AvTalk Episode 370: The man collecting Spirit’s pieces

AVT 370 Transcript
EPISODE 370
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 370 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. How are you, Ian?
[0:00:18] IP: I'm doing well, Jason. How are you, sir?
[0:00:21] JR: I'm good. Too bad we're 10 episodes too far into this series, because at the end, it
would have been good to tie this in as episode 360. But we got away all the way to the end of
the podcast to get to that one.
[0:00:34] IP: We'll get there. We'll get there eventually. We have a very good show this week,
as longtime friend of the show, Steve Giordano is joining us from Nomadic Aviation Group. He’ll
be here to talk about –
[0:00:47] JR: How did we get a hold of him?
[0:00:49] IP: Very, very carefully. He's going to join us to talk about what happens when an
airline goes out of business and you need to move all of their aircraft into storage –
[0:00:59] JR: And it’s in your own backyard.
[0:01:01] IP: Yeah. At least one of them. Steve and his crew at Nomadic have moved nearly two
dozen aircraft over the past week and a half and there are more to come. He's going to explain
how that all works and some of the work that they've had to do, and some of the challenges that
they've had to deal with as they do that work a little later in the show. First, we turn our attention
to Denver, where over the weekend, a Frontier Airlines, A321neo struck a person on the runway.
We've since learned that that person scaled a perimeter fence at the airport and intentionally
walked on to the runway. The Denver medical examiner has ruled that person's death a suicide.
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AVT 370 Transcript
Thankfully, no one on the aircraft was seriously injured. Though, it did cause an engine fire. The
pilots rejected the takeoff, were able to stop the aircraft on the runway. Because of that engine
fire and damage to the aircraft, smoke filled the cabin so they elected to evacuate the aircraft on
the runway. During the evacuation, 12 people were injured, five were sent to the hospital, nearly
all of them as best we know have been released.
This raises all sorts of questions about how that person got there and what's going on in
Denver. The airport chief led a press conference earlier this week, saying that ground detectors
were set off by the fence that that person scaled. A nearby herd of deer were initially thought to
be responsible. Because of the terrain in that area near the fence, the person was not
necessarily visible entirely. Then, because the deer were there, the automated cameras kept
jumping between that person and the deer. Then, the person was sighted, but that area of the
airport runway 17 left is so remote that it would have been impossible to get people out there
quickly enough to deal with this before that person made their way on to the runway.
[0:03:19] JR: Yeah. If you're not familiar with Denver airport, it is the size of a city, basically. It is
33,531 acres, according to Wikipedia, which is 52.4 square kilometers, or 135.7 square
kilometers, which is just absolutely massive.
[0:03:38] IP: It is the largest airport by area in the United States.
[0:03:42] JR: In North America.
[0:03:44] IP: In North America and the second largest airport by area in the world, second only
to Dammam in Saudi Arabia.
[0:03:50] JR: There are entire ecosystems and nature, I guess, you could say, ecosystems, too,
inside that airport. It is a massive area to not just keep control of everything inside, but keep
unwanted things out. As high tech as your intrusion detection systems are going to be, it's never
going to stop everything and it's never going to detect everything over that amount of space.
There's so many questions about how did this person get there, how did they end up on a
runway. Well, they just probably hopped over a fence and walked there.
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[0:04:24] IP: Indeed, they did. That's exactly what happened. Because of the distances
involved, it was impossible for the airport to get folks out there. The remaining question though
is how that person got to where they climbed over the fence in the first place. No vehicle has
been found. No additional clues that would yield how they made it to that. They may have been
walking for a very long time.
[0:04:50] JR: Yeah. Denver’s airport is way outside of the city, too. It is, I don't want to call it in a
remote area, but it's not exactly in downtown, of course, because of the size.
[0:04:59] IP: The surrounding area is very rural. It's the opposite of in the city.
[0:05:05] JR: Yeah. It's not something you really think of much that someone is going to
intentionally hop the fence and go walk around on the runway. Things happen. It's happened
here in New York, where it's not so much a fence, but a lot of the perimeter of JFK is water to
make a bay. Years ago, there was a case of, I think it was two people on jet skis that broke
down. The nearest land happened to be the airport, and they were just wandering around out on
a taxiway next to a runway, because that's just where they ended up. These things do happen.
It's not impossible, not unheard of before. But what is, I think, close to unheard of is that for that
person to not only wander onto a runway, but then get struck by an aircraft, which in this case,
seems more intentional than not, which is real unfortunate. But it's not that unheard of for
someone to just accidentally end up on an airport.
[0:05:58] IP: Yeah. Certainly, not accidental in this case and the investigation is ongoing. The
other thing that was flagged to us by multiple people, both folks writing in via email and on social
media was the story of a mother who was scolded by a Frontier phone rep for not taking her
personal belongings with her during the evacuation.
[0:06:26] JR: Say that again. Surely, you have that backwards.
[0:06:29] IP: I have not misspoken. That is in fact what the Frontier phone rep reportedly
scolded her for. Now, this was a case of a mother who has a lap child, was flying with a lap
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infant who requires formula. The woman had packed formula in her carry-on bag. But in the
evacuation, left said carry-on bag in the cabin, like you are supposed to do.
[0:07:01] JR: Yes. That is good. Following instructions is good.
[0:07:06] IP: Because the aircraft became an accident scene for the investigation for the NTSB,
the FAA is investigating, local police obviously, all of these agents, they have restricted. They
haven't been able to get things back from the aircraft yet. The woman called Frontier and said,
“Hi. I was on the plane that hit a person in Denver. Here's the situation. I still need to get home,
and what do we do about the lack of all these things?” Thankfully, they're staying with family and
they can borrow a lot of stuff and they can go buy formula and things like that. But also, you
need your stuff back. The Frontier phone rep's response as reported by this woman was to
scold her for not taking those things with her in the first place during the evacuation, which you
are not supposed to do.
[0:07:55] JR: Clearly, some retraining needed of that representative. I'm honestly surprised they
were able to get a hold of anyone for customer service at Frontier. Not nearly known for its
stellar customer service, so maybe this person just didn't know what was going on, didn't know
the situation, certainly was not well informed. But yeah, not great. Also, I was reading that either
this passenger, or others were just not particularly well taken care of after the incident. They
weren't able to get diapers, or basically, I think this is coming off a Reddit post that I was reading
that they weren't able to get things they needed for their baby after they evacuated the aircraft
and they were not being taken care of by Frontier. One thing I did find interesting, and
responses to this post on Bluesky, Jonathan Koo, or Jonk, who we've actually had on the
podcast a long time ago is a volunteer at PDX in Portland and actually let us know, “Hey, we're
prepared for these things, at least at PDX. We have several emergency supply closets for one-
off needs.”
So, think exactly cases like this, where there's an aircraft emergency, people evacuate without
the things that need, so the volunteers there have access to water, snacks, diapers, clothing,
anything you might need. Apparently, even dog food, which is that's really thinking ahead.
[0:09:11] IP: Sure. Why not?
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[0:09:11] JR: Snacks, jackets. Things you might need if you have evacuated 250 people off an
aircraft who are not supposed to have basically anything on them. If there are pharmacy items,
medics can potentially provide that. But in this case, it doesn't seem like passengers were well
taken care of, either by the airport, or Frontier itself. Not shocking with Frontier. A little
disappointed if this is the case with Denver, but learning experience and room for improvement
all around it seems.
[0:09:42] IP: Yeah, yeah. We'll see what the investigation tells us more about how this
happened, and some of the learnings that come of it based not only on the person making it out
into the airfield, but also what happens afterwards and how those folks are taken care of. Fedex
has returned the MD11 to service. Without much fanfare, it began revenue service with a pair of
MD11s over the weekend. N521FE and N621FE are back in service. Those aircraft have been
inspected. Pylon repairs have taken place and they're ready to go. The FAA didn't say anything
about this, until reporters specifically said, “Hey, FAA. Did you approve Fedex flying these
again?” They said, “Yeah, we did.”
[0:10:40] JR: Oh, okay. Thanks for the stellar communication. Not sure that N521FE is the
correct reg. 621FE is, unless Fedex is apparently operating a Patriot Airways 727-100, which in
that case –
[0:10:55] IP: 512.
[0:10:58] JR: Okay. Well, I mean if they do want to operate 727 again, that's an even better
story in mind.
[0:11:03] IP: I mean –
[0:11:05] JR: Can we do that instead?
[0:11:08] IP: I mean, we can do anything we put our minds to, Jason.
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[0:11:10] JR: That's true. Okay. Well, that that's an alternate timeline thing. But yeah, this was
really weird, where it was a very high-profile crash and then you have the type just returning to
service, without mom’s the word, apparently. It just happened. Still surprised it's happening right
now, given the skyrocketing cost of fuel, and it not exactly being peak demand season, but
Fedex is going to do what it needs to do and apparently, this is what it needs to do.
[0:11:36] IP: Yeah. This is the first pair of aircraft to return to service after the mandated
grounding required inspections and if necessary repairs to the aircraft, or replacements of the
pylons following the November 4th, 2025 crash of a UPS MD11 in Louisville. Flight 2976 was
departing for Hawaii and crashed shortly after takeoff, when the number one, so the left wing
engine separated from the aircraft. The NTSB is continuing its investigation and to that end, has
scheduled two days of investigative hearings, May 19th and 20th at NTSB headquarters. You can
attend those in person if you're in Washington DC, or there will be a live stream. The docket will
be available prior to, or at the beginning of the start of the hearing. The docket includes all of the
factual reports, so that includes flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder, ground photos, other
investigative materials. That will be opened at the start of the hearing and that docket number is
DCA26MA024. We'll put a link in the show notes to that and the live stream as well, if you're
interested in watching that and we'll have coverage of that in our next episode.
That is coming up next week. But coming up just after the break, we have Steve Giordano from
Nomadic Aviation Group to walk us through what happens when you need to move a whole
mess of planes and don't really have a plan for that. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
[CONVERSATION WITH STEVE]
[0:13:26] IP: Welcome back. We've been talking over the past few weeks about the demise of
Spirit Airlines, and no one, or no company has been more instrumental in what became a
massive operation to get former Spirit aircraft into storage and where they need to be than
Steve Giordano and his team at Nomadic. Steve has been kind enough to take a few moments
out of his insanely busy schedule this week to come chat with us about what a project that has
been. Welcome back to the show, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us.
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[0:14:03] SG: Thanks, Ian. I always have time for FlightRadar24. Ian and Jason, you guys are
the best. Regardless of what I'm doing, I'll always drop all for you guys.
[0:14:13] JR: Thanks, Steve. Great to have you back.
[0:14:15] IP: I’m glad we had that on recording. You use it against me later.
[0:14:21] JR: Yeah. It's been a minute. You've been, I'm sure, to every continent on earth since
then. Maybe Antarctica. Who knows? Do you repossess aircraft from, or move aircraft to
Antarctica? Is there a place you haven’t been?
[0:14:33] SG: We haven't yet. But if we do, that's definitely one we should talk about. I'm down.
I mean, I'm willing.
[0:14:40] JR: You've been busy.
[0:14:43] SG: Yeah.
[0:14:45] IP: You started gearing up. The writing was on the wall for Spirit. They ceased all
operations overnight. Three UTC. Overnight here in the US, all of the planes get parked. Then,
do you get a phone call? Is there a Steve signal that shines into the air near Philadelphia? How
does that work when they call you up and say, “Hey, we need you to move as many Spirit
aircraft to the desert as you possibly can in as short a time as possible”?
[0:15:13] SG: Yeah. It's like an air raid siren, and my neighborhood starts going off. I slide down
a pole into my office. No, it's wild. This thing did happen fast, but it also didn't happen fast in
some ways, because like you said, the writing's been on the wall for some time now. The way it
works is that our clients are the aircraft leasing companies. Not Spirit Airlines, not any banks, or
creditors. It's the leasing companies that own the aircraft that have the aircraft leased to the
various airlines for five, 10, 15-year terms.
These leasing companies have obviously been watching the situation very carefully. Spirit, I
wouldn't say that it's unique in this respect, but it has aircraft leased from a variety of different
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leasing companies. All of the big ones, essentially. I think there's somewhere around 12 to 15
different lessors that had metal on the property at Spirit and that includes –
[0:16:12] JR: That’s way more than I would have thought for an airline the size of Spirit, who is
now a much smaller airline than it was in years past. Over a dozen leasing companies. No
wonder you've been so busy. Just the logistical nightmare of managing not just where are these
planes and how do we move them, but also, oh, we have to report to 12 to 15 different
companies on these aircraft. That’s insane.
[0:16:34] SG: I wish. I wish that every one of them was our client. Our goal is to make every
one of them our client. But in Spirit, we represented five different lessors of the group. Let me
also clarify –
[0:16:45] JR: Still, that’s five times the work.
[0:16:46] SG: It is. It is. Not every leasing company owned every airplane in its entirety. Some
owned engines. Some owned aircraft and engines. To make matters even more complicated,
some of the aircraft were owned by one lessor, where the left engine was owned by another and
the right engine was owned by a bank. You're looking at these assets, divide the value in by
three and then each third is owned by a different company with some legal claim on the asset
as a whole. Very, very complicated situation. I don't know that it was always so many lessors on
the property. I know the LCCs, the ULCCs generally tend to diversify a little bit more. Maybe
they're more of a credit risk and the biggest of the big won't necessarily say, “Oh, I'll give you 30
airplanes.” They want to they want to spread it around.
I don't know if that's dictated by the lessors, or by the airline itself, or what their strategy is. But
the low-cost carriers tend to have more lessors in my experience that own metal there. The first
call that we got came in around, I think, January or February. As you know, Spirit’s been in the
news a lot over the last six months. They've had problems. Obviously, the thing that put
everything over the edge was the cost of fuel, but their business model has led to their business
suffering for quite a while, for a variety of reasons that I'm sure you've gone into ad nauseam
and I have as well.
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The first call we started getting was from one of our clients that had 10 aircraft on the property
remaining. I think at one time, they had more 20 or 30. But it has been a slow burn, because I
don't know the numbers. You guys would know better than me. I know at one time, Spirit had, I
think, close to 200 aircraft. Then with the GTF problems, they parked quite a few. Then, over the
course of time, they were parking more and more, cutting capacity, cutting costs, terminating
leases early, getting out of the debt cycle that was bankrupting them. They were cutting costs for
a while, slimming down the fleet. I don't know, I think, right at the day the doors closed, did they
have somewhere around 80 on the property?
[0:18:58] JR: Give or take. I mean, at the same time, to complicate matters, they were also
already exiting aircraft. Specifically, the neo fleet, they were already shipping aircraft out for
long-term storage and exiting the fleet as the rest of the entire operation was crumbling. That's
what we'll talk about, too. They were actively contracting and about probably less than half the
size they were this time last year.
[0:19:20] SG: Yeah. They've shrunken down a lot. This client had their eyes on 10 321neos.
These are very new airplanes. Obviously, the highest asset value of any of spirits fleet are going
to be the brand new or newer A321neo aircraft, especially ones with good engines, because of
all the GTF problems in the aircraft that have been parked for a while. The thing that's been
challenging is they renegotiated a lot of the leases. By the way, another reason, I think, that a lot
of these lessors were added in the last few months, because something that Spirit’s done, which
is what a lot of airlines do is sell lease back programs.
[0:19:59] JR: They own the lease back. Yup.
[0:20:01] SG: Yup. They own assets, or they owned older assets and then they just put out an
RFP and try to sell those assets, but still keep them through lease contracts after the fact. That's
a way to just inject some cash into a company and turn a liability into a fixed cost and a lease on
the books. A lot of that happened, I don't know how many they owned in the very end. The thing
that we identified early on with this first customer is that the landscape, the actual logistics to
pick up the airplanes, it changes every day. These airplanes, especially the newer ones fly 20
hours a day, maybe 22 hours a day. The goal with any airline is utilization. You have an airplane,
you're paying a fixed cost, depending on the terms of your lease agreement for that airplane
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every month. You got to put butts in the seats and engines turning and the airplane in the air for
every possible hour that you own the lease on that aircraft.
Every single day, these airplanes were parked in different cities. Spirit’s route network wasn't
just domestic US. They had Lima Peru and they have Colombia and Costa Rica and the
Caribbean. Every single day for the last six months, whenever there's been writing on the wall
that things could quickly crumble, the lessor had some inside contact where they were able to
get the locations of the airplanes for that night and then maybe the next night and then maybe
the next night. They had a two or three-day look forward and said, if everything goes bust, this is
where we're going to need to get the airplanes from.
It wasn't really possible for us to accurately plan, or quote them in advance, just like the idea
that we were going to have to scramble, but the locations would be known and then we would
have a day, or two to figure it out. That had been happening, I think it happened two times over
four or five months. Then the can got kicked down the road and then we were told to stand
down, and then I just changed the status in our system to waiting. Then the airplanes go back to
the back burner.
But on Friday, May 1st, the first call came in from them at 10.00 in the morning and they said,
“This time it looks pretty real. We're getting word that they may shut down actually tonight. So,
we need you guys to start coming up with a plan. Here's the city list. Give me a call back in an
hour once you have stuff squared away.”
[0:22:33] JR: Oh, okay. No rush.
[0:22:34] SG: Yeah. No rush. I was driving to Pittsburgh, because my son was graduating from
college that weekend. Bob was home, so he really bore the brunt of the first 24 hours, where I
was more out of the loop and just available on a emotional support basis.
[0:22:54] JR: In this situation, where do you even begin? Because like you said, Spirit was still
a fairly sizable airline, and it's not like they decided, “Okay, at 10 p.m. tonight, we're going to
bring all of our aircraft back to our hubs in Atlantic City, or Detroit.” No. Those airplanes stopped
wherever they happen to be last, wherever that last flight got canceled. How do you triage the
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situation? How do you determine, okay, we're going to send someone to Detroit and Newark
and Philly and we're going to bring those planes first. Because certainly, you only have so many
people to operate so many flights. What do you do first?
[0:23:26] SG: Really, the first thing was to make sure that we had the ability to move airplanes
very, very quickly. Because what we knew was going to start becoming the most pressing issue
was when an airline ceases operations, their airline operating certificate doesn't just cease
instantly. It remains in place. Spirit has what's called a 119 team. It's their management team,
their management pilots post-holders per se in the eyes of the FAA. That would be the director
of flight operations, the director of safety, chief pilot, assistant chief pilot, they're the core
management pilots that report directly to the POI at the FAA.
The AOC doesn't dissolve overnight. There's a fuse that's lit when they cease operations.
Maybe three days, five days, seven days, a week, a month, we don't know how long it's going to
be until that AOC is fully recalled. That means that while the aircraft are still deemed airworthy
per the Spirit Airlines maintenance program and while the lessor has terminated the leases and
retained legal custody of the aircraft back, there exists a short window where the aircraft can be
operated without a special ferry permit, because they're airworthy. They were flying passengers
just mere hours before. That's the normal way that we operate and we grab airplanes in these
type of circumstances. That was the plan all along. No DAR needed. No on-site maintenance.
We got a Spirit maintenance program. We got a jet. All we needed to do was have pilots on site
and ready to go.
[0:25:01] JR: While business stops, Spirit Airlines was still Spirit Airlines. It still had the
capability to move its own aircraft around under its own entity. While it may not be flying
passengers, it's still, what you're saying is basically, they're still Spirit. It's still alive.
[0:25:15] SG: In theory, the AOC is still alive. But there were also very serious things that were
not alive. For one, being their dispatch center shut down immediately. They had no way to
dispatch aircraft. All the crews immediately lost access to their Jeppesen nav pubs, and then
there wasn't gate personnel station personnel. I mean, nobody was getting paid. Pilots didn't
know whether they were going to be getting another page. I mean, it was sheer chaos. There
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was all that in the mix as well. I mean, it just happened so quickly that caught everybody with
their pants down. Nobody really knew what to do. We thought we knew what to do.
Bob and I had agreed early on that if this airline, if Spirit ceased operations, rather than try to
tackle this with our own core team, it was going to be bigger than we would be even able to go.
Not to mention the fact that Bob and I in these situations are more valuable quarterbacking
things from an ops perspective. We need to have a high-level view. We need to be able to see
everything that's going on and move the sliders around to keep the operation working. We
decided early that we were going to use Spirit crews and there's a few reasons for this. Number
one, they're available. They live near the cities in a lot of cases. They are current and qualified.
Here's a big one, and of course, they need the money, of course, right? It's also doing the right
thing. But a big one is flying ferry flights without the support of an airline is something that is
very different that a normal line pilot doesn't necessarily contend with on a daily basis. Ferry
pilots are used to doing things the way we do things, without support. Our call outs are more
manufacturer training call outs. We don't use airline SOPs, because everybody that we employ,
they come from different airlines. They're speaking English, but they're speaking a different
language in the cockpit.
If we're able to immediately just grab pilots that have all been trained to the same standard, we
have instant standardization throughout the operation, which is safety, which answers questions
which allows them to go out there and troubleshoot and problem solve in their own language,
using their own SOPs, their own checklists. There's no questions. There's not two pilots
speaking different languages in the cockpit.
[0:27:35] JR: Everybody wins. It's not exactly normal Tuesday for them, but at least it's normal-
ish?
[0:27:41] SG: It's normal-ish. It's normal-ish. I know Spirit pilots. Bob knows Spirit pilots. One of
my closest friends from the earliest days of my flying, my CFI has been at spirit for 14 years in
the training department. That's the other thing. Not everybody's cut out for this. Even if they are,
not everybody's just the right personality fit. The last thing we wanted to do is, “Oh, I don't feel
comfortable with this, and I don't understand how you can do this.” We needed to have people
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that we could rely on, that would trust us as much as we trust them. The key was rather than
just soliciting the public at large, was to lean into the pilots that we knew on property that
understand the mission and that have an idea in their head of who they would call on if they
were us.
We immediately started a group chat on WhatsApp called Spirit Pilots and we put our core five
or six Spirit pilots that we knew into that group chat and they started – we gave them admin
privileges and they started adding other names. I think it took about two hours, and we went
from five to 40 pilots in the channel. There were Spirit pilots that were stranded in Nashville and
Newark that they just delivered passengers. They just flown a revenue trip and they're like,
“Yeah, this is crazy. I'm in Newark. Send me wherever you want. I’m packed for the next two
days. Just let me know what you need.”
[0:29:06] IP: Sure. I'll take it. I got nowhere else to be right now.
[0:29:10] SG: Yeah. One guy that only had shorts and uniforms. He goes, “Is it okay if I fly in
shorts?” I’m like, “Of course, man.”
[0:29:17] JR: Send them to Arizona. It's hot there.
[0:29:18] SG: That's where they're going. You're going to Arizona. Getting the pilots was – back
to your original question, getting the pilots organized and committed to different tail numbers
was priority one. A domestic flight, especially without an SFP is the easiest possible thing that
we do from an operational standpoint. That doesn't take into consideration gaining access. I
mean we could talk about the real headache. I mean, headache is –
[0:29:46] IP: I mean, that's where I’m going next. Yeah.
[0:29:47] SG: Yeah. We'll go there when you're ready. But the logistics surrounding the repo
and the nature of it, that was the biggest issue. But let me also say, we were counting on being
able to fly these aircraft on the Spirit AOC, and within the first 12 hours that plan dissolved and
we had to pivot. The plan was we had crews – This was a miracle, to be honest with you.
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Trigger was pulled at 6 p.m. on Friday. By 9 a.m., I had 20 pilots in six cities spread out, ready to
move airplanes at 9 a.m. on a Saturday.
[0:30:23] JR: Wow.
[0:30:25] SG: Okay. So, I’m bragging. I’m bragging about that. Less of it has to do with me and
a lot of it has to do with these pilots just being just solid people that had a get it done attitude.
But it was a mirror. I had never seen anything so just quickly compiled and organized. Then
there was the travel. We got people. We didn't even have hotels. These pilots were like, “Okay,
I’m in Orlando. Where do you want me?” It's like 8 a.m., and they've been up all night. We're
like, “Hang on a second. We'll get back to you on that.” Then we started dividing the WhatsApp
into different trip channels with the crews with our dispatch team, and so on and so forth.
But when the clock struck 10 and the first airplane was pushed out of a hangar in Houston, we
were getting ready to get the first airplane moved, and at that point in time, Bob and I were both
like, “I can't believe it we're going to get all 10 of these airplanes moved by Sunday.” All of the
sudden, a wrench hit the gears. Everything seized. Apparently, one of the Spirit 119
management pilots started calling the other pilots that were in this list saying, “You guys are
illegal to fly this. You can't fly this. This is an illegal operation.” They had no understanding of
what we were doing. Within an hour, I’m at a graduation and Bob is in conference calls with the
FAA, the Spirit 119 team, the lessor.
At this point, we only have one lessor we're working for 10 airplanes. Their legal team which is
all in Ireland, it was like a conference call with 25 faces on it, all on mute, with a few people
talking. Nobody understood what we were trying to do. At the end of the conversation, very long
story short, the FAA said, “Look, I mean, you make a compelling case. I don't see how this isn't
legal. But again, Spirit’s the one that has the maintenance program. It's going to be their call
whether you can do this, or not,” and they decided not. Why wouldn't they? I mean, I was
annoyed at the time, but why would they say, “Okay, we'll help you.” Why would they?
We had to pivot and we had to switch to a model where we had to get a DAR, a designated
Airworthiness Rep on site to each of these cities to start signing SFPs, inspecting the records,
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inspecting the aircraft physically and issuing an SFP, so that we can move the airplane
completely without any involvement from Spirit. At that point, Spirit was disconnected.
[0:32:50] IP: Wow. You went from, okay, we've got an easy path. This makes sense. Logistically
speaking, this is the best way things could go, to needing to have someone from the FAA on site
to sign. Now, here's an odd question. Is it an actual physical piece of paper, or is this just all
electronic these days?
[0:33:10] SG: It's electronic that results in a physical piece of paper, where the original has to
be hand signed in ink and onboard the aircraft. It has to happen. Well, there's also a physical
inspection required. The DAR, and these aren't FAA employees. These are designees. They
have their own businesses. Most of them come from an engineering background. None of them
are particularly young. These are very experienced professionals that this is all they do. There
may be a hundred or so DARs in the US. But of that hundred, about 93 of them deal with biz
jets and light aircraft. Very few. They can all have a 103 designation and be licensed to deal with
heavy aircraft, but very few understand the nuts and bolts of it, because it's the ones that are
regionally in Florida and in Arizona and in southern California that deal with all these airplanes
coming in and out of storage and they're the ones that have a high level understanding of how
to review the records and the important things and do an on-site physical inspection in six
hours, versus in 72 hours.
If we were to just randomly pull DARs that are based in Sioux City, or Syracuse, or whatever, I
mean, I’m just randomly picking out cities here. There are DARs that live in places like that, but
it's a huge learning curve. They're representing the FAA. Everything's on the line with that
signature. They're going to be a lot more thorough. They're going to have to consult with their
direct reports at the FAA to make sure everything's right before they issue signatures. That
shrunk the pool to four or five people that could that could do this in the speed that we need to
do this. The first call, and we obviously, we have very good relationships with these DARs,
because they're like colleagues. I mean, I see these guys every week, and I have for 20 years.
We know each other –
[0:35:01] IP: Because this is normally how you do things.
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[0:35:03] SG: This is how we do things. This is how ferry flights happen is – because when an
airplane is not on an AOC, and minus all these LATAM and Avianca. We move things for
airlines, they're on AOC. But that's a very, very minority of the trips that we do. The vast majority
are owned by the leasing company and they need some sort of a special airworthiness
certificate in order to move. DARs are a normal ingredient in the recipe.
[0:35:32] IP: You find these people, bring them to these aircraft, you get the sign off. Then, how
do you get access to these aircraft? Because if Spirit's not helping you, I assume that airports
are looking at you the way a dog looks at its owner after they've faked throwing the ball.
[0:35:52] JR: It's definitely not that old TV show, where you're just scoping out the planes
through the fence and hopping over when the security guard's not looking, right? I don't think it's
done like that.
[0:35:59] SG: Get chased by dogs. Yeah, all that stuff. No, that's not how it works. The battles
for repossession take place in courtrooms. There are people that are way smarter than Bob and
I, and that these are lawyers that are versed in Cape Town treaty and all the laws of
repossession and leasing. Most of them are in Ireland. That battle gets fought without any
visibility from us. We're just a CC on the email that gets copied on the documents at the end.
The logistics of gaining access was entirely on us and it wasn't something that we could plan
for, because not only is it unknown, it's unknown with every airport in the system. There's not a
standard way to do this. Every single airport was a learning curve that began as soon as we had
boots on the ground and people on the telephone. The first step is figuring out who to even call
first. The first few guys that we send out, we arm with the least termination orders and letters of
authorization, powers of attorney from the leasing company signed by the leasing company
legal team, and they just basically said, “I need to talk to an airport manager.” Eventually, they
get put in touch with the airport manager who looks at them cross-eyed and looks at their genes
and their baseball cap and their Spirit ID and a stack of hastily printed legal documents from
Irish companies, and then they say – in almost every case they say, “Let me get back to you.”
Every single airport, we had airplanes at the first, the initial 10, we’re at Orlando, Miami, Fort
Lauderdale, Charlotte, Columbus, and Houston. Six airports. We were trying to tackle them all
very quickly. What I noticed right off the bat was the smaller airports were far easier to deal with.
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Columbus, Ohio, we had resolution within the first half an hour, because it's a very small list of
people that can make decisions at a place like that. Where in Lauderdale, you have Broward
County and the airport authority and the sheriff's department and the terminal employee, the
side of badging office. There's so many different people in the mix that it takes time for the
message to filter through the system and reach the right ears. Then they have to make calls and
then the legal teams have to get together and all that stuff. Gaining access was tough. Then,
even after we've convinced the people that we were legitimate and we were there to do our
jobs, the next challenge was, where are the airplanes physically parked at each airport because
–
[0:38:47] JR: And how do you get them?
[0:38:47] SG: Yeah, and how do you get to them? Because airports are very complex. There's
not just a perimeter fence and the authority to be within it. There are different parts of airports.
Some have military ramps. They all have a SIDA, which is the secure area where passengers
come in and out, where you have to have a background check and fingerprints to have a badge
access to and a reason, and outside of that, there's metal detectors and all the other things that
you go through as a passenger. Whenever you board an airplane, you're in the SIDA as a
passenger. But you're in the passenger designated areas of the SIDA. Can't just go onto the
ramp.
In fact, airline pilots, let's say, a Spirit pilot's based in Chicago, if they're in Miami or Lauderdale,
they don't have access to anything beyond the direct vicinity of their aircraft on the SIDA.
They're not allowed to walk to any other part of the airport when they're not in the terminal. The
same goes for the handling companies and the fueling companies on site. The city of
Philadelphia has six handling companies and four fuelers. They are all are able to fuel, or
handle aircraft at different locations on the field, but not all locations on the field. We may have a
handler that has an A320 tow bar, but they can't access the cargo ramp. We may have a fueler
that we have a contract with, but they can't access the terminal area hydrants. Those are just a
few examples. But multiply that by a hundred and those are all the helmet fires that we were
dealing with in the first 48 hours, trying to figure out how to get people on the airplanes and the
support services to the airplanes. That's even before we've seen a single airplane.
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[0:40:34] IP: Steve, how much less hair do you have now?
[0:40:39] SG: I just looked at the podcast. I edited our podcast, and I noticed there was a lot of
gray hairs on my black shirt. They're falling out rapidly.
[0:40:46] IP: Oh, no.
[0:40:47] JR: Man, the logistics of all of this, between the tiny airports and the big airports, can't
help but notice there are still four Spirit aircraft at Newark. So, maybe those just live there now.
We can push them across the turnpike into Newark baby.
[0:41:01] IP: Those four are going to turn into the Evergreen 747 that was at JFK for decades.
[0:41:05] JR: That eventually left. But the way you're talking with the complexity, I can't imagine
those are going anywhere anytime soon, but this is just crazy.
[0:41:14] SG: Yeah. Think about it this way, right? Here's the case study that everyone's afraid
of. Kingfisher.
[0:41:20] JR: Oh, no.
[0:41:22] SG: Yeah. When Kingfisher –
[0:41:23] IP: I did not have Kingfisher on my bingo card.
[0:41:26] JR: No, no. Next, we're going to talk about Arik Air, I think, is involved in that
nonsense, too. That's a deep cut, Steve.
[0:41:33] SG: It's a deep cut, but it's so relevant. Because for people that don't know, Kingfisher
was a discount carrier in India. It was owned by a rich guy that owned a beer company.
Kingfisher, I think, was a beer. I don't know. I don't know the whole background. But anyway,
they went bankrupt. They shut down very quickly and the Indian courts are among the most
difficult on the planet to deal with, as far as recovering assets through the courts. Everything
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moves at a snail's pace. When Kingfisher went bankrupt, the airplanes were spread throughout
India and all these lawsuits took, at the end of the day, I don't know, two or three years to be
settled. The vast majority of the fleet, dozens if not a hundred airplanes, many of which were
brand new, rotted away, to the point where they had to be parted out on site. They couldn't even
be ferried. There was corrosion, engine cores were seized, there were people living in airplanes.
I mean, it was a disaster.
I would have to assume that somewhere close to a billion, or more dollars of assets were
destroyed, because the logistics simply didn't exist to get those airplanes to a safe location to be
put into storage. That's why everybody's always in a rush to move as fast as possible, because
the longer it takes, the longer it's going to take, and the longer it's going to take, the longer the
aircraft is going to remain unpreserved.
[0:42:56] JR: Well, at least you don't have to go all that far to get some of these aircraft out and
back. It's not like you're flying Qatar to the other end of the world to pick up these aircraft. That's
at least a small bonus for you, right?
[0:43:08] SG: It is. It is. I mean, in fact that it was a US domestic operation definitely lent to our
ability to execute the way we did. Said and done, I can't out pick an exact number, because we
had some things change. I think at one time, we had 26 airplanes on the docket. But some of
the airplanes ended up getting moved by the Spirit 119 team, but we still had crews on site and
travel and logistics, so we still have invoices for every single one of them. But I don't know, we
flew either 24, 23, 24. I don't know how many we actually flew. But it isn't over. I fully anticipate
additional calls coming in over the next couple of weeks before all the airplanes have officially
moved.
[0:43:52] JR: Well, look, we love the business for you. We love that you have been busy. I hope
to never see you be doing this again in the US. Not with any of our airlines, because no one
wants to see this happen. But if anyone's doing it, we're glad to talk to you about it and get
some insight into a part of this industry, which very few see. Well, I guess, you've popped up in
my feed on Bluesky from that Wall Street Journal article seven times in the last day, so more
people are seeing this than usual. But yeah, let's not do this again anytime soon, okay?
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[0:44:22] SG: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think that there's some things that the industry has
going for it right now. Obviously, fuel price is not being one of them. But there was a very short
supply of A320 and A321 CO and neo aircraft that are good flyers out there. A lot of these
airplanes and engines, especially engines are already, I mean, I know for a fact of a bunch, let's
say, no less than 12 aircraft that are already destined to new operators in the next few months
that are already on our schedule to start moving them. That's a really good thing. There is some
good to be honed from this. We're ready. We're hoping that this is the accelerant that we
needed.
We were expecting 2027 and late 2026 to be busy, because the lease extensions that were
signed after the GTF issues last year, they were mostly one and two-year lease extensions.
We're anticipating things being busy anyway, but I think this is going to be a catalyst to increase
that. By the way, before we go, I also want to say, I am putting out a cockpit casual/hybrid
podcast. It's going to be cool. I'm actually almost done. This has been another miracle. Don't
expect the same production value as Cockpit Casual to a tee, but it's darn close. I hope to have
this out by Friday, because my wife and I are going on vacation on Saturday.
[0:45:46] JR: That's quick.
[0:45:47] IP: We’ll put it in the show notes, and folks can head over there.
[0:45:49] JR: Is it just going to be footage from your iPhone of you going, “Oh, my God. Oh, my
God. Oh, my God,” for two hours, because I’d still watch that.
[0:45:57] SG: There's a little bit of that. No, so I got to fly one of the planes. I flew the Philly to
Marana aircraft, so I brought my full setup of cameras, but I did forget to bring camera mounts,
so it was interesting. I was in such a hurry to get out the door. I brought all the cameras. I filmed
on the ground in Philly. I filmed in the air. I filmed on the ground in Marana, and then I also had
Bob receiving all the aircraft with the camera. Pat flew a couple of aircraft. He was filming. I also
dropped off both crews that took the two airplanes out of Atlantic City for another one of our
clients and I interviewed some Spirit pilots. I even interviewed the number one flight attendant
who was hired back when they had Convairs. I did not know Spirit ever had Convairs.
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[0:46:41] JR: Wow. I did not.
[0:46:44] SG: Yeah. She was hired by Spirit by Ned in 1990. They were a charter carrier with
Convairs, which then went to DC9s to MD80s, to Airbuses. She's been there throughout the
whole – I mean, I was in high school. I was in junior high when she got hired. She had some
great stories. It was very emotional. There's this whole human side to this thing. Bob and I,
obviously, we had a very technical job to do, but we got to know a lot of these pilots and their
families even, and just over the last week, it really hit us that there's so many stories and what
these guys are going through so much right now. I wanted to get a little bit of that in there, too. I
got good stuff. I mean, let's see if my editing skills are enough to do it justice. I have my doubts.
But I think it'll be good and I think it's worth tuning into.
[0:47:37] JR: Looking forward to it.
[0:47:39] IP: Thanks so much, Steve. As soon as that up, we'll put a link in the show notes here,
so folks can listen to our conversation and then head over and get that angle on everything that
you've been doing. Before we go, Steve, tell us a little bit about the new podcast that you and
Bob are doing and then where folks can find you.
[0:47:57] SG: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. We started Cockpit Casual, the podcast. The
background is that I don't publish enough Cockpit Casuals to really get the traction that I need
to. I wanted shorter content. I wanted more uploads. Bob and I always have so much to say,
and of course, everybody loves Captain Bob. We decided we were going to do a podcast. We're
12 episodes in. We started it two months ago. I thought it might be a disaster, but it's not. I
mean, I still think every time I record one, it's a disaster, but people listen. We're getting 20,
30,000 downloads between all the platforms each week, which is pretty good. Man, we talk
about all kinds of stuff. We've had a couple guests. We've had an aviation therapist. We've had
Airplane Facts with Max. We've had my father talking about the music in Cockpit Casual. We've
had the Nomadic Ops Team on on one episode. Then there's some episodes where we just rant
and rave for an hour and a half.
Find them on Apple and Spotify and all the others. It's called Cockpit Casual, the Podcast. Then
there's a YouTube companion that most episodes have as well, and it's basically the podcast
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with some bonus footage, but mostly just a couple of talking heads. That gets uploaded to our
regular Cockpit Casual YouTube channel categorized in the podcast bin. But it's out there and
we'd love it if some of your audience crosses over and meets us over there as well.
[0:49:26] IP: I would guess that there's a strong crossover audience here. I don't think we need
to worry about that one.
[0:49:32] SG: Well, you guys pretty much gave us our start on the media side of things. Another
reason why I always answer the phone for you guys.
[0:49:41] IP: Well, we appreciate that, and we'll have to have you back on sometime soon.
Hopefully, I mean, not that there isn't some good here. Like Jason said, we're glad that you are
doing this. But let's talk about more exciting stuff the next time we have you on. I want to thank
Steve Giordano, who's the Co-Founder of Nomadic Aviation Group and an all-around great guy
for coming back on the show this week to tell us about all the work that he's been doing to get
the Spirit fleet into the desert. Steve, thank you so much.
[0:50:08] JR: Get back out there, Steve.
[0:50:11] SG: I got invoices to write. I got money to collect.
[0:50:14] IP: There you go. Good luck.
[0:50:14] SG: Thanks Jason. Thanks, Ian. It's been awesome as always and always looking
forward to coming back on whenever you'll have me.
[0:50:21] IP: Thanks, Steve.
[END OF CONVERSATION WITH STEVE]
[0:50:28] IP: Welcome back. Jason, Steve's always fantastic to talk to –
[0:50:32] JR: That’s true.
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[0:50:33] IP: - of which he's extremely engaging and probably knows more about the aviation
industry than you and I could ever hope to.
[0:50:39] JR: Probably.
[0:50:40] IP: He's probably forgotten. What I was trying to say is he's probably forgotten more
about the aviation industry –
[0:50:44] JR: There it is.
[0:50:45] IP: - than you or I could ever hope to know. But on the one hand, when an airline goes
out of business, it's always extremely tough. Because it was very clear that Spirit was going to
go out of business. Whether that happened this month, next month. The writing was on the wall.
Unless, they had them found a merger partner. But on the other hand, you feel for the people
who make up the airline. I'm really happy to see that Steve's been able to find some of those
pilots at least a little bit of work.
[0:51:15] JR: Yeah. Or at least enough work to get home, or get out of wherever they were.
There is that as well. The story about the one pilot only having shorts and his uniform being like,
“Hey, can you somewhere warm?” Great. How about the boneyard? Yeah, that'll do.
[0:51:33] IP: Yes. You can fly for Nomadic in shorts. Let's turn our attention to something much
more stuffy and stodgy, of course, the Lufthansa Group. Lufthansa Group has announced as of
this week, because it had its annual shareholder meeting, so there's a bunch of
announcements, the largest of which is that they are taking their 41% in ITA Airways up to 90,
spending an additional 325 million euros, which was –
[0:52:02] JR: Which was always the plan, right?
[0:52:04] IP: This is the plan. They’re doing the plan.
[0:52:06] JR: This is Lufthansa Group doing the thing it said it would do.
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[0:52:08] IP: Yes. Italy will hold on, or the Ministry of Transport for Italy will hold on to the
remaining 10% for the moment, but Lufthansa group can purchase those shares beginning in
2028. I would be shocked if they did not wish to do so at that point.
[0:52:24] JR: Yeah. Really feels like we're never going to get that Alitalia brand back.
Remember that a little bit of time where it was ITA powered by Alitalia and we were certain that it
was just going to flip the other way around, it was just going to become Alitalia again one day.
But seems like that's not what's going to happen. Too bad.
[0:52:43] IP: There's still hope somewhere.
[0:52:44] JR: Okay.
[0:52:45] IP: Somewhere. I’m not sure where.
[0:52:46] JR: Fingers crossed.
[0:52:48] IP: There you go.
[0:52:48] JR: I mean, Lufthansa likes its sub-brands, so maybe there can be an ITA part of the
Lufthansa Group and a subgroup of ITA and it can be Alitalia off shoot. Yeah. Why not?
[0:52:58] IP: Sure. I wouldn't put anything. All of those sites would be operated by airBaltic.
[0:53:03] JR: Oh, of course. I mean, there's no other way. That or that, or City. We can't even
do City Airlines anymore, because that – Ah, Lufthansa. Never going to get boring.
[0:53:14] IP: Never. Not boring here, the group has ordered 10 A350s and 10 787s in addition
to all the other widebody aircraft that Lufthansa Group already has on order. That takes them up
to 107 total widebody orders, and we don't know where these aircraft are going to go yet.
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[0:53:37] JR: Yes. Lufthansa Group loves to order airplanes and then figure out where those
airplanes are going to go amongst its many subgroup carriers. Eventually, one day maybe
Discover Airlines, maybe Eurowings, maybe Lufthansa, maybe Austrian, maybe Brussels,
maybe ITA. Who knows? Could go to any of them. Very little fanfare. Just happened, which is
fine. I think it's funny that it happened to be the week after its first actual production 777X finally
flew from Boeing. I don't think we talked about that last week, looking back.
[0:54:10] IP: No, no. We should.
[0:54:11] JR: But I don't think we did. This was the first actual production-ready 777X had its
first flight last week. A Lufthansa 777X with its full interior, which is I'm sure going to be a whole
story in and of itself, because that interior was designed probably about a decade ago, so we're
going to get into that realm back the same story with the A380 and the 787 that by the time
those aircraft finally entered service, it was a decade old out of date product. It really seems like
that's what's going to happen here with the 777X. But finally, some progress. Finally, finally
some progress.
[0:54:49] IP: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how out of date that interior is when they finally
introduce it into service, and then how soon they need to take it out of service or retrofit it.
[0:55:00] JR: Oh, let's not talk about that yet.
[0:55:02] IP: We'll get there eventually. Let's talk about another announcement that Lufthansa
Group made this week. Their airlines will begin restarting Tel Aviv flights as early as June, so
Austrian airlines will begin in June with flights back to Tel Aviv. Then Lufthansa and Swiss will
begin in July and then Eurowings will follow on mid-July.
[0:55:26] JR: Sure. Check back in June, July, and mid-July to see if any of that actually
happens.
[0:55:31] IP: That's a fair point, Jason. The EU has also agreed to suspend slot use it or lose it
rules and fuel tinkering rules –
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[0:55:42] JR: But?
[0:55:42] IP: - which is what Lufthansa was arguing for, but there's a big if. If shortages appear.
[0:55:51] JR: Yeah. That just seems like common sense. If shortages appear and you can't
operate the flights, slot rules shouldn't apply. It seems like common sense out of the EU to me.
[0:56:01] IP: Maybe that's why I’m a little surprised.
[0:56:04] JR: Because they're announcing it ahead of time and there's a plan and it makes
sense? Yeah, that's rare these days. Hopefully, it doesn't happen and we don't need any of that.
But yeah, not much progress going on, and opening up any shipment of jet fuel to Europe from
the Middle East. If shortages appear, really seems likely to transition to when shortages appear
at some point. Doesn't seem like it's happening imminently this summer, or at least the earlier
parts of the summer. But haven't seen much progress in this space yet, so I don't know.
[0:56:37] IP: We await news.
[0:56:38] JR: We await news. Great way to put it.
[0:56:41] IP: Because of the availability of jet fuel, the high cost of jet fuel and everything else,
I’m waving my hands wildly, Air India has formalized a summer schedule reduction. The airline is
cutting 121 weekly flights through August. Not every week, not all routes, but a total of 121
weekly flights, a mix of complete route eliminations, as well as step downs in service. Chicago,
Newark from Delhi, JFK from Mumbai. Basically, New York keeps service from Delhi and from
Mumbai, just not both services to both airports.
[0:57:27] JR: Oh, rude.
[0:57:29] IP: Sorry. Shanghai, Singapore from Chennai, but Singapore keeps Mumbai and Delhi
service. Dhaka from Mumbai, but they keep Delhi service. Then Malé in the Maldives is
completely losing service. Others are being reduced, some just by one or two per week, some
by many more, depending on what the initial level of service was. Certain city pairs are much
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AVT 370 Transcript
more well served than others and will be much less well served. Looking at you, Delhi,
Singapore, which is decreasing quite handily, or Delhi, Bangkok, which is going down not by as
much. I did not realize how many weekly flights there were between Delhi and Kathmandu. That
one surprised me. That city pair is going from 42 weekly flights down to 28.
[0:58:25] JR: Wow. That's a big cut.
[0:58:28] IP: Yeah. Keeping an eye on that to see if there are any further cuts. But at the
moment, it looks like Air India has solidified its summer schedule. There have been a lot. There
has been a lot of speculation about Air India, because of a social media post that made
absolutely no sense, not the least of which it was easily falsifiable by just looking at
FlightRadar24, and I don't even have the map.
[0:58:55] JR: You're referring to.
[0:58:55] IP: And filtering Air India flights.
[0:58:57] JR: Tell me more.
[0:58:58] IP: There was a post that got picked up by way too many media outlets for my
continued belief in humanity, that Air India was canceling all of its international flights.
[0:59:09] JR: Who would believe that? Come on.
[0:59:11] IP: Enough people that I got a whole bunch of emails.
[0:59:15] JR: Oh, come on. You at least have to give a week still just before you cancel
everything like that, but no, no. Come on. Would people believe that? No.
[0:59:28] IP: They believed it enough to ask about it.
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[0:59:30] JR: Okay. Well, you know what? At least they're asking about it. That's important. To
not just see something that you think is probably fake and go, “Oh, yeah. Okay. Whatever.
Moving on.” People questioned it, and that's the least we can ask for.
[0:59:43] IP: I appreciate that you're looking on the bright side of things here, Jason.
[0:59:45] JR: You know what? I’m having a bright day. Let's go with that.
[0:59:48] IP: All right. We’ll go with that. Tell me more about what's going on in New Zealand.
This is a story that you have flagged, good sir.
[0:59:58] JR: Yes. I didn't want to forget about it and put it next week, because we’d probably
forget about it permanently. But apparently, at some point, I signed up for the Transportation
Accident Investigation Commission in New Zealand to get final reports emailed to me, so that's
cool. I did not know that in, what was this? February 7th of 2024, a Air New Zealand Dash 8, or a
Q300 overran the runway at, where was this? Sorry, I’m catching up real quick, in Taumarunui
Aerodrome, wherever that might be in New Zealand. But final report was issued and I just
wanted to call it out, because I like the format of the final report. It says what happened, why it
happened, what we can learn and who may benefit, and comes up with some nice photos as
well. But they had a runway overrun by just a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit. They didn't even leave the
pavement and didn't enter the grass. Just left the basically, the end of the actual runway before
they hit some other pavement.
It was just really interesting that the report says, the aircraft reach speed of 97 knots. Captain
called V1 rotate. For those who know and those who don't, V1 is the speed at what you commit
to take off, you do not abort your take off at that point. You were committed to going into the air.
But at this point, the first officer observed the flock of birds flying to the right of the aircraft
towards their takeoff path and said, “Oh, no,” apparently. At that point, took the initiative to
lessen the angle of their takeoff, basically. Lower pitch, brought the nose down a little bit, which
the captain unfortunately interpreted as, “Oh, we're rejecting takeoff,” and took control and
actually initiated an aborted takeoff at that point beyond the V1 speed, which is a no-no.
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At that point, because of that miscommunication, because apparently, the issue was here, the
CRM, the crew resource management, they were not communicating. The first officer didn't
communicate that he was lowering the nose, lowering the pitch of the aircraft to go under the
birds, rather than initiating an aborted takeoff. It was just really interesting to see the analysis of
what is really not that big a deal in the end of the day, because the aircraft never even left the
pavement. But for the first officer to not report the takeoff, but to want to fly under the birds, I
thought was quite an interesting take, which I don't think is something I've seen before.
[1:02:18] IP: Yeah. I still have a few questions about the pitch of the aircraft and how far off the
ground, or not off the ground they were.
[1:02:26] JR: Couldn’t do much, right?
[1:02:28] IP: No, no. I mean, it seems like it all happened – I mean we're talking about –
[1:02:32] JR: Very quickly.
[1:02:34] IP: We're talking about four seconds here. 06:49:20 to 06:49:24. I mean, not a ton of
time, but super interesting to see how the interplay between the pilots resulted in this. What's
even more interesting to me is that you have this aircraft, it's a runway overrun, but they left the
usable area of the runway by whatever the distance between the nose of the Q300 and the back
of the door is.
[1:03:09] JR: I don't think there was actually any seated passengers on that aircraft who had
physically left the threshold of that runway to =
[1:03:15] IP: Correct. All of the seated passengers were still on the runway.
[1:03:19] JR: The crew departed the runway. The passengers did not.
[1:03:22] IP: Uh-huh.
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[1:03:23] JR: Uh-huh. But also, just looking at the cockpit voice recorder was interesting, too.
Of course, we don't hear it. We can read it. But just the back and forth of saying, the captain
retarded the power, started breaking. At the same time, the first officer was recorded saying,
“Oh, no, no.” At that point, it's too late. But yeah, things happen so quickly. It's just a really good
breakdown of what happens when things happen really, really quickly. In this case, thankfully,
one-third of an airplane left the usable part of the runway and all was well that ends well. But
yeah, just wanted to toss that one in, because I found it interesting.
[1:03:59] IP: Excellent. Back over here in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration is
reminding airports that the FAA has millions of dollars available to install transponders on airport
ground vehicles. This follows, of course, the crash between a Jazz Aviation CRJ and a port
authority of New York and New Jersey ARFF truck at LaGuardia. According to FAA
Administrator, Brian Bedford, vehicle movement area transmitters or VMATs help prevent
dangerous runway incidents, and by accelerating the deployment of this technology, we're
closing critical visibility gaps on our nation's runways and taxiways.
This money is part of the one big beautiful bill money that allows the FAA to immediately begin
equipping 1,900 vehicles at 44 airports that have ASDEX and other Airport Surface Surveillance
Capability, ASSC, which is in addition to the Service Awareness Initiative, SAI Surveillance
Systems. That was a lot of acronyms. But here's where it gets interesting. There has already
been plenty of money available to equip airport vehicles with transmitters going back to 2023.
When the FAA took a look at this and said, “Hey, maybe it would be a good idea to prevent
close calls.” Then in 2024, when they issued a reminder that says, there's plenty of funding for
these things, you can get up to 200 airport transmitters. All the money's included. We will pay for
all of this stuff. Getting everything set up for these vehicle transmitters. Then in 2025, they
reminded folks, there's still money. Here's how to get said money. Now, here we are in 2026.
[1:06:08] JR: Yeah. The release from the FAA makes it seem like this is some magic money
unlocked today that will immediately allow the equippage of 1,900 vehicles at the 44 airports
that have ASDEX and ASSC and another 220 airports that have surface awareness initiative
surveillance systems. I mean, they could have done that before and they didn't. Like I said in
previous episodes, especially at the accidental airport, LaGuardia, the port authority of New
York and New Jersey has infinite money to do whatever the hell it wants, whenever it wants and
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there is no roadblock for to have done this at any point in the past, and it simply did not do that.
This isn't some sort of magic money that's going to allow the port authority to do something they
couldn't do before. The port authority just chose not to do it.
[1:06:59] IP: The announcement today and the reason I went down a rabbit hole on all this is
that the FAA itself is finally equipping its vehicles at airports around the country with this
technology.
[1:07:12] JR: Oh, but remind me, was its own aircraft involved in this crash? No, it wasn't.
[1:07:17] IP: No. But I am shocked. No, I'm not shocked. Having been around for more than a
minute and a half, I'm actually not shocked, but I'm saddened that the FAA didn't take the lead
on this when the technology became available.
[1:07:32] JR: Well, I mean, this almost reminds me of back in the day when ADS-B out was first
required and you had N1. Literally, the FAA's aircraft with the registration N1 did not have ADS-
B out for quite a while, up until, I think it was basically required. So, not exactly shocking that the
FAA wouldn't have done it. Yeah, I don't know. This just makes me sad and angry. Still, even if
I'm missing the point entirely, because this is about the FAA's own aircraft, but –
[1:08:00] IP: I don't think you're missing the point entirely.
[1:08:03] JR: Partially.
[1:08:04] IP: I think it's important to call out the fact that this could have been done sooner.
[1:08:08] JR: Yes. Then again, I don't really know what FAA ground vehicles are tooling around
airports like LaGuardia anyway. There must be some. I just can't think of any off the top of my
head.
[1:08:20] IP: I mean, from my own working knowledge of Chicago, there are at least a few
vehicles that do operate on the airport movement area, but I don't know how regularly they do.
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[1:08:34] JR: Yeah.
[1:08:33] IP: That would be an interesting question. There's 1,900 of them. Obviously ,they're
out there doing something.
[1:08:39] JR: I guess, they're out there, engineers, mechanics fixing light? No, the lights belong
to the airport. Landing systems, I guess, belong to the FAA, like the ILS arrays and stuff like
that. Because I'm pretty sure, lighting systems and all that belong to the airport.
[1:08:54] IP: Oh, this rabbit hole just got deeper, didn’t it?
[1:08:55] JR: Yeah, yeah. If you know what the hell FAA is driving around out there with its
1,900 vehicles, please let us know, because we certainly appear not to know.
[1:09:06] IP: All right. Let's move on to a big month for Boeing, where undisclosed airlines
placed a few orders.
[1:09:16] JR: Our favorite airline, really. It was really a big month for Boeing. It's a 135 net
orders versus just the seven orders for Airbus. But we don't know where they're going. This is a
pretty big thing for there to be a large cache of not just orders. These aren't just little orders for
the 737. This is 52 737 MAX. 29 787s, and 28 777Xs. Somebody, or somebody's went on a
shopping spree and we're not allowed to know who yet.
There's some back and forth out there. Maybe it was BA out there trying to top up its 777 order
book. We don't know though. Who do you think? Who do you want it to be? And don't say
Petchmo Air.
[1:10:03] IP: No. Far, far too new. We don't deal in aircraft that –
[1:10:06] JR: We don’t order new.
[1:10:07] IP: Absolutely not. I don't know. I mean, I've been thinking about it. Because the BA
thing, yes, makes sense, but also, I'm not sure. I mean, if we're assuming that it's multiple
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airlines, then I mean, it could be any number of top-ups and regional orders and things like that,
so I just don't know, Jason. I just don’t.
[1:10:31] JR: I don't know. I mean, I only say BA, because our resident numbers guy Gavin
Werbeloff said, probably, maybe BA. He knows his numbers and he knows BA better than
anyone. You're going with that.
[1:10:45] IP: All right, all right. Well, we'll eventually find out –
[1:10:49] JR: One day.
[1:10:49] IP: Maybe. One day. Shareholders at Sun Country have approved the merger with
Allegiant. Of course, just in time, Sun Country has unveiled a retro delivery.
[1:11:01] JR: Sure. Why not?
[1:11:02] IP: Okay.
[1:11:03] JR: If you're going down, you may as well go down swinging, because paint's
expensive. Allegiant's probably not going to get around to painting this one for a long time,
because it looks pretty damn good.
[1:11:15] IP: It does. It does look very good.
[1:11:17] JR: I mean, surprisingly, Sun, you may not know it, but Sun Country is actually,
they've been around a while and they've got some history to the brand. It's not just this little 737
operator that flies around out of MSP. I believe, they even flew DC10s way back in the day with
–
[1:11:32] IP: Yeah. I’ve heard. Exactly. It was quite the operation. N826SY is the registration, so
go check that out coming to a secondary Sun Country airport near you. There was a missile test
out of India last week. Giant NOTAMs. “Hey, we're going to be launching a missile. Don't fly
here.”
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AVT 370 Transcript
[1:12:00] JR: Oh, that's straightforward.
[1:12:02] IP: Very straightforward. Happens all the time. Apparently, one Garuda flight didn't
quite get the memo?
[1:12:10] JR: Ooh. Yeah. Well that NOTAM may have been on page 62 of 78 and –
[1:12:15] IP: Had to make through all the birds and cranes first.
[1:12:17] JR: Maybe they just missed it. But this resulted in apparently, a four and a half hour
hold on a flight between, where was this going? From Saudi Arabia back to Indonesia. I think it
was a hodge flight. This flight may have even been configured in a quite uncomfortable
configuration, as airlines have a tendency to do to get as many passengers onboard for the
hodge as possible. But apparently, somebody missed the memo and they had a four and a half
hour hold, resulting in, how long was this flight?
[1:12:54] IP: The flight ended up being almost 13 hours in total.
[1:12:56] JR: That is crazy. How long should it ordinarily have taken? Something like eight,
less? Something along those lines?
[1:13:04] IP: Yeah.
[1:13:06] JR: That's crazy. But the point to me that's crazy is not just the fact that they did it. It's
the fact that they could do it. That they had enough fuel, with fuel being as expensive as it is
right now, to take a four and a half plus hour holding pattern, which is just crazy. It's not like they
weren't anywhere where they couldn't land to take on more fuel. They were over India. They
could have. But apparently, either they planned ahead and they were okay with this, or they
didn't plan ahead and were somehow okay with this. Either way, it doesn't make any damn
sense.
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[1:13:39] IP: I don't have an answer. But if you do, drop us a note at podcast@fr24.com, and fill
us in and let us know what was going on here, because there's a lot of unanswered questions.
Unfortunately, Jason, we'll close the show with an answer to a question that no one asked.
[1:13:57] JR: Uh-oh.
[1:13:58] IP: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Regional Jet says, that the CRJ-200 could fly for
another two decades.
[1:14:10] JR: You know that animated GIF, Michael Scott from the office going, “No, please. No,
please. God, no”?
[1:14:15] IP: Yes.
[1:14:16] JR: No, no, no. That is the appropriate reaction to this. Nobody's asking for this.
Nobody wants this, unless it's the CRJ-450, then maybe people are asking for this.
[1:14:27] IP: Maybe. Maybe.
[1:14:29] JR: Maybe. And your name is Scott Kirby, if you're asking the question.
[1:14:32] IP: This comes out of a interview that the president of MHIRJ did with Flight Global,
where they were talking about the history and future of the CRJ. Obviously, they're not building
any more of them, so they were talking about maintaining the existing ones. The argument here
is that yes, they often bear the brunt of a slowdown. However, they often lead the vanguard of a
recovery, because these smaller jets are so much easier to fill that airlines like to keep them
around. And because they like to keep them around, they have to maintain them. And so,
they're saying, they have another 20 years’ worth of life cycle for most of the CRJ-200s. That's
not what I wanted to hear.
[1:15:21] JR: Nobody wants to hear that. But you got to do what you got to do, I guess. If
another 20 years of the CRJ-200 is what we got to do, so be it.
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[1:15:34] IP: So be it.
[1:15:35] JR: It doesn't mean you have to like it.
[1:15:40] IP: And on that lovely note, let's call this episode 370, because that's exactly what it
has been, episode 370 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here as always with –
[1:15:53] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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