New Search for MH370

Hello and welcome to episode three hundred and seventy seven of AvTalk I am Ian Petchnik here as always with. Hello, Ian Jason Rinoz, how How is it going with you It's going well, Jason. It's a holiday week here in the good old US of A as we prepare to celebrate And it's a holiday day here as we celebrate Canada Day on this first of July and work our way to the end of the week where we celebrate the fourth of July and the US's two hundred fiftieth anniversary, the signing of Declaration of Independence, which We'll give it the aviation angle. There's a whole bunch of special liveries now and airlines left and right seem to be slapping stickers on airplanes. As this week goes on, Atlas is the latest. I thought Jet Blue was the latest. I didn't even know there was another one. No, no, Atlas. They just have a sticker that. Jet Blue did like they took a larger special livery and put it sticker. Yeah yeah, they did a larger sticker But I think they also flew to DCA and had like a whole reval, which is impressive because I was under the impression that DCA was not an airport for this month Because of all these celebrations for America's two hundred fiftieth birthday, it has not been kind to that particular airport. No, no, there have been Dlays upon delays upon delays. But that's what we're doing this week. So the podcast will come out on Friday when if you're listening in the US, hopefully you're enjoying the day off aking your way into a good weekend and a safe one. we were to celebrate safely if that is what you are doing Let's Jump into some news where We head to Venezuela We're on june twenty fourth There were a pair of extremely strong earthquakes off the northern coast of Venezuela, just west of The first earthquake struck with a magnitude of seven point two followed by an even larger seven point five quake about thirty nine seconds later So two very powerful quakes very close together. Unfortunately, the magnitude and the location of these earthquakes has resulted in a significant loss of life and an incredible amount of damage T the north of Venezuela. Yeah. There is Basically, I don't know if there's any commercial aviation in and out of Caracas right now because the airport, not that this really matters in the grand scheme of things, considering what's happening there, but the airport from all reports that we could see is pretty much wrecked Thankfully the runways are at least two of them are operational and there's a whole lot of rescue aid and all sorts of other stuff coming in out, which we'll talk about in a minute Yeah, what we know now about the status of The main Caracas airport, the Simon Bolivar airport is that the terminal has suffered extensive damage, including multiple roof collapses as well as damage elsewhere throughout the terminal building As Jason mentioned, the two runways are open and are being used for assistance, most commercial traffic has either halted or moved to Valencia which is become the de facto main hub for Venezuela aviation. The carriers moved over there include Air Europa Ba plus ultra of Yanka And a few Venezuelan carriers as well as others that are pererhaps bringing aid but are non governmental agencies. Caracas itself remains aid only and mostly governmental aid only. And it has really begun to pour in, thankfully. there has been aid from all over the world and most notably aid from Vietnam was carried by two Vietnam Airlines A three hundred fifty s. There have been all sorts of urban search and rescue folks, medical supplies, things like that. Those flights came via Paris, so Hanoi, Paris, Garacas and went home nonstop to become the second longest A three hundred fifty flights ever flown That is impressive, Unfortunate that it comes under such circumstances, but for a moment there, you actually thought it was the longest fight ever, didn't you? And it was a slim margin. It's a very slim margin. We're talking just over hundred kilometers. difference between the two So Caracas Hanoi is sixteen thousand three hundred and ninety eight kilometers. The longest A three hundred fifty flight, and this is as best I can find in our data and some other publications. So if there's a longer one, please email us at podcast at F two four. com and let us know that we got this wrong. But the longest one that I can find is the German Air Force A three hundred fifty in November of twenty twenty Basically at the height of COVID flew nonstop from Cologne to Cambera in Australia And that was basically a German national Rescue flight And that clocked in at sixteen thousand five hundred and thirty just slightly longer All that said, when the proroject suunrise flights begin in twenty twenty seven with the Qantas' A three hundred fifty thousand ULRs That'll all change when they clock in at seventeen thousand and sixteen kilometers So lots of distance to put on the current record holders. but still great that Vietim Airlines, along with many others there was a Spanish. Urban search and rescue folks, personnel from Japan, the U S. State Department brought in their special urban search and rescue folks, lots of countries in the region sending supplies and a lot of non goovernment organizations gathering supplies and things like that So goodood to see that folks are helping And hopefully that aid continues to flow and Venezuela is able to get back on its feet soon Yeah We'll see how much and how long danford this puts on commercial aviation X the US as the U.S. airlines were just spinning back up and actually expanding alost days away ays away, American had already expanded to two flights a day. I think United was out of Houston, I think was preparing Delta as well. Those are seemingly going to be on hold for a little while, if not indefinitely while they rebuild the airport. I haven't seen any timeline for at least getting a temporary facility up But I can imagine that the services, the ground services fueling and everything else required to run an airline operation is going to be in short supply for quite some time Yeah, I can't imagine that it's going to be up and running anytime soon. It'll be interesting to see how permanent, but how long term the Valencia airport as a solution for international passenger traffic So I think that's going to be something to keep an eye on depending on how quickly they can get things back up and running in Caracas. Last week day after we had stopped on the recording Something happened in Texas that made me question whether or not My eyes deceived me if AI had just Run auck And then It turns out that this was real. And in the US, no less. when anytime I see videos like this, my instinctive reflex is say, oh, if this is real, this must have been like Rural Mexico or Colombia or somewhere in Africa. es Someone's going to get in a lot of trouble for what we're going to talk about, right Yeah So November seven o five, Delta November. is a former Delta Airlines triple seven two hundred LR. This particular aircraft was transferred out of the desert after retirement to mammoth freighters who have developed a conversion program for passenger two hundred LRs into freighters The triple seven freighter is built on the two hundred LR platform So this is a straightforward conversion Mammoth completed the conversion and pass it off to the new aircraft owner in anticipation of this aircraft being delivered. to Qatar Airways cargo The aircraft was recently painted in the Qatar Airways' cargo livery However, it is not yet operated nor owned by Qatar Airways Cargo It is currently owned by Jettrend LLC there Base of operations and registered address, according to the Federal Aviation Administration is in Horseshoe Bay, Texas. And that is where this particular triple seven conducted what can charitably be described as a low pass? U yeah, low pass is definitely charitable. I'm really struggling to come up with another term to describe this other than incredibly dangerous near belly landing and then ascent from the runway while also banking to the right while nearly scraping the wingtip on the ground Not an elegant way of putting it, but that's kind of what happened. I mean, it was impressive flying, no doubt. You gott to watch the video and once they started to gain at tiny bit of altitude may have passed this by. We may have se to go, huh, that was a nice, very, very low passed. But once they bank to the right And that right wing dips Yeah, I can't imagine there's more than like Maybe Seven to ten feet separating the ground and the tip of that wing. hard to tell from this video because it's not the highest resolution that we've seen, but it is real, real close Yeah. so A few things here One If you're listening to this podcast, you've probably already seen the video That's true. So I'm trying to add a bit more context about what you're seeing and why Jason and I are sitting here scratching our heads that we just watched this because all of the reaction that I've seen and this is I guess particularly troublesome about what seems like a lackadaisical like, okay, this was really cool from a pure Wing something on a video'k. Yeah. L let's get that out of the way Yes, especially in the age where every damn thing is fake and you can't trust anything you see because it's probably fake and it's probably prompted by some jackass and then put out there as a real thing. No, this was actually a real thing, which is exceedingly rare these days I know you had to pull the data to make sure this was real and indeed it was real. So if anyone's telling you it didn't happen, oh unfortunately, it did happen. Yeah, unfortunately this Yes, it was cool. Yeah, it was really cool that should not come at the expense. I mean Here's the thing. if that wingtip had touched There's a very Very high probability that that aircraft cart wheels. And there are at least two pilots killed in a crash. Yeah. The other thing that I want to get to is the fact that this is not your airplane That's the biggest problem is that it ruined the day of everyone else associated with this aircraft, whether it was probablyrobably not Delta, but it was still wearing in a previous Delta registration. And unless you're Gavin Webelov, you probably didn't really care about that because he actually didn't bring it up to us. But it's wearing it's not in the Mammoth house livery. It's not stripped down in primer. It is in full. one hundred percent Qatar Airways livery and they were not too happy about this situation. And I can only assume they are going to have some strong words with whoever's responsible for this because we don't actually know So the aircraft owner is currently a jet tran. The Low passass occurred at Jettrans like their home base. and they knew it was coming because they had people out on the ramp waiting and filming. So they knew this was going to happen. To some degree, who knew what and when is a question, I'm sure the FAA is asking a bunch of people right now. Yes. And what I mean by we don't know who's responsible is we don't know who was actually flying the plane, whether it was their own staff, contracted out staff, some guy they found on the street. We don't know, but I can only assume the FAA is going to investigate and find out exactly who this was and we'll see what disciplinary action the FAA decides to take if any. For its part, the NTSB says it is not investigating this particular occurce The only other thing I wanted to touch on here is data behind the flight and looking at the ADSB data because I'll put a link in the show notes where we can talk about includes the video, includes our data, But you'll see that the aircraft never passes below nine hundred and fifty feet. S to yourself. Okay. I mean, clearly doth my eyes deceive me and no they don't. That aircraft is just single to low double digit feet above the ground But the ADSP data says nine hundred and fifty feet. What's the deal with that Well the ADSB data is reported so that airplanes cannot run into each other Airplanes have other systems that help them not run into the ground usually. And so the ADSB data is reported standard pressure. it's so it's baramometric pressure above mean sea level at standard pressure so that all of the altitude reporting for that system is designed to be on the same page with all of the other aircraft so that no matter what their areometeter settings or anything like that is they can talk to each other if they need to And it's also reported in twenty five foot increments. So the raw ADSB file or datum that comes to us is not It doesn't have a field that says twenty five feet or fifty feet, it's an integer and then they're in twenty five foot increments So in this particular case, it was nine hundred and fifty feet Well We can do some math and figure out pretty much where that aircraft was above the ground if we have some additional information So we can correct for local pressure So ten thirteen point two five is standard pressure, hectopascals or twenty nine point nine two inches in Mercury. We know that the Q and H or the local airfield pressure at the time was ten eighteen correction leaves us with one thousand eighty feet above se level Jason. What do you think the elevation, the airfield elevation of Horseshoe Bay Resort Jet Center is? G be right around one thousand seventy five It's one thousand eighty feet. Oh, so close. Exactly So we know the aircraft wasn't at zero feet above the ground. So it was damn near it though. Right. So what we'd know is that it was between zero and twenty five and closer to zero than twenty five Yes. what we know is limited, but I'm sure the quick access recorder or the actual recorders on board, which I guess will not be pulled because the NTSP iss not investigating, those record the actual Yeah comp, maybe. I don't know, but those would have recorded the actual radio altimeter information, but That's only going to record the altitude from the radio altimeter, which and I don't believe is located in the right wingtip So there is no actual Data. that will tell us exactly how close the right wing tip of the aircraft was unless I guess you could do the a radio welltimeter to pitch or roll of the aircraft. You can do the mads, but you have to have the data to do that and we don't So we will await the results if any public results come forward will. It' never happening We'll see. but if someone hands you a recently converted triple seven, two hundred LR just don't do it. or if you're to do it, don't film it and put it on the internet If I want to do something if you want to do something dangerous ye if you want to do something dangerous and cool, the same rules apply as doing crimes. If you're going to do crimes, don't put it on the internet because it's sef incriminating. and that's really stupid. Not advocating to do crimes, actually is really helpful for investigators if you do crimes and put it on the interternet, but in this case, like just keep it to yourself I did not think that that's where this episode was gonna go. Invite us to watch it in person. We promise we won't tell it I don't know we're in more trouble now or less, but let's move on. on the twenty sixth of June. A light aircraft crashed into the tallest building in Beijing. A Sunwd SA sixty L Aurora crashed into the CITIC tower Beijing killing the pilot and raining debris down on the street below. donon't have any information and likely will learn very little if previous investigations into Chinese aviation accidents are a guide However, we do know That general aviation has been restricted not only in Beijing, but across the country, albeit unevenly. Yeah. this is definitely one of those incidents where we're just never gonna to find any information. I mean, if they're never going to tell us what happened with that China Eastern seven three, I was the seven three probably I think so. Yeah. They're never gonna to reveal anything here especially if this was an intentional act or even if it wasn't an intentional act, they're never going to say anything There is precious little general aviation traffic in China, especially around Beijing major cities, but this is impacted whatever GA there is in the country, whether it's skydiving operations or whatever else. but this was a really strange one because The aircraft came out of what I would not consider an airport. It was like a Kind of still trying to figure out what it was myself. It was kind of like a manufacturing facility or test facility with a tiny, tiny runway I don't remember exactly where it is because it's not really on a map. It's not an airport. Yeah, I mean, this particular aircraft has a long history of Just doing something basically. ye, it's used almost exclusively for base training It very rarely leaves the pattern. And if it does centers itself above basically a highway intersection flies around for an hour. And then is done And so this was very out of character for this particular Yeah That's really the most we know, thankfully. no one on the ground or in the building presumably was injured. There was a bit of discussion after the fact in the immediate aftermath of peopleeople on social media and even prominent news outlets saying, how could this possibly happen in somehere as secure as the airspace were in Beijing or in China? As a reminder, cities do not have active military aircraft patrolling cities, E China, I don't believe there are fighter jets just buzzing around Beijing for no particular reason. This aircraft was just outside of Beijing the same way That is the case around pretty much any city in the world. There are general aviation aircraft doing general aviation things all the time peopleeople ask, could this happen in New York? And well, I've got news for you. The East and Hudson rivers are both general aviation corridors and aircraft actually land on the rivers. like if someomebody wants to take their light aircraft and do something they're not supposed to do with it. There's next to no reaction time for this kind of thing. So it's unfortunate that it ever happens, but I don't think it was feasible or practical for the authorities to do anything in this case, but thankfully it was a About as light an aircraft as a light aircraft gets it weighs less than There's that at least Yeah, this is not the first time that a light aircraft has flown into a building whether by accident or on purpose, This is not something that cities can absent, I guess, putting air defenses on all major buildings and like I think you said, it's not practical, no, it's not practical to that So we'll Keep an eye on this to see if we learn anything else at this point, but I would assume that There will be very little information now. This is the last we will ever hear at least from Chinese authorities We'll see where we go from here in boy was that the wrong button to press news and Electric Airways A three hundred twenty operating on behalf of Lot. from Warsaw to Tel Aviv accidentally squawked seven thousand five hundred on the thirtieth of June. For those of you who know what The numers seven, five, zero, zero in that order mean. You know how bad that is, Especially flying to Tel Aviv, that's probably the worst place in the world to do that Yeah. so for those that don't There are three Standard, universally accepted IKO Squak codes that Pilots can enter or activate in this case that M Very specific things. seven thousand seven hundred, the one that you see a lot activated and you can get a push notification for it on Fight Ror twenty four is general emergency. So that can be anything from a medical emergency to cracked windshield, to engine failure, anything. It's just a, hey, ATC, hey, look at me. I need your attention right now seven thousand six hundred means radio failure. So seven six zero zero means that I haveve lost commommunications with air traffic control And there are some expanded versions of that one. seven thousand six hundred one is being used in some countries, but seven thousand six hundred means my radio stopped working FYI and I'm going to perform certain procedures to get back on the ground safely. seven five zero zero is the code for unlawful interference or hijacking And that's what happened in this case It was an accident The pilot realized that or pilots realize that fairly quickly It doesn't matter. Once you do it, it's one of those switches where once you flip a switch, there's no one flipping it. Yeah The statement from the Israeli authorities said a quote, a short time ago, two Israeli Air Force fighter jets were scrambled toward a civilian aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea after a report of lost contact with the plane. The incident has since concluded contact with the aircraft has been restored and there is no indication of a security threat. they checked it out. They were going to go diver to Cyprus, so they held near Cyprus They ended up going back to base in Sofia Bulgaria and then They made it on their way O, this is a demonstration of the system working as it should When you squawk, hey, there's a hijacking on board and you unsquak it, doesn't matter that you unsquawked it because whever was trying to presumably force their way into the cockpit could have rememoved that squat code. So good on the Israelis for following up, good on the flight crew, I guess for going back to base and figuring out what happened. And I misspoke. notot Soophia. it's Burgasia O of course but Bulgaria nonetheless Alls well that ends well want to move with safety first, especially flying into Tel Aviv. they are not going to screw around with a potential hijacking. So yeah, don't do that. unless you mean it. Unfortunately for the passengers, their day started. They left Warsaw at eleven thirty five AM and arrived in Tel Aviv two AM the following day. Oh, so A long day for those passengers Let's continue with some oops A Air India flight entered Pakistani airpace. You shouldn't do that Oh, that's . I mean, nothing file it under things that shouldn't mean anything, but really are quite meaningful right now. Hopefully we can get back to a state one day where this means absolutely nothing. But what happened here? I think you said the aircraft is holding due to airestion actually in the Yeah. So there was congestion So this was Air India fllight four hundred and seventy nine from Delhi to Amrasar and they were attempting to land in Armistar. The airport was dealing with holding for aircraft there on approach because they need to do a runway inspection because of a reported bird strike. So an early aircraft said, hey, we hit a bird upon landing This flight was on approach. They were told to go around, they went around. As part of going around and vectoring and dealing with traffic, they briefly entered Pakistani airspace Yeah, not great. There are worse places to do this, I guess. The big issue here is that they didn't tell anybody. Yeah. I mean You assume they knew that happened in the moment We don't know if they did or if they didn't. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if their flight displays have a geographical boundaries like that. The aircraft controller knew. becausecause the aircraft controller coordinated with Pakistani air traffic control There and said, Hey, heads up. They did this. sorry about that. I don't know if there's ATC audio of the pilots being aware, though I assume that the air traffic controllers quriied what they were doing, or if wondering what was happening or trying to get them back into Indian aerospace, but then they didn't say anything. And that's where the DGCA had a real problem You know what good for them for following up on this and You don't want something like this to turn into an actual international incident. Exactly. And I think that's where the issue really arose, not that this happened because you know, these things happen all the time. with like weather there are still, I mean, you can see Russian aircraft passing through Baltic states, you can see Baltic aircraft passing through Kalinigrad when there is weather That's something that just happens and continues to happen and continues to be looked upon as it's better that the hundreds of people in the sky are safe and happen to fly through some airspace versus you know the alternative. And so I think the bigger issues, they just didn't tell anybody Yeah, there are a few places in the world where this is an actual huge no no. and unfortunately, this is one of those places where you just can't do that Yesterday on the thirtieth of June, The Wall Street Journal had a scoop. that reported Federal aviation addministrator, Brian Bedford is considering expanding the U.S's ADSB mandate byypassing the standard rulemaking process to mandate that more aircraft equip themselves with ADSB transponders And Begin using ADSB in as well Why skip the normal rulemaking process to do this? I wonder That is unclear. No final decision has been made. The FAA says that they have not made any final decisions. This would speed things along as far as equiipage and things like that are concerned. But it seems to me that you know if it's worth doing so quickly now, why wasn't it worth doing it several years ago and doing it the correct way sixix months ago or right after the NTSB issued its recommendations Well'll see, we don't know anything because other than the Wall Street Journal scoop, I don't see anything. There's nothing posted by the FAA. if they're not going through the proper rulemaking procedures that there's clearly not going to be a rule to take a look at or comment on as the public or the industry. So I don't know. We'll see if this becomes real or not, but right now it's a thing that may or may not happen. I don't know. Wh knows with this? particular administration We don't know. What we do know is that the FAA is getting ready to propose new radar altimeter mandates. as the CBand spectrum auctions continue This time around, though They're coordinating with the FCC to make the proposal have some rebates four airlines that have to refit their airline s. No wait, wait, you can't coordinate. We've done this before. You have to first wait until the last possible moment and then point fingers at the other guys and say, well, you didn't do your job. And then they say, Well, you didn'ge we had a job to do. G't plan ahead. Apparently lessons have been learned. Ipossible What the FCC is proposing or is said to be proposing is that as part of the spectrum auction, those winning the auction will be required to contribute rebates towards the retrofit of radar altimeters that need to be upgraded because the radar altimeter spectrum is right next to the CBand. They just replaced all these altimeters. What did they replace them with This is that separate upper or lower C band spectrum So it's like on the other side. Yeah, we've talked about this before where there's just no planning ahead and this is going to come back to bite them in the future. And here we are. this is that future biting happening. If they had that fureiblings Yeah, if they had planned actually ahead, they would have, you know, worked to develop transpant or radio alt emitters that were protected on either side of the band. but didn't exist yet. But I think that's what this is. I think this is if you've already installed the retrofitted transponder, you don't have to worry about this This is for transponders that were unaffected previously, but might be affected now. I see. Okaykay. I could be wrong. And if I'm wrong, please let us know. because Wh, I've been wrong before And I'll be wrong again. Nah, can't be. Jason, how if I wanted an A three hundred nineteen No Can I order one? You can. You as Petmo airways can. It's just you're going to have to ask Airbus nicely because they're not really going to proactively tell you that it's an option anymore To be fair Were they ever telling people it was an option? Well, not so much. Recently, there are A three hundred nineteen Ns out there. I think they're all in China And there are still some pending orders for them, but there are a couple ACJs, I believe.. There are some ACJs out there, but there are a very, very, very small number of A three hundred nineteen NEOos operating for like Tibet Airways and Air China or maybe China, southern doing very, very specific hot and high missions. But apparently Airbus has thrown in the towel on proactively marketing this because Fight Global noticed Hey, this chart's got the A two hundred twenty and the A three hundred twenty No But it ain't got no three hundred and nineteen No And yeah, they're right. Airbus isn't pushing this as a commercial aircraft as something that's available anymore. But they'd be more than happy, I'm sure, to churn them out If an airline wanted it th, I can't imagine that happening at any point. Yeah, I suppose it's just yeah, we've got all the parts. We can slap one together. I mean, it's just a smaller A three hundred twenty no, same engine, same everything else. That's why no one wants it. It's a smaller worse version of the three hundred nineteen except for like a couple of routes in China that really really need it We'll see how that goes. There's also the Farmborough Airhow coming up in less than a month and chart might look a little different come the end of July. Are you hinting at a possible launch of the A two twenty five hundred? Because if so, that's exciting. I don't see it I don't see it happening. Maybe it's going to happen at some point At some point they have to announce it because they've done all but announce it. So Maybe Maybe they bring back the A three hundred eighteen and give that a reenineering that they never did. Wouldn't that be something? Do you think Tim Clark finally gets his A three eighty No O, no Could be the a three hundred eighty plus. Remember that that was a thing for like twenty minutes. Did anyone actually get any of that That was the like enhanced winglets and other things that never happened. That was a very last ditch effort to do something with the A three hundred eighty I guess it would be feasible as a retrofit sometimes down the road, but they're more concerned with hey these wings are cracking rather than, hey, we need another quarter percent of fuel efficiency out of those right now Fair enough That's a good point, Jason. That's a very good point. Don't put any more weight on those wings, all right? Exactly. let's not do that Let's head over to Ireland Where the Irish government has decided to retain for longer ground based navigation beacons Because of the effects that have comeome about due to GPS or GNSS jamming and spoofing These are bunch of near end of life navigation aids But now they're looking at how can we keep these around bit longer because They're less susceptible to interference. Yeah. Are we talking things like VORs or other radio basedams, NDB's, things like that? This has been talked about for a long time that we are actively dismantling a completely functional mostly functional ground based system has been rock solid for the better part of well more than half a century and replacing it with something that is not technically flawed, but technically capable of being completely disrupted or spoofed in many cases I'm a little surprised it's coming out of Ireland first I didn't know it was much of a problem there, but I don't know what the status is actually of these navs in places where GPS jamming and spoofing is really problematic. But we know entire routes have been cancellled because of that Yeah, so what's happening here is the Irish aviation Authority is just slowing down their replacement ground based systems with GPS based systems They're not canceling it. They're just slowing it down. which I'm not really sure The other thing is Ireland. Why Ireland? Yeahah, I don't really understand that bit at all This report comes to us from the Irish Times and yeah, it just specifically talks about Ireland and it's very surprising that it wouldn't I can't say that it's not happening in places like Sweden or elsewhere that are closer to a Russian or Ukraine border because maybe it is. Maybe they're even going back And installing VORs and other things like that, probably not The equipment's getting very, very old, but very, very old things. You can continue to maintain them for the right price just that it's going to get more and more expensive do that And I don't think anyone's churning out VOR equipment anymore. I mean mayaybe not new, but they're going to keep plugging along as best they can A story out of Florida, Jason. No, here we go, Florida. It's gonna to be good Virgin Atlantic passengers arriving at Orlando International Airport, which Let me just stop here and talk about the fact that the Orlando Sentinel has abbreviated Orlando International Airport OIA Yeah, you can't do that because you're going to break people's brains, especially if you are the home newspaper like the Orlando Sentinel. you can't refer to your own airport wrong. comeome on. we have codes. we have ual industry standardized code. you are MCO. You can't can't deviate from that, I'm sorry understand what this is all about. Not like an airport code that is not typically used I don't know, DEN maybe stands for Denver, but I don't refer to it as DEN. MCO is like literally their social media handle across all platforms, like that is what the airport refers to itself. So to deviate from that at all, that's not great. Don't do that Oh I A. All right Oo the meat of the story, which is somehow even more now this is the story. Forget the rest. This is the story now So Virgin Atlantic flight arrives in Orlando. And There's bad weather And as we've talked about before, as part of storm preparations and storm management Ground handling facilities, ground handlers cannot operate when there's, you thunderstorms in the area because they canrpt by lightning and that is bad And it happens to be that Florida, I believe is the lightning capital of the world. So they take that stuff seriously there. If there's lightning, you can be sure that they are going to take it seriously and all ramp activity stops. What is it Twelve minutes, something along those lines I'm not sure exactly what Orlando's strictures are. But needless to say, there were delays However These delays were much longer than twelve minutes These delays were hours long And so One passenger said that they were threatened with arrest if they left without their baggage. This is weird because it comes in a the stage of entering the country where you're kind of inlimbo because you've already gone through immigration, but you haven't gone through customs in that. You've gone to a person, they've checked your passport. they've started the process of letting you in in the US, but you haven't collected your bags You can't leave them behind because if you're carrying something illegal or whatever, they have to inspect it and find have the person whoever is in trouble, they need to be there. So you can't leave without your bags, but if they can't deliver the bags No one's supposed to be there for an extended period. I cannot really think of a bad claim area in any major airport that can host seeat Hundreds of people off a transatlantic fight like that, like there just isn't space for that because it's not a space you're supposed to spend Anyt timee. You're supposed to collect your bag as quickly as it comes and leave But for five hours, man, that's rough. No one has taken really any sort of responsibility to kind of explain the situation. OhIA, o see, I did it myself NCO That's it straight to jail. Straight to jail. Can't do that They've just said we understand how frustrating and disruptive, unexpected weather conditions can be, and we also recognize how challenging it can feel when there are no eateries available in the customs area. We sincerely regret these circumstances affected your plans and overall experience. That's a lot of words to say, not a whole lot I would love to know how it took five hours. wereere there staffing issues where the plane break, the belt break. I don't know, but you know what I'm kind of surprised weon't hear about this kind of thing happening more often. Well, when I came back from Stockholm in late May. The KLM flight from Amsterdam to Chicago had landed a few hours before I did and Those folks were just getting their bags. O, Was it rainy in Chicago or No No, just bad, just bad. Js just more proof that you should never check a bag E This is true. Even when you're going on a week's vacation to Or Land or to go wherever you're going. N chek a bag The terrible thing here is that the airline, you know said, hey, sorry, there was weather The airport said it's not our problem CBP said, hey, the airline's got to get us the bags. We can't do anything about that. just an all around Like nobody taking responsibility Yeah, that sucks That sucks. Again also, I don't think This would be a problem unique to the US. I think if this had happened in Stockol or if this happened in Paris the situation is the same. You can't leave this secure area without your bags. I don't think so, at least, but I don't think the situation rises all too often where this is put to the test Exactly Jason, let's do some order and delivery news. and some fleet sale news, Get your pocketbook out and we will be done with this Episode. What do you say? G speed round SAS has ordered a bunch of A three hundred thirty s, including A three hundred thirty NeOos firm orders for eighteen plus ten options and they're going to gobble up whoever will give them some A three thir thousand three hundreds at the moment. so that they can tide themselves over before the A three hundred thirty NEOos start coming into the fleet. Is this for fleet expansion or renewal or So this is expansion and then renewal. So basically they're going to expand the current A three hundred thirty fleet then renew them on a one for one basis, basically. W, not all that long ago. SAS was shedding any aircraft that it could that were too expensive. So quite the quick rebound for them to be ordering eight down three hundred thirty, not the three hundred and fifty that it already has, which I guess will now become the oddball in the fleet, huh? Perhaps pererhaps not. I would stay tuned on that one Interesting. What do you know? What do you know that you're not taking It's not what I know. It's what I think I know. And I'm not willing to say that into a microphone quite y. Yeah because you getting that that having an orphan fleet of a couple A three hundred fifty s just doesn't make sense long term for them? It doesn't make sense long term for them. but I will point that Air France K point out that Air France KLM is actively looking to increase its stake in SAS and bring it as a kind of a fully and say, partner necessarily because of, you know the size differentials But Those two airlines Might have A three hundred fifty order floating around out there. Maybe. Well who else wants some A three hundred and thirty MOs SAS definitely wants I'm not sure who else wants them. We already talked about them because you should look at the next line where I said Chin Eastern too, maybe. Oh, could it be China Eastern? Yeah, maybe. Maybe Ibe Maybe maybe you could read the next line. Reuters reports the China Eastern said last Friday that they plan to buy twenty five A three hundred thirty NOos I haven't seen much from Airbus or anyone on this order. So maybe they plan to in the future do it. Maybe they have done it. Who knows with China. Orders are kind of difficult to track down there. I haven't yet seen it coming from the Airbus order and delivery thing, but I guess we should be getting the June update any day now, but that's an interesting addition to Chinese Jn's fleet. Didn't see that coming. It'll be interesting to see what they do with those aircraft. So keeping an eye on that one Elsewhere in China, China Southern carargo becomes the first Chinese airline to order the triple sevenash eight F. So this is the triri seven X And they will take five plus three options as well as a pair of current generation triple seven freighters So that one we do know about because of a regulatory filing from China Southern. So there you go. That's nice. On the flip side of things, the European cargo fleet is currently up for sale So this gives us at least twelve Is airframes plus one that can be used as a source of spares. So you've got three flight ready A three hundred four thousand six hundred that have been converted to cabin cargo. You have nine A three hundred four thousand six hundred and five hundred aircraft in long term storage that could be put back into flight if you so choose. and one A three hundred for thousand six hundred that's a source of spare parts So John Walton, your airline is calling. Yes. I did not know that European cargo had gone under or closed up shop or whatever. Real quick. Yeah, that happened very quickly. I remember seeing their A three hundred forty six hundreds coming to JFK in the COVID era But that is I guess the end of a real, real strange period of time where you had a cargo operator operating nothing but the A three hundred and forty family That was wild. That history ever allowed for that to be a thing. Though it seems like some of them have moved on to a new entity. apparently they're part of the Priority one group, whatever that is. And some of these aircraft, the split evenly three, five hundreds and three six hundreds will continue operating for this other. So the days of the A three hundred forty five and six hundred freighter, they are not yet behind us For some reason, it's still a thing. For some reason, it just I'm okay with it. Jason nearly six years after this was first announced Koreanir has received final approval. from the Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for its acquisition of Asiana Yep, we're losing a real one there. Asiana was is a long, long standing airline I am glad, I think we talked about this last week, but we're going to talk about it again. Anyway, I'm glad I'm flying late November of this year to get my first and last experience on the airline. I'm still a little surprised they approved it Now there will only be one major, I guess long haul airline in South Korea. though I know there were a raft of concessions that they had to give up to make this happen. But six years, man, so much has changed in that time. And I guess Korean still thinks it's worth it. They'd better at this point. At this point, yeah. hopefully no buyers ro Let's talk about Dallas Fort Worth Not airport itself The region because Dallas Fort Worth is going to have another airport That's not Dallas Fort Worth. Why Does it need it? Apparently, this is the I guess Luton Of Dallas? Oo, no, this might be the south end. I don't know The south of the dance is real small So Kinney National Airport is on the region's far northeastern side and it is going to be served by avevelo ome November. We're looking at Vegas Fort Lauderdale Myers, Orlando and Tampa. Basically exactly what you think would happen for Avella fllights. Yeah, not all that often. You have, I guess, a new commercial airport spin up. I don't know what the passenger terminal or facilities are going to look like there. because I don't believe has this airport ever hosted commercial service I mean, I just don't know. I am surprised that this is happening. I mean, good for McKinney for landing them there This airport's been around since the seventies, but I think this is the, you know, kind of first time they've really had like a full It is indeed a new new terminal build. They will not be operating out of a shack. Well, unless the terminal's not done in time. But yeah,s they built the real terminal and everything. so good, don't care so much about avevelo I'm never going to fly a Vllo, but good for an airport, a new startu airport, I guess, commercially, landing an airline. that's a big deal for any airport authority And finally There will be at least one more search season four MH three hundred seventy Ocean Infinity and the Government of Malaysia have reached an agreement for another year of searching. This search will take place between november twenty twenty six and april twenty twenty seven when the seas are a bit calmer prerevious search was hampered by poor weather and rough seas This search will hopefully take place calmer these and be more fruitful Ocean Infinity for its part will receive seventy million dollars if they can find MH three hundred seventy, but nothing if they do not Yeah, hope is really I'm pretty sure it's already faded. so I'm not going to say that, but hoping they find it really not feeling like they will at this point. Probably the same exact thing I said every other time we've talked about this, but there's always a chance, but the South Indian Ocean is kind of an inhospitable place So hopefully the seas are a little less rough and they can turn something up and literally anything would be a benefit. Yeah, so we'll keep you posted beginning November of this year on that. This has been episode three hundred and seventy seven of AvTalk. If you're in Canada, we hope you had a lonely canida If you're in the US have a wonderful independence dayay and celebrating the two hundred fiftieth anniversary America, and if you're anywhere else, we hope you have a wonderful weekend I am Ian Petniick here as always with Jet Nerbino, thanks for listening