October 16, 2024 • 25 mins
When we fly, most of us have no idea what kind of plane we're on, we just get in and go. Travel and airline journalist Edward Russell tells us what kinds of planes dominate the U.S. market, why they dominate the market, how long planes stay in circulation, and the process for buying, selling, and regulating big ol' jet airliners. Plus: America's best small airport, one thing he'd change about the check-in process, and the biggest change facing the airline industry.
https://byerussell.substack.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi everybody, it's no Show.
I'm Matt Brown, joined asalways by Jeff Borman.
Edward Russell is a travel andairline journalist who writes
for Skift, the Washington Post,travel and Leisure, yahoo News,
stops at Gothamist, the PointSky Flight Global and many, many
others, and one of my favoritethings about his writing is how
(00:27):
easily he can shift from themacro to the micro.
His breadth of knowledgeliterally covers the full
spectrum of the airline industrythe transportation industry
really and on a dime he can tellyou about the most exciting new
airline routes, the airline whogives out the best free toys.
He can tell you about the mostexciting new airline routes, the
airline who gives out the bestfree toys, the intricacies of
(00:47):
labor deals, the facts of lifeabout travel recovery, the
economics of high-speed trainprojects, you name it.
He is always in motion, eitherrunning or on a bike or on a
train or in the air, and heloves the design of travel too,
the spaces and logos andbuildings that guide us on our
journeys.
To the spaces and logos andbuildings that guide us on our
(01:08):
journeys.
Is there somebody out there whoknows so much about so many
things in the airline industry?
I doubt it, ned.
Welcome to no Show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thanks so much for having me, matt, I appreciate it
.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Ned.
There are 45,000 flights everyday in the US At peak hours the
FAA estimates 4,500 planes arein the air just over the United
States TSA screens.
On average, 2.5 million peoplea day, 3 million on the big
holidays.
My general premise here thatgets us to this conversation is
that maybe 1% of thesepassengers actually know what
(01:40):
kind of plane they're getting onor anything about the planes
themselves.
And despite millions of milesunder my own belt, I'm in the
99% camp.
I board these things everysingle week and have no idea
what I'm doing.
My mother asked me recently areyou willing to fly Boeings?
And I hadn't even thought aboutit.
It hadn't crossed my mind.
Obviously I am, because I geton them once a week.
(02:02):
But I don't realize what I'meven on until I get to the seat
and see that little card in theseat back in front of me.
It tells me what I'm on, what'sin the air.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah well, jeff, you've got a really good point
there.
Most Americans, most people,have no idea what kind of plane
they're getting on.
The truth is, if you're jumpingon a plane and the sky's over
the US, you are almost certainlyflying on an Airbus or a Boeing
model.
Those are the dominantmanufacturers we like to call it
a duopoly in sort of major,large aircraft, and the A320 is
(02:35):
the 737 family.
That's pretty much what you'regoing to be getting on.
Of course there are others.
Embraer is probably the thirdmost prominent manufacturer in
the US and that's a lot of theregional flights.
A lot of the airlines American,delta, united, alaska have
moved to Embraer's EJET familyfor regional flights.
But that is still a minority ofmaybe 10 percent of the US
(03:00):
fleet.
So Boeing and Airbus are whatyou're going to be flying if
you're flying in the US fleet.
So Boeing and Airbus are whatyou're going to be flying if
you're flying in the US today.
That's for sure.
And you're right.
You make me think of a clip.
My husband flew flying shortlyafter the MAX came back and
texted me.
Even though I'm always lookingat his plane, he's like wait,
I'm flying a MAX and I'm likeI've told you this three times,
but anyway, like you said,people don't know, but it's an
(03:36):
Airbus and Boeing, almostcertainly If you move outside
the US, does that 90% Boeing,airbus, 10% Embraer, does that
90% change significantly?
I don't think it changessignificantly.
There are, yes, othermanufacturers, and I should say
CRJ, which is owned byMitsubishi, has a tiny
percentage in the US, smallerpercentage abroad.
They're out of production butthe planes are still flying.
Those are the small regionaljets, crj-200s, which you still
see on some small routes.
There are a couple in China.
You have Comac, which is thestate-owned airplane
manufacturer, and they'restarting to deliver some of
(03:57):
their state-owned planes, butthey're only flying in mainland
China at this point, maybe toHong Kong, but China.
And then, of course, if you'reflying in some exotic locales,
you'll probably come across someolder planes and you could see
a Fokker, which is a Dutchmanufacturer that went out of
business a while ago.
Dornier, a German manufacturer,again out of business.
You know the Embraer'sturboprops.
(04:19):
There's a lot of small planesthat you can still find out
there if you want to go findthem, search them out, but
they're not something that'sgoing to be very common at all.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And what are the models of plane, right?
Each is known for.
I mean, if it weren't for theMAX, I don't think people could.
You know, maybe this 777, right, that's kind of a legacy,
Everybody can name the 777.
Within Boeing, within Airbus,what are the models like?
How many varieties of thesethings are there?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, so in production, airbus has the A330,
the A320 family and the A350family in production.
So they've got basically threemain models and each of those
has sort of a sub-variant withinthem.
You know, a330 is an example.
You've got the 800, which isthe shorter one, it's a small
(05:07):
one, and you have a 900, whichis longer, seats, more people.
Same within the A320 and A350family.
Boeing has, on the commercialside, the 737, 777, and 787.
So again, three planes, threefamilies in production.
So yeah, three seems the magicnumber right now.
There's no new major plane indevelopment at this point, so
(05:30):
that's not going to change anytime in the near future.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Ned, how did we get here?
Is the regulatory environmentjust so intensive that it's
difficult for competitors to getinto the market?
Is it about the money?
I wonder why, even though we'renot talking about like a
consumer environment, like carmanufacturers two main
(05:58):
manufacturers for planes seemsawfully low.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It is low and that's the result of sort of decades of
consolidation and everything.
I'd say the biggest challengeis money.
Designing and building a safe,reliable airplane takes hundreds
of millions of dollars billionsof dollars if you're doing
off-shelf or completely new, Iwould guess and that you know
that's just really hard to do.
Airbus was founded with backingfrom four governments in Europe
(06:21):
Spain, uk, france and Germany.
I mean that's how they got offthe ground.
You look at, boeing solidifiedits position by by McDonnell
Douglas in the 1990s, which wasthe other major US airplane
manufacturer.
Like they say about airlines,you know there's there's a lot
of airline names sort oflittering the trash bin of
history, and same goes forairplane manufacturers.
There's a lot of attempts.
(06:41):
Lockheed used to make planesthat they sort of gave up on it
because it just was taking,costing so much, and some of
those planes I mentioned thatare out of production Fokker,
dornier, all have been tried andthe truth is, is money.
And then the regulatoryoversight is a lot, and you see
that right now there's a wholenew subset of tech companies
developing these electricvertical takeoff and landing
(07:02):
planes and they're essentiallyelectric helicopters.
They're learning.
It is just really challengingto get a new plane through the
regulatory hurdles to get itcertified.
Boeing struggles with it,airbus struggles with it.
Say you've never done it beforeand that just eats up a ton of
cash.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
It's also in such stark contrast to how tech
funding works.
Let's say you did have a greatidea for a whole new way to make
airplanes and you went andlooking for investment.
Great, Give me a hundredmillion dollars to get going.
And then, oh, by the way, I'llneed $500 million in a couple of
years, and then probably abouta billion dollars a few years
after that just to get thisoperation moving.
(07:42):
And I think even if you had aninvestor let's say you have some
kind of Bill Gates characterout there who's willing to do it
Just from what you've outlined,the obstacles to getting your
new tech into the market are soradically different and higher
than what it would be if youwere going to design any other
(08:04):
product that would try to takeon entrenched technology that's
already existing.
So it's daunting.
I wonder if there's somebodyout there, though, who's kind of
secretly thinking there's a wayto kind of game the system.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I would suggest giving Boom Supersonic a call.
They probably are thinking theycan do it.
They're definitely trying tolaunch a new supersonic thing,
but no, like you said, I thinkthe tech industry of ethos goes
move fast, break things, andthat's just impossible in the
world of commercial aircraft.
And those hurdles are there forgood reason it's keeping us
(08:39):
safe.
I mean, there are clearlyloopholes and issues, as we all
know, but they keep us safe andthat's why air travel is one of
the safest forms of travel inthe world.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And the lead time on a plane that waters is about, I
don't know, a decade.
Is that about right?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, so it depends if you're buying an entirely new
plane, and I ran the numbers onthis.
Boeing launched its 777X, whichis a stretched version of the
777 that we've all probablyflown on on a long haul flight.
They launched that in 2013 andthey were promising it by 2020.
So seven years the plane isdelayed, so actually probably
won't in our service until nextyear 26.
(09:15):
So it's easily over a decade,but that gives you an idea.
That is a updated version of anexisting plane and that was
seven years.
Think about how long it takesto launch an entirely new plane.
It's long, it's over a decade,which is funny because in the
90s, in the 80s, the generalview was it took five years for
a completely new plane to cometo market, and that has just
(09:36):
totally been turned upside down.
I don't have a good reason forwhy, but just the complexity of
it the global supply chains, theregulatory hurdles everything
has just made that much, muchmore difficult to do.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And how does that affect the design of airplanes?
Then If you have to plan for aproduct that won't actually hit
the marketplace, in use for 10to 15, maybe 20 years, do they
have the vision?
I mean, that's got to retardthe vision in a way of what you
could possibly produce.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh, absolutely it's, I mean, and it's a gamble.
So let's take the Airbus andBoeing.
In the 2000s, airbus gambled onthe A380, super jumbo seating
more than four or five hundredpassengers.
Boeing, on the other hand,gambled on the 787.
They both plowed hundreds ofmillions, billions of dollars in
the development of those twoplanes and the truth was is the
market went towards a 787, aplane that can fly thousands of
(10:28):
miles, carry 200 to 300 peoplegive or take and, you know, open
up some of these smaller routes, routes to cities like, I don't
know, brisbane in Australia, toDallas, fort Worth.
It moved away from Airbus.
Airbus was thinking that 380,500 people would fly all those
Heathrow flights and everythingwould be the way to go and
market the A380, its last planewas built in 2021, the line
(10:52):
closed, whereas the 787 is goingstrong.
So it is a big gamble by themanufacturers and you know every
time they come out with a newplane, they really are, you know
, taking that risk.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
How old do planes get before they're retiring?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
That is a good question.
The generally assumed lifecycle lifetime for a new plane
is about 25 years.
That said, that can go manydifferent ways.
A well-maintained plane in thefleet, a US airline that's
well-maintained Delta Unitedboth fly planes for more than 30
years and that doesn't meanthey're less safe.
They maintain them well.
(11:28):
They have to go through veryrigorous, heavy de-checks every
five to 10 years.
You know those planes areperfectly fine to find If you've
flown a United Thai J 767,which is a plane business class,
something like that.
Those planes are over 30 yearsand I'd fly one in a heartbeat.
But 25 years is assumed lifeand the truth is, if you're
flying like a 737 at Ryanair,those planes only stay in the
(11:49):
fleet for about 10 to 15 years,and that's because Ryanair
focuses on lots of turns, lotsof flights.
They put that plane through alot and what matters in terms of
maintenance is how many cycles,how many times the plane takes
off and lands.
It's not just a straight on agequestion.
So Ryanair's planes tend toretire in less time just because
they're through such heavy use.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Do planes get bought and sold from airline to airline
, or do they tend to stay withthe company that ordered them in
the first place?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh yeah, there is a very hot secondary market for
used planes.
It's one, actually, that a lotof airlines are struggling with
right now because, as manypeople know or maybe don't,
airbus and Boeing have faced alot of delays and because of
that, airlines want used planesand it's hard to find used
planes right now.
So typically they get soldaround a plane here, a plane
(12:39):
there.
One of the fun facts that Ialways find interesting is if
you are an American Airlines orUnited Airlines, you want to
find a sort of batch of usedplanes so 10, 20, something like
that and the reason why isbecause when an airline buys
planes, they buy them to theirspec, their cockpits configured
a certain way, the engines areconfigured a certain way, and so
(13:01):
buying one plane from anairline means you're going to
have one unique plane in yourfleet, but if you buy 20 from an
airline, then you have 20 as anumber like okay, we can train
crews around 20 planes.
There's some economies of scalethere, rather than having one
plane.
So it's interesting.
Airlines look for those dealswhere they can find a batch of
them, and they do it.
(13:21):
Let's see.
I think American bought Alaska'sold A321 Neos a couple of years
ago, simply because they got 10.
They're all alike and, asteriskbeing, alaska now owns 321 Neos
again because they just boughtHawaiian.
But this was before that.
So it's.
There is a hot secondary marketfor these and you know it's.
Yeah, there's a lot of peoplethat play in that market and
(13:44):
there's money to be made.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
It's also interesting when you look in.
I guess this gets back to kindof the tech question of it.
Like so much of modern aviationis automation, but often when
you're passing in and out of aplane you kind of glance into
the cockpit.
It does look really analog tome and I don't know if that's
(14:07):
just my untrained eye or has thekind of mechanical technology
that's in a cockpit.
Has it not changed that muchover the last I don't know 30,
40 years?
Sometimes it looks like this isa plane from like the 60s or
70s in there, even though I knowthey've had upgrades in their
newer planes.
I wonder how often theyactually update the software and
(14:30):
the UX of how planes are flown.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So the difference today is cockpits are full of um
, everything's electronic today.
Things used to be hydraulic.
You flipped a switch, there wasa hydro manual hydraulics that
moved the vertical stabilizer inthe back of the plane.
That happened.
Today, everything, yeah,there's still a switch, but it's
a electronic impulse being sentback to that vertical
(14:53):
stabilizer to make sure theplane does what you want to do.
The other thing is things havegotten more complex.
So, even though certainfunctions have gone electronic
and have moved on to a computersystem, there's more things to
worry about, more controls thathave to be, alerts that need to
be added and things that need tobe monitored just because of
(15:14):
safety and regulatorydevelopment.
So it's just, it's still anextremely complex operation and
that requires a lot of differentthings.
And you know you want a lot ofthose switches to be a switch a
pilot can reach versus being,you know, under a screen on, you
know, a digital display,because in an emergency you
don't want the pilot having topress through the different
(15:36):
screens to get to the off button.
You want them just to reach upand hit the button up above them
.
So there's that factor too.
You don't want to completely doaway with all of those buttons
for safety reasons.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
If the front of the plane, then the cockpit's been
modernized repeatedly, even ifit looks to the consumer's eye
to be something quite old.
The back of the plane, where weall reside.
How many retrofittings arethere in an airplane's lifetime?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So that really depends on how many airlines it
flies for.
If it's bought by one airlineand flown by that airline for
its entire life, probably onlymaybe two or three retrofits
over its life and I'm definingretrofit as sort of an update to
the cabin.
This is separate from amaintenance check.
Those happen every five to 10years, regardless of the age of
(16:27):
the plane.
But the cabin is really onlyupdated probably one or two
times.
You know, like United's A320s,I remember in the 90s they had
nice big fat seats with bigcushions and standard uh seats,
and today they've got slim lines.
Uh, which are slim lines meansa very thin type of seat.
Uh, the pitch is smaller.
But I want to say they've onlyprobably been swapped out twice
(16:49):
between the 90s and now.
It is just it's.
These cabins fly for a long time, they're durable, they fly for
10 years plus.
But if a plane gets sold toanother airline you get things
ripped out and, like I said,there's a strong secondary
market for planes.
It also costs a lot of money torefit a plane.
I mean tens of millions ofdollars.
So when you're buying a planeyou have to calculate that in oh
(17:12):
, we got a great deal on a plane.
But do we want to spend 10 plusmillions of dollars to rip
everything out, put all ourstuff in, so it's a costly
proposition.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
I just bought a house in Dallas that felt a lot like
that.
It was a really good price andit cost tens of millions of
dollars it feels to make itworth living in.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
That's right.
I mean that's why you seebudget airlines will often just
the cabin of the plane theybought it from.
So you're flying I've flown onlow cost and be like, oh, this
used to be a Japan airlinesplane, very clearly.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You know, we go through the same thing Most of
my life's in the hotel world andyou'll build a Ritz Carlton and
then about 15 years later itbecomes a full service.
You know Hilton or Marriott,and then about 10 more years
later it becomes an independenthotel.
You know the Roosevelt orsomething like this.
And then you run that thing inthe ground and by the time it's
50 years old, it's an historicproperty, and somebody steps
(18:04):
back in, renovates the wholething and turns it into a
gorgeous four seasons again.
How does this whole thing tieup?
How many planes are beingbought every year and retired
every year?
How does this work?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So the global fleet is growing.
I mean it stopped growingduring COVID but it is growing
again.
The number is it fluctuatesfrom year to year.
You know I'm thinking about,sorry, united.
I have the numbers on top of myhead, sorry to refer to them so
much.
But you know they are taking inabout 5% to 10% of their fleet
(18:47):
new every year and they'reretiring fewer than that.
So say that they have 900planes increased by 10% but then
retire 5%.
So your net increase is 5%.
It's small growth in emergingmarkets Asia, the Middle East,
especially India, africa to alesser extent, and that is
driving a lot of global growth.
In developed markets Europe,north America the growth is
lower.
But you and you see olderplanes flown for longer as well.
So taking Europe, lufthansa isonly taking maybe 20 new planes
(19:11):
a year across their whole groupand they've got 600, 700 planes.
So it's much smaller the growthand they're flying things
longer.
So the turnover every year iswhere I'm getting is.
You know, probably 5% to 10% ofthe global fleet is new on any
given year, on the high end, butthen you've got retirement.
So it's yeah, the net increaseis definitely smaller than that.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Okay, and here's a question that's very dear to
frequent travelers, with peoplegetting larger and by that I
mean even healthy larger.
Right, we're just taller andmore broad shouldered than 30,
40 years ago.
Are the seats actually gettingsmaller?
It sure feels like it.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
It's a yes or no answer to that question.
First off, for all of thosewith broader shoulders happy to
hear, seats are no narrower on a737 or A320 today than they
were before.
However, the distance betweenthe seat in front of you and
your seat is definitely gottensmaller over the years.
Airlines have gone for what wecall slimline seats, which are
just really thin.
We've all seen them.
It's like plastic with a littlebit of padding on top and
generally bad for my back, butthat's another story.
And so they claim that it's thesame distance, because the way
(20:22):
they measure that is from theback of one seat to the front of
the next seat.
But your knees feel it.
It is tighter in there and it'stough.
That is unfortunately gettingsmaller.
One thing about this change isthere's been an increasing
regulatory push in the US,europe, to start regulating this
and the way that they couch.
(20:42):
That is just about how manypeople can evacuate off of an
airplane in a given amount oftime, and there's a lot of
thought being given to whetherthat needs to change.
That's a big change.
Not saying it's going to happen, but regulators are looking at
that and I think a lot of peoplewould appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Okay, ned lightning round questions here.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
What's your favorite small airport?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Ooh, small airport.
I'm going to go with Ithaca,New York.
I lived there in high schooland it was beautiful and I could
drive up and jump on a plane in20 minutes and there's no
problem.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
You've written about high-speed rail.
You've written about high-speedrail.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
If you could kind of put unlimited funds towards a
high-speed route between twoAmerican cities.
What would that be?
I think it would be.
Probably.
I can only pick one route.
Okay, I think San Francisco, la.
It is a huge economic driver.
That said, not the route thatthey're building today, because
that is a politicized,gerrymandered route aimed to hit
different congressionaldistricts to win votes.
(21:52):
I would simply build a line upthe five straight from LA to San
Francisco, the most directroute, and it's desperately
needed.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
If you could snap your fingers right now, using
cosmic power, to change onething about the airport check-in
process, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Can we just get rid of it?
I hate going to the desk.
Let's just drop the whole thingcompletely and go.
I mean, they've got all my dataon there.
Why do I have to, like, checkin officially?
Everything's in there.
Just show up and scan scan myphone or my eyes or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
The next president loves your work and has decided
to nominate you as America'snext transportation secretary.
Your first day on the job.
What are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I mean, it would definitely be something about
offering Americans more optionsin their transportation.
We have a very car-orientedtransportation system in the US
and a lot of places where that'sthe only way to go around, and
that's okay, but I think that weneed more options across the
board, just so people can makethat choice.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
What's the luckiest flight you've ever been on
either, and it could be theentire process, like a
connection made a seat upgrade.
You don't have to name namesnecessarily, but when did you
ever feel like, wow, I made it,I got away with something.
The stars aligned to make thistrip happen.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I hope your answer involves contraband.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Unfortunately it does not, but the luckiest flight
that I remember that reallycomes to mind is I was coming
back from Hong Kong.
I was going home to visit mymother in Colorado and we were
late into San Francisco and Ithought I was going to miss the
last flight of the night toColorado.
And I got to the gate and theyhad just given I forget what the
(23:52):
reason was but they'd given upmy seat.
So I had to stand by then likecause I was late, and there were
two people getting ready toboard and for some reason they
were just like they saw I wasrunning and they're like, do you
need to get to denver tonight?
And I'm like, yes, and likethey were like, yeah, we don't
need to get to.
Like I forget the whole.
(24:12):
This was 15 years ago, but itwas they, they let me have a
seat.
Like they let me take it.
And it was great I felt.
So I got home that night.
That was definitely my latesttime I like this.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Did this take place during a Christmas movie?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
It felt like it, that's for sure.
This was December, it was.
It was holiday travel.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
There's a rom-com.
Were you trying to?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
get home to someone.
Just to see my mom.
I swear there's no one elseinvolved.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Were you sitting next to a John Candy or Zach
Galifianakis type?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
That would have been awesome.
I would have really enjoyedthat.
No, I remember it was themiddle seat in the back but I
was happy to be on board.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Final one here what's the biggest change the airline
industry will confront over thenext 10 years?
What will they have to addressby 2035?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Climate, definitely climate.
There's a lot being said aboutclimate, climate, but the
industry is woefully unprepared.
There's um so much more needsto be done on across the board,
on sustainable fuels, onelectric aviation, on just being
more efficient.
Um and I, they're talking thetalk, but the walk is going to
be a lot harder, I think, and by2035 it's going to be even more
(25:24):
top of mind from everyone.
So I think that's going to bethe biggest challenge.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
This has been a conversation I've been wanting
to have for a long time and Ireally appreciate all your
insight.
You've got it all.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
No, thanks so much for having me, guys.
I really appreciate it.
Hi everybody, it's no Show.
I'm Matt Brown, joined asalways by Jeff Borman.
Edward Russell is a travel andairline journalist who writes
for Skift, the Washington Post,travel and Leisure, yahoo News,
stops at Gothamist, the PointSky Flight Global and many, many
others, and one of my favoritethings about his writing is how
(00:27):
easily he can shift from themacro to the micro.
His breadth of knowledgeliterally covers the full
spectrum of the airline industrythe transportation industry
really and on a dime he can tellyou about the most exciting new
airline routes, the airline whogives out the best free toys.
He can tell you about the mostexciting new airline routes, the
airline who gives out the bestfree toys, the intricacies of
(00:47):
labor deals, the facts of lifeabout travel recovery, the
economics of high-speed trainprojects, you name it.
He is always in motion, eitherrunning or on a bike or on a
train or in the air, and heloves the design of travel too,
the spaces and logos andbuildings that guide us on our
journeys.
To the spaces and logos andbuildings that guide us on our
(01:08):
journeys.
Is there somebody out there whoknows so much about so many
things in the airline industry?
I doubt it, ned.
Welcome to no Show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thanks so much for having me, matt, I appreciate it
.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Ned.
There are 45,000 flights everyday in the US At peak hours the
FAA estimates 4,500 planes arein the air just over the United
States TSA screens.
On average, 2.5 million peoplea day, 3 million on the big
holidays.
My general premise here thatgets us to this conversation is
that maybe 1% of thesepassengers actually know what
(01:40):
kind of plane they're getting onor anything about the planes
themselves.
And despite millions of milesunder my own belt, I'm in the
99% camp.
I board these things everysingle week and have no idea
what I'm doing.
My mother asked me recently areyou willing to fly Boeings?
And I hadn't even thought aboutit.
It hadn't crossed my mind.
Obviously I am, because I geton them once a week.
(02:02):
But I don't realize what I'meven on until I get to the seat
and see that little card in theseat back in front of me.
It tells me what I'm on, what'sin the air.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah well, jeff, you've got a really good point
there.
Most Americans, most people,have no idea what kind of plane
they're getting on.
The truth is, if you're jumpingon a plane and the sky's over
the US, you are almost certainlyflying on an Airbus or a Boeing
model.
Those are the dominantmanufacturers we like to call it
a duopoly in sort of major,large aircraft, and the A320 is
(02:35):
the 737 family.
That's pretty much what you'regoing to be getting on.
Of course there are others.
Embraer is probably the thirdmost prominent manufacturer in
the US and that's a lot of theregional flights.
A lot of the airlines American,delta, united, alaska have
moved to Embraer's EJET familyfor regional flights.
But that is still a minority ofmaybe 10 percent of the US
(03:00):
fleet.
So Boeing and Airbus are whatyou're going to be flying if
you're flying in the US fleet.
So Boeing and Airbus are whatyou're going to be flying if
you're flying in the US today.
That's for sure.
And you're right.
You make me think of a clip.
My husband flew flying shortlyafter the MAX came back and
texted me.
Even though I'm always lookingat his plane, he's like wait,
I'm flying a MAX and I'm likeI've told you this three times,
but anyway, like you said,people don't know, but it's an
(03:36):
Airbus and Boeing, almostcertainly If you move outside
the US, does that 90% Boeing,airbus, 10% Embraer, does that
90% change significantly?
I don't think it changessignificantly.
There are, yes, othermanufacturers, and I should say
CRJ, which is owned byMitsubishi, has a tiny
percentage in the US, smallerpercentage abroad.
They're out of production butthe planes are still flying.
Those are the small regionaljets, crj-200s, which you still
see on some small routes.
There are a couple in China.
You have Comac, which is thestate-owned airplane
manufacturer, and they'restarting to deliver some of
(03:57):
their state-owned planes, butthey're only flying in mainland
China at this point, maybe toHong Kong, but China.
And then, of course, if you'reflying in some exotic locales,
you'll probably come across someolder planes and you could see
a Fokker, which is a Dutchmanufacturer that went out of
business a while ago.
Dornier, a German manufacturer,again out of business.
You know the Embraer'sturboprops.
(04:19):
There's a lot of small planesthat you can still find out
there if you want to go findthem, search them out, but
they're not something that'sgoing to be very common at all.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And what are the models of plane, right?
Each is known for.
I mean, if it weren't for theMAX, I don't think people could.
You know, maybe this 777, right, that's kind of a legacy,
Everybody can name the 777.
Within Boeing, within Airbus,what are the models like?
How many varieties of thesethings are there?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, so in production, airbus has the A330,
the A320 family and the A350family in production.
So they've got basically threemain models and each of those
has sort of a sub-variant withinthem.
You know, a330 is an example.
You've got the 800, which isthe shorter one, it's a small
(05:07):
one, and you have a 900, whichis longer, seats, more people.
Same within the A320 and A350family.
Boeing has, on the commercialside, the 737, 777, and 787.
So again, three planes, threefamilies in production.
So yeah, three seems the magicnumber right now.
There's no new major plane indevelopment at this point, so
(05:30):
that's not going to change anytime in the near future.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Ned, how did we get here?
Is the regulatory environmentjust so intensive that it's
difficult for competitors to getinto the market?
Is it about the money?
I wonder why, even though we'renot talking about like a
consumer environment, like carmanufacturers two main
(05:58):
manufacturers for planes seemsawfully low.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It is low and that's the result of sort of decades of
consolidation and everything.
I'd say the biggest challengeis money.
Designing and building a safe,reliable airplane takes hundreds
of millions of dollars billionsof dollars if you're doing
off-shelf or completely new, Iwould guess and that you know
that's just really hard to do.
Airbus was founded with backingfrom four governments in Europe
(06:21):
Spain, uk, france and Germany.
I mean that's how they got offthe ground.
You look at, boeing solidifiedits position by by McDonnell
Douglas in the 1990s, which wasthe other major US airplane
manufacturer.
Like they say about airlines,you know there's there's a lot
of airline names sort oflittering the trash bin of
history, and same goes forairplane manufacturers.
There's a lot of attempts.
(06:41):
Lockheed used to make planesthat they sort of gave up on it
because it just was taking,costing so much, and some of
those planes I mentioned thatare out of production Fokker,
dornier, all have been tried andthe truth is, is money.
And then the regulatoryoversight is a lot, and you see
that right now there's a wholenew subset of tech companies
developing these electricvertical takeoff and landing
(07:02):
planes and they're essentiallyelectric helicopters.
They're learning.
It is just really challengingto get a new plane through the
regulatory hurdles to get itcertified.
Boeing struggles with it,airbus struggles with it.
Say you've never done it beforeand that just eats up a ton of
cash.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
It's also in such stark contrast to how tech
funding works.
Let's say you did have a greatidea for a whole new way to make
airplanes and you went andlooking for investment.
Great, Give me a hundredmillion dollars to get going.
And then, oh, by the way, I'llneed $500 million in a couple of
years, and then probably abouta billion dollars a few years
after that just to get thisoperation moving.
(07:42):
And I think even if you had aninvestor let's say you have some
kind of Bill Gates characterout there who's willing to do it
Just from what you've outlined,the obstacles to getting your
new tech into the market are soradically different and higher
than what it would be if youwere going to design any other
(08:04):
product that would try to takeon entrenched technology that's
already existing.
So it's daunting.
I wonder if there's somebodyout there, though, who's kind of
secretly thinking there's a wayto kind of game the system.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I would suggest giving Boom Supersonic a call.
They probably are thinking theycan do it.
They're definitely trying tolaunch a new supersonic thing,
but no, like you said, I thinkthe tech industry of ethos goes
move fast, break things, andthat's just impossible in the
world of commercial aircraft.
And those hurdles are there forgood reason it's keeping us
(08:39):
safe.
I mean, there are clearlyloopholes and issues, as we all
know, but they keep us safe andthat's why air travel is one of
the safest forms of travel inthe world.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And the lead time on a plane that waters is about, I
don't know, a decade.
Is that about right?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, so it depends if you're buying an entirely new
plane, and I ran the numbers onthis.
Boeing launched its 777X, whichis a stretched version of the
777 that we've all probablyflown on on a long haul flight.
They launched that in 2013 andthey were promising it by 2020.
So seven years the plane isdelayed, so actually probably
won't in our service until nextyear 26.
(09:15):
So it's easily over a decade,but that gives you an idea.
That is a updated version of anexisting plane and that was
seven years.
Think about how long it takesto launch an entirely new plane.
It's long, it's over a decade,which is funny because in the
90s, in the 80s, the generalview was it took five years for
a completely new plane to cometo market, and that has just
(09:36):
totally been turned upside down.
I don't have a good reason forwhy, but just the complexity of
it the global supply chains, theregulatory hurdles everything
has just made that much, muchmore difficult to do.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And how does that affect the design of airplanes?
Then If you have to plan for aproduct that won't actually hit
the marketplace, in use for 10to 15, maybe 20 years, do they
have the vision?
I mean, that's got to retardthe vision in a way of what you
could possibly produce.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh, absolutely it's, I mean, and it's a gamble.
So let's take the Airbus andBoeing.
In the 2000s, airbus gambled onthe A380, super jumbo seating
more than four or five hundredpassengers.
Boeing, on the other hand,gambled on the 787.
They both plowed hundreds ofmillions, billions of dollars in
the development of those twoplanes and the truth was is the
market went towards a 787, aplane that can fly thousands of
(10:28):
miles, carry 200 to 300 peoplegive or take and, you know, open
up some of these smaller routes, routes to cities like, I don't
know, brisbane in Australia, toDallas, fort Worth.
It moved away from Airbus.
Airbus was thinking that 380,500 people would fly all those
Heathrow flights and everythingwould be the way to go and
market the A380, its last planewas built in 2021, the line
(10:52):
closed, whereas the 787 is goingstrong.
So it is a big gamble by themanufacturers and you know every
time they come out with a newplane, they really are, you know
, taking that risk.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
How old do planes get before they're retiring?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
That is a good question.
The generally assumed lifecycle lifetime for a new plane
is about 25 years.
That said, that can go manydifferent ways.
A well-maintained plane in thefleet, a US airline that's
well-maintained Delta Unitedboth fly planes for more than 30
years and that doesn't meanthey're less safe.
They maintain them well.
(11:28):
They have to go through veryrigorous, heavy de-checks every
five to 10 years.
You know those planes areperfectly fine to find If you've
flown a United Thai J 767,which is a plane business class,
something like that.
Those planes are over 30 yearsand I'd fly one in a heartbeat.
But 25 years is assumed lifeand the truth is, if you're
flying like a 737 at Ryanair,those planes only stay in the
(11:49):
fleet for about 10 to 15 years,and that's because Ryanair
focuses on lots of turns, lotsof flights.
They put that plane through alot and what matters in terms of
maintenance is how many cycles,how many times the plane takes
off and lands.
It's not just a straight on agequestion.
So Ryanair's planes tend toretire in less time just because
they're through such heavy use.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Do planes get bought and sold from airline to airline
, or do they tend to stay withthe company that ordered them in
the first place?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh yeah, there is a very hot secondary market for
used planes.
It's one, actually, that a lotof airlines are struggling with
right now because, as manypeople know or maybe don't,
airbus and Boeing have faced alot of delays and because of
that, airlines want used planesand it's hard to find used
planes right now.
So typically they get soldaround a plane here, a plane
(12:39):
there.
One of the fun facts that Ialways find interesting is if
you are an American Airlines orUnited Airlines, you want to
find a sort of batch of usedplanes so 10, 20, something like
that and the reason why isbecause when an airline buys
planes, they buy them to theirspec, their cockpits configured
a certain way, the engines areconfigured a certain way, and so
(13:01):
buying one plane from anairline means you're going to
have one unique plane in yourfleet, but if you buy 20 from an
airline, then you have 20 as anumber like okay, we can train
crews around 20 planes.
There's some economies of scalethere, rather than having one
plane.
So it's interesting.
Airlines look for those dealswhere they can find a batch of
them, and they do it.
(13:21):
Let's see.
I think American bought Alaska'sold A321 Neos a couple of years
ago, simply because they got 10.
They're all alike and, asteriskbeing, alaska now owns 321 Neos
again because they just boughtHawaiian.
But this was before that.
So it's.
There is a hot secondary marketfor these and you know it's.
Yeah, there's a lot of peoplethat play in that market and
(13:44):
there's money to be made.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
It's also interesting when you look in.
I guess this gets back to kindof the tech question of it.
Like so much of modern aviationis automation, but often when
you're passing in and out of aplane you kind of glance into
the cockpit.
It does look really analog tome and I don't know if that's
(14:07):
just my untrained eye or has thekind of mechanical technology
that's in a cockpit.
Has it not changed that muchover the last I don't know 30,
40 years?
Sometimes it looks like this isa plane from like the 60s or
70s in there, even though I knowthey've had upgrades in their
newer planes.
I wonder how often theyactually update the software and
(14:30):
the UX of how planes are flown.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So the difference today is cockpits are full of um
, everything's electronic today.
Things used to be hydraulic.
You flipped a switch, there wasa hydro manual hydraulics that
moved the vertical stabilizer inthe back of the plane.
That happened.
Today, everything, yeah,there's still a switch, but it's
a electronic impulse being sentback to that vertical
(14:53):
stabilizer to make sure theplane does what you want to do.
The other thing is things havegotten more complex.
So, even though certainfunctions have gone electronic
and have moved on to a computersystem, there's more things to
worry about, more controls thathave to be, alerts that need to
be added and things that need tobe monitored just because of
(15:14):
safety and regulatorydevelopment.
So it's just, it's still anextremely complex operation and
that requires a lot of differentthings.
And you know you want a lot ofthose switches to be a switch a
pilot can reach versus being,you know, under a screen on, you
know, a digital display,because in an emergency you
don't want the pilot having topress through the different
(15:36):
screens to get to the off button.
You want them just to reach upand hit the button up above them
.
So there's that factor too.
You don't want to completely doaway with all of those buttons
for safety reasons.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
If the front of the plane, then the cockpit's been
modernized repeatedly, even ifit looks to the consumer's eye
to be something quite old.
The back of the plane, where weall reside.
How many retrofittings arethere in an airplane's lifetime?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So that really depends on how many airlines it
flies for.
If it's bought by one airlineand flown by that airline for
its entire life, probably onlymaybe two or three retrofits
over its life and I'm definingretrofit as sort of an update to
the cabin.
This is separate from amaintenance check.
Those happen every five to 10years, regardless of the age of
(16:27):
the plane.
But the cabin is really onlyupdated probably one or two
times.
You know, like United's A320s,I remember in the 90s they had
nice big fat seats with bigcushions and standard uh seats,
and today they've got slim lines.
Uh, which are slim lines meansa very thin type of seat.
Uh, the pitch is smaller.
But I want to say they've onlyprobably been swapped out twice
(16:49):
between the 90s and now.
It is just it's.
These cabins fly for a long time, they're durable, they fly for
10 years plus.
But if a plane gets sold toanother airline you get things
ripped out and, like I said,there's a strong secondary
market for planes.
It also costs a lot of money torefit a plane.
I mean tens of millions ofdollars.
So when you're buying a planeyou have to calculate that in oh
(17:12):
, we got a great deal on a plane.
But do we want to spend 10 plusmillions of dollars to rip
everything out, put all ourstuff in, so it's a costly
proposition.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
I just bought a house in Dallas that felt a lot like
that.
It was a really good price andit cost tens of millions of
dollars it feels to make itworth living in.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
That's right.
I mean that's why you seebudget airlines will often just
the cabin of the plane theybought it from.
So you're flying I've flown onlow cost and be like, oh, this
used to be a Japan airlinesplane, very clearly.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You know, we go through the same thing Most of
my life's in the hotel world andyou'll build a Ritz Carlton and
then about 15 years later itbecomes a full service.
You know Hilton or Marriott,and then about 10 more years
later it becomes an independenthotel.
You know the Roosevelt orsomething like this.
And then you run that thing inthe ground and by the time it's
50 years old, it's an historicproperty, and somebody steps
(18:04):
back in, renovates the wholething and turns it into a
gorgeous four seasons again.
How does this whole thing tieup?
How many planes are beingbought every year and retired
every year?
How does this work?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So the global fleet is growing.
I mean it stopped growingduring COVID but it is growing
again.
The number is it fluctuatesfrom year to year.
You know I'm thinking about,sorry, united.
I have the numbers on top of myhead, sorry to refer to them so
much.
But you know they are taking inabout 5% to 10% of their fleet
(18:47):
new every year and they'reretiring fewer than that.
So say that they have 900planes increased by 10% but then
retire 5%.
So your net increase is 5%.
It's small growth in emergingmarkets Asia, the Middle East,
especially India, africa to alesser extent, and that is
driving a lot of global growth.
In developed markets Europe,north America the growth is
lower.
But you and you see olderplanes flown for longer as well.
So taking Europe, lufthansa isonly taking maybe 20 new planes
(19:11):
a year across their whole groupand they've got 600, 700 planes.
So it's much smaller the growthand they're flying things
longer.
So the turnover every year iswhere I'm getting is.
You know, probably 5% to 10% ofthe global fleet is new on any
given year, on the high end, butthen you've got retirement.
So it's yeah, the net increaseis definitely smaller than that.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Okay, and here's a question that's very dear to
frequent travelers, with peoplegetting larger and by that I
mean even healthy larger.
Right, we're just taller andmore broad shouldered than 30,
40 years ago.
Are the seats actually gettingsmaller?
It sure feels like it.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
It's a yes or no answer to that question.
First off, for all of thosewith broader shoulders happy to
hear, seats are no narrower on a737 or A320 today than they
were before.
However, the distance betweenthe seat in front of you and
your seat is definitely gottensmaller over the years.
Airlines have gone for what wecall slimline seats, which are
just really thin.
We've all seen them.
It's like plastic with a littlebit of padding on top and
generally bad for my back, butthat's another story.
And so they claim that it's thesame distance, because the way
(20:22):
they measure that is from theback of one seat to the front of
the next seat.
But your knees feel it.
It is tighter in there and it'stough.
That is unfortunately gettingsmaller.
One thing about this change isthere's been an increasing
regulatory push in the US,europe, to start regulating this
and the way that they couch.
(20:42):
That is just about how manypeople can evacuate off of an
airplane in a given amount oftime, and there's a lot of
thought being given to whetherthat needs to change.
That's a big change.
Not saying it's going to happen, but regulators are looking at
that and I think a lot of peoplewould appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Okay, ned lightning round questions here.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
What's your favorite small airport?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Ooh, small airport.
I'm going to go with Ithaca,New York.
I lived there in high schooland it was beautiful and I could
drive up and jump on a plane in20 minutes and there's no
problem.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
You've written about high-speed rail.
You've written about high-speedrail.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
If you could kind of put unlimited funds towards a
high-speed route between twoAmerican cities.
What would that be?
I think it would be.
Probably.
I can only pick one route.
Okay, I think San Francisco, la.
It is a huge economic driver.
That said, not the route thatthey're building today, because
that is a politicized,gerrymandered route aimed to hit
different congressionaldistricts to win votes.
(21:52):
I would simply build a line upthe five straight from LA to San
Francisco, the most directroute, and it's desperately
needed.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
If you could snap your fingers right now, using
cosmic power, to change onething about the airport check-in
process, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Can we just get rid of it?
I hate going to the desk.
Let's just drop the whole thingcompletely and go.
I mean, they've got all my dataon there.
Why do I have to, like, checkin officially?
Everything's in there.
Just show up and scan scan myphone or my eyes or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
The next president loves your work and has decided
to nominate you as America'snext transportation secretary.
Your first day on the job.
What are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I mean, it would definitely be something about
offering Americans more optionsin their transportation.
We have a very car-orientedtransportation system in the US
and a lot of places where that'sthe only way to go around, and
that's okay, but I think that weneed more options across the
board, just so people can makethat choice.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
What's the luckiest flight you've ever been on
either, and it could be theentire process, like a
connection made a seat upgrade.
You don't have to name namesnecessarily, but when did you
ever feel like, wow, I made it,I got away with something.
The stars aligned to make thistrip happen.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I hope your answer involves contraband.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Unfortunately it does not, but the luckiest flight
that I remember that reallycomes to mind is I was coming
back from Hong Kong.
I was going home to visit mymother in Colorado and we were
late into San Francisco and Ithought I was going to miss the
last flight of the night toColorado.
And I got to the gate and theyhad just given I forget what the
(23:52):
reason was but they'd given upmy seat.
So I had to stand by then likecause I was late, and there were
two people getting ready toboard and for some reason they
were just like they saw I wasrunning and they're like, do you
need to get to denver tonight?
And I'm like, yes, and likethey were like, yeah, we don't
need to get to.
Like I forget the whole.
(24:12):
This was 15 years ago, but itwas they, they let me have a
seat.
Like they let me take it.
And it was great I felt.
So I got home that night.
That was definitely my latesttime I like this.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Did this take place during a Christmas movie?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
It felt like it, that's for sure.
This was December, it was.
It was holiday travel.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
There's a rom-com.
Were you trying to?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
get home to someone.
Just to see my mom.
I swear there's no one elseinvolved.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Were you sitting next to a John Candy or Zach
Galifianakis type?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
That would have been awesome.
I would have really enjoyedthat.
No, I remember it was themiddle seat in the back but I
was happy to be on board.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Final one here what's the biggest change the airline
industry will confront over thenext 10 years?
What will they have to addressby 2035?
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Climate, definitely climate.
There's a lot being said aboutclimate, climate, but the
industry is woefully unprepared.
There's um so much more needsto be done on across the board,
on sustainable fuels, onelectric aviation, on just being
more efficient.
Um and I, they're talking thetalk, but the walk is going to
be a lot harder, I think, and by2035 it's going to be even more
(25:24):
top of mind from everyone.
So I think that's going to bethe biggest challenge.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
This has been a conversation I've been wanting
to have for a long time and Ireally appreciate all your
insight.
You've got it all.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
No, thanks so much for having me, guys.
I really appreciate it.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.