AvTalk Episode 256: A bad day in Belgrade

AVT 256 Transcript
EPISODE 256
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello, and welcome to episode 256 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. That was a nice lead in, Ian. Thank you.
[0:00:21] IP: I'm feeling wound up today. I figured I'd give us a good wind up to get into the
show, because we have a lot to get through.
[0:00:26] JR: Yeah. We have a whole page of things. None of them individually, or particularly
big. Well, one item is kind of big.
[0:00:35] IP: One. Yeah.
[0:00:35] JR: But the rest of it is just regular news. Remember the before times, before Boeing
fell apart and then before COVID, where it was just random pieces of news and that was it?
[0:00:46] IP: We would talk about airplanes and the things that were happening in the world.
[0:00:50] JR: It feels like that again today.
[0:00:52] IP: Almost like that. Yeah. A full show, the Singapore air show is in full swing. There's
a few bits and bobs of good news, some bad news. Then the show begins today with a very,
very lucky aircraft, and very, very lucky passengers and crew, because this could have been so
much worse than it was. I'm referring to the Marathon Airlines Embraer E195 that was operating
for Air Serbia on its way from Belgrade to Dusseldorf, that departed not from the end of the
runway, but from an intersection takeoff.
Now, intersection takeoffs happen all the time. It's when an aircraft takes off not from the end of
the runway, but from one of the taxiway intersections further down the runway, leads to a
© 2024 AvTalk 1
AVT 256 Transcript
shortened runway. What's supposed to happen is you're supposed to depart from an
intersection, knowing full well that the remaining runway is perfectly acceptable for all of your
takeoff performance calculations. It appears that that did not happen in this particular case. The
aircraft departed after overrunning the runway and striking a variety of instrument landing
system array, antenna and lights, and who knows what else, before becoming airborne.
The aircraft was substantially damaged on its left side. A large gash in the lower left fuselage,
and substantial damage to the wing root area, such that by the time they made it back to the
gate, they were leaking a not small amount of fuel.
[0:02:39] JR: Yeah. This was one of those incidents where there was a very slim margin
between this being something we discuss at the top of the podcast and then move on from, from
it being a special show, because something terrible has happened. Very similar to the JAL
accident earlier this year with the A350. For the grace of who knows what, this aircraft was able
to limp back to its origin, I think 15 minutes later, and touchdown without any injuries. It was, I
think as Jon Ostrower put it, there are some crew members, and some passengers who owe
engineers in Brazil some drinks. Not Brazil. I'm sorry. No, wait.
[0:03:18] IP: No, Brazil. You’re right.
[0:03:19] JR: Brazil. Okay, I got it. I got it. Thank you.
[0:03:21] IP: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:03:22] JR: The E190 is a tank of an aircraft and it was proven yet again, in that you have to
see the pictures. You have to see the video of this thing just limping back all the way to the gate
for some reason. I don't think they stopped on the runway and had any attention there.
[0:03:37] IP: I don’t think the full –
[0:03:41] JR: They didn't know how bad it was. But it was very bad. Very, very bad. This was
inches away, who knows, from being an actual disaster on our hands? What happened here is
that I understand that the runway they took off from wasn't always a runway. Actually, it was, I
© 2024 AvTalk 2
AVT 256 Transcript
believe, recently converted from a parallel taxiway to another runway to a runway recently. None
of this is, we're going to have to, of course, as we always say, wait for the investigation to go
through and wait for the official findings, but there is air traffic control audio from this.
Apparently, they entered at the wrong taxiway, the very wrong taxiway to this runway and the air
traffic controller on duty noticed, “Hey, it looks like you're entering the runway at intersection D5
and not D6. Are you sure you want to do that? Maybe run some new calculations and make
sure you're not accidentally going to kill everyone onboard.” Apparently, they did some
calculations and they did them poorly, because it did not end well for that flight. It's a very
interesting circumstance here where a mistake was made. They entered at the wrong taxiway,
and it was noticed by air traffic control, which is exactly what you would want to happen. For
some reason, the flight crew was confident that they could take off from that intersection, which
was not correct.
What has happened at this point is pretty impressively, Air Serbia has taken pretty decisive
action already and has already canceled the wet lease with Marathon Airlines, which I believe,
operated three E195s and one E190 on behalf of Air Serbia, already canceled, no longer going
to be doing business with that airline, which it's going to have to scramble to backfill, because
this coming summer season, they were supposed to operate 30 flights a day for Air Serbia,
which is a pretty significant chunk of its overall schedule. It's just nice to see that Air Serbia is
taking such decisive action, because I do believe this is Air Serbia's first major incident of any
sort, or at least, notable incident. Air Serbia is not a new airline. It's not a startup. It's been
around for a very long time. A really spotless reputation tarnished in a way, kind of, sort of, not
really. It's lucky, let's say.
[0:05:56] IP: Yeah. I mean, this is inches, maybe feet from being a very different story. The
takeoff distance between the two taxiways is about 1,100 meters, or about 3,300 feet. I mean,
so a significant difference. We're not talking about a few hundred feet here. We're talking about
a full general aviation runway of distance between these two taxi points.
[0:06:25] JR: A massive mistake was made. Like I said, it was noticed. The mistake was
noticed by air traffic control and they just for some reason, the pilots just went with it, which was
in hindsight, not a very good idea. To clarify what I said earlier, Air Serbia in one for [inaudible
© 2024 AvTalk 3
AVT 256 Transcript
0:06:41] has been around for 96 years. This is the very first bullet point under the accidents and
incidents section of its Wikipedia entry. That is, I cannot name another airline that doesn't –
didn't even have that section of a Wikipedia page before. That's, yeah, good on them for taking
decisive action and ditching the wet least contract with Marathon, because that's a real bad
look.
[0:07:08] IP: Yeah. Well, they made it back on the ground safely. No one was injured. The ILS
for – so they departed runway 30 left. The ILS array for 12 right, so the reciprocal runway was
after this accident degraded from category three, down to category one. Whatever it was, it
didn't completely take out the ILS, but it took out enough to degrade the category from category
three to category one. Keeping an eye on the NOTAMs to see when all of those repairs have
been made, but not great. It was great that everyone walked away uninjured. That's a little bit of
good news there.
[0:07:51] JR: Yeah. We'll take it where we can get it.
[0:07:54] IP: This is one of those stories where geopolitics and aviation intersect in a very weird
and possibly, very dangerous way, were it not for those involved going. This seems not right.
What's happened by way of backstory, if you haven't kept up on Eastern African geopolitics is
that the Mogadishu FIR, the flight information region, the area where air traffic controllers are
responsible for aircraft in that area covers Somalia and Somalia land, which is a separate
country, but not recognized by anybody. Recently, fake air traffic controllers, or at least air traffic
controllers who are not authorized to direct the flights, because they've been convincing in their
phraseology, in their instructions, and in what they would be telling aircraft if they were, in fact,
giving them commands. But these are fake air traffic controllers. They are not authorized to
control these flights, have been broadcasting over the same frequencies as the Mogadishu air
traffic controllers, telling aircraft to climb or descend.
No one's listened to them. The actual controllers have stepped in. They've also said, “Pilots, if
you're given a command, confirm that command with CPDLC, or a SATCOM phone call.” The
pilot and dispatch community has spread the news far and wide, so I think everyone is aware of
the issue at this point. It affected close to a dozen flights so far, but just something to add to the
list of threat actors against aviation going, okay, this is a new one and not great.
© 2024 AvTalk 4
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:09:46] JR: Yeah. If you’re not familiar, CPDLC is a shorthand for a controller pilot data link
communications. It's basically rudimentary text messaging between air traffic controllers and
pilots, which is probably not something someone on the ground in Africa is going to be able to
hack, because if so, we've got a much bigger problem on our hands. But this is more than likely
just someone on the ground with a more high-powered, handheld radio than they should have
broadcasting on frequencies they should not be, for stupid reasons. Thankfully, it seems like
everyone that needs to know about this knows about it. Even if a pilot was to listen to one of
these rogue air traffic controllers and modify altitude, there are other safeguards in place that
would prevent hopefully, any tragedy from happening. You still have TCAS and things like that.
If you have two aircraft heading in the same direction, or heading in opposite directions at the
same altitude, you would think TCAS would alert those aircraft. But you never want to rely on
TCAS being the only thing between you and other traffic around. This is scary, but not the first
time something like this has happened.
[0:10:55] IP: Yeah. It’s just, it seems more organized in this particular instance.
[0:11:02] JR: Yeah. There's really unlikely to be anyone on the ground to track down these
broadcasts and go deal with it. There probably isn't an agency as robust as the FCC, or maybe
Ofcom, or whoever in the UK to go deal with this.
[0:11:16] IP: Right, right. This next story is one that it was always going to happen. I'm honestly
surprised it happened this quickly, but I shouldn't find it funny, because it's – I mean, I guess, the
harbinger of things to come, but I find it amusing. Air Canada's chatbot made up some rules
about discounts that the airline offers regarding bereavement fares. Just made them up.
[0:11:47] JR: Okay. Yeah. AI has been known to do that.
[0:11:49] IP: The airline said, well, the chatbot was wrong and resisted providing the refund that
the customer was promised by the chatbot. What he asked was, how do the bereavement fares
work? His grandmother died. He needed to travel, so he went to Air Canada's website. The
© 2024 AvTalk 5
AVT 256 Transcript
chatbot said that this man should book a flight and then request a refund within 90 days.
Elsewhere on the website, Air Canada explicitly says, that's not how it works. Here's the policy.
You have to do this before you book a flight. When he went to request a refund, it was rejected.
Air Canada said, he should have known that our chatbot was making stuff up and gone to the
other part of the website.
[0:12:44] JR: How could you possibly know that?
[0:12:46] IP: Air Canada said, “We're not giving you a refund. We'll give you a credit and we'll
update the chatbot.” This gentleman said, “No, I want my refund,” and filed a small claims
complaint against the airline in – it's called Canada's Civil Resolution Tribunal. It's a small claims
court.
[0:13:06] JR: Tribunal. That's big time.
[0:13:08] IP: I know. Here's where it gets, I think, just ridiculous. Because up until now, I was
like, okay, this interesting. Air Canada said that they should not be held liable for the chatbot’s
misleading information because, “the chat bot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its
own actions.”
[0:13:34] JR: Uh, no. I'm happy that apparently, the court tribunal did not agree with that,
because that would set some pretty dangerous precedent, wouldn't it?
[0:13:43] IP: I'm not sure if they're judges, but they're judicial people that are members of the
tribunal said, “Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its
agents, servants, or representatives, including a chatbot.” It does not explain why it believes this
is the case, or “why the webpage titled bereavement travel is inherently more trustworthy than
its chatbot.”
[0:14:09] JR: Yeah. I mean, I sure would like to know what the chatbot was referencing to come
up with that claim that you could do it after the fact, which just doesn't make any sense. Was it
referencing outside material off of Air Canada's site, or did it just simply make it up? I don't
know.
© 2024 AvTalk 6
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:14:28] IP: It made up a reasonable policy.
[0:14:30] JR: Maybe that should be the policy.
[0:14:33] IP: The policy that the chat bot made up said, “If you need to travel immediately, or
have already traveled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate,
kindly do so within 90 days to the date your ticket was issued by completing our ticket refund
application form.” That seems like a reasonable policy to me.
[0:14:49] JR: Yeah. I'm looking for any evidence of a chatbot on Air Canada's site right now,
and you know what? I can’t –
[0:14:55] IP: Oh, they got rid of it.
[0:14:56] JR: I can't find one. Clearly, they do agree after the fact that there are some issues
with this chatbot, because it is not currently – I cannot find it anywhere. You will have to contact
a human to deal with Air Canada right now, which I guess, they also were arguing that any
representative of Air Canada, they’re also not liable. I don't agree with that at all.
[0:15:19] IP: Well, that sounds like the insurance company defense. We can tell you whatever
we want and just make things up along the way, because none of it matters. I mean, that's the
insurance company defense, or at least in –
[0:15:30] JR: Yeah. Pretty much.
[0:15:31] IP: - with Jason in the U.S.
[0:15:34] JR: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm happy that the outcome was consumer oriented
here. The guy got his money back. Air Canada was reprimanded and say, “Hey, your agent,
whether it's a real person, or AI, no matter how stupid, or illogical that AI is, even if it's making
stuff up, that's what you told a passenger. That's what you told the customer. Deal with it.”
© 2024 AvTalk 7
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:15:56] IP: If you file within 90 days, we'll give you a plane.
[0:15:58] JR: Okay. I mean, there was that, what? The fake tweet from a couple of months ago
about – Oh, that. Yeah, the Harrier. A couple of months ago, someone, I believe they faked a
chatbot conversation with a car dealership, a local whatever, car dealership that they tricked it to
say, to giving away a free car. Clearly, that did not work. This is believable. This person
presumably didn't trick the chatbot to doing anything.
[0:16:27] IP: Yeah. I mean, there was no theft. There was no deception. He just asked the
chatbot a question.
[0:16:34] JR: Look, chatbots have existed as customer service on sites long before the term AI
became mainstream in the last year or so. This is not a new thing.
[0:16:42] IP: It's just a logic tree. Yeah. This is not like, it's Google search with a reply function.
[0:16:48] JR: Yeah. Good for this person for taking it through to a small claims court, or
whatever the Canadian version of it is, I don't know. But I'm happy with this outcome.
[0:16:56] IP: Tribunal.
[0:16:57] JR: Tribunal. Okay.
[0:16:58] IP: We all need a good tribunal.
[0:17:00] JR: Good outcome.
[0:17:00] IP: Yeah. Let's go to Singapore. Because it is, of course, the Singapore Air Show. The
Singapore Air Show is back in full forces here. It seems that attendance will be above pre-
pandemic levels, or at least at pre-pandemic levels.
[0:17:16] JR: Robust.
© 2024 AvTalk 8
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:17:17] IP: Robust. And we've got some orders.
[0:17:20] JR: Yeah. Not a ton.
[0:17:21] IP: Not a ton, but we've got a few interesting ones.
[0:17:23] JR: Enough to keep it interesting. Enough to keep it interesting. To lead things off,
Comac had an outsized presence at the Singapore Air Show this year, really taking the place of
what you would have expected Boeing to have in the past. Since Boeing didn't have any
presence at the Singapore Air Show this year, it's focusing on the nuts and bolts of the industry
right now. Comac is taking that spot. They came away with an order for 40 C919 orders from
Tibet Airlines and Hainan Airlines, I think, but of the interesting plateau variant of the aircraft that
does not yet exist. It's a shortened variant of the C919 for hot and high operations, like, think the
A319 or the 737-700. Shorter version of the aircraft, same engines, presumably, but for hot and
high operations, where you need that extra oomph to get off the ground.
[0:18:20] IP: Exactly.
[0:18:21] JR: That's exciting. Also, catching my eye and not really getting much attention, but
was an order for 10 ARJ21s, which is the MD-80 Chinese knockoff, we'll say, hasn't seen much
commercial success.
[0:18:34] IP: Is it an MD-80 knockoff? I mean, it seems –
[0:18:36] JR: 717 knockoff, or –
[0:18:38] IP: DC9?
[0:18:39] JR: - CRJ, DC9, CRJ1000, I don't know. It's a Frankin plane. Doesn't matter what it is.
[0:18:45] IP: Exactly.
© 2024 AvTalk 9
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:18:46] JR: But it's here and now. There were 10 orders, I think, from two provinces in China,
I think Hainan and Shanghai provinces. Google Translate is leading me astray here a little bit,
saying that they're airlines, but I think they're provinces, because they are ordering not just a
regular ARJ21, but experimental variants of it for government operations. One of them would be
a fire tanker, which is interesting. I quote again, from a Google Translate version of the press
release, “The ARJ21 fire extinguisher can quickly respond to a fire, accurately locate the fire
area and extinguish fire efficiently, taking into account daily air quality monitoring and early
warning and commuting.”
Translation trails off there at the end. But another variant would be for aviation medical rescue
and transfer, which can be used for patient transportation, infectious disease transportation and
severe emergency treatment. A third variant would be for emergency rescue command, which
can, and I quote, “realize the situation, awareness, command decision-making and dispatching
of disaster situation.” Just like an emergency command aircraft, which is pretty cool.
Then there's another one for emergency rescue and forced transportation. I don't know. The
Google Translate's a little iffy, but they're really throwing everything at the ARJ21 to see what it
can do in a government capacity, rather than a commercial operation, which hasn't seen all that
much success. It's something to keep an eye on, because any – particularly the firefighting
variant of the ARJ21 is interesting to me, because that's a variant of any aircraft that is highly
sought after and necessary these days, unfortunately.
[0:20:28] IP: Yeah. We should also note that the Singapore Air Show is the C919's first visit
outside of China. A big debut internationally for Comac.
[0:20:42] JR: Other things happened as well. The newest worst kept secret in the industry, Thai
Airways's order of 45 787-9 is official. I think there was also a option for 35 more 787. That's
exciting. Royal Brunei picked up four 787-9s, which is nice to top off a little bit extra on top of
that. Then today, Airbus chimed in with a small order from STARLUX, topping up its A330neo
fleet with an additional three. But also, interestingly, five A350 freighters. That's a mighty small
airline to have a dedicated wide-body freighter fleet from. I found that one to be quite interesting.
© 2024 AvTalk 10
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:21:27] IP: I'm not sure exactly which executive with STARLUX it was, whether it was CEO or
someone else. But they basically said, “Hey, we're a huge cargo hub. We're important to the
global cargo markets and we are absolutely not going to be left behind. Yeah, let's get a handful
of A350 freighters and put them to use.”
[0:21:49] JR: Yeah. Good for them. A bit unexpected for such a young, small airline to operate a
fleet of brand-new dedicated freighters, especially when the freight sector isn't doing too hot at
the moment. But hey, maybe they like the fact that Airbus also announced at the Singapore Air
Show that the A350 freighter will have an increased max payload from 109 up to 111 tons.
Maybe that made the math work.
[0:22:15] IP: That's what pushed them over the edge, I bet.
[0:22:17] JR: That did it for me. Also, a couple of ATR orders, ATR 46-600s. Two of them being
ordered by Maldivian Airways, I believe. I think that's it. At least through today, the end of the
day on Wednesday, February 21st, not a huge list of orders published, but something is better
than nothing.
[0:22:37] IP: Yeah. Maldivian. We'll get to Moldova later in the show. We don't want to mix those
up.
[0:22:43] JR: I said the wrong thing.
[0:22:44] IP: One of them might get mad at us, and I'm not sure.
[0:22:46] JR: I read the wrong line. Yeah.
[0:22:48] IP: That's all right. Let's come back to the US and talk about not breaking news, but it
happened today. Today's Wednesday, February 21st. Today, Ed Clark, the head of the 737 MAX
program, is getting fired. He will leave the company –
[0:23:07] JR: Took one for the team.
© 2024 AvTalk 11
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:23:09] IP: Yeah. He will leave the company and Katie Ringgold will replace him. Clark took
over the 737 MAX program in 2021 as the fifth head of the 737 MAX program in four years. He
was at Boeing for 18 years, previously the chief mechanic and engineer for the 737 before being
named to head the program. Ringgold is a financial person within Boeing. Her background is in
finance within Boeing. However, she began her career in the US Air Force as a maintenance
engineer, so knows her way around an airplane.
[0:23:46] JR: Okay. That's good. I did see some people discussing how they just replaced an
engineer with a financial. There seems to be some background in engineering there, which is
good and sorely needed. I guess, that could put those rumors or, I guess, disparagements to
bed. That's good. It won't, but it should.
[0:24:05] IP: People should actually go and read the article by Dominic Gates at the Seattle
Times, who first reported this story. To me, our next story is the most important story of the
week. It's not the biggest.
[0:24:18] JR: Has to do with some of the biggest checked baggage, though.
[0:24:20] IP: It does have to do with the biggest checked baggage. But it's definitely one of
those things where this is consistent among changes that I feel this airline has made in the past
and continues to make. I'll say that I'm very upset that my hang glider will no longer be allowed
in checked baggage on American Airlines.
[0:24:48] JR: Oh, man. But it's okay, because you could still bring your javelin, right?
[0:24:51] IP: Nope. Can't bring my javelin.
[0:24:52] JR: What? Oh, no. That's where I draw the line. I'm not flying American.
[0:24:55] IP: I can't bring my pole vault either.
© 2024 AvTalk 12
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:24:59] JR: I mean, you'd be surprised about the junk that we have in this industry that is
standardized and available for airlines to decide, you can bring this and you can't bring that,
because there are what's called industry subcodes for things like this for, you could bring a
javelin and you could bring a hang glider and you could bring pineapples and stuff like that.
That's an actual thing. If you’re flying Hawaii, or I think Alaska, you could bring two pineapples if
you're coming back from Hawaii. That's a thing that the industry has had to deal with. This is the
least of the news American announced, isn't it?
[0:25:31] IP: Yes.
[0:25:32] JR: It impacts the fewest number of passengers.
[0:25:35] IP: I mean, I would be surprised if it impacts more than a handful per month, maybe.
The real story here is that American has – I feel like, you ever – you see the kids getting bullied
and the bigger kids hitting the kid in the face with his own fists, saying, “Stop hitting yourself.”
[0:25:52] JR: Why hit yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?
[0:25:55] IP: Yeah. I feel like, that's what Americans doing to its customers. Because the
changes that American is making and how it impacts their customers. Then the language they're
using to do it, I mean, it's absolutely along the lines of, “Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining.”
[0:26:13] JR: Hey, you said it. You said you were going to say it, but you said it.
[0:26:16] IP: But that's the best phrase to describe what they're doing. I mean –
[0:26:20] JR: It's a different phrase than what you have written in our show notes, which isn't
very friendly.
[0:26:26] IP: We need to stay as family-friendly as possible. The phrase that I have written in
the show notes is certainly not family-friendly, but you can imagine what it is. Jason, tell me
what their actual changes are.
© 2024 AvTalk 13
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:26:38] JR: This year, American has been on a rampage against anyone who would dare
book a flight not directly on its own website. It wants to make sure that anyone booking a flight
on American is doing so on AA.com. It has really clamped down on offering any business travel
support, or anything like that. The most recent change was that if you do not book directly
through American, or one of its unnamed third-party channels, you will no longer earn AA
Advantage Miles, or loyalty points on flights. If you were to book on Expedia, or Kayak, or any of
the other things that you can book, or get to book a flight on, you won't earn points anymore,
which is a big, big change, not unheard of in the industry, because this is basically the way
hotels work these days. If you don't book directly on Marriott's website, or it's app, you're not
going to get points, which stinks.
It's the way American went about announcing this and the way it's trying to spin it in its press
release. That really doesn't sit with me well. It's like the line from Star Wars, where Darth Vader
is saying, “I'm altering the deal and pray I don't alter it any further.” Because that's what they
keep doing. They keep altering the deal. This one, Ian, what was the line that their chief
commercial officer said about this change? Do you have it offhand?
[0:28:08] IP: We want to make it more convenient for customers to enjoy the value and magic
of travel.
[0:28:15] JR: Yeah. It's one thing to make a change. If you want passengers to book directly on
American, so you don't have to pay out any commission, or anything, that's fine. If you want
people to book on American site, because the lowest fare is probably going to be there, maybe
going to be there because of NDC, which is a whole other thing. That's fine. But to go on and
say, we're making it more convenient to enjoy the magic of travel. That's just not what this is.
It's the thing you'd expect to see on like, I don't know, if he appeared on the morning TV shows,
or something like that and consumers were watching it. But to say that in a press release that
they would ostensibly expect media to parrot and to repeat is just ridiculous, because how does
forcing people to book on American site directly enable them to enjoy the magic of travel? Who
came up with that line?
© 2024 AvTalk 14
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:29:09] IP: I just want to point out that all of the news stories that came out this week said,
American Airlines raises bag fees.
[0:29:17] JR: They didn't even talk about this, which is an interesting point, because the casual
passenger who flies once a year and books on ianscheapflights.org probably doesn't have an
AA advantage account and they don't care about miles, because they will never have enough
miles to matter. It is an interesting point that they're making here, that we're only going to give
miles to the people who know well enough to book directly. Yeah, the raised bag fees, which we
didn't even talk about, because honestly, I don't care. I don't ever check a bag, but it's going up
from $35 to $40, or something like that. Just the media spin, swinging a miss like – doing
something so negative and then saying, “We're doing this, because travel is magical.” It's just
not cool.
[0:30:02] IP: A United Airlines 757, traveling from San Francisco to Boston, made an
unscheduled landing in Denver, because the leading-edge slat on the right-hand wing
disintegrated, is a word that I think is applicable here?
[0:30:18] JR: Yeah. Not really quite sure what happened there. Judging by the damage and
possibly, some of the damage on the wing itself, it was probably, I don’t know, probably a bird
strike and it took out a bit of a chunk of the wing, or at least the moveable parts of the wing.
There was almost certainly no actual risk that this aircraft was in. Just probably reduced
efficiency, which I don't know, if [inaudible 0:30:41]. Really horrifying. Yeah. It, of course, made
the rounds in the news, because it did look quite scary.
[0:30:48] IP: Sure. I mean, the average passenger doesn't know what parts of the aircraft are
important to remain intact and which parts can slightly disintegrate and remain safely in the air.
[0:30:58] JR: As we learned from Air Serbia, you can take a whole chunk of the aircraft out and
it won't really matter.
[0:31:04] IP: This was more along the lines of a small piece of, I guess, it's the trailing edge of
the leading edge, if that makes any sense.
© 2024 AvTalk 15
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:31:12] JR: Yeah. Yeah. I get it.
[0:31:14] IP: We could put a link in the show notes. The flight landed safely in Denver and
things were fine. I was going to bring up a whole thing about eyewitness quoting and local news
reporters talking about, asking people, passengers, trying to get that scare quote.
[0:31:29] JR: It's not worth it, Ian. It's not worth your time.
[0:31:31] IP: I'm just going to leave it. I'm just going to leave it. More surprising, though, is our
next story, because Finnair has turned a profit.
[0:31:38] JR: Holy cow.
[0:31:39] IP: Are you sure?
[0:31:40] JR: Didn’t see that one coming. I had to double check the numbers. I was pouring
over their books and running the math and it's true.
[0:31:47] IP: Were you wearing a green visor?
[0:31:49] JR: Well, of course, I had one of those little green lamps that only illuminates the
paperwork and none of the room around you. Finnair is the little airline that could. It actually
turned an operating profit. A small one, 24.2 million dollars in the fourth quarter of last year. Its
first profit since 2019. That may not sound all that impressive, but considering the impact of first,
we had COVID, and then obviously, that impacted every airline in the world. Then Finnair, in
particular, was impacted by the closure of Russian airspace, which had probably impacted
Finnair more than any other airline in the world, I would say, as its business model was
basically, take people from the US and Europe and get them to Asia via Russian airspace.
When you can't go through Russian airspace anymore, that business model doesn't really work
anymore. They had to figure something else out. There were a lot of other airlines that still have
not been able to turn a profit since COVID. Here we have Finnair turning a profit with another,
© 2024 AvTalk 16
AVT 256 Transcript
an entirely separate, seemingly never-ending crisis, they figured it out and they turned a profit.
Good for them.
[0:32:58] IP: Indeed, indeed. I'm very proud, because I enjoy them very much.
[0:33:02] JR: Yeah, Finnair is a nice airline and it's good to see, they presumably, figured
something out.
[0:33:07] IP: The balance of the show, we've got some quick things to move through. Jason,
let's begin the beginning of the end and hit up. Let's go to United resuming Tel Aviv Flights next
month.
[0:33:19] JR: Yeah. This one's hot off the electronic presses. United will resume New York/
Newark, as they call it, to Tel Aviv on March 2nd of this year. Relatively soon. That's only a
couple of weeks from now. However, the flights will spin up on March 2nd, and again on March
4th, but they will not provide non-stop service from Newark initially. They will make a stopover in
Germany, I think it was. Why can't I find this real quick? It's somewhere there.
[0:33:52] IP: Munich, I think?
[0:33:52] JR: Munich. Yeah, I think it's Munich. They're stopping somewhere along the way and
they say, this is after they've conducted a detailed safety analysis in their decision making, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. After just a few days, on March 6th, they intend to resume non-stop
service from Newark to Tel Aviv, but they want to tow dip in the first couple of days, where
they're only going to operate March 2nd and 4th and then on the return, March 3rd and 5th. I
guess, it's a testament if they see what they like, if they're operating without any issues, they will
resume daily non-stop service and I assume, it will be very expensive, because there is still not
much capacity to Tel Aviv.
[0:34:33] IP: Iberia Express, also resuming flights to Tel Aviv. That'll happen on April 1st. They'll
also start with a reduced schedule and ramp up as time goes on. Jason, which airline has
discovered Mexico's newest airport?
© 2024 AvTalk 17
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:34:50] JR: Discover Airlines has discovered Mexico's newest airport in Tulum. This was an
interesting one. It's the airport's first long-haul destination and this is quite a long-haul
destination. This is quite a long flight. It's the world's hottest new airport right now. Everyone is
tripping over themselves to add flights to this destination, except Spirit, who announced and
then said, “Oh, wait. We don't have any airplanes to do that with,” and then canceled the route
before it began. Yeah, what are you going to do?
That's exciting. It doesn't start until December 12th of this year, so that's still way off in the future.
But hey, anytime a new airport has its first international, not even just the international, long-
haul, transatlantic destination, that puts that airport on the map, doesn't it?
[0:35:34] IP: Yeah. It's not Cancuneness of the airport is very appealing for a lot of airlines.
[0:35:41] JR: Yeah. This is not an airport that's going to be busting at the seams, at least with
frequencies anytime. It might be busting at the seams operationally, because it is not a large
airport. I don't even think there's an ILS, but pretty sure, as we know from Mexicana’s first
inaugural flight, which didn't make it there, because it was foggy and they don't have any
instrument and landing system that I'm aware of. Could be interesting for long-haul flights.
[0:36:06] IP: Now it's time for Moldova. Air Moldova's air operating certificate was suspended in
August of last year. The airline was given six months to get its act together. Address
deficiencies, remove non-conformities, show that they could operate an airline.
[0:36:26] JR: It didn't do any of that. Not at all.
[0:36:29] IP: The AOC has been officially revoked by Moldovan authorities. That's another
airline that will add to –
[0:36:36] JR: Will not be coming back. Will not be resuming operations, as they said they might.
As we know, and we mentioned every time this happens, once an airline stops operating, it is a
very uphill battle to resume operations. This is another example, where it just isn't going to
happen.
© 2024 AvTalk 18
AVT 256 Transcript
[0:36:53] IP: This airline is done. Korean Air is also mulling whether or not they will keep their
A220s in the fleet post-merger with Asiana, which is fascinating to me.
[0:37:08] JR: It makes sense. This is actually one of the few A220s I've ever flown on. I flew on
a year, I think a 2019, a Korean A220. But the airline only has 10 of them. Asiana doesn't have
any. It makes sense to cut out the A220, because it would be too small of a sub-fleet for the
combined Korean-Asiana, which feels like a merger that's been in the works forever at this
point, and still isn't a done deal. Still not happening yet. Will happen eventually. But it makes
sense, but it's just odd again to see. Second week in a row, we're talking about a large airline
possibly giving up a fleet of A220s. I don't know if these in particular have been overhauled and
have quite functioning engines, like Egyptian airline ones do, the Egypt aircraft do.
[0:38:00] IP: They might not be as attractive to a new lessor.
[0:38:03] JR: Yeah. I think two of them, I guess, two out of 10 is 20%. 20% of them are not even
in operation right now. Yeah, it's just not – maybe the lease that they have on these aircraft
wasn't particularly attractive. A lot of reasons it doesn't make sense, but it's just interesting to
see such a new aircraft be discarded from airline fleet.
[0:38:23] IP: Qantas is moving eight of its A321 XLR orders over to the domestic side of things.
Seems to fit, because the 321’s been successful on a number of long domestic routes. Why not
make the XLR down in Australia, one of those successful aircraft?
[0:38:44] JR: Few countries would you actually need an A321 XLR to do domestic operations
on. Yeah, that's a long, long transcon fight for Qantas. In announcing this, they did reveal some
delivery delays. Did you see that coming, Ian? Would you have expected that?
[0:39:04] IP: I can't say that this is shocking news to me.
[0:39:07] JR: No, it is not shocking. Boeing has issues, but so does Airbus. Qantas has said, its
first A321 XLR for domestic operations is delayed by three months to early 2025. But more
significantly, its first Project Sunrise A350, is delayed by approximately six months to mid-2026.
A lot can change between now and then. I think it's quite interesting that Airbus is already
© 2024 AvTalk 19
AVT 256 Transcript
predicting that an aircraft that won't be delivered for a couple of years from now will be delayed
by six months. At least, they're giving Qantas a bit of a heads up that that's happening.
[0:39:46] IP: I can only imagine that the fit and finish for the Project Sunrise A350s is going to
be a lot more work than, say, an A350 for KLM, or Air France, or somewhere like that, where it's,
okay, just paint the aircraft, make sure the right seats get put in, and we're all set to go.
We'll close the show with a hearty congratulations to Hawaiian Airlines, which after some delay,
has finally taken delivery of its first 787. Happy Valentine's Day Hawaiian. N781HA went home
on the 14th of February, from Charleston all the way to Honolulu.
[0:40:26] JR: All right. Well, the future Alaska Airlines Group's first 787 looks pretty nice.
[0:40:34] IP: There you go. This has been episode 256 of AvTalk. Thank you all so much for
listening. We always appreciate you making it to the end of the episode. If you've made it this
far, why not go a little bit further and leave us a rating, or a review? Let us know what you like
about the podcast. Let us know what you don't like about the podcast. Wherever you get your
podcasts, let the other people listening on that platform know how you feel about this one. I am
Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:41:06] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2024 AvTalk 20