Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Qantas celebrates debut of A380 flights to Texas

Harrriet Baskas, special for USA TODAY 3:55 p.m. EDT September 30, 2014

Dallas/Fort Worth Airport fire trucks give a water cannon salute to a Qantas A380 as it taxis to its gate during its inaugural landing at the airport on Sept. 29, 2014.. (Photo: AP Images for Qantas)

DALLAS/FORT WORTH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT -- Qantas' superjumbo Airbus A380 is now flying to Dallas/Fort Worth.

Qantas Flight 7 departed Sydney Airport for Dallas/Fort Worth Monday, giving the Qantas the honor of operating the longest A380 flight in the world.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said using the A380 offers the carrier both greater fuel efficiency and a 10% increase in the number of seats it offers on its route between Sydney and Dallas. Qantas previously flew a Boeing 747-400 on the route.

TODAY IN THE SKY: Qantas bumps out Delta for longest flight to depart USA

Joyce touted the A380 service between Sydney and DFW as offering "direct access right in the heart of the U.S. with over 50 connections to all U.S. major cities within four hours, including Orlando, Boston and Houston."

Qantas is able to offer those connections through American Airlines, a member of the oneworld frequent-flier that also includes Qantas. In addition, American and Qantas have a codeshare alliance that allows them to sell seats on connecting flights operated by the other carrier.
To celebrate the new service milestone, Qantas' A380 received a traditional water-cannon salute as it arrived at DFW.

Qantas painted the A380 operating its maiden A380 flight to Texas with a special livery: the iconic kangaroo on the airplane's featured a Stetson cowboy hat and a blue neckerchief decorated with American-style stars. A "G'Day Texas" emblem was added to the forward doors.
And through Oct. 5, Qantas' in-flight menu from Sydney to DFW will includes U.S.themed dishes, beverages and sweets.

First-class passengers can order a 28-day Nolan dry-aged cowboy rib eye, with mac and cheese on the side. Fliers in the business class can dine on chipotle port tortillas while Premium Economy passengers can munch on Texas hot dogs with chili black beans.

And through March, coach-class passengers can snack on a variety of American favorites, including Dr. Pepper, A&W sodas, Route 66 Root Beer, pulled beef sliders and Jolly Ranchers hard candy, which a flight attendant on board the flight said was quite popular in Australia.

Qantas now flies six round-trip A380 flights each week (every day except Tuesday) on the route between Sydney and DFW. The Sydney to DFW flight (QF7) is scheduled to take 14 hours and 50 minutes. The DFW to Sydney flight (QF8) is scheduled at 15 hours and 30 minutes.

The Qantas A380 has 484 seats: 14 in first class, 64 in business, 35 in Premium Economy and 371 regular coach.

Among those on Qantas maiden A380 flight to DFW was Qantas Ambassador and certified pilot John Travolta, who greeted arriving passengers as they exited the A380 in Texas.

Speaking to reporters at DFW, Travolta said he began collecting old airline tickets and old airline schedules as a child.

He said he became enthralled with Qantas early on because it "has a long history of offering some of the world's longest flights."

"It's really quiet and spacious," he said about his experiencing flying as a passenger on the A380.

The secrets of the desert aircraft ‘boneyards’

By Stephen Dowling 18 September 2014

BBC

(USAF) Tucson Arizona

What happens when an aircraft is no longer needed? In the desert dry of the south-western US, vast ‘boneyards’ are homes to thousands of aircraft, Stephen Dowling writes.

If you find yourself driving down South Kolb Road in the Arizona city of Tucson, you’ll find the houses give way to a much more unusual view; rows of military aircraft, still and silent, spread out under the baking desert sun. On and on, everything from enormous cargo lifters to lumbering bombers, Hercules freighters and the F-14 Tomcat fighters made famous in Top Gun.

This is Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, run by the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (309 AMARG). It’s home to some 4,400 aircraft, arranged over nearly 2,600 acres (10.5 sq km). Some look like they were parked only a few hours ago, others are swathed in protective coverings to keep out the sand and dust. Inside the facilities' hangars, other planes have been reduced to crates of spare parts, waiting to be sent out to other bases in the US or across the world to help other aircraft take to the air again. To those who work here, Davis-Monthan is known by a far less prosaic name, one more in keeping with the Wild West folklore from Arizona’s earlier days. They call it The Boneyard.

Davis-Monthan is not the only aircraft boneyard in the world, but it is by far the biggest. The climatic conditions in Arizona – dry heat, low humidity, little rain – mean aircraft take a lot longer to rust and degrade.

An aerial view of Davis-Monthan, including partly disassembled B-52 bombers (SPL)

What’s more, underneath the top six inches of dirt topsoil is a clay-like sub layer called caliche. This extremely hard subsoil allows the planes to be parked in the desert without the need to construct expensive new parking ramps, according to the 309 AMARG.

Planes are expensive things to build and maintain, but even at the end of their flying lives they still have their uses. But it takes a lot of room – and a lot of money – to store these unused planes in the kind of hangars needed to keep them warm and dry. It’s much cheaper to store them in the kind of conditions found in Tucson. That’s the reason why many of the world’s biggest aircraft boneyards are found in the dry deserts of the south-western US.

But it’s not simply a case of landing a plane at Davis-Monthan, parking it in one of the rows and handing someone the keys. Many of the aircraft are considered inactive, but have to be able to be brought back into service if need be. That takes a lot of work.

Broken bombers
The Boneyard’s workers have an exhaustive checklist. Any planes that have served on aircraft carriers have to be thoroughly washed to get rid of corroding salt. All aircraft have their fuel tanks and fuel lines drained, and flushed with a light, viscous oil similar to that used in sewing machines to ensure all the moving parts are lubricated. Then they must have any explosive devices – such as the charges that activate ejection seats – safely removed. Then, any ducts or inlets are covered with aluminium tape and the aircraft are painted over with a special easily strippable paint – two coats of black, and a final white layer to help deflect the fierce desert sun and keep the aircraft relatively cool.

Jets like these F/A-18s may be used to provide spare parts to keep other aircraft flying (US Air Force) Tucson

Aircraft are kept at various levels of restoration – some are kept in as close-to-working order as possible if they are deemed to be needed to fly at a later date, while others are partially dismantled. Some of the aircraft stored at Davis-Monthan include retired B-52 bombers, aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. As part of strategic arms limitation treaties with the Soviet Union, the B-52s were stored with their wings removed and placed next to the plane – allowing Soviet satellites to verify that the bombers had been taken out of service.

Others are used for spare parts, with the components sitting in the aircraft until they’re needed. On site is a smelter, where some of the surplus aircraft are shredded and totally recycled.

And with the original assembly lines of most of these aircraft long-since mothballed, Davis-Monthan is home to some 400,000 piece of tooling and machinery needed to create specific aircraft parts. Aircraft all over the world, not just those flown by the US, contain parts from the base’s enormous stockpile.

Post-Soviet boneyards
“As long as there are aircraft flying, military and commercial aircraft boneyards will always be necessary to keep other planes in the air,” says aviation author Nick Veronico, who has visited Davis-Monthan as well as the Mojave facility and other boneyards in the desert states.

After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, irradiated Soviet helicopters like this Mil Mi-6 were stored in a giant boneyard (Phil Coomes/BBC)

“Each of the storage yards typically performs a variety of functions from storing aircraft that are temporarily out of service but expected to return to the fleet, to reclaiming useable parts which are inspected, overhauled, and then held until needed by active aircraft, to dismantling of the aircraft carcasses. These functions go hand-in-hand and are part of the lifecycle of an aircraft.

“I have flown on aircraft that have gone to the boneyard and provided parts to the fleet,” he says. “I’ve had the opportunity to watch parts being removed from a plane, and then having flown on an aircraft flying with salvaged parts – the exact parts I saw being removed, preserved, and installed.”
There are boneyards in Russia that contain some of the old Soviet Union’s military aircraft, but it’s fair to say the aircraft here are not in any fit state to return to the skies. The former bomber base at Vozdvizhenka, some 60 miles north of Vladivostok in far-eastern Russia, used to be home to Soviet supersonic bombers. After the end of the Cold War the aircraft were surplus to requirement – and simply left where they were parked. The once-secretive base in now abandoned, and this ghostly bomber fleet now poses for photographers who clamber through the rusted fences.

At Mojave Airport, more than 1,000 airliners ended up in the California desert after their flying days (Getty Images)

Another post-Soviet boneyard is in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – the area evacuated after the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine. The vehicles used to help clean up the disaster area were contaminated with radiation. A line of giant Soviet helicopters has been left to rust in the fields. BBC News pictures editor Phil Coomes visited the site in 2006, on the 20th anniversary of the disaster. “After the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, many of the contaminated vehicles used in the clean-up operation were placed in graveyards in the vast exclusion zone around the reactor.

Some remain there today,” he says. “The largest graveyard, Rassokha, [is] where the remains of helicopters, military and civilian vehicles and fire engines are slowly rusting away. It’s a vast site, but over the years parts have been reclaimed for spares but contamination levels vary, so souvenir hunters would be wise to keep away.” Despite the danger of radiation poisoning, many of the helicopters have been stripped of useful parts; their skeletal remains dwindle with every passing year.

In eastern California, Mojave Airport carries out a similar role for civilian aircraft that have reached the end of their operational lives. Airliners have been flown here for decades, and stored in the dry desert heat until broken up for scrap.

Some aircraft end their days being hacked to pieces to be sold as scrap, like these Russian-built Ilyushins in Belarus (AFP/Getty Images)

“Driving across California’s high desert, the airliner boneyard at Mojave airport is visible from miles away,” writes aviation photographer Troy Paiva, who photographed airliners here in the 1990s and 2000s before security concerns made it a no-go area. “The long rows of faded tails seem to stretch to the horizon.”

The Royal Aeronautical Society’s Keith Maynard says aircraft are less of a headache to dismantle than other heavy transport. “I’m not sure how easy an aeroplane is to dismantle, but what goes together comes apart, and there’s a lot less heavy or dangerous materials associated with aircraft than ships.” But as less and less recyclable metal goes into making modern planes, the epic scale of the desert boneyards may be reduced. “In the future, the use of composites may make life more difficult to deal with final disposal, but there are industry protocols that are addressing the issue. But bone-yard parking will still be useful when demand fluctuates. Indeed, the numbers of parked airliners is often a good sign of slump or recovery, and is monitored by analysts.”

Back in Tucson, the long rows of planes at Davis-Monthan sit in the Arizona heat. For some, the sun-baked desert is a kind of aviation retirement home. For others, their flying days are not quite over.

U.S. orders airlines to replace cockpit displays on 1,300 Boeing airplanes

2 hours ago

(Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is requiring airlines to replace cockpit displays on more than 1,300 Boeing Co airplanes to avoid interference from Wi-Fi and cellular devices.

Airlines will need to replace certain cockpit display units made by Honeywell International Inc used on Boeing's 737 and 777 jets within five years, according to an FAA document. (http://bit.ly/1qTpOYb)

The FAA said the display units were susceptible to interference from Wi-Fi frequencies. Independent tests conducted by the agency and Boeing both showed blanking on the screens when Wi-Fi devices were used near them.

The displays are also susceptible to transmissions from mobile phones, weather radar and mobile satellite communications, the FAA said.

Honeywell spokesman Steve Brecken said no display units had blanked in-flight due to Wi-Fi interference.

"The only know occurrence was during a developmental test conducted on the ground. We worked with Boeing and addressed any concerns in 2012 with new display hardware," he said.

The display units provide crucial flight information including airspeed, altitude and navigation information, and cost thousands of dollars each. Replacing all the units is expected to cost airlines nearly $14 million, according to the FAA document.

"Boeing made these recommendations to operators in November 2012. The FAA's directives make them mandatory," Boeing spokesman Miles Kotay said.

A number of airlines and Honeywell asked the FAA to delay or reduce the effects of the directive, but the regulator said the move was necessary to avoid loss of information during take-offs or landings, which could result in "loss of airplane control at an altitude insufficient for recovery."

(Reporting by Ramkumar Iyer and Supriya Kurane in Bangalore; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Stephen Coates)

Monday, September 22, 2014

Germany's Lufthansa Offers In-Flight Meals for Home Delivery

MAINZ, Germany - In-flight fine dining may sound like an oxymoron to some, but Lufthansa is betting its meals are tasty enough that customers will want to eat them even when they aren't flying. The German airline has teamed up with an online supermarket to offer business class-fare for home delivery every Wednesday. The meals only need to be reheated. According to Max Thinius, a spokesman for supermarket Allyouneed.com, "a lot" of frequent fliers have already signed up for the service, although he did not say how many.

"Our customers on some days don’t want to cook, but also don’t want to use convenience products, so we approached Lufthansa to find a solution," Thinius said. This week's menu includes shin of beef, Chinese style, or Shak Navratan Indian vegetables. The meat option costs nearly $13 per meal, including delivery, while the vegetarian one is about $11.50. The initial pilot runs for eight weeks, but Thinius said there’s a good chance the firm will continue testing the product in the months ahead.

Beef filet steak and caramelized onion sauce, one of the meals on offer to fans of Lufthansa's in-flight food.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

American's Retirees Just Lost Their Place in the Free-Flight Pecking Order

By Justin Bachman September 10, 2014

(Updates with American Airlines declining to comment.)

More than two dozen retired American Airlines (AAL) flight attendants are suing their former employer over who gets to fly in empty seats.

A change made Wednesday to American’s employee travel benefits puts retirees behind current workers and their dependents for claims to vacant spots. The previous policy gave the same priority to current and former employees. American also reduced the number of free, one-way “buddy passes” given to retirees each year, from two dozen to eight; current workers receive 16 per year.
The dispute highlights one of the many complex employee issues involved in merging two large airlines.

The travel changes have enraged American’s former attendants, who have staged protests at the airline’s Texas headquarters, upbraided Chief Executive Doug Parker in June at the airline’s shareholder meeting, and barraged executives with e-mailed appeals to reverse the policy. Employees absorbed from the former US Airways have likewise been displeased that the merged airline eliminated seniority in boarding priority for workers, adopting American’s policy of first-come, first-seated.

The change places the retirees “behind at least 500,000 people, including current employees and their spouses/domestic companions and eligible children,” according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in a state court in Chicago. And the retirees behind the lawsuit claim money alone can’t compensate for stingier travel perks, instead arguing that free flights “are unique and have no monetary equivalent” (although the plaintiffs are still seeking monetary damages, too). The suit, which accuses American of breach of contract and deceptive business practices, seeks class-action certification to cover an estimated 20,000 retired flight attendants.

American declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The new American, which was formed in December, has about 700,000 people who fly for free as part of its “non-revenue travel” program. That group includes about 110,000 employees as well as more than 500,000 spouses, dependents, relatives, and friends. Even foreign-exchange students living with an American employee can take advantage of free flights.

Bachman is an associate editor for Businessweek.com.

Airlines Create Rush Hours, Crowds and Full Flights

American Is Bunching Up Flights in Miami to Create Peaks and Lulls

By Scott McCartney

Sept. 10, 2014 7:31 p.m.

Miami

American Airlines is making its hub here more hectic—on purpose.

Instead of spacing flights evenly throughout the day, American in August started bunching them together. The change restores an old format of "peak" scheduling, grouping flights into busy flying times followed by lulls when gates are nearly empty. After Miami International, American next year will "re-peak" schedules at its largest hubs in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Airlines shunned peak schedules at hubs more than a decade ago because they meant higher costs such as more people and equipment, created too many delays and forced passengers to sprint through terminals to make connecting flights. Recently, though, much of the industry has gravitated back to peaks and valleys as a way to fill seats and generate more revenue.

"An additional person per flight will make a difference," said Robert Isom, American's chief operating officer. The company has estimated it will gain $200 million more a year from re-peaking its schedules at hubs.

American's departure times are bunched together in bursts of activity. But travelers may have even less time to make flight connections or to eat. And, airlines, airports and federal agencies are re-evaluating how they manage baggage, cleaning crews and security checkpoints with the new highs and lows in foot traffic.

Peak scheduling packs planes better because it creates more possible itineraries. Under American's old schedule, a flight from Columbus, Ohio, to Miami might have had 20 possible connecting flights. After the Aug. 19 re-peaking it may have 45. That means more bookings on the Columbus flight, and more people on the connecting flights.

Miami flights have been fuller since the schedule change, said Marilyn DeVoe, American's vice president for Miami. United Airlines says most of its hubs use peak scheduling, except for ultra-crowded Newark, N.J. Delta Air Lines says its Atlanta hub has a fairly steady flow and hasn't fully re-peaked, but hubs such as Detroit, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City operate with busy times and down periods.

In Miami on a typical weekday, 42 flights depart between 9 and 10 a.m. Then between 10 and 11 a.m., only a handful is scheduled to take off. The process repeats during the day with 10 "banks" of flights that fill about 45 gates at a time.

There are added costs to re-peaking. American hired 67 more gate agents and 150 baggage handlers and other ground workers before the August change. It had to purchase more belt-loaders, dollies and tugs that push planes out from gates.

Some restaurants in the Miami airport say they've lost business because passengers no longer leisurely sit and eat meals.

La Carreta, a cafeteria-style food line and sit-down eating area, has seen a 7% to 10% drop in business since American started rearranging schedules. Sales at a food court operated by the same company are down 20%, and at another restaurant, down 25%.

"We've already had to cut back hours of some of our employees," said Raquel Benitez, unit manager for Global Miami J.V., the company that operates the restaurant. Overall, airport concession sales haven't declined, said a spokesman for the airport.

Many passengers say they want the quickest trip possible. Adam Hamlin, who traveled from Bogotá, Colombia, to visit his grandparents in North Carolina, said he doesn't mind close connections or running through an airport. "Airports are not the best place to hang out in all day," he said.

Diego Romero, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., but traveled, last week from Mexico City to Nassau, the Bahamas for business, said he wants "to get home as soon as possible."

American tries to put planes with lots of connecting passengers at nearby gates to cut down on long walks through the 1.1-mile linear terminal, said Suzanne Williamson, American's director of Miami tower operations. The airport has a train to reduce long treks.

A Miami airport air-traffic controller manages takeoffs and landings with American's new peaks-and-lulls schedule. There are pitfalls to airlines' clumped schedules. If bad weather hits at the wrong time, diverted flights and missed connections can cause widespread delays. So far, the schedule has held up well, with an on-time arrival rate of 88% since the Aug. 19 change, according to flight-tracking firm FlightStats.com, a bit better than last year.

Still, American workers have concerns about reliability. "To go into this without being concerned about equipment and all the pieces coming together would be foolish," said Joe Rosende, customer service manager on the ramp in Miami. He said late August was a good time to adjust to new processes before the holiday rush. Mr. Rosende was part of an American study group 10 years ago that spread out the flight schedule, and is now part of changing it back to peaks.

Getting bags onto their next flight is a challenge with shorter connections. Miami handles more luggage than other American hubs, on average, because Caribbean and Latin American travelers typically check lots of bags, according to American.

The airline uses "runners" to hand-deliver carts loaded with baggage from one plane to the next. "Rovers" throw bags that are making the tightest connections into the back of pickup trucks and drive them to their next aircraft. Before, they relied more on a sorting system underneath the terminal—a maze of conveyor belts and scanners that can take 20 minutes to move a suitcase to the right place.

With the peaked schedule, more planes spend extra time on the ground before their next flight, said Mr. Rosende. With the old method, they'd pull in and go out more quickly. Passengers would wait, but not airplanes.

So far, bunching the flights hasn't caused planes to stack up waiting to takeoff, land or get a gate, American says. Air-traffic controllers can use two of Miami's three usable runways for takeoffs when there are lots of departures, or two for landings when several planes are arriving.

For international passengers, where lines to pass through Customs and Border Protection stretched as long as four hours in 2013, American and the airport added more workers to guide them through. With the customs agency, the airport and airline also added automation kiosks, constructed two additional booths for officers, and knocked out walls for new exits in baggage claim to speed passenger flow.

After reducing wait times to enter the U.S. by about 25% at Miami's airport this summer, Customs and Border Protection expects the peaks "will challenge our progress,'' said Acting Deputy Commissioner Kevin McAleenan. But, more agents and automation are coming, too, he said.

Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

American Airlines scraps paper manuals for tablets to cut fuel costs

By Jeffrey Dastin 4 hours ago

By Jeffrey Dastin

(Reuters) - American Airlines has won regulatory approval to swap flight attendants' paper manuals for lighter Samsung tablets in a change that will save nearly $1 million a year, the company said on Wednesday.

The move, which does not yet affect attendants at American Airlines Group Inc's subsidiary US Airways, comes little more than a year after American's cockpit went paperless, and is one of many strategies that airlines have pursued to reduce weight and fuel costs.

Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have also distributed smart devices to their pilots, and Delta plans to roll out an e-manual for flight attendants starting in October.

American said its attendants already have the tablets, and those at US Airways will receive them after the combined company receives a single operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration. The timing of that is uncertain.
"Conserving fuel is important to an airline because it is a huge cost," said American Airlines spokesperson Andrea Huguely.

American stock rose 1.63 percent Wednesday to close at $38.58.

American and Delta see smart devices as a boon to cabin service, allowing attendants to see where premium customers are seated and direct more attention to them, the spokespeople said. Tablets also will simplify in-flight food and beverage sales.

Delta is "arming our flight attendants to help deliver more personalized customer assistance," said Kate Modolo, a Delta spokesperson.

When American replaced roughly 35-lb pilot bags with 1.2-lb iPads, it said it would save $1.2 million in fuel costs annually. Switching to tablets from nearly 5-lb flight attendant manuals only will net the airline $650,000 a year.

The remaining $300,000 in savings will come from reduced printing and shipping costs.
Airlines are "looking for lots of little things that together - $300,000 at a time - could add up to real money," said industry consultant Robert Mann.

Since 2005, American Airlines has saved 1 billion gallons of fuel under a program called Fuel Smart, Huguely said.

Initiatives have ranged from pilots using only a single engine during taxiing when this is deemed safe, to removing antiquated phones attached to the seat backs of old planes, saving weight.

After years of losses, U.S. airlines have been profitable over the last four years. Last quarter, American posted the best results in its history.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Alwyn Scott and Diane Craft)