Posted by Seth on March 27, 2008 under News | 
Following on AA’s need to ground and inspect their MD80s yesterday, Delta announced that they were performing a similar set of checks, and similarly taking a number of planes out of service in order to do so. The Delta action affects about 130 planes and there were a number of cancelled flights as a result. All these inspections are apparently to verify that the cable ties holding some wires in place are correctly spaced. Who knew that cable tie spacing was so important??
Particularly interesting to me are the Delta Shuttle flights between New York’s LaGuardia and Wasington’s National and Boston’s Logan airports. These flights are cash cows for Delta, with fares often higher than a dollar and a half per mile for a walk-up ticket. And these flights are operated with a dedicated sub-fleet of MD-88 airplanes, the type included in the grounding. Somewhat amazingly, Delta has managed to control the damage on this route, cancelling only a couple of the flights so far, while keeping the vast majority of them flying (2 cancelled to DCA and 3 to BOS, out of 16-18 for each city). Other routes are not so lucky, but at least Delta’s keeping the money route operating.
UPDATE (5:11pm EDT): Apparently Delta can’t even keep the money route going full speed – they cancelled four more DCA flights and three more BOS flights. Not a good day to be flying on Delta or AA, though Amtrak is probably doing brisk business on their Acela routes between NYC and Boston/Washington.
Posted by Seth on March 26, 2008 under News |
This just in…
American Airlines has reportedly grounded all their MD-80 airplanes. The grounding was ordered to give the carrier time to follow up on an airworthiness directive, according to a spokesperson. This is the same sort of thing that got Southwest in a lot of trouble a couple weeks ago.
The action affects 171 flights, according to the report. I was always under the impression that the carrier had a ton of the MD-80s, so if it only affects 171 flights I’m not sure that all of the MD-80s have been grounded, but I also haven’t seen their fleet plan lately. Time to go look in to that.
What worries me is that it sounds like the lack of FAA oversight/enforcement may be more pervasive in the industry. That would be very bad.
UPDATE (9:46a): AA has over 300 MD-82/83 planes in their fleet (~50% of their total fleet), so if it is a complete grounding of the type then there will be many, many more flights cancelled. Or this is just related to a few specific planes. Or the inspection takes almost no time and they can get it done very quickly as the planes cycle through the hubs. Still not enough details to know for sure.
Update (10:21a): I updated the title of the post to reflect the fact that they aren’t grounding the entire fleet. It does seem that they are just cycling through the checks pretty quickly and getting the planes back into the air.
Update (12:16p): It turns out that they “grounded” and inspected all the planes, mostly overnight, and some were taking a bit longer to finish up, hence the few cancelled flights today. My initial conclusions about the FAA oversight are still troubling to me. If the FAA is doing things correctly why are there situations like this??
Posted by Seth on March 26, 2008 under News |
Singapore Air had to ground a second of their A380s yesterday, again due to an issue with the fuel pump mechanism. They experienced a similar problem about 6 weeks ago which was apparently related to an electrical relay in the fuel pump system. This time it was actually the fuel pump that failed. Two incidents so close together clearly call in to question the reliability of the big bird, though the airline has made great efforts to downplay the situation.
Posted by Seth on March 25, 2008 under News |
Don’t become obnoxiously drunk on a flight, especially when the South African rugby team is on board and willing to assist in quieting me down.
“He became extremely aggressive and abusive,” team representative Frikkie Erasmus told the Cape Town Argus. “That’s when one of the Stormers calmed him down with a good klap. It worked out quite well.”
I don’t know what a “klap” is, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t comfortable.
Posted by Seth on March 25, 2008 under News |
When New York State’s passenger bill of rights went into effect on January 1 it was considered a pretty significant win for passengers, even though it covered very few specific circumstances (delays after departure from the gate lasting 3+ hours) and had very minimal requirements (potable water and functional lavs). Well that minimal effort was shut down this afternoon when the US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals declared that only the federal government can regulate airlines, including when they are on the ground at airports in various states. The crux of the courts decision is summed thus:
another state could be free to enact a law prohibiting the service of soda on flights departing from its airports, while another could require allergen-free food options on its outbound flights, unraveling the centralized federal framework for air travel.
In other words, states cannot require basic minimum standards because other states might have different standards. I actually understand the argument, and since air travel is interstate commerce I’m somewhat partial to the federal management of the situation. The problem is that the federal government refuses to actually do their job and handle the situation. The FAA cannot modernize the air traffic control system quickly enough to actually handle the volume of flights that we have today, much less in the future, even though every time you fly there is a tax to fund such efforts tagged on to the ticket price. Congress refuses to deal with the issue (and I don’t blame them, based on how much money the airline lobby is throwing at them) so we’re stuck in no man’s land.
The airlines are effectively immune. A sad day, indeed.
Posted by Seth on March 25, 2008 under News |
Somewhat as expected, the Alitalia buyout by Air France/KLM is struggling to move forward in the face of significant opposition from Italian politicians and labor unions. The presumptive incoming Prime Minister has called the deal on the table an “arrogant French offer” and the unions have been protesting plans to outsource maintenance and other ground services tasks. Some of the protests have turned ugly, resulting in police conflicts.
In other words, as predicted, the unions are going to scuttle the whole deal, even though it is probably the only way the carrier can survive. It remains to be seen how long the government will continue to lose 1MM euro daily on the carrier, but chances of another savior beyond the AF offer are pretty slim.
What happens when that fails is harder to figure out. Either AirOne comes up with a bid, which seems unlikely to me based on the fact that the bank says they haven’t been, or the government continues to fund the company as it falls apart. The government won’t be able to effect the turnaround that the company needs.
Posted by Seth on March 24, 2008 under News |
OK…not really, but there is some movement in the Brazilian aviation market, and it is being driven by David Neelman, the founder of JetBlue, so that’s where the connection comes into play. I’m guessing it is just bad translation on some press releases.
There have been rumors swirling for a few months now that Neelman was working on getting a new carrier off the ground in Brazil, taking advantage of his dual-citizenship status to get things moving (Brazil has a citizen ownership limit, similar to the USA). The latest article suggests that he has raised $200MM in funding, has hired executives – including some from the now shuttered flag carrier Varig – and is poised to make an announcement regarding the new company as soon as this Thursday. The airline will operate using ~36 E190 planes, which happen to be made by Embrear, a Brazilian company. Stay tuned…
Posted by Seth on March 23, 2008 under News |
I’m not entirely sure how a gun accidentally discharges in general, but it sure does worry me when it happens on an airplane. Some pilots are armed under the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, and apparently there was a accidental discharge of their weapon on a US Air flight Saturday. The plane landed normally, though it was then taken out of service for maintenance.
I’m still stuck on accidental discharge. I don’t know how that happens. Did the guy drop it? Was he playing with it while on auto-pilot? I’m sure that we won’t every hear all the answers, but the situation is pretty freaky.
Posted by Seth on March 21, 2008 under News |
They may actually be leading the crowd, since they are the first to offer voice access, though I am not sure it is a good thing. Emirates has one of their A340s configured with a GSM relay from AeroMobile, allowing for SMS and voice access in the air. They say that they’re seeing a lot of demand and plan to expand the service to include more planes as well as data and BlackBerry plans in the coming months. The only saving grace is that the flight crews will be able to turn off voice access for overnight flights. Otherwise I can imagine some pretty nasty air rage.
Posted by Seth on March 20, 2008 under News |
In another sign of the weakening value of the US dollar, currency exchange shops in Amsterdam have started refusing to exchange US Dollars for Euros. Basically they are worried that the dollar’s value will drop while they’re sitting on them, before they can trade them in at a central bank or otherwise sell them. So essentially the dollar is dropping in value so quickly that folks in Europe don’t want them any more.
In a similar move, tailors in Thailand are now advertising their prices in Euros in an effort to stabilize their profits.
In other words, it is probably already too late to trade in your dollars, but if you haven’t yet, it is probably worth trying anyways.
I’m scared of our trip to Turkey and the UK later this year. Here’s dreaming of a recovery that just isn’t going to happen 
