Loading...
About this Episode
How do you replace 100,000+ seats daily that just disappeared from the global aviation network? Things are definitely a mess.
Hosts & Guests
Transcript
I almost never unplugged my appliances before working on them.
What are you talking about?
Only 240 volts.
What could go wrong?
I know people who don't.
Yeah, we don't need any stories.
We don't need your hair any crazier.
You're listening to Dots, Lines and Destinations, a travel podcast with host Steven C. Graves,
Fosmoloon and Seth Miller.
Hello and welcome to episode 577 of Dots, Lines and Destinations.
I'm Steven C. Graves, joined today by Mr. Fosmoloon and Seth Miller, gentlemen.
How did it feel to wake up an hour earlier today?
Just extra time to troubleshoot a broken dryer in my laundry room.
Well, that sucks.
Yeah.
Do you have a standard size closet for your, like, is it like a standard size slot for your
dryer?
Would you call it?
It's just a room that you have space.
It's part of an addition that the prior owners put on the house and it's in a, like,
they put a full bath downstairs, which didn't have one before.
And so it's basically in the full bathroom.
There's a recessed, double-wide space that are side-by-side, it's a little bit of space
on either side of them and then, like, folding doors.
Gotcha.
Yeah, ours is kind of folding doors.
It's in a hallway.
The space is not...
It is the perfect space for 1990s-sized washing dryer.
Yeah.
Which...
Our old apartment in New York, the fridge, could only fit one brand, like, 19-inch-wide.
It wasn't where it was originally installed.
Like, I made it work, but, like, it was a 19-inch-wide incident, but even 20 or something
like that.
And because of that, it didn't have enough space, like, an inch around it for venting.
Yes.
And because we didn't have that, it would vent out the top.
But even there, I put shelving above it.
And so, I would burn out, uh, refer to it as a compressor, it's more frequently than
it would probably should.
And I started getting worried that there were stuff selling, like, the one model that
would still fit.
So, he buys a...
He buys a storage...
And he's the old actor...
Cool.
Yeah.
Sounds like something I would do.
Yeah.
It does so.
I keep fuzz.
Just...
Just in case I'll keep one in the warehouse.
I mean, it's kind of like me with clothes.
Every time I find something, I actually like...
I'm like, well, I'll buy 12 of them, because...
Yeah.
Do I just buy an extra pair of nice dress shoes once I found them that fit?
Because...
I buy from FluVog a lot, and they change their cycle through different brand or different
models still often.
Yep.
It's like screw it.
So, they're just sitting in the bottom of my closet waiting.
Yep.
I'm with you.
I'll generally do that, but it never would be the things I really like you don't buy
enough of.
Yeah.
Yep.
And then you realize, oh man, I need to, like, three more of these.
Yeah.
Uh...
I like your shirt fuzz.
Fuzz is wearing a bicycle shirt.
I mean, it's a cycle...
It's a cyclist.
I...
I appreciate that shirt.
So...
Fuzz and I did not go to Colombo and through Doha and everything...
We're on a snowy car through Doha right now.
Yeah, sir.
That's not true.
They've got some flights finally operational.
They loaded, like, four repatriation flights for Sunday.
Yeah.
They last...
And last night, they operated, like, six.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There were a few yesterday, too, yeah.
I mean, Doha's probably had been the hit the most, right?
He's...
I've been watching.
Dubai's been working.
I say, he impacted the most in terms of airline operations.
Fair point.
Uh...
Dubai's been...
Like, there's a lot more operations happening out of Dubai, and it's not just Emirates
and fly Dubai.
There's other carriers coming in out of Dubai now.
Yeah.
But...
Still.
I just looked before we started.
Uh...
Average day, seats at Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi combined, about 300,000 each direction,
like, in and 300 out.
Really?
Yeah.
It's a few.
So, you know...
People...
I was impressed by, you know, the concern, such complaint of why don't people reroute?
Why don't you read book on another airline, this and that?
I'm like, okay, let's pretend it's only 80% load factor, which is probably low.
So that means you've got 240,000 people each day, and, and let's assume 100% of it is
connecting traffic, which it isn't.
But still, like, 240,000 people each day trying to get through those three airports, and
maybe, well, 100,000 seats?
Yeah.
So, what do you do with another 120,000 people every day?
I mean, someone posted something, they were in Bangkok, and they actually went to the
Qatar ticket office, hoping to get, you know, like, oh, I'll talk to an agent.
It was like a three-day wait to speak to an agent.
They were giving out tickets with timings to come talk to them, and it was like a madhouse.
They posted pictures, it wasn't safe.
Yeah.
I think so many people connect through these prices, that it's like, I don't know, it's...
And the other carriers that are in Asia don't necessarily have enough seats to carry the
people, the excess capacity.
Of course, they don't.
Why would they have 180,000 spare seats lined around?
Yeah.
But here's a problem.
The US carriers are making this problem worse.
I was working with someone we all know last week, and they were supposed to fly through
Dubai to get to the Maldives, and United was insisting because the flight to Dubai
if they hadn't canceled, they're not going to rebook it.
Like, we'll get you to Dubai.
That was their exact words.
But that's the problem though.
I think it's not just the US carriers.
It's also the carriers in the Middle East.
Like, Qatar has been rolling days of cancellations.
Like, I think it's their own, they've created this problem.
Like, Qatar's like, oh, well, we'll check back in tomorrow at 9 a.m.
Why don't you just cancel everything for a week and say, we will rebook people and let
that be the message, rather than like stringing people out thinking they're actually going
to go through because they're not.
It's not going to reopen.
If you have a repatriation flight, maybe Qatar reaches out to you, but it's, it's not going
to happen.
It's just not.
Or like the flight I was supposed to be on from DeGal to Abu Dhabi canceled three days
before and then the morning of suddenly got reinstated.
Yeah.
Did it actually operate?
It did.
Right.
So it was a repatriation.
They probably, when reached out to people who had said, I need to get on.
Right.
And so.
But I just, what the question that I have is, right, what, how many people are going
to Abu Dhabi to go to Abu Dhabi, how, how are they making the problem worse by finding
them back into Abu Dhabi and not being able to get them out?
That's a good point too.
Oh, right.
That was the thing with the Qatar Airways flights.
They explicitly said these are only seats for people who plan to terminate in Doha.
Yeah.
They refuse to take anyone with the fact that I think I can.
Which is probably a smart move.
I just wish they wouldn't do these rolling cancellations.
I wish they would just pick, pick a, pick a date and say, we're going to reevaluate,
you know, again, in a week for operations.
I mean, I'm sure they don't want to do that when, like you said, it's a ton of seats
every day.
Yeah.
But like at this point, like, I mean, even Riyadh, the other day, like things just three
days ago, two days ago, Riyadh had to close because there was a ballistic missile that made
it into Riyadh.
So.
Yeah.
I'm just popping up some random research or 70% of Abu Dhabi's traffic is transit of
the 55,000 seats that go through there because 40,000 seats every day, every day of people
trying to connect through.
And then you get like, and there has been some service people trying to bring things
back.
You get a Malaysia Airlines on added like a flight to London and two to Paris or one to
Paris and Switzerland, but like, okay, fine, you throw an A330 at that.
500 seats.
Yeah.
Doesn't do a lot.
I mean, we didn't have people just through 40,000 people just throughout Abu Dhabi.
Yeah.
Well, I liked there was some, I mean, even the European carriers and other carriers are
trying to do kind of repatriation type lights.
So I think Lufthansa, also, I think everybody in Europe has basically told people if you
can get to the land border with Saudi Arabia or to Oman, we can, we can get you out.
There will be a repatriation flight and they've offered decent prices for the flights.
Yeah.
You know, I don't know how that was going to work for folks, but okay, I don't know,
the inter globe, B.A. is using a musket.
Yeah.
Come on, just a big gateway these days because it's far enough south.
Yeah.
But I was listening that some of the board, the land border crossing weights were like
15 hours into, into these different places.
Some shared an Instagram ad of a company advertising like Escort, Guidance Services for that border
transit and then onward flight services for people trying to get out.
Nice work if you can get it, I guess.
Pretty quick pivot to, you know, what's new in the industry.
Yeah.
Interesting.
But I mean, I guess the extra capacity from the European carriers standpoint of getting people
out makes a lot of sense just to help, just to help move people.
Yeah.
And like I just kind of, my favorite is the people who are just trying to get back to Dubai
so that they don't lose their tax breaks.
How is that what's everybody's doing is that like the, it's a Dubai has been basically
paying people to live there and talk about how great it is and a lot of UK folks move
down there and then certainly other countries as well and like, but you have to have a certain
number of days in country in the UAE and for the UK folks, you can only have so many
days in the UK or you become a citizen in the UK again.
So like unlike in the United States, where we pay income tax on, if you're a citizen,
you pay the tax regardless of how many days you spend in the US and some of these other
countries, you don't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is like the Puerto Rico for the crypto bros.
I mean, in some ways, yes.
What about the, I mean, there's, there's also the people who have been told to go to
Cyprus, which is an interesting choice.
Like if you're in Tel Aviv or somewhere in Israel and they're like, go to Cyprus.
I'm like, how?
I want to put a boat.
Well, you know, I just saw people, they've extended their waiver includes Athens.
So if you can get to Athens, they'll change it.
Yeah.
Again, how?
Like that.
So there are commercial flights running out of Tel Aviv.
Oh, they are.
It's back up operating.
It's, I mean, it's not a ton of capacity, but I've been seeing some flights.
And so if it's regular scheduled, I'll all stop some of its, you know, charter ferry
evac flights.
Because if someone, if I'm in Tel Aviv and someone's like, oh, well, if you need to get
home, go to, just get to Athens and there's no flights, I'm going to say to you on a map.
Like, I don't find any.
I got to go.
I got to go to Syria.
Like one of the problems right now is we're a week into this.
The, at least the US Airlines have an updated their waivers at all.
Yeah.
And they're still selling tickets.
Yeah.
So like, and they, you know, they all say, if you bought your ticket prior to February
20th, well, what if I buy my, but like, Steve and I had just changed our tickets for
the end of the month, what happened if things don't recover by then?
Yeah.
And those, and those waivers, like those waivers were basically explicit.
But the reason we had to do the end of the month was because they said you can, you
have to fly by the 29th of March, yeah, they wouldn't refund our outbound.
They'd wanted to repress it.
And they said, you have to fly by the 20th.
So we had no choice.
Like, how is that, how does that work?
That's stupid.
It's just stupid.
And there was a cancellation.
So that's why we asked for a refund initially, just them anyway.
If they canceled the flight, they owe you a refund, but we could refund the whole thing,
they wouldn't just refund the outbound preserve the return.
Like most airlines generally will do that, right, if they cancel part of it, I'll get
myself there, just preserve my return, return it to give you higher money back.
And it was like, no, we're going to repress this whole thing.
Yeah, there.
Also of note, just for what it's worth, Azerbaijan, which now has become a major choke point slash
throughput point for traffic between Europe and South Asia, sort of Georgia or Armenia,
and then Azerbaijan crossing, and then across through Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan closed the
southern half of its air space a couple days ago.
So basically, it's narrowed the range through which there's capacity for people to fly.
I mean, there's only so many highways through Azerbaijan, so taking threading a needle to
a home, your level, so they say why?
That's basically providing buffer around the northern edge of Iran for safety.
But they didn't say that experts at it yet, the note I'm said for ops reasons, which
is, you know, super great.
Yeah, I mean, because a lot of the European, I mean, basically, your options are, if you're
going to Asia from Europe, it's through Azerbaijan or it's down now south of Oman, and then
through basically northern Africa, up through years.
There's still decent flow through Saudi Arabia and across.
Yeah, Saudi Arabia, yeah, that too.
But that's out of the way when you actually look at them, it's very, when you look at
a map, like it's very out of the way.
So I love watching the rush of lights, because like things going from Dubai to Moscow,
go down and around the Persian Gulf, up the Persian Gulf into Egypt, cross East back over
Turkey, then up and kind of thread the needle around Ukraine, and then up in Damascus.
It turns like it turns like a three hour flight into like a six hour flight.
Red sea and up Persian Gulf, but yeah, red sea, yeah, sorry, red sea, yeah, some escurs
in there.
Yeah, it's pretty funny, but I was impressive.
I'm on Jordan has remained mostly operational through all this.
It is impressive.
So it's not a hundred percent, but I don't know, man, this is, do we see this ending in
the next three weeks?
I don't.
I hope.
Hope, yeah, I just, I just don't see an ending.
And it's, I think it's the randomness of the strikes that I think is throwing all the
carriers off, like if it was like, oh, this is very clearly targeted attacks, glass for
a day or two, they can go back to operations, but it's like every now and then they just
get a drone that flies over and blows something up.
Because of the way the US air bases in cutter, specifically, it has to fly over the airport.
So yeah, that's a problem.
Um, anyway, seaport, the little airline that could, the one that I think we've talked
about on here before, I didn't realize they were still existed.
They did.
They do still exist.
We talked about them on here because they fly Portland to Bowenfield, um, like seven
times a day, um, are starting, they're starting Bowenfield
to Spokane and there's a demand there.
I, I guess I, I, I, I'm on there is Moses Lake.
I don't know why they wouldn't, you know, I don't know why they wouldn't start Moses Lake
to, to be in Bowenfield, but I was going to ask how far as Moses Lake, um, I mean, you
would want to do Spokane because you can catch people other than Boeing people.
Yeah, true.
Uh, I spoke, I mean, Moses Lake is close.
I can't remember how close it's, it's close, like 20 minutes, um, from Spokane, I
think, uh, doable.
Yeah.
Let me see.
I'm just going to look at it real quick.
That's the only thing I think of.
Like I don't know how there's demand.
I don't know.
It's further than I thought.
It is an hour and a half walk or a drop or an hour and a half drive, hour and a half
drive.
Moses Lake is like smack dab in the middle of Washington and Spokane's on the eastern
edge.
So yeah, I don't know who this is serving.
Okay, I don't know because you have a Seth and I know where to get good cinnamon buns
in Spokane.
I've had to find that place again.
That's where good though.
Oh, the little bocan runs.
I remember those.
It was next to the courtyard.
Yeah.
Okay.
And uh, camp us.
Yeah.
Plus.
Yeah.
Plus.
Oh, yeah.
I'm a, uh, a bear's right on United.
Yeah.
Are you us airways?
Are you?
We both, both US air and United, but these are the ones you could route to like Phoenix.
Yeah.
I know.
Yeah.
The US air one was through Phoenix the United one was you could do three connections.
No wonder you're four million, Mila.
Um, um, anyway, I think this is it ran around a golf on a label from one of those.
Is a real night's course in Cortaline just across the border.
Oh, yeah.
So I think the day after fos and I went out one day and then I went back like two more
times having slept at the airport at O'Hare.
And one of the times I went and played around a golf man.
Mila runs in their stories.
Um, I think this is interesting just because I haven't been able to figure out if they
actually offer connecting itineraries from what I'm searching.
It doesn't look like they do.
But because I was going to do Portland to Boeing field to Spokane and back or something
or just fly one way and take Alaska back.
Um, it's just interesting because date like I think to your point fos Spokane to
Boeing field, like, is there that much demand from Spokane?
I mean, it's only like 12 seats, um, but that's, you know, five times a day.
It's a decent number of people.
And you're not connecting to C-tack.
You're going into central Seattle.
So I don't, I don't know.
It's just, it's a weird one.
Frankie Doodles was the name of the place.
Frank, you got Eagles.
Oh, we have, we have ADHD, um, huh?
Um, and then this isn't really follow up.
I mean, it's kind of follow up, uh, Lufthansa, the new livery.
If they've now painted basically every one of their wide bodies, at least one with the
new livery.
And it looks really, really good on the 748.
Looks really good.
Yeah, I was going to say it looks good on all of them.
Yeah.
We had a friend who spotted it on a, was it a 7-8, uh, recently and looked good on that.
And I think on the 748, I think it just looks, it looks pretty amazing.
Um, and then goal, Seth, you put this topic in here.
Yeah.
Final guest in the area.
It's 330s.
So off with it, it used to be there in all 737 airline right now, last late last year,
Abra group, which is the parent of them, Avianca and Wamos announced that they were getting
seven new A330 NEOs, five of them are going to fly for goal, um, and deliveries are supposed
to start.
Maybe this year.
All right, they are supposed to start this year, uh, later this year, it seems like in
order to get sort of some of the operations off the ground, Wamos is going to be supporting
it.
And so they might bring some of the older planes over and start with the older plane
while they sort of ramp up or it'll be Wallace crew because they're trained and not entirely
sure.
But, uh, should be very interesting to see that happen, uh, let's go extend into North America
or Europe, which is right now with the 737, they don't really do that.
Hmm.
Um, also pretty dense plane.
Yeah, I was going to say the number of seats that are on these planes is pretty high.
Yeah, 290 is more than 290 seats, but includes a business class guy that didn't release any
of the specific details, but yeah, it's 3,900, which is trying to pop like a Delpert
and Fig, um, 290 seats seems like an awful lot to me.
And Belka does not about that 2928 to 24.
So that's 280, one on belt is, it's not that far off.
One extra row.
Yeah.
I mean, or no premium economy and, yeah, I'll see.
So I forget that it's just that much bigger plane.
I mean, is it, do you think Gal is going to displace at all or trying to compete with
Latam?
Is that the market here?
Um, yeah.
I would assume that.
Yeah.
Uh, the real question is how much should they try to go into direct competition versus secondary
cities and figure it out, you know, slightly lower demands, slightly lower competitive markets.
Yeah, I was going to say because Gal isn't part of the partners with anybody.
They had American, right?
Is that still around?
I know American has been doing weird shit down there.
But yeah, it's, yeah, they're still part and over there.
Okay.
Um, so that'll, but it's again, that's been challenging through the bankruptcy and everything
else for Gal, but, you know, they've come out of it.
They're doing it.
Nice growth.
Also, does American really need help getting people to Brazil?
Yeah.
Well, maybe you're around Brazil.
That's about it.
Or tertiary cities, like you said, I mean, you have cut some capacity in and out of Brazil.
Also, they could use additional if they don't have to, they don't have to directly fly.
Yeah.
Because they stopped doing all the secondary cities, right?
But this one, I think it's just Rio and South Paulo that they're flying again.
They're not doing the one that, what's the one in the city in the North?
Receifé.
Yeah, receifé, they're not doing receifé anymore.
I don't think they are.
Hmm.
Seth is looking.
I can see it is pondering.
It's searching faces on.
Because I think those are the 75 route and they don't have 75 anymore.
Yeah.
For June, 2026, just Rio and South Paulo.
Wow.
Okay.
And then on not using planes on that front, a zoo is dropping the XLR.
Yeah.
And I can't say I'm that surprised.
I don't know, just because of all the issues.
Well, what does the range get you and where can you use it, where it would make a little
bit of sense for a zoole would be sort of all the places that tap is using it.
If they wanted to sort of go after some of those secondary markets, because they do fly,
I remember if they definitely fly over to Portugal, yep, in addition to the North America
stuff.
I think for the North America stuff, you just like look at a map of what the range gets
you.
And it's a weird.
It's a weird limited set of options relative to, you know, you don't get that much more
access to things, especially if you start going from like the smaller cities up North.
Yeah.
But without the XLR, you can hit all the stuff you need in both North America and Europe.
So, and if you're going to try it like from Rio, you need a bigger plane.
Gotcha.
So they're they're looking at it from an economic perspective of the airplane, the issues
aside.
Yeah.
They make this plane work.
And then I guess add the issues on top of that and then just like this doesn't make sense
for us.
Yeah.
To where those birds going, someone's picking up the deliveries I'm guessing.
I didn't see the detail there.
They may just be taking them as regular 321s though.
Oh, okay.
I'm going to go back and track.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's an interesting, here we go.
It's the whole refinancing thing.
So they may have just become available for another airline.
Yeah.
Maintains committed to the Airbus A320 Neo family.
So for the matter of cops.
Wow.
Okay.
Interesting.
Uh, and then MX, what is sidecar, what are we, what are we talking about here?
These are new, a new launch concept they're launching because you know, the Sinsure
and Lunches are two full.
And so rather than deal with that problem, they're introducing this new, uh, walk in lounge.
I don't think there's going to be much in the way of seats.
You can only get in if you're departing within 90 minutes.
And the first one is opening in Vegas.
Because Vegas has so many people flying through it these days.
If you were to go to Vegas, the lunches are always full.
Well, that's where everybody is.
Yeah.
Free food.
Yeah.
And then, like, the fly through lounges that United, yeah, and where I think that at first,
maybe.
I don't know.
I feel like this is, if that was my lounge option, I'd be like, okay, okay.
This isn't a lounge, but just like, glad you gave me something, I guess.
I mean, this all comes back to like, people should just cancel their credit cards.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
And they're calling it sidecar, really?
Really serving to go drinks, because that's just what we need in airports.
Oh, I rodey.
Yeah.
I really was.
Yes.
What's the more sick it happened?
So I don't know if I ever told you guys this.
I mean, it still exists in Houston.
So maybe, maybe I haven't.
Maybe people should go check it out.
Drive through batteries.
Yes.
Drive through batteries are a thing.
They serve it in a sealed plastic bag.
So they're not breaking the law by serving you an open container in a car.
Even though it's in a cup, and they give you a straw to the sealed plastic baggy.
And it's, it's, uh, it's not, uh, it's not super hard liquor.
It's like, it's basically like malt liquor in, in a bag.
So, but this is what this sounds like to me is like, here, have your sidecar as you walk
through the airport.
I think so.
Yeah.
It's an interesting word to use just because it can have multiple meanings.
Yeah.
Like, it can be a beverage.
It could be.
It could be the beverage or the extra seed in a motorcycle.
Yeah.
Among other things.
No.
Neither of which have super positive connotations for a language, in my opinion, but okay.
There's a guy around here that has a motorcycle with a sidecar that has the ride around with
his dog in it.
And I think that's spectacular.
So that's what I'm going to choose to.
I'm at sauce.
Yeah.
Well, that's an experience.
I like it.
Uh, anything else you guys want to chat about?
No.
Not for me.
Cool.
We'll get some bonus topics.
We're going to talk about some, uh, fraud.
We'll talk about, uh, Canada approving the new Gulf Streams, uh, United Nigeria wanting
to fly the United States, uh, Delta and their new leadership and then, uh, FAA limits around
ski areas.
So stick around if you're a Patreon supporter.
If not, thanks for listening.
We will talk to you next time.
Happy travels.
Take care.
See you later.
