An FAA preliminary incident report for 17 November reads as follows: SOUTHWEST AIRLINES FLIGHT 438, A BOEING 737, ON DEPARTURE EXPERIENCED A
VIBRATION IN THE NUMBER TWO ENGINE, ENGINE SUSTAINED UNKNOWN DAMAGE,
AIRCRAFT RETURNED AND LANDED WITHOUT INCIDENT, DALLAS, TX
Suffice it to say that the damage in question is now well and truly 'known'.
Well, I've been on the road for a couple of days so maybe I'm missing something, but I am struggling to understand all the commentary on Airbus' new China order. Truly we are in the proverbial interesting times when you can sell 160 aircraft, including 50 widebodies, and the general consensus is that you've really screwed up this time. This Bloomberg piece in the Seattle Times pretty much sums up the situation.
Addison Schonland over at IAG is doing what I think is the best job of anyone on podcasts in air transport. He's taking the medium seriously and using it to genuinely add something to the debate. I worked together with him to interview John Heimlich, who's VP and chief economist at the US Air Transport Association (ATA) on what $100 oil means for the airlines. John really his knows his stuff and makes some smart observations. Take a listen.
I'd be very interested in your views on podcasts. Leave a comment if you've got opinions on that.
A major reason why security fails is when people are instructed to implement procedures that nobody believes matter. Pretty soon after the same people start to doubt that even the bits they thought mattered do in fact matter. And then nobody pays much attention to anything until something bad happens.
I suspect Easyjet is doing the world a favour by making it pretty clear that they don't think the "have you packed this yourself, "has it been out of your sight" malarkey actually means a damn.
Yes I realise it's my tax pounds paying for it, and yes I do trust the USA, but despite all that I still think Europe should build the Galileo satellite navigation system. Plenty of people who know more about the subject than me disagree (and plenty who know less than me disagree as well.) Their arguments are quite rightly based largely on cost/benefits. But that's not my battleground. I think Europe should build Galileo because although I trust the USA - creator of the superb GPS - I don't completely trust it, and nothing in history persuades me that handing over control of something as fundamental as satellite navigation to any one power on earth is a good idea.
Boeing has written to Flight International with its response to the magazine's comments on former 787 chief Mike Bair's speech. They're unhappy with Flight as you can read, and unhappy with the local media for not reporting his comments in full.
For the last couple of years there has been an ill-conceived movement among some members of the Pprune community to close all or part of it to anyone other than professional air transport pilots. (Or something like that.) The former proprietors and, I believe, all or most of the moderators are against the idea - but the idea keeps bubbling up again. You really do have to have a deep misunderstanding of Pprune and the web to think it would be a good idea - but there you are. So today the mods are having a bit of fun with a spoof - and it worked beyond their wildest dreams.
The ATA is running a year-end poll asking what subscribers to its free daily newsletter think is the most important safety issue facing the industry. Quite right too, but it's a peculiar list of options that it offers. I think you can only see it on the newsletter - you can subscribe here - but this is how it runs:
Poll: What is the single most important safety issue to be addressed?
Frequency of runway incursions.
FAA oversight of foreign repair stations.
Aging aircraft.
Lack of a modern air-traffic control system.
A really thought-provoking piece in the Dallas Morning News about what would have happened if American Airlines hadn't avoided Chapter 11. This got my attention because I previously wrote respectful things about the airline for dodging the bankruptcy bullet, and now it seems there are plenty of people who think that just shows how unsophisticated I am.
I didn't get to the Dubai Airshow, but the Flight team has been returning in slightly scorched dribs and drabs over the past couple of days and it seems it was quite something. There is much excitable talk elsewhere (which I'm not sure I buy) about it now being more or less as important as Paris and Farnborough. But what is for sure is that it is even more political than either of them. The Arab aviation community is in the driving seat for now at least and making absolutely certain that everyone knows it.
I'd love to know about all the string-pulling, schmoozing, diplomatic notes, and backhanders that went into creating this final image of the show.
That's nine Franco-British engines, two pretty much British engines, nine British fighters and one very large American aircraft. Possibly more importantly, it's 18 Union Jacks! Slightly incredibly, it seems that Airbus got outmanoeuvred for once.
If you're operating one of the 52 Boeing 707s still on the US register that the FAA has found then you need to do some work. This is to stop the thing blowing up in mid-air (or on the ground for that matter), which after 30 or 40 years would be a sad way for any of these to end their lives. The FAA reckons there are about 185 of the beasts around the world by the way.
At long last (and it took months) the frankly incredible practice of British Airways' former franchisee British Mediterranean Airways (BMed) flying empty aircraft - so-called ghost flights - out of Heathrow to preserve slots has come to an end. An easy decision for BMed's new owners BMI. I was going to write a quick post celebrating that but also taking a pop at the array of public and quasi-public sector incompetents who let the situation endure for so long. But then this comes along!
So you're standing in the check-in for your favourite lo-co airline and you're feeling a bit antsy as the guy in front argues with the clerk about the three add-ons he didn't notice in the booking conditions. A bit of you is thinking 'sheesh, why don't you just read that stuff' and a bit is thinking 'when are the airlines going to make that stuff clearer for people who don't travel every week'. But what you're not thinking is ' I bet he's a travel columnist on US Today'. Which makes this piece all very odd.
All over the world TV newsrooms have got pre-recorded packages set to run as soon as oil hits $100 per barrel - and you can be sure they all include lurid stuff on airlines. I think this time the broadcasters have got it right - putting aside the psychological shock of hitting a hundred bucks, the airlines really are starting to run out of options. And fares are on their way up.
Here at Flight we missed Flightblogger over the last couple of months just as many other people did. So we've given it a helping hand.
I'm not decrying the technical achivements, but I do find it hard to get much joy out of the US Coast Guard's operation to the North Pole. So now we've got Airbus operations in the Antarctic and "domain awareness" in the Arctic. All sound rational motivations I suppose, but I can't say the heart skips a beat.
Richard Aboulafia is the latest to note that there is some very odd stuff in the former Boeing 787 programme head's recent speech. Like me, he wonders quite what is the thinking behind retreating from a global supplier base and why you'd want to publicly beat up on the people who are going to build your aircraft for the forseeable future.
So it turns out that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is re-making the British movie The Dambusters. One of the veterans - George "Johnny" Johnson - helped with the project and reports in this interview that what he's seen of the movie is great stuff. The thorny question is, as afficianados will realise, what are they going to call the dog?
On the whole, I tend to see cock-ups and coincidences where others see conspiracies. But I'm fascinated by what recently deposed 787 programme manager Mike Bair has been saying about major contractors. This really doesn't sound accidental. So either he's a much looser cannon than anyone imagines (and although he has got a bit of form in that area, it's not really the Boeing way), or this is the authorised version - which is remarkable even by the standards of Boeing's infamosly brutal treatment of its suppliers.
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