Posted by Seth on May 24, 2012 under Flying, News | 
JetBlue has been big on their "Even More" suite of products. Starting with Even More Legroom a few years back and recently expanding to Even More Speed (priority security lines) and Even More Space (board first for overhead bin space), the product suite has been growing over time. The latest addition appears to be in-seat power on board.
Odds are they aren’t really going to call it Even More Power, but the concept is definitely there. The new A320 deliveries they are taking starting this year will have 110V and USB power ports installed in the rows which are also "Even More" everything else. This development was rumored starting this morning and unofficial sources suggest that the newest aircraft in the fleet, N804JB, is configured with the power outlets and is currently undergoing FAA certification for the new setup. It is not clear yet at what pace the existing 120ish A320s will be retrofit or whether the 50ish E90s will be similarly configured.
This is a great move in advance of the upcoming in-flight satellite connectivity solution that the company expects to begin deploying later this year. The only down-side is that the deployment is limited to the paid upgrade seats. Still, better than nothing and certainly a welcome development for the roughly 30% of the customers on the A320s who will have access to the plugs.
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Posted by Seth on May 15, 2012 under Flying, News |
The wait is over. A couple months after carriers applied to provide service for four new slot pairs at Washington’s Reagan National Airport the DoT has announced the winners of the coveted operating permissions. And the winners are exactly what I predicted back when the applications were revealed:
JetBlue won their first choice of routes, adding service to their quickly growing operation in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Alaska Airlines won their first choice as well, with service to Portland, Oregon being approved. Austin, Texas had two different applications for service; both Southwest and JetBlue indicated that they wanted to add the destination. Southwest was awarded that authority. Virgin America won their only application, adding service to their hub in San Francisco. The route to SFO will be the only of the new operations with direct competition on it; United Airlines is also going to be operating on that route. Southwest will face competition on the proposed through-service aspect of their Austin service to San Diego from US Airways which will operate that route with a non-stop flight.
So no real surprises in the route authorities awarded. Probably for the best; the routes picked were the favorites because they made the most sense based on the economics of the markets. Still, every now and then I do wonder if the DoT has a sense of humor and would award something like the Colorado Springs application Frontier put out there.
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Tags: Alaska Air, Alaska Airlines, Congress, DoT, FAA, Frontier, JetBlue, Portland, Puerto Rico, San Diego, San Francisco, San Juan, Southwest Airline, United, United Airlines, US Air, Virgin America, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on March 13, 2012 under Flying, News |
Washington, DC‘s National Airport is one of the "lucky few" airports in the country where the government has limited destinations which can be served. The so-called "perimeter rule" keeps the long-haul flights out at Dulles for the most part, but there are a few exceptions to rule and those are coveted by the airlines. As part of the most recent FAA budget authorization bill Congress has added a few perimeter exceptions to the pool at DCA and now airlines are scrambling to grab those slots. The filing deadline was yesterday, and here’s what the proposals look like.
New Entrants
The slots are split into two pools, one for legacy carriers and one for new entrants. In the new entrants category six carriers – JetBlue, Virgin America, Southwest, Air Canada, Frontier and Alaska Airlines have applied.
Alaska Airlines is going big with their application, hoping to offer transcon service from both their Portland, OR hub as well as San Diego. Virgin America is also hoping for hub service from San Francisco. Southwest is aiming to provide service to Austin, TX, with onward connections to San Diego and JetBlue has applied to serve both Austin and San Juan. Air Canada is hoping for Vancouver service and Frontier is looking to serve Colorado Springs.
There is some interesting overlap with the routes being requested and it seems somewhat unlikely that the DoT is going to approve such applications so perhaps the final approval will look something like this:
Legacy Carriers
For the legacy carriers the access to beyond perimeter slots comes with a slightly higher price, as they have to give up service to a destination inside the perimeter to get the new service. On the plus side, the route authorities are more or less guaranteed given that condition so the DoT has less work to do there. Of the eligible carriers, Delta, United Airlines and American Airlines all made their intentions known a couple weeks ago, with service to their Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Los Angeles hubs, respectively. Apparently US Airways has decided to not apply for an additional beyond perimeter slot. They already have service to Phoenix and Las Vegas but it is still somewhat surprising that they haven’t tried for more.
The new routes should be interesting to watch, especially with the potential for competition on the LAX and SFO routes.
Tags: Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Congress, Delta, DoT, FAA, Frontier, JetBlue, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, San Juan, Southwest Airline, United, United Airlines, Virgin America, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on November 15, 2011 under News |
Seems like a pretty simple part of the process if you’re an airline pilot, right? After all, landing without the gear down is generally not the normal approach to arrivals and it is something that these pilots have been doing a couple dozen times each month for years. Turns out that it is still confusing to a few of them.
The union representing pilots at United Airlines has circulated a 101 page memo generated internally to members of Congress critical of the new company’s management and training policies, suggesting that they are skimping on safety in the effort to provide training on policy alterations needed to unify the policies of United and merger partner Continental. Among the concerns cited, nearly forgetting to lower the landing gear is on the list. Others have suggested that the changes have caused them to not follow taxi instructions from ATC while on the ground.
The document, dated Nov. 10, lambasts United for using only individual, computer-based training to help United pilots absorb a "large volume of procedural changes, some of which are quite complex," without including classroom work or practice sessions in flight simulators.
"United’s training regime is the equivalent of the Ringling Brothers Circus introducing a new trapeze routine and training the artists via computer," says the document.
This move follows efforts by the pilots to get the training policy amended in court, a case that was rather quickly dismissed as "speculative" and the FAA has insisted that they are monitoring the training regimen.
I’m all in favor of getting the right training, but I cannot see how getting Congress involved is a way to make anything good happen.
Posted by Seth on October 12, 2011 under Flying, News |
The deal for US Airways and Delta to trade large chunks of their operations at New York City‘s LaGuardia and Washington, DC‘s National airports has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. The swap, which has been in limbo since it was initially proposed about two years ago, will see Delta increase its market share significantly in the New York area, bringing it on par with United Airlines which has held a significant lead thanks to the hub operations at Newark by its Continental subsidiary.
The final agreement calls for Delta to gain 132 slot pairs at LaGuardia in exchange for 42 slot pairs that US Airways will gain in Washington. An additional 24 slot pairs – 16 in NYC and 8 in Washington – will be divested by the carriers to competitors. The divestment plan, which pretty much matches the original proposal from years ago, will have the slots auctioned in a cash-only, blind bid offering managed by the FAA. With the Southwest buyout of AirTran and acquisition of those slot portfolios the Texas-based carrier is no longer in as strong a position to oppose the swap or the blind distribution of the slot divestiture.
In addition to the FAA review of the slot swap there is a Department of Justice Anti-Trust investigation ongoing for the transaction. The DoJ announced that they are no longer concerned with the anti-trust implications in the New York City market but they are still looking into the US Airways monopoly issues at National. If that is too significant an issue it could still result in the deal being scuttled but at this point it does seem like the deal is quite likely to go through.
This represents a significant shake-up in both markets. Delta has not been shy recently about wanting to attack the New York City market and taking a sizeable chunk of that market share from competitors. They will still be running a split hub environment with major operations at both LaGuardia and JFK airports but they’ll have significantly more traffic going forward. For the Washington, DC market the domination at National by US Airways will be much more significant (hence the continued DoJ efforts).
Still plenty of excitement and new developments to come on this front but things are finally back in motion after being stalled for so long.
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Tags: AirTran, Continental, Delta, DoT, FAA, merger, New York City, Newark, Southwest Airline, United, US Air, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on September 27, 2011 under Flying, News |
The "3-hour rule" regarding flight delays was supposed to make things better for passengers by preventing them from being stuck on airplanes on the ground rather than actually flying. And the statistics year-over-year since the rule was implemented are pretty clear: the number of 3 hour delays dropped from 693 to 20 the year before and year after the rule was implemented. Great news, right?
Maybe not. According to a recent report from the GAO the reduced delays come with a side-effect of making flight cancellations much more likely:
GAO analysis suggests the rule is also correlated with a greater likelihood of flight cancellations. Such cancellations can lead to long overall passenger travel times. Airlines and other aviation stakeholders maintain that the tarmac delay rule has changed airline decision-making in ways that could make cancellations more likely.
The report is 111 pages of tables, statistics and generally dry reading. But there are some telling numbers that come out of it. The GAO performed two different regression analyses against the data covering 70 airports around the USA and Puerto Rico. Data was reviewed for both flights canceled before they left the gate and after they left the gate and began to taxi. Unsurprisingly, more flights are canceled at the gate than once they’ve pushed back. But the data from 2010 – after the new rule went into effect – suggests that cancelations are notably more common in both scenarios.
The number of flights cancelled in each year was incredibly small once the plane actually left the gate. Only 992 flights of the 1,846,288 scheduled flights that pushed back from the gate ended up not flying. But that number was 24% higher weighted for the total number of scheduled flights. And the chances of a cancelation are dramatically higher as the time on the tarmac grows. A plane that has been taxiing for more than 60 minutes was 88% more likely not to fly. Over 120 minutes that number was 216%. For flights that never left the gate the odds of a cancellation were also higher, to the tune of 13% year-over-year with 2010 having just over 1% of flights canceled at the gate.
Those are the unadjusted, raw data numbers from the DoT and FlightStats reports. The GAO also performed regression analysis to determine what other factors – weather, ATC, flight distance, time of day and others – might affect the cancelation rates to see if the rule is better or worse than other effects. The numbers do not appear all that promising for passengers. For the Tarmac-Cancellation Model (post push-back) the GAO has the following to say:
In all hour categories of tarmac time, the odds of cancellation were greater in 2010 than in 2009 because all of the odds ratios exceed 1. Moreover, the differential in the odds ratio of cancellations across the 2 years increased with the time a flight was on the tarmac. For flights that were on the tarmac for less than an hour, the odds of a cancellation were about one-third higher in 2010 than in 2009. … For flights with 61 to 120 minutes of tarmac delay, the odds ratio rose to 2.14, indicating that the odds of a cancellation more than doubled in 2010 compared with 2009, and for flights with 121 to 180 minutes of tarmac delay, the odds of cancellation more than tripled in that same time period. …[T]he inclusion of key variables to control for other factors did not have much effect on our findings related to the tarmac rule.
For the Gate-Cancellation Model the numbers are actually even more dramatic:
One significant finding is that the odds ratio for the rule change is substantially greater, when adjusted, than indicated by the simple unadjusted odds ratio shown in table 16. The model results indicate that the odds of gate cancellations rose by 24 percent after the rule went into effect, whereas the simple result indicated only a 13 percent increase in those odds.
Yes, fewer folks are sitting on the airplanes, but fewer are also actually getting where they are going. That’s not necessarily a good thing.
The report recommendations are pretty toothless, suggesting that the DoT collect more data than they do today and better analyze it for comprehensive impact against passengers. Not likely that will have much impact in the long run.
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Posted by Seth on June 2, 2011 under News |
Since the announcement a couple years ago that much of the safety testing data from airline seat manufacturer Koito was falsified there has been a bit of a dance going on about what the disposition of the seats currently installed would be. Last September both the FAA and EASA (the European equivalent) released rulings on the seats, and reasonably strict timelines were set for the retirement of the seats. This week additional directives are being issued, with the FAA still taking it easy on enforcement.
The new FAA rule will apparently permit some seats that fail the new testing guidelines to remain in service for up to six years after the failure rather than the previously announced two years. The European regulators, on the other hand, are apparently considering a requirement that all Koito seats be replaced within the next 10 years, even if they pass the tests, as the historical data is considered too suspect to be reasonable for the future of the seats.
Released Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration’s safety directive requires additional testing to determine whether some 40,000 seats manufactured by Japan’s Koito Industries Ltd., and installed on more than 270 U.S. commercial aircraft, comply with mandatory safety standards.
In some cases, the FAA rule also gives carriers up to six years to replace seats that fail to pass, versus a strict two-year deadline the agency proposed last fall. The Continental Airlines unit of United Continental Holdings Inc. is the U.S. carrier most affected by the rule, industry officials said.
Neither of these approaches is necessarily sound – the FAA comes off as too soft and EASA as too strict – but the discrepancies between them are quite telling. Given that one airline in the USA has nearly 40,000 of the seats installed on 200+ aircraft, a directive that they can no longer fly would be potentially financially ruinous. Then again, any accident that involves seat failures will be similarly so, especially with the fact that the company knows the seats are potentially bad.
There’s not much good that will come out of this Koito debacle and certainly further delays in addressing it won’t help either. Well, it won’t help anyone but the airlines’ bottom line for not having to buy new seats. Worth the risks?
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Posted by Seth on March 22, 2011 under Internet, News |
When Continental Airlines announced their deal with LiveTV to provide in-flight television service a couple years ago there was an additional piece to the deal. LiveTV was also supposed to provide in-flight internet service via their Kiteline product. It was going to be lighter (i.e. cheaper) for the airlines and cheaper for passengers, offering basic connectivity for passengers in the air.
As time marched on, however, that plan drifted away and then was finally shelved as LiveTV eventually admitted that the Kiteline project was dead. They never managed to get the antenna built the way they needed it and ultimately they decided to let the project die. It was too little, too late at that point to be a competitive service.
Fast forward to September 2010 where JetBlue announced that the LiveTV product was going to space. Rather than sticking with a terrestrial solution, they are going satellite-based, using the latest Ka-band technology available at the time. Actually, it isn’t even available yet. The ViaSat satellite is due to launch in 2011 and the service will come online once that happens.
Continental executed a letter of intent with LiveTV today to expand the carrier’s DirecTV installation to include the new ViaSat-based product. Just like they intended to offer the Kiteline solution a couple years ago. The first installs are not expected into aircraft until 2012 and the service is expected to be installed on the roughly 200 aircraft that Continental has currently fitted with DirecTV service or in line to be installed.
This is just the first of many steps to getting the service into production and on to the aircraft. Lots of details to still work out, including things like an install schedule and FAA approval of the hardware, not to mention actually getting a working product operating. Still, it is good to see progress on this front.
Faster, cheaper internet connectivity is a good thing to have.
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Posted by Seth on March 10, 2011 under Flying, News |
When the Department of Transportation announced in December 2009 that they were setting a hard limit on the amount of time flights could be delayed (the so-called "3-hour rule") before the operating carrier would be subject to significant fines there was quite the debate as to its potential impact. Many lauded the government for helping protect the passengers while others (self included) raised the point that more cancelled flights is worse for passengers than being stuck on the airplane but actually getting to the destination. Nearly a year into the new program the data available suggest that, so far, customers are losing far worse than expected from this policy.
With nine months of data available it is pretty clear that the number of 3-hour or longer tarmac delays is down. The DoT is making sure to trumpet that news and many media outlets are picking it up and running with it. They even have a pretty graph showing the impact of the rule:
Seems great, right? It is not.
Yes, there are fewer folks spending entirely too long in the plane on the way to wherever they are going, but that does not mean they are actually getting where they are going. It turns out that the number of flight cancelations has increased dramatically during this period as well, both as an absolute number and as a percentage of total scheduled flights. Actually, the latter is even worse as the total number of scheduled flights has decreased since the rule went into effect.
Here’s another look at the data, compiled based on the statistics published by the same federal agency that the DoT is using for the above numbers (click the images for the source data):
Yes, the variation in the size of the lines is much more dramatic in the bottom graph, but Marshall McLuhan would not be amused. It may look like the decrease in 3-hour delayed flights is more dramatic than the rise in cancelations, and in terms of percentages it is. But most significant is that the number of passengers displaced is MUCH higher because of the increased cancelations.
Oh, and the total number of flights operating each month was lower in 2010 than in 2009 so the fact that the cancelation numbers are higher in 6/10 samples and essentially the same in 3/10 is not a particularly comforting thought at all. That’s 90% of the sample since the rule went into effect where the percentage of flights canceled was higher than the previous year.
Load factors are running at or near all-time highs. This means that once a flight is canceled it is even harder to accommodate the affected passengers as there simply are no empty seats to place them in. So increasing the number of canceled flights certainly doesn’t seem to be the way to solve the problem of inconvenienced customers.
It should be pointed out that correlation certainly does not equal causation. Maybe there is another reason that there were so many flights canceled. But there is weather every year and the impact of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption was mostly confined to April 2010. Ironically that was the one month of the past 10 that had a lower cancelation rate.
Penalizing lots of customers for the sake of a select few is a bad way to operate. The Department of Transportation needs to take a hard look at these numbers and reconsider this policy. Delays and cancelations suck for everyone. The government should not be in the position of inducing them.
A bit more coverage of this phenomena can be found here, too
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Posted by Seth on February 3, 2011 under Flying, News |
The FAA and JetBlue announced today that they will be partnering in the testing of GPS-based navigational systems on some of the carrier’s routes. The system, commonly referred to as "NextGen," makes additional flight routings available via satellite-based navigation rather than the legacy radar-based systems. As many as 35 aircraft, roughly a third of the company’s Airbus A320 fleet, will be equipped with the systems.
Initially the NextGen routes will be between the carrier’s hubs in New York City and Boston and destinations in Florida and the Caribbean. Given that New York City has some of the most congested airspace in the world getting any incremental efficiency from operations will be good for the company and for passengers. Additionally, it is expected that the new navigational systems will eventually permit the operation of new flight paths between these regions.
The initial hardware cost, roughly $4.2MM, will be borne by the federal government while the training and installation costs will be borne by the carrier. The installation will begin in 2012.
More details in the FAA press release, here.
Posted by Seth on September 24, 2010 under News |
Ever since news came out that airline seat manufacturer Koito had been falsifying safety data for their products the industry has been waiting to learn the fate of the roughly 150,000 seats currently installed worldwide. Certainly if the seats are not up to spec they’ll need to be replaced, but just how quickly and who will be most affected?
Both the European and American certifying organizations (EASA and FAA, respectively) have released directives to all airlines detailing the next steps that must be taken by airlines currently operating with Koito seats in production. While the directives certainly pull no punches on the issue the EASA report is particularly damning:
The Japanese airworthiness authority JCAB has informed EASA that a review of the safety of passenger seats manufactured by Koito industries has disclosed discrepancies which include falsification of static, dynamic and flammability testing, as well as uncontrolled changes to production data (material and dimensional).
In addition JCAB confirmed that Koito records, showing evidence of falsification, could not be deemed complete. Examples include: fictitious dynamic test pulse plots inserted into test reports following failure to meet required certification requirements; flammability test coupons not representative of production parts, for instance by use of alternative adhesive not specified on the approved drawing; and fictitious deformation values entered in test reports when values exceeded the maximum allowed.
Based on these findings the EASA will require that all Koito seats be removed from aircraft within two years unless the airline is willing to pursue a new certification process for the seats in question. Any such plan must be first approved by EASA before going into effect.
The FAA is not taking quite as hard a line on the issue. Rather than requiring the replacement or recertification of the seats, the FAA will permit airlines to demonstrate only partial compliance in order to keep the seats currently flying legal. The FAA will also permit spares to be installed in a like for like manner where the seats are today.
So why did the FAA take a softer stance on the issue? Is it possibly because roughly 30% of the Koito install base is centered in a single company that is based in the United States, Continental? Is it because someone in Washington decided that they don’t really need to enforce all the rules so long as some of them are followed? The only comment offered up by an FAA spokesperson was this non-answer:
Clearly the FAA doesn’t operate in a vacuum, but that said what we have to do is look at the safety impact and the safety issue and the proposed solution based on our environment, not the environment that exists in Europe.
Apparently a plane crashing in Europe does so in a manner that is sufficiently different from a plane crashing in the United States such that the seats can be subject to different rules. It is certainly understandable that the two bodies might have small variations in their policies but when the FAA chooses to only partially enforce their own rules – “[T]his proposed AD will not require full compliance with every applicable regulation…” – that certainly raises other questions.
