The 737 Max - woe woe thrice times woe but is it?

Today's word is TRAINING.

I have opined elsewhere on my feelings about the Max and the reasons for its difficulties. So I wont be rehashing today (unless someone asks) as to why I feel the good people at Boeing messed up.

Instead I would like to focus on the topic of what the impact of when (not if) the 737 Max returns to the skies.

So here is the thing. if we calculate all the bad news from the Max grounding we could be talking about terrible things like the $30+ Billions knocked off Boeing's stock market value. Not to mention their $5 Billion hit they took in 2019 Q2's numbers. But let me posit that its one of the best things to happen to airlines recently. Why? Because when your load factors are at 80%+ your margins go through the roof. Couple this with the theoretical number of aircraft from Jet Airways, WOW etc and you can see that the slack has been taken up and the airlines across the pond are doing nicely thank you and domestically fabulously (except for WN who is probably taking it in the nuts). Oh but wait... who are the real losers here? Yup you and me. Travelling public who are paying over the odds. But just one tiny little thing. Boeing is still churning out Maxes at the rate of 42 a month. By my reckoning that will be about 300 ships by the time November rolls around. Dumping that number in the market in December will be very interesting. Come January the blood bath will be palpable. So spare a thought for the poor Chinese leasing companies. And if anyone things that there will be instant certification simultaneously- think again.

It is no mystery that when the Max returns it will face a series of challenges. I don't think that we should waste valuable reading time debating the nomenclature. It will always be the 737 Max no matter what the brand mavens at the airlines or Boeing apply to it. The bigger issues are how to instill in both the user community and the flying public confidence in the equipment and system.

The numbers are astonishing as to the mammoth task ahead of bringing the Max back into the regular world of airlines. The days of wonderfulness and joy will soon be tempered with the enormity of the task of retraining. And the cost.

Let's do some simple mathematics. A typical direct round number is that each 737 Max will require 5 crews. In December without taking anything else - that translates into the 380 aircraft ( originally grounded) and then the additional aircraft that will be produced through December which is currently grounded and future produced) That's another 340-350 ships.  Let's use a nice round number. 4,000 pilots who have to be retrained. A full retraining programme of 5 weeks to transition to a new type (which is a fair assumption to make). That is 400 Man years of training that will be required.  2018's Simulator census - found here https://www.flightglobal.com/asset/24074 - registration required but not a paywall. Lists just 14 worldwide. I will let you speculate as to whether that's enough or how long it would take to run those 4000 folks through a programme.

Hmmm bummer.

But let's go further... where are they? Today there is but ONE (let me say again that is a single) 737 Max simulator in all of North America. (Talk about hoist on your own petard Boeing). Its at Air Canada and there is a nice picture of it above. (this comes from a great article about it for Avgeek types seen here: https://pizzainmotion.boardingarea.com/2017/12/20/aviation-geek-dream-boeing-flight-simulator/ ).  By now its common knowledge that the airframer went all in on saying that additional resources for training would not be required. A few hours with an iPad should have done it. Couple that with the majority of Maxes will go as replacement aircraft not new ships flying new places. Voila the recipe that drove a distinct lack of interest in Simulators for the Max. By now there should be heaps of them all over the place. In particular at the other major North American airlines who are Max customers - Westjet, American, Southwest and United. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Air Canada is going to be whispering in the ear of the regulator in Canada https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/services/aviation.html about that need. And they will definitely be listening.

For the FAA - this is going to be tough going. The coziness between the Airframer and the regulator has been highlighted elsewhere. Re-certifying the simulators to be an accurate reflection of the aircraft's behaviour will not be easy. Something the NY Times figured out early. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/business/boeing-737-max-simulators.html

All this points to a difficult conclusion. Maxes will be released for flying but will only impact the market after a lot of re-training and those resources will be in extremely short supply for quite a while.

You have been warned.

UPDATE25 July 2019 : Today, WN removed Maxes from their flight schedule till Jan 5 2020. Given that the Xmas/End of year rush disruption would not be possible in any time frame - this is a wise move and has been greeted by collective sighs of relief across the Airverse. 

The chances of any airline introducing 737 Maxes before end of the year is now remote. Given that both United and American just announced cancellations through October and November respectively 2 weeks ago - this gives some credence to my core belief that the Max will not be back in revenue service until early 2020.

Chill Out Everyone on Ryanair's FA/Pilot Idea...

OK so read on...

There is a huge hue and cry over the proposal from Mr O'Leary on replacing the second pilot in a 737.

So let's analyze the issue and be sure we all understand it.

Let's deal with the current regulations. Cockpit distraction is a problem. So there is indeed a regulation that covers this. In 1981 the FAA enacted FAR 121.542 and FAR 135.100 to help curb the number of accidents related to cockpit distraction or interference. Commonly known as the "sterile cockpit rule," these regulations specifically prohibit crew member performance of non-essential duties or activities while the aircraft is involved in taxi, takeoff, landing, and all other flight operations conducted below 10,000 feet MSL, except cruise flight. NASA has some interesting details on this.

The issue of cockpit distraction achieved a lot of attention after the two Northwest Pilots overflew their destination which chatting about non-flying issues. In the past few years other examples of distraction of a different sort has emerged with a video of 2 pilots on board a French Airliner interacting with a Stewardess. If you want to find it - go look at the Sun UK news paper.

The Ryanair's CEO perspective is that on short flights the need for the second pilot is not great and during the critical moments when a second pilot is required a flight attendant can perform that function.

In all hoopla people have not dealt with the issue which is that there is nothing to prevent this. IF.... the Flight Attendant is a fully qualified person to engage in cockpit activity and then is able to fulfill other functions - why not?

Of course it is a little silly as which pilot qualified and current rated person would ever want to be hired as a FA? However stranger things have happened, Just this past June such an incident happened when a pilot on board an AA flight became incapacitated. Just by chance a pilot trained (but not current) Flight Attendant was among the crew. 61 year old Patti De Luna assisted in the process of landing an AA 767 in Chicago O'Hare - not one of the easiest airports in the world.

The simplest an easiest way to view it - is that as long as safety is not compromised then there should be no commercial reason as to why this could not be the case.

But since that is neither practical nor commercially viable - the idea is not going anywhere. So people - just chill out!

Cheers

Pilot Unions Scupper WN/F9 Deal

You have to admire the way unions seem to shoot themselves in the foot.

I think most of us had hoped and believe that this sort of union behavior was a think of the past. Apparently not so. Thus the US bankruptcy court ruled yesterday as the WN bid included a requirement for the 2 pilot unions to agree.

So here is the bottom line. F9's pilots (700 of them) and WN's pilot's (6,000) of them could not agree on the seniority issue. Thus the bid failed. Thus F9 ends up with a value of 108 million from Republic Airlines Group vs the much larger cash bid from WN.

I think it's high time that someone tackled the seniority problem with a set of rules that makes sense. The simple answer would be merge them based on suitable dates. However a bad merger could result which was the situation at the Pan Am/National merger. So the best answer is to put in a single set of rules that is based on COMPETENCY and hours in the cockpit rather than the date of hire.

And to the two pilot unions. Shame on you both.

However there is a little bit of silver lining in this. Frontier stays independent (which was my preference if anyone was asking) and the team at F9 stay intact and will continue to keep prices in check! So perhaps the real winner will be the consumer. Zut Alors!

Cheers

The Winter of Discontent 2 - American Pilots are unhappy

I wrote recently about the Pilot Troubles at United. Well... this is not the only group of unhappy people.

This is from the Dallas Morning News Travel Blog this morning...

The union representing the staff of the American Airlines' pilots union plans to picket today to generate attention to the fact that its members have gone 417 days without a new contract.

The Allied Pilots Staff Employee Association (APSEA) -- which represents 23 employees of the Allied Pilots Association (APA), plans to picket from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at the APA headquarters.

OOPS....

Can we say coming up chaps - at an airport near you - unhappy pilots.