Joe Sharkey At Large

Oddly absent from media coverage of the horrific crash of a Continental Airlines flight near Buffalo is any re-evaluation of this wondrous term “miracle” that was being thrown around so readily last month, when a US Airways A320 free-landed (or “ditched”) in the Hudson River, with all 155 aboard saved through skill, bravery and level-headedness of human crew, passengers and New York City first-responders — not to mention stone cold luck.

In much of the media narrative for the Hudson River incident, human skill and courage took a supporting role. Primarily, in some of the media, this was the “Miracle on the Hudson,” as the accidental New York governor, David (“Hey, It’s a Miracle I Got This Job”) Paterson, kept prattling.

Our media lexicon of piety, while fulsome and abundant, evidently does not have a word for the withholding of a miracle — which is the only logical way one can define the consequences of the Buffalo crash, assuming one had previously defined the consequences of the Hudson River crash as the bestowing of a miracle.

Piety is not my strong suit.

On Sept. 29, 2006, I was one of seven men who walked away from a horrific mid-air collision at 37,000 feet over the Amazon in Brazil. Such a thing had not happened before, people surviving a high-altitude collision of two aircraft, unless it was in a military aircraft with an ejection seat and parachute.

What a miracle!, many said. But 154 passengers on the other plane, a Brazilian 737 airliner, were killed in that collision, in a hideous fiery plunge into the jungle. Where, I kept thinking, was their miracle? Why did I, so manifestly unworthy, receive this blessing, while they did not?

I bristle at this use of “miracle” because words have meaning and consequence. Valuing the supernatural as a component of a safe air-transportation system makes it easier to devalue skill, training, human courage and the importance of a well-maintained air-safety infrastructure.

When I got back home from Brazil, after I had filed my story, I dutifully made the network media and major print-media rounds, including the morning shows like Today. That afternoon, the local New York media began arriving at my home.At times during the day, several crews were stacked up out front like trick-or-treaters. I remember being impressed by the famous television-reporter faces that showed up at the door — thinking, hey, these people still do actual, knock-on-a-door legwork.

The last local news crew showed up in early evening. There was another familiar face, I guy I had seen on New York television for decades. He and his crew set up in the living room, as they all had, and he began the interview with a question that indicated what his angle would be.

“Do you believe in miracles?” he said, beaming in anticipation of my answer.

He looked crestfallen when I told him no, I did not believe in miracles, I believed in luck. “If what happened to me was a miracle, what do we call what happened to the 154 people who died on the other plane?” I said.

He soldiered morosely through the rest of the interview and packed up to rush into the studio for the 11 o’clock news, which I happened to catch on TiVo.

The anchorwoman introduced the segment by saying: “Next is an astonishing story of surviving a horrible airplane crash … by an area man who doesn’t believe in miracles.”

And sure enough, under my image on the screen appeared the words, “Doesn’t believe in miracles.” Local TV news, I thought, is indomitable.

Which brings me back to the horrors of the most recent crash, and what I would argue is a responsibility to demand an explanation of a celestial miracle-worker who received the credit for the happy ending of the Hudson River crash: Why was a miracle withheld for those people on that plane approaching Buffalo in the wind and ice the other night?

Believing in miracles, one might also demand an accounting of the cruel coincidences inherent in this latest human disaster. Explain, for example, why this happened to the kind and gentle and tenacious 9/11 widow, Beverly Eckert, who died in the crash en route to a commemoration of the birthday of her husband, who had died on the 98th floor of one of the fallen towers that day? Explain to me the awful, cruel irony that Mohammad Atta, ringleader of the terrorist monsters of 9/11, boarded American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001, having arrived in Boston on a connecting flight aboard Colgan Air — which was the operator of the doomed Buffalo flight.

Shouldn’t one logically point out the following to any sentient, all-powerful potential miracle-worker with a hand in human tragedy: Devising or countenancing such gruesome coincidence is an act of psychosis, malevolent and unforgivable in any rational world?

Today I see pious scenes of stricken worshipers praying in churches, drawn there on a Saturday by the Buffalo crash. Praying for what? In any rational world in which the belief in supernatural miracles stubbornly persists, the faithful would be arriving with pitchforks and torches, demanding a full accounting.

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Yes, the Dash 8 Q400 airplane and its siblings in the Bombardier line of Dash 8 turboprops are highly regarded airplanes, despite the landing gear problems that were associated with three non-fatal crashes in Scandinavia in the fall of 2007.

And clearly, wing-ice has emerged as the probable primary cause of the horrific crash that killed 50 near Buffalo Thursday night on a Continental Airlines flight operated by Pinnacle Airlines subsidiary Colgan Air.

So here are the major lines of inquiry as I see it:

1. Big turboprops apparently are more susceptible to icing — which of course makes operational changes in a wing’s shape and attack — than jets. Let’s have a close look at de-icing systems on the Q400, which have already been flagged by the FAA.

2. Maintenance: the next big story in commercial aviation. Who maintains the fleet, and where? Across the board, regional airlines, squeezed hard by the majors for whom they fly, have been slashing costs. Follow the money.

3. Following the money, who flies these airplanes, and under what conditions? You don’t have to press very hard to find underpaid regional jet pilots who grab a miserable night’s sleep in the terminal before hauling themselves back into the cockpit for the next shift — which is then flown in technical adherence to the law.

Look at the working conditions of the crews of our regional airline system and tell me how confident you feel getting on a flight on a windy, icy night. (Or how confident they feel).

The pilot of the 74-seat Dash 8 that crashed near Buffalo was Marvin D. Renslow, 47, employed by Colgan since September 2005. The first officer was Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, who was hired by Colgan a little over a year ago.

According to data from IAG AirInsight, Colgan Q400 captains make about $58,000 a year. First officers (co-pilots) make … are you ready? … $27,000 a year.

Here’s some interesting background in an e-mail from Michael Ciasullo, the managing director of IAG:

“Pilots will fly about 6-7 hours on days when they are scheduled to fly. This is called block time and is measured from the t, Pilots’ formally scheduled flight time “is measured from the time they leave the gate until they pull into the arrival gate at their destination.

However, there is another thing called duty day and that is essentially from the time the pilot leaves the hotel in the morning until they get to their hotel at
night. This can make the work day up to 14 hours long. Your pay is based off
block time so as soon as you pull into the gate the pay clock stops but you
still have to sit and wait to fly the plane to the next destination. You
don’t get paid for sitting in the terminal or waiting.

So, in summary, their ‘off time’ can be up to double their actual flying
time on the days they fly; pilots don’t fly every day. They will do 6-7-8
hours a day for 2-3 days in a row maybe three times a month. All adding up
to about 75 hours or so. Pilot are limited to 1,000 hours per year of flying
by the FAA.”

And therein, folks, lies a hell of a story.

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[Right: The Dash8 Q400]

[UPDATED 5.30 pm ET]

This Reuters story on the horrible crash that killed 50 when a Continental Airlines flight approaching Buffalo went down last night has good reporting and background, but one glaring problem: It somewhat cavalierly dismisses manifest recent safety problems on Dash 8 Q400 turboprop airplanes, three of which crash-landed in Scandinavia in the fall of 2007 because of landing gear malfunctions.

But here’s a truly remarkable comment to Reuters from one of those aviation professors who always seem to be available for instant speculation:

“There have been a few crashes with the Dash 8 over the years, but I don’t recall anything that has been noticeably pointed out in the literature about that particular airplane that would suggest any issues,” said David Greatrix, professor of aerospace at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Well, the “literature” aside, I’d say we do have some “issues,” as I have said before about this aircraft.

There is no indication that any landing gear problem might have caused last night’s disaster on approach to the Buffalo airport.

The Wall Street Journal said today today the plane made a sharp right turn as it approached the runway from about six miles off, and that the erratic turn occurred “about the time that the pilot would have been configuring the aircraft for landing.”

On the other hand, the NTSB said that the Dash 8 crew reported ice buildup on the wings at some point before the final approach.

Ice or not, it is time to connect some dots on the history of the Dash 8, including some along the various maintenance trails. That would include de-icing systems.

Another thing that will be looked at more closely: The ATC recording as the Buffalo flight went off screen shows that air-traffic control in Cleveland, about 200 miles away, was handling the flight at the time it went down — presumably at the point where a handoff to the Buffalo tower was being made for final approach.

Meanwhile, here’s an interesting take on turboprops and icing problems, from Clive Irving, a consulting editor on aviation issues at Conde Nast Traveler, link via the Daily Beast.

The Continental Airlines flight was operated by Colgan Air under contract with Continental. Colgan is a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines, which used to be known as Express Airlines.

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When you consider that roundtrip walk-up business-class fares across the Atlantic were pushing $10,000 earlier last year, it’s amazing what is now occurring in the premium airfare world.

British Airways, whose Club World business-class service is among the best in the world, launched a fare sale yesterday with Club World fares starting at $1,998 (plus about $250 in fees) roundtrip to London Heathrow from Kennedy, Newark, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta and Chicago.

Tickets must be bought by midnight Feb. 15 for travel between April 1 and May 24. A 50-day advance purchase, and a Saturday night stay, are required.

Meanwhile, the hard-charging British Airways subsidiary OpenSkies, which flies all business class service, has a fare sale through Feb. 16 — $2,098 roundtrip (plus up to $300 in fees) between Kennedy and Paris Orly or Amsterdam Schiphol. That’s a 30 percent discount from the usual lowest OpenSkies fares.

The travel dates are the same as the British Airways sale: April 1 through May 24.

Hotels, by the way, are discounting like mad, all over the place.

Hotels.com has a 24-hour fare sale now underway. Las Vegas, from $22. San Francisco, from $49. Et cetera.

It is a very good time to travel, obviously.

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A reader e mailed me suggesting that I follow up on a news article elsewhere today that got all worked up over the fact that people who buy nonrefundable tickets and then don’t fly on the appointed date can’t in turn donate those unused tickets to charity.

Sorry, but at the risk of sounding like my friend Terry Trippler (stalwart defender of the airlines in all matters), I’m on the airlines’ side here. It’s nonsense to expect an airline to re-adjust complicated fare and yield-management distribution systems because someone raises a faux-populist issue about bereft charities.

An airline ticket is priced in an intensely competitive environment. A nonrefundable ticket, which is purchased at a discount to a fully refundable ticket, actually has some refundable qualities, in that it retains value for one year from the purchase date — provided the holder cancels the trip in advance.

Within a year, that ticket can be re-booked — by paying a “change fee.” Now here is where I think the airlines are behaving like roadside bandits in Baja, in that the typical change fee has now been jacked up to $150. (Southwest doesn’t play this game, incidentally, and that’s one of the reasons people are very loyal to Southwest. But Southwest also doesn’t operate with the degree of requisite complexity that, say, Delta does).

But the issue raised wasn’t change fees, it was a half-baked notion that the airlines should go to the extraordinary trouble and expense of allowing unused nonrefundable tickets, purchased at a significant discount and under specific fare rules, to become transferable — to whoever and wherever. For charity.

Baloney. The logistical costs of doing this would certainly drive up the overall prices on all tickets. Far better to use the ticket and write a check to that charity, or donate frequent flier miles, which is simple to do and doesn’t involve the complexity and potential fraud.

And if you can’t use the ticket in a year, well, them’s the rules. It’s why it was way cheaper than a refundable ticket.

And double baloney to a statement in the source cited by my e-mail friend that “spoilage” — that is, unused tickets — encourages airlines to overbook flights.

That’s a shaky assertion riding in cahoots with a largely nonexistent problem, overbooking. The Transportation Department’s most recent statistics on overbooking, released today, show that 1.10 of every 10,000 passengers were bumped in the last quarter of 2008.

So overbooking is statistically minuscule. Secondly, if you cancel a flight on a nonrefundable ticket — and canceling it is the only sensible thing to do once you know you aren’t going that day; otherwise you lose full value of the ticket — the airline knows that you are not showing up, and that seat returns to inventory. You have to be pretty dumb not to cancel if you have a ticket that you know will retain a certain value.

And you can’t fix dumb.

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[Update: See reader comments following this post. I caught hell on this one, and with good reason. Southwest did in fact prominently state (see Southwest comment) which flights have the WiFi test service. My mistake.]

Southwest Airlines says today it’s testing inflight WiFi service, in an announcement that makes it sound like it has invented the wheel and that this is something that hasn’t been fully put in place already by other airlines.

(Sort of like those reporters who keep “discovering” the inflight WiFi story as if some of us hadn’t been writing about its evolution for two years.)

Whatever, Southwest says it is testing “aircraft to satellite technology” on a single plane, with three more to join in by early March. Mysteriously, Southwest does not see a need to identify the Wi-Fi enabled aircraft.

Southwest also says it is forming a partnership with Yahoo! to “offer an in-flight homepage with destination-relevant content.”

Translation: Advertising.

Says Southwest:

“When Southwest customers board the WiFi enabled aircraft, they will be
greeted with WIFi placards and onboard instruction sheets. Those interested
in using the service during the test period will have the opportunity to log
on to the service free of charge via their own personal WiFi-enabled device [sic]
(laptops, iPhones, WiFi-enabled smart phones, etc.). Cellular technology
will not work with the WiFi service. The service is being offered on a trial
basis, and has not yet received final FCC approval.”

I do expect Southwest will let us know as soon as they work out the kinks and get this sucker rolling beyond Mystery Aircraft No. 1.

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…The French have surrendered. (Again). It says here that the Paris airports are shutting down tonight because a snowstorm is predicted.

This a week after London went into hysteria and came to a standstill over five inches of rapidly melting snow.

Out here in the Sonoran desert where I’m holed up, a long run of 80-degree winter days has ended, with snow already on the mountains and even some snow predicted for the desert valley.

Lucky me, I’m not going to Paris or anywhere else.

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British Airways, which offers some of the world’s best long-haul premium service in its first class and Club World business-class cabins, said today that its premium traffic declined by 13.7 percent in January. That’s as measured by passenger revenue miles flown, compared with January 2008.

This sharp decline in premium passenger miles flown comes even as British Airways, like most competitors on the industry’s highly lucrative long-haul premium routes, has been discounting and offering promotions that include free nights at London hotels with the fare.

B.A. is a bellwether for the industry. The decline in premium traffic, much of it dependent on the now-staggered financial services business, is a still-underreported crisis for the major airlines. Few of them have yet ‘fessed up to the real crisis in premium traffic — on which several U.S. airlines have bet a good chunk of the farm.

Obviously, this is a good time to book long-haul premium fares, if you are so inclined.

From the B.A. statement today:

“British Airways added more discounted fares to its World Offers sale for travel between January and September 2009 with reductions on a range of longhaul destinations including New York, Cape Town and Grand Cayman and shorthaul destinations including Paris, Venice, Milan, Vienna and Prague…”

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Most major U.S. airlines made big bets on the resiliency of international travel last year, and the bets are going sour.

The initial reports on air traffic in January give a rough outline of a problem that will soon be obvious, because international traffic revenues are buoyed by premium fares in business class and first class.

By all anecdotal indications so far (although premium traffic is not broken out in the routine monthly operational reports), premium traffic on international routes is in a tailspin. Those $9,800 round trip business class fares over the Atlantic (OK, big companies supplying a lot of business could get them for $5,000) are history — the $9,500 AND the $5,000.

Mike Boyd, the airline forecaster, refers to the international premium-fare collapse as a “neutron bomb” for domestic airlines that depend mightily on them.

Anyway, here are some of the January results (without any break-out of premium traffic, as I said):

–Delta, which has the most diverse routes over the Atlantic, and thus is at least somewhat insulated from the most severe downturn, in New York-London premium traffic: Delta’s international traffic was up 6.6 percent in January (compared with January 2008) — but on an increase in capacity of 11.3 percent.
(It was far worse domestically. Delta mainline domestic traffic was off 6.7 percent on an 8.5 percent capacity decrease. Regional routes were worse, with regional traffic off 14.4 percent on a 13.6 percent decrease in capacity.

–Northwest (which Delta, which acquired Northwest last year, still reports out separately): International traffic down 5.7 percent on a capacity decrease of 2.4 percent. Domestically, Northwest traffic was down 10 percent on a 9 percent decrease in capacity.

–American Airlines: Off 8 percent internationally with 2.8 percent fewer seats; off 13.9 percent domestically with 11.6 percent fewer seats.

Keep your eye on those international numbers as this slump deepens and travel demand continues to decline. The major airlines are very, very worried about that so-far not widely assessed bad trend.

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Bombardier aerospace division is cutting more than 1,300 jobs as faces a 10 percent drop in business jet orders.

This occurs during an abrupt decline in new orders for business jets, and a corresponding rise in the number of customers backing out of existing orders. No one saw this coming late last year, when the business jet industry was still posting record sales and profits.

More later today on why this is occurring, and on the way the business jet industry missed an opportunity to make a reasonable case for its products, rather than blaming the press for the troubles it’s having in an bad economic environment coupled with a fierce public backlash against corporate high-riding arrogance — best exemplified by the three Detroit CEOs who famously rode their corporate jets to Washington last November nto beg for taxpayer bailouts.

Bombardier, based in Montreal, makes both commercial regional jets and a line of business jets. The workforce cuts will take place at the company’s facilities in Montreal, Wichita, Kan., and Belfast over a five-month period, beginning this month.

The company said it expected to deliver about 10 percent fewer business aircraft this fiscal year. In fiscal 2009 (which ended Jan. 31), Bombardier delivered 239 business jets, compared with 232 in the previous year. The company blamed the new forecast drop on a greater-than-usual number of deferrals and cancellations of existing orders.

The industry in general has not yet assessed the additional impact that will come from the evaporation of anticipated new orders this year.

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