AvTalk Episode 287: How best and final is “best and final”?

AVT 287 Transcript
EPISODE 287
[EPISODE]
[0:00:08] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 287 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How's it going?
[0:00:19] IP: Hello, Jason. It's going well. It's going well. Fall is here. We have passed the
autumnal equinox.
[0:00:27] JR: That's true.
[0:00:27] IP: We’re now into shorter and shorter days.
[0:00:31] JR: Yeah, the calendar we've all rely on day-to-day has caught up with the airline
industry in determining that summer is officially over.
[0:00:38] IP: Indeed. Indeed. Summer is over. Fall is here. As we go into the winter season, I
guess, as far as IATA is concerned, I always felt like, if we're only going to have two seasons,
we should rename them something, instead of just summer and winter.
[0:00:55] JR: Peak and not peak.
[0:00:56] IP: Peak and not peak. Good and bad.
[0:00:59] JR: Yeah.
[0:01:01] IP: This week, it's Wednesday, September 25th, we have some things on the calendar
that haven't quite happened yet that we'll get to talk about a little bit more next week. Southwest
is hosting their Investor Day. Normally, not something that we would really dig into on this
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podcast, but this year's a little bit different, because this year's Southwest Investor Day is
promising to –
[0:01:26] JR: Things are going to change.
[0:01:27] IP: - play host to all of the changes that Southwest is going to implement, exactly,
during the coming year as they seek to continue to fend off Elliott Investment Management's
play to take over the airline, get rid of all of the executives and board members and run it their
way. Southwest executives say, “No, no. We've got a plan.” And we'll hear more about that plan
tomorrow, the 26th, so we'll talk about that on next week's episode.
A bit of news already so far from Southwest this week with a bit of root shuffling, shall we say?
No surprises, really. Southwest, not pulling out of Atlanta, but certainly diminishing their
presence there. Southwest's presence in Atlanta, not all that old, really.
[0:02:19] JR: No. It was AirTran’s Hub, I believe, that I think Southwest inherited from AirTran
back when that merger went on. I think AirTran was a South, an AirTran hub, right?
[0:02:31] IP: I can't remember if it was a hub, but they definitely had a big presence there.
[0:02:35] JR: It was an operating base. I don't know if they –
[0:02:37] IP: There you go.
[0:02:38] JR: I don't know if they called it a hub, but according to Wikipedia, AirTran’s operating
bases were Atlanta, Baltimore, and Milwaukee, and Orlando, so it was definitely a very
important city, AirTran, which Southwest inherited, which in 2024 now they say, “Yeah. Not so
much.”
[0:02:54] IP: Yeah. They're making big changes there, and we'll have even bigger changes,
we're pretty sure, tomorrow, and we'll talk about those next week. A bit of follow-up on, from last
week's episode, we talked about the Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines merger, receiving
Department of Transportation approval. That merger has now gone through. They are now
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merged, and have started doing all sorts of things to make that happen. One of those things is a
consolidation of their new cargo unit, which is exciting. Because we were talking about how silly
it would be if Hawaiian got rid of its intra-island flying, it'd be like Alaska getting rid of the milk
run. Well, those things are safe, because the cargo unit is in full swing. Good news there.
[0:03:39] JR: Yeah. You can now, as a code-share, book a Hawaiian Airlines flights on the
Alaska Air website, and I think maybe the other way around, too. But as we speak right now, I
just did a search from JFK to Honolulu on alaska.com, and look at that, Hawaiian showed up.
That's fun.
[0:03:56] IP: There you go.
[0:03:57] JR: No more stopping on the West Coast. You could just go all the way now.
[0:04:00] IP: There you go. Off you go. We'll see Jason at the end of the show.
[0:04:04] JR: We'll see what the mile redemptions are like.
[0:04:07] IP: Yeah. Probably not very good.
[0:04:08] JR: Oh, no.
[0:04:10] IP: No. Yeah. Last week, we talked about Boeing's offer that had been tentatively
approved by the machinist union, and then voted down resoundingly so. This week, we have
what Boeing is terming a best and final contract offer.
[0:04:33] JR: Sounds a lot like last and final boarding call, which is never true. It's never the
case.
[0:04:38] IP: For all ticketed and confirmed passengers, Jason. Get on board.
[0:04:42] JR: This is the last and best and final boarding and offer contract call. It's not gone
over particularly well, has it?
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[0:04:51] IP: Decidedly not. Let's talk about what's in this revised contract offer, and then we'll
talk about what the machinist union thinks about that. We now have Boeing offering a 30%
general wage increase over the life of the contract. It was 25. There is now a $6,000 ratification
bonus that was previously $3,000. The AMPP bonus is reinstated, that had previously been
eliminated in favor of contributions elsewhere. But now, Boeing sad, “Okay, we'll bring this
particular program back.”
Then, Boeing will increase the company match of the Boeing 401k to 100% of the first 8% of the
pay that you contribute, if you're a machinist, plus continue an automatic 4% company
contribution that was previously 75% of 8%. Good old-fashioned math here, but the contract
such as it is does not seem to, in any way shape or form, interest the machinist union rank and
file. The union leadership took a poll of the union members, and they said, “Nah, we're not
interested.” Not really clear where things go from here. We haven't heard much progress, as far
as negotiations are concerned, and Boeing is calling this its best and final contract offer.
[0:06:22] JR: I don't know. Things are getting a little weird. Remember that initially, the offer
brought to the union members was brought to them via the union. Boeing communicated an
offer to the union representation, who then disseminated that message down to the union
members, who resoundingly did not take the recommendation to accept it. What? 98% said,
absolutely not. This time, it's a little weirder in that you have Boeing not actually communicating
the new offer to the union representation, but basically, directly to union members via almost the
media.
The union representation did not like this, of course, so they said they didn't have time to go
over it. We don't even have time to set up the infrastructure to take a vote. This isn't going to
work. Boeing gave some more time for members to go over this. But I can see both sides of this
argument, how initially, the union leadership said, “Hey, here's an offer from Boeing. We
recommend you take it.” Then 98% of people actually voting, turn it down. Maybe I understand
why Boeing is going around union representation, since the recommendation at first was so
overwhelmingly ignored. It's not a good look, I don't think, going around the union. But at this
point, I don't know, I'm out of my element here.
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[0:07:44] IP: Yeah. To my mind, it doesn't seem like it helped reset the relationship between
Boeing and the union.
[0:07:53] JR: No. It certainly did not. It did not help.
[0:07:55] IP: If it’s the goal. If the goal, and this is the stated goal of Boeing's new CEO, Kelly
Ortberg, to reset the relationship between the company and the union, if that was the goal, I
dare say, they failed.
[0:08:08] JR: Yeah. Things are not going well. It's very unclear what it's going to take, at least
from our perspective, to end this track. What is it that the machinists want? What's it going to
take to get Boeing to revise its best and final, we swear, last offer. We're closing the boarding
door offer.
[0:08:27] IP: Underscore final, underscore, no, really this time.
[0:08:30] ANNOUNCER: V2 2024.
[0:08:32] IP: Exactly. Exactly.
[0:08:34] JR: Yeah. This doesn't seem like it's ending tomorrow, but you never know. We saw it
with the Air Canada pilots just a couple of weeks ago, where all of a sudden it was, “We're on
strike. We're on strike. We're going to go on strike,” and then somebody snapped their fingers
and stop, all right, they'll strike.
[0:08:47] IP: For now.
[0:08:48] JR: For now
[0:08:49] IP: Someone still has in the strike now.
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[0:08:51] JR: Yeah, we're already in the strike, so we've gone past that point, but what it's going
to take to ratify a contract, or approve a tentative deal, I don't know. Things are not looking like,
they're going to be resolved by the time this podcast comes out on Friday.
[0:09:03] IP: No. Meanwhile, Boeing's beginning its furlough program that it introduced, or laid
out last week, and the other professional union, SPEEA, which is the engineering union that
works for Boeing said, “No furloughs. We're not doing that. That's not in our contract. Not going
to happen.” There you go. But non-union employees can look forward to a three weeks on, one
week off for the duration coming up.
In a follow-up to a story that we brought you a few weeks ago, a further investigation of the
Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engine on the Cathay Pacific A350-1000, that was a lot of numbers
and hyphens, they found out that the cause was a ruptured fuel manifold hose. That was the
instigation of the fire and inflight engine shutdown. IASA, through its investigation, has linked the
degradation of those particular hoses to a “suspect cleaning process” used on those hoses.
They've issued a revised airworthiness directive that instructs operators with not only Trent-97s,
but also the 84s that power some of the A350-900s, depending on when they had their last shop
visit to be inspected to make sure that that cleaning process was not used on those hoses and
to make sure that the hoses are okay. They were found to “have either frayed metal braids, or
collapsed structures inside the hose.”
[0:10:54] JR: You don't want that in your high-pressure fuel hose and the jet engine.
[0:10:56] IP: Certainly, certainly do not.
[0:10:59] JR: You don't want that, but this is good news, I guess. They were able to figure out
what happened. Figure out that the damage here is limited to a cleaning program, of all things,
and that this isn't some manufacturing defect, or worst of all, in unknown reasons. This is going
to become a distant memory pretty quickly, it seems like.
[0:11:19] IP: Yeah. It sounds like, they've got this figured out, and they know what to look for,
and they know how to prevent it from happening again.
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[0:11:26] JR: Mission accomplished.
[0:11:26] IP: Yay, safety investigations. Yeah.
[0:11:28] JR: Good stuff.
[0:11:29] IP: Good job. This is an interesting one that I am very confused by.
[0:11:36] JR: Okay.
[0:11:38] IP: I get where they're coming from, but I can't, for the life of me, see how this is a
good idea.
[0:11:44] JR: You could be talking about a great many things right now.
[0:11:49] IP: What I'm currently talking about is the Canadian government's transport
adjudicator, their office within their Department of Transport that deals with airline complaints.
They are planning to charge the airline subject to the complaint, nearly 800 Canadian dollars,
which is nearly 600 US dollars, for every customer complaint that the transport watchdog needs
to resolve. Whether or not they find in the customer's favor, or the airline's favor.
[0:12:26] JR: Okay.
[0:12:29] IP: If you fly Air Canada, or WestJet, or any other Canadian airline, and something
goes wrong, and you as the passenger filed for –
[0:12:38] JR: Or you perceive that something is going wrong, remember to file a complaint.
Nothing actually has to go wrong. You could complain that the temperature on board the aircraft
is a little too cold.
[0:12:51] IP: If the Canadian transport agency has to resolve the complaint. If the airline settles
with this person, that's fine. They don't have to pay. If the person withdraws the complaint, they
don't have to pay. But if the CTA, the Canadian Transport Agency, becomes involved such that
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they make a ruling on that complaint, they would charge the airline $600 roughly, US, for their
trouble.
[0:13:17] JR: This is just, go on.
[0:13:18] IP: The CTA says that it's 60% of the cost of resolving a complaint. It's roughly a 1,000
US dollars to resolve a complaint. The agency resolves upwards of 22,500 complaints every
year. It adds up. I mean, it's an operating budget.
[0:13:41] JR: They say, it results in about 29.8 million Canadian dollars per year.
[0:13:47] IP: It's about a 25 million US dollars.
[0:13:49] JR: That's a lot. That's a lot. But that's the cost of being a government regulator. This
is the task that you collect tax revenue for. This is the job of government.
[0:14:00] IP: I could certainly understand if they resolve the complaint and rule against the
airline. The airline would have to pay.
[0:14:07] JR: Yeah. There’s definitely a need for that. Air Canada, especially after COVID, had a
huge number of complaints, because it simply just wasn't refunding anyone at any point. It took
years. I think the US DOT, or was it the FAA actually, had a record fine against Air Canada for
just not issuing refunds. Maybe Air Canada had it coming, but this does not seem like a prudent
decision.
[0:14:32] IP: Yeah. This feels half-baked to me. It feels like, we should do something.
Something needs to be done, and then they didn't go beyond that.
[0:14:41] JR: Maybe they should work on a system of credits and debits where, yeah, they'll
charge you 582 US dollars if there's a complaint, but they'll credit you back $300 if there's a
consumer compliment that submitted. Remember, that is a thing. You can do that.
[0:14:57] IP: That is a thing. They are, I wouldn't say ultra rare, but –
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[0:15:02] JR: They are few and far between. I actually, way back when, probably 10 years ago,
I happened to notice it by reading the DOT consumer report that they put out every month for
airlines that in the column right next to complaints is a column for compliments. Every now and
then, there's a non-zero number in there. I actually submitted a federal Freedom of Information
Act request to get those compliments and read them and see, what are people so impressed by
with airlines that they are writing to the federal government to compliment that airline. Yeah, it
does happen and it's just mundane stuff like, “Hey, I had a really good flight and my connection
was good.” I should submit another one of those requests to see what they look like in 2024.
They do happen. Maybe credit the airlines back if they've been good.
[0:15:50] IP: See? I think this is a plan. You know what? We should write into the Canadian
Transportation Authority.
[0:15:56] JR: We should.
[0:15:56] IP: And say, hey.
[0:15:56] JR: Wait, they're going to charge somebody for that. I don't know who. Maybe it
comes out of Nav Canada's budget. I don't know. I feel like, this has the opportunity to be
abused, where someone's going to have a vendetta against WestJet, or something like that.
They're just every single flight they take, they're going to submit a complaint about something,
because there's always something to complain about. That's the whole basis of social media.
There's always something to complain about on a flight.
Also, what's stopping from one Canadian airline for booking 200 tickets on a competitor and
having all of those employees fly and be like, “My food wasn't hot enough, so we're submitting a
complaint.” That would add up to a substantial loss for that other airline. I can't imagine an
airline doing something that malicious. But I don't know.
[0:16:46] IP: No, but it could certainly lead to an increased number of complaints, or at least just
encourage people that were maybe not going to complain, but they know that if they fill out the
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form, it's going to cost the airline some money. Even if they don't win, they still get to stick it to
the airline.
[0:17:06] JR: All right. Yeah. That's probably fair. I mean, ironically enough, I just finally heard
back from Delta today from a DOT complaint I filed last month. All the reply was is, “We got a lot
of these right now. We'll reply to you, or not, eventually.”
[0:17:22] IP: Or not.
[0:17:24] JR: Or not. I don't know. It just says, “Hey, we've gotten your complaint from the DOT
and we'll deal with it, but we've got a lot because of “the July disruption to Delta's operation.””
[0:17:34] IP: The July disruption to the Delta. That's amazing.
[0:17:39] JR: That's a new one. At least it doesn't say –
[0:17:41] IP: It's like a euphemism. I love it.
[0:17:42] JR: Yeah. We all know what it is. Just say what it is. But yeah, complaints happen.
They're real, but being this punitive seems oddly not very Canadian. Very punitive.
[0:17:54] IP: Very, very strange to me. This just doesn't seem all the way thought through. In
news that is interesting to me, because I'm not sure how this is all going to work. JetBlue is
adding lounges to its offering for some people.
[0:18:14] JR: For some people, but not most. JetBlue has in the, not all that long lifespan, has
gone from everyone is equal, everyone gets the same seat onboard to a very differentiated
airline now, of course, with different types of business classes even, and a couple of years ago
introduced transatlantic flights. But one thing they never had was lounges, even when they
introduced mint service, which was the business class transcontinental service between New
York and California and eventually, all over the map, lounges were never really a thing that
JetBlue got into. Except now, apparently, they will in 2025, but only for mint passengers flying on
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transatlantic flights, or for passengers with a fancy new premium JetBlue credit card that does
not exist yet, or for the top, top, top, top, top tier JetBlue elite passengers.
There's only going to be two announced so far, JFK and Boston to follow that later. But it's an
interesting move for an airline that is doing things to cut costs and be leaner and make more
money. I guess, they've done the math, and somehow adding the expense of lounges in their
Northeast airports only for transatlantic passengers will bring in more potential passengers for
those flights. They have to have done the math on that.
[0:19:42] IP: I mean, one certainly assumes that they've done the math. But the math is a
mystery to me, as far as the customer that I think of booking a ticket to fly transatlantically on
JetBlue is not to me the customer that really, really, really values spending more time in the
airport.
[0:20:05] JR: The one time I flew JetBlue transatlantic, I got there very close in before boarding
for my flight, because it's just honestly terminal 5 just isn't the place I want to linger all that long.
But building a lounge, especially at somewhere like JFK, is hugely expensive. Building anything
at JFK is very expensive. I've heard stories before where you have to have a permit to literally
tighten a screw in places, in terminals in New York that are operated by the – or not operate, but
leased out by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Construction is hugely expensive,
and it's not going to be very big. I think it was only 8,000 square feet in New York and 6,000
square feet in Boston. That sounds a lot.
But Delta's new Delta one lounge in the same airport, JFK in terminal four is something like
40,000 square feet. Yeah, JetBlue has a – Yeah. Well, JetBlue has a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of
the transatlantic flights that Delta and its partners does. But that's not very big, but we'll see if
this makes a difference. It’s certainly interesting. Unexpected.
[0:21:12] IP: Yeah, very unexpected. We should have expected this next story, given last
week's news, and then I think this order came out as soon as we hit stop on the recording. Not
huge news, but certainly worth mentioning, because we mentioned the Airbus side of the order
last week. China Development’s Bank Leasing Arm has ordered 50 Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft,
which came the same week as the 80 A320neo family aircraft. These particular MAX will be
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delivered between 2028 and 2031. Those will come faster than the A320neo family aircraft,
which are supposed to be delivered between 2030 and 2032.
[0:21:59] JR: Well, we'll see how long the strike goes on for.
[0:22:01] IP: There is that. Speaking of leasing aircraft, this is an interesting one. I'm surprised it
took this long for this type of arrangement to happen, given how things have gone over the past
couple of years. But we're finally seeing a league-wide leasing arrangement coming out of the
NBA. Basketball teams will have access to eventually, 13 A321neo family aircraft. All of these
aircraft are going to be operated in VIP configuration by Delta, which currently operates an
aging fleet of VIP configured aircraft. I believe, mostly 757s.
[0:22:46] JR: The ageist 757s around operating. I think most of these are 30-plus years old,
and Delta said, this was bound to happen. Like you said, this is really overdue and interesting. I
think the NBA is in a unique position, at least from American sport leagues to be able to do this,
since we know that a bunch of NFL teams actually have their own owned aircraft outright, but
NFL teams travel with a huge amount of personnel and equipment and basketball teams are
much, much leaner. They can all fit on not just a 321, but a highly customized VIP, very nice
A321neo. There's no timing for when this is going to happen. It'll happen eventually at some
point.
[0:23:34] IP: Eventually, yeah.
[0:23:35] JR: Eventually. I don't think Delta has actually confirmed this news, but this was
originally broken by Corporate Jet Investor. I've not heard of them before, so kudos to them for
breaking this scoop. That's really cool. I'd expect other leagues to follow suit like this.
[0:23:53] IP: Yeah. I think it's interesting, it makes a good point. Basketball teams travel so
much lighter than football teams. I think the thing could work similarly for baseball teams. Not a
huge roster of players and not so much equipment that you can't toss it in the hole.
[0:24:12] JR: Yeah. I think a lot of baseball teams, including the New York teams, do actually
use Delta 757s as well, which I think earlier this year, actually, in the beginning of the season,
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the Yankees were leaving Miami in one of these elderly 75s broke down and they didn't get out
of Miami until 3 am, or something. If you have a game starting at 1 pm the next day, that's a big
deal. Not great. I could understand why sourcing some new, or simply less ancient aircraft
would be a benefit for the league.
[0:24:44] IP: Yeah. Exactly. Let's go to news that doesn't matter in the slightest, but the only
reason I'm even remotely interested in talking about it is we might see a Eurostar train in a Sky
Team livery now.
[0:24:57] JR: That'd be cool. On the heels, two years ago of Deutsche Bahn being
incorporated, or inducted as an intermodal partner of Star Alliance, now we have Eurostar, I
guess, applying, or intending to become a member, or an intermodal member of Sky Team in
2025. This one is a lot less of a big deal. Deutsche Bahn is huge, with ties to most every major
German airport and a lot of international far-reaching network for Deutsche Bahn, even though it
is Deutsche Bahn. If you're taking an ICE train to your flight, you're probably going to miss it
anyway, so it's a good thing they're a part of Star Alliance at this point.
Eurostar has a meager network compared to Deutsche Bank. The only airport, I believe, they
even really serve is Amsterdam, and that might be cut next year due to track work. I think they
serve Paris like a couple times a week maybe, but there's not a lot of detail on what benefit
there would be for this, since I believe, KLM has already had a long-standing code share with
Eurostar. I don't know.
[0:26:08] IP: The benefit is a possible Sky Team livery on the Eurostar train.
[0:26:12] JR: That might be it. Or even better, a Eurostar special livery on a Sky Team airplane.
[0:26:18] IP: Okay. Now –
[0:26:20] JR: Now you're interested.
[0:26:20] IP: Now we’re talking.
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[0:26:22] JR: Flipped it on you.
[0:26:24] IP: You have piqued my interest, good sir.
[0:26:26] JR: Yeah. We'll see what happens with this. I don't expect anything groundbreaking,
but what's left for one world? I don't know. Amtrak?
[0:26:35] IP: Sorry.
[0:26:36] JR: Hey, United did have a code share with Amtrak up until 2020 in COVID. Yeah, I
don't know. Maybe JR out in Japan for JAL.
[0:26:46] IP: That would actually make sense.
[0:26:49] JR: That would make sense. Let's do that.
[0:26:51] IP: You can get on that, Jason. Let's go to Kazakhstan.
[0:26:56] JR: Okay. What are we doing in Kazakhstan?
[0:26:58] IP: We're adding fuel tanks, so that we can get from Kazakhstan to London.
[0:27:02] JR: Ah, okay. This is an interesting one, and we're trying to piece together what
exactly is happening since details are light. But Air Astana currently has a fight to London, but it
unfortunately, now, because of the restrictions of flying over Russian airspace, they now have to
make a tech stop along the way. Because this flight is no longer operated with a 757, or even
767, the 321LR, not an XLR, but an LR, does not have the range to fly nonstop to London. Yet,
apparently, Air Astana is, and I'm air quoting, “installing,” because we don't know if they're
activating already installed fuel tanks, or actually physically installing additional fuel tanks that
are inherent to the LR. They put the LR and 321LR. But now they will be able to actually fight
again, nonstop to London. Flight Global says, it is and will be one of, if not the longest
narrowbody fight in the world, potentially, blocked in at nine hours and 35 minutes. That is a long
time.
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[0:28:11] IP: Longest narrowbody flight in the world so far.
[0:28:15] JR: So far. It may not be the longest one. I think that award goes to, is it Iberia to
Dulles? I think it is. That's a long flight also, on the 321LR. But yeah, that's an interesting thing. I
hope we find out if they're just activating, or installing a fuel tank, but that's a pretty flexible
aircraft.
[0:28:34] IP: It is. It is. This is an interesting story, and I'm still trying to understand what exactly
we're talking about here, because the initial reporting was well, well, well outside the scope of
anything that was accurate. It's taken a couple days to piece this together. We're going to talk
about it this week, but hopefully, next week, we'll have a little bit more information, or we won't
and we'll just never know.
A United Airlines 757 en route from Newark to San Francisco was beginning its initial descent to
San Francisco near Sacramento when it experienced a TCAS resolution advisory. The RA told
the pilots to stop their descent, which they did. Then the flight continued to continue for a safe
landing in San Francisco. There were two aircraft in the area at the time. One was Alaska
Airlines flight operated by Sky West. AS3304. There was a Southwest 737 in the area as well,
Southwest 4096. This was all taking place last week on the 19th of September.
The best that we can piece together so far, because the resolution advisory has been confirmed
to have occurred on the United aircraft, but not on any other aircraft. If you know how TCAS
works more than we do, please email us at podcast@fr24.com. Because we're trying to learn as
much as we can about this, as it's still interesting to me that there wouldn't be an RA on one of
the other aircraft, especially the Sky West aircraft, because that seems like the aircraft that the
United aircraft was responding to. That'll be an interesting thing to learn more about. The RA
told the United flight to stop its descent. It stopped its descent. Then after it was clear, it
continued descending for a safe landing in San Francisco.
[0:30:44] JR: Hmm. That is a weird one, isn't it?
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[0:30:46] IP: Yeah. They were flying near perpendicular to each other. I don't know if that had
anything to do with it. I honestly don't know at this point. I'm keen to learn more, so I've asked
some folks who I hope can help us answer this question. We should learn more, because the
FAA and NTSB are both investigating. The initial report put the event hours before and
hundreds of miles away from where it actually happened. The initial reporting was that this
happened at 38,000 feet over Wyoming, which is a different place and a different altitude than
31,500 feet over California.
[0:31:24] JR: Those are different things, aren't they?
[0:31:25] IP: Yeah. I don't know where the information got started. But this all came out
because there was an FAA report found, because two people were injured on the flight. I
believe, one passenger and one flight attendant. Thankfully, the fasten seat belt sign was on,
because they had begun their descent into San Francisco. Could have been worse, I suppose.
[0:31:48] JR: Yeah. By the way, I ran the numbers and I was half right on the longest 321 flight.
It is to Dulles, but I believe it is SAS from Copenhagen. Not Iberia from Madrid.
[0:32:01] IP: All right then.
[0:32:03] JR: Yeah. That's a nice 4,000-plus mile journey.
[0:32:06] IP: There you go. Then, they're only going to get longer.
[0:32:09] JR: Yeah. Mixed feelings.
[0:32:11] IP: Yeah. That sounds about right. You know what? I don't have mixed feelings about?
[0:32:15] JR: Ending this podcast and going about the rest of our day.
[0:32:17] IP: Ending this episode of the podcast. This has been episode 287 of AvTalk. I am Ian
Petchenik, here, as always with –
© 2024 AvTalk  16
AVT 287 Transcript
[0:32:28] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2024 AvTalk  17