the runway in the grass,
didn't look like there was much damage to the aircraft, but again, sadly, that pilot did not survive
the flight either. Not a great week for pilots and medical episodes onboard.
[0:19:31] JR: No. But glad to hear that the passenger was able to get that aircraft down,
because that's no small feat. Hat's off to them.
[0:19:39] IP: The NTSB has issued multiple preliminary reports this week that are, I think,
worthy of discussion. Jason, do we want to start with Nashville, or Atlanta? Where should we
go?
[0:19:49] JR: Let’s start with Nashville.
[0:19:50] IP: Nashville it is. This is the rejected takeoff by an Alaskan airline, Alaska Airlines
737.
[0:20:00] JR: Oh, you would have gotten so much hate email if you went with Alaskan Airlines.
Man.
© 2024 AvTalk 9
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:20:04] IP: No. Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines. Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines.
[0:20:10] JR: Bingo. There you go.
[0:20:11] IP: I've been working on my drills for airline naming conventions. This was an Alaska
Airlines 737 departing Nashville on runway 13, a Southwest Airlines 737 crossing runway 13 for
a runway 20 center departure. The preliminary report lays out a timeline of events in which,
what the NTSB terms the local controller, which I'm pretty sure is the tower controller, because
they were clearing Alaska to line up and wait on the runway. The ground controller was
contacted by Southwest. The ground controller at 9:13.05 clears Southwest to proceed to
runway 20 center and to cross runway 13 at taxiway T5.
Southwest is doing what they were told to do. 9:13.13 flight crew of the Southwest reads back
the taxi instructions correctly to the ground controller. At 9:13.28, the local controller clears the
Alaska flight for takeoff on runway 13. The crew at 914.30, the crew of Alaska at 9:14.30, so
about a minute after being cleared for takeoff says that they're boarding the takeoff and the
controller cancels their takeoff clearance, because Southwest was crossing in front of them. It
looks like, we've seen this story before.
[0:21:45] JR: Yeah, and at least we have a report rather quickly to tell us what happened.
Speaking of reports to tell us what happened rather quickly, you might recall just a couple weeks
ago, the very bizarre photos and video coming out of Atlanta, where a CRJ-700's tail wasn't
there anymore, as it was clipped off quite cleanly by another Delta A350 that was taxiing out to
Tokyo, Haneda. When I opened this report, unfortunately, my computer exploded and I haven't
had the chance to actually go back and read the whole thing. Ian, I believe there was a photo, or
basically, a diagram that showed where each aircraft was. One of them wasn't really totally
where it should have been, was it?
[0:22:32] IP: Yeah. What the NTSB diagram shows, and we'll put this into the show notes,
obviously, so that you can all follow along at home. What the diagram shows is scale figures of
both the CRJ-900 and the –
© 2024 AvTalk 10
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:22:48] JR: Oh, it was a 900. Not 700. My mistake. I was thinking way back when the Air
France versus Delta, whatever.
[0:22:55] IP: There's been so many opportunities of CRJs losing their tail.
[0:22:59] JR: Man, the CRJs are such a punching bag. Poor things
[0:23:02] IP: It's terrible. The CRJ-900 was on the taxi away, not all the way up to the hold short
line as the A350 was taxiing behind it. They helpfully lay out where the wing tip clearance was
and where the CRJ was. Well, we all know what happened to the CRJ's tail, thanks to the
A350's wing. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. This is just a preliminary report. They
haven't said everything that went into why they were there, where they were and things like that.
The graphic lays out exactly how it happened. Not necessarily –
[0:23:36] JR: There was one interesting thing that I read before my computer exploded. We
know that not everything happens for one particular reason. In this case, it was not just the CRJ
not top being, I think it was 56 feet back from the stop bar, but the A350 was never supposed to
be in the position to clip the tail of the CRJ in the first place. However, taxiing out to the runway,
they had some notification about, I think, a navigation system issue and they had to go
elsewhere to go troubleshoot that. That is only when they clip the tail of the CRJ. If it weren't for
that error message and having to go troubleshoot that, they never would have been in that
position. It's always something.
Also, on top of that, the other runway that they typically would have used was closed. They
shouldn't have been using that runway in the first place, or they don't normally use that runway.
Then they don't normally taxi beyond where they went. Then that other aircraft wasn't pulled up
all the way. At least three factors leading up to that big whoopsy.
[0:24:42] IP: Yeah. It's always something.
[0:24:44] JR: In this case, at least three, some things.
© 2024 AvTalk 11
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:24:47] IP: At least three some things. This, I think, puts an end to the ongoing saga of
Qantas’ selling flights that were never actually going to operate, or that had already decided to
cancel. They've been ordered to pay 100 million Australian dollars, which is 67 million US
dollars for advertising and selling tickets on flights that were pretty much already canceled. They
had been sued by Australia's competition watchdog, which said, “This is absolutely misleading.”
The two parties have agreed to settle for a 100 million dollars. This has been the ghost flight
controversy, which sounds cool, given the fact that it's October. I think that would be fun.
[0:25:37] JR: Yeah, spooky.
[0:25:40] IP: At first, Qantas was very up in arms that they would ever be accused of such
things, although by, well, now, they're just happy to be done with it.
[0:25:50] JR: Yeah. Only one CEO earlier retirement later. They're all right.
[0:25:56] IP: Let's shift things around, Jason, and stick in Australia, because this one, it's not
quite Baltia level.
[0:26:03] JR: Whoa. That is a massive accusation, if you call something on the level of Baltia.
[0:26:08] IP: Which is why I'm saying it's not quite above their level.
[0:26:10] JR: This airline actually had airplanes and passengers and flights.
[0:26:13] IP: Yeah. For a minute.
[0:26:15] JR: And diet cokes being served. Baltia did not – Tell me what happened.
[0:26:19] IP: This is the Australian government probing, as well as now the United States
Department of Justice investigating whether 777 Partners and its main funder, the insurance
organization, ACAP, used money that was earmarked for other things, namely the soccer teams
owned by 777 Partners for Bonza in Australia, to keep them afloat.
© 2024 AvTalk 12
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:26:53] JR: There are some particularly spicy quotes here from the ABC Australia news article
about this. I should just read this.
[0:27:02] IP: You should. They're very good.
[0:27:04] JR: This is from Virgin co-founder, Brett Godfrey, who the article goes on to say, is
among those who thought it was a doomed idea from the start. The quote is, “If Qantas, or
Virgin thought it was a great idea to fly 180 seat airplanes between, oh, God, Maro –” Two
random places in Australia that you don't see a lot of flights. Picking up the quote again. “Well,
they probably would have done it.” There just wasn't the market there. Then the really spicy bit
at the end of the quote is, it was economic suicide from the outset.
[0:27:35] IP: To be fair, the only reason I wanted you to read that quote is because I thought
you were going to do the pronunciation of the names.
[0:27:42] JR: Maroochydore. I got nothing. I can't even pronounce it. I've never heard of this
place before. I think that's the point that why are you flying between these two cities? There's no
demand for it, especially operating 180 seat ultra-low-cost airline. None of it made any sense.
Yeah, that was proved pretty quickly, wasn't it?
[0:28:04] IP: Their initial root network seemed to do okay. Then they said, “Oh. Well, we have a
couple of successes, so let's just expand as much as we possibly can.” That didn't work out.
Then they ended up with Flair covering their aircraft and then they couldn't get the aircraft. It all
got very messy. It seems that 777 Partners kept dumping money that now the US government is
probing whether or not they had or not, into this airline to try and keep it afloat. The whole thing
is very, very interesting. Because first of all, you have a soccer team and an airline and you're
mixing money between the two and you shouldn't be is what the US DOJ is alleging here. This
all just seems like, why are you involved in businesses like this? What is going on? Are you
trying to not run either of them well? What is this here? I'm very confused.
[0:29:05] JR: I think, it is actually Maroochydore. Okay. That's what Wikipedia tells me.
[0:29:12] IP: All right.
© 2024 AvTalk 13
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:29:13] JR: If you're from this Queensland, Australia city with 62,673 people and would like to
be in the podcast, pronouncing the name of this city, reach out to podcast@fr24.com, because
we'd love to know.
[0:29:25] IP: Please do.
[0:29:26] JR: We’d love to know.
[0:29:28] IP: Going to keep following this one up, because it sounds like, there's no shortage of
stories coming out of 777 Partners.
[0:29:38] JR: It's not Baltia level scam, but it sounds like, they were doing some pretty shady
dealings to keep things afloat.
[0:29:43] IP: Yeah. We'll keep on this one. Jason?
[0:29:47] JR: Yo.
[0:29:48] IP: Well, I'm supposed to be at a party tomorrow that I'm not actually going to,
because I'm not flying to New York. But I hear there's a reason that United's throwing a party.
Tell me more.
[0:29:59] JR: United is throwing a party. It's actually embargoed information right now. But for
you, dear podcast listeners, I'm going to break that embargo, because this podcast doesn't
come out until after the embargo lifts, but it'll be our little secret until then. United announced its
summer 2025 international expansion plans. We don't ordinarily cover things like that, like
airlines fly to new places. That's what they do and we don't normally cover that. But the list of
new cities that United is flying to in 2025 is surprising, let's say. There are some bangers on this
list that I would not have ever – if you had given me 5,000 guesses, I probably wouldn't have
guessed these cities. Ian, have you had a chance to look at it yet?
[0:30:46] IP: I haven't had a chance to go through the list.
© 2024 AvTalk 14
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:30:48] JR: Oh, good. We can play some trivia then.
[0:30:51] IP: That, we can.
[0:30:52] JR: Okay. I haven't prepared for this, so I don't have trivia for you. I'm just going to list
off these exceptionally unexpected destinations United is going to be flying to next year.
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I'm just going to let that one sink in.
[0:31:09] IP: That was at the top of my list. I mean, I, for years, anyone who's listened to this
podcast more than zero times knows that every episode I say, United should fly to Mongolia.
[0:31:20] JR: Well, good news. They're going to be doing that next year. Next up, Kaohsiung,
Taiwan. Somewhere I actually went last year. That's unexpected. Kind of surprising. Here's
another one. Nuuk, Greenland.
[0:31:34] IP: Yes.
[0:31:35] JR: Yeah. It gets a little less interesting from here. Dakar, Senegal. That one is
already served by Delta from JFK. Palmero, Italy, other destinations in Spain, Madeira Island
and Faro, Portugal. Just a really surprising list of cities, especially Kaohsiung, Ulaanbaatar, and
Nuuk, Greenland, and how they're doing some of these, especially the Mongolia and Taiwan
routes is they are making use of their Guam-based 737 fleet through Tokyo, Narita, just like it's
1995 all over again.
[0:32:11] IP: Wow.
[0:32:12] JR: Yeah. We're in this weird situation, where you could fly to Mongolia, or Taiwan on
a United aircraft after flying ANA to Tokyo, Narita. It's just a really weird situation, where you
would think it'd be the opposite. You'd fly United to Tokyo and then ANA, or another airline would
connect you onward to a place like Mongolia or Taiwan. But in this case, you could fly an ANA
777-300ER to Tokyo and then connect to a United 737-700 to Mongolia. That's bizarre.
© 2024 AvTalk 15
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:32:47] IP: Yeah.
[0:32:47] JR: Uh-huh. United says, there is a lot of demand. There is a lot of to Mongolia. The
kicker is that their data shows that there's demand to these cities, but people do not want to
transit through mainland China right now. There was a lot of connecting from US destinations
through Beijing onward to places like Mongolia, or Taiwan, but people just aren't doing that
anymore. They swear, there is still demand for it. But if they want to fly through Tokyo, people
are much more likely to do that. That is the bet. Man, United flying a 737 to Mongolia wasn't on
my bingo card. I don't know about you.
[0:33:25] IP: No. If you gave me a hundred guesses, I would not have gotten that. Not even
close.
[0:33:34] JR: No.
[0:33:35] IP: Cool.
[0:33:36] JR: Yeah. Taiwan and Mongolia will be 73700, or 737s based out of Guam, which I
believe are all NGs. No MAXs there. Dakar, Senegal is nonstop out of Washington Dulles. Nuuk,
Greenland is out of Newark. I believe that's on a 737 MAX of some sort. No announcement of
the 321neo XLR routes to anywhere. But interestingly, I believe these are all narrowbody routes,
except for when you get down to the Spain routes, or Portugal. Those are also out of Newark, of
course, but they did not specify what aircraft those will be on. Interestingly, they didn't eliminate
any routes for next year. They're just adding some real interesting stuff.
[0:34:22] IP: Cool.
[0:34:23] JR: Yeah.
[0:34:24] IP: All right. Yeah. I mean, I think we have to go to Mongolia now.
[0:34:27] JR: You should come to the party tomorrow, where I believe and hope now, Mongolian
food.
© 2024 AvTalk 16
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:34:31] IP: They’re taking people to Mongolia?
[0:34:32] JR: Not until next year.
[0:34:33] IP: Yeah. Okay. Fine. Well, you know who's not adding routes, Jason? In fact,
removing many of them. Spirit Airlines is on a tear of taking away routes and the Wall Street
Journal and Bloomberg both reported late last week that Spirit is considering bankruptcy,
considering restructuring the airline, given its increasingly tenuous financial situation. The failed
merger with JetBlue, the introduction of bundling of all kinds, the elimination of fees, cutting
routes by double digit percentages, 10% this month, nearly 20% in August and September,
deferring deliveries, not good news all around.
[0:35:24] JR: No. You alluded to it, but I do think that personally, Frontier, I guess, unbundling,
or rebundling and removing –
[0:35:32] IP: Rebundling.
[0:35:33] JR: - change in cancel fees is really what drove the dagger through the heart of Spirit
here. They probably could have survived not going through with the merger with JetBlue. But
once their main competitor got rid of basically, all the change and cancel fee and bundled
everything together in these fares, Spirit had to follow, and that is a massive amount of ancillary
revenue. They're just, they have to give up. Potentially, that is what might not kill Spirit, but force
of restructuring of some sort, which may change the very foundation of the airline. We don't
know. I don't think Spirit is going to go away, but hey, bankruptcy happens.
[0:36:12] IP: It does, indeed. It's ironic that the Frontier, “Hey, let's merge,” or JetBlue stepped
in with a counter offer. Spirit said, “Well, JetBlue's offers.” Frontier said, fine. Then Frontier is the
one that puts the nail in the bankruptcy coffin, if that is to happen.
[0:36:30] JR: I was going to say, if you can't beat them, join them. But in this case, it was if you
can't join him, beat them.
© 2024 AvTalk 17
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:36:34] IP: Beat them. There you go.
[0:36:37] JR: It sure looks like that's what's going to happen here.
[0:36:39] IP: In Russia, S7 Airlines is now the first airline to sign up for Russia's homegrown
ACARS service. ACARS, which is basically text messaging between aircraft and dispatchers,
which allows them to send messages of a variety of extremely important things, such as
weather updates, fuel updates, important messages about onboard emergencies, or anything
like that, and also, sports scores. That system has been unavailable to Russian Airlines since
March of 2022, because of sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. They've spent this
time developing their own system. S7 says that, “Hey, sure. We'll sign up for that.”
[0:37:31] JR: Yeah. Apparently, the story is here that although, of course, there were receivers
and a whole network in Russia, the actual data transmission in exchange was handled by
international companies. Way back in March 2022, the handling of those messages stopped and
it has taken over two, two and a half years at this point for Russia to bake its own system and
fully test it and get it deployed here with S7. It's not something that is a nationwide network. Yet
again, Flight Global comes to us with the details that so far, it's only 10 receivers along the
primary S7 flight routes and each receiver covers about 300 kilometers, which isn't huge, but
they hope to expand that network to 55 stations by 2026.
On the one hand, it's neat and interesting to see Russian Airlines be so scrappy and put
together homegrown things, but it's also distressing to see this very thing happen, because as
time goes on and they develop their own things and systems and procedures, it will become that
much harder eventually, one day, hopefully, to reintegrate Russian Airlines and to international
airspace if they suddenly have their own ACARS system and their own ADS-B. I don't know.
Their own everything. They're getting farther and farther separated from international standards
and international systems, but they don't have a choice.
[0:38:58] IP: Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I think the longer and further down this road we
go, the more difficult it becomes to reintegrate, eventually, into a global system. I think that's a
very real concern. This was an interesting argument, exchange, I'm not sure what to call this
exactly. But current Breeze Airways CEO, David Neeleman, and IATA CEO, Willie Walsh, had
© 2024 AvTalk 18
AVT 289 Transcript
passionate conversation, shall we say, about sustainable aviation fuel. Our good friend, Seth
Miller was there to capture the audio, and what they had to say is, I mean, comes down to
where, I think, a lot of people on either side of this debate fit in.
[0:39:43] JR: Yeah. Seth, who published the article in Paxex.aero calls out that neither of them
convince the other that they are right, or they are wrong, because of course, not. That's never
going to happen. On the one hand, you have Willie Walsh, who he is the head of IATA, he is the
CEO of the airline lobbying group, really publishing, SAF is the thing that will save the aviation
industry from the whole climate debate and emissions and all of that. You have David
Neeleman, Breeze Airways CEO, Azul founder, JetBlue founder, saying, “Hey, SAF is BS. It's a
stopgap. It's extremely expensive. You have to truck it to the airport. It's not the end all, be all.
This is barely a temporary band-aid at best.”
It was just really interesting to hear at a major airline industry conference to extremely well-
regarded CEOs have such a heated debate on two very opposite ends of the spectrum here.
What I thought was particularly interesting was David Neeleman saying, “Well, at Breeze we
operate the Airbus A220 with the newest, latest, greatest engines. We're ahead of the curve.
We're good here.” then Willie Walsh coming back and saying, “Well, all airlines are doing that.
You’re not doing anything different than anyone else's at this point.” I'm glad someone is saying
that you are not a green, clean airline, because you operate the A220, or the 737 MAX.
Because at some point, that will just be the norm. Every airline will be operating a geared turbo-
fend engine, hopefully successfully. Once that comes to norm, they're going to be in service for
50 years and they will still be running on some liquid petroleum fuel, be it SAF, or not SAF, or
something else. This problem isn't going away tomorrow. Just because you're operating an
A220 with the GTF engine doesn't really make you any better than anyone else. I thought it was
very interesting to see Willie Walsh call that out, because that is often a large talking point on
the industry.
[0:41:48] IP: If nothing else, I think it's helpful to see this out in the open between two people of
their stature.
[0:41:55] JR: Here's the exact quote. Willie Walsh says, “An airline like yours, if you want to
say, I'm not going to do anything to address my environmental impact, I wish you well.” David
© 2024 AvTalk 19
AVT 289 Transcript
Neeleman says, “I am doing stuff. I've got the most efficient engines.” Willie Walsh counters by
saying, “Everybody has the most fuel-efficient engines, because we all have the same engines
as you have, you know. So, you know. Therefore, the one that sets out, I'm the greenest airline
out there, you're not. You're going to be, as we say, the cream of the crap. Not the cream of the
crop. You have no choice. You have no choice.” I paused there to make sure that wasn't a
transcription error as I read the words, the cream of the crap. Apparently, that is the quote,
because the cream of the crap was followed by cream of the crop. We will link to Seth's article,
which has a video, or audio recording of it, because an airline CEO, or industry lobbying CEO
now saying, cream of the crap, is something you've just got to hear for yourself.
[0:42:58] IP: There you go.
[0:42:59] JR: Wow.
[0:43:00] IP: We will end the show with a mystery, Jason, and our favorite airline.
[0:43:03] JR: I love a mystery. Who? Is it Petchmo Air?
[0:43:07] IP: Our second favorite airline.
[0:43:08] JR: Oh, you must be talking about undisclosed.
[0:43:12] IP: I am.
[0:43:13] JR: The world leader in new aircraft orders.
[0:43:17] IP: Indeed. Delivery and order figures for September from Airbus are in. They
delivered 50 jets last month, including 41 A320neo family aircraft. They had taken in orders for
235 aircraft in September.
[0:43:36] JR: That's a lot.
© 2024 AvTalk 20
AVT 289 Transcript
[0:43:38] IP: Of those 235 aircraft, I think, well, a lot of these were firming orders. I'm using
orders very loosely. However, a new order for 85 aircraft, including 10 A350s and 75 A320neo
family aircraft joined the backlog. That was placed by undisclosed airlines.
[0:44:05] JR: Significant. It was 20 A320neo, 55 A321neo, 5 350-900s, and five of the big boys,
the A350-1000. That is a massive order from, presumably, a single airline who wants a wide-
ranging regional, short-haul, and long-haul, possibly ultra-long-haul network. There are few
airlines in the world that would place an order of this size. Rumors swirling around, perhaps this
is Riyadh Air's big introductory order with Airbus. Perhaps, it's not. We have no idea. Perhaps,
it's two or multiple airlines placing undisclosed orders on the same day. Unlikely. This is
probably one airline. This is pretty massive. Not many airlines out there ordering such a wide
range of aircraft this. Are you sure it wasn't Petchmo Air?
[0:44:57] IP: We can't afford those planes.
[0:45:00] JR: You only took the A318neo. I get it. Someone had to do it.
[0:45:05] IP: Yeah. We're the sole operator there.
[0:45:07] JR: Once we learn who undisclosed, at least for this particular order, is, we will update
you, because I am extremely interested.
[0:45:15] IP: I would love to know. I'm sure we'll know soon, because there will be a giant party
announcing this large of an order at some point. Until then, I guess, we'll just have to leave it
there. This has been Episode 289 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:45:34] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2024 AvTalk 21