Flight International

This isn't a compromise to settle the US Air Force tanker dispute but a curiosity being hosted on the booking engine of Thomas Cook Airlines. So hard to tell them apart these days.

Last year we revealed that an Emirates A380 would be the new advertising tenant on London Heathrow's former 'Concorde' roundabout. And so it has come to pass - at least according to the San Bernadino Sun which says the model, put together by California's Penwal Industries, is to be delivered in early July.

It's one-third scale, which makes it about the size of a Bombardier CRJ, and the newspaper says it'll be designed in pieces to "fit inside an Antonov An-225". Whether the Ukrainian six-engined gargantua is the designated mode of transport to Heathrow hasn't yet been confirmed.

White boy rapping and aviation has traditionally gone together like toothpaste and orange juice, but the recent Terminal 5 chaos has prompted a guy to get all satirical, and release the “Terminal 5” song:

Similar to a Flight of the Conchords ditty, this satirical view (also produced by a Kiwi man) is quite humorous, and shows how the at least some people can laugh about the travel chaos. If they haven’t got there bags auctioned off that is!

*Hats off to Goose on AirSpace for the link.

Hats off to Travolution for this spot:

To be honest with you,this scenario doesn't seem to be out of the realms of possibity, especially if they run out of raffle tickets to sell!

As my colleagues at Airline Business have reported, Singapore Airlines are getting ‘touchy feely’ to create some excitement for its first A380 flight from London.

First of all, they have offered the personal touch by creating an area dedicated to personal memories of the A380; an area where people can share photos and thoughts of the A380. This may seem to some aloof organisations as too much work, but in this era of endlessly competing airlines, it seems good business sense to use a more personalised approach to marketing.

The second element of SIA’s marketing strategy comes in competition form and this is where it’s time to get creative. Singapore Airlines are looking for pictures that show a “creative expression” of the airline and London. I’m no Picasso but what do you think?

Somehow I don’t think I’m in for much of a shout!

According to the New York Times, travel publishers are still trying to find a successful method of appealing to the mass travelling market.

Reading Kieran Daly's Unusual Attitude blog post about Easyjet's security procedures reminded me of another oddity with Easyjet's online booking policy.

A colleague of mine recently sent me his booking confirmation, noting the unusual email that Easyjet uses to mail its booking confirmations:

-----Original Message-----
From: easyJet.com [mailto:blackhole@easyJet.com]
Sent: 2007
To:
Subject: easyJet booking reference

easyJet.com - book cheap flights, hotels, car hire for low cost travel
-----------------------------------------------------
Flight booking: Confirmation

My colleague accompanied it with an amusing note:

"I always thought that it was going into a blackhole. A bit of a metaphor for the whole travel trade experience: No light ever escapes and time becomes infinite on the event horizon."

I think the title says it all in this great story, except that i am intrigued that in the Star Telegram report, they refer to drunken rambling as speaking in a "thick-tongued manner". Maybe that's why he had salad cream all over him!

This has to be my favourite explanation for being arrested at an airport. If you can better it however, go to our AirSpace forums and have your say.

Well it's finally happened; at a Dubai event already packed with announcements, the A380 has been sold to its first VIP client, and shockingly it is not everyone's favourite Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

Unsurprisingly, the shortlist of those that could afford a mere $310 Million investment is small, and so it is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud who takes the prize as the first owner of the world's ultimate boy toy. The "Flying Palace" is born.

In part one of their massive order announcement, Emirates Airline has ordered 81 Airbus aircraft.

At a press conference at the Dubai air show Emirates chairman and Chief Exec, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, said “The A350XWBs and A380s will play an important role in supporting Emirates’ and Dubai’s growth plans.”

However, with an Emirates/Boeing press conference set to follow, indicators are that an additional agreement with Boeing will further increase the order size.

The order is valued at 20.2 billion USD.

More to come ...

The flight team are specialists in many different areas, but the arena of fine cuisine isn’t obviously one of them.

We all talk a good game, pretending to know our foie gras from our lobster tail, but Gordon Ramsey we certainly are not.

Sexy pictures are the aim of the day today in the Flight office, but not in the sense that you'd think.

Forget images of sexy flight attendants and uniforms for a second, we are talking about the first flight of the A380.

For most people the sight of the First Class lounge brings with it a ping of jealousy, as you trudge through to cattle classes and look enviously on at the haven of plentiful drinks, great cuisine and beds made of silk(okay well this is how I imagine it anyway).

There is some sad breaking news regarding a plane crash in a market in Kinshasa, Congo. Firm details are at yet scarce, but so far there are 17 announced casualties.

A man who flew on the inaugural Pan Am Boeing 747 flight has been invited as SIA's guest to fly on the Airbus A380 maiden journey from Singapore to Sydney on 25 October.

Is he not the luckiest man alive?

A special kind of scrutiny was applied to the European Aviation Safety Agency last week.

On 27 September the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) imported five of the top executives from EASA, seated them behind a long desk facing a packed hall of industry people, allowed them a few words each to update the audience on current issues they face, and then opened the session for about two hours of questions.

This doesn't normally happen to the senior executives in European agencies. So why EASA? And why did the agency's big five - executive director Patrick Goudou, communications head Daniel Holtgen, quality and standardisation director Francesco Banal, certification director Norbert Lohl and deputy head of flight standards Eric Sivel - agree to undergo this public grilling?

The big news in the office this morning is the announcement from BA, who have chosen both Airbus and Boeing as their fleet options for the replacement of 34 of the BA's long haul fleet.

It seems that David Field on the Airline Business blog isn't a fan of certain corporate airline blogs!!!!

Since yesterday's tragic air crash in Phuket, it has been difficult to come to any firm conclusions about what actually happened.

As news and video of the aftermath came through it became clear that weather conditions played their part, but as our Safety and Operations Editor David Learmount states in his video review of the incident, no firm conclusions can be drawn until the flight recorder information is downloaded.

Whatever the outcome, a tragedy like this is hard to grasp.

There seems to be a growing trend among airlines to refer to their passengers (a word that seems perfectly adequate) as the more grandiose 'guests'; an odd trend that makes customers sound like they are entering a hotel rather than a jet.

In promoting Virgin Blue's Embraer 170 jets, CEO Brett Godfrey talks from a "guest point of view". He says:

"We (Virgin Blue) cannot wait to introduce the aircraft to Virgin Blue guests in the coming months"

Now, I am all for marketing speak to sell an experience, but does the word "passengers" suffice?

Or maybe soon airlines will start calling First and Business Class guests and Economy as cattle!!!

Photo credit: AP

NTSB investigators yesterday offered up a perfectly plausible explanation for why two very seasoned airline pilots on a perfectly dawning summer morning pulled their perfectly fit CRJ100 regional jet onto a tragically unfit runway (too short) and ploughed into trees and other obstacles before coming to rest a half mile from the airport, killing 49 of the 50 aboard...

Confirmation Bias.

Good luck to Delta and all who sail in her. I had to pass up the opportunity to visit Atlanta this last weekend when they left Chapter 11 and so will probably never get to meet Jerry Grinstein. But that was probably the classiest passage through bankruptcy protection that I can recall - made more impressive by the dismissive shrugging off of US Airways' frankly bonkers acquisition attempt.

But this is nearly as barmy. They're repainting the fleet. Again! Delta, United, US Air(ways) - all forced into Chapter 11, all never succeeded in repainting their fleet before they decided to change one more time. If you're in the US you'll remember the comical situation of USAir in the 1990s when they had about five liveries on the go at one point. American Airlines: no repainting (and in fact not much paint, period) - and no Chapter 11. I rest my case.

Seriously, I don't think Delta or United (and quite possibly not American) have done enough reinvention to survive long-term against the lo-cos. And chucking money around design houses and paint shops is exactly the sort of thing that should not be on their agendas right now.

Has any US major ever actually succeeded in repainting the entire fleet in one go?

It's not the most important story in the world, but I've got personal experience of this story in The Times regarding strange goings-on at the Ryanair operation at Girona in Spain.

You'll remember that JetBlue managed to turn lead into gold when one of their A320s suffered a nosegear failure and ended up starring on live TV in one of the world's most publicised landings. Everything went well, the pilot was lauded, and the airline effectively got advertising that I suppose would be valued in seven figures at regular TV rates.

Last week things were different. JetBlue is being flayed for its near network-collapse and all the advertising in the world couldn't fix its reputation right now. The saga may well lead to passenger-rights legislation in the USA, and JetBlue has come up with its own bill of rights in the meantime.

But Neeleman's smart touch is, I think, shown in this YouTube video in which he talks directly about what happened and what JetBlue is doing about it. It's about as good a job as could be done in the circumstances - he comes across as a CEO who's genuinely horrified by what happened and regretful of what his company has done to its individual customers. The YouTube comments are predictably cynical, but as the thread develops, an increasing number of plausibly genuine supporters get on board.

Right now this has tremendous impact. But I don't think it sets a precedent that will be widely followed. The next airline CEO that does it will get about one-tenth of the impact, and anyone else will barely be noticed. Fact is that the airline industry lets its customers down so often that YouTube would need a special "contrite airline CEOs" category. I don't suppose United's Glen Tilton considered YouTube for a moment after this horror.

Unfortunately not by me, but this is a nice blog post by a Russian passenger on a Skyexpress Boeing 737-300 undertaking one of the first of the airline's flights from Moscow Vnukovo airport to Sochi. It's in Russian, but Google language tools does quite a nice job of getting the gist of the report. And for me the striking thing is how startlingly similar the whole experience is to, say, an Easyjet trip. Skyexpress is linked to Airunion, reportedly with some Western investment involved too. I'm not sure where they got their concept from, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were Luton, England.

Iraqi Airways’ designator code is ‘IA’ – that’s Insha’allah Airlines, whispers a Kurdistan Regional Government official with a smirk, because it’s God’s will whether the flight will arrive on time, depart on time, or even turn up at all.

Jihad, the blight of modern-day airline scheduling. Iraqi Airways flight-something-or-other (the indicator board at Kurdistan’s Erbil Airport enigmatically declares no number) is 90 minutes late departing to Baghdad, but the punters appear content that their shabby green Boeing 727-200 – belching soot and bearing a Sierra Leone registration which would send the European Commission apoplectic – at least has a wing on each side. Its pilot, waving from the cockpit window, is remarkably cheerful for someone heading for an airport whose arrival pattern features a corkscrew dive to improve your chances of dodging a SAM-14. 

To this otherworldly place, far removed from Viennese order and comfort, Austrian Airlines has returned. It’s barely three weeks since Saddam Hussein was shown the gravity of his crimes (much of that gravity suddenly appearing beneath an open trapdoor) but so far there’s no evidence of resurgence in the violence that stalled Austrian’s earlier attempt to restart flights to Iraq.

Kurdistan’s capital is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world but don’t believe that 50 centuries has been nearly enough time to agree on a name. The airport says ‘Erbil’. Immigration stamps my passport ‘Arbil’ and the breakaway GoogleMap faction insists on ‘Irbil’. The Kurds call it ‘Hewler’, and you’d think they’d know, but their opinion doesn’t seem to count.

Whatever. The KRG insists the place is safe, shortly after our press corps disembarks from Austrian’s A320, but our token, low-key security detail nevertheless includes a police car, close-quarter escorts with shades and earpieces, and half-a-dozen peshmerga troops riding shotgun. We couldn’t be more conspicuous if we were travelling by tank.

Passers-by look initially bemused, but then break into spontaneous beaming and waving with an infectious friendliness which seems to permeate Kurdistan. Downtown Erbil is a chaotic sprawl of cheerful bartering, taxi horns, peace murals, low-hanging phone wires, and labyrinthine bazaars where everything brightly-coloured that isn’t edible is covered in sequins. Under a kerbside tree an elderly gentleman, cross-legged on a rug, is selling mobiles while from a narrow entryway an industrial clothing-iron vents steam into the street. One shop’s facade is tiled with a selection of framed presidential portraits. For those who aren’t feeling particularly deferential, the commercial district contains dozens of other stores with wall-to-wall paraphernalia which manage to blend Middle Eastern mystique with all the strategic consideration of an eBay fire-sale. If sir cares for a brand-new copy of last year’s diary, sir has come to the right place. Welcome.

Throughout 2001 there were deepening signs of financial crisis at what was then Swissair and its parent SAirGroup. It looked as if they would be restructured with heavyweight funding from the usual suspects in the international banking community; the idea that the situation was already beyond saving seemed inconceivable.

Then on 2 October something happened that I remember almost as vividly as the first whispers of what would become known as "911". I was writing for our realtime news service Air Transport Intelligence and trying to leave my desk for a quick lunch. Suddenly our reporter Maria Wagland was saying that two Swissair aircraft had been impounded at Heathrow. We were still trying to check that out when our Turkish correspondent Tolga Ozbek filed a story saying a Turkish fuel company was refusing to refuel Swissair aircraft. The game was well and truly up, and the ghastly, prolonged death of Swissair was inevitable.

Its $13 billion collapse brought down Sabena of Belgium and other affiliates in France as well, and put 5,000+ staff out of work.

Make no mistake, Willie Walsh is the big winner in the settlement of the British Airways cabin-crew strike, despite some very odd things being written in British quality newspapers.

Not only is the cost of the settlement to BA a minor one, but the BASSA arm of the T&G union representing the cabin crew has been publicly humiliated and is in internal disarray, and Willie himself did not put a foot wrong in the whole affair.

The game was up from the moment on BBC primetime radio news that T&G deputy general secretay Jack Dromey failed to respond to Walsh's declaration that average sickness absence among cabin crew was 22 days a year. Not news to anyone in the industry, but big news to the rest of the world.

Dromey repeatedly refused to address the point. Shortly after, his boss Tony Woodley took over the negotiations and he and Walsh quietly thrashed out the new deal over a period of days. I guess labour deals aren't negotiated in the proverbial 'smoke-filled rooms' anymore, but it was that sort of old-fashioned session that cracked it.

Upshot:: no protracted strike, sickness absence problem consigned to history, minor concessions on both sides, stock price rock-steady.

Nobody should be surprised. The characterisation of 'slasher' Walsh as the scourge of unions is simply stupid. It comes from his Aer Lingus days and ignores the context of what was happening at that company - which was nothing less than its complete reinvention from a stone-age, state-owned, flag-carrier into a reasonably modern business with a fighting chance of long-term survival. Employment reduction was just one piece of the jigsaw.

And I have to respect former pilot Walsh, he passed the Aer Lingus aircrew selection test in the same era that I failed it! Another story...

Well, the Airbus numbers are out and my prediction of a week ago that they'd get to 40% by net units sold was right, but a big chunk of undisclosed customers listed as December 06 orders means that I wasn't as close as I'd like to have been. In fact, Airbus's 790 net orders gets them up to 43% against Boeing's 1,044 net at 57%.

So that's one of their best years ever in absolute terms, but also puts Boeing back as undisputed champion for the year - for Airbus I think "bittersweet" is the word (probably something a little stronger inside the company.)

The additional December 06 orders revealed today are as follows:

• Undisclosed - 5 x A320


• Private - 1 x A319


• MEA - 4 x A319, 4 x A330-200


• AirBlue - 4 x A320


• Private - 1 x A319


• Undisclosed - 3 x A319, 7 x A320, 5 x A330-200


• Undisclosed - 9 x A319, 18 x A320

If you know who the undisclosed customers are, then do tell...

So congratulation to Boeing on a really superb performance. And congratulations to FT Deutschland who got the correct Airbus figure leaked to them four days ago!

If you're one of the tens of thousands of Americans who thought you might get a job out of Virgin America then, as I'm sure you know by now, your government has decided you shouldn't get that chance.

No, the Department of Transportation, in its infinite majesty, has concluded, after a year or so of pondering, that a company employing exclusively Americans, paying overwhelmingly US taxes, managed entirely by Americans, and bringing innovation, robustness and cheaper pricing to American consumers, through the use of one of the world's most successful brands, is not a fit citizen to do business in the USA.

That's because....umm, well, I'm not exactly sure what that's because. It seems that the DOT has decided that this airline is "not actually controlled" by US citizens. Well, charming guy that Sir Richard Branson is, if the DOT truly believes that he is "controlling" Virgin America then they clearly haven't "actually" talked to him about it. No, Sir Richard is undisputed king of one of the global economy's great machines but a detail-man he is not. Try this wonderful interview if you doubt me. Sadly it's been truncated, but his explanation of gross and net was that gross was the world market for a product by revenue and net was the bit you actually got. (No, really, that's what he said.)

I rather think Virgin America is not going to go away and I hope that it will eventually embarass Congress and the government into doing the right thing. The much-predicted weakening in the US economy (which I personally think has been overdone - the quoted indicators are pretty much in the froth of a major economy) might well fix that.

Lurking behind all this is the issue of open skies in Europe, and particularly London. The Brits take protectionism to new heights over this of course, but it's in a very narrow context - and the UK is arguable the most welcoming place in the world for foreigners to do business. Anyway, it's not really an issue - American, Delta and United can switch to Paris or Frankfurt or Amsterdam or wherever as their main European gateway anytime they like.

The best aviation forum on the planet is www.pprune.org . I've got no vested interest in that at all - it's just a fact. If you don't currently follow it then now would be a good time to start. And this thread is as good a place to begin as any.

London Heathrow this week has been a hideous embarrassment to the UK. Take my word for it, we've got serious fog over here. It's nasty and it hasn't lifted all week - this is not much fun. And, the way technology currently stands, fog is a big problem at capacity-constrained airports. Heathrow is down to about 60% of normal movements, which is catastrophic.

It's catastrophic for technical reasons which, depending on who you are, may be obvious or not very obvious at all. There have been plenty of people in the industry who, through their public pronouncements on the web and even TV this week, have shown that even they don't understand the effect of fog on an airport.

So, asking passengers to understand is not a trivial thing. But, as is its usual way, the air transport industry has treated those people with utter contempt. (Just to be crystal clear, I'm not flying this week and the affair has had no effect on me or anyone I personally I know at all.)

At Heathrow today there were hundreds (I think thousands actually) of people who turned up to find not only that there were tents erected outside the terminal to house them, but that there was no room in the tents! (The airport calls them marquees - everybody else calls them tents, because that's what they are..)

Courtesy of former Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief-Alan Mulally's Ford company, I know from the little gauge in my Ford Mondeo that it was 0 degrees C this morning. His former industry thought it would be a reasonable thing to make people with tickets that cost hundreds of pounds/euros/dollars queue at dawn, with their children, in the street!

Well, indirectly I make my living from the air transport industry and I'm ashamed of it. But, as you'll see from the link at the top of the post, there are plenty in the industry who just don't get it.

Well, my fellow blogger Addison Schonland over at IAG is not stupid and realises that if he gives me a namecheck then I'll do the decent thing. So please follow his excellent blog - I do, and he's given me plenty of thought-provoking moments (although I'm easily provoked - see the post that I'm just about to create above this one.)

Addison draws attention to Virgin America's Alpha+ pass of the FAA's operations test. No surprise really, but the fact is that the recent US election result has played against the airline by giving people like Democrat Representative (of a small group of Minnesotans) James Oberstar the opportunity to destroy another few thousand American jobs. As a result I'm not sure what the airline's chances of getting off the ground actually are.

Obvio