Fifth Avenue Forum

A++ level troll job.

The ground speed of the 747 peaked at 714 knots.

Dude, that's 800+ mph across the ground.

It was a great day to be headed east. Not so much headed west. A fair number of aircraft had to make fuel stops in places like Canada and Maine. Winds in Europe also caused dozens of diversions, and aircraft at places like Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Amsterdam Schiphol, and Cologne Bonn were going around all day. An Air Europa flight from Madrid to Amsterdam executed five go-arounds at Amsterdam before giving up and flying back to Madrid.

I've seen videos online showing a few last-second go-arounds at Heathrow, included a couple that were post-touchdown. Yikes.

Yup, and it was all caused by that massive storm that rolled through a few days ago. Created a pretty damn intense upper-level jet.

Flight cancellations to China are being extended. American Airlines announced today that it's canceling its Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong flights through the end of April, and Air Canada made a similar announcement. I think United and Delta have already canceled through most if not all of March, and we'll see if they extend like American.

It's going to be interesting to see how this shakes out when it comes to commercial aviation. There are major Chinese carriers that currently have flight-cancellation rates of 60% and up, and a couple carriers are up near 75%. Will the Chinese government bail them all out? If not, I think some airlines are going to struggle to survive.

China won’t even bail out their citizens, why the hell would they bail out airlines?

A lot of the airlines are state-owned, at least in part. The major Chinese airlines are usually owned at least in part (and often majorly in part) by the national government, and a lot of the smaller/regional airlines are owned at least in part by regional governments. Not all of them are, though. Interestingly, the highest reported cancellation rate (75.5%) comes from the HNA Group airlines, which are for the most part not government owned. It makes one wonder whether the government-owned airlines are operating empty or near-empty flights at the government's orders just to keep people working.

The number of cancellations to, from, and within China is so great that the global price of jet fuel has significantly fallen due to greatly lower demand. We're taking tens of thousands of canceled flights.

Interesting news. Alaska Airlines, long an independent, has announced that it will be joining the Oneworld airline alliance, which also includes such airlines as American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Qantas, and Qatar Airways.

I've seen videos online showing a few last-second go-arounds at Heathrow, included a couple that were post-touchdown. Yikes.

Can we please quit giving names to random weather events.

Can we please quit giving names to random weather events.

I will never forgive the Weather Channel for this garbage. Naming winter storms is the dumbest, most arbitrary bullshit they've ever done and all so they can get more ratings and have a cool hashtag.

Reports are that Bombardier is in the process of selling its remaining stake in the A220 program to Airbus, which would remove Bombardier entirely from the commercial-airliner market. The Quebec government owns something like 19% of the program, and Airbus would own the rest. There are also rumors that Bombardier had approached Textron Aviation (owner of Beechcraft, Cessna, and Hawker) about buying out Bombardier's line of bizjets. It's looking like Bombardier wants to get out of aircraft entirely and focus on the train and people-mover side of its business (the company that makes Bombardier snowmobiles and recreational vehicles was spun off years ago). Bombardier owns the Learjet name (and still makes one model) and has a lineup of midsize and large business jets under its own name. I could definitely see Textron being interested in the purchase. While the midsize Bombardier jets overlap with some Cessna models, Cessna doesn't have business jets that compete with the Bombardier Global models, which are the main competition for the big Gulfstream jets.

Boeing says it found debris in fuel tanks of parked 737 Max jets

Boeing found debris in the fuel tanks of several 737 Max jets that have been sitting in storage. It's the latest problem Boeing faces as it tries to get the 737 Max back in the air.

In a note to Boeing employees, the company said that foreign object debris, referred to as FOD, "is absolutely unacceptable. One escape is one too many. With your help and focus, we will eliminate FOD from our production system." The note was from Mark Jenks, vice president and general manager of the 737 program and the Renton, Washington, factory.

And the list grows.

China plans to take over HNA Group and sell its airline assets as coronavirus hits business, report says
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/19/china-t ... -says.html

So the answer to the question I posed a couple days ago as to whether the Chinese government will bail out airlines it doesn't own is "no." The government of Hainan is going to seize the airline assets of the HNA Group and sell them off—no doubt mostly to the other state-owned airlines. In addition to its flagship Hainan Airlines, the group owns all or part of no less than 11 other regional Chinese airlines, and a rough calculation from Wikipedia numbers shows that those airlines collectively operate over 600 aircraft. That's a heck of a lot of aircraft to be trying to sell off at the same time, although I bet there are a fair number of airlines that would be quite willing to snap up some used Hainan 737s or A320s to make up for the Boeing MAX delivery delays.

One slight advantage of the shutdown in flights to China is that US airlines are using those aircraft in the meantime to fly some domestic routes. On American, for example, if you're flying between places like Chicago, LA, Dallas, NY, and San Francisco, it's possible that you might end up on an international-spec 787 or even a 777-200. Those flights used to see nothing but A321s or 737-800s.

Is this FOD in the MAX tanks an actual big deal or just piling on for Boeing?

I understand the danger of FOD and don't discount that; just curious if this is just a normal thing and it's being blown up for effect.

It's sign of systemic shitbaggery in their QA. The USAF had to suspend deliveries of the new KC-46 tanker because of similar problems, and things like rags and even tools have been found inside sealed compartments of Dreamliners recently. Boeing is really taking it in the plums of late.

Agree with tifosi. It's not a problem in terms of actual operations because every 737 MAX will be thoroughly checked and inspected before being put back into service. FOD will be caught. But it does show that Boeing and its assembly workers in Renton (where every 737 is built) are taking a… shall we say… cavalier approach to quality control. That's certainly not a good thing.

Air travel is in a free fall right now. The Lufthansa Group, like other carriers, is experiencing huge fall in travel demand globally. It just announced that it is cutting capacity by 50% and may park its fleet of 14 Airbus A380s due to lack of demand.

The bad news and capacity cuts keep coming. Qantas is parking 2/3 of its Airbus A380 fleet and is cutting its flight schedule by up to 50%. Qantas is also asking employees to take voluntary retirement, and some employees will be placed on unpaid leave.

Korean Air, which is the largest airline and flag carrier of South Korea, has cut more than 80% of its international capacity and has grounded 100 of 145 its passenger aircraft. Today, the company CEO announced that the company is at risk of bankruptcy. I can't imagine Asiana Airlines (the other main carrier in Korea) is doing any better.

While the US hasn't been affected much by COVID-19 yet, it looks like it's already having a significant impact on aviation. A poster on airliners.net did a count of filled seats for flights that are scheduled to depart tomorrow, March 10, on Delta from LaGuardia, and the average of flights to 21 markets was 34.9%. The only flights that had more than half of their seats filled were flights to Jacksonville, Florida, which probably has to do with spring-break demand this time of year. Flights from LaGuardia to Pittsburgh are at 26% capacity.

I expect my flights in June to be 100% full.

Delta Grounds 300 Planes, Cuts 40% Of Flights, Asks Government For Help
https://onemileatatime.com/delta-ground ... g-flights/

The COVID-19 outbreak is shaping up to be the most disruptive event ever for commercial aviation. We are going to see airlines go out of business before this is over. It wouldn't surprise me if at least a quarter of the global fleet is grounded right now, and it might get worse before it gets better.