Travel Holiday

[UPDATE, 2 pm MT: According to the AP, the plane that crashed near Buffalo was inexplicably on autopilot at the time it went down. The AP attributes this to Steve Chealander of the NTSB. However, there is no direct quote from Chealander stating that the plane was on autopilot, just a paraphrase (though he does discuss autopilot operations in general in direct quotes). I am always wary of paraphrases.]

[Update 7 pm MT: As I suspected, the AP seems to have it wrong. Paraphrasing is often thin ice. The auto-pilot disengaged before the crash, is what the NTSB actually said.]

Anyway:

Here are some more things to consider after the horrible Buffalo crash:

1. Here’s an alert from the National Transportation Safety Board on the dangers of aircraft icing, from December. The NTSB is famously careful about maintaining its boundaries, but I’m saying here that a public rift is developing between the transportation safety board, which is respected by professional pilots, and the Federal Aviation Administration, which is not. In fact, the FAA is seen with good reason as a stooge of the airlines. (Remember, till it got nailed last year, the FAA referred to airlines as its “customers.”)

[For more evidence of a widening rift between the NTSB and the FAA, look at this report in today's Buffalo News. It quotes Jim Hall, the former chairman of the NTSB, accusing the FAA of "lax oversight" ... "in its failure to adequately address known safety risks related to icing."]

It’s important to note, though, that while icing is a known hazard, icing has not been determined to have caused the Buffalo crash, which is under investigation. And often, airplane crashes result from a chain of events.

2.Another issue that needs to be addressed more clearly: The first officer working for Colgan Air on the doomed Buffalo flight was 24 years old and made less than $30,000 a year. It’s widely known that regional airlines captains are expected to “train” co-pilots on the job. We need to know a whole lot more about that.

3. And a big issue bubbling just below the surface, which desperately needs attention, is regional-airline pilot fatigue. Again, it’s clear that the NTSB is sending signals that the FAA is not on the job:

Look at this NTSB accident report on a Pinnacle Airlines regional flight that ran off a runway in Michigan with 52 on board during in snowy conditions in 2007. “Poor decision-making likely reflected the effects of fatigue produced by a long, demanding duty day,” the report says. “Contributing to the accident,” the NTSB adds pointedly, were “the Federal Aviation Administration flight-and-duty-time regulations that permitted the pilots’ long, demanding day.”

By the way, Pinnacle Airlines owns Colgan Air, which operated the Continental Airlines regional Dash 8 Q400 turboprop aircraft that crashed.

And also by the way, if you’re a regional airline pilot and you have something you think needs to be said about fatigue, pop me an e-mail at joesharkey2@comcast.net

###

The FAA says the duty-time regulations discussed below are safe. Are they? This pilot, whose e-mail to me this afternoon describes the grinding routine, says “Hell no!” I’ve withheld his name till I hear from him again that it’s ok to use it.

His e-mail:

“ALPA has been beating this drum for years and finally making some minor
headway. I hate that 50 people had to die, but maybe this will be the kick in
the pants it takes for the FAA (or Congress) to pass some duty time regulations
that have a basis in medical science (as opposed to being pulled out of some
administrator’s ass 50 years ago, which is pretty much how we got where we are
today).

The compensatory rest regulation, for instance, was originally designed so that
pilots would be able to catch up the day after weather/mechanicals/etc. caused
them to dip under the nine-hour required rest period. Unfortunately, airline
pressure on the FAA managed to convince the FAA to issue an interpretation of
this rule that brought about our current scheduling nightmare — that pilots
could be SCHEDULED for less than required rest as long as compensatory rest was
built into the next day’s schedule. That’s in total contradiction to the
original intent of the rule and it’s dangerous, but every regional airline
(including mine, which I will not name) does it and there’s not a damn thing
any of us can do about it because the FAA says it’s OK.

I don’t know what things were like 50 years ago when all these regulations were
conceived, but the reality of modern airline life is something like this:

You get into the airport at, say, 2200. Your “off-duty” period officially
starts 15 minutes after the flight blocks in, so that’s 2215. In reality,
you’re lucky if you have all your stuff packed up, the postflight completed,
and are on your way to the hotel van at this point. By the time you actually
get to the hotel, it’s 2240, assuming the van was on time. I don’t know anyone
who can fall asleep the minute they walk into their hotel room, so let’s say
that at best, you’re asleep by 2315. You’ve already lost an hour of your “rest”
right there, and that’s a best-case scenario.

Now, your block-out time the next morning is 0800. The FAA says this meets the
requirement of nine hours off-duty (”rest”) time, since you go back on duty 45
minutes prior to departure time. Of course, the airline requires you to be AT
THE AIRPLANE at this point, so in order to be there on time, you had to leave
the hotel at 0630 (it’s a 20-minute drive and the hotel van only runs on the
hour and half-hour, so an 0700 van is too late). Most people I know take at
least half an hour to wake up and get ready in the mornings, which means you
couldn’t set your alarm for any later than 0600, which means you got less than
seven hours of sleep on a “nine-hour” overnight in this best-case scenario.

The really fun schedules are the ones where the airline gives you a
reduced-rest overnight (less than nine hours) on day 3 of a four-day trip and
then schedules you for eight hours of flying in five (or even seven!) legs on
day 4. Those schedules are also perfectly legal according to the FAA, but are
they safe? Hell. No.

The way to fix this is nothing short of a complete overhaul of duty time
regulations. I don’t have a problem with the scheduled flight time limitations
(eight hours of scheduled flying is tiring, yes, but it’s doable on plenty of
rest), but I definitely have a problem with the rest requirements. The
realities of hotels and transportation to and from the airplane are such that
any scheduled off-duty period of less than 10 hours is entirely too short
(you’d be lucky to get eight hours of good rest even then), and the 15-minute
“debrief time” after a flight is utterly preposterous. (To be fair to the FAA,
I believe that’s actually a contractual thing rather than part of the FARs; it
could be longer if our contract specified it to be.) Here’s what I would
propose as a starting point for new language in FAR 121.471(b) (which,
incidentally, also greatly simplifies figuring out rest requirements, which are
currently a NIGHTMARE to determine):

* Flight crews cannot be *scheduled* for less than 10 hours of off-duty time
during consecutive days of duty under any circumstances at all.
* Off-duty time, for the purposes of rest requirements, is defined as that time
the flight crew is at the rest location (hotel). It does not include time spent
en route to or from the rest location.

The first provision still allows the somewhat controversial continuous-duty
overnights (also called “stand-ups”, “high-speeds”, and “illegals” by various
pilot groups), while preventing airlines from scheduling back-to-back two-day
trips with very short rest in domicile between trips. It also eliminates the
concept of “reduced-rest” overnights entirely. Put simply, if a crew arrives
two hours late to their overnight, the crew gets 10 hours off duty, period. If
that means the flight the next morning goes out two hours late and people miss
their connections, tough cookies for the airline and the passengers. I’d rather
they miss a connection than end up a smoking hole in the ground, and I’m sure
they would, too, if you put it to them that way.

If we can’t have the second provision, the minimum off-duty time in the first
provision needs to be 11 hours to make up for it.”

###

Bombardier’s aerospace division is cutting more than 1,300 jobs as faces a 10 percent drop in business jet orders.

This occurs during an abrupt decline in new orders for business jets, and a corresponding rise in the number of customers backing out of existing orders. No one saw this coming late last year, when the business jet industry was still posting record sales and profits.

More later today on why this is occurring, and on the way the business jet industry missed an opportunity to make a reasonable case for its products, rather than blaming the press for the troubles it’s having in an bad economic environment coupled with a fierce public backlash against corporate high-riding arrogance — best exemplified by the three Detroit CEOs who famously rode their corporate jets to Washington last November nto beg for taxpayer bailouts.

Bombardier, based in Montreal, makes both commercial regional jets and a line of business jets. The workforce cuts will take place at the company’s facilities in Montreal, Wichita, Kan., and Belfast over a five-month period, beginning this month.

The company said it expected to deliver about 10 percent fewer business aircraft this fiscal year. In fiscal 2009 (which ended Jan. 31), Bombardier delivered 239 business jets, compared with 232 in the previous year. The company blamed the new forecast drop on a greater-than-usual number of deferrals and cancellations of existing orders.

The industry in general has not yet assessed the additional impact that will come from the evaporation of anticipated new orders this year.

###

Most major U.S. airlines made big bets on the resiliency of international travel last year, and the bets are going sour.

The initial reports on air traffic in January give a rough outline of a problem that will soon be obvious, because international traffic revenues are buoyed by premium fares in business class and first class.

By all anecdotal indications so far (although premium traffic is not broken out in the routine monthly operational reports), premium traffic on international routes is in a tailspin. Those $9,800 round trip business class fares over the Atlantic (OK, big companies supplying a lot of business could get them for $5,000) are history — the $9,500 AND the $5,000.

Mike Boyd, the airline forecaster, refers to the international premium-fare collapse as a “neutron bomb” for domestic airlines that depend mightily on them.

Anyway, here are some of the January results (without any break-out of premium traffic, as I said):

–Delta, which has the most diverse routes over the Atlantic, and thus is at least somewhat insulated from the most severe downturn, in New York-London premium traffic: Delta’s international traffic was up 6.6 percent in January (compared with January 2008) — but on an increase in capacity of 11.3 percent.
(It was far worse domestically. Delta mainline domestic traffic was off 6.7 percent on an 8.5 percent capacity decrease. Regional routes were worse, with regional traffic off 14.4 percent on a 13.6 percent decrease in capacity.

–Northwest (which Delta, which acquired Northwest last year, still reports out separately): International traffic down 5.7 percent on a capacity decrease of 2.4 percent. Domestically, Northwest traffic was down 10 percent on a 9 percent decrease in capacity.

–American Airlines: Off 8 percent internationally with 2.8 percent fewer seats; off 13.9 percent domestically with 11.6 percent fewer seats.

Keep your eye on those international numbers as this slump deepens and travel demand continues to decline. The major airlines are very, very worried about that so-far not widely assessed bad trend.

###

British Airways, which offers some of the world’s best long-haul premium service in its first class and Club World business-class cabins, said today that its premium traffic declined by 13.7 percent in January. That’s as measured by passenger revenue miles flown, compared with January 2008.

This sharp decline in premium passenger miles flown comes even as British Airways, like most competitors on the industry’s highly lucrative long-haul premium routes, has been discounting and offering promotions that include free nights at London hotels with the fare.

B.A. is a bellwether for the industry. The decline in premium traffic, much of it dependent on the now-staggered financial services business, is a still-underreported crisis for the major airlines. Few of them have yet ‘fessed up to the real crisis in premium traffic — on which several U.S. airlines have bet a good chunk of the farm.

Obviously, this is a very good time to book international premium-class fares if you are so inclined.

From the B.A. statement today:

“British Airways added more discounted fares to its World Offers sale for travel between January and September 2009 with reductions on a range of longhaul destinations including New York, Cape Town and Grand Cayman and shorthaul destinations including Paris, Venice, Milan, Vienna and Prague…”

###

…The French have surrendered. (Again). It says here that the Paris airports are shutting down tonight because a snowstorm is predicted.

This a week after London went into hysteria and came to a standstill over 5 inches of rapidly melting snow.

Out here in the Sonoran desert where I’m holed up, a long run of 80-degree winter days has ended, with snow already on the mountains and even some snow predicted for the desert valley.

Lucky me, I’m not going to Paris or anywhere else.

###

[UPDATE: I'm wrong in the below post, the snark part (of course). Southwest (see appended note from Southwest at end) did prominently state which flights have the WiFi test service.]

Southwest Airlines says today it’s testing inflight WiFi service, in an announcement that makes it sound like it has invented the wheel and that this is something that hasn’t been fully put in place already by other airlines.

(Sort of like those reporters who keep “discovering” the inflight WiFi story as if some of us hadn’t been writing about its evolution for two years.)

Whatever, Southwest says it is testing “aircraft to satellite technology” on a single plane, with three more to join in by early March. Mysteriously, Southwest does not see a need to identify the Wi-Fi enabled aircraft.

Southwest also says it is forming a partnership with Yahoo! to “offer an in-flight homepage with destination-relevant content.”

Translation: Advertising.

Says Southwest:

“When Southwest customers board the WiFi enabled aircraft, they will be
greeted with WIFi placards and onboard instruction sheets. Those interested
in using the service during the test period will have the opportunity to log
on to the service free of charge via their own personal WiFi-enabled device [sic]
(laptops, iPhones, WiFi-enabled smart phones, etc.). Cellular technology
will not work with the WiFi service. The service is being offered on a trial
basis, and has not yet received final FCC approval.”

I do expect Southwest will let us know as soon as they work out the kinks and get this sucker rolling beyond Mystery Aircraft No. 1.

Here’s the note from Southwest:

# Paula Berg - Southwest Airlines Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 12:04 pm e

Joe - Indeed we think this is exciting news, as do many of our loyal Customers.

The wi-fi enabled aircraft (N901WN) left Dallas as Flight 1 this morning, from there is will travel the following route:

TODAY
Flight 20 HOU – DAL – LIT
Flight 860 LIT – LAS – LAX
Flight 159 LAS – BUR – OAK

TOMORROW
Flight 1147 OAK – ONT – PHX (departing OAK at 6:45 a.m. PT)
Flight 1791 PHX – SAN – OAK
Flight 291 OAK – SNA – PHX
Flight 209 PHX – OAK
Flight 1442 OAK – PHX

We did identify the aircraft number on our blog in several spots. I’m sorry that you missed it.

Also, just to clairfy for your readers, Southwest Airlines is the first US carrier to test satellite-delivered broadband Internet access on multiple aircraft.

Paula Berg
Southwest Airlines
# joesharkey Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 6:10 pm e

By the way, I know Southwest is the first to test satellite internet delivery. Satellite delivery is, by the way, very promising for flights over oceans.

###

A reader e mailed me suggesting that I follow up on a news article elsewhere today that got all worked up over the fact that people who buy nonrefundable tickets and then don’t fly on the appointed date can’t in turn donate those unused tickets to charity.

Sorry, but at the risk of sounding like my friend Terry Trippler (stalwart defender of the airlines in all matters), I’m on the airlines’ side here. It’s nonsense to expect an airline to re-adjust complicated fare and yield-management distribution systems because someone raises a faux-populist issue about bereft charities.

An airline ticket is priced in an intensely competitive environment. A nonrefundable ticket, which is purchased at a discount to a fully refundable ticket, actually has some refundable qualities, in that it retains value for one year from the purchase date — provided the holder cancels the trip in advance.

Within a year, that ticket can be re-booked — by paying a “change fee.” Now here is where I think the airlines are behaving like roadside bandits in Baja, in that the typical change fee has now been jacked up to $150. (Southwest doesn’t play this game, incidentally, and that’s one of the reasons people are very loyal to Southwest. But Southwest also doesn’t operate with the degree of requisite complexity that, say, Delta does).

But the issue raised wasn’t change fees, it was a half-baked notion that the airlines should go to the extraordinary trouble and expense of allowing unused nonrefundable tickets, purchased at a significant discount and under specific fare rules, to become transferable — to whoever and wherever. For charity.

Baloney. The logistical costs of doing this would certainly drive up the overall prices on all tickets. Far better to use the ticket and write a check to that charity, or donate frequent flier miles, which is simple to do and doesn’t involve the complexity and potential fraud.

And if you can’t use the ticket in a year, well, them’s the rules. It’s why it was way cheaper than a refundable ticket.

And double baloney to a statement in the source cited by my e-mail friend that “spoilage” — that is, unused tickets — encourages airlines to overbook flights.

That’s a shaky assertion riding in cahoots with a largely nonexistent problem, overbooking. The Transportation Department’s most recent statistics on overbooking, released today, show that 1.10 of every 10,000 passengers were bumped in the last quarter of 2008.

So overbooking is statistically minuscule. Secondly, if you cancel a flight on a nonrefundable ticket — and canceling it is the only sensible thing to do once you know you aren’t going that day; otherwise you lose full value of the ticket — the airline knows that you are not showing up, and that seat returns to inventory. You have to be pretty dumb not to cancel if you have a ticket that you know will retain a certain value.

And you can’t fix dumb.

###

When you consider that roundtrip walk-up business-class fares across the Atlantic were pushing $10,000 earlier last year, it’s amazing what is now occurring in the premium airfare world.

British Airways, whose Club World business-class service is among the best in the world, launched a fare sale yesterday with Club World fares starting at $1,998 (plus about $250 in fees) roundtrip to London Heathrow from Kennedy, Newark, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta and Chicago.

Tickets must be bought by midnight Feb. 15 for travel between April 1 and May 24. A 50-day advance purchase, and a Saturday night stay, are required.

Meanwhile, the hard-charging British Airways subsidiary OpenSkies, which flies all business class service, has a fare sale through Feb. 16 — $2,098 roundtrip (plus up to $300 in fees) between Kennedy and Paris Orly or Amsterdam Schiphol. That’s a 30 percent discount from the usual lowest OpenSkies fares.

The travel dates are the same as the British Airways sale: April 1 through May 24.

Hotels, by the way, are discounting like mad, all over the place.

Hotels.com has a 24-hour fare sale now underway. Las Vegas, from $22. San Francisco, from $49. Et cetera.

It is a very good time to travel, obviously.

###

[Right: The Dash8 Q400]

{POST UPDATED 5.30 pm ET}

This Reuters story on the horrible crash that killed 50 when a Continental Airlines flight approaching Buffalo went down last night has good reporting and background, but one glaring problem: It somewhat cavalierly dismisses manifest recent safety problems on Dash 8 Q400 turboprop airplanes, three of which crash-landed in Scandinavia in the fall of 2007 because of landing gear malfunctions.

But here’s a truly remarkable comment to Reuters from one of those aviation professors who always seem to be available for instant speculation:

“There have been a few crashes with the Dash 8 over the years, but I don’t recall anything that has been noticeably pointed out in the literature about that particular airplane that would suggest any issues,” said David Greatrix, professor of aerospace at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Well, the “literature” aside, I’d say we do have some “issues,” as I have said before about this aircraft.

There is no indication that any landing gear problem might have caused last night’s disaster on approach to the Buffalo airport.

The Wall Street Journal said today today the plane made a sharp right turn as it approached the runway from about six miles off, and that the erratic turn occurred “about the time that the pilot would have been configuring the aircraft for landing.”

On the other hand, the NTSB said that the Dash 8 crew reported ice buildup on the wings at some point before the final approach.

Ice or not, it is time to connect some dots on the history of the Dash 8, including some along the various maintenance trails. That would include de-icing systems.

Another thing that will be looked at more closely: The ATC recording as the Buffalo flight went off screen shows that air-traffic control in Cleveland, about 200 miles away, was handling the flight at the time it went down — presumably at the point where a handoff to the Buffalo tower was being made for final approach.

Meanwhile, here’s an interesting take on turboprops and icing problems, from Clive Irving, a consulting editor on aviation issues at Conde Nast Traveler, link via the Daily Beast.

The Continental Airlines flight was operated by Colgan Air under contract with Continental. Colgan is a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines, which used to be known as Express Airlines.

###