Boarding Pass 246: Basic Business

This is The Next Trip Podcast with Aviation Insiders Doug and Drew. Together with more than 40 years of industry experience, they are creating a network for other athletes and travel enthusiasts to obsess about all-thing aviation. All thoughts and opinions are their own. G'day and welcome to Boarding Pass 246, operating on August 12, 2024. This is Doug and airline pilot and I'm here with my buddy Drew and airline ops manager, private pilot

trainee. We're here to discuss aviation topics from an industry insider's perspective. Drew, I'm about to ask you about any work issues that you might be getting with the remnants of Hurricane Debbie. I just want to start by saying it is early for both of us on a Friday morning and I am sitting in my in-laws car in their garage so that I don't wake anyone else up in the house. The Doug looks like he's at a stakeout, like he's in an unmarked car waiting for the bad

guys to come out of a house. It's like a SWAT team type situation. I can barely make I can't even make you out. I can tell that there's a car window but it's like a very, yeah, I just saw a wave. It's going to be an interesting episode but the things that we do to get these episodes out on time for you. I said Doug you were saying it's like it's going to be crazy. It's like no, let's work it into the episode. As long as they can hear us, the sound quality is good. Anything with Debbie.

Yes, a lot with Debbie. But before Debbie, this week has been really bad. It's been really bad for weather, not just Debbie but thunderstorms and newer. There was a day, I believe it was Monday where the boss was like, I'll work the morning. Why don't you come in and just sleep in. Enjoy time with Robbie. I'm like, that's awesome. So I came in at 10. That was a trap. I don't think she meant to put me in a trap. But now it's 10 to 6.30 and

it's thunderstorms and Newark. So we were into like massive diversions when it's time for me to go home. How do you go home when you're about to take taxi violations? So I'm like, I will never do this again. But no, I'm glad that I was there. I'm glad that I was able to help. But Doug, I've become very rusty. We only had six diversions. It was hard keeping track of them and a couple of them got a little bit too close for comfort.

We had 1757 that's going to Newark. It was just over two hours and it was going to taxi. It was at a remote spot. It was going to taxi to the gate so that we could offer egress. The DOT requires that we offer egress before that three hour mark for domestic flights. So it's on the way back to the gate so we can offer egress and then the crew is like, hey, we have everything we need and we have a clearance. Can we just go? And I'm like, how much

time do we have? It was down to like less than 45 minutes. So I said, yeah, go ahead. It's very nerve-wracking because that 45 minutes goes pretty fast and sure enough, it takes half an hour. They put in a wheels up time. The guy took off maybe six minutes before that three hour time. That was way too close for comfort. We have an idea what we're going to do if this happens in the future. We'll keep them on our remote spot. Keep the stairs

up. Take our ops van. Have a supervisor or someone. Just go onboard and make a quick announcement. Bring egress. If anyone needs to get off, we can take them out in the van. And apparently that's legal for the DOT. That'll lower a lot of blood pressure. I can tell you I know that you as the station are trying to keep an eye on it. But when you have multiple diversions, it's hard to follow each of those planes. I can tell you as the crew, we are keeping an eye

on that as well. It's not like we're just sitting there, twiddling our thumbs, not paying attention to the clock. I can tell you each individual crew in those airplanes are keeping an eye on it. They will reach out to you or they should reach out to you if there becomes a question. That way the crew themselves are actually reminding you, maybe it fell through the cracks. Maybe you're not paying super close attention because you have a lot

of these going on. But we're getting a car's messages constantly reminding us you're within an hour of having to offer egress. You're two hours out. That's good. I didn't know that. The crews are actually paying attention to this as well. At two hours, don't you get a reminder to serve the people a snack? Yes. We do. There's quite a bit of these. I don't know if they're automated. I know they come from the NOC, the National Operations

Center. I don't know if it's someone up there who's doing it or if it's just an audit. I'm pretty sure it's automated. Yeah. But we do get messages. So we are keeping track of these things as well. From when this started, this started a number of years ago when there were long taxi times and the DOT was like, this has got to stop. And then there were these rules at the station. Ultimately, we are responsible. If that plane, if the

crews like we have everything we want, can we just go and we say yes. And then they go over their time. Ultimately, the station is responsible. I'm sure they'll ask you as a crew for a statement as to what happened. But as far as the violation, we would have to answer to that. My point is I've noticed what exactly what you're saying, Doug. I will like pilots will call say we're out here two hours. Do you want us to come back?

I'm like, that makes our job so much easier because we don't have to to negotiate with the crew or explain why they need to come back. So that's good to hear that you are also getting those reminders. All right, Doug, you did your first, I didn't even know this. I don't know if you told me you did your first KC 46 instructor flight. How did that go? Yeah, it was because I certified two days or three days prior. It was easy because I

was flying with another instructor and another captain. It wasn't really like I had to offer instruction to a brand new pilot, but it was actually kind of nice because this was the first time since I'd started training over a year ago that I was fully qualified on the airplane. No restrictions. I didn't have to fly with an instructor. I could be in any seat with any different pilot. And it just felt somewhat natural. I say somewhat because

I'm still new on the airplane. Still taking gratuitous amounts of notes every time I fly. And then when I get back, I type it into my, I know people laugh about my spreadsheets, but I also have notes of study materials, especially now that I am going to be flying with brand new pilots in the airplane, brand new pilots in the Air Force. I need to have all these notes, all of these things kind of on the ready to be able to instruct these people.

So it was nice for the first flight to be with a fully qualified crew. I didn't really have to instruct even though I was an instructor on the flight because it was fully qualified everyone knew what they were doing, but it was a nice way to ease myself into that position. And now I feel more comfortable going forward. You were not instructing anyone. So was that there for you to sit so that you could sit in the seat of the instructor and see how

you do? No, no. The way it works is once you are certified as an instructor, you are always an instructor. Even if you're flying with a fully qualified crew, it would be like a line check pilot, not giving a line check or not doing OE, but they still are that's their crew position. And they have that level of expertise. You know that you're flying with a line check pilot, even though they may not be giving a check ride to you. And it's

more of just the experience level. And that is indicated by the crew position that you were filling. So yes, I wasn't actually giving an instructional flight to a student, but I still wasn't instructing on the airplane. Alright, let me ask a question. So it could be an uncomfortable question. You're flying with a very senior pilot, but you are the LCA. You're not, they're not on a check ride. And they do something wrong. What's the

best way to tell a senior captain that they didn't follow a process? We've been around long enough and we are really good about giving and taking feedback. In fact, every single flight, both at the airline and in the Air Force and hopefully every flight that you do, I'm sure every flight because you're a student. You do a debrief afterwards. You sit down. It is really eye opening when you see a senior pilot or a senior person say, okay, what

went well? What could we have done better? What could I have done better? It's not like you're throwing them under the bus. It's like, hey, here's something that I noticed that I see people do all the time. I don't know if you realize that you did this. Let me tell you what it is. And it's like, oh, yeah, thank you. I've never realized that. Or it's been a long time since I did that. We do feedback sessions and we're professionals. I can take

feedback. They can take feedback or most people that I fly with can take feedback. That's just how it works in aviation because it makes you better. It makes you a better pilot. It makes you better. It makes you better. It makes you better. I better. Aveator, a better person in general to be able to both give and take feedback. Yeah. And I think that's like common in any industry, right? The people that really want to do a good job. They're very open

to feedback. The ones that aren't. Hopefully there's not too many. They're too cool for school. You can't tell them anything without getting pushed back from them. Now to the non-rev lounge portion of the podcast. Looks like it went pretty well. Are you still in Boulder? the San Francisco of the Rocky Mountains or whatever. No, that was just a day trip yesterday. We're back at my in-laws on the South Side of Denver. We non-revved here. It was not without stress.

It was one of, if not the most stressful, non-rev experiences with the family. I've had a few on my own, but I'm trying to get a family of four with an eight and a five year old. The eight year old can sit by yourself. The five year old, I'm not quite comfortable with that yet. And when we're looking at flights that, when we talked about this last week, Tuesday in the morning in the middle of August is supposed to be a great time to non-rev. It wasn't true. I looked at backups.

I looked at Southwest. I looked at Delta. I looked at American. Everyone was full, including us. In fact, the original flight that we were planning to take, we aborted before we even left for the airport. I woke up at the time that we were planning to wake up to get the kids ready for that first flight. Looked at the loads, and I was like, yeah, maybe we'll get on.

But I don't even want to try for this flight, because it would mean that we would be sitting at the airport with the kids for an additional like five hours for what is supposed to be a two to 1,5 hour flight. So we picked one that I thought looked good. And in the couple of hours in the morning before we went to the airport, out of left field, all of a sudden, all these people are buying these tickets. And the numbers are just dwindling and dwindling and dwindling.

And then we got to the airport and a family of four who is more senior to me. I know this is where Tyler is going to say, well, wouldn't you wish that it was based on the time of check-in because a family of four that was more senior to me listed, checked in, and all of a sudden, we were bumped down to not only the last four. We had the last three open seats. And one of us was off the list. Not would not have gotten on. Were you also listed for the jump seat? At that point, I was not, but I did.

I went ahead and listed for the jump seat because I was like, I can sit in the flight deck of this A319 and the family can sit in the back if it means getting everyone on. Worst case scenario, I would have sent Marissa ahead with Pippa, Poppy and I would have just spent the day trying to figure out, okay, how do we get to Denver? And then we could have Ubered from the airport once we got there. We lucked out, we were able to get on, but it was completely full, not an empty seat available.

We were able to get a row of three, aside with the girls, Marissa sat by herself up in the extra leg room seats, slept the entire flight. I played around with the kids and Pippa was like, daddy is mommy in second class. Again, she just doesn't understand. I was like, no, mommy is in the same class as us. She's just in a different seat. We are all in second class. Yes. Well, no, Poppy thought that she was in third class because it was boarding group three. It was boarding group three.

Yeah, that was a couple trips ago. So you're saying that was so stressful, but that's not as stressful as when you were going to South America and had to get to foreign country and take three flights. No, that was actually less. The stress for South America was when we thought that we might not make it to Houston. But then once we left San Francisco and we knew that we were going to make our connection into Tucson, the stress was gone.

Because once we got to Houston, we had a list of five or six different places that we were trying to get to. Yeah, we had a hierarchy on the list, but if we didn't get to our number one, we would go to our number two, which we did. If we didn't go to number two, we would go to number three. That wasn't really all that stressful. This stress was more about, Marissa has this trip planned down to the minute.

And if we got in a day late or if we had to split the family, when her dad was picking us all up, then all of a sudden, and they live an hour, hour and a half from the airport. So now all of a sudden, if Poppy and I go later, we have to figure out, okay, as Marissa's dad is going to have to drive back again and pick us up, do we take an Uber? How do we do this?

Again, when it's just Marissa and me traveling, I don't, yeah, I would like to sit next to her, but if she's in a different seat than me, I don't really care all that much as long as we get on the flight. Whereas with young kids, you want them to be by you. I don't want my five-year-old sitting by herself, 10 rows behind, next to strangers. Like maybe when she gets older, again, like Poppy is done, I'm a little bit more comfortable with her doing that.

That is where the stress comes in, is the family of four, all trying to get to one destination at the same time. When the destination matters, that's where the stress really starts to come in. No, I love it because you're taking advantage of your benefits and the people who work for the airlines that don't take advantage of this priceless benefit. I just don't get it.

It's good because Marissa and even the girls, they are getting complied, like your girls are gonna understand how non-reving works and they're gonna be able to use it to their advantage when they're older, so it's really good. And you've been very lucky. Well, and that, I mean, round trip that saves us anywhere from $1500 to $2,000 for a family of four. That's a lot. Just depending on what the ticket prices would've been.

Doug, we've talked a lot over the years, and especially recently, about how low-cost carriers have been at a disadvantage in the post-COVID travel boom with regards to a lack of premium seating. We discussed last week, Spirit is now going to unbundle its pricing and place a greater focus on premium offerings, which we love. It's being reported, however, that they are not the only airline that is considering unbuddling its product.

It's being reported by several sources, and it was backed up by a statement by this airline's president, that Delta is exploring unbundling its international business class tickets. It's unclear what that would look like, but it's something the Qatar already does, and apparently you told me K-Element Air France do this as well. So I'm sure there are other airlines that we'll probably hear about in right now. Emmer has started doing it in future.

Emmer has started doing it in 2019 with their business class. Okay, yeah, I didn't realize that. Qatar's saver fares do not include onboard meals, lounge access, or other amenities that are generally expected when flying international business class. Essentially, all that's offered with the fares is the seat. Drew, I have some thoughts.

We're gonna try and keep this relatively short because we're already going along in the episode, but seeing your facial expressions and the angry messages that you sent me last night after you read this. I have some questions, I'm sure you do. Why don't you start? I honestly, I hope that we don't do this, Doug, at the company because like Emirates and Qatar, those are considered high quality airlines. So when you buy a business class ticket, you expect a high quality of service.

I think that this is, it's diminishing the product where you have these people that are paying more. Now you're taking lounge access this way. And on some of them, you can't even get a seat assignment until you check in and that's in business. That's the whole value of business. It's a better product. I don't like it. I'll give you an example.

So if we have a business class seat that doesn't have the IFE working, we will take that seat out of service because a revenue customer may say, oh no, I just want the seat, but then they get in and it's a inferior product. And sometimes they'll send Instagram pictures or Twitter as it used to be complaining, hey, I'm in business and look at what they're, we just won't do it because we want to offer a high quality product.

If we don't have enough meals for business for some reason, because people book last minute, sometimes we won't fill those seats. This is diminishing the product. I'm not a fan of this. What are your thoughts? The first one is this is going to be really difficult for the crews. Imagine the flight attendants trying to identify. I know that they've got iPads and iPhones and lists of passengers.

So they can look and be like, oh, four E is a basic business ticket so they don't get meals or beverages, but it could start to become really confusing for the crews and more work for the crews to try and parse through. Okay, which seat gets a meal, which seat doesn't, which seat doesn't even get alcohol when they're doing the drink service. Oh, I'm sorry. You asked for a sparkling wine. No, you can't because you're on a basic business fare.

It's going to add a lot more work for the crews, but think about it this way too, too, Drew. How hard has it become for non-revs to be able to get premium seats anywhere internationally compared to five years ago? Oh, it's very difficult. Very difficult. I understand that this is a revenue grab for the airlines and revenue is what pays our paychecks, but we just talked about the benefits of being able to non-rev to Denver.

I know a lot of listeners are probably gonna say, well, wait a minute, Doug is usually talking about the benefits of revenue as opposed to the benefits of working for the airline, but I see this as in a way a slap in the face to the employees because if you're selling a Delta 1 seat to Paris, Atlanta to Paris, $8,000 round trip is probably the, or four to 8,000, probably the going rate for Delta 1 with lounge access, with meals, with all of that.

And now all of a sudden you sell just the seat for maybe 2,000. Now all of a sudden, yes, people probably will pay for that because we've seen that people pay for premium economy and the premium economy seats are always full. Now the people who are buying premium economy might be like, oh, you know what? I'd rather the lay flat seat. I don't care if I get lounge access or a meal onboard. Now all of a sudden, there will be zero open seats. And that benefit will completely be gone.

But then that brings up the question. If you're selling a Delta 1 ticket for $8,000 round trip, Atlanta to Paris, that includes onboard meal, drinks, and lounge access. And then you sell just the seat for $2,000. You're telling me that lounge access, the onboard meals, and drinks are $6,000. Yeah, no way. Right. Absolutely, absolutely no way.

Which would mean that you would be, you would start to eat into your actual premium offering because people would say, do I want to pay $8,000 for the lounge access or onboard meals? No, I'm just going to pay $2,000 for the seat. So I think that this would have a negative impact on the actual sale of the full fair business product. Well, yeah, that is a really good point. And the other thing is you're going to have something, I did not know.

So you were saying that these carriers, they don't even offer meals. If you're on this specific in this lower business class, I thought it was just like, it might be like the economy meal. You might get the economy meal, you wouldn't get whatever the business class meal is. Yeah, that would be horrible because you're also sitting, you're still kind of sitting together with other customers.

So you're going to have a full fair business class customer seeing someone else denied alcohol or denied a regular meal. And that doesn't look good. That's not a good look. Because I would be like, why are they denying them? What one would think is a given in a business class cabin. Imagine a passenger who doesn't realize that they bought the basic business. They see $2,000 Atlanta to Paris. And they're like, oh, that's a great deal. Not realizing that it's basic business.

I know we talk about transparency and how transparency is important. But if you're in a rush, if you're on your phone and you're booking it really quickly, maybe you don't catch that. And then all of a sudden you get on board and you're like, wait a minute. Why didn't I get lounge access? Why am I not getting a meal? Why am I not getting drinks? I think that this is a really bad idea and a slippery slope. And I hope I really hope the Delta doesn't end up doing this.

But you did say last night, KLM and Air France do. KLM and Air France are joint venture partners with Delta. Meaning if you buy a ticket on Delta, you could possibly be flying on Air France or KLM. I think part of the reason why Delta is considering doing this is to streamline the product across the Atlantic with their partners. On the major carriers, on the network carriers, people who have a status with the carrier domestically, they get a free upgrade. Civilian Doug probably loved that.

Employee Doug and spreadsheet Doug probably does not like that because if it's always full, if the cabin is always full, doesn't that mean that we could have charged more for it in miles or price? That's my concern. These cabins domestically are always full and a lot of them are free upgrades. Why are we giving away for free when the demand is so strong? I'm not in the zone.

This seems like a really weird time for Delta to be doing this when we've talked about how high the demand for the premium product is. It just seems like a really weird time for Delta. And you brought up the fact that Delta changed their lounge access policies last year. You told me this last night in a text and the blowback on that, they then walked a lot of that back because their loyalists were really mad.

Delta is still in the midst of recovering from this crowd strike thing and then this news breaks. I've been reading on a lot of the forums about a lot of unhappy Delta passengers in the last several months. Delta has had a decade run of having that wind at their back of being, quote unquote, the premium airline of the United States. And then with a lot of these changes, that they're shooting themselves in the foot, they are doing this to themselves. There's no reason for it.

Well, yeah, and you know, they're not looking at the big picture. And also, I know for employees, they don't look at us as a revenue source, but employees that have bought club access at Delta were told they can't use the club anymore. Of course, they refunded them their club access, but that really left a bad taste in their mouth, right? Because I know we know a few Delta employees. They were very upset about that. Will they get over it? Maybe. But airline employees love to talk.

I have club membership, you have club membership, Patrick, Ryan, all these people that work for the company, they have club membership. We use it and we talk a lot about it. We promote it. I don't know.

I don't think, you know, taking all the stuff away, it just seems like when you fly Delta or one of these Skyteam carriers, I'm going back to your initial point where if you know that you can get just the seat for $2,000, people aren't going to be forking over the $4,000, $5,000 to get the whole product because they're going to wait. And I think in the long run, just like you said, it is going to lower the yield of that product, which is not a good thing. All right, we're going really long.

We're going to do this next one in a minute or less. We're going to quickly talk about a second opening topic before we get to the news. Drew, did you hear the United Plants to phase out its hemispheres in Flight Magazine? This is going to join Delta and American and honestly, most carriers around the world. I think we're down to about a dozen left who still have in Flight Magazine from the research that I did. What are your thoughts on this? In 30 seconds or less. In 30 seconds or less?

Oh my god. My thoughts are, I am, what's the word? I'm resigned to accepting it because I know people don't read it. It's that nostalgia of flying on an airline and having an in Flight Magazine. And at least looking at the magazine to see what their root network is or their fleet or a little graphic of their hubs, that will be missed. But I know hardly anyone reads it hardly. I don't even read it all the time.

Airlines are doing this because it, quote unquote, saves on weight, which I guess, like pennies on the dollar over millions of flights. Yes, it does a little bit. You don't have to pay to print it. And I'm a millennial. I'm a generation behind you. But I'm going to start sounding like a boomer here by saying all of this technology is great. But come on, do any of us like scanning a QR code at a restaurant to get the menu or get a physical menu put in front of us?

During COVID, it was all to scan the QR code. I know you and Robbie have been doing restaurant. We've been going out a lot. At least from what I've seen, a lot of restaurants now are bringing back the menus because they got pushback. Even from younger generations, from my generation, Gen Zs, who are like, this whole scan on the QR code thing. Yeah, it's great. Technology can be good. But there's nothing better than actually having the physical thing in front of you.

And yeah, maybe people don't read all the articles and stuff. But there's still a lot of great information in there. What need am I coming into? Where in the airport do I need to go? And yes, it's all on the app. But sometimes it's just easier to grab what's sitting right in front of you, reference it, and be like, oh, yeah, I have to go here. OK, boom, done. Put it back in the seat. Well, yeah, and it's just been coincidence. But when I went to India, the story was three perfect days in Delhi.

And then when we went to New Zealand, I sent you a picture. It's like, how do they know? Three perfect days in New Zealand. So it's kind of nice, right? Because I did read it. I got some tips. I know we got to move on. But real quick, last night, I sent you some clues. I said, all right, see you in the morning calm. Does that mean anything to you? No. Morning. Morning calm is the Inflite magazine of Korean Air. Oh, really?

OK. Yeah. And then I said, all right, I'll see you in the morning calm when we'll be visa V. Do you know what that is? Was that America West? No. I can picture it. Yeah, you got to go back because this airline changed the name of their magazine. I don't know. Visa V was the Inflite magazine of United before they changed it to Hemisphere. It's French. Yeah, visa V. It's like face to face, right? In French. But a lot of Americans didn't know.

So when I was working at another carrier, they were like, oh, we need more copies of the visa V. It's like the visa V. No, it's the V. It's the V. Then I said, all right, when we'll be visa V, which is face to face, before I'm in route to Martin State Airport. I didn't know this either. I don't know in Rio. Air Canada, one more before I'm in Rio. I'm in O for three right now. I didn't know that would either. So these are tricky.

Before I'm in route to Martin State, we're all be living the high life in the sky, high life in sky. Well, sky is delta or was delta. High life was high. No, it wasn't British Airways. High life sounds like Virgin. It does, but it is British Airways. Oh, it is. OK. That's why they always say in test, go with your first instinct. Yeah, high life. And then the last one that I put up is Pan Am's magazine was Clipper. I think my favorite one for the American Careers was the American Way.

That was American's magazine. And it was called the American Way. I thought that was cool. In a foreign country, and then you board American to get back home. And the magazine in these American Way is kind of cool. All right. The only thing I didn't like about American Way was their route map. Wasn't a route map. It was just a list of dots on the map where they flew. You couldn't see what their actual route map was. Never like that. All right. We do need to move on.

I know you have a flight lesson you have to get to. Our first news topic this week is it go around from something we talked about back in June. We spoke last week about Boeing's new CEO and the issues he now has to deal with leading the struggling company. While the commercial was generally get the most attention, especially on our podcast, it's not the only part of the business it's having issues.

In early June, we lauded Boeing for its first successful crude launch of the Starliner, its new space capsule. As a reminder, two US astronauts launched to the International Space Station on June 5th for what was supposed to be a 10-day mission. We joked the following week about, quote, tarmac delays as it careered away several hours before they were able to successfully dock with the space station. Well, I'm not sure what kind of delay this is now.

Both astronauts have been on the ISS for more than two months as Boeing and its engineers remotely work through a host of issues, including battery and thruster problems. Boeing has emphasized that media reports claiming the astronauts are, quote, stranded are overblown. And the company in the assable green light to return when they feel any unnecessary risk is gone. I will say, Drew, I typed this up before the news broke on Thursday or on Wednesday that they may not return now until next year.

And they might return on the space. That's crazy. Yeah, I saw that, too. And then there's a whole process for removing the starliner from the space station because it's on main and so that they can open up another gate to bring a second dragon, SpaceX Dragon up to that. Yeah, it's a whole thing. But I just want our customers to know, when we have a creeping delay and it's like, oh, it's another hour to finish fixing it, these people thought that they were there for 10 days.

And they're going to be there for possibly a year to be imagined. Nine months. Yeah. I would be, like, if you were an astronaut, I know they're built for this kind of stuff. But at some point, I wouldn't need counseling. Someone's going to tell me you're going to be here a year. There was, what was that space series? Robbie and I used to watch it, but they were stuck in space. And they missed their turn or whatever and they kept going. And they said they're going to be there for like five years.

It was like an international space cruise. I'll find the name of it. But it's something like that where they're running out of food and stuff. Doug, our final news topic this week is a little surprising, mainly that this wasn't announced at Farmboro last month. Kathy Pacific announced on Wednesday that it plans to invest $100 billion or $1,200 billion Hong Kong dollars or $12.83 billion US dollars in airline improvements over the next seven years.

The executive said these investments would come in the form of new planes, cabin updates, new updated lounges, and digital, and sustainability initiatives. So as part of the investment, Kathy and Airbus announced 30 firm orders for A330 Nios with an option for 30 more. The deliveries will begin in 2028 and run through 2031. And the aircraft are expected to serve as replacements for aging planes in Cathay's fleet. Great news. It is.

I'm wondering if Airbus gave Cathay a discount because A330 Nio has not been a good seller compared to the A350. And that's what, in a way, I'm kind of hoping will happen with the triple 7X that Boeing will start to give discounts to carriers, possibly our carrier. This is good for Cathay, but it is only sounding like its replacement for aging planes, not growth. But still, a 30 firm, 30 option order is not insignificant by any means. Right.

And they also ordered some A320 Nios, which I believe will go to Hong Kong Express. I did not know this. Do you know that Cathay Pacific owns Hong Kong Express? There'll be more planes for them. And you know, you're talking about A330. That's a perfect plane for these trunk routes in Asia, like between Hong Kong and India, Hong Kong and Japan. That's their version. So for Singapore, it's the 787-10. That seems to be the workforce, the workforce, the workforce of Southeast Asia.

OK, we talked about Delta already. We're going to come back to Delta here. We talked last week about the CrowdStrike IT outage and how Delta was looking in the litigation after the outage caused massive lingering problems at the airline. Delta said it suffered more than $500 million in losses in the week-long stretch that saw more than 6,000 flights canceled. This week, both Microsoft and CrowdStrike responded to Delta's assertion.

Microsoft said that it immediately reached out to Delta and offered assistance, but that the airline either turned down the help or didn't respond. The company said that its initial investigation suggests that Delta's prolonged issues are due to outdated IT infrastructure and not the CrowdStrike issue, which was the initial reason for Delta's issues. CrowdStrike also responded saying they too reached out to help Delta, but Delta said they didn't need help.

CrowdStrike's lawyer said in a letter to Delta, quote, the lawsuit has contributed to misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta's IT decisions and response to the outage, unquote. The lawyer also said that CrowdStrike's liability should be less than $10 million. So I love that. That's like the ship that ran into the key bridge in Baltimore, which all that wreckage is out of the way, by the way. So they said, we're not responsible, but we will only pay $40 million.

What is that? You're not responsible, but you're willing to fork out $40 million. Delta responded by saying it has invested billions in IT upgrades since 2016. A company spokesperson said, quote, Delta has a long track record of investing in safe, reliable, and elevated service for our customers and employees. Doug, this is starting to get juicy, so we'll follow this story. For different airlines, it must have been different.

I just assumed it was the same for all airlines, like a software issue, but for us, it involved our IT people going to individual workstations, which is thousands of them, to fix it. I don't know what the fix was for Delta. My understanding is it was the same thing, but Delta's crews scheduling issues were due to an internal design issue. They lost track of the crews.

And even once the computers were rebooted, whatever their internal IT design for how they track the crews couldn't keep up with all of the issues. Unlike the other airlines who, once the computers were rebooted, everything came back online relatively quickly. I think that this is a really bad look for Delta. Yes, I understand they're trying to get compensation.

Their passengers are still angry, and now Delta is in a way doing this to themselves, bringing themselves back into the news, tossing the blame on someone else, but not taking the blame saying, yes, we messed up. We are going to improve. We are going to make it better. End of story, Delta could have been out of the news. But Delta keeps bringing this back up and pushing for this litigation. And now they're in a pissing match with Microsoft and CrowdStrike. That's not a good look.

And the statement saying, we've invested billions in IT upgrades since 2016. It doesn't look like whatever the investments they made were actually helpful in this situation. I totally get it. Yes, CrowdStrike and or Microsoft were responsible for the initial shock to the system. That's undisputed. No one is saying that that's not what caused the initial issue, but then it's how did you recover? All the other airlines recovered very quickly once those computers were rebooted.

Delta's problems lingered for days and days. That's not CrowdStrike's fault. That then becomes an internal issue with whatever your system is. Delta is bringing themselves back into the news right now.

And they already are out of favor with a lot of customers because they lost honeymoons, they lost trips to weddings, they lost grandparents trips, whatever it is, people are angry and now Delta is dragging themselves back into the news as opposed to just owning it and say, we screwed up, we have internal things that we need to fix and we promise we will fix it.

They're trying to find someone else to blame because their reputation has been sterling for decades, for years and years and years and now their reputation has slightly tarnished and they're again trying to come out on top and say, look, it's not our fault, look at all that we've done. This is fully someone else's responsibility. Do you know I'm a parent of two kids? If I told my kids, never take responsibility, always make it someone else's fault.

What kind of an image would I be sending to my kids by doing that? Well, yeah, and also you don't want to burden the customer with these internal issues. Delta could have done all this programming themself, right? Like in the old days when the airlines used to do had their own platforms for checking or reservation systems. So Delta is subcontracting CrowdStrike.

Our airline subcontracts a bunch of companies to do the catering, sometimes the ramp work, sometimes the IT when something goes wrong, we don't blame them, we just apologize and then in the background, we work with them for compensation. So it's not just Delta, Doug, I, you can be sure that American, United, other airlines that were affected by this are going after CrowdStrike for some damages, but we're not burdening our customer with that.

CrowdStrike is going to have to pay something out to Delta because that's how it started. But then a week into it, is it still CrowdStrike? No, there's going to be some, you're not going to completely absolve CrowdStrike from Delta's problems, but it was a bigger issue than just CrowdStrike. It's not a good look to drag this into the public. All right, we just finished talking about Delta's ongoing woes after the CrowdStrike outage.

Well, we received a great call to the hotline from our friend DJ relating to flight delays. This is DJ from Rally. Hey, Doug, in general, I wanted to get your take on whether passengers should be compensated for weather delays. The question comes up because that was a fine American airline. This past weekend, we get a August 3rd and 4th. And both of my flights to Philadelphia were canceled. Two in Philadelphia were canceled.

Luckily, I didn't have to pay for any further hotel accommodations or any further food. But a lot of people that were on my flights were stranded for two to three days. And they really had to pay out of pocket lots of money for things that were out of their control, but obviously also out of the airline control. So wondering if things will shake up in the future on what the rules might look like or if the government might back down. I'm not sure. Just want to get your thoughts. Thanks.

I have a lot to say. I know that we are running long. But this is a really good question, DJ. It's a really good question. And this is where there's a double standard for companies where the airlines are held to a much higher standard by the customers. When a flight cancels due to weather, we can't control that. We don't control thunderstorms. We don't even control air traffic control. We just have to work around it.

And passengers get very upset when we don't pay for their hotel room, pay for their meals. But I just want to give you this example for people who don't work in airline ops. If Amtrak cancels your train because of high heat or for a snow storm, do you expect a hotel and meals from Amtrak? No. You leave. And the Amtrak tickets are way more expensive than airline tickets between DC and New York. I know that from experience.

When your Uber is late and you miss your flight, do you go to Uber for compensation? No, you don't. But I will say something where legally, we are responsible for our diversion. So if you're flying from Santa Domingo to New York and you're flight diverts to Washington, we do cover your hotel. And I believe I've been gone from customer service where I believe we cover your meals too. Definitely your overnight accommodations. But I'm thinking from an airline perspective, why are we doing that?

We're not diverting because of any problem of our own. But you're not in your origin or destination. So the airlines do take care of you. This is a really sticky situation. I would love if I'd been in a situation where I had a flight cancel for some reason I was not at home. And it was not covered by the airline. I just ended up sleeping in the airport. Yeah, it wasn't great. But it was like, well, I mean, I'm here. I will get home eventually. Yeah, it kind of sucks right now.

But that kind of stuff does happen. Yeah, it would be great to have everything covered by the airline. When you pay $250 for a round trip ticket, a hotel room in New York City probably costs $250. So if all of a sudden now the airline is having to shell out hotel room accommodations for all of this, they're going to have to find those costs somewhere. And that's going to be in higher ticket prices.

If this were the case, if now all of a sudden, all of these hotels are required to be covered, their lines would take a huge loss unless they increase the ticket price.

So if people really want two to three nights of hotels covered in all the meals and all of this, but you only paid $250 for the ticket, that would be like me going to a sporting event, paying $50 for an outfield ticket at a baseball game, and then getting angry or expecting like when it starts to rain, hey, I'm getting rained on, I'm getting wet here. Well, I could have paid for the $1,000 suite, but I chose not to.

Right, to me, it's kind of the same analogy that if now all of a sudden I'm expecting compensation, I'm expecting to get fully covered by this. Okay, well then ticket prices are going to have to go up because the airlines just don't have the money for that, because the ticket prices are so low, relatively speaking.

And then here's something you can do if you are in DC and you're trying to get to Newark, and the airline has to provide you a hotel room, which are hotels are hard to find when there's 2000 extra customers stranded. Ask for this, ask for a travel credit. Just ask for a $150 travel credit, and then you get your own way to New York, rent a car or have someone pick you up. The airlines would much rather do that, give you a travel credit because it's not real money.

I mean, I hate to say, I mean, it is $150 in value for you, but for the airline, it's not as much. It's very easy to issue, and for you, if you fly a lot, that is like cash to you, right? If it's a $150 travel credit. So I would ask for that, and then you could be in New York while everyone else is in DC for a day, waiting for a flight back. One more thing on this, DJ, something that you can do if you are a frequent flyer, this is where status helps.

Doug knows this, if you are a high flyer with Delta or American or United, and you're in their high echelons, you get added perks. We will pay for your hotel. I don't know what the level of mileage member it is, but I know for some categories, even though it's weather, we will pay for your room as a perk because you are of that status. So if you're close to that, this is why you stay with the same airline because you do get benefits for loyalty. DJ, thanks for calling in.

All right, Drew, you're about to go fly. What else is on tap for this week? We just canceled my flight today because it's raining, and we are seeing, we talked about Hurricane Debbie. It was tropical storm Debbie, as it moved up the coast. Now it's not any of that. It's just, we do have high winds on a lot of rain, so some areas are flooding. That's not that bad. So I will spend today studying at home, and then I will have a flight lesson tomorrow because it's supposed to be sunny.

One more quick, so I got this, and I need to respond because I know it annoys some people. I started my airline career at San Francisco, and quickly I started calling it SFO because a dispatcher at our company called and said, hey, are you in SFO? And I'm like, what? I started saying that. But we got this message from listener Jill Pollock, and they say, hi guys, I have a question for you. I spent 28 years working in operations and maintenance for United and Continental, 12 of them in SFO.

I have never heard any part of the operation referred to SFO as SFO. Is this a new thing? Is this unique to your podcast? It sounds very strange to my ear. I know it drives Doug Crazy. I can't stop saying it, but there are some people who say it, it's not just me. Shout out to Noah who does DMV flights. It's DMV flights altogether. He's on Instagram. He's a spotter at Washington, Dallas. And he was saying that. I'm like, did you get that from me? He's like, no, I've been saying that.

So he said, he was like trying to figure out who he heard that from, and it was from a friend's father who's a captain at our company that says that. So it's not just me. And it's not someone we know. Interesting. And I know Eric, our listener at Seattle, he always says that. He does say that because of me. I'm hoping it's catching. I'm hoping it's not. I'm hoping it's not. I'm hoping it's not. I'm hoping it's not. I'm hoping it's not. I know we could do a poll of how many people hate it.

And I'll still do it, but we could just see what's out there. No, so on tap, I have my flight lesson tomorrow. And then back to work and the weather's supposed to be calm or this week. So if I have to work later in the day, I will. So I don't get trapped helping with thunderstorms. How's the rest of your vacation? I'll talk about that in a sec. All I can say is I work at SFO and I interact with ops every single time I work and I've never heard anyone there say it. I'll leave it alone.

That's all I'm going to say. It's just one soul versus three. It's more efficient. What's on tap this week? We're here in Denver until hopefully we can get home on Tuesday because I actually have a sim that I have to get to for the Air Force on Wednesday. I haven't looked at the loads yet. I don't usually look at going home until a couple days prior. I'll probably find a flight list and then as the time gets closer we'll figure it out.

I'm less worried about us all getting home on the same flight as I am when we're getting here. We just have to get someone home to get the dog to get the cat. I have to be home by Wednesday evening, which means I have like 24 hours of sit at the airport, figure it out before I actually have to be home and leaving a big hub like this. Lots of clubs, lots of food options. It's not like sitting at the smaller airport in Sacramento. Plus the vacation is done. The vacation is done at this point.

We've done everything we wanted. If we do get home a flight or two later it's a little bit less stress. I won't be as stressed trying to get everyone home as I was trying to get here because we didn't want to miss anything. That's good. Normally people reverse engineer it where they see how many seats are coming back before they plan their trip too, but you're on a domestic flight. You'll find a way to get back. Good luck on the flight tomorrow, Drew.

I know that you're probably disappointed because it's two days in a row that you canceled, but this is invaluable ground study time. I know I said that we are like even as someone who's been flying for a decade and a half where I'm always studying. I brought my iPad along, the girls went out with the grandparents for ice cream the other day. I opened up my iPad and I studied for an hour and a half even while I'm on vacation.

It's always good to find those little pockets of time where you can get into the books and you can just feel better about it before you show up for the flight. It's a good luck tomorrow. To our friends and contributors this podcast is your show. Go on our website, nextrippnetwork.com. Let us know what's on your mind so we can talk about it or give us your feedback. You can also follow us on Instagram or threads at nextripppodcast.

Please tell your friends about us so we can reach more people who love aviation and travel. Yeah and speaking of aviation, you just mentioned you're still studying in your mid-30s and I'm in my 50s and I'm learning this and even an experienced pilot on airlines, they constantly have to remain sharp and know the procedures and it's a good thing. I think later in life it's something that keeps you thinking and keeps the wheels turning and aviation will do that.

You can also call our hotline like DJ just did. The number is 872-529-5620 when calling from the US. If you're calling from abroad you can use Country Code 001 or PLUS1. Thanks to all of our friends and contributors for your support and for joining the conversation. We'll see you next week and in the meantime, stay aviation tough. This has been the next trip podcast.

Visit nexttripnetwork.com for information about previous episodes, trip reviews, aviation photos, and other aviation related content. This is your show, so search for the next trip on Twitter and let Doug and Drew know what you want to talk about. Not on Twitter, you can also email them at nexttrip.podcast at gmail.com. Please consider leaving a review wherever you download your podcasts. It will help other listeners like you discover this show. Hey everyone, it's Doug with the post-log.

Drew and I recorded Friday morning before the reports of the ATR accident in Brazil. We are following the situation. We'll talk about it next week. Sorry that we didn't get to it this week. It's just been super busy. As I said, it happened just after we started recording. We'll talk about it next week. Thanks for listening. See everyone. Always be yourself.