AvTalk Episode 374: 17 years without a license

[00:00:07]Hello and welcome to episode 374 of AVT Talk. I am Ian Pachnik here as always with >> Jason Rabinoitz. Hello Ian. What's going on in apparently very rainy Chicago?

[00:00:21]>> Oh, it was very very wet.

[00:00:24]>> It's summer >> and it's summer. Yeah, the thunderstorms are moving through. Unfortunately, the thunderstorms thundered into my house a little bit.

[00:00:32]>> So, our recording today was delayed by me mopping up.

[00:00:38]>> Ground delay program issued at >> ground Yeah. ground delay. Exactly. Both at the airport and in my house. So, the flight radar 24 North American office is now a bit drier thankfully. But it's summer in Chicago, so these things happen. There's trees down around the neighborhood. So, it it was pretty windy and O'Hare shut down for a bit. I screenshotted the mear at the time of windiest.

[00:01:02]>> What did it say? Just don't bother.

[00:01:03]>> Well, it was five lines long and yes, basically said don't bother. Let's see.

[00:01:09]Winds 2550 at 26 gust 45.

[00:01:13]>> Oh, that's >> visibility half a statute mile. Runway.

[00:01:18]The RVR on the departure runway was e thunderstorms, broken clouds at ground level, broken clouds just above ground level, overcast at 1,000 ft. So yeah, it got real dark real quick and the wind was whipping. I feel like the MEAR reports you see don't often capture the true in the- moment intensity and scariness of some of these thunderstorms because it's a capture of an exact moment in time of what the weather was for that exact moment and it could calm down, it could intensify, but really hard to capture what's going on on the field in alpha numeric nonsense.

[00:01:58]>> Yeah, I think that's a really good point and we see this especially when things get really bad. Sometimes the weather stations just go nah >> nah [laughter] not is O'Hare like JFK where forever and always as long as I've been doing this is always a dollar sign at the end of it that indicates some data above may be inaccurate followed by three exclamation points. So something's broken. You don't know what >> we don't have three exclamation points.

[00:02:22]>> Oh well you need the three exclamation points.

[00:02:24]>> We only have the dollar sign to indicate possible deviation from truth. Well, the dollar sign tells you possible deviation from truth. But actually on aviationweather.gov, an official source of mears, the QC flag actually has three exclamation points next to some data above maybe inaccurate. So they really want you to know that like this is probably the weather, >> but also I don't know, maybe not.

[00:02:47]>> Things are moving at O'Hare. Things are moving here at the podcast. And let's get to it because it has been a busy week. We begin with bad news.

[00:02:58]Unfortunately, >> we always do >> generally. Yeah, we do. But this time, thankfully, well, unfortunately, people got hurt, but thankfully not very seriously as far as we know at the moment. But a Lufanza Boeing 787-9 was preparing to depart Frankfurt for Los Angeles when at the gate, the nose gear decided it would no longer be extended. It opted out. It opted out of extension. It became retracted. We don't know yet why the gear retracted, collapsed, folded, whatever you want to use at the moment because we don't know exactly what happened yet. This was Delta Alpha Bravo Papa Quebec and it was positioned at stand A15 preparing for flight LH450 to Los Angeles. There were ground crew and flight crew on board the aircraft at the time of the incident.

[00:04:01]Lufansza says that several people sustained minor injuries and at least two people sustained serious injuries and multiple people were taken to the hospital for evaluation. The aircraft sustained significant damage to the nose area as well as some other areas.

[00:04:19]Thankfully, as far as extremely extremely expensive and difficult repairs, the front door seems to have been closed. The L1 door that was at the jet bridge appears to have been closed.

[00:04:33]>> Yeah, there's a couple other interesting points here. The extended video shows most of the videos people have seen and and we even have in the blog only show the immediate moments before the gear collapse. But the longer version of the video actually shows the doors opening up before the nose wheel retracts into the bay, indicating that for whatever reason, whether it was commanded to retract the nose gear or whatever else, it wasn't just that the gear gave out and collapsed into the wheel well. It seems to have been doing the normal thing, the normal actuation that the nose gear does, which is very, very interesting. Whether that was due to some maintenance procedure that was going on or whatever other reason, it wasn't simply that the nose gear gave out. It looks like it was commanded to or either decided to do it for whatever reason. And Ian, you speak of thankfully that damage could be worse. And as John Ostraer points out on Blue Sky or wherever, thankfully the folks at Boeing designed the 787 with and I'm sure other aircraft with this in mind so that if the nose gear gives out the face of the nose of the aircraft hits the ground, but thankfully there is enough clearance that the very precious engines do not hit the ground or do so very very gently.

[00:05:50]>> Exactly. Yeah. The way that the 787-9 and other aircraft generally hit the ground when this happens, it does leave clearance for the engine nay cells to not hit the ground. As Jason notes, the gear doors opened. The main gear doors also opened.

[00:06:12]>> Ah, I did not see that.

[00:06:13]>> Yeah. So, the first picture show us with the main gear door open. So it is possible that this was part of a maintenance action or something like that. We just don't yet know. So there is definitely definitely an ongoing investigation here. The German investigators are looking to see what happened, how it happened, and then we will bring you more as we get a preliminary report hopefully sometime soon. Yes. But for now, Lufansza is down 1787. quite new 787.

[00:06:47]>> Yes, this is less than a year old, but they did just take delivery of a new 787 this week. So, I guess one out, one in, maybe.

[00:06:59]>> Sure, not ideal for fleet planning or schedule delivery at the very beginning of the summer season, but Lufansza's got some experience with this. It's not the first time it's happened before. Way back when in 2017, a Lufansza 747400 did the same thing at Frankfurt, too.

[00:07:15]Not quite sure if it was the same exact gate. Apparently, this happened at gate A23 back in the day on a preparing for a flight to Delhi, but apparently there was a malfunction of the lever mechanism with the safety bar in conjunction with the ground block pin and this left the GLP in an inserted position in an unlocked state. And well, the same exact thing happened. So, happened before, it'll happen again, but just I'd be Do we know what gate this happened at? This most recent one because that would be a real weird coincidence.

[00:07:41]>> Not the same. Close but not the same gate. This is alpha 15. Oh, so close this time around. But to Jason's point about what happened with the 747, the nose gear pin, this was an issue with the 787. Again, we don't know the same issue this time. We have no information one way or the other, but for a holistic context, the 787 has two holes on the nose landing gear. One of those holes is the lockout pin so that the nose gear cannot retract. One of them does not lock out the nose gear. They're next to each other. And in a previous incident, somebody put the pin in the wrong hole and the nose gear was able to retract on the ground. Well, Boeing put out a service bulletin and airlines have been in the process of basically plugging the other hole.

[00:08:34]>> What does the other hole do?

[00:08:36]>> It's just a hole. It doesn't do anything. It's just the design of the gear. And in this case, this particular incident, we don't know if that played any role here at all. This was a brand new or almost brand new aircraft. So it it stands to reason in my mind, and again, we don't know, but it stands to reason in my mind that this is something that Boeing after telling other operators to take care of this years ago, would have already taken care of this on new build aircraft. So, we'll wait to learn more exactly the sequence of events of what happened and how it happened, but there's some context about why uh Lufansza is missing one of its 787s in action for the foreseeable >> for probably a while. But you know what?

[00:09:20]If you wait maybe even just 30 days, somebody's probably going to issue a preliminary report. And that's just what the NTSB did with the Newark United 74.

[00:09:31]Oh, no, not 74. 767400.

[00:09:34]>> Wishful thinking. Wishful thinking.

[00:09:36]Yeah. Or wishful thinking. I don't know.

[00:09:38]Go.

[00:09:38]>> Yeah. Either one. From the 747 from Lufanza back in the day. No, we're talking about the United 767-400 that found its way to impacting a light pole on the New Jersey Turnpike just outside of Newark. We now have the preliminary report. And we now know for a matter of fact, it would seem that the aircraft did not hit the truck. I kind of suspected this from the very moment we saw it cuz it just didn't look quite right. But what happened was the NTSB confirms that the plane did hit a light pole and subsequently that light pole hit the truck. The aircraft continued on as we know, landed safely, went to the gate where the pilots did a walk around said, "What the heck happened here?" So now we know plane did not hit truck but it came damn close. It came very very close. So in the final report which we won't get for quite some time hopefully we'll have a bit more information about the precise location of both the truck and the aircraft in relation to each other because I'm very interested in how close those two vehicles actually got to each other. But the idea that the pilot had was to fly a lower approach than a standard 3deree glide slope. So the captain of the aircraft discussed wanting three red and one white on the precision approach path indicator or papy that on a normal 3°ree approach displays two red and two white lamps to the pilots to let them know that they are on the correct glide slope. This captain wanted a lower approach because >> he got it. He got too low. Too low. What he wanted to do was touch down with more runway remaining than would be available otherwise if he made a threederee approach. So that's the idea that seems prevalent enough that United felt it necessary to remind pilots not to do that.

[00:11:55]>> Yeah, this is a tough one. This is a relatively short runway on a nonprecision approach. This isn't an ILS. This is very much either I don't think it's visual VR. I guess these days a GPS approach, but it is not precision.

[00:12:09]>> It's an arnav approach that becomes a visual approach.

[00:12:12]>> Yeah, it's quite tricky. And the runway is by far and away the shortest at Newark of the three runways. It's like the half a runway basically.

[00:12:20]>> Yeah. So four right 22 left was the original originally sun runway. It got switched like three or four times because it's Newark and whatever.

[00:12:29]>> As is tradition, >> that runway is 9,000 ft and change.

[00:12:34]Runway 29 is 6,500 ft.

[00:12:37]>> Yeah. And anything can land on that runway. I don't know if an A380 can, but A380s aren't allowed at Newark anyway, so it doesn't matter.

[00:12:44]>> You can land anything once. That's true, Ian. That's true. [laughter] But the NTSB preliminary report is interesting because they do note that at least the captain stated they had no crew resource management issues during the flight.

[00:12:57]There was a lot of conversation back and forth between the pilot flying and the pilot not flying. Multiple call outs of like, "Hey, you're a little little low.

[00:13:04]You're a little slow. Maybe you should do something about that." And as their speed decayed again, the first officer recalled like, "Hey, you're slow and you're a little slow and a little low."

[00:13:13]And apparently he he was right. and when they heard a thump, they didn't know what it was. But now we know what it was. So, could have been a lot worse than it actually was. But yeah, maybe don't take that particular approach solo next time. It definitely could have been a lot worse. And it's interesting to me how United felt strongly enough that this might be prevalent enough to say, pilots, don't do that. Don't shift the aim. They're calling it ducking under.

[00:13:45]Don't shift the aiming point during landing. Saying that this contributes to low flight paths during visual approaches, which this was at [snorts] certain airports. And Newark being one of those airports where there just happens to be 12,000 lanes of traffic right next to the threshold. Yes, famously wide New Jersey turnpike. But there's also one more thing. We got a couple photos from the NTSB and via the Port Authority. That puts a little more context in what actually happened to the truck. The video from the dash cam on the truck is very dramatic because it is probably a window-mounted camera and when the windshield is shattered, the camera ends up not where it was before.

[00:14:26]The truck wasn't flipped over. It didn't go flying across lanes. The truck driver pulled over and it was fine. But the video is way more dramatic than what actually happened simply because the windshield was shattered and remained in place. actually. But then the dash cam took a bit of a trip inside the cab of the truck, but it wasn't like the truck got blasted or anything or ended up in a ditch. It was completely upright and fine.

[00:14:51]>> Yeah. Thankfully, this resulted in no serious injuries. Got to the truck driver and thankfully the truck was not severely damaged.

[00:14:59]>> No bakery items >> lost during this. [laughter] >> That's the important thing. Wouldn't it have been hilarious if this was like a gate gourmet truck?

[00:15:07]>> I mean, it can happen. It definitely can happen.

[00:15:10]>> So, >> but again, nothing of value would have been lost. [laughter] >> Having eaten food on United Fights before, literally nothing of value would have been lost.

[00:15:19]>> So, this is one of those things that we've never discussed on the podcast and then something happens and then we get there tangentially and I'm like, okay, let's talk about it for a second. This was brought up, I think, twice to me in the past week and a half. There's a sign on some of the gate gourmet trucks that makes people take a second look at them.

[00:15:42]>> Is it the regulated garbage one?

[00:15:44]>> It's the regulated garbage.

[00:15:45]>> I knew you were going there.

[00:15:47]>> Any airline catering provider, whether it's Gate Gourmet, Doen Co., what have you. Some of the trucks have a sign on them that says regulated garbage. In most countries, all of the garbage that comes off of an international flight gets recycled as your next meal outbound. No, that's not [laughter] >> No, it's incinerated because they don't know where it's been. They don't know what you're bringing into the country.

[00:16:21]It's the same reason you you can't bring fresh fruits and vegetables and things like that to another country without a whole lot of paperwork. and they have signs on those trucks that say regulated garbage so that that information is communicated and so that they know they can go certain places and remove that garbage and things like that. But it's always very interesting.

[00:16:39]>> What you're getting at is you should never be afraid to ask for seconds on board a flight because they're just going to burn the leftovers anyway.

[00:16:46]>> That's true. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a great takeaway from this. Yes.

[00:16:50]Always ask for seconds. They will most likely say yes. I mean, the flight crew is probably going to be upset because they actually eat the leftovers. But whatever's the leftover of the leftovers, then it finds its way to a fire pit.

[00:17:00]>> Yeah. Then you can have that. Jason, this is not the story I expected we would be talking about this week because I didn't think that this >> I didn't think it was possible in country like this.

[00:17:14]>> No. But as it turns out, Captain Jeffrey Wall, who is now a retired and under arrest Air Canada captain, is being charged with fraud and forgery because he didn't have the right pilot's license to operate Air Canada flights and never did. This is some real Pakistan stuff right here. years ago, what was it, 2020, 2021, where we saw a massive operation in Pakistan to figure out, hey, are the pilots flying for this? To >> be clear, this is just one guy, I guess, that we know about, but just one guy.

[00:17:51]>> However, this came about apparently as an investigation called Project Icarus, which is just a fantastic name. If you're not familiar, Icorus is, long story short, guy flew too close to the sun and burned up or whatever. So in this case, yeah, this this this pilot flew too close to the sun for apparently 17 years. No big deal without the correct license. And only at some point did someone actually Ian, you explained to me before we started recording what happens basically and what happened.

[00:18:22]From my understanding based on the charging document and the press conference that the Peele police had, this all started because of a random check where Transport Canada like the FAA or YASA or whoever is the regulator of that country visits with pilots and says, "We would like to see your documentation just to make sure that all your lensure is in order, just to make sure that your medical's here, everything's good to go, you are who you say you are, just making sure the systems working as designed and he presented evidence of lure and all these things and the folks said that doesn't look quite right sir this is a fruit rollup not your license key can you please provide your license and this is just a piece of paper that says I can fly any plane I want >> yeah to be clear he did have some sort of license an AT >> so he was a military pilot or a CPL >> and had a CPL so he was a military pilot and then had a CPL L he did not have an air transport pilot's license that offered or enabled him to operate flights that carried passengers on an airline which is crazy to have that crazy how over a decade almost two decades that this guy was able to fly 767s 7787s like these are not fly under the radar aircraft. This guy is flying all over the world and at no point during his career until the very end of the career did anyone ask to see >> he's retired. The actual license would >> he's retired. Like you would think at some point in a career that long it would happen incidentally like renewing your health checks and all that and going through recurrent training. Nope.

[00:20:03]Never happened apparently. No, it did happen. Nobody looked close enough.

[00:20:07]Yeah. So he's accused of fraud and forgery. Not that he was just flying with the wrong license that somehow wasn't caught. He apparently doctorred a license so that he would appear to have a ATPL. Air Canada for its part says that at no time, and I'll say what they say and then then we'll talk about that. Air Canada says at no time is safety compromised because pilots go through recurrent training every six months. Uh, true. True. But with an asterisk, I guess. Yeah. I mean, he this person definitely did have not just recurrent training, but new training if he moved up the ranks from the 76 to the 78 and uh the trip 7 and then the 78. Like there is a lot of training involved in gaining those type certificates. So yes, but also I mean you kind of want all your pilots to be fully licensed correctly and not fakey, I guess, in [laughter] this case. Yeah.

[00:21:08]Makes you wonder who else out there. Is project Icorus just for this one guy or was it for multiple pilots? I don't know. Or multiple airlines. Who knows?

[00:21:18]We'll have to wait and see what else comes. But hopefully we don't hear anything about this.

[00:21:22]>> Hopefully nothing. Hopefully it's just the Peele police really leaning into the naming of criminal investigations.

[00:21:28]>> I can't blame them. It's a pretty good one.

[00:21:30]>> You know, there were a couple meetings about that and they debated it.

[00:21:34]>> What are we going to call this investigation >> where it sounds good? Exactly. So, yeah, he's been charged with fraud, uttering forged documents, possession of a counterfeit mark, and public mischief.

[00:21:49]>> Public mischief. Okay, mischief.

[00:21:52]>> I feel like they're just throwing whatever out there. See what sticks.

[00:21:56]>> There you go.

[00:21:56]>> A timehonored tradition. Let's switch gears completely and talk about something that is very, very cool. Okay.

[00:22:04]NASA's X59 quiet supersonic aircraft made its first supersonic flight on the 5th of June and made its second supersonic flight today, Wednesday the 10th of June. The first flight passed Mach 1 and reached a top speed of Mach 1.1 at 43,400 ft. Soon the aircraft will begin targeting a top speed of Mach 1.4 at 55,000 ft. Once they're comfortable at that altitude and speed, the aircraft, and this is where it gets real fun, the aircraft will begin doing quote unquote community flights. Those will be flights over populated areas that NASA will then survey to say, "Hey, did you hear the supersonic plane?"

[00:22:49]>> H I was kind of hoping community flights would be inviting the community.

[00:22:53]>> Wouldn't that be fun? Unfortunately, it's a one-seater. So, you would have to become a NASA pilot, go through years of training, a rigorous qualification program, and then somehow also be able to fly the plane and you've got like a year to do it.

[00:23:09]>> I can't just fake all those credentials because I'll get caught by Project Icarus. Exactly. And then you'll be charged with public mischief. I don't need any of that. But the community flights and the surveys I feel like are going to be very very very different than what happened back in the the 60s and 70s with the run-up to the Concord.

[00:23:28]Cuz I feel like the environment is just a hell of a lot noisier than it was back then between people with very souped up, very annoying, purposely modified cars that make all sorts of noise. It sounds like it's going to kill you, but it's really just some guy who modified his exhaust to be as loud and as obnoxious as possible. I feel like that didn't really exist back then. So people are just kind of I don't know, they tune out nonsense like this, but a sonic boom is pretty damn loud. Well, the idea here is that it's a sonic thud.

[00:23:57]>> Exactly. The idea here is that you'll feel possibly a sonic thud. The X59 is projected to have a 75 perceived decel noise level whereas the Concord was at 110. That is a big difference because remember that's like exponential.

[00:24:17]>> It's a logarithmic scale. So much much much different. It'll be very interesting to see. I don't know exactly how they're doing the community flights, whether they're doing the flights because I feel like telling people ahead of time when these things are going to happen and then going to be looking out for it.

[00:24:34]>> Yeah. Right. And then I'll be like, "Oh, yeah. I definitely heard it. It was super loud." What time did the aircraft fly over? uh 6 a.m.

[00:24:42]>> at some point. That being said, 75 dB is nothing to sneeze out. I'm looking at the Port Authority in New York, New Jersey has a somewhat nearly live noise monitoring website up and all of the noise monitors around Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK, they are all well below 75 dB.

[00:25:04]Even as what is this? An A22300 flies over one. Right now it's only at 66 dB.

[00:25:10]Granted, these aircraft would probably would make be making the most noise when they're low to the ground approaching an airport, but the background level of noise at these airports, even with aircraft flying low overhead, is not all that high. It's around anywhere in the 40s to 50s to 60s. Newark, unsurprisingly, is in the high 60s. So 75 dB on the low end would be noticeable, especially if it's a very very momentary thud. You're going to hear that. Oh, look at that. New York just peaked to 77. [laughter] Something loud must have happened on the turnpike.

[00:25:44]I mean, but the other thing is the design of this specific aircraft where the design of the aircraft is designed to while that noise exists, it's designed to deflect it upwards. And so it'll be super interesting to see because we haven't been able to hear it by itself yet because the first flight had NASA's F-15 flying alongside which was much louder than the X59. So that'll be super interesting to see what is happening. There's a quote from Katherine Balm who is the project manager on the X59 program and she was speaking to the BBC in 2023 and she says, "We always kind of joke that the X1 broke the sound barrier and now we're trying to fix it." And I think that's, you know, super interesting.

[00:26:31]Quote, "Its sonic boom won't be loud enough for people to notice. It'll be like distant thunder or your neighbor's car door closing that merges into everyday life."

[00:26:40]>> I mean, I don't want noise. I have enough noise. This trip 7 200 that just took out a JFK at 1500 ft produced 80 dB of noise. Just tossing that out there.

[00:26:50]Just some nice to see these numbers go up and down. But I guess if these things are flying, I don't think they will ever fly nearly in any of the numbers that Boom Supersonic or any of the other manufacturers would like you to believe.

[00:27:03]So it's probably not going to be the biggest deal. But if you happen to be living under a flight path that these would take, you're probably going to notice it even if it is a thud. But very interesting to see what the result of these uh what do they call it? Community flights.

[00:27:17]>> Community flights. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's shift gears to Rio mostly and cover some of the IATA annual general meeting news. The IATA annual general meeting is exactly what it sounds like. It's an annual general meeting that takes place wherever IATA decides to hold it. This year it was Rio. Next year it's back to China, I believe, and everybody's there.

[00:27:46]Airlines, organizations, OEMs, everybody goes. Not everyone, Ian, we're we're not there.

[00:27:54]>> Fair. That's fair, right? Not everyone.

[00:27:57]>> Not everyone. Our good friend of the podcast, Dead Russell, is there. Maybe we'll have him on next week or talk about what he talked about.

[00:28:05]>> He was collecting news left and right, but we're going to go through some of the things that caught our eye and then we'll talk about some orders and deliveries that have happened in the past month or so that are also noteworthy. So, let's start with Southwest Airlines because anytime Andrew Wat talks, I always like to listen, if only because he's one of the people in the industry that I trust to tell it how it is.

[00:28:35]>> Yes.

[00:28:36]>> Whether it's good for Southwest or not, you're not going to get spin from Andrew. You're going to get I mean, you'll get a little bit of spin, but any good advocate for their organization is going to do that. However, you'll always get, you know, kind of what's actually happening.

[00:28:50]>> What is actually happening >> exactly? So, for him to say that they're expecting to add the Max 7 early next year, no earlier than 6 months after certification. So, early next year. So, Southwest seems to be on board with Boeing's target for this summer for certification of the Max 7. They're going to bring the first batch of about 20 to 30 aircraft into the airline and begin service on special purpose flying.

[00:29:19]So those aircraft will be ETOP certified. And if Southwest needs an ETOP certified aircraft, Jason, where are they going? They are probably going to go to Hawaii or maybe Iceland these days. I don't know. Who knows with Southwest? [laughter] So definitely Hawaii and and the example that Wat gave was these aircraft can go from the US west coast to Hawaii then they can bounce around the islands and then they can come back to the west coast. They have that capability. They have the right number of seats for that kind of flying and they can really plug and play them into that special program.

[00:29:57]and they are desperately needed to replace Southwest's legacy 737700's which are getting a bit long in the tooth and having flown on one just a couple months ago desperately need to be put out of their misery. [laughter] So after that first batch then we'll start to see basically a one forone replacement of the 737700s that are still in the fleet which is numerous I think. How many do they have in their fleet? Let's see. Bringing it up right now. Loading. Loading. Loading.

[00:30:28]Verifying your browser. They have got wow 289 in the fleet right now, which is a lot. That's still the bulk of the Southwest fleet is 737700's.

[00:30:41]Only Eclipse for the Max 8 at 319 now.

[00:30:45]Good for them. But this is nearly 300 737700 that they've got to replace. I don't know how many Boeing has on the ground wherever scattered across the Pacific Northwest ready to go to replace these, but they need to hurry up.

[00:30:59]Southwest currently has 256 firm orders for the Littlest Max. So, if they want to replace all of them, they're going to have to order some more. Let's head over to Boeing news where Boeing says that they have received type inspection authority 4B.

[00:31:22]So this is the last stage in type inspection authority granted by the FAA.

[00:31:28]So we're we are moving much much closer to the trip 7-9 becoming an actual airplane flown by actual airlines. first one for Lufansza flew for the second time this week. It's thought that Lufansza is going to be the launch customer, but it may Emirates. So, we'll see. But hopefully, we're still moving in the right direction.

[00:31:51]>> Does it feel more real this time to you?

[00:31:54]>> It feels much more real. I I mean, the FAA does not grant type inspection authority willy-nilly. And so, for them to say, "Yes, you can move it."

[00:32:03]Basically 4B is the biggest mediest step until final certification.

[00:32:11]We've got, you know, avionics is a huge component of this step and it's one of the things that needs to go well for Boeing and everything seems to be moving in that direction so that they can get to final certification and then start delivering this plane to airlines sooner rather than later. I hope so. As we talked about earlier, Lufansza needs a new airplane as it's currently down at 787. So it could really use that trip 79. Though even if they were to induct it into their fleet tomorrow, they're not exactly going to take it and immediately launch it on flights of Delhi or New York. It's going to sit around on the ground for a little while and then do crew familiarization and then bop around Germany or Europe for a while. So even if they take it, it's still a pretty decently long road to full-fledged operation, which doesn't always go well, doesn't always go amazingly. New airplanes are hard, especially an actual new type for an airline. Even lesser new types, just look at United with its elevated 7879s that it took from Boeing not too long ago. Those aircraft have been a disaster operationally. So it takes a while to get used to new aircraft and break them in and make them a part of an actual operation. So I that leads more credence to what Wat said for Southwest that even if we take them, it's going to be no earlier than 6 months after certification before we can actually do anything with them.

[00:33:38]>> Yeah. So I mean we're moving in the right direction. Things are looking the way they're supposed to now. Let's hope that continues. Hey Jason.

[00:33:48]>> Yes.

[00:33:49]>> Remember all the talk over the past few years about sustainable aviation fuel. I know it rings a bell. It rings a bell.

[00:33:59]I've seen some airlines beg me to buy some for them. Exactly. And how sustainable aviation fuel was the key to decarbonizing aviation and reaching net zero targets. The industry target of net zero by 2050.

[00:34:12]>> That's like next.

[00:34:14]Guess how much sustainable aviation fuel accounts for in 2026.8% I'm going to go with >> it's almost like I wrote that down in the show notes.

[00:34:26]>> Wow, look at that.

[00:34:27]>> Okay, >> look at that. Willie Walsh, the outgoing IATA director general and incoming CEO of Indigo Airlines said, "The path to meeting 65% of our needs in 2050, which is the amount of sustainable aviation fuel that the industry, the aviation industry worldwide needs to be using by 2050 to reach carbon net zero. The path to meeting 65% of our needs in 2050 is growing more difficult with each year of ineffectively sequenced government policies, which is a long-winded way of saying governments aren't paying for it.

[00:35:04]And oil companies manifest lack of interest.

[00:35:07]>> That just makes sense there.

[00:35:09]>> Yeah. When they're going to do whatever is best for them. None of this is surprising. Many people have been saying this for a long time. Many people have also been banking on SAF to somehow save the industry, but from itself, but it was a long road. It's expensive. There's no clear path to, you know, a net zero by 2050 was never going to happen. I don't think anyone really believed that.

[00:35:30]But then literally just yesterday, American put out a press release that it and Google signed a record-breaking sustainable aviation fuel agreement. But it's only for Google. It's only to offset Google's own employee flying.

[00:35:46]Apparently, the agreement unlocked 35 million gallons or 132 million liters of SAFS over just 3 years, resulting in blah blah blah blah blah. But this is a private company saying, "We want to offset our own employees flying, so we're going to buy some SAFS and feel good about it." But that's kind of where we're at with this is that individuals can try to offset their own carbon emissions by some airlines offering a green fair which lets you buy into SAS but in this case a company in this case Google just saying we're going to do it ourselves and we're going to buy some SAFS or make it available out of Chicago O'Hare specifically. So one company out of one airport with one airline setting up for SAFS. This does not feel like a sustainable, expandable future for the industry. And apparently ITA is finally getting on board with that. What plan B is? I don't think there is a plan B.

[00:36:40]>> No, no, there's no plan B. It's doubling down on we need SAF.

[00:36:44]>> But we did that already and it did it didn't work. Triling down.

[00:36:48]>> It's too expensive, too hard to do.

[00:36:51]Well, let's try uh hydrogen again. Have we looked at that again recently?

[00:36:55]>> I think that one's on pause.

[00:36:56]>> Oh, okay. Well, that's all we got.

[00:37:00][laughter] Let's stick with the cost of fuel then because WestJet has announced that it will retire its 737 NG fleet faster than it initially planned to help defay higher fuel costs that it is currently paying. So, it'll wind down its NG fleet with 1:1 Max 8 replacements throughout the end of the year, which makes sense for a variety of reasons, but WestJets's also pretty mad at the Canadian federal government. Yeah, apparently they felt strongly enough to put out a public press release, and I'll quote here, "West strongly opposes the government's proposal to issue loans to airlines amid the rising fuel cost. The government faces a choice. Continue with costly and market distorting subsidies or build sustainable future for Canadian aviation. Goes on to say some stuff about COVID. The government lost $400 million in CO rest blah blah blah blah airline loans. I don't know. It also calls out to say the US didn't extend any loans. Yeah. And then Spirit disappeared probably for the best in that case. But this this one has me debating internally back and forth with myself whether or not this is something the Canadian government should do because there is a very different very specific type of airline in Canada that offers uh lifeline connectivity. I'm thinking Air Inuit, Air North and and I'm sure there are plenty plenty I don't even I've never even heard of and will never hear of in Canada that offer services that cannot be replicated by literally anything else. I'm thinking, you know, services like flying a 737200 with a gravel kit to a runway that's barely a runway to bring the literally everything a town needs to survive through the winter. If the cost of fuel doubles or triples and those airlines go away overnight, there are entire populations of people who will not be in a very good spot because WestJet's not going to swoop in with it 737-8 Max and deliver anything because it physically cannot do that. So, I kind of get it, but also the I I feel like Canada's the north of Canada is in a very unique spot where it needs these subsidized airlines if it comes to that point. I don't know if you have a different opinion, but there's some nuance here that I feel like they're skipping.

[00:39:18]>> I think anytime WestJet is upset, you can just look at you can remove all of the other airlines except Air Canada from the equation basically. Or maybe Porter or maybe Porter. I think if the Canadian government handed out just boxes of money to Air Tindy or Canadian North or Air North or >> nobody should blink an eye.

[00:39:43]>> I think they would be fine with that.

[00:39:45]Those are PSOS. Those are public service obligations. The Air Canada side of things, the interesting thing to me is that they don't mention that at all.

[00:39:56]It's a blanket statement. You know, they quote, "Canada should stay away from distorting markets both within our country and across the border in the US, which it's really weird that they're so focused on the US here." Well, we're their neighbor, but we're not their neighbor. Quote, "Our direct competitor." Oh, that's right. Because the US airlines siphon off their traffic. I'm not sure what they're against and what they're for here. I don't know. It's a really weird statement. I think they're just upset with everyone and kind of wanted to just lash out a little bit. But the picture of the 737 Max 8 that accompanied the pressure is >> that's a good picture.

[00:40:27]>> It's a very good picture. It's Is it a real picture? I don't know. Unclear.

[00:40:32]Unclear. Might be a rendering. I don't know. Could be. We'll We'll figure it out.

[00:40:36]>> No, we won't. That's what I'm going to spend my night on tonight. figuring out if this is a >> delivery.

[00:40:43][laughter] >> Let's talk about some orders and deliveries because Airbus, the A320 family, passed the 20,000 orders mark in May.

[00:40:54]>> That's a lot of 27 A320 Neo family orders for the month.

[00:41:00]the total family from the first order in June of 1981 from Air France through the large order for undisclosed airlines in May of 20 A320 Neos and 50 A321 Neos brings the mark past 20,000.

[00:41:21]That's a lot of planes. Our favorite airline at it again, undisclosed airlines. I assume the curtain will be withdrawn from that order at FarnBower probably cuz that's a very big order.

[00:41:33]Orders like that don't go undisclosed for all too long. Who do you think it could be?

[00:41:38]>> Oo, that's a good one. It's got to be Southwest.

[00:41:41]>> Probably Southwest if I had to guess.

[00:41:44]Yeah, definitely. No, Ryan already placed their big comarmac order, >> right?

[00:41:49]>> Right. We talked about that last.

[00:41:50]>> No, this is a strange alternate timeline. I don't like it. [laughter] I don't know. There's been a lot of talk about large widebody orders because that was one order one coming up, >> right? That was one order. One order, 2320 Neo and 5321 Neo. That was one order, not broken up over a couple of orders or a couple. That's one solid order. So that's a lot of airplanes.

[00:42:13]>> It is. It is. I can't think of anyone at the moment off the top of my head who hasn't recently ordered that many aircraft. So that'll be interesting to see. Yeah, I think FRO is going to show us the details on on that one. On the delivery side of things, United took delivery of its first XLR XLRing from it was in the air last week when we when >> Yeah, we talked about this last week.

[00:42:39]Next, >> and then Canada, Air Canada made its first XLR revenue flight the long long haul destination of Montreal to Toronto. You need the XLR >> as we mentioned.

[00:42:53]>> Yes, >> these are leg stretching activities.

[00:42:55]This was obviously a press flight, first revenue flight, but also a lot of press on board and they did very nice from what I hear. And they'll they'll, you know, stretch its wings later in the year and into next year. Jason, >> there are airlines that start up and they obviously want PR and they reach out to organizations like Flight Raider 24 and say, "Hey, this is what we're doing. Are you interested?" And a lot of times we'll say, "Yeah, we're interested. We'll help you, you know, announce things or that's really interesting for our users." We'll of course send it along to them. And often times that's the good stuff. In the case of Riad Air, they didn't tell us about the good stuff because they took delivery of a pair of 787s in an objectively cool way and didn't say anything about it. And they took actual delivery of this time. They didn't just take somebody else's aircraft, slap some stickers on it, make it look like they're these are their actual real aircraft that they're going to put in service or have already had service.

[00:43:56]>> Exactly. Have already put in service because I actually don't I actually don't know what did they do. So they took delivery of two 787-9s.

[00:44:04]>> Unremarkable, but go on.

[00:44:06]>> Uh-huh.

[00:44:06]>> One from Everett, one from Charleston, and they linked up over the Atlantic and landed in tandem.

[00:44:14]>> Unlike different runways at the same time or back to back. I don't know if they did different runways at the same time or just one after the other, but I mean that's impressive coordination to be able to take delivery of two aircraft at the same time because Boeing delivery flights run notoriously to no schedule in particular. That's very impressive to be able to get not one but two aircraft out from Boeing at the time you think from different origins and be able to over the North Atlantic.

[00:44:42]>> Ian, maybe they didn't tell you because it wasn't supposed to happen like that.

[00:44:45]Maybe they were supposed to be three days apart.

[00:44:47]>> [laughter] >> It was a happy accident. Complete accident.

[00:44:54]Oh, that would just be the icing on the cake. Well, they started their first revenue flights, actual revenue flights where you can buy a ticket rather than >> Guess they went to Heathro.

[00:45:04]>> It did. It took to slots. The flight leaves Riad at 2 in the morning and lands at Heathro right around 7 in the morning. Sure.

[00:45:15]>> That's rough flight, but they've got their flights. Hey, maybe that big Airbus orders for Riyad. Maybe. I don't know.

[00:45:21]>> Sure, why not?

[00:45:23]>> Get your money in.

[00:45:24]>> We'll see if Airbus can orchestrate such a nice delivery.

[00:45:28]>> All 70 of them at the exact same time.

[00:45:31]Let us know at podcastfr24.com if you've got insight into who might have that delivery order out when the podcast comes out. Jason and I, if all goes according to plan, and you hate to say it, but >> yikes.

[00:45:44]>> Yeah.

[00:45:46]Will be on the Goodyear blimp. And we will bring you all of that next week.

[00:45:51]Whether or not JFK or Jason just taxes around JFK and and I get a lovely lucky.

[00:45:58]>> Oh boy. All right. Well, cross your fingers, cross your toes, cross all your things. Wish us luck and we will talk to you next week. This has been episode 374 of A Talk. I am Ian Pachnik here as always with Jason Urbanowitz. Thanks for listening.

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