Author: David Learmount

“Instagrammable cocktails” solution to bad Vueling pax reviews

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Learmount.com’s series on awful airline experiences today looks at a European carrier’s attempt to persuade booked passengers that their trips will not be as bad as the online reviews.

Holidaying passengers flying Vueling are promised that they can start winding down – or up – as soon as they’re airborne. Here’s the just-announced pan-Europe mix of goodies in the Barcelona-based carrier’s bespoke summer cocktail, dubbed “Vueling in the Clouds”: Cava, ratafia (a sweet dessert wine), gin, limoncello, and elderflower liqueur.

This chilled delight is topped, according to Vueling’s press release, with a “cloud of candyfloss” – presumably supplying the promised “instagrammability”. If that doesn’t put the stressed travellers in a good mood, nothing would.

Looking at Tripadvisor reviews for Vueling, nearly half score in the “terrible” category, and if you add the “poor” votes as well the total comes to well over half. Complaints range widely from delay, cancellation and overbooking to awful customer service. On the other hand, adding the “excellent” voters to the “good”, together they make up less than a third of the total. Very few fliers seem to tick “average”.

In “Overview”, Vueling scores 2.5 out of 5. The only categories where scores beat 2.5 are value for money, cleanliness and check-in/boarding. Even those, however, don’t exceed 3 out of 5. However, there are nearly 4,000 (out of about 35,000 reviews) who rated Vueling excellent, so at least some passengers get lucky.

Don’t kid yourself: luck is what gets you a “good” low-cost flight. You’re not expecting much, so if absolutely nothing goes wrong, the trip will feel excellent. On budget airlines margins for everything, commercially and operationally, are so tight that it is rare for everything to go right for every passenger.

Sad though it is to have to admit it, alcohol can indeed do the trick. A trip I took with EasyJet recently was pretty stressful at every stage from check-in to disembarkation, and I found myself shoe-horning my creaking frame into the tightest seat row I have ever experienced. Once seated, I felt awful about the prospect of the 3h flight ahead.

Normally, if I choose to drink on flights, my purpose is pleasure and relaxation. This time I wanted oblivion. One G&T later I was feeling slightly better, and after a second I felt ready to forgive EZY and its crew. It had worked, and EZY’s bar had profited.

That’s what Vueling hopes to achieve, but there are risks. Alcohol doesn’t always pacify passengers, and it’s the cabin crew who are left with the task of managing the results.

Maybe the answer is a general anaesthetic delivered via the cabin air conditioning. Meanwhile, “Vueling in the Clouds” will have to do.

On second thoughts, maybe it was irresponsible of me to make that suggestion, because Michael O’Leary (Ryanair’s boss) might yet sell it to you as an option!

AI 171: the system is beginning to leak under pressure

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Air India flight 171 crashed immediately after take-off from Ahmedabad on 12 June, and today, two weeks later, with no news about causes, the system is beginning to leak.

This is what happens naturally when information which people know is available to the authorities is withheld from the media and the public.

It’s easy for authorities like the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation to believe they can justify withholding information on the grounds that it’s very complicated, and they intend to release it quite soon anyway. Unfortunately for the DGCA, today’s media environment does not have that kind of patience any longer, especially in a case like this.

This fatal accident, a first for the Boeing 787 of any marque, killed 241 people on board and many on the ground. Whatever the cause was, it was highly unusual – maybe unique. For that reason, the industry and its regulators are desperate to know if there might be an unknown latent failure in the 787, so they can stop it happening again.

This pressure is what causes the system to leak. The Air India 171 flight data recorder has been downloaded by the National Transportation Safety Board for the DGCA at the Air Accident Investigation Bureau in Delhi, so some outstanding data will already be clear, even if not fully analysed yet.

Meanwhile the NTSB is sworn to secrecy according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation protocol which states that the nation in which the accident occured is responsible for the investigation. So in this case, the NTSB provides all its data to the DGCA, but as an agency of the nation in which the accident aircraft was designed, built and certificated, the NTSB has a particular responsibility to ensure that all operators of Boeing 787s throughout the world – there are about 1,000 of the type flying today – learn as fast as possible what, if anything, they should do.

That NTSB responsibility is a heavy one, but at the same time they want, if possible, to stick to the protocols to ensure the investigation proceeds calmly.

The NTSB obviously has to tell Boeing any details that are emerging. Then Boeing has an urgent duty to provide advice to 787 operators, particularly if any system failure detected might possibly repeat. This information will be received at Boeing by many engineers and technicians who must act rapidly to frame a plan for inspections and corrective action, then communicate with the operators, where an even larger group of airline technicians must carry out the Boeing advisories, or any directives that the Federal Aviation Administration may see fit to issue.

The pressure on the DGCA is of a different kind, and arguably less urgent. It is, after all, a regulator, a bureaucracy, with the responsibility to oversee the investigation and ensure it is conducted properly and according to law. It does, however, face the reality that a lot of highly relevant information is being shared right now by hundreds of experts all over the world, and the media knows it. So if the DGCA delays release of established facts, it will face increasing censure, especially if it delays release beyond one calendar month from the date of the accident.

A month is now firmly established as the time it should take for an air accident investigator to establish the basic facts of the case, and release a “preliminary factual report”. The final report can take more than a year.

Meanwhile, what of all those FDR facts whizzing around the world between experts at the manufacturer, the investigator, the world’s civil aviation authorities, and all the airlines that operate 787s? Well, they leak, of course, because they are important and everyone knows it. But most of the time the precise source of emerging information isn’t obvious, because individuals discussing them do not want to be recognised, so responsible journalists have to be careful what we do with what we hear.

What happens, however, is that it gradually becomes clear, among the plethora of opinions and guesswork always out there, which facts are beginning to establish themselves.

Some are simple, almost obvious. For example, the one emergency radio call made by the AI 171 crew said they had lost power, and an observation of the flight path almost immediately after unstick corroborates that puzzling fact.

But double engine failure immediately after take-off is almost unheard of, so what caused it? That is less obvious.

The DGCA has issued a list of checks it required Indian 787 operators to carry out. Unfortunately it lists checks that – mostly – are routine and would be carried out anyway.

The exception to that is the requirement to test the Electronic Engine Control System. These are computers called Full-Authority Digital Engine Controls (FADEC) that monitor the engines’ performance and react to demands by the pilots via the power levers or the flight control panel (autopilot input). These are vital, but have been established since the 1980s as highly dependable devices, and more reliable by far than the old mechanical connections.

So if both FADECs failed that would be extraordinary. In fact it makes more sense that something else failed or malfunctioned and disabled both FADECs. There is a lot of credible information gathering that backs this up, but since its precise source is not certain, I will not run it here.

Suffice to say we will soon learn what the problem was, because the DGCA knows it would look very bad to sit on it beyond 12 July 2025.

Enhanced checks for GEnx-powered Indian 787s

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India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued orders for “enhanced checks” to be carried out on Boeing 787s powered by GEnx turbofans registered in the country.

Those looking for clues as to the causes the authorities believe might be behind the disastrous Air India 787 crash at Ahmedabad on 12 June are likely to be disappointed, because the checks cover a broad spectrum of systems and components, many of which would be checked before all flights as a matter of routine.

But here is the instruction anyway.

Air India suffers the first fatal crash involving a 787

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Boeing’s long-range widebody 787 has been in service since 2013, and had some worrying technical problems in early service. Those, however, were corrected and it had been crash-free until now.

There has been very little information for investigators to work with since the Air India 787-8 crashed just after take-off from Ahmedabad today.

There are reports of an urgent Mayday call from the crew during the brief airborne period. The 787 appears to have reached a maximum height of about 600ft before descending, wings-level, in a nose-high attitude, to impact with buildings about 1.5nm from the runway’s end. An explosion followed, resulting from the large amount of fuel on board contacting hot engine parts when the crash breached the fuel tanks. The aircraft had been fuelled for the scheduled ten-hour flight to London Gatwick.

Powered by twin GE Aerospace GEnx engines, the 787-8 took off from Ahmedabad at 13:40 local time in good weather, carrying 242 passengers and crew. Initial reports from the site indicate that all on board died except for a single passenger who was thrown clear, and has survived. There are expected to be many casualties on the ground, but the numbers are not known at present.

Looking at a video of the last few seconds of the flight, the landing gear still remains down, the flaps look as if they are still at a take-off setting – but the video quality is so poor that cannot be stated with certainty – and the aircraft is in a steady descent which only ended in impact with buildings and the ground.

At this point after take-off, the gear would normally have been retracted and the aircraft would have been climbing rapidly. The steady descent actually witnessed in the video suggests the crew could not command sufficient power from the engines to keep the aircraft level, let alone to climb.

If that is true, what had happened to deprive the pilots of power from the engines? Had they suffered a multiple birdstrike that damaged both engines? No-one so far has reported a flock of birds in the departure path.

And failure of a single engine should not cause a crew to lose control of a modern airliner, even in the critical early climb phase. The video shows an aircraft that looks under control, but unable to climb.

Simultaneous engine failures for unconnected reasons simply do not happen, according to the entire history of aviation accidents. So if there was a failure of both, what could have caused it?

Frankly, we don’t know for certain in this case if engine power was the problem, but if you go looking for a potential cause of multiple engine failure, fuel contamination could do it. Again, however, history is against that potential cause in observed reality.

Could the pilots not demand the nose-up attitude they actually wanted because of some technical limitation? Well, that happened in the notorious 737 Max cases, but there is virtually no commonality in the way the 737 Series controls work and the manner in which the 787 Series operates.

So we have to wait for the investigators to report. These days, if the Indian investigators follow today’s recommended protocol, after about a month they will provide factual data of which they are certain, even if the final verdict is not yet clear. The aircraft’s “black boxes” – the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder – will provide data on what the aircraft actually did, and may throw some light on why it did it.

Meanwhile, be patient. This kind of accident is incredibly rare these days, and finding the truth behind it could not be more important.

Ladies and gentlemen, your pilot is unconscious

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An official incident report has confirmed that a Lufthansa Airbus A321 flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Seville, Spain on 17 February last year flew for 10min without any pilot supervision because the copilot, alone on the flight deck at the time, suffered a “sudden and severe incapacitation” which was defined in the report as a “seizure”.

An experience of my own many years ago was strikingly similar to this, so we will return to that subject in a moment after examining the events on Lufthansa’s Frankfurt – Seville flight last year.

Once Flight LH77X was established in the cruise over northern Spain at flight level 350 (35,000ft), carrying six crew and 199 passengers, the captain discussed pertinent weather conditions on the route with the copilot, who was the pilot flying, and then left the flight deck for a toilet break at 10:31:00 (UTC). Exactly 36 seconds after the captain had left the flight deck, the copilot suffered an epilepsy-like seizure, according to the Spanish accident investigation authority CIAIAC.

There was no immediate indication to the absent captain that anything was wrong, because the autopilot and autothrust remained engaged, despite some inadvertent switch selections by the copilot, and the fact that his right foot was pressing the rudder pedal hard – but fortunately not hard enough to cause the autopilot to trip out.

Meanwhile the sector controller for Spain’s Pau ATC region attempted three times to establish radio contact with LH77X, but received no reply.

At 10:39:00 the captain was ready to return to the flight deck, and he attempted a standard entry procedure, but there was no response from the copilot who would have had to approve it. After three further attempts he decided to employ the flight deck emergency access code, but while he was doing that the copilot, “pale, sweating and moving strangely”, opened the door from the inside.

The captain took control of the aircraft at 10:42:00, and at his request the cabin crew helped the copilot into the forward galley area, administered first aid, and obtained the help of a doctor from among the passengers. Meanwhile the captain decided to divert the aircraft to Madrid, the nearest airport, rather than continuing to Seville. The A321 landed safely and the copilot was taken to hospital, but released after examination.

The CIAIAC report quotes the definition of a “seizure” under these circumstances as “an abnormal paroxysmal excessive discharge of cerebral cortical neurons”. The copilot had no medical record of any such event previously, and said he had not experienced anything like it before. The medical judgement as reported by the CIAIAC is that, even had the copilot been tested specifically for such a condition, it would not have been detectable unless he had suffered a seizure in the presence of a medical observer.

The report’s main recommendation for the future is that, any time one of the pilots has to leave the flight deck, a member of the cabin crew should join the remaining pilot in the cockpit until the absent pilot returns. This is actually a previously established procedure which had fallen into disuse simply because incapacitation is so rare. But if it had been applied in this case, the cabin crew would have been able to alert the captain immediately about the copilot’s condition, and help him re-enter the flight deck quickly.

Meanwhile here is an account of my personal experience of airborne seizure – and precursors to it – that is highly relevant to cases like this one.

During my time as a qualified flying instructor (QFI) in the RAF I had gradually developed a condition which caused me to suffer minor seizures which, at the time, I did not recognise. They just felt like momentary mental “absences” that I attributed – for example – to having had a few drinks too many in the Officers Mess the night before. At the time I was in my late 20s, and had been flying pressurized jets and turboprops for eight years,

But my wife noticed these “absences”, and reported them to an RAF doctor who then approached me about them. I dismissed the matter as unimportant, and he did not pursue the issue further.

I recall having an “absence” while on short final approach to land a Jet Provost, solo, at RAF Linton on Ouse. I can’t actually remember the touchdown itself, but can remember rolling out at the end of the runway and turning onto a taxiway back to the pan, by which time I felt fine. But the thought of this event – now that I know more about my condition at that time – chills me.

Some months later I suffered a fully-fledged seizure during my sleep, and my wife called the doctor, who attended immediately. When I awoke I felt as if I had been beaten up.

I was taken to an RAF hospital and tested via electro encephalograph (ECG), and underwent brain scans. The diagnosis – given the evidence of the seizure – was that I was “probably” prone to epilepsy, but the condition was defined as “idiopathic”, meaning there was no medically detectable sign of it.

Continuing to fly professionally after that was not an option, so I left the RAF and became an aviation journalist.

At the time I believed my symptoms might have been caused by an sudden and unexpected application of quite high negative G during a practice aerobatic sequence flown by one of my student pilots. But the medics could find no sign of brain damage.

Over the decades since that time, in my job as an aviation journalist, I learned about “Aerotoxic Syndrome”, the name given to a condition caused by damage to the brain and nervous system by neurotoxic chemicals from aero engine lubricants and hydraulic fluids. High doses, gained via a “fume event” in the cockpit or cabin, can cause instant cognitive problems, although these may fade with time. But in other individuals, regular exposure to low doses of neurotoxins over a long time can gradually build up in the body, degrading the nervous systems of pilots and cabin crew.

These organophosphate chemicals, containing known neurotoxins, are delivered to the cockpit and cabin by aircraft air conditioning and pressurization systems, where the air is sourced directly from jet or turboprop engine compressors. Engine oil seals constantly leak fluid at low levels, so when the highly compressed – and therefore hot – air is delivered to the air conditioning system, it contains pyrolized neurotoxic aerosols. This is the air that the crew breathe.

In some individuals, that constant low-level poisoning builds up in their system until it causes visible symptoms of neurological damage. In other individuals, their systems gradually purge the chemicals, making symptoms last only a short time. But so far there is no way of knowing in advance which kind of system individual aircrew have.

In my case, today I no longer have even slight seizures, neither do I have to take any medication which, for more than 25 years, I had to do constantly to keep the symptoms at bay. Neurologists say, nonetheless, that they cannot declare me free of epilepsy or related neurological conditions because they still do not know enough about the subject to be certain. I suspect what has happened is that, since I left the RAF, I fly only occasionally, so my system has had time to purge itself of the neurotoxins that regular flying delivered to me.

I wish the Lufthansa copilot of flight LH77X on 17 February 2024 well, and hope he gets all the support he needs to continue his career, if that is deemed possible.

Meanwhile for him, and all those who want to know more about Aerotoxic Syndrome, FlightGlobal has a useful account here.

Trump rides to the rescue of US ATC

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“The ancient infrastructure is buckling,” says the President of the USA, Donald J Trump.

His subject is the state of America’s air traffic control (ATC) services, but he does have a solution: “We’d like to give out one big, beautiful contract, where they are responsible for everything from digging ditches to the most-complicated stuff”.

Trump has casually tossed a simple solution to a serious national infrastructure problem into someone else’s in-tray. But is this even in his gift?

The political in-tray belongs to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who agrees with Trump about the state of the air traffic management (ATM) system. Needing somebody to blame after the 29 January fatal mid-air collision between an army helicopter and a PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 that was on final approach to land at Washington DC’s Reagan airport, Duffy attributed the crash to “our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system”. Having delivered that verdict, he named his predecessor, President Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg as the man responsible for the state of US ATM.

Meanwhile, taking Trump at his word when he said “We’d like to give out one big, beautiful contract…”, the chief executive of a major US electronics company is – surely – soon going to feel the thud of a massive Concept of Operations document landing in his in-tray. So will Chris Rocheleau, the Trump-appointed Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. Rocheleau, an experienced FAA man, was given the job in January, but so far no actual Administrator has been appointed.

In the USA, the FAA is responsible for providing ATM. The Administration’s two main tasks are the safety oversight and regulation of the entirety of the USA’s aerospace and air transport industry, plus the provision of ATM and its operating infrastructure. Unusually, therefore, the FAA oversees the safety of its own ATM system.

Finance for the FAA comes from the Airport and Airways Trust Fund (AATF), financed in turn by the users of the system who are charged taxes on domestic passenger tickets, freight carriage charges, fuel, and international departures and arrivals. These proceeds, which fund nearly 90% of the FAA’s costs, don’t go direct to the FAA: congress annually appropriates funds from the AATF for the FAA – but in practice it quite often delays the appropriation, bringing aviation to a halt for a few days. The reality is that the FAA is a state-owned utility.

Returning again to Trump’s stated plan for “one big, beautiful contract” to upgrade America’s ATM and air navigation services, unless the President has the FAA in mind as contractor (unlikely), he must be referring to private industry.

So who are the industry candidates to take the lead in this “big, beautiful contract”? If Trump’s plan goes ahead, one company will lead, and the others will contribute. The line-up looks something like this: Raytheon, Thales, Adacel Technologies, L3 Harris, Honeywell, IBM, SpaceX (Starlink), and Verizon (telecomms). Trump’s “America First” policy might rule out Thales for being French, although it is huge, global, and has a big US division.

What will Duffy require of this agglomeration of US industrial expertise? Here are some extracts from public statements of intent he has made in the last few months about ATM modernisation: “Rebuilding some ATC towers, control centres and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facilities; new telecom, new fibre… We are going to have brand new radios in our towers, new radar for the ground, and new sensors on our tarmacs; all the front-facing equipment for controllers, all the back-end systems for controllers – all brand new; all new hardware… All new software… A new flight management system that will support flights of future air taxies – the electric vertical take-off and vertical landing aircraft now under development by numerous firms.”

What is more, all of this will be accomplished within four years, says Duffy. A bill to approve funding to the tune of $12.5 billion is working its way through the House of Representatives.

The sheer size of the task of raising this system from its current state of repair can be gauged from a recent event. On 28 April, controllers at the Philadelphia TRACON “temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear or talk to them”. That summary of the event was provided by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). Controllers at that facility are responsible for “separating and sequencing” jets flying to and from Newark airport, New Jersey, one of the three main airports serving New York city.

In the last few days the Philadelphia TRACON problems have recurred, according to Duffy, who resorts again to blaming Buttigieg. Meanwhile Newark airport is talking to airlines about reducing the flow-rate of traffic there for safety reasons. And the whole problem is exacerbated by a shortage of air traffic control officers (ATCO), which Duffy has acknowledged is nation-wide, and which the National Transportation Safety Board is examining as a possible contributory factor in the Washington DC collision.

Good luck to the FAA and its partner companies in this massive endeavour. They’ll need it!

Washington DC airspace will stay risky

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Activity in Washington DC’s urban airspace is now being constrained – just a little – by the Federal Aviation Administration following its discovery that the risk of collisions at or near airports across the whole USA is higher than the Agency had appreciated.

This fact emerged during the inquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FAA into the 29 January fatal mid-air collision between an army helicopter and regional jet airliner over the Potomac River near Washington Reagan airport.

This decision to reduce traffic, however, is likely to be challenged, and probably quite soon.

The appetite for instantly accessible air transport among DC denizens is insatiable because – they would tell you – of the febrile environment in which many of them conduct their political, lobbying, military or security business in the District. There is always high demand for flights to and from DC’s compact downtown airport close to the heart of the city, and it operates near capacity all the time. Reagan airport is right next to the west bank of the Potomac River, and the other side of the river directly opposite the airfield there is a confluence of urban helicopter routes (see chart below, helicopter routes marked in blue). In addition to that complexity, less than a mile to Reagan’s north west is the Pentagon, with its own heliport.

On the night of the collision the PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ was approaching Reagan from the south, tracking northward above the Potomac River, intent upon intercepting the instrument landing system (ILS) for runway 01 to land. Meanwhile the army Black Hawk was to the north of Reagan, tracking south along helicopter Route 1 to join Route 4.

Reagan tower asked the CRJ crew if they could accept a late runway change to land on 33, and because the crew could see the lights of both runways they accepted the change, broke off from the runway 01 ILS while still at about 1,700ft, and made a slight right turn to head north to intercept runway 33 ILS. Approaching ILS intercept, the CRJ turned onto final approach at about 500ft. As the CRJ descended through 300ft toward the runway the two aircraft collided.

The circumstances of the collision are not surprising given that these operations were carried out under night visual flight rules (VFR), and the visibility at the time was such that visual identification and separation was practical, if not actually wise. Asked by Reagan tower if they had the CRJ in sight, the Black Hawk crew said they did, although the fact of the collision makes it clear that they had misidentified the regional jet. The lights of the city and airport crowd around on all sides, making misidentification easy.

It has since transpired that the army helicopter was not operating its ADS-B-Out to enable identification by ATC, which it was supposed to do. Right now there is a behind-closed-doors argument going on between the army and the FAA about the military use of ADS-B-Out. The army doesn’t like its aircraft to be trackable, and the FAA insists they must be identifiable in environments like DC airspace. There was, however, no special security classification that demanded stealth for this particular helicopter flight, which was carrying out crew training.

Chair of the NTSB Jennifer Homendy remarked upon the failure of the FAA to respond to the fact that the exact point at which the two aircraft collided had long been identified as a “high risk location”. This failure, she said, was “more than an oversight.” When it was published in early March, the NTSB’s preliminary report on the accident revealed that, between October 2021 and December 2024, there had been more than 15,000 “close proximity events” between helicopters and commercial aircraft near Reagan.

It may be a useful exercise to gather statistics like that to back an argument, but anyone who operates the skies near Reagan knows how busy it has always been, and knows that such a level of traffic density involves considerable risk, especially at night or in poor visibility. The operational requirements for a helicopter heading south on Route 4 are that, when passing Reagan, it is supposed to be at 200ft or lower, so that any aircraft on approach to runway 33 should pass over the helicopter at a height between 300ft and 400ft. The margins for error are tiny, both for vertical separation between the two aircraft, and for obstacle clearance between the low-flying helicopter and ground obstructions, especially risky at night.

The FAA has now decided to close Route 4 whenever runway 33 is in operation. But what if, like the day of the accident, the tower decides at short notice to change a landing from runway 01 to 33? Can sufficient notice be given to helicopter crews using Route 4? The agency plans to allow some limited helicopter traffic on Route 4, but only for “urgent missions, such as lifesaving medical, priority law enforcement or presidential transport”. Unfortunately such flights over this city are common, and there is a question as to who should authorize them. Meanwhile ATC will be expected to prohibit fixed-wing aircraft from simultaneously using Reagan airport’s secondary runways – 15/33 and 04/22. That combination of responsibilities is quite an ask for controllers as busy as those at Reagan.

The FAA’s administrator Chris Rocheleau, at a Congressional Hearing on 27 March, obviously bidding for the Understatement of the Year Oscar, said: “Clearly, something was missed.” The NTSB’s Homendy pointed out that the DC airspace incident data is there to be easily gathered, in the form of voluntary safety reports of near-accidents of all kinds, but admits there is a lot of it. Rocheleau says the Agency is now looking into using artificial intelligence to sort through “tens of millions” of such reports to identify – and flag up – specific risks and trends.

Urban aviation activity like that in Washington DC’s airspace would not be permitted in similar European airspace. Instrument flight rules (IFR) would apply, even if visual separation was used as a backup in VMC. That is not to say Europe is right and America is wrong. Each State has a right to decide what level of risk it finds acceptable, and to determine ways of ensuring that its agreed standards are met, in the knowledge that the authorities will take the rap if they get it wrong.

That is the question Washington DC must answer: how much risk do its denizens want to take, and should they be allowed to take risks at that level? In the 29 January collision all the people on both aircraft died, but the machinery fell harmlessly into the river. In a future collision, that might not be so.

In DC, my money is on a win for the risk-takers who are not prepared to slow down.

Awful Airlines, says Which?

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Ryanair has been identified in the UK Consumers Association publication “Which?” as the air carrier against which airline awfulness is benchmarked, and it has found that – by one particular measure, British Airways is even worse.

Airlines examined in this survey are among those offering services to or from British airports, and Which? says it is based upon a survey of 6,500 passengers who travelled in the last year. The consumer champion reports “a gulf in standards between the best and the worst”, and it places Jet2 comfortably at the top of short-haul ratings, with Ryanair at the bottom (and Wizz almost as bad).

In long-haul, Singapore Airlines tops the league, with British Airways firmly at the bottom of the nineteen carriers listed, and Air Canada close to it. Indeed, the mighty American Airlines scores much the same as BA, but can claim a Customer Score of 65% against BA’s 62%.

Which? scores all the airlines on 12 categories across the service spectrum. In each category airlines can win from one to five stars, and an overall customer score out of 100. As an example, Jet2 (short-haul) earned five stars for customer service, four in several categories, and in none of the cateories did it win fewer than three stars. Ryanair, on the other hand, didn’t earn more than two stars for anything, and scored one for boarding, seat comfort and food.

Asked by Which? to comment on the survey results, Ryanair had this to say: “Ryanair this year will carry 200m passengers…Not one of our 200m passengers wish to pay “higher prices” as Which? falsely claim.”

Indeed, Ryanair has always been totally unapologetic, as I pointed out in my recent obituary for enjoyable air travel “Surly Bonds (Part 2)”. Quote: “One of the industry’s extant personalities, Ryanair’s chief exec, Michael O’Leary, almost encourages the impression that he chuckles at the pain he can persuade his passengers to undergo to knock a Euro or two off their fare! They just keep coming, he crows. And he’s right, they do – in ever larger numbers!”

But what excuses can British Airways field? It scored lower even than Ryanair on its response to customers who ask for assistance of any kind. Meanwhile on short-haul its highest score was three stars, with a mere two for boarding, seat comfort, food and value for money. On its long-haul routes BA earned four stars for its booking process, but only two on seat comfort, food, cleanliness and value for money.

The UK flag carrier responded: “This research from Which? is entirely at odds with comments from the hundreds of thousands of customers who we know do travel with British Airways and then tell us about their experience.” BA then, in a style reminiscent of recent UK politicians attempting to mitigate dire poll results, lists all the investment it has recently made in cabins and customer service, finally adding: “This [feedback] is also reflected in a recent independent study from Newsweek, which surveyed 17,000 people who voted us their Most Trusted Airline Brand.”

Great brands – and British Airways was indeed a great brand not long ago – can survive a period in the doldrums, but trust can quickly be squandered.

This blog has already vented about the deadly tediousness of air transport today, and the complacent acceptance by the industry of mediocre standards. Flying used to be considered a glamorous and exciting mode of travel, and could be again if spiced with a little imagination.

If that imagination is not invested, the air travel industry will be self-limiting, and environmentalists will be able to celebrate its shortcomings.

Musk’s DOGE starts chopping at the FAA

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) union says 133 of its members at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have just been fired following a review of the agency by the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). They include aeronautical information managers, who update domestic and international information about the whole aviation environment, including routes, charts, procedures and flight paths, and maintenance mechanics, who maintain air traffic control facilities.

Others sacked include aviation safety assistants, who maintain office records, and environmental protection specialists, who evaluate environmental impacts, ensure compliance with environmental requirements and monitor environmental protection plans. The latter are believed to be particularly threatened by DOGE.

In the case of the FAA, Elon Musk, appointed by president Trump as head of the DOGE, is responsible for finding areas where he believes efficiency can be improved or costs cut, and for reporting these to the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Duffy has since commented, in response to the PASS report on dismissals, that the FAA employs 45,000 people, and those few dismissed were all staff on probation.

As for the acknowledged long-term shortage of air traffic controllers, he blames this on his predecessor at the DoT, Pete Buttigieg, whom Duffy also blamed for doing nothing about “our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system”. Finally, he alleges that the FAA’s budget is being used as “a slush fund for the green new scam and environmental justice nonsense”.

Duffy did not mention any remedies for President Donald Trump’s publicly stated theory as to why a mid-air collision recently took place over the Potomac River.

Trump, Musk and the FAA

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Just as President Donald Trump rushed to claim that the 29 January mid-air collision over the Potomac River was the result of air traffic control incompetence resulting from the Federal Aviation Administration’s application of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies in controller recruitment, so others have lined up to point out that there has been an unusual cluster of serious US fatal air accidents since his appointment as POTUS.

Anyone with a brain knows that neither claim has any causal connection with reality.

But I am serving notice today that this blog will examine any proposals that emerge from the Trump-appointed DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) regarding the funding or reorganization of the FAA, and I invite senior executives and employees of the FAA, the airlines and general aviation bodies to report on substantive changes ordered by DOGE by responding to this blog.

Like others who care about maintaining and advancing aviation safety, I am wary of politically-inspired tinkering with an important oversight agency by leaders who have no expertise in the management of aviation safety. Trump’s first lieutenant Elon Musk, a man of many talents, has been entrusted with heading DOGE. He has a businessman’s appetite for risk-taking.

As Boeing acknowledges, business skills wielded by those for whom safety and quality control is an important concern, but whose primary objective has become shareholder returns, can get the balance wrong and damage both.

The USA has led the post-war world in advancing civil aviation safety, with the FAA being its general and the Flight Safety Foundation its standard-bearer. If the FAA’s ability to oversee industry safety performance and to manage the USA’s airspace is diminished in the name of “efficiency”, it affects global aviation, so the world will be watching with its own interests at heart. The FAA is an agency, a public service, it is not a business.

This appeal for reader feedback will have to be carefully managed, because at this stage the proposed Trump/Musk policies inspire apprehension without advancing any substance worthy of appraisal.

But soon actions will loom, and appraisal must begin.