AvTalk Episode 242: Quit horsing around back there

AVT 242 Transcript
EPISODE 242
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 242 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:16] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Ian, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about this week.
[0:00:20] IP: Got a great show this week.
[0:00:22] JR: Yeah. We're all over the place from Dubai to Amsterdam to FAA headquarters to –
think we're touching every continent this week.
[0:00:30] IP: We're touching all seven continents to speak on the podcast, and I think we need
to begin right in your backyard and check in with the Boston Center air traffic controllers. I'm
referring to an incident that happened earlier this week when a Air Atlanta Icelandic flight had an
unruly passenger onboard. I want to play you a little bit of the air traffic control audio, courtesy of
our good friends at liveatc.net. Have a quick listen.
[CLIP]
[0:01:00] MALE 1: Atlanta 4592.
[0:01:02] MALE 2: Yes, sir. We are a cargo plane. We have live animal horse onboard the
airplane and the horse managed to escape his stall. We don't have a problem as of flying-wise,
but we need to return back to New York. We cannot get the horse back secure.
[END OF CLIP]
[0:01:19] IP: Jason.
[0:01:20] JR: Yes.
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AVT 242 Transcript
[0:01:22] IP: That's not the usual radio call that you get.
[0:01:25] JR: No, no. That's quite the unruly passenger.
[0:01:28] IP: When you have an unruly passenger.
[0:01:30] JR: I mean, usually when we see these unruly passengers, they're subdued, or
improperly duct taped to a seat, or they fall asleep, like on my recent Spirit flight. This is a little
different. Quite an interesting story. I'm sure something like this has probably happened before,
But my takeaway here is the communication back and forth between ATC and the pilots was
pretty fantastic, I'd say.
[0:01:53] IP: I mean, it was – the thing that gets me about all of these incidents and the thing
that I'm always called back to, and we'll touch a little bit more on the professionalism of air traffic
controllers a little bit later in the show. But the professionalism and the complete nonchalance of
the pilots and the air traffic controllers. There's a horse running around the back of a 747. The
horse weighs the better part of, I guess, we'll take the average and call it a half a ton. That's a
lot of weight to be throwing around an airplane, even an airplane as large as a 747.
I mean, if you're the pilots, first of all, as long as you don't have control issues, you just want to
get on the ground and deal with it then. The, “Hey, we got a horse. It's not paying attention to
directions.” It's not following the directions of a crew member.
[0:02:49] JR: It is disregarding the flight attendants and the seat belt sign.
[0:02:53] IP: The seat belt sign, we left the seat belt sign on on purpose and this is what
happens. Yeah, they said, “Hey, we got to go back to JFK. We're going to dump 20 tons of fuel.
When we're done with that, we would like directions back to JFK and please have the vet meet
us, because the horse is distressed.” If you're a horse traveling inside of a 747, I can
understand how leaving your stall and then being confused as I'll get out while trying to figure
out where you are and what is happening. Yeah, I could see how that would make you a little
nervous if you were the horse.
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AVT 242 Transcript
[0:03:27] JR: Yeah. Transporting live animals like this is a very specialized thing. I think there
are actually entire subsets of some airlines that specialize in this. I think Kalitta has a subgroup
that specializes exactly in transporting horses from A to B. It's a difficult thing. I mean, these are,
as we just said, these are extremely large animals that may not always do exactly what you
want to do. It sounds like, in this case, maybe a latch wasn't secured, or maybe the horse
figured it out and got out. Good. Yeah.
[0:03:58] IP: We don't know how many horses there were and were they in cahoots. Was this a
conspiracy? We don’t know.
[0:04:05] JR: They wanted to go back to JFK. They really like it here in New York and they
wanted to come back. We don't know the outcome. We assume, hopefully, everything was okay.
JFK has –
[0:04:15] IP: There has been no reporting otherwise.
[0:04:19] JR: The pilots did request a vet on arrival at the ramp, which is actually something
that is a thing at JFK. I believe it's called the arc where animals being transported go in or out
from that. Basically, an animal terminal that they do have vets on staff, I believe, might be – I
don't know if they're on staff, or contracted, but if they're going in or out of any airport in the
Northeast, that's probably the airport they want to be doing that, which might be why they
diverted back to JFK and they did go to Boston, or somewhere else a little closer, because they
were quite a bit out there already.
They were over Martha's Vineyard dumping fuel. They were quite aways. I did find it funny that
ATC directed them out eastward to dump fuel to then double back to come west to get back to
JFK, but got to do what you got to do. Yeah, just really fascinating to hear that play back and
forth between ATC and the pilots. Just another day, right?
[0:05:11] IP: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that the controller tried to follow up later on. But they were
probably dealing – if it was the beginning of their shift, or not the end of their shift, I mean, they
probably had another couple hundred flights to deal with that day.
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[0:05:25] JR: Yeah. That really explains why, and I haven't really listened to ATC in New York in
quite a while, at least extensively. Man, the speed at which the arrivals controller was talking
was fast.
[0:05:38] IP: Yeah. I found that very interesting, because that also caught my ear, too, because
the idea is that the controllers speak in such a way that it is understandable, that you can
understand the directions. I am a native English speaker and I barely understood his directions.
[0:05:55] JR: Yet, the pilot on the flight understood every one of the commands. I don't know if
this was a recording clarity issue. Maybe we're not getting the full fidelity of this antiquated
analog signal, but they didn't skip a beat. I'm listening to this like, I know what he said, but not –
I know what he's saying here. Like, there is a call sign and then an altitude and then a speed,
maybe a heading, but some of the commands I didn't fully understand.
Like, I knew he was saying things, but I didn't hear the altitude assignment, or the speed
assignment. Bless him, the pilot of that flight had no issue comprehending what the controllers
were saying. That's experience for you.
[0:06:35] IP: Yeah. These pilots, they were flying – Air Atlanta Icelandic is a mostly cargo. They
do have some passenger aircraft, but mostly cargo airline. This was flying for network aviation,
but the Air Atlanta Icelandic pilots. I'm sure the horses probably aren't even on the top 10 list of
strangest, or most unusual things that they've transported in their careers. I'm sure this was just,
I mean, maybe not just another day at the office, but it sure sounded like just another day at the
office when you listen to the full audio there. Good on them for getting back.
A few things that people brought up on social media to us, I think we've definitely talked about a
little bit before, but the fuel dumping took place at 22,000 feet. At that height, the fuel is going to
aerosolize before it hits the ground, so there's not going to be fuel reaching the ground as fuel. I
know that was concern for the fine people at then Tuckett and Martha's Vineyard. The other
thing was, oh, somebody pointed out that there was a not tabloid publication that said the
aircraft plunged thousands of feet. I mean, no, they were instructed to descend from, I think they
made it up to 33,000 feet was the max height, or max altitude. Or 31,000 feet. They made up to
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31,000 feet was the maximum altitude, and then they were instructed to descend back down to
flight level 220. Back down to 22,000 feet.
Basically, getting the aircraft out of everyone else's way so that they could return to New York.
They didn't want them flying in anyone else's way. Yes, 31 down to 22 is a big descent, but there
was no plummeting, there was no plunging, there was no precipitous anything. I just thought
that was – the horse story is good enough. You don't need to make it like, the horse grabbed the
controls of the plane and plunged the aircraft towards the sea. That's not what happened.
[0:08:44] JR: I mean, maybe we don't know that.
[0:08:46] IP: That's true. We don't know. We don't know how many horses were involved in this.
[0:08:49] JR: We don't know if horses can fly airplanes. It’s never been done.
[0:08:53] IP: Someone's going to email us and then like, “No, actually, they tested this in the
50s.”
[0:08:56] JR: Well, it’s a long time. What didn't they do?
[0:09:00] IP: If you know of any horses flying any planes, please email us at podcastfr24.com.
[0:09:05] JR: Yeah, that inbox is going to stay empty, I think.
[0:09:08] IP: Probably. Let us continue our discussion of air traffic controllers, but switch gears
to the report that came out today. It was submitted to the FAA by the National Airspace System
Safety Review Team. We spoke with a member of the safety review team, Robert Sumwalt,
who's the former chair of the NTSB, before they commenced their work earlier this summer. We
asked him at the time, what are you going to look at and what's going to be the point? He said,
“We're going to look at everything and we're going to come up with some recommendations for
making things better.”
[0:09:46] JR: That's exactly what they did.
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[0:09:47] IP: That's exactly what they did. I've had time to go through the report and I'm still just
a gog at –
[0:09:54] JR: There's a lot. There is a lot. I pulled out some excerpts and there's some good,
some frightening, some bad. They dropped some hard truths in here. They did not hold back.
They are not government employees. They are not writing this as the FAA. They are writing this
for the FAA, making recommendations. They start that going, generally, the SRT, which is the
safety recommendation team, I guess, found that the ATO, which is the air traffic organization,
operates a robust and well-functioning safety management system in integrated collection of
policies, procedures and programs used to manage safety risk in the provision of air traffic
management, navigation and surveillance services.
The ATO also enjoys a just safety culture where employees feel free to report safety issues
without fear of reprisal, or discipline and voluntary safety reporting programs are in use and
reporting valuable insight into the operation. This is good. This is saying that the FAA and the
US air system, specifically the FAA, has a good safety culture in that people are not afraid to
report safety issues. Pilots are not afraid to report safety issues and they do quite a bit. This is
great news that no one is afraid that they're going to be reprimanded, or disciplined if they bring
a safety lapse up to management's attention. That's great. That is one of the most positive
things you can see here. It takes a, well, let's pull a quote from that, not tabloid before. It
plummets from there in, doesn't it?
[0:11:28] IP: Yeah. I mean, I've got a paragraph here that I think sums up where we're headed.
[0:11:34] JR: I’ll bet we pulled the same paragraph, but go on.
[0:11:35] IP: Yeah. Through the intensive process? Is that the paragraph you’re thinking?
[0:11:39] JR: No, it's a different one, actually.
[0:11:40] IP: Ah, okay.
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[0:11:40] JR: You shoot and then I'll shoot.
[0:11:42] IP: This is the letter from the safety review summary. We're not even in the summer
yet, to Administrator Whitaker, who has recently taken the reins of the FAA. They say, through
this intensive process, which was the process of working through all of this information, all the
data, all the analyses and everything like that, through this intensive process, the SRT identified
several significant challenges that inject risk into the National Air Space System. I think that's
the important thing here is that the overriding theme of this is things are done in such a way, or
situations exist in such a way that we're taking what should be much safer situations and
injecting risk into them, because of poor policy choices, or because of poor implementation, or
because of lack of funding.
I'll get back into the quote and say, “We are making recommendations to address the areas of
process integrity, staffing, facilities, equipment and technology. Recommendations are also
made regarding inadequate, inconsistent funding, because of its criticality to affecting
meaningful change in other areas.” Who knew that if you provided people with money to do the
things that you've asked them to do, they will be able to do those things?
[0:13:01] JR: Ah, yeah. But part of that is spending the money wisely, which really hasn't been a
theme at the FAA in the past couple decades. Now, the summary of recommendations breaks
down into four distinct categories. Process integrity, staffing, facilities, equipment and
technology and funding. Some of these are easily solvable. throw money at the problem. Throw
political will at the problem and problems just go away. The rest of these are pretty –
[0:13:30] IP: They're simple. I don't know if they're easy.
[0:13:32] JR: Yeah. They're simple topics, but they're not easy solutions. let's go with process
integrity because it's number one on their list. There are a lot of problems there. Their
recommendations, there are five establishing AOV as dual reporting entities. There's a lot of
jargon here. There's a lot of – it goes on about a lot of stuff. But what it boils down to, and I
pulled this quote out. This quote, I think, summed it up very well. Maintenance and sustainment
of the ATOs internal processes and systems are challenged by a lack of adequate staffing and
funding.
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Limited organizational capacity is devoted overwhelmingly to air traffic management. While this
is an appropriate prioritization of resources, it detracts from other, sometimes longer terms,
safety, critical areas such as safety, system deployment and maintenance, training oversight
and the monitoring of process integrity. This generates an accumulation of deficits and can
ultimately affect the management of risk in the system. That's exactly what you said, that they
are injecting risk that need not be there into the FAA, because processes are messy, they're
sloppy, things are really not – It's not a well-oiled machine and that creates risk where there just
shouldn't be.
[0:14:44] IP: Yeah. I mean, you don't have to read it, but if you want to, it's fascinating, the
things they call out and the recommendations they make, especially if you follow things as
closely as Jason and I do and hopefully, bring some of this to our audience. We've linked it in
the show notes and I'm also, as I work my way through everything, trying to understand exactly
where the recommendations are coming from, because there's a lot of back story to each and
every recommendation. There will be a longer form blog post, hopefully up by – we're recording
Wednesday. It'll hopefully, be up by Friday as well to go along with the podcast if you're
interested in more –
[0:15:21] JR: Get this guy some coffee, because it's going to take a while. There are a couple
of more things I want to pull out here, one from each of these. We talked about this earlier and
said, what? I want to name some names, but interesting tidbits. The committee here goes on to
say that ATC buildings are aging poorly with no replacement plan. When these buildings age,
they break down, things go wrong, that creates more AT0 incidents as air conditioning breaks
and fire suppression systems break, or in Chicago's case, someone tries to burn down the
building.
[0:15:49] IP: Slightly different.
[0:15:50] JR: That’s a problem. Slightly different, but there's no plan to replace these buildings.
Some of them, they said, if you start replacing every ARTCC building, I believe, once a year,
every year, starting in 2025, by the time you're done, some of these buildings will be a century
old. That's a problem. The older a building gets, the harder and more expensive it is to maintain.
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The next one, I think we talked about this a little bit, they go on to say that ADSB, which is all
near and dear to our hearts at this podcast, of course, and GPS performance-based navigation,
they were designed to lessen the dependence of legacy navigation and surveillance would be
primary radar. The old-school way of keeping track of aircraft was by radar. It was supposed to
be supplemented, or replaced by ADSB. That hasn't really happened.
I quote, “The FAA has not been able to capitalize significantly on the potential of these
technologies, because politically powerful users have not obtained the equipment, or modified
their operations to enable them to stop relying on legacy navigation systems.” The FAA has
consistently been prohibited from restricting airspace, or even parts of it to users equipped to
utilize the FAA's most efficient technologies. This, I think, is particularly interesting. They go into
it back and forth about ADSB in versus ADSB out and how the promises of next gen and ADSB
just really haven't materialized, because FAA hasn't been able to sunset its antiquated old radar,
or beacon technology. It hasn't been able to really see the benefits of next gen, because not all
users of the airspace are required to use it.
They point specifically to the military, which I think is interesting because if this report were
written by the FAA itself. I don't think we would have really seen them calling out the military like
that, but this is an independent panel charged by the FAA to do this. Really interesting to see
that truthfulness coming out of it saying, “Hey, there are political forces at play here preventing
the FAA from being as efficient as it could be.”
[0:17:54] IP: Yeah. It's really interesting that the efficiency feeds into the funding issues,
because now you have all these legacy systems that need support, that no longer have a
manufacturer. The manufacturer has been merged into – it was built by who knows what that
now has different owners 10 years later in this report, or 20 years later, or 50 years later for
some of these. Some of these things are so old that spare parts don't exist anymore. The FAA
can't make their own.
[0:18:29] JR: They can't make their own, because they don't have the rights to do that. Literally,
there are things that they cannot repair, because not only does the part not exist, but they can't
even make their own, which is just wild.
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[0:18:41] IP: They've had to spend 700 million dollars on the ADSB rollout, which has been
extremely useful as this report points out in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, where radar
coverage has always been sparse. Then they still need to support all of these, and the report is
keen to call this out, rarely used ancient systems that they've been forced to continue to
maintain.
Money that they could be spending to redo other systems, or upgrade buildings, or hire more
qualified ATCOs. That's not being used in that way, because it's being used to maintain all of
these legacy systems. I mean, so it really just starts to pile up as there are so many things that
could be done and that should be done that are being held back to where you're ending up with
you're spending on three separate legacy systems, because you have politically connected
users, the military with congressional mandates saying, “Oh, no. You need to keep these going.”
[0:19:49] JR: Yeah. Some of the aspects of this report are scary. There's no real answers. This
report was not designed to create answers, or come up with answers. There's just a lot of
uncertainty here of, hey, the FAA is really dependent on ancient technology that is ridiculously
expensive to keep operational. Forget about enhancing it. Just keeping it operational is a daily
battle. Even if we start replacing this stuff now, some of the equipment seems like it's going to
be in service for a century at this rate, without really having a firm replacement plan.
This goes to some of the back and forth of the FAA, or really, government procurement would
rather rip and replace everything, instead of incrementally improving what they have, which
really is disappointing that so much of their old technology has had to be kept in service. If you
really want to dig into this 52-page report, we will, and they have all of the appendixes and all of
the breakdowns of what the terminologies. If you want to read it, we will link to it. Grab a drink.
It's going to take a while.
[0:20:56] IP: I'll sum it up with one of the concluding lines from the report. “At current funding
levels, the FAA has insufficient resources to carry out its portfolio of responsibilities.”
[0:21:08] JR: I mean, name a government organization that doesn't have that problem. It's
usually so in your face to the general public as it is here with the FAA.
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[0:21:18] IP: You would think that one organization that was critical to safety, and so publicly
focused might receive a better treatment from appropriations. I guess, that's not the case.
[0:21:29] JR: No. I would like to say, I just love how straightforward and how truthful they were
in this report. I mean, even so, they say, in some respects, the challenge of aging equipment
was worsened by the FAA's next gen initiative, which was announced in 2007. LIKE, there are
ways that next gen actually made things worse, which is just really got to take stock of what's
going on here at the FAA [inaudible 0:21:51]. The new administrator has his hands full, let's
say that.
[0:21:56] IP: The FAA responded to the submission of this work by saying that they welcomed
the team's findings and they look forward to exploring the report more. I bet they do.
[0:22:07] JR: Mm-hmm.
[0:22:08] IP: Let's talk about some folks who have probably been fired by now. This report from
Russian investigators certainly is not going to help their case.
[0:22:21] JR: No. Not at all.
[0:22:22] IP: Jason, what did Russian investigators call the actions of the crew of the Ural
Airlines fight that landed in a field, because they ran out of fuel?
[0:22:31] JR: Apparently, the term used was unreasonable, which is not a term you throw
around too lightly. Apparently, the Russian investigators have issued a preliminary report that
they said the crew acted unreasonably and their diversion to divert, having incorrectly estimated
the fuel required after failing to take into account the aircraft's extended landing gear. They also
went on to note that, yeah, the aircraft could have landed just fine at its original destination
airport. There was no reason to divert.
Diverting was unreasonable, giving the circumstances of the landing gear and I think all the
flaps and slats being deployed, it was in its landing configuration with the hydraulic system out
due to a seemingly just run-of-the-mill hose broke situation. Diverting and ditching did not need
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to happen, especially ditching at a field. None of this should have happened. We will await the
Russian investigation's final report, which who knows how long that could take, but the initial
report here, the preliminary report deemed it an unreasonable action by the crew, which I think
anyone really looking at this situation from day one, we all jumped to the same conclusion,
because none of this seemed correct. None of it lined up. Sure enough, this should not have
happened.
The praise, as I said, initially after this happened, the praise for the crew in this situation should
probably have been tempered a bit, because they put themselves in that situation, except for
the cabin crew. Hats off to them. They deserve whatever applause and hopefully, bonuses came
their way.
[0:24:07] IP: There you go. Well, in a normal week, without any unruly horses, we probably
would have started the show with this news, but we've finally gotten to the Dubai Air Show.
[0:24:23] JR: Not saying it's not an important air show.
[0:24:25] IP: No, no.
[0:24:26] JR: There were a lot of orders. Let's be clear.
[0:24:29] IP: Yeah, this was Boeing’s show, and Airbus was just along for the ride.
[0:24:33] JR: They showed up.
[0:24:34] IP: They showed up. 297 Boeing airplanes ordered, 61 Airbus, and 20 ATRs.
[0:24:42] JR: That's cute.
[0:24:44] IP: Emirates going with top billing for a top-up order of 90 firm orders, though we can
discuss how firm, firm orders are to Emirates in a bit. 777Xs, 55 777-9s, and 35 Dash 8s. That's
the headline order there. Though there are some interesting orders. I think Ethiopian Airlines'
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first MAX order since the crash a few years ago, ordering 20 firm, plus 21 options. Ethiopian
also choosing 11 A350-900, so adding to its fleet there. Let's see, what else is of note –
[0:25:26] JR: Egypt Air.
[0:25:27] IP: Egypt Air, yeah.
[0:25:29] JR: 10 A350-900s. It seems like Egypt Air just must operate every aircraft type.
They're the new Lufthansa, I think. Yeah, that's fun. SCAT ordering seven 737-8s. Emirates,
apparently, ordered five more 787s. I didn't see that before.
[0:25:45] IP: They did. Just a little top-up.
[0:25:47] JR: Yeah, just a little something on the top. To me, the most interesting order, by far,
forget the 777X, forget the 20 top-up order for the A220 for airBaltic, that's interesting, but they
only have A220s, so what else do they get for order? What is by far the most interesting, is the
3787-9s for flydubai. That is, by far, the most interesting order, subjectively, to me, probably
objectively. flydubai only operates 737s. I believe, only the –
[0:26:19] IP: Not for long.
[0:26:21] JR: Yeah. Only the 800, the MAX 8 and 9. They may have had a couple of 700s, I
don't know. But it's exclusively an all Boeing 737 airline right now. These are new orders. These
are not shifted over from Emirates, or anything. This is a fresh order for 30 787-9s, and it really
changes the game for flyduai as an airline. We've seen this before with the likes of WestJet
going for the 787, or Norwegian going for the 787 when it was primarily a short, medium-haul 73
operator. In this case, it is going to be particularly interesting for flydubai, because they are in
such a position where they could operate pretty much anywhere in the world out of Dubai with
this aircraft. It's going to be exceptionally interesting to see how it either supplements the
existing Emirates network, or adds on to maybe destinations that Emirates doesn't fly to with
wide-body capacity.
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This is going to be one really, interestingly, to keep an eye on for a number of years. I don't
know when they're taking delivery of these aircraft. I don't think it's going to be tomorrow, or
anytime in the immediate future, but it's going to be an interesting one to watch.
[0:27:29] IP: Yeah. I think the other interesting bit about this is that it also opens up cargo to
flydubai. Having been an all-737 operator, continuing up until the delivery of the first of these
aircraft, they don't really have any cargo capacity. Now with the 787s, it not only gives them a
wide-body fleet, a healthy wide-body fleet, too. I mean, 30 firm orders. Then opens up a cargo
market for them in a market that is certainly already a healthy cargo. I mean, Dubai is certainly a
healthy cargo market. It'd be interesting to see how those 787s get used for a variety of
reasons. It'll be nice to see what they do with them. Also, what do they do with the cabin?
Because flydubai has a very nice 737 cabin.
[0:28:17] JR: They also have some very sparkling 737 cabin. That's the interesting thing with
flydubai. They range anywhere from maximum capacity, 189-seat 737-800s to 737 MAX 9s with
full flat seat. Multiple different types of full flat premium cabin. We don't know how they're going
to outfit their 787s. What we do know is that it's going to be fun to watch, and I'm excited for
that.
[0:28:45] IP: I'm excited as well.
[0:28:47] JR: Yeah.
[0:28:48] IP: Let's talk about some other news that came out of the show. Tim Clark was
speaking, so of course, there was just absolutely brilliant quotes come out of that man's mouth. I
mean that both in a semi-facetious way, but also in a legitimately awesome way. His take on the
industry is always one that I'm keen to hear.
[0:29:10] JR: Well, now that Akbar Al Baker is no longer the CEO, or the head honcho of Qatar
Airways, or probably most outspoken, most listened to head of an airline, I would say.
[0:29:21] IP: I don't know if there's anyone who knows the business quite like Tim Clark knows
the business. He was speaking on a variety of issues, but I took his comments about the
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A350-1000 to be particularly interesting. Basically, Emirates, because there was a soft
expectation, I think that Emirates might place an order for the A350 at the Dubai Air Show, and
they didn't. Clark says, the airplane's not good enough. It's just simply not good enough for what
we need to take.
[0:29:47] JR: Spicy take. Read the quote.
[0:29:49] IP: It needs the – well, I'll get there. The aircraft needs to have better engines. The
engines need to have more time on the wing. The maintenance cost needs to be right at that
amount of time on the wing, and it probably needs more thrust. He's talking about the Rolls-
Royce Trent XWB-97, which powers the A350-1000. He was not critical of Qantas' choice for
the A350-1000 for the Project Sunrise flights, but laid out the physics, I guess, or the engine
performance requirements behind that choice and said, “Look, those engines are going to be
working really hard. If we worked the engines that hard in the environment in which Emirates
operates, it would not work for us, and we would probably lose – we would lose three quarters
of time. They would last a quarter as long as we need them to.” Here's the quote. “We whack
these airplanes around the skies, full up all the time.”
[0:30:46] JR: He's not wrong. The utilization –
[0:30:47] IP: He’s not wrong.
[0:30:47] JR: - with Emirates is quite high. The operating conditions in Dubai are as extreme as
they get, I would say. Yeah, then again, he is also the same person that is still rallying Airbus to
do an A380neo, which is not going to happen. This seems like a bit of bluster, but maybe not.
It's interesting.
[0:31:13] IP: One could argue that a higher thrust Trent XWB put on the wing of the A380 could
really be what he's after for the long term.
[0:31:24] JR: Maybe. He's not going to get it, but maybe. I want to hear his take on the Pratt &
Whitney GTF. If he's saying this about the A350-1000, I can't imagine what he would be saying
about the GTF issues, of which does not impact Emirates in any way, I guess. They're off the
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hook there. If he's not happy with Airbus's latest pride and joy, I can't imagine he'd have too
many positive things to say about the A220, or the A320 series right now.
[0:31:53] IP: Yeah. The only other thing I wanted to talk about as far as the Dubai Air Show
goes is Jason wrote off airBaltic because they have A220s and they ordered some more. I want
to point out for just for milestone's sake, that this order brings them over, or to a 100 aircraft in
the fleet. CEO Martin Gauss has said that that's their goal is to get to a 100 aircraft fleet. I don't
care about that, other than the fact that by the time airBaltic has a 100 aircraft, they might be
able to wet lease them out to a 100 different airlines for a season.
[0:32:27] JR: They would need to wet lease a 100 airplanes themselves.
[0:32:30] IP: That could just be fascinating to see where those aircraft end up actually flying if
airBaltic has that many aircraft to play with.
[0:32:37] JR: One thing we did not get at the Dubai Air Show is the mythical, rumored, long, not
appearing order for Airbus airplanes from Turkish airlines. That is still pending board approval,
or something. I don’t know.
[0:32:52] IP: Maybe. Something.
[0:32:54] JR: It didn't happen. It will happen at some point, apparently, but it will not be at the
Dubai Air Show.
[0:33:00] IP: We wait for Farnborough, I guess next year.
[0:33:03] JR: It will happen soon. Yeah, we'll just have to keep waiting, because that order has
been kicked around for a while now.
[0:33:11] IP: We'll continue to wait and see. The Dutch government has said, “Ah, we were just
kidding. You can keep all your slots and flights and don't pay any attention to us.”
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[0:33:22] JR: You know what instills confidence in the traveling public? Flip-flopping. I just love
when a government meddles in a thing and then says, “No, you can't fly here. We're cutting our
flights. No, just kidding. We didn't really mean any of that.” This whole situation is just bonkers.
Apparently, the reduction in slots will not come into effect in the 2024 summer season to which
many airlines are very happy about, including JetBlue, who will apparently, not be exiled from
Amsterdam. They applied quite a bit of pressure with the US DOT, so we don't really know what
spurred the reversal from the Dutch government here. I did want to point out that it is just
bizarre, the communication coming out of Schiphol here, who seems to really be rallying for this
reduction in flight.
[0:34:06] IP: The airport itself, yes, has really been rallying.
[0:34:09] JR: Counter to its goal of being an airport, the whole thing is a little confusing. The
quote here is, “The government's experimental regulation is being suspended. This means that
the maximum of nearly half a million flights no longer applies. We are disappointed by this
development, seeing as the regulatory scheme gave local residents clarity and certainty.”
Here we are with an airport saying, we are disappointed that more flights are going to happen.
It's really, I think, a unique situation where I can't name any other airport in the world that's
saying, “Oh, man. We're getting all these flights back. This is disappointing.” This is usually their
goal to increase the number of flights sustainably. Not saying, “We're disappointed that more
flights are going to – or the same number of flights as last year is going to happen.” The whole
situation is just really quite bizarre.
[0:35:01] IP: What happened in the last few weeks, we talked about the DOT approving the
complaints. The EU also warned the Netherlands that they would be bringing a complaint in, I
guess, I don't know enough about EU parliamentary governance. But apparently, there is a time
period when you can complain.
[0:35:24] JR: That's every day for me.
[0:35:26] IP: The European Commission was warning the Netherlands that they would not be in
compliance with European regulations. Basically, the open skies agreements that the EU has
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with the US in particular. It seems like, that pressure is what made the Netherlands back up.
Both the US and the FAA telling Dutch airlines, “You need to let us know what your plans are, so
we can screw with them.”
Then the European Commission basically saying, “Don't do that, because it violates our
regulations and then you'll get in trouble with us, too.” It seems that the Dutch have walked it out
back. The stated goal was to reduce the noise at the airport by 15%. KLM said, “We're going to
do that with new aircraft.”
[0:36:12] JR: Just give us a decade.
[0:36:14] IP: Yeah. That argument doesn't really hold a lot of water. But the idea of just
unilaterally cutting thousands of flights in a single season without really any backup plan
seemed to be unworkable from the beginning. We'll see what happens next, I guess.
[0:36:32] JR: Well, it is a little disappointing here is it's not just the flight cap restriction being
overturned, or rethought. It's everything else that they wanted to do, which they said was a part
of their eight-point plan. And so, they won't be able to move forward also with the ban on private
flights, the ban on noisiest aircraft and the night closure of the airport. It is a little disappointing
that they're not able to stick it to the private aviation sector, less so for, I think we talked about
this, banning the noisiest aircraft, most of which didn't even exist anymore, or it was just a weird
list with things like the AN225 can't fly to Schiphol anymore when Russia blew up the only
example. A little odd there. But the entire plan is now caput, rather than just the flight cap. That's
a little disappointing, because anytime you limit private aviation, I'm a little excited because it's
not fair. They’d taken up all our slots like that.
[0:37:31] IP: Let's go back across the Atlantic Ocean over to Toronto, where an air Canada
flight landing from Tokyo's Haneda Airport encountered something?
[0:37:42] JR: Read the words in the show notes.
[0:37:44] IP: We have it listed in the show notes as air Canada's wibbly-wobbly landing. I think
that's an apt description.
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[0:37:51] JR: I don't know what else to say about it, other than I don't know if there will be a
report, or anything issued, because nothing really happened. The aircraft went back into service
the next day as it normally does in its rotation. Coming in from Haneda, came in as AC2. Went
back out as what? AC1. Just went right back out. Back to one normally. It may not have even
been a hard landing. It was probably a stone's throw away from potentially being a very nasty
situation if – could have been looking at an Asiana situation at SFO, where if the wing dug into
the ground that aircraft was going to have a bad day. All is well that ends well, and potentially,
don't want to jump to conclusions, but potentially, kudos to the crew for really wrangling that
aircraft back into control, because if you skip a few frames, you wouldn't even know anything
happened.
[0:38:44] IP: No. I don't know if we'll see a report. Like Jason said, there was nothing wrong
with the aircraft. I assume it was noted and Air Canada maintenance said everything looks
good.
[0:38:56] JR: I mean, they probably needed to change out a few seat cushions, because wow.
[0:39:00] IP: That might be true. Yeah.
[0:39:01] JR: There's a maintenance log there probably somewhere, but not for what you think.
[0:39:07] IP: Let's go to an incident where there's definitely a maintenance log for this one. This
was a GOL flight that was looked like to be holding at the end of the runway, waiting to depart
and adding power to the engines and it added pieces of the runway onto its horizontal stabilizer.
[0:39:26] JR: Yeah. Looks like, the runway just gave up and said, “No, I don't want to deal with
this.” It just departed the ground and entered the horizontal stabilizer, unfortunately creating
quite a bit of mess behind the aircraft. The runway is in pieces. This happens. We've seen this
before. It'll happen again. Usually, you don't get video like this of it happening. Unless, it's like a
– I believe, the last time I saw this, I think it happened. I'm pinging a memory from 15 years ago.
Didn’t this happened in a Mythbusters episode when they used call in a 747 and it ripped up a
piece of the runway. Or am I making that up?
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[0:40:01] IP: It probably happened.
[0:40:02] JR: Okay.
[0:40:03] IP: That sounds like something that would happen, or a Top Gear episode, something.
[0:40:07] JR: Yeah, something like that. One of these shows I've watched with a freighter 747
chopped up a bunch of the runway when they were doing some sort of thing. Pretty sure that
happened.
[0:40:19] IP: A Mythbusters episode where they were talking about driving in a car in back of a
running engine is what that, what I recall. Now, we'll check down that. If we can track down the
episode, it'll go in the show notes.
[0:40:33] JR: Okay.
[0:40:34] IP: It is time for our weekly check-in with the venerable, or not so venerable, Pratt &
Whitney 1100G engine.
[0:40:40] JR: It's still bad.
[0:40:42] IP: This week's news comes to us from Cebu Pacific Airlines, which will ground up to
20 aircraft next year as it seeks to mitigate engine issues. Its efforts include not growing as fast
as they wanted to. Slightly related news, possibly, probably related news. Air Arabia has chosen
engines for its incoming A320neos. Jason, I will give you one guess as to which engines they
have not chosen.
[0:41:11] JR: Man. I have a feeling, Pratt & Whitney probably didn't come out on top this time.
[0:41:15] IP: They did not come out on top. Air Arabia has, in fact, chosen the CFM LEAP 1A
engines to power their A320neo family aircraft.
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[0:41:26] JR: Yeah. Probably a prudent choice.
[0:41:28] IP: Probably. We talked about the launch of the reinvention of Mexicana in the context
of we absolutely did not understand why they're doing this, what they're trying to do. Basically
thinking that the Mexican president is trying to kill off Aeromexico somehow. Well, they're not
going to do it with the 737-800s that they initially plan to do it with. They're going to start with a
Embraer E145.
[0:41:58] JR: No.
[0:41:59] IP: That doesn't sound right.
[0:42:00] JR: There's no worse aircraft that they can – I mean, maybe some old turbo prop. But
an E145. This is some sort of joke, right?
[0:42:09] IP: They're painting it. The registration on the aircraft, as shown in the photograph in
the paint hanger, is XAVGQ. It says Mexicana on the side.
[0:42:26] JR: Oh, man. They couldn't even –
[0:42:27] IP: I don’t know what to do.
[0:42:28] JR: - some old E170, or something. An E145 is just something to everyone involved.
[0:42:36] IP: They've got quite the route network mapped out. You can check. I don't know if
we've talked about this, but we've begun a new weekly series on the FlightRadar24 blog that
includes updates from five separate regions around the world each month. Each month sees an
update for all five regions. This week's is the focus on Latin America. We certainly talk about the
route plan for Mexicana. Whether or not that actually comes to fruition, totally different story. But
you can see where they want to fly on the blog this week. There'll be a link in the show notes
there.
[0:43:10] JR: Well, at least an E145 won't pose much of a threat, terrible [inaudible 0:43:14].
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[0:43:15] IP: Let's talk about a more capable aircraft, a newer Embraer. The E195-E2 is now
certified at London City for the steep approach, the five and a half degree approach, rather than
the standard three degree approach.
[0:43:29] JR: The largest aircraft to be ever certified for the steep approach into London City. I
originally did not know this. I thought, oh, the A318 has to be the biggest. Now this has just
overtaken that award for largest aircraft, now that the A318 rest in peace at BA. No, the E195-
E2 is actually significantly bigger than the A318. This is actually newsworthy.
[0:43:56] IP: There you go. The trials that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, where
Boeing is flying a 737 MAX 10 around and having a NASA DCA fly behind it as part of research
into what is the chemical composition of SAF contrails compared to jet 1A contrails. How do
they differ? What's going on there? Well, we've got the first results.
As it turns out, those contrails generated from the burning of SAF seems to be positive.
Sustainable aviation fuel seems to have lower suit emissions, which are important, and also, a
reduction in particular emissions and ice crystals and contrails. An interesting initial findings, and
we'll have much more as these final reports come out.
[0:44:50] JR: Yeah, this is good news. This article comes to us from Runway Girl Network,
which is oddly the only place I've seen this article published so far. But they pull out a quote
from the report that says, the set emissions from the SAF are dramatically and noticeably
different than with jet A1. That's a great result. They're not mincing words there. The words
dramatically and noticeably are not tossed around by scientists, willy-nilly. That's some pretty
firm statement there.
They still have to, and I quote, “Work through the data for probably the next year to really put
out a final report.” Initially, this is great proof that SAF isn't just marketing nonsense for the most
part. There are different types of sustainable aviation fuels. Not all are great, but in this case, it
seems pretty proof positive that SAF is a great stepping stone to something better, because it's
what we can do right now.
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[0:45:40] IP: Yeah. The feedstock remains the key to how sustainable “SAF” is. That'll be
interesting to see how well things move forward. We come to the part of the show where we
quickly move through things that Jason wants to talk about, purely because they rhyme.
[0:45:57] JR: How often do you get to say SAS A350 to MAS, right? They're almost the same
letters, but Malaysian Air will be taking one of the A350s that SAS has shed throughout
bankruptcy. I just thought that's interesting. Malaysian Air has an eclectic fleet, let's say. They've
got a lot of airplanes from a lot of different operators, but now SAS will be one of those A350s,
which is disappointing because I really liked SAS’s A350, and I'm much more likely to fly SAS
than Malaysian Air, which is, what are you going to do? It's good to see they got home and
they're not just sitting in the desert anymore.
[0:46:37] IP: Yeah. That aircraft was formerly registered SCRSB and has now been re-
registered into a Malaysian registration and has flown from Victorville to Kuala Lumpur. They got
the airplane.
[0:46:51] JR: Hey, I've been on that airplane. That's awesome.
[0:46:54] IP: There you go.
[0:46:55] JR: 2021. I flew it from Newark to Stockholm. I have a vested interest in this story that
I didn't know about.
[0:47:01] IP: Excellent.
[0:47:02] JR: Yeah. What else we got? This is my section. I'll keep on going. ITA, Italy's favorite
airline took delivery of its first A321neo, distinctly not an A321neo LR, which is interesting,
because I thought they were. But oddly, it has a cabin that you would think would be an LR, but
it's not. It’s just a 321neo. It has a full-fat premium business class, a very nice-looking business
class, a full premium economy, an extra legroom cabin and an economy cabin, of course. It's
really a three and a half cabin aircraft, but it's not flying to destinations that you would often see
a 321neo fly over the Atlantic, like Dulles, or to Boston, or even Newark. Ian, do you know what
the first destination of their brand-new aircraft is?
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[0:47:52] IP: I know it was supposed to be Tel Aviv.
[0:47:55] JR: It's not anymore. It's London Heathrow.
[0:47:58] IP: Yes. The old four-class. To be fair, Singapore operates the A350 between London
and Milan, I think.
[0:48:09] JR: Something like that.
[0:48:10] IP: No, no. Sorry, it was Copenhagen. I'm still stuck on the last story. It was
Copenhagen.
[0:48:14] JR: And Iberia flies whatever they have between Madrid and London, which often
includes – it used to include an A340-600, these days an A350, but this is an aircraft that really
won't be flying more than maybe three to four hours and has a cabin that you would expect to
see on a long-haul flight for 12 hours. It's just a bit confusing, I would say, but I really want to get
onboard.
[0:48:38] IP: Well, off to London, you go.
[0:48:40] JR: Okay.
[0:48:40] IP: Or Rome first, I guess.
[0:48:42] JR: Either way.
[0:48:43] IP: Either way. In the air right now is the first 787 flight to land in Antarctica.
[0:48:51] JR: See, I said we would touch every continent and I meant it.
[0:48:55] IP: It took us a while to get there, but we did it. Qantas has flown sightseeing flights to
Antarctica, but has not landed there. Now, Norse is on its way carrying scientists and equipment
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for the Norwegian Polar Institute to the Troll Airfield, which we've talked about many times and
had the folks from Troll on the podcast. If you want to know what the airfield is like and how to
run an airport in Antarctica, you can listen to that episode, which we've linked to in the show
notes. Today, the 787 will land in Antarctica for the first time. That's a neat little milestone and
congratulations to Norse for making that happen.
[0:49:34] JR: Yeah. Interesting to see that their A350s would be pressed into that kind of
service. Very fun.
[0:49:39] IP: 787s.
[0:49:41] JR: 787s. Sorry.
[0:49:41] IP: There you go.
[0:49:43] JR: Yeah. Maybe that's the spare aircraft that told us that they always keep around.
[0:49:45] IP: Maybe. Yeah. Well, now they're keeping it very far away.
[0:49:49] JR: It will not be ready for the next flight out of JFK if they needed.
[0:49:52] IP: Not be ready. We end the show with just an incredibly beautiful airplane.
QantasLink’s first A220-300 has been painted. The aircraft will bear the permanent registration
VHX4A.
[0:50:10] JR: That's a weird one.
[0:50:12] IP: Is in just an incredible, incredible livery, featuring the – continuing the Qantas flying
art series that was launched in 1994 when they unveiled their first indigenous livery aircraft,
which was the 747 Wunala Dreaming. This continues that series and is just an absolutely
beautiful aircraft. A 100 painters, a 130 stencils were needed to replicate the design over two
weeks and the aircraft features over 20,000 individual dots. The most complex livery Airbus has
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ever completed on the A220. Very cool. It has not yet been delivered, so we will follow that one
closely when it begins to make its way to Australia from Montreal.
[0:51:04] JR: Yeah. This one is actually destined for QantasLink to replace its 717 fleet. It's not
technically a Qantas aircraft. I think it's the first QantasLink aircraft to be dorned in this particular
series of special liveries. I just love that they went so far as to even paint the Wi-Fi radome
hump on the top of the aircraft. A lot of airlines leave that out, but they went to that full extent
and they painted it. Really shows some thought here. A lot of airlines don't. Some airlines do. I
find it particularly interesting when Spirit paints its Wi-Fi radome yellow, even though the rest of
the plane isn't yellow, because they're anticipating that it will eventually all be yellow. In this
case, QantasLink got to it from day one. Definitely check it out, because it is a stunner.
[0:51:53] IP: There you go. All right. That is episode 242 of AvTalk. We hope you've enjoyed the
show. That was a lot of stuff. We hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Next week, we'll have
an episode, but it'll be an abbreviated episode, assuming no further horse shenanigans happen
due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Stay with us. We'll be back next week with an episode,
nonetheless. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:52:25] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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