AvTalk Episode 204: Two tail strikes and an all stop

AVT 204 Transcript
EPISODE 204
[EPISODE]
[0:00:06] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 204 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:15] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. How's it going, Ian, on this rather slow week?
[0:00:20] IP: Slow. I am so incredibly thankful. It has been a slow week. There have been no
balloons. There have been no planes diving towards the ground and then climbing away as if
nothing happened. There have been few, if any incidents, thankfully. It's been a quiet week. I'm
so very glad after all that has happened already this month that that happened.
[0:00:50] JR: Yeah. I mean, there was one incident this week. You misidentified the Panda
flights.
[0:00:57] IP: Yeah. Well, it’s been nice hosting this podcast. It’s been nice hosting this podcast.
It's been nice working with flightradar24. I shall take my leave.
[0:01:05] JR: Of all the ways that to me and –
[0:01:07] IP: All the ways to go out. I did in fact. There are four pandas leaving Japan and going
to China.
[0:01:17] JR: Never should’ve let them book their own air travel.
[0:01:20] IP: I know. That's the problem. They sent three on one flight and they're sending one
on another and I mixed them up and posted that on the internet, but points to the person on
Twitter who called it just absolute pandemonium. I thought that was very well done. Some nice
wordplay.
[0:01:35] JR: It was all meant to be.
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[0:01:37] IP: A good time was had by all. Other than that, yeah, a slow start to the week for the
most part. We had some planes, trains and automobiles with a flight by President Joe Biden,
and his travels to Ukraine. That was interesting. A bit of plot thickening and detective work on
the part of folks trying to figure out how it was done and things like that. Other than that, not too
much to start this week. Last week, some things did happen. Jason and I will argue about one of
those in a minute. I promise that will be a vigorous and spirited debate. First, a very interesting
thing happened at the end of January –
[0:02:17] JR: Last month.
[0:02:19] IP: Last month. That's the word I was looking for. The blocks of 30 days. That thing.
[0:02:23] JR: Sometimes 28. Sometimes 30.
[0:02:26] IP: Yes. I'm counting on my knuckles, to a song about how many days a month has.
Anyway, two Alaska Airlines flights almost back-to-back departing Seattle.
[0:02:38] JR: Both going to Hawaii.
[0:02:39] IP: Both going to Hawaii. That's important in a minute. Suffered tail strikes on
departure. One of them was a 737-900ER, and the other was a 737 MAX 9, both flying from
Seattle to Hawaii, and both suffering tail strikes.
[0:03:02] JR: On the same runway.
[0:03:03] IP: On the same runway.
[0:03:04] JR: 16L.
[0:03:05] IP: Leaving the same runway, not too far apart, within minutes of each other. Alaska
did something pretty fascinating to me and really important. They stopped everything. They shut
down the airline. Bret Payton, who was the on-duty director of operations for the airline said,
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“We're not departing any more flights.” There is no way that two tail strikes within 15 minutes of
each other is a normal occurrence. That just doesn't happen. Something's wrong.
[0:03:35] JR: I don't even think it was 15 minutes, right? I mean, what I'm reading, so it's about
six minutes later after that incident.
[0:03:43] IP: Let's see. The first flight departed, let's see, 16. Yeah, so not long enough. 16:48
UTC, and then 16:53. Within 10 minutes.
[0:03:54] JR: Yeah. That is astronomically unlikely to have two flights departing from the same
airport on the same runway, both encountering tail strikes, and really, really have to tip the hat to
Alaska Airlines and the safety culture there and the operations to not just know that both of
these flights experienced tail strikes moments after they happened, but to make that link that
okay, we've just had to in a few minutes. That is not normal. We need to shut everything down
and figure out what happened. Then solve that situation. Figure out what it was and resume
flights in 22 minutes. That is an exceptional example of safety prioritized over everything else.
It's really good recognition that something was wrong, something they need to fix, understand
and then possibly fix, or just, I guess, right off possibly as just a really unlikely coincidence. This
was just really, really stellar work all around at Alaska.
[0:04:55] IP: Yeah. First things first, the planes are okay. The passengers are okay. The crews
are okay. They came back, they landed normally. The 737 MAX 9 and 737-900ER both have tail
skid plates, and they absorbed all of the energy, thankfully. Both aircraft were able to be put
back into service after an inspection. The passengers made it to Hawaii with only a few hours
delay.
What happened was, is the takeoff performance calculation tool that is used by Alaska Airlines
is called dynamic source. The aircraft weight and balanced data, how many people are aboard,
how much cargo is aboard, how many bags are aboard, how much fuel, all of that fun stuff is
plugged into this software. Then it spits out the takeoff performance data. How much thrust the
pilot should use to take off and trim values and things like that. The idea is that using the
software allows the aircraft to get off the ground as efficiently as possible, while using the least
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amount of thrust, because it uses the least amount of fuel and it saves wear and tear on the
engines and saves fuel.
In this particular instance, there was a bug in the software that was sending very, very, very
underweight values to the airplane. I'm quoting from the Seattle Times article by Dominic Gates
from last week, where he's quoting the Alaska pilots saying, there was a 20 to 30,000 pound
error. That's a lot of pounds. That led to some seriously underperforming takeoff calculations.
They had enough power to get off the ground, but it also led to the tail strikes.
They found the bug. They came up with a workaround, so that they could continue operating
flights. That happened in about 20 minutes, as Jason mentioned, 22 minutes they were shut
down for. Then they fixed the bug in the software and were able to no longer have that issue.
Good on Alaska for doing all of that, and doing it so quickly.
[0:07:15] JR: Yeah. There must have been a pretty glaring bug in the system there to be able to
recognize that fix it and patch it and resume flights and 22 minutes. That's quite something. I
can’t accomplish anything in my company in 22 minutes, let alone identify a bug in a flight safety
critical mission like that and be able to patch it. I'm sure there's a lot more to the story that we
will not know and why did it only impact Alaska and nobody else? I'm sure the software is used
by other airlines, but very, very interesting situation that thankfully, had a good outcome in this
case.
[0:07:52] IP: Yeah. Again, from Dominic Gates article in the Seattle Times, which we'll put in the
show notes, the software, he says, the software had been tested over an extended period of
time, but the bug was missed because it only presented when many aircraft at the same time
were using the system. Basically, it was rush hour and it broke.
[0:08:08] JR: It's a good thing, airlines don't operate on a bank schedule, where a whole bunch
of flights will go out at once. Yeah, that was sarcasm. That's exactly how airlines work.
[0:08:20] IP: They fix the issue to get the aircraft moving in about 20 minutes. Then it says, five
hours later, the software was permanently fixed. Now they have a test for what happens when
the software is under high load.
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[0:08:34] JR: Don’t really understand that, how high load, more flights can mean the software
just kicks out incredibly inaccurate data. That's going to be a very, very pointed conversation
with some software developers somewhere.
[0:08:47] IP: I'm absolutely certain of it. Last week, there was, what is now I believe, the longest
flight to nowhere.
[0:08:58] JR: There have been some long ones. This one may be the world record holder,
hopefully ever.
[0:09:04] IP: Oh, yeah. If this gets topped, I really hope it doesn't. Air New Zealand was
operating its Auckland to JFK service. They operate to terminal one at JFK. What happened
was, as Jason ruined the terminal for everyone, somehow. This is your fault, Jason. There was
an electrical issue, a fire happened. The terminal was closed for a few days. A lot of aircraft
were affected in the initial closure, which I'm still confused about, because it sounds like, they
knew they weren't going to be able to use the terminal long before they actually told anybody
they couldn't use the terminal. Is that – because I want to clear –
[0:09:44] JR: Yeah. The whole situation with JFK terminal one, which is like, if you've never
been there, it's like the oddball of their miscellaneous international airline terminal at JFK. It's
this weird hodgepodge, co-owned by Lufthansa, JAL, Korean and Swiss, I feel like. I don't know.
Someone else. It's a group of airlines that doesn't make any sense, but it's this weird other
terminal. They're knocking it down in a couple years, rebuilding it. What happened was there
was an electrical fire, like Ian mentioned. The entire terminal just lost power. It was not
operational.
Unlike how many people on social media came to say, let's say, why couldn't they just go to
other terminals? Well, it's JFK. There isn't on a good day, there isn't a lot of spare capacity.
There isn't a lot of gates on a good day on to the terminals. Some of these aircraft had to turn
around. some of them diverted. Some of them went to Newark. Some of them went to Boston,
or Washington, or even quite a few far-out destinations.
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[0:10:46] IP: Stewart.
[0:10:47] JR: Stewart. Yes. Norse Atlantic, who is definitely not Norwegian pulled a –
[0:10:51] IP: Not at all.
[0:10:52] JR: - straight out of the Norwegian playbook, which was divert to Stewart at north, in
the suburbs, at least an hour north of New York and have passengers check in at JFK. Shuttle
bus them up to Stewart and operate them out of there. It's actually a pretty elegant situation that
they pulled off.
Yeah, the Port Authority of New York In New Jersey operates the airport itself, but the airport’s
terminals are all self-governed little fiefdom doing their own thing. They don't really cooperate
with each other. They don't communicate. What essentially happened was the terminal at some
point declared that it was closed. It was not able to accept any inbound flights and flights that
did land for a while, ended up at hard stands, or they scrambled to find other gate space. At
some point, they issued a notice saying Terminal One is closed, please go away.
A lot of airlines did, they diverted to other airports. But then there were a few Korean, and most
noteworthy of course, Air New Zealand decided, “You know what? I don't want to deal with that.
I'm going home.” Air New Zealand was already eight hours into its flight from Auckland to JFK,
which is already one of the longest flights in the world and the longest in their network for sure.
They decided to return all the way to Auckland, instead of trying to get access to another
terminal at JFK, which may or may not be possible, or diverting to another airport in its network,
or at least in the US, let alone in New York, and instead they diverted all the way back to
Auckland for a 16-hour, 5-minute flight to nowhere. Air time. That is purely air time. That does
not include the time it took to board the aircraft, push back, take off, land, get back to the gate.
People were probably on this aircraft for close to 18 hours to go nowhere.
[0:12:42] IP: Not ideal. But.
[0:12:44] JR: But.
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[0:12:45] IP: But a lot of people said, our Twitter mentions were rife with, “Why didn't they just
land in New York anyway?” Or, “Why didn't they divert to Los Angeles, or they were near-ish to
Hawaii when they turned around, so why didn't they go to Hawaii?”
[0:13:06] JR: Good question.
[0:13:08] IP: Or somewhere else. What the airline said, the airlines reasoning was diverting
anywhere, but returning to Auckland would put the aircraft, the crew and the passengers would
actually be more inconvenient for all of that than for all of those things, people and things, than
just returning to Auckland. Because basically, what they said is that the aircraft would be out of
position for multiple days. They would have multiple crews out of position for multiple days.
Then the passengers, they were able to rebook them, all of them from Auckland, whereas they
weren't sure they could rebook all of them from an outstation as quickly as they were able to
rebook them from Auckland. Jason and I have prior to recording over the past week or so, gone
back and forth about this. I'm not sure I've been able to convince Jason that I think what the
airline did was the right thing.
[0:14:04] JR: Nope. You have not convinced me.
[0:14:06] IP: I’m unable to – Why not? Why do you remain unconvinced?
[0:14:10] JR: I am not saying what the airline did is wrong. I will not second guess their
operations. What I will say is that the pilots of this aircraft pleaded over ACARs and we've seen
the messages. They pleaded over ACARs with operations to continue to anywhere in the US to
Houston, where they have operations, or Newark, or somewhere, somewhere to get those
passengers literally anywhere else other than back to Auckland. A bit of context that we haven't
mentioned yet was Auckland and New Zealand in general had some really terrible floods
leading up to the departure of this flight. The prior flight of NZ 2 was actually canceled. This
flight doesn't even operate daily.
People have possibly already been waiting up to more than half a week to get on a flight
departing Auckland to New York. Some of these people are already quite a bit delayed. Sending
them back to New Zealand on a 16-hour flight, basically resets the clock for these people, and
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they have to be re accommodated somehow on a route that only operates every other day at
best. There is no alternative flight. Either they send them through LA, or Houston or something.
It was the right call from an operational, from an airline operations point of view.
From a passenger standpoint, it was the worst possible decision they could have made. They
were not far from Hawaii. As a minimum, I would have landed in Honolulu, offloaded the
passengers there, made them United's problem, because they are Star Alliance member. They
could, I'm sure gotten most, if not every one of those people out on the many United flights out
of Honolulu every day, because not everyone on that New Zealand flight was probably
terminating in New York.
I know for a fact, there are plenty of people who connect onward from New York, which is crazy
to think about. You've just gotten off a 16-hour flight and you're going to go connect onward to
somewhere.
[0:15:58] IP: Poughkeepsie.
[0:15:59] JR: Sure, Stewart. If not Honolulu, they could have gone to LA. They could have gone
to Houston. They could have found somewhere in the New York area, or the northeast at least,
and shuttle the flight crew from the New York area to Boston, or DC. It's not an impossibility.
Also, diverting to Hawaii, taking a 24-hour penalty for the crew to get some rest, or eight hours, I
guess, to get some rest to get back in the air, that's about the same amount of time it would
have taken that aircraft to go all the way to New York, turn around in a few hours and then go all
the way back to Auckland. I just don't understand how turning around and going back to
Auckland was the best move.
Maybe it was in the purest point of view of, we need this airplane back as quickly as possible.
But that airplane wasn't coming back immediately in the first place. Did they really need it back
that quickly? I don't think so.
[0:16:51] IP: All right.
[0:16:51] JR: That's it. That's it from you? No rebuttal?
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[0:16:54] IP: No, no. I'm going to leave it there. Because it happened. The airline did its thing.
I'm giving my point of view with the airline says, and I'm going to stick with them. I'm going to let
Jason make a very well-reasoned and dispassionate argument. I'm going to leave it there for
the moment. I'm going to ask everyone to email us at podcast@fr24.com. I want to hear your
thoughts as well. Did Air New Zealand do the right thing by returning to Auckland as quickly as
possible? Or should they have continued on, landed somewhere and offloaded the passengers
and gone from there? Podcast@fr24.com. Give us your thoughts. I'm keen to hear what our
listeners think.
[0:17:34] JR: Yeah. Again, not the only airline that did something along those lines. Korean also
returned back to Seoul, though I think it was 12 hours –
[0:17:43] IP: It was about a 13 – Yeah, 13, 12 and change.
[0:17:44] JR: 13 hours. Still, absolutely brutal. Terrible. 16 hours, I hope is the longest,
unintentional flight to nowhere we will ever see. Because it's going to be really hard to beat that.
[0:17:59] IP: Yeah. I'm not really sure how – I guess, it would have to be a Qantas flight to –
[0:18:06] JR: Yeah. At some point, though, that flight crosses the point of no return and they just
can't get back to Auckland to battle the headwinds. I don't know how there could be, at least for
a commercial airlines, how you could have a longer diversion. Hopefully, no one will ever have
to find that out. Because I just can't imagine the feeling of the passengers 16 hours into that
flight, knowing they've gone absolutely nowhere. Having to face it again for another 16 hours is
just –
[0:18:38] IP: Yeah. I don't even think how that would be possible. A few weeks ago, we talked
about airlines in Russia receiving permission to begin using their existing aircraft as spare parts
repositories. Using spare parts from some of their aircraft to maintain their other aircraft. This
week, we get to talk about another step that Russian airlines are asking Russian regulators to
greenlight, which is basically saying, there's certain maintenance intervals for various tasks, and
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the airlines want to extend those intervals. If it's 10,000 flight hours to inspect this particular part
of the landing gear, maybe it's 15 now, maybe it's 20.
They're also looking for and this is where I think it gets really interesting, alternative methods of
compliance with airworthiness directives. Basically, if Boeing comes out tomorrow and says,
we've got a problem with the 777-300ER, which is one of the airline types that is currently being
operated by Russian airlines and the FAA says, “You know what? We're going to issue an
airworthiness directive that says, if you operate the 777-300ER, you got to fix this.” Well, if it
involves parts, the Russian airlines can't get those parts. Or, they're going to have to figure out a
way to get those parts, and so they're looking for alternative methods of compliance. An
increasing slope on the slippery slope of operating aircraft for which you can't really maintain the
fleet.
[0:20:14] JR: Hey, none of that sounds great at all, does it?
[0:20:17] IP: Nope. Sure doesn't.
[0:20:19] JR: To be clear, it is not unheard of, or exceptional, even for airlines to ask the FAA to
increase the period of time between inspections of certain parts. That does become as parts
become more reliable, the inspections of those parts can become more prolonged over time. I
don't think we have seen any US airlines and we want to just push the inspection cycles for
everything out six months, and we're just going to figure out a different way to comply with an
airworthiness directive. Some of these will be, of course, minor and almost barely worth talking
about. Like you said, Ian, if GE were to discover a problem with the GE90, that basically said,
you have to fix this, or I don't know, the engine is going to explode and Russia has to figure out
another way to go about fixing it. That is a very not good situation to be in.
[0:21:08] IP: Which is not to say that that is extremely likely to happen. At some point, there's
going to be an airworthiness directive, or there's going to be a maintenance event where okay,
that plane just can't fly anymore.
[0:21:21] JR: Yeah. Well, think about the Pratt and Whitney 777 on the United's 777- 200ERs.
That was a pretty significant issue they were having. They had lots of investigation went into
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fixing that aircraft and quite a number of hours to get it back in working order. It's going to be a
bit different for the Russian airlines, I guess.
[0:21:41] IP: It'll have to be. Let's stick with Russia. I want to hit on some interesting comments
that Ben Smith of Air France KLM said during their 2022 earnings call that happened this week.
There was an analyst that asked them about flying around Russia. Air France KLM flights
having to fly around Russia to get to destinations in China, in Japan and in places like that. Ben
Smith said something very interesting. That, yes, they have to fly longer, up to three hours
longer, while avoiding Russian air space.
The interesting thing here is that the overflight fees that the airline was paying to Russia to use
Russian air space were so high, that they've actually seen similar performance. It hasn't really
affected the profitability of those flights.
[0:22:38] JR: Yeah, that's wild.
[0:22:39] IP: That’s crazy to me.
[0:22:40] JR: Isn't it? Yeah. Russia has always been notorious for charging high overflight fees,
because they can. Russia is huge. Why not charge a lot?
[0:22:49] IP: Where else are you going to fly?
[0:22:50] JR: Well, what are people going to do? Fly around for three hours? Yeah, these days.
I guess, this math works, while oil prices are low, as they are now and aircraft are more and
more efficient. Does this math work with a brand new A350? Probably. I guess, it does. Would it
have worked with a 747-200? Almost certainly not. This is definitely very interesting. I'm not sure
all airlines are in the same boat with this, because some airlines have been very, very impacted.
We've talked about Finnair in the past, where they basically had to change your entire business
model, because of this. For France KLM, it seems like, it's more of awash.
The only downside, I guess, is that if it's three hours extra each way for these flights, that's six
hours round trip that that aircraft is not available to do something else. As Air New Zealand has
taught us, that's very important for that airplane to be where it's needed at any time.
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[0:23:46] IP: Indeed, it is. Yeah, I just thought that was a very interesting comment from Ben
Smith.
[0:23:50] JR: That is interesting. But that could change at any moment, if oil prices go up.
[0:23:55] IP: I mean, if the price of – Yeah, exactly. If the price of oil goes up, then that comment
becomes much different. Speaking of comments from airlines, Volaris is hopeful that Mexico will
receive a category one rating within six months from the FAA, which opens all kinds of doors to
– Well, yeah. Reopens all kinds of doors for Volaris and other airlines in Mexico. We've talked
about this before in the context of both Mexico, and I think, Malaysia, I believe is the –
[0:24:27] JR: Yes. I think so.
[0:24:28] IP: Yeah.
[0:24:28] JR: Indonesia, maybe, I think as well.
[0:24:31] IP: Probably as well. Yeah. The idea here is that with a category one rating, Mexican
airlines can open up new routes to the US. US airlines can add codeshares to Mexican airlines
operating routes and all sorts of good fun stuff can happen, because their safety rating from the
FAA is at the highest level. Interesting to hear them put a timeframe on it, given how much
airlines, or air framers put timelines on things that the FAA is going to do has been looked down
upon in recent history. If they're saying six months –
[0:25:07] JR: Sure. Why not? This is definitely dragged on a lot longer than I think anyone had
suspected it would. The FAA must have really identified some glaring issues in Mexico's aviation
sector, let's say, because this is everything from air traffic control to airports, to everything in
between. There must have been some major issues at hand for it to take this long. With a
country that has so many airlines, and so many routes operating between the US and Mexico,
this is a major impact I don't think anyone thought would be going on for quite this long.
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[0:25:46] IP: Yeah. The timeframe here is just, I thought we would be done with this by now as
well. Also, this week, this was an interesting one. That is just rather unfortunate, not nearly as
long as the Air New Zealand flight, but a Japan Airlines flight that was flying from Tokyo to
Fukuoka missed curfew.
[0:26:06] JR: Oh, no.
[0:26:07] IP: There was poor weather in Tokyo, and they had to do an aircraft swap. The plane
took off late, and they couldn't make the 10:00 curfew. Then they didn't have enough fuel to
divert all the way back to Tokyo straightaway, so they had to land in Osaka, then they had to
switch the crew, and then they went all the way back to Tokyo. Not a long flight by any stretch of
the imagination, but super annoying.
The curfew is 10 pm. At 10 pm, they made a loop near the airport, basically, but they were still at
15,000 feet. It's not like they were on final approach and the aircraft was like, “No, no.” Or the
airport was like, “No, no, no. We're closed. Go around and go away.” It didn't quite come as
close to that, but it's weird to me that they wouldn't – could they not fly a few knots faster to get
there?
[0:26:57] JR: Yeah. Apparently, they needed prior written permission to break curfew in line. If
you're familiar with Japanese culture at all, they probably would have had to fax at something.
probably can't do that from A350. I don't think they come up with the fax machine.
[0:27:11] IP: We should ask Airbus.
[0:27:12] JR: Yeah, we should. I mean, if you pay Airbus enough, they will install it in that fight
deck.
[0:27:16] IP: Yeah. I guarantee they would.
[0:27:18] JR: It's disappointing that the airport wouldn't have let them land if they were already
enroute and closed. Even here, LaGuardia has “a curfew.” It's not a real curfew. Typically, I think
it's midnight between April and September, or something. It's not supposed to be any flight
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operations past midnight. That is frequently these days, suspended due to weather. We are
aware that weather happens here in the Northeast. If a fight is 40 minutes late, even two hours
late, if there's a major weather event, they're not going to say, “Go away. Go to JFK. Don't let
that fight land.” In not even exceptional circumstances. Odd that they wouldn't allow it in this
case. Didn't seem to be weather based. Again, really feel bad for those passengers to make a
three-segment flight, I guess, that ended up going nowhere. Or I guess, it was two, since it
didn't land initially. At least, JAL found a crew in Osaka in the middle of the night to get them
back to Tokyo.
[0:28:18] IP: That's true. That's true. They did make it back to Tokyo. They get put up on hotels
and went the next day. But just not a great week for flights to nowhere.
[0:28:25] JR: No.
[0:28:26] IP: The New York Times has discovered sustainable aviation fuel.
[0:28:29] JR: Hey, that's great.
[0:28:31] IP: I'm glad to see that they've finally written about it. They had a piece out today. It
mostly focuses on United and it talks about how there's not enough staff to go around and all of
those things.
[0:28:43] JR: Yeah. Because United’s going to put it all in there supersonic, little thing.
[0:28:47] IP: Well, that's where it's really interesting to me, because they have a quote from
United CEO, Scott Kirby. Kirby says, “I am genuinely a nerd about climate change. The
implications are so dramatic and there are all these tipping points that once you hit them, they're
effectively irreversible.”
To Jason's point, the conversation about SAF usage, and I think it's a very valuable
conversation, one that we've had quite a few times and when we keep coming back to and I'm
sure we'll revisit it more deeply once again, as it becomes more available and more airlines start
using it for more of their flights. However, I'm still having a great bit of difficulty squaring away
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the fact that United is going – says, it is going to purchase these boom aircraft and use them a
100% on sustainable aviation fuel. Then Scott Kirby says this, that he's a genuine nerd about
climate change and there are tipping points that are effectively –
[0:29:41] JR: Yeah. Scott Kirby has definitely been outspoken in the past about how carbon
offsets are nonsense and they're not a solution. They are barely even a band-aid on the
problem. United doesn't really – not like a lot of other airlines, they don't offer that in the booking
path. I do agree that of most airlines CEOs, Scott Kirby has been the most vocal about how
what the industry is doing now.
[0:30:06] IP: I'm not disagreeing with that.
[0:30:07] JR: Yeah. Then, how do you square that with – Well, SAF is really limited, but what
we're going to do is take our limited supply and burn the hell out of it in a supersonic aircraft that
just nobody needs. At four times the rate of a conventional aircraft.
[0:30:22] IP: All that is to say is that I'm glad the New York Times is taking an interest in the
issue. The piece to me, it didn't even really scratch any of the surfaces here beyond just a
general overview. A good start, but let's catch up. We had reserved big space in the show. We
were going to make this a four-hour long podcast, because Qantas was unveiling its Project
Sunrise premium cabins today. There was a lot of, will they won't they, about what things were
going to look like. Was this going to be an incredibly revolutionary product? The answer is –
[0:31:02] JR: Nope.
[0:31:03] IP: Looks a business class seat.
[0:31:05] JR: Yeah. Qantas’s Project Sunrise, A350-1000s, Airbus one, I guess, the Project
Sunrise competition here for these aircraft are going to fly between Sydney, or is it Perth? No,
Sydney and New York. Very, very long flights that hopefully, don't return to Sydney and have an
18-hour diversion. But they revealed the, I guess, the concepts, or the renderings of the first and
business class seats, which are fine. Nothing special. First class looks extremely nice, and that
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AVT 204 Transcript
it's a seat with a bed, side by side. Also, nothing new. We saw Lufthansa do that in its old, old
first class, which they don't even have anymore.
I love the concept. It was a bed, aside from the seat, so that there's two separate places. It's not
a seat that converts to a bed, though it looks like it can do both, actually. And a business class
that just looks like any other business class that you'd find on – almost looks like the LL seat,
actually. The same kind that United, Polarisy, LL, just staggered one-to-one seat. There's a door
that doesn't really add any value, but adds weight to the aircraft. There's nothing really special.
It is a low-density aircraft. There are only 238 seats. That's quite a low number for an
A350-1000. There were really no details announced for most of the people, 40 people in
premium economy, and 140 and regular economy, really no details about what will be back
there. It's not like we saw anything that Air New Zealand announced, where they'll have those –
I don't remember the marketing term for it, but those kind of –
[0:32:39] IP: SkyNest.
[0:32:41] JR: SkyNest, where economy passengers will be able to rent a bunk bed for an hour,
or a couple hours to go get some rest. Qantas didn't announce anything like that. These fights
will be even longer. Really disappointing, that maybe they have something up their sleeves in
the future, because they only reveal the details of business and first class. There's really nothing
that stands out that's unique or special about these aircraft.
I would love, of course, to fly Qantas first class on these aircraft, because it looks phenomenal.
Again, compared to what is modern day first class on new aircraft, it is really nothing unique. A
little disappointed. Not that I have Qantas first class booking anytime soon. I am not personally
disappointed, because I will never book something like that on my own dime. I mean, I'm flying
to Japan in less than two weeks in regular old economy. Somebody is probably very
disappointed, someone who has a lot of money.
[0:33:46] IP: To end the show, I want to follow up on some listener feedback that we've had
over the past couple episodes. One is that our discussion, a listener pointed out, two listeners
pointed out, thankfully, about our discussion about the 25-hour cockpit voice recorder standard
and how Jason I've both been lamenting it's non-availability in the US. We should mention that
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we are talking about US specifically. European Union Aviation Safety Agency has in fact
mandated since 2000, that this be available. It exists. The technology is there.
What we're arguing for is that the US should mandate it. I think that would go a long way
towards making things better on that front. That's one thing to keep in mind. Yes, EASA has
already mandated that. Then we got an in-depth discussion from one listener about air India's
aircraft order and some of the things they point out are, I think, rather helpful to keep in mind
when we're discussing the massive letters of intent that Air India signed with Airbus and Boeing.
One of which is the Tata Group's other businesses involve joint ventures and manufacturing for
both Boeing and Airbus, including some military stuff that goes to the Indian armed forces, as
well as some HR and finance jobs that Boeing has outsourced to a Tata-owned company in
India.
There's also the fact that no one really knows for sure what's going to happen with all of the Air
India and Tata-owned, sub-branded airlines. You've got Air India, Air India Express, Vistara, Air
Asia India, and there's a mix of full-service carriers. There's a mix of low-cost carriers, and
what's going to happen with all of those consolidations as things start to move. What we talked
about, I think last week, as things start to move into an Air India and an Air India Express
dichotomy. Those are some of the other things to keep in mind. This particular listener also
questions why they ordered the 777X. That one, I don't have any answer for you on.
[0:36:05] JR: Nope.
[0:36:06] IP: It'll be interesting to see if they ever take delivery of them.
[0:36:09] JR: I'm guessing, no. But time will tell.
[0:36:11] IP: Time will tell. Then, I messed up publicly at the top of the show. Jason messed up
publicly in the last episode. He misspoke and deeply regretted that he said Flybe was operating
ATRs, when in fact, everyone knows they were operating data shades. I think we had just come
off of a discussion about ATRs. I think that's where Jason's brain was.
[0:36:38] JR: We don't know turboprops here in the US. I'm sorry. They're all the same to me.
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[0:36:43] IP: We can all forgive him, right? Right. Okay, that's the show. We messed up and we
have apologized and we hope, dear listeners, that you will forgive us, because I guarantee, we’ll
mess up more in the future. Until we have another chance to mess up, I will say that this has
been episode 204 of AvTalk, and that I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:37:05] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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