The eHang EVTOL took its first commercial flight in China – how important is this milestone? Boeing 737 MAX re-certification has entered its public comment period, and other 737 models have had an emergency airworthiness directive recently sent out. And, the big four airlines (United, Delta, American and Southwest) have had a rough Q2 in 2020 – how does it compare to a year ago?
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Full Transcript: EP19 eHANG EVTOL First Flight; Boeing 737 Woes; Are the Big Four Airlines in Trouble?
Dan: This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech – at Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightening protection easy.
You are listening to the Struck Podcast. I’m Dan Blewett.
Allen Hall: I’m Allen hall.
Dan: And here on Struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.
Hey, welcome back to the Struck Podcast is episode 19. I’m your cohost, Dan Blewett and in today’s episode, got a bunch of really good topics, actually. So we’re going to cover a bunch of things with the Boeing seven 37, their public comment period has begun. Uh, we’re also gonna talk about. Jet time, which is an interesting, quick little story of Danish company.
Um, we’re going to chat about some of the big four airlines as their losses this year have come to light and we’re starting to compare to, you know, Q2 last year to Q2 this year. So we’re going to chat about that. Uh, there’s been some really interesting conversion, the, uh, Embraer prey tour legacy for fifties, actually have a conversion kit now to go into the parade tour 500.
We’re gonna talk a bit, a little bit about the engineering that goes into a conversion of a, of a business jet, which is really fascinating thing to think about. And then we’re also going to chat some more about a seven 37 or eight homes. Um, a airworthiness directive, just put out on the Boeing seven 37.
And lastly, we’ll chat in our electric tech – the ehang EVTOL. Which just made the first passenger trip around a yang. Tell China. So let’s jump in here with, uh, some of the seven 37 max stuff. So the public now has 45 days as of July 21st to comment on the proposed changes. So tell us, what does this, what does this mean?
Allen Hall: Well, for any sort of major, uh, changes, uh, special conditions, uh, it was all rural changes. That’s always a public comment period because these changes end up being, having the, the rule of law essentially applied against them. And so when you make new regulations or laws, you want to have a public period to discuss those, to see what the public feedback is in this particular case.
I’m not sure what the public feedback is going to be. Uh, but the FAA has to respond to all the comments. And so they may get thousands of comments back on this, whether they’re valid comments or not, you still have to respond to them and situations where we’ve seen a lot of public responses in, uh, sort of critical or controversial areas.
You kind of get this wide range of responses. And then as the FAA, I don’t know how they must lock a couple of people in a room to go through almost responses. It sounds terrible, right? Because you can write as much as you want for and as a response. So you could have 50 different comments in response.
So the FAS go through those and sort them out and put them into groups and title respond to each one of them. So it takes a long time, right? Which is why they keep, keep saying like the seven 37 is not going to be flying at a couple other minor reasons, but it seems like the certification open public comment forum thing is going to shove it out to December of this year, before those airplanes get going again.
Plus they have to qualify all the, all the pilots, which is going to be another hurdle, but they could actually probably start that now. So I understand the need for open dialogue on this. I just, I, I, there are times I wish I think the public has no idea w the specific specificity of these changes and be able to add anything to them.
That’s what the FAA is for. And that’s what all the DTRS are for. Right. And yeah. So,
Dan: so if I write these jet engines should be more shaped, like watermelons. Yes. Yes. Or respond to that. Thank you for your, we, you know, we don’t believe they should be shaped like watermelons. We believe
Allen Hall: that that’s right.
Dan: That’s right.
Allen Hall: They’ll do that. Or they’ll say that doesn’t fit the, the, uh, the question or the comment isn’t applicable to the particular situation, but they have to respond to them. So you could say, and like the added yeah. Angle of attack censure, uh, may cause, uh, the improper activation of some other system.
Pick it just pick it, pick it out of the hat and they have to respond to that. And then someone has to go look and then what the FAA is going to do is they’re going to talk. If they have something that is even questionable, they’re clearly going to throw it back into Boeing and Boeing gets to see those comments.
So Boeing’s got the engineers at Boeing, get to see those comments and get to respond to them. And it’s sort of a negotiated outcome, but it’s not, we’ve been working on this for more than a year. What’s going to be added at this point that we don’t already know. I don’t know. And then you have to go through the, once you get FAA gets checked box off, you still have to do all the foreign certifications too.
So it isn’t like Boeing’s out of the clear on this. There’s still a lot of work to do.
Dan: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting process. I guess it’s still good that the public does have a chance to sure. Stay within you to say, I mean, that’s, I guess kind of kind of democracy and action.
Allen Hall: Well, yeah, it is. It is, it is, but it isn’t, you have a system in place right now and which, uh, you can.
Direct comments to in this particular case, I think just because of the visibility of it, they had to do that. I’m never sure what it adds to the end result.
Dan: Yeah. So quirky story. I will just touch on this Danish company, jet time, two words, uh, it hadn’t basically didn’t survive the COVID situation. Um, Went under and it says, nevertheless, jet times owner has already registered and received a certificate for his new company.
Jet time, just pushing the two words together and expect it to start chartering flights in 2021 using some of their old key employees, as well as five of the previous Boeing 30 sevens. This seems bizarre. I think I realized that companies are shielded from liability. Like you have. You know, watermelon LLC goes out of business.
You can then just like start a new LLC. Right? Like, and those assets are gone and creditors can come after the LLC, but not, you know, you personally, whatever, but like, does this seem weird to you that they just made another business that quick?
Allen Hall: It does. There’s something called the corporate veil or piercing the corporate veil.
You can’t. Be malevolent and do bad things, intentionally skirt creditors, uh, by, because you have a corporation Vale, particular case. That’s what exactly. If you have to, like, you’re like, I’m going to take all the money out of this thing and shovel into a new company. Good luck to all my creditors on the other side and, and, uh, come get my airplanes.
Now. Let’s just, if you have watched that show on airplane repo, if you don’t pay the airplane bills, Someone’s coming to get those airplanes. There’s no doubt about that. So you gotta, if you want to keep those airplanes, you better keep them locked under someone, watching them all the time, because they’re going to get repoed.
Airplane companies are not playing. And I, I remember, uh, when I worked in Wichita, there was a, one of the repo guys that I knew that used to work for Cessna. They go down to South America all the time and bring your airplanes back. Which has gotta be scary as all get out, right? You were walking down to South America, you flying down to South America, you go into this, a remote field.
If you can find the person that runs the airport and saying, can you get the keys? You’re probably paying him or paying the desk person to get the keys. And then, you know, you’re trying to, you’re playing a flight back at two flight back to America or wherever they needed to take the airplane. That’s serious business.
So even though they may skirt the bankruptcy here, they’re not going to skirt. The marketplace. They totally won’t.
Dan: That’s interesting. Yeah, it just struck me as funny. So I wanted to bring it up. So let’s, uh, shift to the U S big four and who’s kind of been hit the hardest. So between Southwest Delta, American and United, and I personally didn’t realize that Southwest is that is about half of the size of those three other companies.
Yeah. Delta United and American all do about. I guess 45 to 50 billion in revenue a year. And Southwest does about 25, but all of them essentially have converged on the same point, which is about 2 billion in revenue in second quarter of 2020. So for Southwest, it’s a much lower drop-off because they’re only coming down from 6 billion, a quarter rather than dropping down from 12 billion a quarter.
But I tried, um, What do you think about this? I mean, who do you think is going to come out on top as far as these four? Or what kind of predictions do you have?
Allen Hall: Well, it’s all due or at least mostly due to the lack of international travel. So Southwest only has a selected number of flights that are outside the continental us, uh, to Hawaii, uh, Puerto Rico.
And I think Mexico now, too. So they’re relatively limited on their international travel and international travel is expensive. I remember flying if you’ve ever flown over to the, to, uh, Europe, it’s, it’s relatively expensive. It’s, it’s a lot cheaper to fly across the United States and longer flights than it is to just hop the pond.
And where are you playing double triple the amount. So there’s a huge profit center in those international flights. And Southwest has never really done that, uh, which in this particular case, it’s going to help them tremendously because, uh, most of the travel it’s going to happen from the United States.
It’s going to be within the United States. So United at American and Delta are really going to struggle. And that’s why you see all the seven 47 is getting retired. All the big international airplanes are all getting retired because you just don’t think international flights going to happen for awhile.
Dan: Yeah, the last seven 47. Did you see that? The thing that Quantis did, they made like this kangaroo pattern as they did their logo? Yeah. The last seven boy. Yeah.
Allen Hall: I don’t understand it. You have, have you seen that recently? Like they go fly these patterns. I think what a colossal waste of fuel. Yeah, I don’t understand.
I mean, I understand taking the airplane out and doing like a celebratory flight for the house, the sexual, the aircraft has been in Boeing has actually made a big deal, the seven 47 retirement, because I saw interesting, uh, Tweet the other day about the comparison between the 83 80 retirement and the seven 47 retirement, the seven 47 retirement is a lot of hubbub and people being stylistic about the aircraft and they three 80 is crickets.
Dan: Yeah, no one cares. Huh? Why? The care.
Allen Hall: Uh, I think the length of service or the three 80, hasn’t been around nearly as long as the seven 47 and the seven 47 has always been considered that super duper, uh, smooth flying airplane. And, uh, the was just, wasn’t raw long enough to build up that kind of legacy
Dan: So here in our engineering segment, there’s a couple interesting things we’re gonna touch on, but first let’s talk about let’s stick with Boeing. So there’s an emergency airworthiness directive put out just recently. So on July 23rd, and this is about a bunch of different seven 37 models. So can you take us through this?
I mean, what’s going on Allen with this, uh, this directive.
Allen Hall: Well, they parked a number of seven 30 sevens because the Kobe and one of the worries when you park and pickle, an airplane basically
Dan: commissioned it in a jet engines.
Allen Hall: Well, yeah, I mean, everything kind of gets put in Stacey’s. Uh, and so you. Well, if it’s very similar to when you are going to park a car in the garage, like you’re going overseas for two years and you got your, uh, car, you, you just don’t leave it sitting in the garage like that because bad stuff happens.
Right? You want to drain the fuel tank. When I take the antifreeze out of it, you want to put preservatives in it to make sure when you get back there, it’ll fire back up again. Well, the same thing as this in airplanes, there’s actually a list of things you go do. Well, the problem is is that when you bring the aircraft back in the service that not everything works.
Like it should. And some of the components aren’t necessarily visible and are not required to go double check them. And there were some vows in the seven 37 engines that are not working correctly, which leads to engine shutdown. And the FAA has ethic. They had four cases of engine shutdown on the seven 37 over a variety of models.
So the FAA is really concerned that. Because both engines left and right. Use the same valve, uh, that you could have a simultaneous engine shutdown, which would. Make you a glider, which is not good, right? Seven 37 does Glidewell but it’s not going to glide all that far. Uh, so now that emergency director was like, Hey, we gotta go look at these things.
And I think that’s sort of one of those unexpected outcomes that I was anticipating happened. Like when you mop off airplanes, as fast as that happened, do you, are you sure that everything’s up and running as well as it should be? So I’m glad the FAA has stepped into it. Clearly the mechanics and the airlines are on top of this and are watching this because this is one of those war.
Real serious concerns is when you bring a lot of airplanes back, all of a sudden, do you have problems? And can you nip it before it gets to be too big? So,
Dan: so they shut down happened, I assume as they’re firing them up on the ground or like, how did they avoid any issues
Allen Hall: like crashes, those spots as far?
No, I think they had some of them shut down on the air at least that’s that was my read on it. No. Well, the engine aircraft can fly one engine and two others to, uh, uh, it’s just, uh, uh, if the probability of, if, if there’s a malfunction, uh, certain malfunction inside the engine and you’ve had that same thing left right.
And left engine and right engine
Dan: scary to think about.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it is. It is.
Dan: Let’s, let’s continue to demonize the seven 37, seven 37 is the worst aircraft of all time. Now I don’t want any parts. Yeah, I don’t want to hear that.
Allen Hall: It’s a really, really, really good reliable airplane, but it was never meant to be shut down like this.
Uh, and that’s one thing about any sort of mechanical devices once it’s up and running, you want to keep it up and running. I don’t care what it is. Car a train, a boat when you mothball anything, it just doesn’t always come back to that. Place at once was,
Dan: does mischievous raccoons always in trouble. Yeah.
Gremlins. And then, so sticking with the seven 37, you said there was a radar home that also might have some issues, shoes on a consistent basis. So what’s the story with, with this, uh, this. Report the bill put out.
Allen Hall: There was a really interesting event that happened about a year and a half ago. So it was like the end of 2018 Aeromexico was flying a seven 37 into Tijuana on approach.
They’re actually coming in to land and there’s a loud thud. And when the pilots got out, they could see it, that the nose radon was severely damaged. It looked like they had hit. A bird made my first look. Yeah. I remember
Dan: when that happened. Yeah,
Allen Hall: yeah, yeah. I mean, they hit something, they clearly must have hit something.
He hit a bird, but there was no blood or feathers, which is usually indicative of hitting a bird. And so the, the press headline and the, I think the pilots actually said that I thought they had hit a drone because they’re so close to the ground. What had happened that. If they didn’t hit our bird. And the only thing around is the drone.
So they assume they had a drone. It became this big press thing about
Dan: could be a record. Runes could be born. Raccoon.
Allen Hall: Definitely could have been
Dan: a, maybe a bird had a raccoon that had picked up. Sorry, I dropped it. Eagle drop it a fit. Exactly. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Right. Well, the Boeing got involved and did a postmortem on it and shot a check in the radon for DNA.
Dan: Didn’t see any,
Allen Hall: didn’t see any, uh,
Dan: the usual suspect
Allen Hall: like parts of birds, bird, feathers, bird, blood, bird pieces. Didn’t see any of that. And they also started looking for drunk pieces. Didn’t see anything like that. And then they realized that the there’s a, there’s a seal. That’s all, that’s actually on the airplane.
So the radar sits on the outer ring on the, on the front of the airplane. There’s a spot bulb seal that goes around it. And then at the bottom of that, there’s a gap. There’s like an eight inch gap at the bottom for Le fluids and things drain out, but also lets that equalize pressure. So as you fly up to out to two there’s less pressure.
And as you come back down, there’s more pressure closely. Or if it’s about 12 ish. PSI difference 10 to 12 PSI. I don’t remember exactly somewhere in that range. So what has happened is they replaced that seal, but they didn’t leave the gap in the seal. They pretty much enclosed it with a seal all around the periphery.
So the airplane flipped altitude, all the air escaped as it came back down, all the pressure built up on the outside and boom collapse that rain home to the point it looked like, okay, they get to hit something.
Dan: I did look. Yeah, it is very, very much destroyed. Yeah.
Allen Hall: If I was a pilot, I would think 100% I hit something and it had to sound loud and the air noise after that had to be tremendous.
And as you’re on approach, you just don’t like those things to happen. Like. Bad noises are serious. Uh, but it is interesting that I have seen other rate homes do similar thinking like, man, what is up with that rate? I’m like the front of it’s collapsed in, uh, and they’ll say, well, we think we hit a bird.
I’m like, nah, that’s not a bird. Cause there’s just, no, there’s just no guts anywhere. So I wonder if they’re having issues in general with these seals that they’re over sealing, these Ray domes. And mechanics, aren’t thinking about the pressure deltas and all of a sudden you got these collapsing radars, which is a pretty serious thing.
Parts parts could come off of that and go places you don’t want them to go. All right. And
Dan: so the last thing I want to cover real quick in this segment is, uh, converting the Embraer four 50 into the. 500. So how, how do they do this? I mean, this is pretty interesting because they said the range of these planes gonna increase from 2,900 nautical miles to 30, 30, three 40, and it’s payloads going to grow from 800 to 1600 pounds at full fuel.
So, and then there are upgrading avionics, a lot of other things. I mean, how do they do this? Is this a really like significant process, some to get recertified? Like, what does this look like when they convert a plane like this.
Allen Hall: Well, most airplanes are derivatives of previous models, ergo, the Cessna citation, and all the variations on that airplane.
Same thing for Lear jets. They really haven’t changed all that much over time. Uh, the beach King years haven’t changed that much over time, the Bonanzas and all the variations on those. Uh, even the Cirruses haven’t for that sort of 20 to 22, the there wasn’t huge changes made. So what Amber air did when they upgraded to the 500, uh, that they basically used the four 50 as a baseline and made it made a wing a little bit bigger, longer, more aerodynamic, which allows you to take more load on and also the low more fuel in.
So there. As a, it’s not a marketing play. What is a, I’m sure it’s a fundraiser for them cash. It helped raise cash and it looks like they did the work down in Hartford, not very far from here, uh, where they, uh, all the engineering work to basically make the wing more efficient, put more fuel on it, move the fuel probes around so they could gauge the fuel that they added to it and, uh, fix the upgrade of the avionics.
So if you had bought a four 50. Back at like 2016 and in the 500 came out like 2018. You could actually upgrade it and it may make more sense to upgrade it than to buy a new airplane. It probably does. And it probably makes the airplane more valuable at the end of the day. You gotta get out of the trade off, but it’s the, the, the marketing was sauna was interesting.
Cause you could fly from Miami to Seattle,
Dan: which is a long
Allen Hall: way to
Dan: go. For sure.
Allen Hall: Like that’s it, it is a long flight. It’s pretty cool.
Dan: All right now, final segment here. Let’s cover . So we’ve been talking about electric, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. And this one just made the first, the world’s first commercial trip with passengers. So yang was established during the 16, um, it’s China based company and, uh, I know in this big race to get a basically essentially electric air taxi into commercial service, it looks like they’ve won.
So this thing looks, it’s interesting. It’s a kind of, it’s pretty small. I guess he can hold probably two passengers. And this was like a little sightseeing trip around yang. Tell China. So what do you, what are your thoughts on this right here?
Allen Hall: If I remember this correctly, I think this is the aircraft, which wasn’t quote unquote certified.
It’s like an amusement park ride as said the way they’re treating it. So it’s like be able to fly in certain areas back and forth to this hotel essentially is what it was like a shuttle for the hotel and it, and it hadn’t been through the same rigors, like all the other European US-based, uh, It doesn’t mean Japanese doesn’t matter where you are, Bernie much everywhere else.
So it’s that sort of certification approval, a human inside of an aircraft. You wouldn’t have some assemblance that the aircraft is not going to crash all the time, but in some. Odd circumstances like this hotel in this region got authorization to fly these things. Uh, so now there’s consternation in the Eve area.
Like what’s the deal? How, how are they doing this? And is it advantageous for, uh, the Chinese, uh, government structure to promote their industry by basically not making them go through the rigors or certification? And they’re therefore allowing him to speed up the process and then maybe go off for certification somewhere else.
It just seems unsafe. Uh, yeah. I wouldn’t drive in a car in which had, had me crashed tested, and it has some sort of, you know, validation system. I would definitely would not be in an aircraft that didn’t have some level of review going along with it. And this one doesn’t seem, and it may be perfectly safe.
Maybe, maybe have a great track record. It’s just not worth risking your life over.
Dan: Yeah. So I guess back in March, the company obtained their first operational flight permit. And, uh, you know, that’s, I guess it’s valid in a couple of different countries, but yeah, like you said, it there’s something a little bit off or just a little bit different and it was only going 60 miles per hour.
Um, it did a short little loop. It’s got a 20 mile range. So I think maybe you’re right here that this is just more of like a. Yeah, it says, right?
Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s what it seems like, like you’re at your own risk. Good luck.
Dan: Yeah. Well, and speaking of which there’s a. Um, a company called rebel here in the U S that I guess they’re based out in New York, but I see their little mopeds all over DC.
And you know, you can rent these yeah. Mopeds just like a year round a scooter. Yeah. And they’re electric, and I guess they had their first person killed on one recently in New York city. I think she was actually a reporter, but Oh boy. Yeah. Anytime like, for me, I like the scooters. I bought a scooter, but those mopeds have to obviously drive in traffic.
They do come with a helmet you can put on, but for me, that’s like, I’m not qualified to drive a motorcycle. And I know what happens if you fall off, even going 30 a moped, like all your skin gets all your skin gets taken off and you don’t. It’s like, there’s a huge jump from scooter, for example, or bike to a moped, even if it only goes 30 miles per hour.
And these things, even if it’s just like tourism, just shooting around the city. If it falls out of the sky, you’re all, you’re all gone. So I don’t know. It’s that’s yeah, I guess it’s, it feels a little troubling to me that if they don’t as regulators heavily in certify, like you said, then good luck is, is a tough pill for me to swallow personally.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Fire be aware, right?
Dan: Yeah. And so last thing I want to kind of touch on quickly is the idea of like these verdict ports, these vertical takeoff and landing aircraft airports, or pads. Yeah. I mean, where do you feel like is the most viable place to put them? I’ve seen some really cool renderings of, you know, essentially they put four stilts above a highway, that’s going through a city and they put a nice flat pad.
So cars are going underneath it. You know, these little choppers laying on top of it. Uh, on top of buildings or some people are proposing, the waterfront areas are probably the best locations. Um, what do you think are maybe a best future spot for them?
Allen Hall: Let’s just go through a history of where aircraft land.
Aircraft for the most part. Uh, now it, you don’t see that as much today, but originally our porch and them were in the middle of nowhere, even around New York city, they were in the middle of nowhere on an empty field. And the reason they were that way was because they were less likely to land into populated areas.
And even the helicopters that are, if you around New York city, They’ve had a number of accidents in the river or near the river where the helicopters are taken off and had some sort of, um, mechanical issue and plummeted down to earth. So I’m really dubious of. Putting a lot of inexperienced pilots landing on top of buildings.
I think that’s a mistake. I think if you landed a mile or so from where your destination is in a unpopulated area for the time being that would help until we get to something that’s more autonomous, like Tesla’s done on the driving aspect where they, and even on space X, right. There’s just take space. I said, as an example, so the space X where they’re landing the rock is vertically on the.
Um, the platforms, you know, space X is not landing those things in Houston, right? They’re not landing them in our populated areas, Atlanta and I’m out in the ocean. So even though they have at this point a road until the good track road occur, to be able to land those things on a moving platform in the sea, they’re still not going to land them in the city because bad stuff can happen.
And I I’m struggling because Lillian put out a little. Press release about, they don’t think that the Lilium, uh, travel distances should be less than 20 kilometers, which is about 12 miles. And the argument was if, well, if it’s less than 12, 12 miles. So do you have to have like landing areas all over the place?
You’d have to want to have to have one at your dry cleaner. You have to have one at the pizza place. You have to have one at the elementary school. So you ended up having these, all these places where you’d have to have landing platforms. And it just explodes in terms of, um, the number of, of, of landing sites you would have to have, and their suggestion as well.
Once you have essentially a regional landing spot, and then you can take your bike or your electric vehicle too. Your final destination is I think that’s probably more realistic because the worst thing for the industry is to have an accident in a populated area early on, and cause a bunch of damage or, or, or huge loss of life.
That would just be a. Unbelievable bad mistake.
Dan: All right, well, that’ll do it for today’s episode of struck. If you’re new to the show. Thank you so much for listening. And please leave a review and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out the weather guard, lightning tech YouTube channel for video episodes, full interviews and short clips from the show.
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