AvTalk Episode 282: Just when everything was starting to go well

AVT 282 Transcript
EPISODE 282
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello, and welcome to Episode 282 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. We are here back to a regularly scheduled program. We have
told our lovely guest from last week, Steve Giordano, to come back only if we can talk about
good and happy things, and we have not yet arranged that. So today, it’s just the normal news.
[0:00:33] IP: Just the normal show. Having Steve on two weeks in a row, that might be –
[0:00:39] JR: We would work people. I think that’s a bit too much Steve.
[0:00:41] IP: I think that’s exactly what happened.
[0:00:42] JR: But he’s busy and on vacation. So, we don’t want to bother him again.
[0:00:46] IP: Exactly. Yes. We should have mentioned that. I think I may have mentioned it last
week, but we did in fact pull him away from his vacation to come talk about the Voepass crash.
So, thanks again, Steve, for doing that.
I’m back from a little break. Jason, how are you?
[0:01:04] JR: I’m back in Dallas again. I don’t know how I got here. I took the train this time, so
that’s something different.
[0:01:12] IP: It did get you some different every once in a while.
[0:01:15] JR: Yes. I don't trust SkyWest anymore, not after last time. So, Amtrak, it was.
[0:01:21] IP: Yes, because Amtrak is often known for its extreme punctuality and on-time arrival.
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AVT 282 Transcript
[0:01:27] JR: Yes. We were only 22 minutes late today. That's like practically early.
[0:01:30] IP: That's only a yellow dot.
[0:01:33] JR: Yes. That’s pretty good. Pretty good.
[0:01:34] IP: Well, just when everything seemed to be going so well, over, not over the
weekend, at the very beginning of the week. My days are all mixed up. I’m not really sure what
day it is, because I took a couple days off. So, I’m still getting back up to speed with the
airplanes. But I saw Jon Ostrower’s Standby for News, and I stood and then this happened.
Jon was the first to report over at The Air Current that the 777X flight tests have now been
halted, because the post-flight inspection of WH003, so one of the three flight test vehicles for
the 777X program, post-flight inspection revealed that a thrust link on one of the engines was
broken. That's not great. Boeing says, during scheduled maintenance, we identified a
component that did not perform as designed. Okay. Our team is replacing the part and capturing
any learnings from the component and will resume flight testing when ready.
Additional reporting from Jon revealed that after they found the broken thrust link on the engine
on the aircraft in Hawaii. They looked at the other two aircraft that are part of the 777X flight test
program and noticed that those thrust links were cracked, or at least one of them was cracked
on both aircraft, if I'm reading the reporting correctly. There are two thrust links per engine. So,
the thrust link is a piece that carries the thrust load from the engine into the pylon where the
engine is mounted. It's a large titanium piece that carries the thrust load from the engine into the
airframe at the engine pylon. So, there's a double system that's a redundancy on the engine.
The engine wasn't in danger of falling off the wing, but it sounds like this is something you don't
want to break.
[0:03:51] JR: No. It does, however, seem like kind of a good news, bad news situation that it
was good that it was discovered at this phase in testing and not after the aircraft had been
certified and put into service. Bad news is that such a critical piece of the aircraft would be
developing cracks after not all that far into the testing program for this aircraft.
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Good news, I guess, technically that they were able to find it across multiple aircraft. So, this
wasn't just a one-off. Why did it happen on this one, but not the other ones? I guess that goes
under the good column and not bad column. I'm not quite sure. We'll have to wait and see what
happens here. How long this is going to keep these aircraft grounded? If it's something that
Boeing needs to go back to the drawing board on it and redesign these parts or identify what
went wrong. Was it counterfeit titanium? Or was something wrong casting the parts? Or is there
just misunderstandings in the structural integrity of this part? There are going to be a lot of
questions. But this is really what a flight test program is expected to uncover. It's just not
something anyone wants to see after the 777X program this far into an already very long delay
of entry into service.
[0:05:06] IP: Yes, absolutely. So, we'll continue to follow along and see what Boeing says about
what they find out whether or not this was a design issue, a manufacturing issue, a materials
issue, and we'll go from there and hope to see the 777X back in the air.
[0:05:23] JR: Really putting Boeing's new CEO, his feet to the fire real quick. I think this was his
eighth business day as CEO of Boeing when the story broke. So, I'd imagine it was an
unpleasant phone call. Not everything going so great at Boeing. We haven't really talked about
Starliner much, but any day now, we're expecting either a kind of a go, no-go situation with
bringing the astronauts home from the International Space Station. So, things are not great on
the first few weeks of Boeing's new CEO's tenure, but hopefully this is a relatively minor road
bump. But we shall see.
[0:06:01] IP: Yes, we shall see. An update on activities in Brazil after the Voepass crash last
week. Obviously, we discussed what we knew so far. At that point, we now know that the data
from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder has been successfully downloaded
and is being reviewed and analyzed by Brazilian investigators. And on the other side of things,
Brazilian civil aviation authorities have placed Voepass under stricter scrutiny following not just
the crash last week or the week before, but some other seemingly unrelated issues. Aviation
authorities, looking to understand if there are any issues at Voepass or whether or not these are
just the normal happenings of a normal airline and looking at how to shore up any safety issues
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that the airline may have. So, not taking any regulatory action at this point, but just looking
closer at their operations. Jason?
[0:07:10] JR: Yes, I had nothing to add to that. Sorry.
[0:07:12] IP: That's okay. No. That was just an update. There's not really much to discuss there
at this point. I was going to say, Jason, when the Department of Justice says, we're going to
look at your merger, we're going to see if it enhances competition or is going to stifle
competition, and when they decide that your merger is bad, they make a really big deal about it.
But if they decide that your merger doesn't seem to pose much of a problem, they apparently
just don't say anything at all.
[0:07:45] JR: Yes, I think what you're referring to here is the Alaska-Hawaiian merger, which
was at the very end of the period which the DOJ could either decide to try to block this from
going through or to just let it happen. There were actually a couple 24-hour extensions filed, I
believe, which made people think like, maybe there's something going on here. Maybe they're
going to toss a wrench into the works at the last second.
And no. On the 19th of August, Alaska, and jointly with Hawaiian, put out a very brief press
release that just said the time period during which the parties were prohibited from closing under
the HSR Act has expired. The government's review is ongoing. So, that is effectively saying, the
DOJ has raised no issue with this. Now, it moves on to the US Department of Transportation for
whatever it wants to see out of this, if anything.
But you’re right, it was such a start contrast with that. Like American and JetBlue and Spirit
where they were up in arms. They were up in front of the press. There were press releases for
this. I don't even think the DOJ issued a press release. This just kind of happened because the
clock ran out.
[0:08:54] IP: Yes. I mean, when it came to Spirit and JetBlue, there were big red buttons. There
were, in case of emergency, break glass and all sorts of things. This was kind of one of those
things where, like, did somebody forget? I mean, nothing happened? All right, moving on.
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[0:09:10] JR: Alaska says it worked closely with the Hawaii Attorney General to reinforce and
expand upon our commitments for the future of Hawaiian Airlines and the Hawaii consumers,
which I guess means, as we know right now, Alaska is going to keep the Hawaiian Airlines
brand around for some extended period of time. It's going to be hopefully very different where
Alaska just absolutely gutted, decimated, and pretended Virgin America never existed at all.
They're going about it quite differently this time.
[0:09:39] IP: Well, when you didn’t actually want the airline that you acquired –
[0:09:43] JR: For way too much money.
[0:09:45] IP: For way too much money. Yes. But from everything we know about this particular
deal, it’s going to be one airline sharing back office functions, but for the foreseeable future.
[0:10:02] JR: And apparently the DOJ's reaction to that is, “Yes, all right.” Okay.
[0:10:07] IP: The other airline that had some news this week is, well, I guess all of the airlines
did. But the one we're going to talk about next is the Southwest Airlines. Elliot, the investment
group that has purchased a stake in the airline in order to try and force the board out, the C-
suite leadership out, and change the airline's direction, has put forth a slate of candidates for a
new board of directors. That slate includes former airline executives from Ryanair, Virgin
America, speaking of Virgin America, Air Canada, and WestJet. It also includes, and this is the
one I'm most interested by, former Department of Transportation official, Sarah Feinberg. So
that was an interesting one there. Also includes ex-Marriot group president, a McKinsey senior
partner, and some other folks who, I guess, are less germane to the situation, but some heavy
airline experience and transport experience in that slate of directors.
[0:11:19] JR: It is a list of extremely heavy hitters. When I read through that, it was, I can't
believe they can kind of assemble that kind of like all-star dream team list. I don't know who of
them will be actually nominated, but it is a list that shows that they have not come to play. They
have come to do some serious business here. Even down to – it's funny, you mentioned Sarah
Feinberg, in your perspective, she is the former US Department of Transportation official. In my
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mind, she is and always will have been the president of New York City Transit before that stint at
the DOT.
It brings it a little home for me that this slate of people, and including someone like David Cush
from Virgin America, is just such a list of heavy hitters. It’s going to be really interesting to see
where this goes. Because I was Southwest and I saw this list of names, I would be a little bit
afraid of what's going to happen in the near future because they have come to get stuff done.
[0:12:19] IP: Yes. I think this announcement, this slate of candidates, kind of put it into a deeper
bit of perspective that Elliott seems quite serious about this. Now, whether this is something
where they say, “Okay, we're extremely serious, now give us a little bit of what we want.” I'm not
sure. This is kind of one of those overboard things so that they get a little bit more of what they
want because Southwest starts running scared. Or if we see kind of a deeper retrenchment from
Southwest's existing leadership, I think this is just heating up.
[0:12:56] JR: Stay tuned. Grab the popcorn. Get a spot on the couch because it's going to be
an interesting show to watch.
[0:13:03] IP: Absolutely. Does it make an appointment of financial reporting? I don't know what
you would call it.
This next story, Jason, you brought to us because we both thought it already existed.
[0:13:17] JR: Yes. Apparently, the United States and the Dominican Republic did not already
have an open skies agreement. But congratulations to the Dominican Republic.
[0:13:28] IP: They do now.
[0:13:29] JR: Because they do now. The US DOT on August 13th saying the US and Dominican
Republic have signed an open skies agreement to advance bilateral aviation connectivity. For
those not familiar, without an open skies agreement, basically, the governments on either side
have to approve routes and airports and capacity and pricing. There's really a lot of stringent
limitations on what and where you can operate to. But quoting from the US Department of State,
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“Open skies agreements, eliminate government interference in the commercial decisions of air
carriers about routes, capacity, and pricing, freeing carriers to provide more affordable,
convenient, and efficient air service for consumers.”
That sounds great. Not all countries have that in place, but it is really surprising to me that the
Dominican Republic in the US, as close as these two countries are, did not have that in place
because there are so many flights from like, let's say, New York or even, I think DCA might have
flights to Dominican Republic. Do they even have US preclearance there? I think they might.
[0:14:32] IP: I don't know. They didn't when I was there, but that was a very long time ago.
[0:14:37] JR: I might be making that up. But either way, it's good to hear, and I would expect
more and cheaper flights to be coming soon between the two countries. That's exciting.
[0:14:46] IP: Excellent. Speaking of more flights, airBaltic has ordered another 10 A220s,
moving its backlog up to 90 aircraft. All A220s, because they are, of course, now an all A220
operator.
[0:15:04] JR: Yes, and these are the 300 variant, I believe. So, it will bring them up to, it says,
close to 50 A220-300s. It will make them the largest A220-300 operator in the world when all
said and done as long as nothing changes, because I believe Delta is the largest operator of the
100 right now. But apparently, airBaltic will be the largest operator in the world of the 300,
because it would be most of their fleet.
[0:15:34] IP: And if you’re flying in the summer, you could be flying on which airline, and still be
on an airBaltic A220.
[0:15:44] JR: I wish that would be the case here in the US. Those are great aircraft. I want an
American flight operated by airBaltic. Can we do that?
[0:15:50] IP: That'd be hilarious. I'll do my very best to see if we can make that work.
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[0:15:53] JR: It's not something we've ever really talked about, but the US carriers really don't
ever do wet leases like that. It's so common in Europe and even Asia, but it is something I don't
think I've ever really seen here in the US. That'd be nice though.
[0:16:10] IP: Yes. That would be nice. That's interesting.
[0:16:11] JR: We'll talk about wet leases again.
[0:16:15] IP: In just a few minutes. But let's finish our order book for the day with Virgin Australia
and Jason, you note sort of, order the –
[0:16:25] JR: Yes. Kind of, sort of. Virgin Australia has some old Focker F100s in its fleet. They
can't operate them forever, probably. I mean, you can operate anything forever, but it's going to
get expensive. But to replace those, Virgin Australia, kind of, sort of, has placed a firm order with
Embraer for eight E190-E2 as a part of its fleet renewal. But the interesting thing is these aircraft
more or less really won't be something you'll find yourself as a Virgin Australia passenger, as
they will be really for the Western Australia charter market. I guess your diamond mines or
whatever it is they dig in the ground for in Western Australia. These will really be primarily for
charter operations for corporations. But I guess they'll end up in the commercial fleet at some
point every now and then, right? Maybe?
[0:17:15] IP: Maybe it's a wet lease.
[0:17:17] JR: It is the Virgin Australia Regional Airlines, VARA, I guess, which is a subsidiary of
Virgin Australia. I'm not quite sure. But it's technically not Virgin Australia, just kind of, sort of.
[0:17:31] IP: Okay.
[0:17:32] JR: Yes. That's different, but good for Embraer, because the E190-E2 family hasn't
sold particularly well compared to its competitors. So, getting a couple sales there in Australia,
that's a nice change.
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[0:17:44] IP: Yes. Okay, let's talk about wet leasing again. And we're also going to talk about
things that we already thought were a thing again. This is a theme this week, I guess. So, the
Russian government has recently amended their laws to make it possible for airlines to wet
lease aircraft in Russia to each other, because apparently that wasn't allowed before.
[0:18:10] JR: And apparently it was so not allowed that it took years and Vladimir Putin's
signature on his desk to amend this into Russian law. Very surprising that Russia was so heavily
against, I guess, wet leases at the time. But when I read this news at first, I thought it was
Russian airlines were not able to wet lease aircraft from foreign carriers, which wouldn't really
make much sense right now, because who's going to lease out an aircraft to a Russian airline?
That's not really a thing right now, but apparently this was Russian airlines were not able to wet
lease aircraft from other Russian airlines.
At this point, I'm sure there are several airlines that are in desperate need of wet leasing
between each other. This flight global article calls out that representatives of Aeroflot and S7
Airlines each express support for exploration of wet leasing aircraft during an international legal
forum last year.
I did find it funny that one of the quotes was saying that this was a widespread concept in
Europe and the USA, which is interesting because we just talked about how it's not really a
thing ever here in the US, at least with commercial airlines. But this makes a ton of sense for the
Russian airlines that are having to scrap together a full fleet, while some others may have fleet
to spare. But yes, apparently Putin himself had to sign off on this and it took years to happen.
[0:19:39] IP: Yes.
[0:19:40] JR: Surprising.
[0:19:42] IP: Maybe there is a student of Russian aviation history or Russian business history
that knows a bit more about this. If you do, email us at podcast@fr24.com, because I'm
interested to know why this wasn't already a thing.
Let's stay in the neighborhood and head over to Belarus, where we now have a sanctioned 767.
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[0:20:05] JR: Interesting. Apparently, the presidential 767-300ER has been added to the list of
assets subject to US sanctions in the latest round of restrictions against the country. Again, that
article brought to you by Flight Global. So basically, if this 767 ends up wandering into US
territory, or I guess a US-friendly territory, they can just go ahead and take it, can't they? I don't
know if it's that easy, but that's kind of –
[0:20:34] IP: But they’re not going. Well, we should cost deep. Someone's going to do, it's
probably him.
[0:20:41] JR: Bringing it back full circle, huh? This would be a real interesting repo. But
apparently, they have other aircraft, including a BBJ2 and a Bombardier Challenger 850. So,
that is going to severely limit where they can take the 767-2. I don't know if the US is really
going to want to repossess, or I guess, what do you call it, when something like a property is
sanctioned?
[0:21:10] IP: Seized.
[0:21:11] JR: Seized. There it is. Seized. So, I don't know if the US would actually seize a
presidential aircraft of another country, but I think this is more of a warning shot saying, “Hey,
you're not allowed to fly that most places anymore. If you do, you might want to think twice
about it.”
[0:21:28] IP: This seems like one of those things where he was already not going to go to these
places because of himself. So, the aircraft's not going to go to those places, although maybe the
aircraft could be going there to pick something else or something.
[0:21:40] JR: Or for maintenance?
[0:21:42] IP: Yes. I mean, that's actually probably really where you're hitting the nail on the head
is that you don't have the ability to perform heavy maintenance on it, which is as we've seen,
maybe they do the heavy maintenance. Maybe they don't do the heavy maintenance. We don't
know. But, yes. That's an interesting point there, Jason.
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Let's head to Canada and talk about poor WestJet, which has 10%, or had 10%. They've got a
couple aircraft back in service now, but they had 16 total aircraft out of service for hail damage,
inspection, and repair. This was an August 5th hailstorm, severe hailstorm in Calgary that
damaged 16 WestJet aircraft, as well as two Cargojet aircraft that were in Calgary along with
other smaller aircraft that were also in the area.
We got an update from WestJet last week, actually, a week ago on the 14th, with some pictures
and video about what happened and how they were resolving the issue, what they were having
to do. I thought that was a really interesting video, and we'll link to the blog post that lists the
aircraft involved on our blog, but also has the video available, because they go through what
they're doing or what they need to do to inspect the aircraft, and there's some cool kind of B-roll
of what the maintenance technicians are doing looking at, it seems like laser scans or
something of where the hail damages on the wings.
But then they also mentioned that they were bringing in technicians from other airlines and from
around Canada. Basically, anybody that they could get to Calgary to help fix these planes, they
were going to. So, I'm good on them.
[0:23:37] JR: Yes. It was good. It's going to be several weeks more, they say, while they are
sourcing specialized equipment and materials to complete these inspections and repairs and
definitely go take a look at the video and pictures because these aircraft are quite beat up. And
anyone living in the South or in the West who is familiar with hail, you know that if there's a hail
storm coming, you're going to do whatever you can to get your car out of the way because cars
can be totaled by hail. Here we have 10 % of a major airline's fleet really damaged by hail.
They're lucky it wasn't more. They were able to get some of their aircraft into hangers to prevent
further damage.
But it is a real interesting piece of news to chew on because this is going to happen again and
it's going to happen elsewhere. What if a hailstorm like this happens in Dallas or Atlanta or LA
Somehow? Probably not LA. But I'm just thinking about the dozens and dozens and dozens of
Delta or American aircraft being impacted by hail and taking weeks or months to repair the
damage, it's going to happen at some point. Storms are getting more frequent. They're getting
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more violent and they're getting longer in duration. We've seen it in the northeast for the last few
summers. Now, we're seeing this in Calgary. It's going to happen at some point.
[0:25:00] IP: What we need is a giant retractable dome for the airport.
[0:25:03] JR: Like a stadium. Perfect.
[0:25:05] IP: Exactly.
[0:25:06] JR: When a storm is coming, you put a giant dome up. You stop everything for six
hours, no big deal.
[0:25:11] IP: No, no, no. You put big wide doors in the side of the dome and then they can just
land on the runway.
[0:25:16] JR: Right. I'm pretty sure that's how miniature Wonderland works.
[0:25:22] IP: Yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about here.
[0:25:24] JR: Exactly. But in all seriousness, this is going to become a bigger problem every
year. It's going to repeat itself and I don’t want to know what’s going to happen to a, let’s say, a
major US airline if there’s a hailstorm in Atlanta or Dallas. It’s going to be immensely impactful,
and this is a good learning experience that unfortunately, WestJet is having to go through.
[0:25:46] IP: It’s also worth noting that in Calgary, they do use aircraft to conduct flights that do
hail mitigation. So, ahead of the storm, they will send up these flights and they will release
things that are designed to prevent hail from forming in that storm.
[0:26:09] JR: So, the opposite of cloud seeding? Cloud deseeding?
[0:26:13] IP: It's kind of like cloud seeding, but it's specific for hail. I need to spend some time
learning more about this because I'm sure it's a fascinating topic. We should have somebody on
the podcast. See, we just record and then ideas come as they come.
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But yes, it'll be interesting to see what happens and how quickly they can get WestJet’s entire
fleet back in. They've been canceling dozens and dozens of flights, unfortunately, every day,
going down slowly, but just not a great position for the airline to be, especially as the busy
summer season winds down. Very unfortunate there.
Also, unfortunate, Canada Jetlines is no more. Not that they were more before, but now they're
really no more, because they hadn't actually been flying themselves for quite some time.
[0:27:07] JR: I think their fleet wasn't even on the continent when it was –
[0:27:10] IP: Nope. They were all in Europe. Still all in Europe, I believe.
[0:27:15] JR: It's interesting. If you go to the Canada Jetline's website, it's as if nothing has
gone wrong. Nothing has changed. You can still plug in cities to book a flight, but all the dates
are shown as an X, so there's nothing. But they just kind of stopped doing things one day.
There's no social media posts. There's nothing. It's like they never – like they left the office one
day and just never went back, which might actually be the case.
[0:27:40] IP: I mean, kind of probably what happened?
[0:27:42] JR: Yes. Possibly. But yes, another COVID-era airline startup bites the dust. This is
becoming a trend.
[0:27:51] IP: I don't like it, but I understand it.
[0:27:54] JR: No, Especially in Canada. We had links go out not too long ago, now Canada
Jetlines. So, we'll see. Hopefully nothing comes next, but I wouldn't bet on that.
[0:28:03] IP: We're running out of Canadian Airlines is what we're doing.
[0:28:06] JR: Well, we're going to end up with probably the two. Whatever's left of WestJet's
fleet and Air Canada.
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[0:28:12] IP: And Air Canada. Okay. We were going to try and mention this three weeks ago,
but we forgot, or I forgot, and that was my fault.
[0:28:25] JR: There was a page break.
[0:28:28] IP: There was a page break in our show notes. Then, last week we had Steve on for
the full show. So, this week, we're going to talk about it. Jason, I know this is near and dear to
your heart and I'm so sorry.
[0:28:41] JR: It is unexpectedly near and dear to my heart, but United will be ending its
Hemisphere magazine publication. I think it's already done. If not already done, it will be
happening quite soon. This is the print version, which first launched in 1992. So, that's about 32
years of the Hemisphere magazine. I like airline magazines. If you're sitting on a flight and
there's no entertainment or you've run out of things to watch, there's always something
interesting in the airline magazine. If not just by flipping to the last few pages to learn about the
fleet or their destinations or something else, there was always something – including really
weird das. Airline magazines always had bizarre ads in the back. Somehow had to be very
intentional about wanting to place an ad towards the end of an airline in-flight magazine.
But I'm pretty sad by this, especially the three perfect days articles that they had, because last
year when I flew to Tokyo and I was there for three days, it happened to be the month, they
were running the three perfect days in Tokyo article. I thought, “Hey, it's meant to be.” But
apparently the articles will live on digitally, but the print magazine will no longer be printed.”
I think it's just kind of sad. I hope some airlines do continue to print these, but I'm not holding my
breath on that.
[0:30:06] IP: Yes. I'm also not going to hold my breath. I think that they're all pretty much on the
way out eventually. I mean, so many people have their own device. How many people are
actually reading them? They take up a lot of weight, costs money to print. I totally get it. But I
agree with Jason. I'm bummed too. It was actually a good magazine, and I like flipping through
the magazine.
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[0:30:30] JR: Yes, especially on a really long flight, like let's say New York to Tokyo or
something. You can't watch another movie because you've already watched seven in a row and
you want to look at something physical. It was just nice to be able to look at something that was
real and had a lot of effort put into it because it's no small thing putting a magazine like that
together. Especially since COVID, a lot of airlines last printed a magazine in March 2020, and
they never came back.
[0:31:00] IP: Yes. Jason, the second-tier, low-cost carriers, they are fighting.
[0:31:06] JR: Oh, they're fighting and the fighting is getting hot in the most unexpected place. If
you live in New Haven, Connecticut, which up until not all that long ago, had basically a
rounding error amount of regional flights, you are just rolling in the low-cost carrier life right now.
So, Avelo Air had its northeast hub in Tweed Airport in New Haven, but Breeze, having
countered of Avelo moving into its hub in Hartford, I believe is what happened here. Breeze is
coming in hot to New Haven, launching 10 routes, which begin in December 10th through 13th of
this year, and it's a pretty wide spectrum of routes. It is Fort Myers, Orlando, West Palm Beach,
Vero Beach, Charleston, South Carolina, Jacksonville, Florida, Norfolk, Virginia, Richmond,
Virginia, Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, Sarasota, Florida, and Breeze through service to
New Orleans. Most of this is multiple days a week. So, you're looking at something like Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. It's not just your, maybe your Saturday-only service.
Some are only two days a week. But I'm really surprised to see Breeze coming in so hot with so
many flights.
While it's good right now that passengers will have choice somewhere where they had no
choice just a couple of years ago, it can't possibly be good in the long haul for the consumer
because Breeze is probably going to lose money battling Avelo. Avelo is going to lose money
countering Breeze coming into its territory. At some point, one or both of these airlines are going
to call it quits and not operate at all. Then we'll be back to having one United flight to Newark out
of New Haven. I don’t know. I don’t even know what else there is there, other than Avelo and
Breeze. I’m not sure if there is anything. Good in the short term, but this just seems spiteful and
bad in the long term. I don’t know.
[0:33:15] IP: Dumping a bunch of capacity to see what sticks and pull the rest.
© 2024 AvTalk 15
AVT 282 Transcript
[0:33:20] JR: Yes. It's probably not too great.
[0:33:24] IP: You know what's not great?
[0:33:26] JR: Let me look at the show notes here. 787 seats that accidentally move when you
push a button that should have a cover over it that isn't working correctly. Then the pilot
accidentally hits the column and the plane goes into a bit of a nose dive for a few seconds.
That's bad, right?
[0:33:42] IP: Exactly. That's bad. That falls into the bad category.
[0:33:46] JR: That is certifiably bad.
[0:33:46] IP: Yes. So bad that the FAA issued an airworthiness directive today that includes all
Boeing 787s. So, the 8, the 9, and the 10. This airworthiness directed was prompted by a report
of uncommanded movement, never good, of the captain's seat in the forward direction that
caused their rapid descent. We're of course referring to a LATAM flight that happened in
between, I believe it was Sydney and Auckland. The aircraft was in between the two cities, and
someone leaned on the switch on the back of the seat. The switch did not have a cap on it, and
therefore the seat moved, pushing the captain's seat forward, which pushed the captain
forward, which pushed the control column forward, and then the airplane went nose down.
Everything was fine.
[0:34:36] JR: There is no one thing that causes an incident. Even with the seat moving, there's
a chain of events.
[0:34:43] IP: Yes. So, the airworthiness directive requires inspections of the seats for a missing
or cracked rock or switch caps and for any of the cracked or non-functional switch cover
assemblies. Then, of course, you have to replace them. That may take a while, a couple
hundred airplanes to go through, and there have been more reports of this happening since the
initial report and very newsworthy report that we talked about with the LATAM aircraft.
© 2024 AvTalk 16
AVT 282 Transcript
So, not great. You can read all about the rocker switch and how the cap is supposed to work in
the airworthiness directive which we will put in the show notes. But the FAA is saying, “Okay,
we've seen enough. Go fix your seats.” Jason?
[0:35:34] JR: Yes?
[0:35:35] IP: I think it's time to call it an episode.
[0:35:36] JR: It is.
[0:35:38] IP: It is.
[0:35:38] JR: It's nice to get back to the regular news and just talk about the silly things that
have happened.
[0:35:45] IP: Enjoy Dallas as much as anyone can, I suppose?
[0:35:50] JR: At least the weather is nice. I'm not melting outside.
[0:35:53] IP: Hey, there you go. I'm going to get back into the rhythm of things, and we'll see
what else happens in the wide world of aviation over the next week, and we'll be with you back
again next week.
This has been episode 282 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik here, as always with –
[0:36:12] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2024 AvTalk 17