Flying Lessons

Lacinda and Spud Homfeld at the Hangar Hotel

When an aviation geek says, “Let’s go somewhere where we can watch airplanes take off all day”, and the non aviation geek partner says, “Yeah, let’s do that”, the couple is probably headed to the Hangar Hotel at Gillespie County Airport in Fredricksburg, Texas.

Earlier this week, Lacinda and Spud Homfeld chose to celebrate their 36 years of togetherness by pursuing their separate interests with a two night stay at the aviation-themed hotel. For a few hours each day, Spud and Lacinda could sit in the sun on the hotel’s outdoor balcony overlooking runway 14/32 and watch jets, planes and the occasional helicopter take off and land.

Later in the day the couple could mosey into downtown Fredericksburg for a meal and some shopping in the perfectly preserved historic town center.

Lacinda ought to be a wing-nut, her father was an air traffic controller in Houston. She told me when she was little, her dad used to take her to the TRACON where he worked so she could see what he did for a living. Still, she was 30 before she ever flew on an airplane and the experience did not ignite any passion within her.

Her husband Spud, on the other hand, loves everything about airplanes. On a visit to Fredericksburg over Labor Day weekend, he was astonished to see the Gillespie airfield packed with planes. He decided to return and spend some time as a guest at the Hangar Hotel.

The Hangar Hotel has a WW2-era theme

At first it does seem odd to place a $119 to $179 a night hotel and 98 hundred square foot conference center an hours’ drive from the closest metropolitan area – which in case you are curious is San Antonio. In reality, this tiny town, with a population of ten thousand is a hot destination for both the moneyed tourists who arrive here on private planes and ordinary folks looking for a relaxing getaway.

When I ask Dick Estenson, a private pilot as well as the owner of the hotel what attractions might lure aviation geeks to visit, he points out Fredericksburg’s proximity to the Mooney Aviation Company - for the past 60 years located in nearby Kerrville - and the Museum of the Pacific War. Mooneys have been out of production for the past five years, so I have my doubts about how much tourist interest the factory is generating at present. When it comes to the War Museum, Estenson has a point.

The Museum of the Pacific war isn't one museum; it is several - along with a large outdoor gallery detailing the role of the nine U.S. presidents who served in World War 2 and a Japanese garden that in its quiet way urges an end to conflicts like the one that is the centerpiece here.

A Japanese float plane on display at the museum

The fifty thousand foot George H.W. Bush Gallery is the largest of the exhibit halls with a collection of Pacific theater artifacts that includes a Japanese float plane, a B-25 Bomber and a Grumman F4F Wildcat. The exhibits are placed in chronological order and present the stories of the people, the weapons and the battles.

Naturally, the museum draws a large number of visitors for whom the Second World War is part of their personal history. That specific group of museum goers diminishes each day but the museum recently completed a major renovation that visitors of all ages will find compelling.

One of the Lockheed JetStars used by President Johnson

Another Fredricksburg attraction for both aviation buffs and their disinterested companions is the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park the former ranch of the 36th President, now run by the Federal Park Service.

Under a large canopy not far from the house that was called the Texas White House, sits the first plane to be assigned to carry a Vice President, a Lockheed JetStar VC-140. After Johnson became president, he continued to use the four-engine jet to get to and from the farm which has its own 6,300 foot asphalt runway.

Park Ranger Russ Whitlock at the Texas White House

Though all aircraft carrying a U.S. president are dubbed “One”, Johnson reportedly referred to the sixty foot executive jet as “Air Force One Half. The plane, the executive golf cart used to ferry him and visitors from the plane to the ranch are part of a terrific tour of the only federal park that captures the birth-to-death activities of a president.

Of course the history of Fredricksburg goes back much farther. It was settled by German immigrants in the 1840s and there was an unusually good relationship between the new arrivals and the Comanche who lived on the land at the time. Much of the German heritage is preserved in the downtown area. On the lengthy main street, locally owned businesses display German/Texan products and the blended culture is evident in the architecture.

Main Street in Fredricksburg

All this, and the 36 wineries within 25 miles of Fredricksburg on the Texas wine trail, explain how couples who differ about the romance of aviation can agree to spend time together, as Lacinda and Spud Homfeld did, celebrating their anniversary from an airport hotel.

On the one side you have Emirates under its new "Hello Tomorrow" slogan sending out a gleeful announcement of its commitment to American jobs. On the other side you have some of those U.S. workers, namely pilots, blasting Emirates, its supportive government and the United States as well for creating a staggering imbalance that the Air Line Pilots Association claims will cost American jobs.

Concept for the 777X Image courtesy Boeing

Sure, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad and Lufthansa have together placed the largest order Boeing has ever received - $76 billion from Emirates alone - for its new model Boeing 777X, still under development. The way Emirates is spinning it, that's seventy-six billion real live American greenbacks headed this way as opposed to, say, Airbus, based in France.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Washington State Senator Maria Cantwell joined the foreign carrier in expressing delight. It is a "win/win for our economy and our workers," Secretary Pritzker said. No wonder Emirates is thrilled. No wonder a number of U.S. based airline workers are furious.

"The Middle East carriers are threatening all U.S. aviation," said Dino Atsalis, a Delta Air Lines captain and the head of the government affairs group for Delta pilots for ALPA. The 777 manufacturing jobs won't compensate for the jobs that will be lost if foreign carriers continue to poach passengers from U.S.-based airlines.

"They don't have labor protection laws in these foreign countries that protect like we do here," Atsalis told me. He said that as airlines like Emirates increase market share in other countries, those nation's airlines will suffer, citing Qantas, which entered into a code share with Emirates in 2012.

"Qantas is a shell of itself, it has become a feeder for the routes that Emirates is flying," he said.

Emirates has put a whole lotta effort into creating a customer-friendly airline. It offers 63 flights between its base in Dubai and six U.S. cities. (New York, Houston, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle and Los Angeles.) In October, it began flying from New York to Milan under Fifth Freedom rights providing direct competition to Delta Air Lines and United.

In a white paper called Leveling the Playing Field, ALPA argues that actions by the U.S. government have put American carriers at a disadvantage in the global marketplace. On this, the union is in step with Airlines 4 America, the trade group that has been making this same point to anyone who will listen since Nick Calio took over nearly three years ago.

Nick Calio photo courtesy A4A

"Our issues are non-partisian," Calio told me at the International Air Transport Association's annual meeting in Cape Town in June. The way the United Arab Emirates has used air transport "as a strategic asset" to boost and diversify its oil-based economy is great for them and nothing like America's policy, Calio said, because there is no policy.

Instead, American politicians turn their attention to the airlines only in response to the complaints of passengers, who may or may not even recognize that the deteriorating experience of air travel is not entirely the fault of the airlines. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Don't get me wrong. The U.S. airlines are plenty flawed. But they are hobbled by the fact that the government involves itself in aviation only to levy taxes on tickets while feigning concern about fares or to pander to passenger complaints about personal electronic devices and tarmac delays.

The American Airlines/US Airways debacle is the most recent example. Really, what was Justice Department opposition all about? After allowing merger after merger over the past decade, all of a sudden, this particular marriage is anti competitive? Never in the history of airline hookups (okay, I'm making that up, but it seems right) has an airline pairing been so welcomed by so many principals.

Using ticket prices as the litmus test is itself flawed. As A4A is happy to point out and was reiterated in this excellent article by The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, the cost of traveling by air has plummeted over the years. Fares are so low that many people don't think twice about hopping on an airplane. And between budget carriers and legacy airlines, a broad range of fares is usually available.

My observation of the global aviation industry leads me to believe that for the most part, Calio and Atsalis are correct. Our nation's lack of a strategic plan for aviation is just messed up.

So congratulations to Boeing for making a fist full of dollars selling planes to foreign airlines. But when bureaucrats and politicians are finished celebrating that particular victory, it will be time to sit down with the rest of the industry and hammer out a plan that U.S. airlines, American workers and passengers can also celebrate. Correction: It will be long past time.

Rumors are flying that Finnair will soon be accommodating some international travelers on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The airline's official position is while retrofitting some of its Airbus A330 and 340s with lie flat business class seats this winter, part of a fleet wide upgrade, the airline will need a wide-body replacement aircraft in December and January.

If the airline were to wet-lease a LOT Dreamliner, the plane would fly on the Helsinki / New York route. A final decision on what airplane will fill the gap, "has not been made," according to Finnair spokeswoman Laura Varja. She added that a wet lease (in which the airline hires both the plane and the crew) would be for a time period of between one-and-a half to three weeks.

The Dreamliner lands in Warsaw.

My man in Poland, Krzysztof Moczulski, tells me "its no mystery that in the low season, LOT is actively looking for work for Dreamliners," pointing out that through the company Rainbow Tours, LOT runs 787 charters to Bangkok, Colombo, Varadero, Cuba, Cancun and La Romana in the Dominican Republic.

That prompted me to do a little looking around on the internet and darned if I didn't find this fascinating writing in the sky during a Boeing 787 ETOPS flight test - a nineteen hour and 22 minute flight conducted in part by Karsten Liljegren, Boeing's chief pilot for part 125 operations. (How did I miss this back in 2012 when the flight was made?)

Dreamliner flies a special plan to trace its name and Boeing logo in the sky.
Image courtesy Flightaware.com

In his post about the flight, The New York Times Matt Wald explains that no one on the ground could have seen the numerals 7 - 8 - 7 and the Boeing logo "painted" in the sky and produced into a visual by Flightaware.com. Boeing's Randy Tinseth reported in his blog, that the complicated aerial dance gave all aviation geeks something to smile about.

You may have noticed that my activity writing this post has a similar meandering quality. (There's an American holiday coming up on Thursday.) So rather than spend 19 hours testing my extended range, I'll leave you with this video from two weeks ago of the first Dreamliner flight into the Dominican Republic of G-TUIB, one of the four 787s operated by Thompson. And if I learn anything more about Finnair's temporary dance with the Dreamliner, I'll be sure to let you know.

The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 that caught fire in London this summer will soon fly back to Addis Ababa, a flight both companies surely hope will take them closer to the end of 2013, an "annus horribilis" if there ever was one.

Boeing's not talking but Tweolde Gebremariam, Ethiopian's chief executive officer said that repairs to the plane's aft fuselage and tail section are nearing completion. This comes less than six months after the July 12th event in which a blaze above the ceiling of the back passenger section burned through to the exterior of the plane. At the time, ET-AOP was parked away from the gate at Heathrow Airport, awaiting its 9:00 pm flight back to Addis. No one was on board when smoke was seen emerging from the top of the airplane.

At a Star Alliance get together in Vienna on Thursday night, Gebremariam told me the plane could be ready to fly before the end of the year.

"Why not?" he asked when I expressed my astonishment at how quickly ET-AOP might return to service.

Well, for one thing, I was remembering the Qantas Airbus A380 that suffered an uncontained engine failure in November 2010. That plane was on the ground undergoing repairs for 17 months before it flew back to Sydney in April 2012 and into passenger service.

There's a difference in the amount and nature of the damage on these two planes. The A380 that was Qantas Flight 32 had ruptured engines, holes in the wings and fuselage and ripped wiring from the pieces of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine that spewed out, up, down and sideways.

The fire on Ethiopian's Queen of Sheba was confined to the aft fuselage and tail sections. Still, as Dominick Gates reported in the Seattle Times, the composite structure presented a number of issues. Boeing considered several options before it decided to patch the plane with a full rear fuselage produced by the 787 factory in Charleston, South Carolina.

That all sounds like a lot of work, which is one reason I had to place my hand on my chin and put my jaw back in place during my conversation with Gebremariam, which included my asking him if his confidence in the plane had been shaken. It's not the first time I've asked him that question and once again he waved off concern by saying the Dreamliner is a good plane.

Gebremariam has made a habit out of acting magnanimous about Boeing and its troublesome Dreamliners. After the plane was grounded from January to April 2013 due to mysterious fires on two planes operated by Japan Air Lines and All Nippon Airways, those two Japanese carriers held off on re introducing the 787 into service while they did their own analysis. Not Ethiopian, though.

In exchange for being first in line for installation of the super-duper battery fire containment box for its Dreamliners, it happily became the first airline to resume flying the planes on - you guessed it - the Addis to London route. Ten weeks later, ET-AOP developed a smoking hole and there in London she remains today.

While all this is going on in London, over in Warsaw, LOT Polish is also feeling cheerier about Boeing. According to Polish columnist Danuta Walewska who writes for the publication, Rzeczpospolita, LOT has come to terms with Boeing over the money LOT lost when it had to cancel flights during the 787's grounding. The country's minister of privatization, Wlodzimierz Karpinski told Danuta that "we are very satisfied and our demands and expectations were fulfilled" by whatever the two entities came up with behind closed doors after months of very public complaining by the Polish government, which owns the airline.

Karpinski said the details will not be made public and the settlement is not being called "compensation", though there's a reported $33 million in credits on LOT's side of the ledger in the accounting books at Boeing. It is "proof of partnership" and a "responsible attitude by Boeing," the minister said.

In the Christmas wonderland that is Vienna in December, I am reminded of this season in 1992 when the Queen of England described a year in which two of her children got divorced, the royal family laundry was aired in Princess Diana's tell-all book and a fire damaged Windsor Castle. She described it all as her "annus horribilis."

Of the Queen of Sheba, Boeing spokesman Doug Alder will confirm nothing. But if Boeing can get Ethiopian's Dreamliner out of England and back in the air before 2013 is over, it might be seen as a harbinger that the Dreamliner's own annus horribilis might be coming to a close.

It was going to be a disappointing ride; two and a half hours on a bus traveling between Klagenfurt, Austria to the Alpine ski community of Kals. The bus would take me through spectacular scenery but I would not be able to appreciate it either way because both drives would be made in the dark. Such is what happens when late evening and early morning flights are booked.

As the airport bus dropped us at the boarding stairs for Austrian Flight 934, the tarmac was wet from the mist and fog that had settled over tiny Klagenfurt Airport. Prospects for a view from the air seemed dismal too.

The Austrian Dash 8 took off into a thick grey soup. As the plane punched through the cloud layer, a brilliant sun filled the sky pouring through the windows and bathing the cabin in yellow light. To my delight, the ceiling below did not obscure the view entirely. Instead, the ocean of foamy clouds lapped midway up the mountains and the taller peaks pierced through as if reaching toward these blue skies we now shared.

I turned to airport writer Harriet Baskas and Austrian Airlines executive Peter Thier who were traveling with me, to make sure that they could also see Austrian-style timber houses perched randomly on the mountain. The people who live in these homes could look down on the clouds like a guests on cruise ship can look out on the ocean. The smiles on Harriet and Peter’s faces told me they were also enjoying this fantastic sight.

I've written plenty about the distractions available to air travelers; movies and television shows, wifi access, meals, snacks, sleeper seats even onboard shopping. But travelers can be entertained so much that we miss the best show of all; the one going on outside the airplane window.

Earlier in the month, I was in Haiti for the opening of JetBlue’s new route between New York and Port au Prince. While there I visited Cap Haitien, a quick 25 minute flight on Haiti's Sunrise Airways. I flew from the international airport at Port au Prince on a British Aerospace Jetstream 32. From my seat behind the cockpit, I could watch the pilots run through their checklists. I could have pushed the throttles had the pilots needed an extra hand.

I’d been advised to sit on the left side of the plane to view the fabulous Citadel, a 19th Century fortress built by the slaves after they liberated themselves from the French colonists and declared independence in 1804. This was history I learned about while visiting the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien the day before. The fort was insurance that if the French tried to reclaim this little slice of heaven in the Caribbean, they’d have a fight on their hands.

Luckily the fort was never needed. Now it is testimony to what the Haitians accomplished working together.

Haiti struggles each day with an international reputation as a helpless and hapless country. It suffers from the interference of an international, multi-billion dollar humanitarian assistance industry that perpetuates the idea that the people who live here are incapable of solving their own problems. (For more on this read Jonathan Katz excellent book, The Big Truck That Went By)

This is a monumental contrast to what history tells us about the strength and determination of the people who build this brick and limestone fortress, ringed by cannons and perched high in the sky. The power in the hands of Haiti's founding fathers can be seen from the window of an airplane.

What does it take to summon the restorative spirit of two centuries ago so that people can make a better tomorrow for themselves? It's a big question and I don't pretend to have the answer, but aviation gives us an opportunity to get a mind-altering perspective.

Whether it is as the reminder of a proud past or glimpse of the villages of Austrian farmers and their self-reliant lives lived partially above the clouds, God blesses me with these snippets of the world from a heavenly perspective.

As my Austrian flight descended back into the mist, a pilot’s halo appeared around the shadow cast by our plane onto in the clouds; a circle of color telling me to open my eyes. Whether sad or the serene the majesty of our complex world is right there waiting to be appreciated.

Bjorn Kjos is interviewed in Oslo in 2012

Four major U.S. airlines and the largest American pilots union are calling on the U.S. Department of Transportation to deny Norwegian's attempt to fly into the United States under a new subsidiary based in Ireland. This could threaten the low cost carrier's rocket-like ascent into the U.S. and Asia markets from hubs in Scandinavia.

The U.S. government must approve a new operating certificate for Norwegian now that the company has separated its cockpit crews into two groups to evade labor laws. Low cost carrier, Norwegian has divided its 737 pilots who are paid a union-negotiated wage hitched to the country's high cost of living from its contract Dreamliner pilots who will fly long haul, live in Bangkok and work under contracts with an outside hiring firm.

As I reported for the Runway Girl Network on Friday, Norwegian offers bargain basement fares between a growing number of American gateways and Scandinavia and soon, England. But the high-flying plans may become snagged by the airline's need to get operating certificates in Ireland and the USA. The effort is being challenged by the Air Line Pilots Association the trade group Airlines for America and four airlines, US Airways, Delta Air Lines, American and United.

In a filing on Friday, the four airlines said Norwegian's plan violates a prohibition on "flags of convenience to evade labor protections and thereby derive a competitive advantage in the marketplace." The airlines also charge that beginning flights from London to America without stopping in any Scandinavian country is a key piece of the Norwegian strategy and would not be possible without Norwegian obtaining an operating certificate in Ireland.

I'd call the Norwegian plan - involving a lot of legal paperwork and fractionalizing of the company - eyebrow-raising except Norwegian is not alone. It follows European low cost carriers Ryanair and easyJet, both of whom employ similar schemes and who have gone crosswise with the tax and labor departments in Europe.

Earlier this year the French government ordered Ryanair to pay 9 million euros for breaching labor laws by putting French pilots under Irish work contracts thereby paying lower social security and taxes. EasyJet tried and was caught doing the same thing in 2010, though the company spokesman at the time blamed confusion rather than an active effort to save money on pilot salaries.

Some airlines consider these efforts to cut costs in the cockpit "right sizing" of paychecks, including Norwegian's Bjorn Kjos, who explained the strategy to me when I interviewed him last year about the airline's propensity to contract out for personnel services.

"Isn't it harder to keep control?" I asked him.

"On the contrary. If it is your own people you cannot change them out. If you have a contractor you can do it. If they aren't slim and trim to the last number," he said of the airline's suppliers, "they will loose the contract."

Airlines with unionized cockpit crews and those in countries with strong worker protection laws don't have this freedom which explains why the lawyers are making hefty fees finding ways around the restrictions. Just ask the pilots at Austrian.

Faced with years running in the red, the flag carrier did a little legal re-configuring so that it could transfer its long haul pilots into the regional carrier, Tyrolean, a change that went into effect over the union's protests in 2012.

"Tyrolian operates the flights. The staff, the crew uniform are the same," explained the airline's CEO Jaan Albrecht at status meeting for reporters in Vienna earlier this month. What's different is staff salaries. By stopping automatic increases for this work group Austrian saved 45 million euros. If we had not done anything, Albrecht said, "personnel expenses related to flying staff, in the year 2012 we would have seen an increase of 8 percent in our costs." This from a former airline pilot who was an officer with the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations.

CEO Jaan Albrecht photo courtesy Austrian

He was also an executive at Mexicana, the chief executive officer of AeroPeru and the CEO of the Star Alliance. If it seems a little startling for Albrecht to share space with renegade Bjorn Kjos and industry bad boy Michael O'Leary, note that neither Mexicana nor AeroPeru are still flying today. That may be enough of a reminder to the chief of a struggling airline of the penalties of not keeping costs in line.

Pilots are far from the only ones feeling the pinch during this monumental transition in commercial aviation. Flight attendants, ground crews and even passengers are being squeezed as well. Still, because of the significant role pilots play in the level of safety air travelers enjoy, controversies affecting them always get more attention.

This is why the challenges filed by ALPA, A4A and the four U.S. airlines to Norwegian's complex two-tier salary scheme are significant beyond just one airline. Not only could the Norwegian debate instigate clarification about the right way and the wrong way to "right size" salaries during challenging economic times, it could prompt a much needed discussion about how to ensure fair competition in a global market where salaries differ widely.

And I'm guessing the wing on this airplane doesn't look too good either. Right.

In what might be the most consequential error in their career, the flight crew of British Airways Flight 34 appears to have taken the wrong taxiway while maneuvering for takeoff from Johannesburg's's OR Tambo International Airport on Sunday night. A statement from the South African Civil Aviation Authority said it had confirmed "that the air crew got instructions from the Air Traffic Control to taxi using taxi way B. The crew continued onto taxi way M which is narrower resulting in the aircraft impacting on an office building behind the SAA Technical hangers."

In the photo provided by Harriet Tolputt, a passenger on the flight and the head of media (as luck would have it) for the British charity consortium Oxfam, the right wing is seen deeply embedded in a brick structure outside of the security fence at the airport. Note the worker in high-visibility vest taking a look at the situation while passengers are still onboard the aircraft.

JoBerg Airport view from pprune.org

At 14,000 feet, 3L/21R, the runway from which BA 34 was to take off is one of the longest in the world. Taxiway M, on the other hand did not have sufficient width to accommodate the 747-400's 195 foot wingspan. British Airways is one of the world's largest purchasers of Boeing 747s with 57 in its fleet.

Photo courtesy British Airways

Phindiwe Gwebu a spokeswoman for the aviation authority said four people working in the technical hangar of South African Airways were injured when the leading edge of the wing came plowing through the wall. Though there was some fuel spilled as a result of the event, none of the 17 crew members or 185 passengers were hurt during the emergency evacuation on the taxiway.

My son, Antonio will be flying on Christmas.

My son, Antonio, is flying from Charlotte, North Carolina on Christmas Day - so he can be home in Connecticut with the family. When he boards his US Airways flight, he will flash his beautiful smile and wish the gate agent, the flight attendants and the cockpit crew a very Merry Christmas. He'll do that because he's just that way. But also because he knows, and so do you, that people respond to pleasant, with pleasant.

I write this still in a state of flummox having read about a flight attendant who used the F-word and by that I don't mean Fa-la-la-la-la, on a passenger who complained about overpriced cheese and crackers on a Ryanair flight to Pisa. Look, I know it can't be fun working for the carrier everybody loves to hate. With a publicity-seeking yahoo for a boss and a corporate philosophy that seems to be "let's take the passengers for everything they're worth, while they're too busy wondering what happened to that fifty-pence air ticket they thought they bought".

Still, though not unprecedented, screaming obscenities at passengers is simply not done. Just when I thought that story couldn't be beat I read about the Indonesian public official, who was unable to purchase a ticket on a sold out flight on Merpati Airlines, so he had his minions drive their cars onto the runway, blocking the airplane and preventing the flight from taking off.

Oh, these episodes are appropriate preamble to the announcement by the International Civil Aviation Organization that next year it will update the laws on how airlines handle unruly passengers. Is it notable to anybody other than me that personal behavior on public transportation has not reached a level that the United Nations must weigh in?

In his story in the Los Angeles Times, Hugo Martin reports that instances of unruly passengers jumped from 500 in 2007 to 6,000 in 2011. And that's just the passengers. Snippy, unhappy or expletive-spewing flight attendants aren't included in that tally.

I'm all for airlines having a plan for what to do when someone misplaces their manners at thirty thousand feet, but the mommy in me thinks when the solution takes international organizations and bureaucratic policy makers, it is already too late.

Capt. Fili Tepeci of Turkish is all smiles greeting passengers

Then I remember that this is the time of year where regrets get buried in the pile of new leaves being turned. So as we make our resolutions to lose weight, read more, stop smoking or whatever, can all of us who travel by air, for work or for play, in the front or in the back, try to smile more and grumble less in 2014? We will all be better for it.

From start to finish 2013 was as jam packed as an airliner during the holidays with news about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. When I wasn't writing about whether the forced grounding of the world’s newest airliner was justified or an overreaction by persnickety air safety agencies, I was writing about the equally polarized debate over the use of electronic devices onairplanes.

We depart 2013 with lithium ion batteries whirring away – safely contained we are told – in specially designed boxes on the highly electric 787 while inside the cabin of that airplane and many others, passengers use lithium ion battery-powered gadgets for all the things they’re good for on the ground, with the exception of actually making phone calls, though that could be next.

Travelers, egged on by The New York Times technology writer, Nick Bilton, asked for and got gate-to-gate-gadget use. Electromagnetic interference as a safety issue has been given a sharp thumb-drive to the heart, but whether that Dracula will come back to haunt us remains to be seen.

In April when the National Transportation Safety Board held a two-day forum on the fire-starting properties of lithium ion batteriesboard chairman Deborah Hersman opined in notable understatement that that “The genie is out of the bottle, we’ve got to figure out how to mitigate these risks.” As an aside, one impressive witness on day one was Tesla engineer Celina Mikokajczak. Okay while her name is practically unpronounceable she gave a stunningly easy-to-understand presentation explaining the risks of lithium ion and illuminating the safety practices of her employer. She reiterated the theme of her boss, Elon Musk, who in the early days of the Dreamliner battery mess offered his company’s expertise to Boeing.

How ironic then that the tables were turned just five months later when Tesla electric cars started igniting. Even more odd, on October 1, when Rob Carlson’s Tesla S erupted into flames on the exit ramp off a highway in Kent, Washington, one of the first people on the scene was Steve Emmert, Boeing's Steve Emmert, who’s Linked In profile describes him as a director at Boeing Commercial Airplanes responsible for environmental strategy. Oh to have been a fly on the wall when Steve arrived for work with the story of what happened that morning.

I have to wonder, did watching the fire department wrestle with that blaze, which intensified with the application of water, rekindled repeatedly and required jacking up the car and using a circular saw to extinguish, dampen Emmert's enthusiasm for the use of lithium ion batteries as a power source in aviation?

Speaking of fires, the controversy over the true cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800 rekindled in 2013 when a documentary claiming new evidence aired on television.

Don’t discount as a shameless plug for viewers, the motivations of the folks involved who petitioned the NTSB to reopen the long-closed 4-year investigation. Those conspiracy theorists are nothing but true believers that the airliner was shot out of the sky and everyone who knows the truth is keeping mum.

I will mention however, that their never-say-die challenge to the official report has also rekindled interest in Deadly Departure, my book on the crash, now re released by HarperCollins as an e-book and available here. And yes, that IS a shameless plug.

The crash of Asiana 214 was a deadly reminder that no matter how sophisticated airplanes get, the human at the controls is an integral partof the safety system. Are planes being designed to work with or at cross purposes with the flight crew? Are pilots trained and current in the critical business of remaining ahead of the aircraft? These are the important questions arising from the accident.

At the same time one can’t watch video of the Boeing 777 cart wheeling up on one wing as it careens down the runway at San Francisco International Airport and not be impressed with how advances in seats, belts and cabin interiors contributed to the fact that so many people survived.

Well by the end of the year, the other Dreamliner fire, the one that caused the top of Ethiopian’s Queen of Sheba ET-AOP to smolder while waiting at a remote stand for its scheduled flight to Addis Ababa had been fixed by Boeing and the plane flew off into the sunset before Christmas while airline boss Tweolde Gebremariam surely hopes that’s the last time his game-changing airplanes make news.

I enjoyed more pajama-clad plane-spotting at some magnificent airport hotels this year including the Hilton Charles de Gaulle Paris, the Delta in Calgary, Alberta, the Hilton at Tampa International while bemoaning the fact that in New York the great minds at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey can’t even get one airport hotel off the ground at John F. Kennedy International Airport. (Which in many ways is an international embarrassment.)

During this year I took a tour (by bike!) of Calgary’s growing-like-gangbusters international airport, flew in a sea plane on Harbor Air in Vancouver and traveled on JetBlue’s inaugural flight to Port au Prince,Haiti– an airline’s vote of confidence in the often maligned island nation. At a meeting at New York’s Wings Club I met and fell in love with the air show aviatrix Patty Wagstaff.

At a Lufthansa awards dinner I conducted a fawning interview with Joe Sutter, who oversaw the creation of the Boeing 747. It is with some sorrow that I learned that the magnificent Queen of the Sky is on the wane, but her sizable appetite for fuel has led many airlines to make plans to fly into the future without the 747. I’ll be reporting more thoroughly on that in an upcoming issue of Air &Space.

With Joe Sutter and I am gobsmacked

My flying year ended on two Austrian flights on which I was blessed by the sight of not one but two pilot’s halos. The first I spotted over Vienna where I was covering the news that after a 4 year interruption, Air India is back on track to join the Star Alliance.

Then, as my Boeing 777 approached the airport in New York I saw another.

While all that was thrilling, so was the completely unexpected sight of a United airliner on departure just below my plane returning me to my beloved Connecticut and holidays with my family. How cool is this?

This year, dear readers you have bumped FLYING LESSONS up to well over half a million page views. Thank you for following my observations of this business we all love and for contributing your own thoughts, criticism and praise. Yeah, praise. Thanks especially for that. Happy New Year.

Amelia Colon completes training in New York
Photo courtesy Norwegian

Who says the thrill is gone from the aviation business? Apparently not Amelia Colon, Olga Komissarova or Frank Cedeno. They are three of a number of enthusiastic new hires at Norwegian, the low cost carrier with ambitions to go global that is opening bases in Europe, Asia and yep, right here in the good 'ole U.S.A.

Not so fast, though. The airline's never-say-die boss, Bjorn Kjos first must solve two very big problems. The airline does not have the air operator's certificates it needs to have the right to fly on some of the routes for which it is so busy hiring staff.

It's a complicated business plan Mr. Kjos has going, involving international treaties, labor law, flags of convenience and now, I am told, a hot-shot Washington lobbying firm that surely must have orchestrated today's photo rich announcement of all the American jobs Norwegian is creating.

Norwegian's new cabin crew hires in New York
Photo by Norwegian

The hiring news is not carrying much weight with the Air Line Pilots Association or the airline trade association Airlines for America both of whom have filed papers with the U.S. Department of Transportation urging it not to allow Norwegian to operate under the U.S. - E.U. Air Transport Agreement.

To find out why, read my earlier post here.
What's new is Norwegian's campaign to show how even while it tries to evade labor law in its home country, the airline is pro employment elsewhere. If it is successful in offering point to point, low fare service around the globe, on a no frills airline with below union wage scale workers, the airline promises thousands, nay, millions of jobs will be the result.

"Norwegian’s entry into the U.S. market will also create millions of jobs in the travel- and tourism industry," reads the press release accompanying the photos of Amelia, Olga and Frank at their training course in New York.

One can't help but wonder how much Norwegian hopes that the promise of jobs for the locals will sway the two governments in whose hands the airline's fate presently rests.

Norwegian applied to operate in the U.S. as an Irish operator, even though as of this date, that government hasn't given Norwegian the go-ahead. Still, the company is busy telling the Irish about all the jobs that will be created there.

The most surprising bit of gossip I've heard is that recruiters for Norwegian are hard at work convincing pilots presently working in the Middle East that they can move to Dublin and fly the Dreamliner. Sure they'll take a cut in pay, but they won't have to live in the desert.

Is that working? I can't say. But I wouldn't advise Norwegian's new U.S. or Irish employees to take out any big loans just yet.

At the same time, Kjos, who resuscitated Norwegian Air Shuttle from near death just a decade ago, makes no small plans. Only a fool would count him out too soon.

Through the rain splattered window of the Aston Martin I was driving on 12^th Avenue in Manhattan, I could see my bicycle parked forlornly outside the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. A plastic grocery bag protected the seat from the storm.

At 4:30 on a Monday night, traffic on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel was at a crawl. These were not the ideal conditions for test driving a V12 DB9 Vanquish Volante, a car with a price tag of $200,400. But then again, I was hardly the company's target customer. The really serious potential Aston Martin owners would get their chance to drive this car in a few hours at what the newspapers like to call a "tony" bash. That's the kind where the folks in attendance resemble those in the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street.

The party was held last October on the very day that plane maker Bombardier was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the LearJet's first flight and the 100th anniversary of the Aston Martin which I wrote about for The New York Times.

I know peddlers of high end products like private jets and hand made cars are running after the same customer. Back in 1964, long before personal jets became ubiquitous, Ford Motor Company sold its very first Mustang to a Canadian airline pilot named Stanley Tucker. The photo the company sent me earlier this week shows the Wimbleton V8 Cruise-o-matic convertible cuddled up to a beautiful Handley Page Herald British turbo prop with the not-so-bad-himself, Capt. Tucker proudly centered in the shot.

Stanley Tucker with the first Ford Mustang ever built photo courtesy Ford

At the time, Tucker said, "Getting into it is something like slipping into the cockpit and I feel as much a part of the machine as I do when I'm flying."

So whether the private jet aficionado really has anything in common with British sports car fans may be beside the point. I was wondering whether the people who fly planes have a special interest and aptitude in gauging a car's performance.

Aston Martin Brand Ambassador Terence Jenkins in New York

With this in mind, I asked Aston Martin's press rep if I could invite pilots to try the car and judge for themselves - and for the rest of us, how close the experience resembles flying. He said "yes", and so on a sunny fall day at Danbury Municipal Airport in Connecticut, eight pilots both private and commercial took the Aston Martin for a spin, which I wrote about for Frequent Business Traveler magazine. You can read the full account; including the verbatim comments of these men and women by clicking here.

Of course you have to know that our day was about more than driving. Yes, some flying was involved. To learn about our afternoon, keep on reading.

(L-R) Les Abend, Pete Frey, Rory Kay, Nadia Marchinko, Mike Bowers, David Paqua with Jenkins

Pete Frey helps at the grill

We gathered for the test drives as guests of Tom Torti a pilot who operates Westconn Aviation, a collection of beautifully appointed hangars and ramp space. This is where we waited for our turns behind the wheel and to share our experiences afterward. What we discovered during our post-drive chats was that driving the Aston Martin - even for a solid half hour on the winding roads of northwest Connecticut wasn't enough to satisfy our hunger.

So we cooked up some hamburgers, with Delta Air Lines captain Pete Frey manning the grill, while private pilot and airplane builder David Paqua took corporate pilot/flight instructor (and sometimes fashion model) Nadia Marcinko up in the Acro Sport he built on the 3rd floor of his glass shop in Stamford.

Marcinko and Paqua in the Acro Sport

Round about that time, Tom Casey, a retired American Airlines pilot appeared at Westconn with the one activity that might scratch the itch brought on when we realized the Aston Martin was about to leave. He invited us all to go for some touch and go landings in his Grumman Albatross.

Tom's HU-16A flying boat has lived through some pretty dramatic times, not the least of which was Hurricane Sandy - a 2013 storm that wrecked havoc on planes, homes and cars across a wide swath of the north east US.

Another set of wings for Jenkins.

But the plane was ready. Fat from our burgers and happy about our opportunity to drive a beautiful car on a beautiful day, we were ready too. One last thing remained to be done, Terence Jenkins, Aston Martin's brand ambassador had been a good sport. He had right-seated each and every pilot's test drive, not to mention my own and he deserved thanks. So on his lapel, below the modified wing that is the Aston Martin logo, I pinned a tiny golden airplane.

Surprisingly, Jenkins told me he has never flown in a private plane. The timing of his flight back to Los Angeles precluded him from sticking around and joining us on the Albatross. We can hope that someday soon he'll try the drive/fly comparison himself.

The Aston Martin Rapide S we drove at Danbury

Jenkins couldn't have crossed the Connecticut state border before the rest of us were airborne. He may have been moving faster. His car may have been handling smoother. Undoubtedly his drive was quieter than the Albatross. Still as one who finds a bike ride around an airport as thrilling as touch and go landing on a rural lake, a day like this just doesn't lend itself to questions of who had the finer time. Probably because we all did.

Acrobatic pilot Rob Marsicano takes off from Danbury Municipal Airport

United Capt. Rory Kay poses for his wife before his test drive

Nadia Marcinko modeling with an Aston Martin
Photographer: Tereza Janakova, Make up: Kodo Nishimura

My little car on a previous encounter with the Grumman Albatross

Photo courtesy Boeing

I believe this to be true about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner:

Designers and engineers at Boeing are hard at work reworking the plane without its two lithium ion batteries. And, I suspect with less confidence, they have been doing this for quite some time.

I believe this because this is a company that has built an empire on brilliance and creativity and surely it must know better than anyone else that it cannot survive under the barrage of publicity it receives each time one of its batteries does not perform as expected. And also because it can no longer be confident that it can tame the wild volatility that is the cobalt oxide lithium ion battery.

The latest 787 battery event happened on January 14th, when a Japan Airlines Dreamliner scheduled to depart Narita Airport for Bangkok was taken out of service after a mechanic noticed white smoke coming from the front battery. Passengers were transferred to another plane which arrived in Survanabhumi Bangkok International without problem.

The battery and charger were taken to the headquarters of GS-YUASA where both the Japanese air safety authorities and the U.S. NationalTransportation Safety Board will participate in an examination.

Reports say the smoke seemed to be coming from one of the eight cobalt oxide lithium ion cells inside the battery box and it did not appear that the one cell leaking fluid had caused any difficulty with the adjacent cells. Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism told Japanese media, "It might not have been so serious as to effect the safety of the plane," according to my man in Tokyo, Takeo Aizawa.

JAL at Boston. Photo courtesy Patrick Smith

You may remember that last year at this time both JAL and All Nippon airways experienced problems with their Dreamliner batteries. The entire fleet of 50 787s was grounded for nearly 4 months.

The NTSB characterized the problem on a JAL Dreamliner at Boston Logan Airport as a thermal runway, meaning an uncontrolled increase in temperature. Several cells were affected and the damage was widespread and dramatic. What caused the initial problem has not been determined.

Damage on the JAL 787 in 2013. Photo courtesy NTSB

Boeing’s fix included creating more separation between cells, a suggestion made by Elon Musk - the man behind Tesla Motors, who in the days following the 787 battery woes last year offered that unsolicited advice from his perspective as leader of a company that uses the same chemistry to power its luxury electric cars.

The Boeing solution also included a smoke containment boxwhich would be a backup just-in-case. Happy with the plan, the FAA and European authorities let the airplanes fly in April 2013.

That just-in-case smoke containment box was put to use during the event at Narita on Tuesday and not unexpectedly, Boeing is spinning it great proof of concept.

Maybe it is, but it also proves the fears of many materials scientists who believe this battery chemistry predictably unpredictable and inadvisable for use in airplanes. It may also be inadvisable on cars, as Mr. Musk may also be learning. (Read more about that, here.)

Examining the JAL battery in 2013. Photo courtesy NTSB

It received little attention when the press release went out last month, but the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced it was open to receiving proposals for government funding for research into creating low energy nuclear reactions. One proposed method involves using the naturally occurring dendrites in lithium oxide. That anyone believes you can create a nuclear reaction in the substance flying around on airplanes is a stunning piece of news.

If we know anything about aviation safety it is that no event is unprecedented, there are always warning signs. The challenge is being alert enough to heed those signs before an event becomes catastrophic.

The batteries on the Dreamliner have given enough signs that Boeing cannot possibly be ignoring them - given the amount of energy and time it will take to redesign the plane to accommodate a different energy source.

And that is why when it comes to the Dreamliner I am sure, Boeing must have long ago said, “I love you, now change.”

Photo courtesy Ryanair

You heard it here first, folks; Ryanair, the airline passengers love to hate, has a plan to turn on the charm. And just in time, it would appear, given the ransacking of one of its planes in Nantes, France earlier this month.

The 170 passengers were reportedly aggrieved when their flight from Rabat to Paris was delayed and then diverted due to the illness of a passenger and then a nighttime limitation on arrivals at the Paris Beauvais-Tille airport.

Press reports say that the passengers revolted, stealing food, perfume and cigarettes from the airline's onboard store. Passengers say after being stuck for seven hours on a flight scheduled for two and a half, they were merely helping themselves to "drinks and food.""People need to eat," one unidentified traveler told the French news site, Metronews.

O'Leary, photo courtesy Ryanair

For an event like that, I blame the man at the top, the notoriously coarse Michael O'Leary, who doesn't seem to be happy unless he's agitating someone, somewhere. There's a remarkable similarity between the Irish airline boss and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey.

Governor Christie is in hot water these days because his former top staffer seems to have pulled some strings to create a 4-day traffic jam into New York City, by closing lanes on the world busiest bridge. This was intended to punish an area politician who declined to endorse Christie's re-election bid.

Governor Christie, handout photo

Christie and O'Leary are highly self-confident but famously impatient with others. Both are powerful salesmen; Christie sells to voters. O'Leary sells seats and anything else to travelers on his low cost carrier. Both have a history of contemptuous behavior that has bruised feelings and engendered hostility.

Whether Governor Christie knew that his underlings were hatching a plan to create chaos for commuters last summer is the subject of several investigations now. But as far as I'm concerned it is irrelevant. He created an uncivil tone at the top and disrespect trickles down.

Now comes news that Ryanair, pioneer of what is euphemistically called the "minimal convenience" model of air travel wants a more gracious image. In November, O'Leary told the Guardian "Were moving away from making noise to actually communicating with people."

But several years ago, in another attempt to attract a higher class of customer, O'Leary characterized his planned business class service as offering "beds and blow jobs." When video of the news conference went viral, O'Leary was not only not apologetic, the company issued a press release celebrating the number of hits his crude comments received on YouTube.

So don't talk to me about the hooligans on Ryanair's flights. Best I can see, aviation's bad boy has created an airline in his own image. If he's looking to make change, it's clear where he needs to start.

Twelve years may be a long time to wait for justice, and it may not have arrived even now. Still, today the twenty three hundred pilots who worked for Trans World Airlines, and who wound up on the bottom of the seniority list when the airline was acquired by American in 2001 are closing in on a settlement in their lawsuit against the Air Line Pilots Association.

Allen Press

ALPA told its members this afternoon that it had agreed to stop fighting a court finding that it had betrayed its TWA members and will instead pay them $53 million. The settlement, "allows your union to move forward," ALPA president Lee Moak wrote. "This is positive progress for you and for your union and will close a difficult chapter in ALPA's history."

When I reached him on the phone this afternoon, Allen Press, the attorney who represented the TWA pilots in Brady v. ALPA was pragmatic. "It is a compromise," he said of the figure which was considerably below the amount ALPA might have been expected to pay if the financial losses of all two thousand plus pilots were tallied and presented to the court. But the dollar figure was what Press called, meaningful. "The case has been going on for 12 years and the end was not in sight."

Former TWA pilots and their lawyers in 2011

I spoke to a much more ebullient Press in July 2011, right after a jury ruled for the pilots. The jurors in New Jersey found that ALPA had sold out its members by failing to support their integrated into the American Airlines seniority list after the merger. In exchange, ALPA was hoping that American's pilots would give up their in-house union, Allied Pilots Association, and return to the ALPA fold. That did not happen, but sure enough, the TWA folks wound up in a last-hired/first-fired situation when they started flying for American. When the industry tanked shortly thereafter, about half of these TWA pilots lost their jobs.

But winning a jury verdict is far from the end of the matter. Press and his plaintiffs including Alan Altman, now a pilot with JetBlue had to prepare for another trial, this one to determine how much ALPA should pay for its bad behavior. In these discussions, nearly every figure tossed around was higher than the announced settlement. Some even suggested the damages could exceed one billion.

On the other hand, the plaintiff's lawyers had to consider how much ALPA could even pay. They were working with the idea that the union's net worth was $30 million and the insurance wasn't such a sure thing. Would bankrupting the union benefit the plaintiffs?

Lee Moak, ALPA photo

Over at ALPA HQ, the leadership has been struggling to keep members in the fold. The pilots at Delta who are pushing to leave the union have their own Facebook page and fund raising campaign.

In his announcement to members, Moak promised dues will not rise and insurance will pay part of the claim. He may be gritting his teeth, but Moak must be hoping that by paying the money, this nasty business will soon be visible in his rear-view mirror.

The same cannot be said for the wronged TWA pilots. Press must now come up with a plan to divvy up the money so that those most affected will receive fair compensation without pushing those who do not receive as much to challenge the distribution.

"We've been working for a couple of weeks on different formulas and we are close to where we have an optimum model," Press said. "It's not a number to make everybody happy, but a lot of people felt vindicated" in 2011, when the court affirmed they'd been wronged.

So to the question, "What's the penalty for treachery and deception?", it would appear the answer is $53 million. But there's no certainty that everyone who fell victim to it will agree that 12 years is long enough and its time to move on.

If the Air Line Pilots Association has accomplished one thing during its 12-year battle with their members from the former Trans World Airlines, it is this; it saved up money for the rainy day that has arrived. That does not mean, however that the leadership has learned how to be magnanimous in defeat.

The union has agreed to pay $53 million dollars to settle the long standing lawsuit in which a court found it failed to properly represent the TWA pilots when their company was acquired by American Airlines in 2001. Insurance will fund half of the amount and ALPA the other. But paying up is not the same as fessing up.

Lee Moak, the ALPA chief responsible for the offer to settle said he didn't believe anyone was harmed by the union's failure to help the TWA pilots secure spots within the American Airlines seniority list. (For the motivation behind that, see previous posts here and here.)

"I don't believe, nor will I ever believe there was ever an intention of any of the things that were stated," in the lawsuit, Moak told me on Friday. And if a federal jury found otherwise? That is unfortunate, Moak said, but dollars, especially $53 million of them apparently means never having to say you're sorry.

That's a lot smaller of a sum than what the pilots wanted for the stalled careers and lengthy furloughs that followed when they were tacked to the bottom of the American Airlines seniority list. Then came the terror attacks of 9/11 that sent the aviation industry into a multi-year dive and many of the pilots wound up unemployed. One told me even when he was called back to American, he retired at sixty never having made it to the left seat.

Such are the vagaries on which flying careers are made. From the perspective of the pilots' union, however, the TWA folks, no matter what happened to them after the merger, were lucky that TWA didn't just go bankrupt. Then where would they have been?

All of this pre-dates Moak's tenure as head of the 50-thousand member union. But it has dogged him nonetheless. What to do about the lawsuit has been one of many problems with which he has been dealing."I inherited this and now I think I've settled it fairly."

I asked Moak why the ALPA announcement to its members sounded so victorious considering that it was on the losing side.

"I don't look at is as a victory," Moak said. "From a business viewpoint this was the right decision to make at this moment in time." The announcement is intended to assure members that dues will not rise and there will be no special assessment. Nor will ALPA lay off employees, or be forced to economize in other ways. "We have approximately $120 million in revenue," Moak said. "We had planned for this for an extended period of time and now we've taken care of it."

All except for the "I'm sorry" part.

Alan Altman, now with JetBlue used to fly for TWA and as far as he is concerned, the ALPA payout doesn't set things right.

"An apology would go a long way," Altman said, especially since Moak wasn't personally involved in the decision making at the heart of the case. Altman is also able to separate animosity for the union from what he says are its positive contributions to the profession. "Their aero-medical folks, their safety folks, those groups are amazing," he told me.

Fifty-three million may buy an end to the litigation. Too bad ALPA didn't throw a little remorse in too. With that, it might have truly settled the dispute.

Oxnard, California -- Along the 14 hundred foot Port Heuneme Pier fishermen dangle lines into the Pacific while dog walkers, joggers and families enjoy the occasional sight of dolphins arcing their way through the water. On the beach, more dolphins are depicted in bronze on the memorial to the victims of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which crashed 14 years ago today.

Eighty eight people died in the disaster - the result of a failure of the screw mechanism used for pitch control on the horizontal stabilizer. This was ultimately attributed to lax maintenance practices by Alaska Airlines and lax oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The flight control issue begin two hours after the plane left Puerto Vallarta, Mexico headed for San Francisco and then on to Seattle. The pilots thought they had the situation under control, but the last minutes of this ill-fated flight were so full of drama, it was fictionalized in 2012 in the movie Flight starring Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle.

I thought about this accident last night, while attending the New York premier of the movie, Charlie Victor Romeo. This new film comes from an off-Broadway show created and produced by Bob Berger, Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory. It was first performed in 1999.

Bob and I worked together at CNN covering the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, an event that changed both of our lives by sweeping us up into the complex world of aviation safety.

Charlie Victor Romeo is a powerful ensemble performance, a frills-free re-enactment of the transcripts of six cockpit voice recordings from air accidents in the eighties and nineties. Each vignette is heart-pounding and no less so because we already know how each episode will turn out.

Re-enacting CVRs in the movie Charlie Victor Romeo

When the movie was over, Bob talked about what he learned over the past 15 years of being involved with this subject matter, describing the fallacy of pilot error and the element of caprice that shifts the balance from a non-event to disaster. The dramatizations he filmed were little different from what went on that January afternoon in 2000 two hours after flight 261 left Puerto Vallarta.

Captain Ted Thompson and First Officer William Tansky had thousands of hours in the MD-80. It was practically the only airliner Tansky had flown. So when the problem with elevator control developed, neither man seemed overly worried - at least from what I could tell by reading the CVR transcript. The pilots insisted on turning back to Los Angeles, which they'd passed 90 miles back.

Twenty minutes later, while trying to diagnose the issues and calculate how to approach and land at LAX, their hobbled condition deteriorated.

"We're in much worse shape now," Capt. Thompson says. "We've lost control, vertical pitch." Eight minutes later the plane became inverted.

Capt. Thompson asks, "Are we flyin?" Then, in the struggle says to Tansky, "Gotta get it over again. At least upside down we're flyin."

Pilots in the vicinity had been asked to keep their eyes out for Alaska Flight 261 and several reported seeing the plane do a "big, huge plunge." There was time for the crew to issue one Mayday before the plane hit the water.

An air disaster is a story only partially told from the pilot's perspective. Earlier this month, while visiting the memorial, I struck up a conversation with a man named Todd, who was sitting on a nearby park bench. From where we were, we could see the heaves of the Channel Islands where the MD-80 plunged into the ocean near Anacapa Island. Todd worked for the town of Oxnard back then. His memories of the day remain vivid.

Pieces of the airplane washed up all along this beach and he and many others were responsible for securing it all for investigators. Fishermen, boaters and others were rushing out to the crash site to help in what they hoped would be a rescue effort. It was heartbreaking for sure, nothing on this scale had happened to this quiet agricultural community.

Earlier this week, when I spoke to Bud Bottoms, the sculptor who created the memorial, he told me about a few notable coincidences involving Port Heuneme and the Alaska flight.

First, Heuneme is an indigenous Chumash word, Bottoms told me. It means "resting place". And those dolphins - a frequent element in the artist's work - leap along the raised gnomon of the sundial even as their real life counterparts splash in the ocean, just steps away.

Dancing Dolphins in Puerto Vallarta. Courtesy Bud Bottoms

The sculpture on the memorial completes a circle that began in Mexico long before the crash, in 1987 when Bottoms designed a playful sculpture for Puerto Vallarta, a sister city to his hometown of Santa Barbara. Sitting as it does above the beach, it is easy to imagine that some of the people who would soon be on flight 261 might have seen and enjoyed the sight of the three golden dolphins leaping out of the fountain with the ocean as backdrop. They would not know, but I will tell you, that the artist's interest in these mammals is based on a Native American myth in which drowning humans are transformed to dolphins.

Sometimes even without the movie producers real life can seem like Hollywood drama.

The NTSB's report on this accident can be found here.

The trailer for Charlie Victor Romeo can be seen here. The film screens at the Film Forum New York and Downtown Independent Theater Los Angeles between January 31 and February 6th.

It comes as no surprise to me that Ireland has approved the operating certificate of Norwegian Air International over the protests of labor unions and U.S. based airlines. The decision to grant the airline permission to base its international division in Dublin means the airline is one step closer to its plan to offer no-frills, low fare flights between Europe, the United States and Asia.

Kevin Humpreys, the chief of safety and regulation at the Irish Aviation Authority dismisses as "rubbish" the challenges by labor organizations including ALPA, the Air Line Pilots Association.

ALPA's Lee Moak

"ALPA doesn't know what it's talking about," Humphreys said. "They don't know what they're fighting for." If Humphreys was feeling prickly, its understandable. Not only is the union charging that Norwegian is undermining pilot salaries and labor standards, ALPA president Lee Moak, is also questioning whether Ireland can properly supervise an airline that offers no flights into or out of the country. For more on the safety charge, see the story I wrote for APEX here.

Using both tactics, ALPA and its European counterparts European Cockpit Association have been lobbying hard to stop Norwegian, which it refers to by its acronym NAI, claiming that the airline's plans to hire flight and cockpit crew from nations with lower pay scales threatens to undermine labor standards and create a lopsided competition against airlines with higher labor costs.

"NAI wants to gain an unfair advantage over U.S. airlines in winning passengers’ business by dodging its national laws and violating the spirit and intent of the U.S.-EU Air Transport Agreement," Moak said in a statement after learning about the decision.

Airline boss, Bjorn Kjos on board a Norwegian 737

The business model being advanced by Norwegian's feisty boss Bjorn Kjos, is to hire workers outside of Norway, home to some of the best paid folks in the world, and that's something Norway's laws won't allow. Calling the rules outdated", the airline said on its website today "Norwegian could have based its long-haul company in any other European country and still used American and Asian crew, the way several other European airlines have been operating for years."

Norwegian's pretzel-shaped efforts to become an Irish airline so it can fly to Asia from the United States, has airlines fuming too. The trade group Airlines for America and a few individual airlines, have written to the US Department of Transportation urging it deny the airline's application for an foreign air carrier certificate. Now that Norwegian has its Irish paperwork in order, it has standing to ask for this.

Interestingly the issue would not have come up if the industry hadn't been pushing to open up aviation and tear down national borders. Now we have the EU-US Air Transport Agreement and darned if one of the first hot-potato issues to arise is whether an airline from one country should HQ in another, operate from a third and hire staff using labor laws of still others.

Norwegian new hires in the USA photo from Norwegian

Is it destructive and unfair, or is it just the inevitable evolution of the world economy unleashed so many years ago with the birth of commercial aviation? Ireland's Humphreys thinks its the latter.

"I don’t see this as being a particularly big event," he told me. "This is all part of the development of the globalization of aviation. It's going to happen anyway."

Which goes a long way to explaining why an airline called Norwegian is now an Irish carrier. What do we think the Americans will decide?

Terminal 3 at Delhi Airport

In her very funny book, Holy Cow, Aussie writer Sarah Macdonald writes about her first visit to India. After multiple delays in her attempt to fly home she describes the country as "Hotel California, where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

I hadn't been in the country more than 10 minutes when I realized just what she meant. This is the curious story of an airport hotel where check in is difficult enough, but once you have arrived leaving is impossible.

The dramatic increase in international air travel is fueling a worldwide boom in the construction of airports and the smart planners are including on-the-premises hotels. This is a convenience for the traveler of course, but it is a revenue stream for the airport authority and in some cases can help lower the fees airlines pay to use the airport.

View from Changi Crown Plaza Hotel

The Hyatt that is the centerpiece of Orlando International Airportin Florida for example, provided nine percent of the operating budget for the Greater Orlando Airport Authority in 2013. Frankfurt, Calgary, Paris and Singapore are some of the airports with more than one airport hotel. (More about my fantastic stay at Changi's Crown Plaza in a later post.)

En route to Delhi earlier this month, I popped in for a tour of the five star Sama Sama Kuala Lumpur Airport Hotel with a ballroom that seats 300 and pool nestled in a jungle-like garden that looks like Shangra-La. This truly is a hotel where one might never want to leave but if want to, you can.

Lobby of the five star Kuala Lumpur Airport Hotel

That is not the case at the Eaton Smart New Delhi Airport Transit Hotel which serves three kinds of customer, the international traveler who will stay in one of the 57 rooms on the secure air side of the airport and international and domestic travelers who will come to the hotel from New Delhi and will stay in one of 36 rooms on the land side of the airport.

Eaton Smart New Delhi Airport lobby

Either way, a guest at the Eaton Smart hotel must work pretty hard to actually get a booking. Complete flight information, proof of a visa for destination and sometimes even a boarding pass must be provided to the hotel before check in. International transfer travelers will not even have access to their checked bags. A full-page of do'sand don'ts is sent to the lucky few who, having inquired about a stay, will actually be able to book a room there.

The most interesting restriction is that on the domestic side, once a guest checks in, there's no leaving the building other than to catch ones' plane.

When hotel manager Sharin Surendran, first explained all this to me, and believe me, it took some time, I thought he was joking. "This can't be a working business model," I opined. He agreed. “You have people who want to use this hotel,” he told me. But the vast majority of inquiries cannot be accommodated due to the peculiar rules of the Civil Aviation Authorities.

Waiting out a layover in the terminal

Keeping the airport secure is the reason given for the rules. Never mind that airports around the world, including the United States (home to some pretty peculiar security practices) have been able to establish secure airport hotels. Security is just one issue. Marketing is another.

Eaton can’t sell rooms to airline crews because pilots and flight attendants don't want to be confined to quarters during a layover. Further, the 3000 international transfer passengers predicted when Indira Gandhi International Airport’s snazzy new Terminal 3 opened haven’t materialized.

View from the dining room of Eaton's international hotel

We get about 800-850 passengers a day in Delhi, Surendran told me. Of those, only about one to two percent have a layover long enough to make checking into the hotel worth the effort or the price, about $150. Surendran said, “It’s not related to the price of the room, it’s more that the number of airlines hasn’t grown.”

View from the domestic Eaton hotel

Having had the opportunity to use the hotel twice, it is troubling that government decision makers have made it so difficult to patronize the hotel. The rooms are extremely comfortable, quiet and well appointed. Food at the restaurant/bar is delicious, enhanced by the terrific view of the airfield. There’s even a small gym and spa where I had a massage that did much to help me get over my jet lag. These are the kind of services that travelers appreciate – and frequent travelers have come to expect.

It’s a shame that the hotel's investors, who Surendran described as “first time hotel owners who put their hands in the most complex operation,” are having difficulty making money on what anywhere else in the world would be a sure thing.

Illogical, bureaucratic government decisions shouldn't threaten a promising and consumer and airline-friendly aviation enterprise, especially these topsy-turvy days of air travel when anything-can-happen. In the great scheme of things, 93 rooms at a mid-sized airport isn't such a big deal. It's just another example of how, even when things seem promising in Indian aviation, something is sure to come along to disappoint.

That I first heard about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 while 10 miles out at sea in Vietnam's Ha Long Bay illustrates just how connected we all are to the instant information made possible by today's communication technology. That three days later little more is known about the airplane, where it went and why it did not arrive at Beijing on Sunday morning, is astonishing, frustrating and confounding.

It is not just that the world is fascinated by air disasters - as this apparently is - A Boeing 777-200 disappearing 40 minutes into a six hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing it is surely a nightmarish scenario for those awaiting word on the fate of their loved ones and presents a quandary for air safety investigators, too.

Yesterday, I tweeted, "NTSB to send investigators to crash, but where to go?" Today the answer to that question is Kuala Lumpur, which makes sense since it is the nation of the operator Malaysia Airlines and the place where much relevant information will be found about the plane, pilots, crew, passengers, maintenance and operations documents, etc.

The French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses, (BEA) with years of experience in the ultimately successful deep water recovery of Air France Flight 447 offered to assist in the search of the South China Sea, where the plane is likely to have gone down according to BEA spokeswoman, Martine Del Bono. Meanwhile, the Malaysians say boats and planes from many countries are helping with the search.

Interestingly, as I reported here in 2011, the lead BEA investigators called for changes in black box technology to avoid similar expensive and exhaustive searches when planes crash away from radar coverage.

In a related story for The New York Times five years ago, I quoted Rob Austin from DRS Technologies of New Jersey, a company that produces breakaway, floating data recorders for the military but had at the time, made little headway with commercial airlines. He said, “One can imagine cases such as a midair breakup over deep ocean where the exact location of the aircraft is difficult to track.” Well Mr. Austin could imagine it, as could others who have been working on this since the dawn of the Twitter age.

Little seems to have changed since then, at least as far as airlines are concerned. Are they rolling the dice? After all, in the event of an accident such as this, it is governments who pick up the search costs, not airlines. Add it to a pile of questions stacking up over the missing Flight 370 and leaving all of us to engage in this unaccustomed activity called waiting.

Writing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- I heard two very interesting comments during today's press briefing by the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation into the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 on March 8.

The first was the admission that on day six, investigators feel they are no closer to knowing where to go to find the missing Boeing 777. In a spoof on Twitter, @raykwong shared this photo of the ever expanding search area.

In reality, only the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean are being searched for the plane and its 239 occupants. Twenty seven thousand square miles and that's big enough, thank you.

The missing airplane in Los Angeles courtesy Jay Davis

Nevertheless the speculative theories are blooming as reporters try to wrap a narrative around often conflicting, sometimes technical and occasionally nonsensical statements from investigators, on and off-the record. Just listening to some of the questions during the news conference this afternoon at the Sama-Sama Airport Hotel makes me realize its not just the theories that are wacky, some of the reporters are too.

When the waving arm of one journalist was finally recognized, his question was more rant than request. "I'm not hearing from Boeing, I'm not hearing from Rolls-Royce," he said. I don't think that's transparent. I don't think you are being transparent.

Due to the National Transportation Safety Board's policy of revealing information as it is learned, people around the world have come to expect that American-style of tell-all briefings. In fact, the USA goes beyond what the International Civil Aviation Organization's Annex 13 recommends as a standard practice. I've already written about whether its realistic to expect to keep secrets in an event as high profile as an airline accident.

News abhors a vacuum and in the absence of information in what is certainly the most mystifying event since the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, that vacuum will be filled -- facts be damned.

The most fantastic scenario I read so far is the suggestion that the plane was commandeered by bad guys (who might or might not be the pilots) and flown to some remote airfield with plans to use the plane again for another nefarious purpose. Another story is Reuters "exclusive" that the plane was under the command of a sophisticated pilot who cleverly threaded the plane in between navigational way points in order to remain undetected.

Well undetected Malaysia Flight 370 remains as of this writing. Which brings me to the second interesting statement made at today's press conference.

"A normal investigation becomes narrower with time," acting Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein said. "This is not a normal investigation."

No one here in Kuala Lumpur will dispute that.

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