David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
NOT Traveling Blog, 1st
Week Of March 2021
David Danto’s ongoing list of disjointed and occasionally random
observations and thoughts as we wait-out the pandemic – mostly NOT traveling
like we used to.
If you’ve been a frequent traveler
for as long as I have (or longer) you’ve seen some amazing things over a long
period of time. I’ve seen pure angels that work for
airlines go way out of their way to do nice things for travelers. I’ve seen ground crews repair a broken
aircraft with duct-tape so it could take off.
I’ve seen FAs decide it was their duty to bring holiday celebrations to
their passengers. I’ve been stuck all
day at a storm-closed Heathrow where the airline agents told first and business
class travelers from a cancelled flight to go to a different gate (where they
were given a printed letter that basically said ‘leave the airport’) while coach travelers just heard the very same
message as a PA system announcement. I
and others probably have hundreds of stories about experiences like these that
would warm your heart and curl your toes.
It is purely from that ‘experienced’ perspective that I recall a lesson
I learned when I was a senior in high school:
When you bend a strip of metal
back and forth a number of times, or put continued stress on it, it eventually
becomes brittle and snaps.
The phenomenon in question is called “metal fatigue.”
I learned about it – along with what I suspect was most
people at the time – when engines started falling off DC10 aircraft. The deadliest hint came on American
Airlines flight 191 in 1979, when an engine fell-off the aircraft upon
take-off. Over the next few months there
were a
number of other incidents where DC10 engines falling or falling-apart were
confirmed or presumed to be the root cause.
It is fair to say that the aviation industry was forever
changed by these incidents, because, as a result, safety and inspections were
given an elevated level of importance.
But then over time, as happens in many cases, greedy management in an
industry seeking higher and higher profits show they either don’t have as good
a memory as the rest of us or simply don’t care enough about the risks they
take. Reducing and outsourcing airline
maintenance became the one of the ways for airlines to make more money. One
old article covering the situation stated:
“According to a 2008 audit conducted
by the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General (OIG),
nine major air carriers, AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, America West
Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Northwest
Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines, outsourced 71 percent of
their heavy airframe maintenance checks in 2007. Almost 27 percent of these
heavy airframe repairs were outsourced to repair shops overseas. Roughly 20
percent of these repair shops are in developing countries. Therefore, about one
in every five planes is being sent to developing countries such as Africa, Asia
and South America, to be overhauled and repaired.”
Now as we turn to the present, imagine the shock (shock I say!) to airline management when
they suddenly discovered that engine fan blades may suffer from metal
fatigue. (You know, that same phenomenon
we definitively learned in 1979 could cause engines and other airline parts to
fail and fall-off.)
As I’m sure you’ve seen in the news, a United 777 had one
engine essentially disintegrate after take-off from Denver last week. It was one of TWO
reported incidents about that type of engine on the same day. The FAA has ordered the grounding of 777s
with the same Pratt & Whitney engines (but not including 777 aircraft that
use engines made by Rolls Royce or GE because….um….somehow the FAA and airline
management think those other firms use metal blessed by magical fairies that
are not subject to the laws of physics I guess.) Click the picture below to see video from the
incident.
From USA Today -
Chad Schnell via Storyful
Without getting melodramatic, thank goodness that the United
flight returned to Denver safely on its one working engine; thank goodness that
the shower of engine parts didn’t kill anyone on the ground; and thank goodness
the failure of the engine didn’t happen later in the flight when the Hawaii
bound aircraft would be completely over water with no nearby airport to
run-back to. Anyone thinking those
results were anything but dumb luck is deceiving themselves. This incident could easily could have resulted
in dozens of deaths in the air and/or on the ground.
What should we learn from this? I suggest there are two lessons.
The first one is obvious: metal fatigue is real, and airline
parts are made of metal. There are
dozens of parts on an aircraft that could be compromised by this issue. They are all just waiting to happen. The second one is also obvious – at least to
me: deregulation of the US airline industry is a failure. Money that should have been invested in the
safe and successful operations of the fleet has been redirected to greedy
management and undeserving investors. As
is the case in the health insurance industry, the Texas electric power industry
and all other privatized / deregulated industries that effect the safety of the
customers, whenever there is a conflict between serving the public good and
making a profit, a privatized / deregulated industry will always opt for profit
instead of the public good. Are
government agencies the panacea for good decisions – hardly – but at least with
the profit motive removed these industries would be able to operate as
utilities in the public interest again. The Healthcare and Power sectors are clearly
a mess that have no easy solutions, but the airlines however have already
accepted billions of our tax dollars – probably more than they are worth – to
keep flying. I suggest we just foreclose
and develop an agency in the public interest to run them all.
Perhaps then we can have airlines run by people who don’t
forget that water is wet, the sun comes-up in the morning, metal fatigue is a
real thing, and safety is more important than increased profit.
As always, please feel
free to write to me with comments or items I should add to a future Not
Traveling blog (or if you just need someone to write to.) Stay safe, be well, hug those you’re
sheltering with (but no one else) and do your best to stay positive. We’re going to be in this for a while
longer.
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal
opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.
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The Explanation
for my Not Traveling blogs: In 2014 I was voted
by USA Today readers as one of the top ten business travel bloggers in the
USA. Now mind you,
I turned out to be number ten on the list of ten, but I did make it on (with my
thanks to all those who voted.) Now
that we’re all stuck at home and not traveling, I had to think about what to do
with my blogs. I could stop writing them
entirely – waiting till we all get through the current COVID19 pandemic /
crisis. I could wax nostalgic and/or
complain about past trips. Or, I could
focus all of my efforts on my day job – growing the use of collaboration
technologies – especially in light of how many people are now forced to use
those tools for the first time. In
reflecting upon those choices, what I decided to do is compile an ongoing list
of observations during the crisis. Some
of these may amuse, some may inform, some may sadden and others may help. My goal will be for you to have seen
something in a different light than you did before you stopped to read the
blog. I was going to apologize for how
disjointed these thoughts may seem when put together, but then it dawned on me
that feeling disjointed is our new normal – at least for a little while.