Jet Airways Asset Disposal Auction

Hello and welcome to episode three hundred and seventy six of AvTalk. I I'man Petchnik here as always with Jason Irbinoitz. Hello, Ian. What's going on? Hello, Jason. Happy happy beginning of the real summer. Everyone seems to be out of the office. I feel like that's when summer really begins when you get that notification. I am here in my home office. I know you are home at your home office working , though I think all of Europe has melted as we're recording this. Yes, so if I want to take some time off or maybe maybe not because their office is air conditioned and they want to go to the office. Well, even I think I said John Walton was at Heathrow today and it was twenty eight Celsius inside. Oh yes, melted in there. But to be fair, it is hot in the British Airways lounges in T five in like the dead of winter. I don't think they have quite perfected the art of air conditioning there at Heathrow or installed it. But yeah, it's the hottest day, I think , in the southern UK ever, if not close to for the month of June. No. It's just for the month of June. Sorry, yes, the hottest June day ever . I still say I have been in the UK for the hottest day in recorded history, which was a couple years ago in July, and hopefully they don't come anywhere near that . But I am home. I am here talking to you. I've got one eye on World Cup matches. Currently watching Swiss International Airlines versus Air Canada, a big Star Alliance Medal. Yes, good old fashioned Star Alliance Medal. Star is on another channel doing something. Yeah . So of course, you know, as Have Gigs, we have to equate every country in every match to airlines . Well, you should get ready then because we're putting together. So when we move to the knockout round, we'll be doing a fun little game where it will be flag carrier versus flag carrier in a livery contest for those teams that make it into the knockout round. Oh man, this is stuff I used to do back in like twenty fourteen on Twitter. And it was always fun and then I got too busy for stuff like this, but I wanted to do it again, but now you're taking it on, which is even better because I can participate without having to put it together myself. Now you get part toicipate , not have to do any of the work. Yeah, what do you do for some countries that just straight up don't have an airline? Like Kirisao, I guess there probably are. Hope they don't make it up. No, no, they have they have an airline. So Cursa isw actually they have an airline. I don't know if it's a flag carrier, but they do have an airline that put together a special livery oh for the World Cup. So we've got a post on the blog that if you're into this sort of thing, and if you're listening to this podcast, I'd say it's better than Fitch Mom into the . There is a I actually think it's one of the better ones that Divi Divier put together a twin otter registration, papa Juliet Delta Victor Delta. And it has the phrase cursa on our backs, the world in our sight and it's okay. So somehow we didn't talk about this ahead of time and I just named a random country in the World Cup in moving to the round of thirty two and somehow you just knew all of that about Kirao. We put together a piece you can actually go and check out so we put together a piece on airlines that did special liveries. We didn't plan on talking about this, but I think it's worth talking about because there are some really , really great looking special liveries for this year's World Cup. Er Algires A three hundred thirty Neo I think is the best looking one of them all. It has a desert fox on the tail that just looks real sharp. You have some that were less word I'm looking for artistic and engaging. And then you've got some that, you know , go right down the middle. There's no shortage of team decals applied this year where you've got, you know, three to five members of the national team on the tail or on the rear fuselage, but some good stuff. Yeah . So we'll put a link to that in the show notes if you want to take a look at that. I mean, I am now partial. I am a super fan of Caboverde now because of the weird tie in with their national airline with the Providence Rhode Island route, their only transatlantic route and Providence is only international route on a very strange little airline with one whole airplane, but they too have a special livery for the world We did not learn until right now. So I'm even more of a die hard cop overnet fan and I love it. This is the best thing about the World Cup a country you have a tangential relationship with at best becomes , you know, the most important thing in the world to you for all of you know three or four weeks . I was about to say on their website Cupoverty Airlines dot com that oh look they put together like a mock special livery for the World Cup. And to my defense , it is very much a Microsoft Paint Mockup on the website. But then on Jet photos, I see it's an actual real livery. So they took the MS paint mockup and made it real. Hard to do considering that's their one seven thirty seven. So any downtime for that aircraft is pretty impactful, but I want to go now. I hope they make it far and now I want to go to Cape Verde. I mean, that's that's the goal right there is hey, discover us and then come visit . So consider their job well done. Good job. Kabul Verde Airlines marketing team. Yeah. They're the official transportation provider of the Cape Verde National Team because of course they are. I mean, this is good stuff, good stuff. Yeah , let's switch gears completely. Talk about beds and talk about not good stuff. Yeah. So yet again in the United States National Airspace System, we are discussing a close call . And I feel like at this point we need an official definition of close call because we're just talking about so many , so often these days. And again, we've talked about, you know, the fact that a lot of these are discovered because people have easy access to things like Flight Rader twenty four, live ATC, et cetera, et cetera , but also there's some things here that are happening that all feed into each other. And we're talking about an incident that happened Saturday, june twentieth , where a Delta Airlines A three hundred nineteen was on approach to Boston and an American Airlines seven hundred thirty seven eight hundred was cleared for takeoff Nothing happened. There was no incident . There was no accident. The Delta A three hundred nineteen conducted a go around when it realized that the American flight was not going to be clear of the runway in time, circled around, landed without incident , but it does highlight the problem once again with intersecting runways and few seconds of the American flight being cleared for takeoff , they did not immediately start their takeoff role. Delta was cleared for landing under the assumption that American would have departed since American had I think it was actually the opposite. The controller had told Delta that departing traffic was waiting , I believe. And then at some point later down the road, that apparently became not the case, and the controller cleared American for takeoff. So the information given to Delta , if I'm reading the situation right was not even correct or it may have been correct at the time it was issued. Right, right , but then that's a problem in and of itself. And I think that's one of the things that this highlights is, you know, we're talking about an arrival on one runway, a departure on another runway, a waiting departure on the arrival runway because there was a jet blue flight waiting to depart on the same runway that the Delta was arriving on. And so you end up with even a few seconds of delay one way or the other , you end up with a situation where you're relying on the pilots to spot something might not be right ahead of time and then conduct a go around or ATC chiming in and say, hey go around, but this particular event was a pilot induced go around where Delta said, we don't like how this looks. Americans still moving on the runway and we're going to go. And they ended up crossing over American three hundred to three hundred fifty and feet above the aircraft. Yeah, so we've seen much closer, not that you ever want to get closer than this, but there's a bunch of questions . So the controller did in the clearance to land to Delta twenty three fifty one did say traffic holds runway twenty seven . That at some point changed for some reason because there were no other aircraft present at the time except the American flight , which was then quickly issued a departure clearance maybe about thirty seconds later, but then another problem occurred where the American crew just kind of sat there for thirty seconds. So even though the controller told Delta that the American flight was going to hold before departing and then change their mind and then issued the departure clearance for American. If American had departed in a timely manner, this would have been a non issue. They would have been well clear the runway for Delta, but for whatever reason they hung around for thirty seconds, started to go, and the controller did not catch that American was hanging out for thirty seconds. But thankfully, the Delta pilots, one of the two Delta pilots or maybe both who knows, caught that and initiated a go around on their own. But this is also kind of like the worst case scenario where yes the runways are intersecting but they're at a very, very offset angle having both aircraft kind of facing away from each other, I would say, where the Delta aircraft is flying north west while the American airline is departing kind of mostly west, but also facing to the south. So the angles these aircraft are going the pilots are going to be seeing each other is pretty extreme. I'm not even sure if it was possible for the American crew to see the Delta flight out there at the cockpit windows. And I'm sure that is something the NTSB is going to be looking at as well. Yeah . Since the NTSB is looking into this, we should have a preliminary report about thirty days from now, so about the end of July. And it'll be interesting to see what they choose to focus on as far as this investig ation is concerned and what do they come up with in the initial report? Probably not very much , but the final report could be some very interesting reading. Yeah, I do wonder if it's time that the FAA gets some sort of alert or technology in place that rings a bell or does some sort of alerting where if a flight has been given takeoff clearance and the departing crew doesn't move for fifteen seconds, may maybebe should go off and say, hey, you as an air traffic controller are always six steps ahead in your head , but what about if the things on the field don't actually keep up with you? Right. It's very difficult cognitively to think that many steps ahead and then something happens out there on the runways and it doesn't happen and not have someone follow directions. Yeah . So it would probably behoove the FAA and the NTSB to have some sort of alerting because it's definitely possible it's just software to say like, hey, you issued takeoff clearance to this flight thirty seconds ago and they're still not moving. You should probably take another look. Give them a little poke with a stick or something. Yeah, throw rock at the plane . Don't't sugg donest that. Let's to DC , where the aircurrent first reported on a transportation research board meeting that took place on the seventeenth of June, where the U . S. Coast Guard has taken issue with the revisions to airspace around Washington, DC that happened following the january twenty twenty five mid a collirision between U a. S. Army Buckhawk helicopter and a PSACRJ nine hundred . The Coast Guard says that the FAA didn't adequately consider the risks of helicopter to helicopter collisions and other factors when eliminating certain helicopter routes and making changes to those airspaces . So this is a really interesting one because the Coast Guard is saying actually I'm going to read the I'm going to read the quote because I think that's what does it justice. This is from Commander Nate Rhodes who leads the Coast Guard helicopter unit based at DCA. Quote, it seems like a lot of what was being pushed was mitigating the risk between commercial airlines and helicopters, but it wasn't mitigating the overall risk. It was just transferring that risk elsewhere. So that's an interesting way of looking at it because what the Coast Guard is saying is that revisions to the airspace created unrealistic routes where they're asking aircraft, they're asking helicopters to make a ninety degree turns. And also the altitude structures that they've input on these revised routes don't necessarily take into regard the controlled flight into Terrain concerns that some of these pilots have. Yeah . I mean, clearly what the FAA put into place had to happen. There was for years and years and years, these routings around DCA were problematic and the obvious action immediate ly was to get rid of these conflicts. And yeah, it's not a perfect system. You move the problem elsewhere and the problem doesn't go away. It just changes the problem slightly. But there were some other quite interesting topics. I'm trying to find it in the TAC report here about basically like, hey, you've pushed everything further away from the airport. Now you have literally the entire rest of the country as your airspace. So maybe go figure that out . That was the FAA saying that . Yes, basically to the Coast Guard. So the FAA in retort says, We don't have any data to support what you're saying, Coast Guard. We just don't have that data , which I guess is good in a way that there have been no incidents that have resulted in the creation of data . However, that doesn't mean it's not happening, you know ? Well, it also seems to me that it might be good to say , let's keep it that way. What are your concerns? And can we mitigate some of these through revised rule makings, through further changes to the root system ? Or is there something that we can do differently in your operations that allows you to cond your missions, but also keeps everybody else safe. Yeah , and some of the I mean both sides here have valid points of course . The Coast Guard saying you've pushed us farther away from the airport where it was easy to identify aircraft as opposed to everything else out there , they say because they're also low level, mixed with all the cultural lighting that it's harder to spot farther away than an airliner over DCA, but I guess that's kind of been disproven at that point because that well, we know what happened and we know where we are now . So I think that quote is kind of bunk from theast Co Guard here because it was proven to still be a problem to the point where a midair collision did occur. But yeah, this is tough. There's no perfect answer. You would hope we can rely more and more on technology to deconflict the airspace, but short of that , if these fights are just looking to operate, they're going to have to operate elsewhere . And conflicts are always going to exist, I guess. I'm not sure what the answer is here. Let's talk about that technology for a moment because at the moment lawmakers in Congress are still at odds over their competing bills to require ADSB in and other safety measures. The NTSB has called for ADSB in to be fitted to commercial aircraft . And others will see what Congress ends up mandating in what will need to be a compromise bill unless the Senate can convince the House or the House can convince the Senate to go with theirs and theirs alone . But one of the sticking points seems to be something that doesn't really have much to do with safety at all, but rather with money. And tracks as far as everything else goes. Right now, the big sticking point seems to be the ability of airports to use ADSB data to collect landing fees from private aircraft , which of course the private aircraft owners are against and the airports are for . Why would they be against it just because they want to try to get away with not paying or what exactly is the argum ent there? The argument is not that. The subtext of the argument, I think, is that yeah , but the argument on its face is that ADSB is a safety technology and should not be used for other purposes . Uh sure. I mean, why not both ? You sound very convinced, Jason. I made a passionate defense of that argument, did I not? When you start complaining about a bill like this, that would be used for safety because like, oh, we might have to actually pay our landing fees or whatever, or data might be more accurate and we might have to pay more. Like, okay, but you're just paying for what you're actually using and doing, right? It wouldn't necessarily mean you're paying more. It's just better tracks. I'm having a hard time following the line here. Yeah , I mean I guess the idea is that the argument that they're trying to make is that it's a safety technology it shouldn't be used for collecting landing fees . And the airports are arguing, well , we don't have the same technologies that other much this is mostly smaller airports making this argument. We're private GA aircraft are operating , we don't have the same technologies that these large airports have to measure the same things . And so we need a way to ensure that we're accurately doing all of these things and collecting fees. So I think that AOPA and its arguments will win out in the final bill. It just remains seen to be how remains to be seen how long it takes Congress to get in on this and come up with something that both houses can agree on. Yep In other airspace news , the FAA and the DOT have selected airspace intelligence for two what they say are complementary cutting edge technologies that will improve how flights are scheduled and managed throughout the National Airspace System . These are two AI empowered tools . One is called Flow Management Data and Service, which will be the new technological backbone of the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center and that is in charge of balancing aircraft demand for space for airspace with airspace capacity and provides all of the data that supports traffic management initiatives . And then there's the strategic management of airspace routes and trajectories or smart that is within the flow management data and services that uses data to prevent congestion and delays by coordinating schedules and trajectories before aircraft depart . So all very good things , we will be very , very closely watching how this is developed. Yeah , to be clear, this isn't injecting AI or any sort of that nonsense into the actual air traffic controlling . This is something that's used probably by every competent airline in the world at this point in scheduling wise. One might argue machine learning . Yes, there you go. To optimize flows, schedules, reducing delays . It seems to be good in theory whether or not the human capacity exists to actually act on these things rather than just slashing flights and saying, hey, we reduced delays because we increased more flights , like that's not great. But if they can actually improve traffic flow and actually increase airspace capacity, like the bullet points here on the FAA press release say it will, that's good . I am just hesitant to really buy into any of this because we've seen it all comes down at the end of the day to the human beings sitting in front of the scope. And that has been the number one most capacity constraining element in the entire national aviation system . And we have some news on that, don't we? And we do have some news on that. Jason tells us all about New York slot controllers. Well , it's never getting better here. But the US FAA has extended slot relief at New York Airports, which essentially means, hey , we're still not really staffed up to where we need to be. So you don't have to worry again through summer twenty twenty eight for Laguardi and JFK and through this next coming summer at Newark. Don't worry about your slots or your runway timings. You don't have to use them all because typically it's use it or lose it, but we are still a state where there are not enough air traffic controllers to actually operate a full schedule or all sorts of New York airports. The FAA says the New York Tracon is still only at fifty seven percent of target staffing levels which is bad. That is quite bad. And it is not getting better at least until they say in late twenty twenty seven , which I don't quite buy because it seems like every time they say it will be better , it is not. And we still are not even at sixty percent . This doesn't even account for new work, which has been moved to Philly, which this past weekend has had its first round of staffing delays, actually a couple airports throughout the country. I think SFO or maybe LAX had some staffing triggers as well . So it's all well and good to inject AI or machine learning into the planning and the optimization of the airspace and routing around thunderstorms. But still, again, at the end of the day, if there are only fifty seven percent of the air traffic controllers that New York Tracon, doesn't matter what you optimize because you still have the same amount of employees to do the same amount of rerouting that they're not able to do today. So until that changes, I mean, I guess their new flow management data and services isn't coming online overnight. So maybe by the time that's ready, we'll have sixty two percent of staff at New York Rey Gon. That would be nice. Inching up there. Just inching up there slowly, yet surely. Hopefully. Oh , so slowly. But at least we're seemingly in the clear on the Newark Tricon Philly move thing breaking down like every other day. Haven't heard of that happening in quite a while. So whatever they did, whatever copper wires they spliced together or whatever seems to be holding for now, which is good. Well, I mean I guess we're in a take what we can get sort of situation here. Yeah, we're back to the age of just like a cloud somewhere over pen nsylvania taking Newark offline for the whole day, which is, you know, as intended . That's how it's designed. Yes Let's head away from the US and over to Europe where the European Union Aviation Safety Agency issued an emergency airworthiness directive on a little more than a dozen A three hundred eighty's this week . This follows the completion of inspections for previously mandated a look into wing spark cracking on A three hundred eighty's generally . Those inspections found sixteen aircraft, fifteen Emirates aircraft and one Quantas aircraft which had cracking that was serious enough ES A to issue an EAD for these aircraft, breaking them down into two groups Group one of which there are five aircraft , those aircraft cannot fly passengers until they receive the special inspection , a special detailed inspection that is being worked on in process with Airbus . Group two, the larger group can operate up to twenty five flight cycles those aircraft need to go in for inspection. Yeah . Most of the great one A three hundred and eighty operators are no strangers to wing cracks on the A three hundred and eighty and inspection. So I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who's followed the A three hundred eighty's life cycle. But this one poor Emmert seems to hit them a bit hard . Also one for quantums. Yeah , they've already got most of their aircraft into maintenance. There was one group one aircraft that was being ferried, they were allowed a ferry flight with no passengers, non eTOPs. They were ferrying it, I assume to a location where the aircraft will be inspected thoroughly. It was headed to Asia so, possibly H ong Kong, I think might be, or more else, I'm not sure where else Emirates can find MRO space for an A three hundred eighty , but some of the other aircraft were already in for maintenance. So the one Qantasu aircraft that was inspected here has been at Dresden since March , undergoing repainting, refit, new interiors, all that fun stuff. So I assume they'll be able to take care of whatever repairs need to be done there . To toss that in, hey, I know you were putting a new coat of paint on, but would you mind inspecting the wings for cracks? That'd be great. Just get in there and have a look, but only sixteen aircraft. The interesting thing here is in our resident numbers expert Gamma Ruf brought this up to me earlier today , the MSNs are all over the place. That's weird . I mean, it ranges from MSN thirty to MSN two hundred and thirty four . Oh , that's quite the range. Yeah , thirty, forty two, fifty five, fifty six and they're it's not like older ones are all group one and younger ones are all group two. MSN two hundred twenty eight is in group one, two oh nine's in group one, but MSN thirty is in group two. Huh. Very strange. I wonder how they put this list together then. I think this is just the result of we inspected all of them and these are the ones that look really bad. Possibly . Sometimes it's not as complicated as you think it might be. We looked at them and found it and found it. Let's stick with Aerobus because Erbus says that it is once again saying that it's closing in on a what it is calling simple stretch of the A two hundred twenty into what will like ly be the A two hundred twenty five hundred . So it sounds like the airframer is narrowing down to about an additional five rows of seats, putting it in about the one hundred and eighty five passenger mark , but what they also say is that the eight hundred and twenty sole engine supplier will continue to be the Pratt and Whitney Geared Turbofan engine . Much to the dismay of literally everyone, I think . This came out during an Airbus Canada media briefing yesterday, the twenty third of June up at Mirabel . And they are saying they see no reason to move away. Improved performance from the engine is now being delivered by Pratt and Whitney . The new engines that are being delivered from the company are since they'll be free of the defects that were affecting previous engines . So hopefully they can get the most out of the gear tubo fan engine as they move forward. It'll be interesting to see if that holds true. Yeah , they're definitely doing a bit of damage control here. I'm reading an article from Runway Girl Network who is there at this event and they say Airbus's head of the A twenty twenty program is quoted as saying we've come a long way with Pratt. I mean today the relationship with Pratt is at a very good level and this is outside the quote, adding that AOG nearing zero and the engine now close to the benchmark, and again quoting we have no reason, especially when we look at a simple stretch to move away. I could think of one really good reason, and that would be reputation . Sure, the spare parts might be coming online and finally getting all the aircraft back in the air, but the reputational hit to end levels of trust for Pratt and Whitney at Airlines not be any lower at this point. So yeah, the engines may work and things might finally after years and years be getting better, but if I were an airline I don't know if I would trust Pratt and Whitney or if I were, you know, a bean encounter of an airline that doesn't exist anymore because Pratt and Whitney put me out of business, I probably wouldn't trust them again. But there is good news, some good news out of all this. Mary Kirby on the Runway Girl Network says that Airbus says the A twenty would remain five abreast seating if they do stretch the aircraft, which is great news because it was a lot of back and forth that if they stretch it, they might also squeeze an extra seat in every row and well that would, just row in the A two hundred twenty , wouldn't it? It sure would . That is great news to hear that as far as passengers are concerned, a stretch is just a stretch. It is what it says it is for now . Let's stay in Canada for a moment and talk about Transport Canada beginning a review of its crew licensing processes . This comes after the announcement a few weeks ago. Operation what ? Come on. What was it called? Jason , I'm asking you to recall it. Operation you're gonna make me type the word operation in my Nope, not Venezuela, not groundhead. I'm going to keep going with the news and you let me know when you figure it out. Yeah, I'll find it and we'll come back to it. All right . So anyway , they are beginning a review of their licensing process a few weeks after charges against a former Air Canada pilot were announced because he used a fraudulent pilot's license during his career and while he was serving as a captain for Air Canada. Project Icarus. Found it, there we go. There you go. Too close to the sun. Too close to the sun. How could we forget that? Boy, oh boy. Shame on us. Jeffrey Wall was a captain for Air Canada who piloted more than nine hundred domestic and international flights between two thousand nine and twenty twenty five. He was also the former chair of the Air Canada Pilots Association Master Executive Council . He did not have an air transport pilot's license . He had a pilot's license, just not the one required to be piloting , among other things, a Boeing triple seven for Air Canada. So Transport Canada says, We're going to look through this and make sure that everything 's okay. To be clear, there has been no indication that there are other fake pilot licenses floating around , but they're going to look through and make sure. Air Canada, for its part, is cooperating with the investigation continuously and they are being treated as the victim in this . I mean sure . Transport Canada issued a civil aviation safety alert communicating the importance of quote determining the val idity, authenticity and currency of pilot licenses and associated credentials at all stages of employment and operations. So yeah , that's good. Whoops . Let's not let that happen again. No . And you know what? Other regulators out there, you know, the US, the UK, Yasa, whatever, maybe you should do probably the same thing because if someone can get away with it in Canada for an entire career , there's probably some others out there in other jurisdictions too. Yeah, definitely something that all regulators might want to take a look at, but we'll see where that goes from there. Croatian investigators have released a preliminary report on the A two hundred twenty Veroff , where the A two hundred twenty veered off the left end of the runway as it approached V one. And if you're having trouble remembering this incident, veering off is a light piece of terminology to describe what happened. It went off roading and smashed through a bunch of signs . So that might help you recall this incident. Fair enough. So the aircraft was near V one when it approached the left side of the runway as it drifted first gradually and then abruptly. Veering off the runway first slowly and then all at once. Exactly, veering off the runway into the grass, striking runway edge lights and signage before it came to rest. Thankfully, no one on board was injured , but investigators are trying to determine happened to make the aircraft veer to the left . They say that a previous Croatia Airlines A two hundred twenty had successfully tak en off from the same runway four minutes prior . There was a crosswind component. It was within limits . So they're looking at all angles to see what may have happened with this particular craft and hopefully we'll have a final report in the near future. Okay , Neptune Aviation has taken delivery of its first A three hundred nineteen for water bomber conversion. I'm super excited about this. Really ? I had actually not heard about this. That's by far, I think, the most modern aircraft to be chopped to pieces and have a hole put in the bottom and dous it with water. Where did this airplane come from? This particular airframe came from the Braul retirements out of Sweden, when they were operating for a period of time, some Airbus aircraft stopped operating them, retired the aircraft to, I think, Spain for storage for a little while, and then Neptune has acquired it. So this will actually be the first flyby wire aircraft converted into a water bomber . And I was looking at an article about this earlier today . And one of the things that popped out at me is that Neptune was saying, it takes about four years to train a new recruit first officer to become a captain on one of these aircraft and just the amount of impressive flying that they do and how they do it, I thought was just a really , really cool thing. And it's going to be very exciting to see their first flyb wyire aircraft , they say, it doesn't matter because once you turn the quote was, once you turn the autopilot off, it's just an airplane. That's what I was going to mention. So first of all, this isn't coming into service until twenty twenty eight, probably , but Airbuses in particular fly by wire are known for doing what they want to do. And if the pilot isn't putting controls that are unsafe or don't really make sense, the airplane says, No, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do what I want to do because it's safer and the passengers will be comfier . So I assume for something as dramatic and dangerous as firebombing, they're going to be turning all that off and moving from normal lot to alternate lot no, they're just how is that going to work? If you've ever seen water bombers before like MD eleven's or anything else, like it is precision operation . They said they've tested it and they said that quote , once you turn off the autopilot, it's just an airplane. Okay , that I'm having trouble in my brain figuring how that works because all of the protections on an airbus don't necessarily require autopilot to be on, but I feel like they probably know what they're talking about. Yeah, I would assume that they've had a look at this and they say that they've been working on testing ground testing and things like that and proof of concept. So it's going to be super interest ing to see and just bizarre to see an A three hundred nineteen dropping water fire retardant on a wildfire come the twenty twenty eight season. Super, super interesting and strange. Huh. Okay, that's fun . This might be fun, might not be fun, but it sure is interesting . Castleake is really attempting to acquire EasyJet in whole and they've been rebuffed thricely thus far. What's a castle lake? Castle Lake. What's a castle like? Who are they? What's a castle? Castle lake is a private equity and financing firm. They participated in Air France KLM purchase of SAS . They were the financing partner there. So it was the Air France KLM, Danish government and then Casalak. Kasalak also has a large aviation portfolio . So this is not coming out of left field. Kaslike has deep aviation experience. Yes. This is what I wanted to clarify that it's not like an Elliot aviation coming in to gobble up and destroy southwest. This is very different. Yeah, this is very different. It's different in the sense that it would be a whole acquisition. This would not be an activist investor necessarily coming in and poking things around. This would be them taking control of the airline . The board has thus far rejected bids between five pounds sixty and six pounds twenty five per share. Castleake faces a deadline of Friday, the twenty sixth make something happen. So they are attempting to go directly to the shareholders and get them to try and vote on an acquisition. So it'll be really interesting to see if this works out, if this turns into something where they're just trying to hold out for more money per share or if the board really doesn't see a cast like takeover as in the best interest of easy jet shareholders. But we'll keep an eye on that to see how things go. Yes, we will. Heading back to Canada , we have Porter doing something that surprises me and delights me. Jason, what did they do? The lowered fees. Ian What ? Yeah, that doesn't happen ever, but in this case it did. So when the price of fuel went up a little bit and then doubled and quadrupled and then went through the roof , a lot of airlines reacted instinctively and said , need We more money and put fees and random other surcharges in place. And Porter was one of those airlines that put a forty dollar quote temporary fuel surcharge on reward redemptions and said, Hey, well, you know, we'll look into it when fuel stabilizes or goes down and maybe we'll revise it. And everyone goes, yeah sure you will. Because if we've seen anything from our current state of inflation and tersr andor allist that the. price Once go es up, the price does not ever come back down. It stays that way forever because businesses are greedy and the world is terrible. But in this case, I don't know, mister Porter's friendly, and they actually lowered. They did not eliminate, they lowered the temporary fuel search to twenty dollars in, which is half. That's nice. You know who would never do that? Search hurtle . I was gonna say Michael O'Leary. Oh , he would never do that. No, but I will note that the price of jet fuel is come way down. It's still elevated above where it was before whatever it is is the US doing with Iran at this point, but only a little bit. It has come down substantially . So it would be lovely to see other airlines follow suit like Delta and American and United and Jet Blue who all increased their checked bag fees and all those other fees to lower those or eliminate them, but it's just not gonna happen. Those airlines also explicitly said and they basically said , We believe these increases will be sticky. Yes, they are very, very, very sticky. Kind of like, you know, oil is sticky, I'm pretty sure. But hey, at least we get to see one airline doing the right thing. There you go . I brought up Michael O'Leary because this week he signed on for another six years as the chief executive of the Ryanair group. He will remain at Ryanair's helm through at least april twenty thirty two . Alright, good for him, I guess. Ryanair is a fine outfit making good amount of money and Ryanair doing Ryanair things, so good for them . Yeah, he's gonna he's gonna stick around. So we'll have him to at least keep us with some podcast fodder every once in a while. At least maybe they'll even order some bigger airbuses at some point or , you know, actually ever see any of the seven hundred thirty seven Max ten it ordered a long time ago? Only got like three hundred on order. No big deal. I think they can read. Maybe that's why. That's probably the only reason he extended his contract is just because he wants he wants to see the Max ten delivered so they can finally take deliver the max ten . Oh boy, oh boy Elsewhere in the world we have a date for the end of Asiana Airlines. Oh , it's december seventeenth . Yes . Good thing I'm flying at Asiana at the very end of November. I'm an airline I've never flown and I'm excited to fly once and I guess never again , but who knows how long it'll take Korea to repaint all those aircraft as we know some other ones take a very very long time to do that. But there was some controversy about Asiana can celing or removing award tickets if you booked with them using their Asiana miles or another airline after that date. I don't know if there's any truth to that , but this has been going on for half a decade at this point. So at least we now finally know we have a date where Asian a as an airline will cease to exist and maybe we can finally put this all behind us. I assume there will be some more complicated fact ors before we get to that point. Hopefully those complicating factors happen after I fly them in late November . There you go. That's a good point. That's a very good point. Jason , the more I read about Vietnam's Sun Fuqu e Airways , the more I feel like we're developing an Asian Norwegian. Ooh , that's not good. I don't ever want to be any Regions Norwegian. So they started up in November of twenty twenty five as a full service , basically full service leisure carrier. That's like november twenty twenty five was also like yesterday in airline . Yeah , life . And they have since expanded the route network taking on international destinations. They started with Taipei , they're going to Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong , and are starting with A three hundred and twenty one s, but they also have a huge mess of seven hundred and eighty seven s on order . They're going to also start operating used A three hundred thirty two hundreds . They're going to try and expand to Central Asia, destinations in Russia , not just any A three hundred thirty two hundreds, former American airlines A three hundred thirty two hundreds that have been chilling in the desert since COVID were an American probably regretfully retired them. So hey, that's finally finally good to see those getting a home. But you know what? I am going to retract your comparison of this airline to Norwegian and just directly compare it to another Vietnamese airline. Remember bamboo? This is bamboo. They already tried this in Vietnam. It failed spectacularly. They did the same exact thing with the same exact path where they had A three hundred and thirty's, they got leased from elsewhere, and then they took on really nice seven hundred and eighty seven S, and then it didn't work . This is that again. You don't even have to go out of the country to compare it to something else. Well, then ouch. Does bamboo even exist anymore? Bamboo exists in receivership and legal fashion. I think they had another judgment against them issued this week . Yeah, it was a they're still around though. Yeah, they're still around, a skeleton of its former self, but it's the same story where it was a small airline with foreign investment who had big amb itions, they got some Neos, they got they ordered ten seven eight seven nine s got a bunch delivered and turns out expanding quickly is really expensive and really complicated . So good luck to this new Vietnamese entrant , don't do the mistakes your former Vietnamese friends did? I don't know. This seems all sorts of weird, but I'm sure Boeing will be more than happy to take their deposit on those seven eighth seven Exactly. It's a promise of future success. Sure perhaps . JetBlue is changing its New York operations, closing its flight detendant base at New and Y itsork tech ops bas es at Newark and Lagordia , shifting some flying to Florida where it actually makes money . Makes sense for an airline still trying to figure out exactly how it's going to carry on and continue to make money. But it's just sort of weird to see them closing up stuff in New York given its New Yorkishness . Yeah, well, remember New York is not New York , it's New Jersey. So there's a whole host of complications doing that . It makes sense to focus on JFK and trying to improve that operation, but at the same time, they have been whittling down their operation at La Guardia. I'm pretty sure they lease out a good chunk of their slots. They don't have a huge operation like they used to at Laguardia. So it kind of makes sense. Why would you need a base there? But yeah, it's disappointing to see New York's home airline quite figuring out how to work in New York. Well, Dubai's hometown airline is trying to figure out how to convince people to come back to Dubai, and Emirates has decid ed that it's going to offer really, really good travel insurance as part of the options as far as selling its tickets so that people feel comfortable and safe traveling through Dubai. A subsidiary of Zurich insurance called Travel Guard and Emirates are teaming up to offer what is incredibly generous travel insurance , including cancellation protection, delayed baggage protect ion, unlimited medical expenses, and emergency evacuation from anywhere in the world Okay . That's all you also have to fly Emirates through Dubai. So there are trade offs here. Yeah, that's all good and whatever, but if DXB has to shut down again or you misconnect or you divert to DWC and you miss connect and then your whole vacation is kind of ruined or set off by days like I bet that stuff's not going to be covered or if it is. No it is. Even if it is , it does not get you time back. Insurance cannot that is also true. Re invent time. Unfortunately, they haven't they haven't invented that technology yet. Maybe that could be a thing that we figure out and then we can sell like time insurance . We can do that time insurance. It's no, I don't think we have the technology yet but one day, but yeah, insurance is good, but it doesn't get you your time back. So if you only have a week for your trip and suddenly two days is stuck misconnecting at DXB, well, that sucks. I do hope that very, very soon the Middle East carriers are able to get back to the juggernaut connecting operations they are , but that has not yet happened and it's going to take just like this to get people to come back because right now I unfortunately probably still would not feel comfortable booking emirates or Edihad or Qatar or any of the other Middle Eastern airlines because things just are still too shaky for my taste. Well, perhaps you could purchase a trio of seven hundred thirty seven NG's and use those just as your purchase fly wherever you want. What do you think about that? Sure . Only if they came from Jet Airways . It's sold . How about? Oh no seven three seven eight hundreds and a seven three seven nine hundred . I will caution you that one of them only has one engine. That's no problem. Okay , yeah, yeah. Well there you go . Yeah, single engine take off isice fine because it 's only going to be me on board. That one can be had for a base price of five hundred thirty thousand dollars How does Jet Airways still exist as an entity that has airplanes . It exists as an asset disposal device because they still owe creditors over a billion dollars. It's been so long. How are we still talking about Jet Air waves. That is that's outrageous. The Indian legal system is nothing if not thorough. For next week, I want you to do some research and find out are there any aircraft still owned by King fisher and are in dispute somehow. Without even looking, I can say yes. The answer is yes, don't have to look it up. Yeah, don't have to look . I've been trying to buy one of them for years. No, so yeah, a pair of seven three seven eight hundreds, one being offered for seven point four million dollars, one being offered for nine point four million dollars that seems high for basically a junker parts aircraft . But I mean, they were delivered new to jet airways. They've got, I guess, low time engines . They've only been sitting around for a few years . Yeah, they've got low time engines because they've been rotting in India for half a decade. But they're still trying to pay off their bills. I can't believe they owe more than a billion and a half dollars . That's crazy . Which yeah, very, very strange. But if you're looking for relatively inexpensive seven thirty seven one with only one engine, then you know, get in on the Jedi Airways auction. Sure. And if you're looking for a lightly, actually probably heavily used A three hundred and twenty . The final spirit A three hundred and twenty , our final spirit aircraft outright that was somewhere out doing spirit things has been ferried back to the U. S. Tucson and then Marana out to the desert. This one November six one November Kilo was in San Salvador since March, actually undergoing maintenance since a lot of its maintenance happened there in San Salvador and that's the end of that chapter. All of Spirits aircraft have been moved from wherever they happen to be to the bone yard or onward to their next journey. End of a chapter . Oh , and on that note , it's the end of this episode. This has been episode three hundred seventy six of AvTalk. I am Impetnik here as always binoets, thanks for listening