A Summer of Profits for Airlines but of Discontent for Labor

Second quarter earnings reports are out and there's quite a bit of good news for airlines. This latest earnings season has the big four airlines swimming in black ink. On the other hand, airline labor groups are not quite feeling the love they feel they deserve. Delta's pilots just voted down a tentative agreement for a new contract while Southwest's flight attendants also voted down their recently reached tentative agreement. So what's going on?

Well, lets first take a look at the haul that the airlines brought in this past quarter. United weighed in with an all time record profit of $1.2 billion and this was on reduced revenue. Southwest, the smallest of the "big four", increased their profit 31% to a record $608 million. American Airlines pocketed a record $1.7 billion, while Delta brought home a healthy $1.49 billion on $10.71 billion of revenue.

These airlines are so hip deep in cash that they don't know what to do with it all. The airlines have been under the gun to not flood the market with capacity which in the past has always ended up in brutal fare wars and bankruptcies. Since expansion is mostly off the table, returning the loot to investors through stock buybacks is the order of the day.

American bought back over $700 million last quarter and has announced further buybacks of  $2 billion through 2016. United is just finishing a $1 billion buyback ahead of schedule and is embarking on a further $3 billion buyback through 2017. Southwest recently completed a $430 million buyback and is accelerating plans to buy $500 million more.

First Time Rejection for Delta's Pilots

Yes, times are flush for airlines but airline labor groups are now angling for a larger piece of that pie. As mentioned above, Delta's pilots recently voted down their tentative agreement with the carrier. This was the first time that the pilots at Delta had ever defeated a proposed contract. Chief among the complaints were reductions in profit sharing, changes in sick leave policy and a wish to be made whole after a decade of stagnation at the carrier, especially in light of record profits.

Southwest's flight attendants also voted down their tentative agreement in a lopsided 87% negative vote. The issues centered mostly around work rules which would increase the maximum duty day to 12 hours and minimum work rules which would affect vacation pay. Southwest is still in negotiations with its pilots who recently formed a strike committee and also its baggage loaders.

The pilots at American and USAir voted last January to approve their new contract with the newly combined carrier. This agreement included hefty pay raises over and above post 9/11 concession wages, but they are still looking for improvements. From the APA website:

APA will now focus on further engagement with American Airlines management to address ongoing shortcomings in our contract. Our total compensation will still trail industry-leader Delta, while work rules affecting our pilots’ quality of life need meaningful improvement. There’s a lot of work remaining to achieve the industry-leading contract our pilots deserve.

United's pilots likewise approved their merger contract back in 2013 which included pay increases over bankruptcy contract wages dating from the early 2000's. While the United pilot's contract doesn't become amendable until 2017, rest assured that they will be targeting "industry leading" wages.

Will There Be a Strike?

Unlike most unionized labor forces in the country, airline labor groups and their collective bargaining agreements are regulated under a very old law known as the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The RLA, passed in 1926, doesn't allow for labor contracts to "expire" but for them to become "amendable". This means that on the amendable date, the labor agreement in force just continues until a new agreement is reached. The animus behind this law is that it was viewed that a shutdown of the railways was too economically harmful and therefore work stoppages must be avoided at all cost.

There is a very specific series of events that must occur before any strike can occur under the RLA. The first step is mediation followed by a declared impasse. Once an impasse is declared, a 30 day cooling off period must be observed and only then may a labor group or company engage in "self help" which means a lockout or a strike. No current disputes are even close to any of this happening. So no, it is highly unlikely that there will be any airline strike. Keep in mind that there is always quite a bit of posturing by both labor groups and management in these affairs.

What Next?

The Kabuki dance between labor unions and management will continue. Agreements will eventually be reached and everyone will get on with their jobs. It's Great Circle of Life stuff.

As far as the specific pilot contracts are concerned, my belief is that airline managements will eventually have to open their checkbooks to attract a dwindling number of new pilots to replace the tsunami of retiring pilots. Regional pilots looking for their first major carrier jobs are in the catbird seat, and have the luxury of choosing the major airline with the best pay and best prospects for a quick upgrade to captain. 

As captain upgrade is driven by retirements (and growth, which is not happening), looking for the airline with the best upgrade prospects means finding the airline with the most retirements. Currently all three of the largest major airlines, American, United and Delta have huge numbers of upcoming retirements. Replacing these pilots will drive wage demands. Southwest, which has a relatively young pilot force, and hence upgrade times topping 15 years, may have a specific challenge attracting new talent.

I don't personally get too excited about union politics as things always seem to have a way of sorting themselves out.

MH370 Found?

MH370 found?

No, but an airplane part and a suitcase have washed up near Madagascar. The part will be tested to determine if it came from the Malaysian jet. If it's determined that the part is from MH370 it won't be of much help finding the rest of the wreckage. Ocean currents are quite random and will provide little help as to where to look other than the places already being searched.

The theories that will be put to rest if the part is genuine are the conspiracy theories positing that the aircraft was hijacked and flown to a secret base somewhere. My opinion is that the captain committed murder-suicide with his own airplane for political and other reasons.

Stay tuned.

Airline Laser Attacks Spike

In a series of incidents last week, twelve aircraft, 11 airliners and a Coast Guard aircraft were hit with lasers in the New York area. Furthermore, 23 other aircraft across the nation on the same night reported laser attacks.

While there were no injuries, as I detailed in a post a few weeks ago, commercially available lasers have the ability to injure and completely blind humans in less time than it takes to blink or to look away from the laser.

My personal feeling is that it is simply a matter of time until the laser attackers up their game to some industrial strength lasers to cause some real mayhem.

Airliner With Only Three Minutes of Fuel Told It Can't Land!

A breathlessly told story in the Daily Mail screamed the above headline to tell of an airliner nearly running out of fuel while being told tough beans by the controller. It's dramatic and scary and also has the added benefit of having very little in common with reality. (More on that later). The one thing it does do, and probably quite well, is to gather clicks. And that means eyeballs and ad revenue. So I naturally chose the same title for this post while also calling them out.

You might think that most people involved with aviation would have an interest in demystifying the subject to help calm the nerves of the flying public. That of course could not be further from the truth, with the above mentioned story as prima facie evidence. We pilots, I must admit, also like to be associated with a frisson of danger and a whiff of derring-do. It assuages our fragile egos and also doesn't hurt during contract negotiations, but we certainly don't go out of our way to scare folks.

Your 'umble narrator has even been accused of spreading discomfort towards flying though this blog. (Thanks, Mom!) (jk) My aim in writing about flying is to merely throw open the hood to explain some of the workings not seen by the public and to thereby hopefully soothe the savage flying beast. As with any human endeavour, there is perhaps some inevitable sausage making going on in aviation that reluctant flyers may not care to see. But rest assured dear reader, commercial aviation is an extremely safe and robust mode of travel. If my scribblings convey the opposite, I apologize.

Though the topic has been covered ad infinitum to ad nauseum, flying in a commercial airliner is probably second only to travelling in an elevator in terms of safety. And of course we all climb willingly into our automobiles which kill tens of thousands annually, but at least we're in control! Quoting safety statistics, though, seems to have little effect on the visceral fear felt by some. John Madden, the NFL broadcaster, famously refused to fly and instead rode his bus all over the country to call games.

For those without million dollar contracts and custom buses who still need to travel, there are plenty of programs aimed at helping scared flyers. (Programs, by the way, which probably provide a decent paycheck for the proprietors). And though most pilots are gracious and understanding when fearful customers stop by to say hello (as they're encouraged to do), I am personally perplexed as to how allegedly functioning adults can allow their feelings to gain such purchase so as to refute overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary regarding airline safety. That one I leave to the shrinks.

Bingo Fuel

Ok, as promised, back to the story. An Allegiant MD-80 was delayed for about an hour before departing Vegas for Fargo, ND. The delay put the aircraft in conflict with a Blue Angels practice which had been previously scheduled. Being a clear day, the Allegiant plane probably had only it's required reserve fuel on board which contrary to the article was not 3 minutes but rather 45.

The term bingo is used to denote a decision point. In this context the pilot meant that he had three minutes of loiter time before diverting, not running out of fuel. Of course the tower would absolutely let the plane land for a declared fuel emergency. That's a legal definition. Declaring an emergency will always get an aircraft priority. The controller simply needed to hear that declaration before interrupting a scheduled event.

Who screwed up here? The pilot for being unaware of the field closure which would have been listed in the "notices to airmen" or "Notams" which every pilot is required to reference before departure.

The morons who write these stories as clickbait may (but probably don't) know better, but writing what really happened would spoil a great headline.

KLM Video Demonstrates the Hazards of Crosswind Landings

A very dramatic video of a KLM B-777 landing at Schiphol in strong crosswinds has been recently going viral on the interwebs. While the video is certainly hair-raising to most casual viewers, there are a number of things going on here that can help to explain events that can go wrong during a crosswind landing.

The aircraft in the video is a Boeing 777-300 which is the stretched version of the older 777-200. This model aircraft weighs in at 370,000 lbs empty and has a max landing weight of 554,000 lbs, so we know that this particular airplane weighed in somewhere between these two numbers, more likely towards the higher number. This means that there's a lot of weight being thrown around.

The video starts with the aircraft perhaps a mile or so from the runway established in what's known as a "crab". In this scenario, the fuselage of the aircraft is "windmilled" into the wind. What this means is that the heading of the aircraft is not the same as the ground track the aircraft is following. 

The easiest way to understand this might be to think of paddling across a moving river in a canoe. In order to reach a point directly across the river, one must "aim" the canoe at a point upstream to counter the current. Where the canoe is pointed is its "heading" and where it is actually going is its ground track. The two are not the same in a cross current (or wind).

To you math geeks (and you know who you are) this is simply the sum of the two velocity vectors of the aircraft and the wind. 

Flying an aircraft in a crab is a standard and routine method of counteracting a crosswind on final. The problem that arises is that the aircraft cannot be landed while it is in a crab. The reason for this is that the landing gear are by design aligned with the aircraft fuselage. This means that when the wheels touch down in a crab, there will be instant skidding and dragging of the wheels across the pavement.

To use another analogy, think of a stunt car doing a jump but while airborne twisting sideways. When it touches down, there will be a huge lateral force on the tires as they'd rather roll straight and not sideways. The car may even roll over. The same forces work on the airplane and put tremendous side loads on the landing gear. The landing gear for nearly all airliners are not built for such loads and could potentially collapse if landed in too much of a crab.

Wing Low

The proper technique to land an airliner in a crosswind, then, is to make sure that the aircraft heading and hence the landing gear are aligned in the same direction as the runway before touchdown. This is done with the rudder. As the aircraft will be naturally windmilled into the wind and not aligned with the runway, downwind rudder must be applied to align the two.

That means that if the crosswind is from the right, as in this video, left rudder must be applied. When this is done, however, the aircraft will then begin to be blown downwind. To counteract this tendency, aileron is then used to lower a wing into the wind which keeps the drift at bay. This technique, known as "wing low", is how most airliners must land in a crosswind.

In this video, you'll see a number of airplanes landing at Dusseldorf in a strong crosswind. Some do a better job than others of both killing the drift and aligning the aircraft with the runway at touchdown.

Ok, getting back to the KLM video, we can see that starting at about 13 seconds in, the pilot starts to apply left rudder to align the aircraft heading with the runway. It is especially pronounced at about 28 seconds that the rudder has almost full deflection to the left.

As the aircraft continues into the flare, we see lateral rolling which becomes more pronounced until just before touchdown when a large wing drop occurs. What is happening here is that as the aircraft gets down to tree and building level, the wind becomes very unpredictable. Trees and buildings can cause a significant amount of gusting which must be quickly countered. Unfortunately, there is really no way to predict where and when the gusts will occur.

Beware the PIO

While the pilot is making a heroic effort to counter each gust, there are circumstances where the situation can be made inadvertently worse by the pilot himself. This is what's known as a "pilot induced oscillation" or PIO, and it can cause real trouble if it's not recognized and corrected.

The pilot-airplane unit is together what is known as a feedback control loop or system. In such a system, an initial input is made, the results are observed or "fed back", and from those results further inputs can be made. Again for you geeks out there (and you still know who you are) the system might be depicted as such:

where the controller and measurement boxes are the pilot, the system is the aircraft and the disturbances are the wind gusts.

Such a system should be stable with the feedback serving to dampen out the effects of the disturbances (or gusts in this case). In certain circumstances, however, this is not what happens. A pilot may "over control" when making a correction causing a deviation in the opposite direction. The tendency after that is to put in an even larger correction back the other way causing an even larger deviation again. The root cause of these oscillations is the delay between the control input and the reaction of the airplane. 

If not caught and corrected, a PIO can and has resulted in aircraft damage and crashes. This video shows a PIO in an F-16 flown by a test pilot so you can see that it can happen to nearly anyone.

In geek speak, what has happened is the "gain" is too high on the feedback loop and the system becomes unstable. The solution? In most cases, just letting go of the stick will allow the airplane's natural stability to reassert itself.

Rockin' and a Rollin'

So again getting back to the video, what appears to me to be happening is that the aircraft is hit with several gusts resulting in a PIO around the longitudinal axis, or the axis running from the nose to the tail. The pilot appears to be overcorrecting to each wing dip by making successively larger aileron inputs resulting in the rockin' and rollin' on short final.

The largest danger inherent in lateral excursions or wing dips near the ground is the possibility of dragging an engine pod or wingtip. This is obviously a less than optimum outcome and could result in aircraft damage ranging from scraped metal as a minimum all the way up to a cartwheel and hull loss otherwise known as a crash.

In this case, the dampening force that eventually quelled the PIO was the runway itself. It is difficult to determine if a go-around would have been the best course of action as a video can exaggerate the actual attitude of the aircraft. Apparently KLM management, to their credit, are backing up their pilots in this event.

Landing in strong weather always entails a measure of risk above a calm and clear day. The particular challenge for pilots in such weather is not so much knowing how to fly in it as much as knowing when to abandon an approach that has gone south.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Have you ever been on a flight where everything just seems to be going wrong before takeoff? You think you’re going and then you’re not. There’s a problem. Then the problem is fixed and you're going again. Then there’s another problem and you’re not going. And it goes on like this for a while until either you end up finally going hours late or the flight is cancelled.

As frustrating as such a scenario is for you, it’s equally if not more so for the crew. Even though it may not always seem that way, no one wants to get you where you are going more than the crew on your airplane. In most cases, the cause for the problem is out of their hands but they are the ones left trying to make it all come together while not running afoul of the myriad rules thrown in the way.

Let me tell you a story about what happened recently to a friend of mine at another airline while trying to get the job done amidst a raft of problems. He’d like to stay anonymous for obvious reasons so let’s just call him Rob Joe. The trip started out somewhere in the Midwest and was scheduled to pass through LaGuardia and then Atlanta before finishing in Chicago. Both LaGuardia and Atlanta are known for delays so Joe was hopeful that the day would go smoothly, but realistic in his expectation that it would not. He was not disappointed.

La Guardia is Another Word for Hell

LaGuardia is a hopelessly congested airport.  Even though it is slot controlled, meaning that there are restrictions on how many airplanes are allowed to land, someone must have paid someone off so that on any given day a line of 30 or more airplanes waiting to take off is the usual order of business. This day was no different. A departure rate of one takeoff every two minutes meant an hour delay from pushback to takeoff.

Well there was no worry because such delays have already been baked into the cake with a padded schedule and extra fuel on board for the wait. But, as the company had planned the flight for only a 30 minute delay, the actual hour that it took put them 30 minutes behind.

The arrival into Atlanta was busy but uneventful. Rain showers had been predicted but held off. The flight to Chicago was the last leg of the day and so far it looked like the flight might be only slightly delayed due to LaGuardia. Pushing back with a full airplane,  Joe elected to taxi out on one engine to save some fuel. The second one would be started a few minutes prior to takeoff.

Here’s where it started getting weird. There is an uphill grade on the taxiway leading to Atlanta’s runway 26 Left, the takeoff runway that day. There’s also a restriction on the maximum thrust allowed during single engine taxi so as not to blow anything over with jet blast. Unfortunately, that setting was too low to get the full airplane up the slope so Joe directed his copilot to start the other engine.

Just then, another airplane reported that they had hit a bird on takeoff, suspected some engine damage, and were returning to the airport. This meant that the runway was shut down until ground operations could send someone out in a truck to inspect the runway for bird or airplane parts. This meant more delay and with two engines now running it might mean a return to the gate to get more fuel if the delay was extensive. So Joe shut an engine down again to wait.

It Won't Start

After about a half hour and the removal of bird remains, the runway was opened and the conga line started moving again. As he approached the runway, Joe again asked for the second engine to be started. His copilot dutifully turned the switch…and nothing happened. The engine wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even turn over. They checked for popped circuit breakers and rechecked that the engine was receiving starter air which it was. Everything was in order but it just wasn’t happening.

This meant a gate return. On the taxi trip back in they tried it one more time and of course it turned right over, but after any anomaly like that, a mechanic needs to inspect the engine. The mechanic was waiting at the gate and had a good idea that the pneumatic start valve was sticking, which it was. When Joe asked how long for the repair, to his surprise the mechanic said 10 or 15 minutes.

And he was right. It only took a very short time to fix the motor. In the meantime, though, the air-conditioning had to be off while the mechanics worked on the air system. The poor passengers were cooking in the Georgia summer heat. Ground air was hooked up but it was no match for the Southern cooking they were experiencing.

A New Problem

Soon enough, though, the plane was fixed and they were ready to go. Except for one new problem. The pilots were about to go illegal. With their original day scheduled at about 8 hours of flying, the delays had taken them close to going over 9 hours of actual flying or “block” time.

New rest regulations passed by Congress in the wake of a regional airline crash a few years ago now mandated maximum flight hours regardless of either how the pilots felt or any delay status. Under the old rules, pilots could finish a trip if the trip had been planned to be under the limit but exceeded them due to delays. Legal to start meant legal to finish. The new rules now allowed for no exceptions regardless of how the pilots felt. And they felt fine but it didn't matter.

Given the amount of time they already had on the clock, they were allowed exactly 19 minutes to get airborne or by law they'd have to taxi back to the gate. A truly tall order in Atlanta. Well they pushed back and taxied out to find only a few airplanes in front of them. But as luck would have it, another airplane had a problem and needed to go back to the gate. This caused more delay. As the clock clicked through 17 and then 18 minutes, the other plane cleared the runway. As Joe taxied over the runway threshold, the clock showed 19 minutes. It looked like they'd make it. Or so they thought.

You Are in Violation

Well they did take off and flew uneventfully up to Chicago. Upon landing, though, there was a phone message waiting for Joe to call scheduling. The scheduler informed him that he had taken 20 and not 19 minutes to takeoff and was therefore in violation of Federal Aviation Regulations. A criminal. This made him subject to enforcement action by the FAA, and the airline. That meant potential investigations, lawyers, and fines.

See, the onboard clock doesn't log the airplane airborne until the wheels leave the ground and the weight on wheels switch is triggered. It must've clicked over to 20 minutes sometime during the takeoff roll.

The scheduler advised Joe and his copilot to fill out a special safety form which under certain circumstances can provide immunity from punitive actions. The idea is that people won't be forthcoming with safety information if they are under threat of prosecution. So that's what they did. As of this writing, they haven't heard anything back and may be in the clear, but won't be sure for some time. The wheels of justice turn slowly but inevitably.

A Cynic is Born

If you've ever wondered why airline employees might seem just a bit grumpy at times, perhaps this little tale will help you to understand. Those who lean forward to make it all work can at times end up walking into a propeller as reward for their efforts. Should that happen too many times, you might find people who don't lean so far the next time around.

Joe and his copilot discussed calling it quits before going but just thought that the poor folks in back had had enough. The copilot even lived in Atlanta and therefore had extra incentive to call it a day. Heck, Atlanta is a crew base for Joe's airline so they would've been easily replaced...after another two hour delay getting reserves to the airport.

Well it all ended happily (I think), and 139 good folks got to their homes and/or meetings or weddings, or wherever they were going albeit a few hours late. That's what it's really all about.