rickair7777

Yes, mainline pilot groups let the RJ's go, essentially an industry wide C-scale. 9/11 and bankruptcies then turned up the gain on the outsourcing.

flensr

They're spending too much time and energy focusing on labor issues and not enough on actually building products people want to buy. The time to announce a 737 replacement was at least 6 months ago. Even today, a bold announcement that they're going to be in position to ride the covid recovery surge with a new innovative narrow body would be welcomed. Instead, they're worrying about counting their silverware while the house burns down.

Better than just one 737 replacement (perhaps with twin aisles?) would be a new narrow body plus some targeted and tangible movement towards actually bringing a new design concept to the market. Blended Wing Body is one possibility. They had a huge amount of buzz over the 787 innovations and now would be an incredibly appropriate time for them to announce that they're taking everything that WORKED with the 787, and will apply it to a new generation of designs that will be products airlines can buy within 5 years. That would work. Instead, their only corporate buzz is... what?

9mikemike

I thing Boeing and most private employers understand a couple of things.
Any “covid recovery surge” will be completely swallowed by a recession/depression.
Doing business with employees in any state where socialism is taking hold is the death knell.
My guess is that many businesses will retrench and retool in states that support private industry and they will be very successful
post recession. Boeing is likely on track for at least one new airframe by the end of the decade if not two..That timing seems perfect for where the market should be

symbian simian

Almost always agree with you, am at NK, have family at SWA. Completely wrong. Not a single NK airplane has ended up in a Burbank gas station or crushed a car in Midway. Just talked to a SWA pilot after my first flight into SNA, and he told me he landed max weight because they tankered fuel..............
Not trying to start a fight here, but that is one comment you need to delete.

flensr

Lots of people getting bent about that so I'll keep it up.

BECAUSE

The post I was responding to was the haha-only-serious sim profile about how everyone flying the 737 is at constant risk of running off the runway, so a Boeing sim training program should include a laundry list of every 737 that's gone off the end. It was interesting timing, because the most recent news about a plane ending up in the mud was a 320. It had nothing to do with Spirit except that they were simply the most recent crew to end up in the mud, and everything to do with the fact that off-road excursions in an airplane are rarely the fault of the aircraft. Now... If the post I was responding to was explicitly directed at SWA and I posted "hey look spirit puts them in the mud too!!!!!1111one one one" then yea that would be out of line, and I wouldn't do that because, well duh. The fact that the incidents listed in the joke sim profile were largely (all? I didn't care to check) from SWA wasn't something I really cared about.

Maybe it would have been more clear (and appropriate?) if I'd made a cute meme about every A320 mishap and how an Airbus sim profile should include things like "remember to add power when you do a go-around during an airshow flyby", "don't go around after landing gear up" and other such things, but honestly I thought the one I was responding to was kind of disrespectful and didn't want to repeat it. Rather I posted that incident because it happened very close to the stupid post I was responding to and I figured one example of a 320 in the mud would make my point that the 737 isn't any different from any other plane in the sense that it is only as safe as WE (as a collective industry) make it.

If I wanted to snipe at Spirit, there are a couple of incidents I could have used. PM me if you really want to know, because I don't think this is an appropriate forum. But I didn't want to stoop to that level and one of them involved *me* (oops).

The fact that people knee-jerk reacted to think it was some sort of peepee measuring contest between SWA and Spirit, or some sort of weak "hey you guys do it too!!!!1111one" comeback just shows how the nature of forum posts guarantees that when people mis-understand a post, they'll often immediately jump to the worst possible interpretation and then add some sort of sinister motivation to their conclusion.

So, no. My post will stay up, because it was aimed at the nonsense 737 sucks post and I can't help it if some people assumed the first post was a snipe at SWA and because of that assumed my post was a swipe at Spirit.

Spirit pilots are highly professional and I still count myself lucky to have had a chance to fly with them. They taught me this job and I'm grateful. I had my one ground taxi mishap over 20 yrs ago so I know it can happen to anyone without warning and I'm not quick to point fingers at the crew.

flensr

Again in shorter form, my post wasn't SWA vs. Spirit. Rather it was pointing out that there have been plenty of 320 mishaps just as egregious as the 737, and the associated memes are disrespectful. Spirit's excursion off the paved surface just happened right then and they fly the 320, so...

Yes, SWA tankers into MDW and SNA year round, including in the '800. Also into BUR. My least comfortable landing in a large aircraft was a heavy 800 tankering fuel to MDW and landing in the snow. Landing data showed that there was a reasonable stopping distance margin, so I made damn sure I landed on speed in the touchdown zone and we stopped with plenty of runway remaining. Still, none of the pilots I've flown with seem happy about it and the company making decisions like that is a source of contention between planning and flight ops. Mostly we comply and try to not foul it up, and most captains make their own experience based risk decision on whether or not to continue or hold, divert, go around, offload/onload fuel before departure, etc. The verdict still isn't out about that practice, and some recent procedural changes will highlight it further (internally of course).

Anecdotally, a few years ago *someone high up* allegedly exclaimed "so you're the one wasting the company money" when flight ops informed him that dispatch's intent to file every flight at max altitude regardless of wx or gross weight wouldn't work. What do you think the response would be if flight ops requested that we quit tankering fuel into short runways where we ALREADY put one off the end? Nobody believes they'd be thanked for bringing up a thoughtful point about assuming unnecessary risk which violates our first RRM principle, because another of our RRM principles says it's ok to balance risk against benefits, at appropriate supervisory levels. Apparently SWA has looked at the issue and decided that tankering gas into MDW, SNA, and BUR saves enough money to justify the risk and aircraft wear and tear associated with safely landing a heavier than necessary aircraft on our shortest runways.

We can take measures to mitigate it (hold, divert, offload/onload fuel, go around etc) but the practice itself is the result of a business decision that considered the risks and benefits and made the choice to dump the final risk assessment into the cockpit during line ops. And we know, historically, how that works out for everyone not just SWA.

Varsity

The gain was always there, baked in from the start. Mainline pilots rolling in cash were too naive to see it.

rickair7777

Tankering to max weight to a contaminated, runway-length limited destination sounds like a bad idea.

That depends on the reported runway conditions equaling actual runway conditions AND that the actual braking action equals or exceeds the *assumed* braking action for the reported conditions.

Significant uncertainty in there. Kind of eating into your regulatory buffers, so then you need to be good and just a little lucky.

HalinTexas

This dick comparison ****e has got to stop. I've flown with enough airlines in enough countries, and watched enough flight ops form a jumpseat, and trained enough pilots is that everybody's scat stinks. You are all capable of screwing up. No airline is immune.Train, focus, discipline and standard.

So, just stop.