Flyerist

Looks like EasyJet is falling apart. Hat tip to The Cranky Flier for the link.

via Awesome Drama Over easyJet’s Unreliable Operation.

I’m sure that will buff out/off:

While working yesterday, I saw a huge supercell develop near my hometown. I sent a text to my dad and asked him to take a picture of the storm and text it to me (keep in mind he’s about to turn 80 and uses an iPhone to text his kids). I also snapped a pic of the cell with the Radarscope app for the iPhone. Finally, I had a flight that was enroute take a shore video of the cell from the air. So, here we have three sides of a thunderstorm.

From the radar:

Cells moving through Eastern Nebraska

From the ground:

Thunderstorm from the ground

From the air:

What a gorgeous preserved video. This is a testament to the 1945 Kodachrome that still looks this good after all these years.

VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.

From Monday, 31 MAY 2010:

IND-ORD on the scenic route

I hear the flight was cleared direct, but in this case the airplane was too heavy to land with the fuel on board (above maximum landing weight). So, the flight flew with the reroute to burn off the fuel and landed normally.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TCF7680/history/20100531/2145Z/KIND/KORD

I saw a post on Flightglobal.com that was very much like my analysis of the 787 ETOPS question, and in that post the auther referenced that Boeing is aiming for 330-minute ETOPS certification, with a fallback to 207 minutes if needed. While the certification may eventually allow that, to announce it as the initial route assumes the highest ETOPS certification ever granted, all within the first year of an aircraft’s introduction into service. That, and we have one more fuel requirement: decompression fuel.

As a dispatcher, I welcome larger and larger ETOPS circles, and the 787 will undoubtedly create routes that we have never thought of before. IAH-AKL is just the start. What about SAT-NGO for Toyota’s heavy manufacturing presence? Or LHR-HNL-SYD? Such long routes require ETOPS stations along the route of flight for diversion in the case of an engine shutdown. Currently at my airline, one of the largest ETOPS carriers in the world, the 207-Minute ETOPS allowance is ONLY allowed on the North Pacific routes from the US to Asia, and it is used when no Russian airports are legal to use as ETOPS alternates. Then, the 207-Minute allowance will cover the gap between Anchorage and Chitose, Japan. It is rarely used and in a given year it is used on a dozen or so flights.

Meeting 330-minute ETOPS will be a challenge for any aircraft, let alone one that is brand-new. Four-engine aircraft have a blanket 240-minute ETOPS requirement, and nearly all routes in the world are covered by the ETOPS 240 rule for them. If a flight is within four hours of an adequate airport, there is no need to designate alternates like there is with twin-engine alternates. Dispatchers monitor the weather of the ETOPS alternates in addition to the destination and destination alternate. If an ETOPS alternate has weather forecasts or conditions that no longer allow it to be used as a legal alternate, the dispatcher and the captain must concur on the safest course of action, which usually requires recomputing the flight plan to use a different airport. In extreme cases, the flight plan must be altered while enroute to remain within the appropriate ETOPS time restriction.

The story doesn’t end there.

One more piece of the ETOPS puzzle requires that if the airplane suffers a decompression, and is forced to descend to a lower altitude, that it have fuel on board to fly in that area until reaching a suitable airport. This decompression is assumed to happen at the most critical point in the flight (the point that is farthest away from land), and the fuel must be enough to fly on either one or two engines in a decompression, or a single engine without a decompression. Of these scenarios, the twin engine decompression is usually the most fuel-intensive, as the airplane is now at 10,000 feet and has both engines operating. Additionally, in northern climates, engine and wing anti-ice is needed and the dispatcher will determine if the ETOPS burn will use anti-ice, which increases fuel burn. It is not uncommon for flights to arrive in Hawaii with two hours of endurance fuel due to this requirement.

Due to the 787′s “bleedless” engine design, and that all of the airplane’s pressurization and anti-ice requirements will be met by electrical sources, I can’t determine how the ETOPS critical fuel scenario will play out. But, the airplane has to have a decompression scenario, which would require a descent to 10,000 feet. Electrical pressurization or not, you would still have a twin engine airplane up to four hours from land at 10,000 feet burning fuel in both engines. That’s a lot of gas.

As part of a Memorial Day celebration, a V-22 came in to land a bit too low and the downwash caused tree limbs to break with about ten injuries reported among the spectators.

IAH-AKL great circle map with ETOPS

To Auckland, but how?

I see that Continental announced their flight to Auckland, and my initial reaction was “What about ETOPS?” See, the flight to the South Pacific passes through some pretty desolate ocean, and like most twin-engine aircraft, the 787 will need to remain within 180 minutes of a suitable airport.  At 7415 miles, it is certainly one of the longest routes for a twin engine aircraft. It’s about 900 miles farther than LAX-AKL, yet the LAX-AKL flight is within ETOPS specs.

ETOPS is an acronym for ExTended OPerations. It used to be Extended Twin Operations, but now ETOPS applies to both two and four engine aircraft. Twin-engine aircraft can be certificated to fly up to three hours away from an adequate airport.

Luckily, there is a great website called the Great Circle Mapper that can plot a route with ETOPS circles. We can see there is a large swath or dark blue ocean over which the IAH-AKL flight flies, and that the LAX-AKL flight is just within the 180-minute ETOPS circles. This is based on a single-engine cruise speed of 410KT, similar to the Boeing 777. From what I can see, there is a lack of ETOPS coverage through a significant part of the flight. This would require the Houston flight to nearly fly over LAX to get to AKL within ETOPS coverage, and adding a healthy number of miles to the flight:

IAH-AKL: 7415SM

LAX-AKL: 6504SM

IAH-AKL (over LAX): 7883SM (+468 Miles)

That is nearly an hour of extra flying that is required to comply with ETOPS regulations. It’s also a reason that flight operations and flight dispatchers are critical to route planning.

Solutions?

I’m not sure what a solution would be. Beyond 180 minute ETOPS is extremely rare, though it does exist. It’s called 207-minute ETOPS, and right now it is allowed only on the North Pacific routes to Asia. It allows an aircraft to fly 15% beyond ETOPS 180, but only when the enroute Russian airports are not suitable due to weather. At my airline, this is used less than a dozen times per year.

Could an even higher standard of ETOPS-240 be used (which still wouldn’t cover the entire route above)? Not likely, as ETOPS-240 is for aircraft with three or more engines. Think A340-500 and B747-400ER aircraft which can fly 18+ hours, such as EWR-SIN and BKK-LAX. To certify a brand new aircraft with ETOPS 240 would be unprecedented, and also note that NO TWIN currently has more than ETOPS-207 certification.

More info: Boeing PDF of ETOPS and extended operations

So iWeb wasn’t working for me, and I wanted to add photos and comments (especially comments). Please continue to watch this site as I migrate old content over from the old site.