AvTalk Episode 225: The escaping escape slide

AVT 225 Transcript
EPISODE 225
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 225 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Happy Wednesday, Ian. How are you?
[0:00:19] IP: Happy Wednesday, Jason. I'm well. How are you, sir?
[0:00:22] JR: I'm good. I'm good. It's Wednesday. Boring, boring work week. Not much going
on. Not much in the way of news. Some interesting things, but not a whole ton. It's summer.
People don't want to be doing anything.
[0:00:34] IP: No, it's definitely the middle of the vacation/holiday period, where making sure that
at least one person is in the office, just to keep an eye on things is where we're at.
[0:00:49] JR: Send a work email and I dare you to find someone to a group of people that
you're not going to get an auto reply from that says, “Sorry, I'm out of the office. I'll be back in
two weeks.”
[0:00:59] IP: There's a lot going on though, as far as aviation events are concerned. We just
had the Royal International Air Tattoo last week in the UK, and then –
[0:01:09] JR: They obviously get off the ground, because of the weather.
[0:01:12] IP: Yeah. Well, I mean, it is the UK summer weather. It delivers as promised. Then
Oshkosh is coming up. Well, Oshkosh begins this weekend. We'll talk a little bit more about that
in the show later on, get into some detail and things like that. Aside from our first story, it's been
a relatively quiet week. But this was anything but quiet for the people that were in the house.
[0:01:37] JR: You've got some local news.
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AVT 225 Transcript
[0:01:38] IP: I do. Yeah, local news indeed. A United 767-300ER on approach to Chicago's
O’Hare International Airport from Zurich landed a little bit lighter than it should have earlier this
week. This was Monday, the 17th of July. United flight 12 as it was on final approach, runway 28
center, lost one of its escape slides.
[0:02:03] JR: Where'd it go? Where'd they lose it?
[0:02:08] IP: Yeah. Well, they lost it over somebody's house. This was one of the off-wing. We
don't know which off-wing escape slide, right or left side, but it was one of the off wing 767
escape slides. It deployed and detached from the aircraft as the aircraft was going about a 137
knots over the ground. At about 12.30 in the afternoon, landed on someone's house to almost 3
miles east of the airport. Aircraft landed safely, taxi’d to the gate. Ground personnel said –
[0:02:41] JR: “Can we get back, please?”
[0:02:42] IP: There's a hole in the plane. The folks who found, or heard the slide hit their house,
then went outside and said, “Hey, that's weird. That's not supposed to be there.” Called the
police and the police called the FAA and United and they said, “Yup, that's our slide. Can we
have it back?”
[0:02:58] JR: That's nice. Yeah. The fun part was that the crew had no idea that this had
happened. There's apparently no alert for this on the ECAS system the slightest.
[0:03:09] IP: Yeah, that was a question that I was going to pose to folks who are listening to the
podcast. If you are a 767 pilot, I know a few 767 pilots listen to the podcast. If you have any
information on this, I would be interested to hear from you, because the news reports said that
the United pilots had no idea this happened. The story is that the ground handling personnel
saw that the slide was missing, and that's how the story developed. A similar incident happened
to an Atlas Air 767 approaching Phoenix in 2016. In that incident, it was reported that the pilots
were alerted that the slide deployed.
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AVT 225 Transcript
[0:03:56] JR: Well, there's also another incident, again, a 767. In 2019, a Delta 767, I believe a
300ER, I'm not quite sure, also lost the slide on approach to Boston. According to this article
from CBS News, they didn't know either. They reported a loud noise as the aircraft was on
approach to Logan. Then it says, workers inspected the aircraft after landing and discovered
that the right rear evacuation slide was missing. This is very much a thing with the 767
apparently.
[0:04:28] IP: Obviously, the FAA is investigating. Who knows if we get an emergency
airworthiness directive, or just a regular old airworthiness directive after it's all said and done
and this has been investigated. There are multiple existing airworthiness directives, regarding
escape slides for the 767. A few of them involve the door mounted slides inflating un-
commanded, which is really bad, because they inflate inside the aircraft.
[0:04:56] JR: Yes. That's happened recently, hasn't it? I don't remember to which airline, but I
do recall that happening somewhat recently.
[0:05:03] IP: Those exist. Then there are also off-wing escape slide airworthiness directives that
address the escape slide not deploying when it's supposed to. Part of those airworthiness
directives also address the slide deploying in an un-commanded fashion during maintenance
activity. The mechanisms for these particular slides deploying, it's supposed to be the overwing
exit is opened, or that part is triggered, depending if you do it during maintenance activity, you
don't have to actually open the overwing exit. Then a panel that's in the fuselage, this particular
slide is stored in the fuselage, the panel that's on the side of the fuselage, just above where the
aft part of the wing meets the fuselage, opens, the slide deploys, and then you can go down the
slide and get off the wing.
It's unclear at this point, obviously, the FAA is missed getting what happened, or why it
happened exactly. I'm going to be keen to find out what they discover about why this particular
slide deployed. Good news is it detached from the aircraft. It didn't cause any further problems.
We talked about the possibility of the slide being caught on the horizontal stabilizer in the
context of Asiana exit door slide. Jason, that was what? A month or so ago.
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AVT 225 Transcript
[0:06:34] JR: Yeah, not even. This has been happening a lot recently, which it probably
shouldn't be.
[0:06:38] IP: This was not someone opening a door on approach. This was just sounds like a
mechanical failure, because there are a number of mechanical linkages between the slide
opening, or the door being opened, or aircraft thinking the door is open, and this particular slide
actually deploying. All sorts of interesting things happening here. We’ll be very keen to find out
what happened and why.
What's interesting is if it had happened 30 seconds later, the slide would have fallen into the
middle of a forest. I'm sure it would have been found fairly easily, because it's a giant silver
escape slide, but it would have been much more difficult to retrieve, and it would have been a
much bigger mystery. Here, it just hit somebody's house, which is rather unfortunate.
[0:07:28] JR: Yeah, and thankfully, it didn't hit any people on the ground. Yet again, we've been
quite lucky with things falling off of airplanes and thankfully, not hitting anyone recently.
Hopefully, that luck doesn't run out anytime soon.
[0:07:41] IP: Yeah, I certainly hope not. Let's stick with United and talk about some new routes
they've introduced. I don't think any of which will be operated by the 767-300ER.
[0:07:53] JR: No, probably not. They probably have a bit of a problem if they tried that. Pacific
demand, or Transpacific from North America to Asia has been really lagging pretty much
everything else in the world since COVID. China specifically, really has not reopened for much
tourism from the US. There is not a lot of capacity at all. United finally announced a big ramp up,
not to China, but a lot of new and increased Transpacific service, which is interesting, because
American and Delta have not really touched this at all so far.
The headlining route here is a new daily route starting – These are all starting in October 28th
and 29th, San Francisco to Manila, which is quite an interesting route, that according to our
friend Seth Miller, United's been trying to launch since 2019, or something like that. This has
been a long-time aspiration for United to get the slot and they can finally withdraw their objection
to Philippine Airline flying so many routes to the US, while they can't do it. That's good.
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AVT 225 Transcript
Some other interesting routes, Los Angeles, LAX to Hong Kong is being introduced by United.
They are actually, and this is quite an odd one, resuming LAX to Tokyo Narita on top of the
already existing daily LAX to Haneda flight, which is the preferred airport for origin and
destination travel. Haneda is more for origin and destination, while Narita is really great for
connecting itineraries to other Asian destinations. Another one that I didn't see coming was an
increasing to two daily flights from San Francisco to Taipei, which is a lot of capacity on that
route now.
[0:09:39] IP: Yeah. I mean, the Manila flight makes sense, because as you mentioned, they've
been trying to launch that for some time and it was a hole in the Pacific network. The interesting
thing is the doubling of the Taipei frequency. That one, yeah, I also did not see coming.
[0:09:54] JR:  Yeah, and that's on top of other airlines who already operate that route. I assume
both EVA and China Airlines already operate that route. Yeah, the Manila flight is certainly
interesting. That's the headlining route that United really came out swinging with. They also said
that they would launch tomorrow, if possible, or relaunch Newark to Hong Kong, because there
is demand for that. Unfortunately, with the aircraft they have, they just can't do it because of the
Russian airspace closure for US airlines, which is unfortunate.
[0:10:27] IP: Yeah. The rub there is that there are still airlines operating through Russian
airspace to make that route work.
[0:10:37] JR: Namely, Cathay Pacific three or four, five times a day. Yeah, a little bit of an unfair
advantage there. But there is one more thing that I forgot to mention that Manila is not a new dot
for United. It's not a new destination, as it's currently served by the Island Hopper on a 737.
That's interesting. They'll get actual nonstop service from the mainland, but Manila is actually
destination served by United today. Just not in a way that any normal human being would want
to get to from San Francisco. You could do it. You either have to be crazy, or a geek like one of
us, but you could do it.
[0:11:13] IP: Or both.
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AVT 225 Transcript
[0:11:14] JR: Or both. You could do both.
[0:11:15] IP: I mean, I don't want to say that crazy and a geek like us is mutually exclusive. I
don’t want to say that.
[0:11:18] JR: I would love to do the Island Hopper one day. I don't know if that will ever happen,
but yeah, interesting and it's not actually a new destination for United, but a new nonstop option.
[0:11:29] IP: Well, how about that? Well, Jason, would you say any of those routes are to the
North Pacific? Maybe the Narita one?
[0:11:38] JR: Maybe. It's way the hell North of Tokyo, that's for sure.
[0:11:41] IP: All right. Well, we'll take it and we'll run with it. Because Northern Pacific began
their service last week. The inaugural went about as well as inaugurals can go. There were
some minor delays, but inaugural flights are often delayed, because it's the first time out, there's
a lot of excited passengers boarding the aircraft as [inaudible 0:12:02].
[0:12:02] JR: It’s a party. It's allowed to be fashionably late.
[0:12:06] IP: Exactly. The return on the other hand, there was nothing fashionable about that
delay.
[0:12:12] JR: No. Not to bury the lead here, but 26 hours of delay. Well, technically not a delay
at all, because –
[0:12:18] IP: No. It canceled.
[0:12:19] JR: The aircraft went home without any passengers on board. Not great.
[0:12:24] IP: No. They're going to try again this week, I guess. The Northern Pacific aircraft, the
757 that they used had a technical issue from what we understand from someone who is
onboard, or who is supposed to be on board, the return flight from Las Vegas to Ontario,
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AVT 225 Transcript
California. There was a light bulb that was, I don't want to say critical to flight, but you can't fly
without it. They needed to find a replacement and the replacement they found didn't work, and
then they needed to get another replacement, so they had to get the part from Ontario,
California, so they had to drive it over to Las Vegas. Then by then, it was Sunday night and who
knows what happened after that?
But they ended up, basically, buying everyone on the flight, a new way to get to wherever they
needed to get to. To their credit, they got people where they needed to go, rather than just back
to Ontario, California. Because some people had connecting flights, or not connecting flights,
but some people had follow-on flights that they were supposed to be taking from Ontario, or
from other LA airports to different destinations. Northern Pacific basically got people where they
needed to go on their dime. Kudos to them for that, but just a real not great start to things.
[0:13:44] JR: No. [Inaudible 0:13:44] trial by fire, a little quicker than anyone would have
preferred, or liked, I'm sure a lot of lessons were learned. A lot of improvements to be made,
both, I guess, maintenance practices-wise and just generally, what do you do with your aircraft
while it's sitting on the ground in overly ridiculously hot Las Vegas for three days between
flights, make sure they just properly buttoned up and the battery won't die overnight, or
whatever happened. I don't think they ever actually clarified, but at least they got people where
they needed to go. But maybe, that's only because it was technically still the inaugural round
trip. Will that happen three months from now if they cancel? I don't know. I hope Northern
Pacific has a better go of it this coming week, though, that's for sure.
[0:14:31] IP: Yeah. Good luck to them. Also, good luck to them as they – they're still
progressing toward the stated goal of operating flights from the U.S. West Coast to destinations
in Asia via Anchorage. They really do want to do the Icelandair of the West model. It won't
happen for a while, but that's still their stated goal. Good luck to them reaching that as well.
[0:15:00] JR: They just got to get that ETOPS certification.
[0:15:02] IP: One day. One day. Good news, if you're flying United in the near future, because
one of the, I guess, things to worry about going wrong with your trip is seemingly off the table,
because United pilots have an agreement in principle with the airline for a new pilot contract.
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AVT 225 Transcript
Good for them. Seemingly, very good for the pilots. Pilots will receive between 34.5% and
40.2% increase in pay rates over the life of the four-year agreement, as well as citing bonus pay
back to January of 2020. The union says that the contract is worth 10 billion dollars over the
lifetime of the contract.
[0:15:56] JR: That's a lot of billion.
[0:15:58] IP: That's a contract covering the Airline Pilots Association pilots at United, 16,000
United pilots. Every time we talk about contracts, whether it's with pilots, and we'll talk about of
some flight attendant contracts in a moment, it still boggles my mind. Having been doing this for
a while now, it still boggles my mind how many people work for airlines.
[0:16:19] JR: It's a lot. Yet somehow, never enough.
[0:16:23] IP: Right? Yeah. I mean, 16,000 pilots at United covered by this contract. It's
incredible to me. That's just United pilots. That's not all of the subsidiary pilots that also fly
aircraft that have United paint on them.
[0:16:39] JR: It’s a lot of people. A lot of people. 16,000 pilots. That's not even flight attendants,
ground staff, gate agents, people to check in. It's just a remarkably complex and very crowded
industry. Again, never enough.
[0:16:56] IP: Never enough. These contracts are always extremely comprehensive. They cover
almost everything that you and I could think of, and then so much more that we don't even know
to think about. One of the things that struck me is the pay rates, the proposed pay rates for
captains and first officers by aircraft type were published. One of the things that I found slightly
amusing is the comprehensive nature of the pay rates in that aircraft that United doesn't fly.
99.999% sure will never fly are included on the pay scale. Just in the .001% chance that United
somewhere down the line says, “You know what? We're going to pick up a bunch of
secondhand A380s from Emirates and operate them.”
[0:17:52] JR: Well, I am there for that. That would be nice.
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[0:17:55] IP: If they do that, a first year A380 captain would make $544 and 21 cents per flight
hour.
[0:18:05] JR: Hey, that sounds good.
[0:18:08] IP: Per duty hour, I think, is how the breakdown works. A 12-year captain, so say they
operate the second hand A380s for 12 years.
[0:18:17] JR: We're getting real up there in the land of hypotheticals.
[0:18:22] IP: A 12-year captain on the A380 at United would make $593 and 10 cents per –
[0:18:28] JR: Very nice. In some sort of parallel universe, maybe this would happen. That would
be fun.
[0:18:34] IP: In more realistic terms, first year captain on the 777 and 787 will make $386 and
95 cents per hour. A first year, first officer would make $109 and 42 cents per hour. First year,
first officers across the board making a $109 and 42 cents per hour. Then it jumps way up from
there. A second year first officer goes from $109 and 42 cents per hour, the 777, to $208 an
hour and 72 cents the second year. Interesting stuff. Some real big jumps in the second year,
depending on what aircraft you're operating. I just thought it was very interesting that everything,
nearly everything gets thrown at the pilot pay scale, just to make sure all the bases are in fact
covered.
[0:19:26] JR: I wonder if they actually have people putting these contracts together, going
through like, “What should we pay hypothetically our captains, our 10-year long captains
operating in A380? About $585 a duty hour.” Are they actually going through that list and coming
up with these amounts? Or is this just some algorithmic, the bigger the plane, the higher the pay
thing I wonder?
[0:19:50] IP: I'm sure it's based on some baseline calculation. Then they just throw out a
number. I'm sure that that wasn't one of the more contentious points of negotiation, as far as
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things were concerned, what they were going to pay hypothetical A380 captains. Interesting to
see, nonetheless.
[0:20:11] JR: Fun exercise though.
[0:20:12] IP: Yeah. American Airlines pilots on the other hand, having already reached an
agreement in principle with that airline in May are looking at the United Deal and going, “Hey,
wait a minute.”
[0:20:27] JR: I want a do over.
[0:20:31] IP: That'll be interesting. Because the agreement in principle is reached, but the rank-
and-file union members have not yet voted to ratify that contract.
[0:20:41] JR: Interesting. They've agreed on it, but they haven't voted to ratify. Could they
theoretically say, “You know what? No. We could do better. Look at United,” and then start this
whole thing over again?
[0:20:53] IP: Yeah. I mean, basically. Yeah. They could vote not to ratify the contract. Then I
don't know if it's back to square one. I don't know if the vote not to ratify would take them all the
way back to starting over. Or if they could say, “Okay. Look at what United's got. We want to
negotiate from there.” That will be interesting to see. Delta has their contract. Hawaiian has a
contract. JetBlue has a contract, and Spirit has a contract. Those are all Allied Pilots Association
represented pilots. The American pilots are represented by the Allied Pilots Association. A
different union. I don't know that has any bearing on how these things work out.
On the very negative side, if the rancor on social media and talking points coming from the
union are to be believed, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association is not happy and is very, very
strongly for possibly striking. They have voted in favor of a strike, and the pilots have requested
to be released from mediation, which is a step towards actually striking. We're not there yet, but
this is – it does not look good over at Southwest.
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[0:22:13] JR: No. Everything does not look good, indeed. Everyone wants their slice of the pie. I
say, go get it.
[0:22:19] IP: Then there are the American Airlines flight attendants, of which there are 26,000.
[0:22:26] JR: Geez. Makes United’s numbers with their pilots look insignificant.
[0:22:31] IP: It does, indeed. American Airlines flight attendants, they're going to vote at the end
of July through August, and the August results will allow for a strike authorization. This will also
follow being released from mediation by the National Mediation Board. We're not there yet with
American Airlines flight attendants, but things are getting much more serious when you start
voting to authorize strikes.
[0:23:00] JR: It takes a month to vote on that, but between July 28th and August 29th. It takes
more than a month to vote?
[0:23:06] IP: Well, eight are 26,000 of them.
[0:23:09] JR: Yeah, there are a lot. But we as a nation have one election day.
[0:23:13] IP: I'm pretty sure the voting has to be done in a specific way, and you have to leave
the vote open for a certain amount of time. I don't know all of the union rules, but there are a lot
of them for this type of thing.
[0:23:24] JR: Well, I hope they get everything it is they want from American.
[0:23:28] IP: Well, we'll find out later this summer who's getting what they want and who is not
and how it could impact your travel plans later this coming fall. Stay tuned for more on all of that.
Let's go very far away from America for the moment and head to Turkey, because Turkish
Airlines has created a new, wholly owned subsidiary, which is one of my favorite phrases in the
airline industry. I love a good wholly owned subsidiary.
[0:23:58] JR: It's Turkish Airlines, but not.
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[0:24:00] IP: Yes. It's a wholly owned subsidiary of Turkish Airlines for the operation of
Anadolujet, which is the low-cost version of Turkish Airlines. They have their own livery, but it's
just Turkish Airlines for the moment. There's no word on whether, or not or when they'll begin
operating with their own operating certificate. That could turn them into their own airline. Turkish
also wants to spin off Turkish cargo. They have not yet done so. It would be interesting to see
how long that takes, and whether or not they do in fact begin operating with their own operating
certificate and become their own airline. I don't know if that will wipe off the A trademark of
Turkish Airlines off the painting of the aircraft, but we'll see on that.
[0:24:52] JR: Yeah. What else could we scrounge up in Turkish aviation news?
[0:24:56] IP: Well, I think the Pegasus Airlines order for another 36 A320neos is worth talking
about, because that takes their order book up to a 150. Not a bad order book. 36 new orders
and previous orders have included 72 A321neos, and they've taken delivery of about half of
those as of the end of June, and 42 A320neos, all of which have been already delivered.
There’s still a small contingent of 737-800s hanging on at Pegasus. This airline is notable, one,
for its quick expansion and shift over to Airbus. And two, for the fact that their livery always
makes me think the website is flypigs.com.
[0:25:47] JR: Is it not?
[0:25:49] IP: The billboard titles on the front fuselage of the aircraft says FLYPGS.com. Every
time I look, I know what it says. I know the website. I've gone to the website. Every time I look at
a picture of one of these Pegasus planes, I swear it says flypigs.com.
[0:26:07] JR: Flypigs.com.
[0:26:09] IP: Which I think would be a great name for an airline.
[0:26:13] JR: Up there as nice of an airline name as Bees Airline, you know? I like these airlines
named after animals. How is Bees Airline these days anyway? Are they still a thing?
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[0:26:25] IP: They were hanging on for a while. Bees Airlines for those that are unfamiliar, was
a Ukrainian startup airline.
[0:26:33] JR: Oh, was an airline. Oh, man. Yeah.
[0:26:38] IP: Not great.
[0:26:38] JR: No, the last line of its Wikipedia entry, is the airline's AOC was revoked later in
summer of 2022, due to the airline not having any aircraft. Not great.
[0:26:49] IP: I mean, the lessors were like, “Well, if you're not going to run the airline, we'll take
our aircraft back,” which, I mean, makes sense. Hopefully, they can restart eventually after the
war. Let's see. That was Turkish. We ended up with Bees Airlines. Now after we're done
recording, I'm probably going to go down a rabbit hole of aircraft, or airlines named after
animals.
[0:27:10] JR: Sounds like a blog post.
[0:27:12] IP: I was going to say, maybe look for that on the flightradar24 blog later the week. I
don't know. Then Jason, you had this flagged. Somebody got scammed, or almost got scammed
when they tried to call Delta Air Lines.
[0:27:26] JR: Yeah. This is not exactly a new phenomenon. People getting scammed on the
internet. I mean, who's heard of that before, right? This tweet from, I think, Schmullie Evers on
Twitter hit a particular inflection point. 2.3 million views, apparently. His flight out of JFK was
canceled, as were the flights of so many other passengers this summer. Things are not great.
The line for customer service, which you really don't need to join, given the robust app and other
self-service channels these days, you probably don't need to do that. The line was really long.
He Googled a Delta JFK phone number, which is sending up all sorts of red flags, because you
can't call an airline at an airport. That's not how it works.
Unless, you will get up on Google flights, then somehow a phone number, or a listing for Delta
JFK came up on Google flights with the phone number. He gave them his confirmation number
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and gave all sorts of flight information. They called. The flight line broke up. They call it back. It
all sounded like, things were going to be fine. They'd get him a new flight and he'd get where he
was going. Things got a little weird when seemingly hours later, they determined that they
wanted him to pay five times the price of the original ticket, which doesn't make any sense. If
you know anything about travel, when there's a cancellation, you don't pay anything additional
to get on a different flight to get you to your destination. The airline will do what's necessary to
get you from A to B.
What turns out is that there's quite a little scam going on on Google Maps, and not surprising
that scammers have inserted fake listings for airlines. In this case, it was Delta. The biggest red
flag that should have come up was that it spelled Delta Air Lines, not Delta Airlines. Air Lines is
two words when it comes to Delta. Big red flag. You and I would have known that.
[0:29:20] IP: Yeah.
[0:29:21] JR: Apparently, this guy did not. It's a big problem on Google. There's listings for
American, Southwest, LaGuardia, Air France, Qatar, ITA, Turkish. Never call any of these
numbers that you find on Google Maps. Because best case scenario, you're wasting your time.
Worst-case scenario, they either cancel your flight out of spite, or they charge you an order of
magnitude more to do a simple self-service change on your behalf. If you're in this situation, go
to the airlines’ website, use the airlines app, only look at information you can find through an
official channel.
It sucks that airlines really go out of their way to make it difficult to find the actual phone number
to call them, because they don't want you to call them. Because if everyone calls, it's going to
be really difficult to answer all those calls. Moral of the story, don't look up an airline's phone
number on Google Maps, because nothing good will come with that.
[0:30:17] IP: Was the scam that they were trying to steal the guy's credit card? In an effort to do
that, they were going to buy him a new ticket on whatever – Did they just go to the Delta
website?
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[0:30:28] JR: I don't think the scam to get your credit card information, though, they're probably
going to get that information as well. The scam here is that it appears to you as if they are the
airline, as if you have called Delta Air Lines. They're not telling you that you have called
someone else, but all they need is your last name and your reservation number. They can just
go on delta.com, or southwest.com, plug in that information and rebook you on another flight. If
you have to pay something for some reason, they'll take your credit card information, probably
put it in. If you're simply rebooking someone, you can do that on the website and they can just
make up whatever cost and then just charge you on Stripe, or PayPal, or whatever.
At the end of that, you get to your destination, because they reissue the ticket through the airline
website and you're never the wiser. Because if you're calling that line, you probably don't know
any better. Maybe you just think, “Oh, it's totally ordinary that I'd have to pay $500, because the
airline canceled.” But no. Never, ever, ever do that. Unless, you're calling a travel agent, but you
probably already know who they are.
[0:31:34] IP: Right. Then you know who your travel agent is already. Wow. That's terrible.
[0:31:40] JR: Yeah. Let's be honest, if you call a number for what you think is an airline, and
somebody picks up right away, it's almost certainly not the airline. If you don't go through at
least five minutes of annoying voice authentication and IVRs and entering pin numbers that you
don't know and reservation numbers you don't have on you, you're probably not calling the right
line. They don't make it easy to get to a person. If somebody picks up right away, it's a red flag,
unless you're a platinum elite, or whatever and you have a dedicated client.
[0:32:13] IP: Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, so last things, last, is that Oshkosh, or EAA
AirVenture, as it's actually called, but I'm not sure how many people actually call it that, besides
the folks running it, just regular Oshkosh, is coming up. It starts this weekend and runs through
the following weekend. This is, of course, the massive, massive gathering of more than 10,000
aircraft and 500,000 people over the course of a week. The tower at Oshkosh becomes the
busiest air traffic control tower in the world for about 10 days. Well, I'll be there on Saturday, the
29th of July.
© 2023 AvTalk 15
AVT 225 Transcript
If you are headed there, or if you weren't headed there, and now you're like, “Well, if Ian's going,
I should go, too,” let me know. Email us at podcast@fr24.com and let us know when you're
going to be there. Unfortunately, we'll only be there this year on the 29th of July. But hopefully,
next year we'll have an expanded presence, or at least a few days to see more stuff. Because
there's no way to see – If you spend the entire week there, you still don't see everything there is
to see. It sounds like, there's going to be some really cool stuff this year, looking at tweets from
the Experimental Aircraft Association. Some of the big aircraft are going to be there, C17,
Boeing Dreamlifter. That'll be interesting to see.
[0:33:38] JR: Yeah. I hear that if you harass Ian long enough, he'll give you some swag.
[0:33:43] IP: Long enough is like, eight seconds.
[0:33:45] JR: There you go.
[0:33:45] IP: Exactly. Yeah, so looking forward to seeing anyone and everyone who is there
next Saturday. If you are going to Oshkosh and you're not going to be there next Saturday, drop
us a note, too, and let us know what you're looking forward to seeing. If you've already gone
and come back, let us know what you enjoyed the most, so that we can chat about it on next
week's show before we head up there, so we know what to expect and exactly what we want to
see. Until then, this has been episode 225 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:34:21] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2023 AvTalk 16