AvTalk Episode 277: Finally, some good news for Boeing!

AVT 277 Transcript
EPISODE 277
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 277 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always
with –
[0:00:17] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. How's it going?
[0:00:20] JR: It's going well. The storms have passed. We'll talk a little bit about that in a
moment. The sun has come out and the week is ambling on, towards the weekend, which is
when the exciting stuff begins. But you are back in front of the microphone, back from behind a
bagel, I assume?
[0:00:39] JR: A couple bagels.
[0:00:39] IP: Or some poutine, maybe?
[0:00:40] JR: Yeah. I hear Montreal is famous for both of those things. I think the bagels are
pretty good. The poutine is very good. But had a nice little weekend, extended getaway in
Montreal, where it was also blisteringly hot, and the French influence of how we don't really
need air-conditioning. It was a little unfortunate for the most part, but it was a nice weekend.
[0:01:01] IP: Well, that's good. Welcome back. I'm glad you had a nice time in. That's what I
always do when I think of places to go. When it's very hot, I want to go to places without air-
conditioning.
[0:01:14] JR: Yeah. I've only ever been to Montreal during heat waves. I really got to cut that
out, maybe go in February, or something. I'm just happy I got there and back, without any major
issues. Because if you've been paying attention to air travel in the Northeast, or really anywhere
east of the Mississippi in the last week, it's been a hellscape of flight delays, cancellations,
diversions, tornadoes, and all sorts of stuff. I got extremely lucky. No major issues in either
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direction. Actually, we were early in both directions. But it was one of those situations, the way
there, our flight was delayed because of operational issues, not actually because of weather
The earlier flight, two hours earlier than mine, was also delayed because of operational issues
by two hours. I said, “Well, I just hop on that flight.” I'll get where I'm going, before I was even
supposed to land on my original flight. That turned out to be great. On the return flight,
miraculously, we took off from Montreal and just made a straight line south to New York. That
doesn't really happen in the summer. We landed early, and it was just miraculous. It was so
seamless that I think I cashed in a lot of travel karma this week.
[0:02:25] IP: Well, hopefully you have some of it banked up for later in the year.
[0:02:28] JR: I hope so.
[0:02:29] IP: That was Jason's plan for last weekend. This weekend, I don't know what he has
planned. But if you're in the UK, the Royal International Air Tattoo is this weekend. If you're
going to be there, shoot us a message, podcast@fr24.com. We'll put you in touch with my
colleague, Chris, who will be at Riyadh for the weekend. Then next weekend is Farnborough,
which is one of two really, I guess, major air shows. Then you have the secondary Dubai and
Singapore. But as far as commercial things go, Farnborough and then Paris, obviously in the
odd years is the big one. Farnborough is beginning next week. We'll have a presence there as
well.
We'll do our standard orders and information wrap-up show after all that good stuff happens at
Farnborough. Then the week after is Oshkosh. I've mentioned in the past few weeks and I'll
mention it again, I will be up there on the 27th of July. If you're going to be around, email us,
podcast@fr24.com, and we'll get a meet up together. There's a few of us that are going to meet
up in the afternoon, but feel free to drop a line and say, hi, if you're going to be up there.
[0:03:44] JR: So much stuff going on.
[0:03:46] IP: It's the busiest weeks of summer. Oh, I should probably also mention, by the time
the podcast comes out, it's entirely possible that we will have set another all-time flight tracking
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record. The third Thursday in July, which happens to be yesterday, if you're listening to the
podcast on Friday, that is usually, over the past couple of years, the highest number of total
flights for the year. Last year, we topped 263,000, that is. This year, we've gone over that a
handful of times already. It's not outside the realm of possibility that we will track 300,000 total
flights on a single day this year. We'll keep an eye on that and report back next week and see
what we can see.
[0:04:30] JR: All right.
[0:04:31] IP: While Jason was enjoying Montreal, I was sitting in my basement while the
tornado sirens were going off.
[0:04:38] JR: And I was watching on my phone going, “Oh, that's just a bad, bad day for not just
O’Hare as usual, but also the little sister airport on the south side of town.” I think, Midway got in
on the action too, which you don't hear much about Midway.
[0:04:54] IP: Not anymore. Formerly, the world's busiest airport and the world's busiest square
mile. You now don't hear much about Southwest's northern hub, dare I say. But both Chicago
airports, O'Hare and Midway reported tornadoes on or very near the airfield.
[0:05:15] JR: Which you don't want. That’s bad for –
[0:05:16] IP: You certainly don't.
[0:05:17] JR: - for everything.
[0:05:18] IP: The Midway METAR, if you copy it and paste it into a document, is nearly four
lines long and includes remarks, such as tornado, 5 miles southwest of the airfield moving east,
and a tornado, and that's a new one for me. I don't think I've ever seen tornado listed in the
METAR itself.
[0:05:42] JR: I think at one point, the FAA's air traffic management system, or the delay
reporting system just reported the condition at both O'Hare and Midway as tornado/hurricane,
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which I think at any given moment, it could have been either. So, you might as well just say
both.
[0:05:56] IP: Yeah. The weather was bad enough.
[0:05:58] JR: You had firsthand experience. Was it really that bad?
[0:06:01] IP: The funny thing is, is my house is due east of the airport, due east of O'Hare. I'm
located in between runway 27 center and 27 right. I'm on the north side of the airfield. By the
time it got to us, it had calmed remarkably. The weather on Sunday night was actually much
worse at my house than it was on Monday night when all of the tornado sirens are going off and
everything. I mean, I'm not going to say I was disappointed, because I'm glad we did no damage
or anything like that. But it was a letdown.
[0:06:41] JR: Oh. Well, I'm sorry, your house didn't blow away, Ian. You can't have it all.
[0:06:47] IP: But this is not to talk about weather. I mean, it is. The thing that I wanted to bring
up here is the fact that a lot of people asked, well, what do they do at the airport when there's a
tornado? Obviously, for the folks in the actual airport itself, in the terminal buildings, or the air
traffic controllers in the tower, they evacuate. They go down into the basement area at O'Hare,
and there's nearly every airport in the world now, there's a collection of tunnels that people can
go into. You may have seen pictures in the past of the rather famous tunnel that has the art
installation and is always playing Rhapsody in Blue between the concourse B and C in terminal
one, which is home to United and other places.
The question then came, what do they do if they're on the airplane, if they're already pushed
back from the gate waiting to take off when a tornado comes through? One pilot's answer was,
there is no plan.
[0:07:45] JR: Yeah, put the parking brakes on and hope you don't move much, I guess, is
probably the plan. This is something I did want to talk about, too. I think there was a confirmed
tornado listed 2 miles east of O'Hare, which is frighteningly close. Thankfully, it wasn't any closer
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than that. A lot of people said on the social medias, if they tend to, they react to things without
the knowledge needed to actually add any constructive –
[0:08:09] IP: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
[0:08:10] JR: I know. It happens. I’ve been known to do it myself.
[0:08:12] IP: That’s a heavy accusation.
[0:08:14] JR: Heavy accusation, but it's true. There are a lot of people saying it, “How could the
airlines not have canceled these flights? How could they have let these flights go during a
tornado warning?” None of it really works that way. Airlines don't cancel flights for a small
weather front like this. They'll proactively trim flight schedules for a hurricane, or a major storm
front that'll impact for the entire day. Something you can predict that will happen, impact your
operations for an entire day.
A storm front like this that's going to maybe roll through during a pretty short window a period of
time. The storm isn't exactly long lasting. It probably only impacted the airport for what? Like, 30
minutes maybe? It was pretty fast-moving.
[0:08:56] IP: I mean, it impacted the actual airport for, yeah, just under an hour. Then
departures were stopped in total for about two hours.
[0:09:06] JR: Right. This isn't like a hurricane, or any sort of other major storm that you can
predict exactly when it's going to hit. You just know that there's going to be weather sometime
during that day. Airlines will issue weather waivers saying, “Hey, if you have some flexibility,
maybe fly tomorrow, or the day before your scheduled flight.” A tornado warning is only issued
when a tornado is confirmed to be on the ground, either by radar signature, or someone literally
on the ground using their eyes going, “Hey, there's a tornado over there.” By that time, there's
nothing for an airline to do. They can't magically recall all of their flights and get them back to a
gate and get all those passengers off. That takes forever.
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It probably took all night to get all of those flights that were out on the ramp that eventually had
their flight crews timed out to get back, not just to the apron, but actually back to a gate and get
those passengers off. There were probably dozens and dozens and dozens of canceled flights
that night. This isn't really the thing that an airline can easily plan around. You can't plan around
the exact severity of this storm. It could very easily have been that there was a major, major
storm at Midway, but it totally missed O'Hare. You can't predict that. It's not fair to say, airline
should have canceled flights, or how could they have flights out there during a tornado warning?
Well, tornado warnings only last for a few minutes. It's a warning, because you don't know
what's happening until it's happening. Then it becomes a warning. Maybe they meant a tornado
watch. They should have canceled more flights during a tornado watch, but then you'd be
canceling a lot more flights a lot more often throughout the summer. I don't think passengers
would be too happy about that either.
[0:10:51] IP: No. I mean, it's one of those situations. Like I said, where I am, looking at the radar
signature, if you open both of your arms and then slowly close them, it made a hollow space
where there was no precipitation, and the wind was very calm right around the airport and
towards the lake. It was one of those things where it was a very small portion of the front
actually passed over the airport. It just so happened that that small portion of the front spawned
at least one tornado. This goes to talking out of school here is, I don't know how an airplane, a
fully loaded airplane would respond to a tornado. If anyone has any information, or has seen
any research on that –
[0:11:39] JR: I don't know if there are any models on this kind of thing.
[0:11:41] IP: I would love to see. A cursory Google search returned nothing valuable, as far as
believable information. I'm interested to know what would happen. Obviously, the bigger danger
is debris within the tornado impacting the air, like not what's actually going to happen in the
aircraft. But part of me is still very curious to see what would happen.
[0:12:02] JR: Yeah, out on the airport, I mean, O’Hare is a huge pot of land. There's not going
to be a ton of debris flying around, but there will be stuff if the tornado is big enough, but a part
of my brain can't reconcile a tornado passing over the airfield, if it hits an aircraft, it's either
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going to do nothing, maybe spin it around a little bit, or it's going to create enough lift to make
the airplane go in the air. Honestly, I can't reconcile that in my head. What would happen? I feel
like, this is something that could easily be modeled with the proper software and computer. If
you possess both of those things, maybe run that and let us know.
[0:12:39] IP: That would be amazing. All right, let's move on. Hey, good news for Boeing.
[0:12:46] JR: Impossible.
[0:12:47] IP: No, it's not impossible. There's actually good news for Boeing.
[0:12:51] JR: What is it?
[0:12:52] IP: Boeing has begun 777-9 certification flight testing. The FAA has granted Boeing
type inspection authorization. TIA is the big step towards actually certifying the aircraft. Type
inspection authorization means that the FAA believes that the aircraft is able to be certified. Now
they move towards proving that in real life. The FAA is satisfied that Boeing has done its
homework. They're satisfied that the changes that Boeing implemented to some of the
mechanical parts of the aircraft. The explanation that they gave the FAA regarding all the
software on the aircraft is ready to go.
Now, the FAA inspectors just need to be on the airplane while it's flying. Eventually, probably
about 18 months from now, they'll say, “Okay, here's your type certification.” Then begins the
long road to delivering the aircraft to commercial customers. Let's just stick with the good news
for now.
[0:13:58] JR: Yeah. The aircraft, the 777-9 that is doing this flight testing, Ian, it flew four and a
half years ago for the first time. That's pretty notable that it's taken that long to get from the first
flight to actual certification flight testing. That is a major hurdle overcome.
[0:14:17] IP: In a while.
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[0:14:18] JR: Yeah, it's been a minute, but far – I mean, it's been exactly one pandemic and
then some. Wow, it's long overdue, but I'm sure there's some much-needed relief. I don't know
of celebration in wherever it is Boeing is headquartered these days, but good news nonetheless.
[0:14:37] IP: I mean, there's definitely, I would say, cause for celebration. I mean, this is a major
milestone in the certification of an aircraft, or certification process of an aircraft. I think, kudos to
the team that's been working hard on this. At least at this point, we're not likely to see further big
stretches where they go, “Oh, you know what? No, we're going to need another 18 months.
We're going to need another year. We're going to need –” I mean, this is a big thing. They've got
inspectors on board and now it's time to fly the plane and make sure it's the plane that they
designed.
[0:15:13] JR: Maybe even the 737-7 and 10 will join the flight-testing party at some point.
[0:15:21] IP: Jason, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
[0:15:24] JR: I mean, I'd like to get a little ahead, because these are 737s. They shouldn't be
that complicated. If I'm an airline, I really, really want those. Maybe I won't get too ahead of
myself. That's the next party. It's like having your birthday and Christmas too close to each
other. You don't want to combine celebrations. You want to spread them out, so you get the gifts
spread out and you get multiple gifts. You don't want to combine. Maybe in six months from
now, they can have another celebration.
[0:15:52] IP: There you go. Sure. We'll go with that.
[0:15:53] JR: Yeah. That all made sense.
[0:15:56] IP: Let's shift gears entirely and talk about what happened in Russia last week, which
is the crash of a Gazpromavia Superjet outside of Moscow. This aircraft was coming out of
maintenance. It had just received heavy maintenance and was flying for the first time when it
crashed, killing all three crew members who were onboard. We did not track this aircraft with
ADS-B, but we did receive Mode S frames from the aircraft, which indicated no positions, but
did provide altitude. The aircraft calculated vertical rate, which is reported as part of the Mode S
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data, both of which indicated a climb to 5,000 feet and then a precipitous descent into what we
now know to be a mountainous wooded area outside of Moscow. Russia is investigating the
crash and they have recovered both the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. They
say, that they have downloaded the data from both of those recorders and are now in the
process of analyzing that data.
[0:17:05] JR: Yeah. Initial reports had said that this was one of the Russified versions of the
aircraft, I guess.
[0:17:12] IP: The new, the Superjet New. Superjet New, which is not true.
[0:17:17] JR: Yeah, not true. Thankfully, I mean, maybe not thankfully, but, I guess, it is
thankfully for Russia that that program is probably not impacted by this. But terrible tragedy. Yet
another whole loss of the SSJ. I guess, this is the third, I think, whole loss?
[0:17:33] IP: I think fourth?
[0:17:34] JR: Is it the fourth? Well, there was the initial one. I think that was in South America
during flight testing and during the media flight. There was the, what was it? The Aeroflot one,
that belly-flopped on the runway. Then there was this one. Was there a fourth?
[0:17:51] IP: Demonstration in Indonesia, into the mountain.
[0:17:53] JR: Indonesia, thank you. Not South America.
[0:17:55] IP: There was the one in Russia, where it experienced runway excursion in 2018.
There was the fire in Moscow. That was the one that we discussed thoroughly, and where it was
captured out in video. Then the one where it went off the runway way back in 2018 in, I believe
Yakutsk
[0:18:16] JR: Oh, that’s right.
[0:18:18] IP: Actually, this is the fifth.
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[0:18:20] JR: Wow. Yeah, okay. We will wait to see what the Russian investigation has to say.
Thankfully, like you said, Ian, they recovered the boxes from this aircraft and they were able to
be read out and we'll just wait to see what they have to say. Not much international implication
here, because I don't think there are really any SSJs flying outside of Russia at this point, or
outside of any Russian airlines at this state.
[0:18:46] IP: Right, right, right. There's still a bit active outside Russia, but not –
[0:18:50] JR: Not by any Russian airlines. This would have been a much bigger concern back
in the day, where you had Interjet and CityJet operating the SSJ, but those days are well behind
us.
[0:19:00] IP: Yeah. The French BEA, the accident investigators in France, have released their
final report on an AirHub Airline A320, which descended very, very low in Paris based on a bad
altimeter setting. They were given the wrong altimeter setting by the air traffic controllers, and
that led them to believe that they were higher than they were. We previously discussed this, but
the final report does a really good job of layering all of the things that went wrong beyond the
bad Q&H. They were given a Q&H of 1011 hectopascals, rather than 1001. That made them
think that they were 280 feet higher than they actually were.
When they got to the ground, or near the ground and they were flying in instrument conditions,
they did not see the runway by what they thought was decision height and conducted a go-
around. Well, what they thought was their decision height was actually six feet above the
ground, nearly a mile ahead of the runway.
[0:20:26] JR: To put that in perspective, if I was standing out in the field, I would have been hit
in the head by this aircraft nearly a mile away from the runway.
[0:20:34] IP: Yes.
[0:20:35] JR: Wow.
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[0:20:37] IP: That part we knew. We knew that the aircraft had gotten far too low. What's
interesting is the readout of how this happened and what went wrong, because one of the things
that the investigators note is that this happened because they weren't using an ILS approach.
They were using a separate precision approach, which uses the altimeter settings and then
leaves the pilots without that vertical guidance outside of the altimeter settings. Thinking that
they were on the correct vertical profile just much lower than they actually were. One of the
other contributing factors that the BEA notes is that the runway lights were not turned on.
[0:21:28] JR: Their wipers were on high as they were in the rain. They had a lot going against
them here.
[0:21:33] IP: Yes. There was multiple things that go into this. The other thing is you would think
that, oh, hey, why didn't they receive a terrain warning? The report does a really good job of
showing, basically, they weren't low enough, far enough away from the airport. Because they
were on a stabilized approach, they were just too low on the approach, the way the terrain
profile warning system works on this particular A320s, they weren't low enough, far enough
away from their runway to trigger a terrain warning. It did trigger terrain warning in the control
tower, but the control tower took too long and improper –
[0:22:17] JR: Nine seconds.
[0:22:18] IP: Nine seconds. And used improper phraseology to inquire what was happening with
the aircraft. They know multiple times that the tower couldn't actually see the aircraft. Again, one
of those things where it's never just one, it wasn't just the wrong Q&H. Because they never
corrected the Q&H. But with the runway lights on, the aircraft was able to establish a visual
reference and land safely.
[0:22:49] JR: Yeah. Apparently, it took the controllers nine seconds after the alert was issued to
warn the crew. Unfortunately, apparently, the crew didn't hear that call and continued to descend
below to that very, very scary six-feet above ground level, which thankfully, there wasn't so
much as a light pole on the ground. They miraculously didn't hit anything. That's a hell of a
runway safety area, I guess. Wouldn't expect there to be that much empty space around to go,
but I guess there is.
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[0:23:19] IP: Thankfully, it's all farmland.
[0:23:21] JR: Yeah. Thankfully, they weren't growing any corn out there, because corn can get
over six feet tall. I don't know.
[0:23:25] IP: That’s true.
[0:23:26] JR: That's true. Fun fact for you. There's some other interesting information here that
neither the aircraft, nor the air traffic controller’s tools are designed to detect this type of error,
which would be the incorrect Q&H setting. There's really nothing to prevent this from happening
again. The only thing that prevented this flight from actually impacting the ground was that the
crew, thankfully, miraculously, at six feet above ground level, determined, “Oh, we can't see the
runway. We're too close to the runway. We're going to go around now, because we don't have
visual confirmation of the runway. We're going to initiate a go around.” They didn't actually know
how low they were. They just got insanely lucky, let's go with. Is that the right way to phrase it?
[0:24:11] IP: Basically, yeah.
[0:24:13] JR: Yeah. That's scary. That's really scary. Thankfully, on the second approach, which
was also carried out with the same incorrect Q& H setting, they were able to land because of
other factors. The runway lights were on and that they had visual contact with the runway and
they were able to land without any issue. But man, was this close to being a very, very different
story. I feel like, we say that a lot.
[0:24:40] IP: We do say that a lot. Thankfully, this is the story. We'll put a link to the final report
in the show notes. We'll also call out the separate report summary that includes the safety
recommendations, because that gets into the difference between ILS approaches and Baro-
VNAV approaches, and –
[0:25:00] JR: Stuff's complicated.
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[0:25:02] IP: - and why that matters. I went down a rabbit hole on this. Thank you for coming
along. We'll leave it there, unless you want more information, in which case, definitely read the
final report.
[0:25:11] JR: You can call Ian any time and he'll tell you all about it.
[0:25:14] IP: You can. You can. Absolutely.
[0:25:17] JR: If you find his phone number, go for it.
[0:25:21] IP: Southwest pilots were already in a bit of hot water, because they took off on a
closed runway. This week, we learned something that, to be perfectly honest, if you've listened
to the podcast a few times and heard us talk about NOTAMs, isn't entirely surprising, but
concerning nonetheless.
[0:25:41] JR: Yeah. We talked about this. I think this was a Portland Jet Port, which by the way,
I think is still the best possible name for an airport, a Jet Port.
[0:25:49] IP: It's definitely up there.
[0:25:49] JR: No turbo props allowed. We don’t allow turbo props to the jet port.
[0:25:53] IP: Well, after they renamed Atlanta back to the airport from the spaceport and nail
salon.
[0:25:57] JR: Intergalactic nail salon.
[0:25:58] IP: Intergalactic space port. Yes, and nail salon. Sorry. After they renamed Atlanta, I
think, it goes back to Portland.
[0:26:05] JR: Apparently, as the report confirms what we already knew, not only did they miss
the NOTAMs, but they missed transmitting, apparently, any of the activities they were doing. Do
we have the report to say, how many NOTAMs there were? I think they said there were 30. I feel
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like, the number is 37 NOTAMs that they had to sift through, and that they assumed that the
runway closure didn't apply during the time they were there. Do you have that up in front of you?
[0:26:33] IP: I don't have the number of NOTAMs in front of me. That one is somewhere else in
the report, and now I'm going to have to scroll through it, and we're just going to have to put the
podcast on hold until one of us can find it, and keep scrolling. 32.
[0:26:49] JR: 32. Okay, so I was close. That's a lot. Still a lot. But obviously, not an excuse for
missing something as critical as the runway is closed and missing the situational awareness of
all of the other airplanes are doing something else, and all of the other airplanes are
communicating over the common radio frequency, what they're doing. Lots of questions that still
need to be answered about this particular event. We will await the NTSB's preliminary report,
and we will certainly bring this one up again soon.
[0:27:19] IP: Indeed. Speaking of Southwest, in California, Southwest is partnering with Archer
about developing, basically, air taxi routes within California. Initially, I thought to myself, well,
that's weird. Why would Southwest, of all airlines, be partnering with Archer, or really, any?
[0:27:45] JR: Or any of them. I mean, this is the airline that only realized that passengers want
USB ports in their seats six months ago. Jumping from that to an eVTOL is quite the stretch, but
here we are.
[0:27:58] IP: Here we are. The quote that I want to pull out, because this one puts things into
context for why Southwest is going down this route. As part of the announcement, Archer's
Chief Commercial Officer said, “By putting together Southwest's impressive network of airports
in California, and they're frequent,” I'm going to come back to that frequent, “intrastate flights
with our planned network, Southwest customers could someday complete door-to-door trips,
like Santa Monica to Napa in less than three hours.” I think that's where the interesting thing
comes in is because Southwest is a different airline in California than it is in the rest of the
country.
[0:28:43] JR: It's basically what California's high-speed rail should be, but instead, it's airplanes.
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[0:28:49] IP: Yeah. Frequent departures, most, I think, all major cities, most secondary and
tertiary cities, and easy to get on and get off and go about your day.
[0:29:02] JR: Maybe it works out there on the West Coast. I mean, here on the East Coast, we
could barely get regular airplanes off the ground without hours’ worth of delay. Out in the West
Coast, where weather's not really a thing for the most part, maybe this makes sense. I don't
know.
[0:29:16] IP: I think it's interesting that they're trying this in California, because I don't think it
would work really anywhere else the way Southwest's network is structured and the way that
eVTOLs are planned to be structured. We don't have any knowledge about how this is all – any
of this is actually going to work. I think what makes all of these announcements partially
speculative, but there's real money behind these, so I think it's worth talking about.
I was having a conversation last week with some folks who are working on advanced air
mobility, or eVTOL regulatory frameworks here in Illinois. The regulators, I think, are still a bit
behind where they need to be. I'm really worried about what's going to happen when these
companies come up against regulators who are coming up against constituencies. Because
we've talked about this before, where the big adoption isn't technology. The big barriers to
adoption isn't going to be technology. It's not going to be the regulatory framework. It's going to
be community opposition.
I mean, when people realize that these things make a ton of noise and to make any sense
whatsoever, they're going to have to be able to land in your backyard, or a professionally built
place in your backyard.
[0:30:39] JR: Yeah. Well, they mentioned right there in the release that these aircraft are quiet,
compared to a helicopter, that is probably true. I think they call out noise right there in the press
release. They say, the goal of Archer's aircraft is to offer a safe, low-noise cost competitive
transportation option with no direct emissions. Forget the no direct emissions part. Forget the
safety part, because that's unproven, but the low noise, I mean, comparatively to a 737, yeah,
that's true. But compared to nothing, no, that's not true. There's a balance to be struck.
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[0:31:16] IP: To say that these aren't coming, I think would be a misstep. But to say that they're
going to be welcomed with open arms, I think is a whole –
[0:31:26] JR: Is a mistake. But at the same time, it's just amazing to see an airline like
Southwest, who a few short years ago wasn't even technically capable of scheduling a red eye
flight that operated into the following day, now suddenly partnering, or having an MOU with an
eVTOL outfit is pretty remarkable.
[0:31:50] IP: It's a wild world we're living in.
[0:31:52] JR: It is wild. I want to say, Southwest technologically is so far behind, yeah. But
they're catching up slowly, but surely. Also, the same airline that couldn't operate in an
international flight until a few years ago, until it got new backend technology. Quite the
transformation for Southwest. If they could bring that back, the club seating, though, that'd be
pretty cool.
[0:32:16] IP: Would it?
[0:32:17] JR: I mean, if you're a group of six people, sure. If not, absolutely not.
[0:32:24] IP: That is just so awkward. Hey, I forgot Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines were merging.
[0:32:30] JR: It's been very quiet.
[0:32:32] IP: I honestly forgot. When I read the headline, I think it was Seth's bot that flagged
the filing that Alaska and Hawaiian have jointly requested transfer of Hawaiian’s International
Route Network Authority to what will become the parent company of both airlines when the
merger closes, so that Hawaiian can keep operating its flights outside the US. I was reminded,
but I'm not ashamed to admit, I completely forgot that this merger was even in process.
[0:33:09] JR: Yeah. Mainly, because I think there's no one really opposing this merger.
Everyone just looks at it and says, “Yeah, all right. This makes sense, whatever.” If there's not
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much opposition, you're not going to hear much about it, until one of the regulators says, yes or
no, and I don't think a no is forthcoming. The less you hear, the better, I think.
[0:33:31] IP: Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's a good way of looking at it.
[0:33:34] JR: Yeah. At the same time, literally as we record this right now, Alaska just
announced an expansion of first class and premium seating. Some major increases on the 737
800 from 12 to 16 first-class seats and expansion of premium seats from 24 to 30. Wow, that's a
lot all happening within the next couple of years. As they are working through their merger with
Hawaiian, they are not resting on their laurels with the Alaska side, and they're going heavy for
the premium side, which is nice to see. The seats don't look like anything truly remarkable. If
you know the Alaska product, this won't seem all that out of the ordinary. Yeah, I think the less
you hear about this particular merger, the better.
[0:34:23] IP: Yeah. Virgin Atlantic is dropping another one of its long-haul routes to Asia, this
time stopping flying to Shanghai. They have been flying to Shanghai for 25 years and are going
to be stopping as of October. Pandemic hits, they stop everything. They restarted Shanghai.
Virgin decided last year that it wasn't going to restart Hong Kong. That was because of
pandemic restrictions and because of Russian airspace restrictions. Now, they say that they're
going to stop, as of the 26th of October, stop flying to Shanghai. Some airlines have been able to
make it work. Virgin Atlantic, not one of them.
[0:35:07] JR: Yeah. Interestingly, just earlier this year, at the end of January, Virgin Atlantic
signed a co-chair agreement, I think, with China Eastern to provide service to Shanghai, which
is China Eastern's main hub. Maybe that was a part of the plan all long. Shift all of that traffic
over to China Eastern and Virgin can pull out of Shanghai and redeploy the fleet elsewhere. I
certainly would find myself disappointed, rebooked from a Virgin flight to China Eastern, having
flown both of those airlines in the past. If they're not making money on it, it makes sense to shift
that over to a co-chair partner who operating the flight regardless.
[0:35:50] IP: There you go. A collection of aviation industry organizations, a large collection of
aviation industry organizations in the US sent a letter this week yesterday, in fact, to the
transportation committees in the US Congress and said, “Hey, we need more money, and here's
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how we think you should do it.” By we need more money, they mean airports. This includes, oh,
well, who doesn't it include? Almost all of the Airline Pilots Associations, the Aircraft Owners and
Pilots Associations, Airlines for America, which is the airlines trade association, IATA, EAA got
involved, the Cargo Airline Association, the Air Traffic Controllers Union, the National Business
Aviation Association, Travelers United, which has a little suitcase logo that I particularly enjoy,
and a few organizations I had honestly never heard of before.
All organizations saying that the airport and airway trust fund that is administered by the FAA is
the surplus that is going to come about over the next few years, according to CBO projections,
is going to need to fund the FAA's facilities and equipment capital program, which will improve
airport infrastructure. I don't think anyone can argue that there isn't need for improvement
across the US in airport infrastructure.
[0:37:30] JR: Yeah. It was a pretty stark contrast, earlier this summer when I visited one of the
German air traffic control facilities out in Bremen, Germany. It was such a nice facility. The roof
wasn't leaking, the elevator worked, the air-conditioning was on. They didn't use paper strips to
organize aircraft in their control sector. It was wonderful. None of that exists here in the US.
We’re still using paper strips. What did the FAA, or the independent report say that if you started
replacing every FAA facility now, by the time you're done, you'd still have facilities that are a
century old by the time they get replaced. That's not great.
The call here from a very wide range of concerned entities for increased funding above and the
already proposed 8 billion dollars of spending over the next five years from the Biden
administration, apparently not enough, not nearly enough. More, more, more. Let's hope that
doesn't end up getting tacked on to airline tickets, but it probably will.
[0:38:41] IP: This argues that the money should come from the projected surplus that's going to
come out of the – I don't want to get the acronym wrong, the Airport and Airway Trust Fund. This
is already money that's being allocated to this trust fund. They're saying, “Why don't we use that
surplus that's projected and the amount of money that's already there?” We're talking about 18
and a half billion dollars through fiscal year 2030 to do some of these projects. We've put next
gen on hold time and time again. There are all sorts of critical safety improvements that haven't
been done because of the funding.
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Only three of the 23 facilities evaluated in the FAA's life cycle facility maintenance and repair
report could be classified in good condition. I mean, there's so many things that this money
could be spent on. They're saying, let's appropriate that money from the surplus, including folks
at the International Council of Air Shows, which I didn't know existed, but that's cool.
[0:39:48] JR: How do you get on that council?
[0:39:50] IP: I don't know, but I'm absolutely going to find out as soon as we hit stop on the
recording.
[0:39:53] JR: You should apply.
[0:39:54] IP: I think I'm going to have to. Yeah, so there's that. To round out the show, Emirates
Sky Cargo says, “We have more cargo, which means we need more planes,” and they want five
more 777 freighters. Jason, you have flagged a bit of United Fleet planning, which is already in
an interesting state, given what we learned at the beginning of the year about how they were
expecting to take 100 fewer aircraft now than they had initially planned. What does the new
update leave us with?
[0:40:27] JR: On the 787 side, the entire year of 2024, they will take delivery of four 787s,
which is sure a lot lower than they would have preferred. But they are taking a surprisingly good
number or planning. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Again, they're planning on taking 30
A321neo/neo XLR through the end of this year. A healthy number of 737 MAX, which
apparently, will all be the eight and nine planning on taking 20, just 29 of those aircraft. I think it
was supposed to be over well, well, well, I don't want to say any particular number. But at the
same time, they're also dramatically reducing the number of A319 and A320 CO aircraft in the
fleet, down from 170 to just 157 of those aircraft. A reduction of 13 of the rather elderly A319,
A320 aircraft in the United's fleet that are getting a bit long in the tooth. Yeah, some interesting
maneuvering at United, but far, far, far fewer aircraft from both Airbus and Boeing than originally
intended.
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[0:41:42] IP: Yeah. I will know the important thing for me is that there is no reduction this year in
the number of 757s in United.
[0:41:51] JR: Not by choice. I mean, that is something to call out that they started the year with
61 757s, and they’ll end the year with 61 757s, not by choice.
[0:42:03] IP: Not because they want to. No.
[0:42:05] JR: They are supposed to be replacing those with the 737 MAX 10. That is
happening, who knows when? Not in 2024, apparently. The 757s, the 767s will not be changing.
The 777s will not be changing, much to the dismay of United passengers who have probably
found themselves on many a delayed, or canceled flights due to elderly aircraft starting to lose it
at this point, particularly the 767 fleet, I think, is getting elderly.
[0:42:35] IP: What is this? American Airlines from 10 years ago?
[0:42:38] JR: Oh, deep cut. Deep cut. We'll see, if any of the United 76s have an engine
explode at O'Hare, then you can start making that comparison. That hasn't happened yet.
[0:42:49] IP: Oh. Don't say things like that. Don't tempt the wrath of the thing high at top of the
whatever.
[0:42:53] JR: I'm just bringing it back to the top of the podcast.
[0:42:55] IP: I appreciate it.
[0:42:56] JR: All things begin and end at O'Hare. You know that.
[0:42:59] IP: It's one big taxi around the entire airport complex.
[0:43:01] JR: The natural order of things.
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[0:43:04] IP: On that note, this has been Episode 277 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchenik, here, as
always with –
[0:43:14] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
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