I have to pick my car up from the shop tomorrow morning, so I thought I’d put my post up tonight instead. It’s amazing, but I actually do get email if posts don’t go up at the usual time. So, here you go . . . .

You always hear misguided governments argue that they need to prop up failing airlines. I’m not quite sure why that is, but combined with other government intervention (including the proposed passenger bill of rights which I don’t support) this probably helps explain why this industry will never be healthy for long periods of time. Something that happened over the last couple of weeks will hopefully help governments understand why coddling isn’t necessary. (I can always dream, right?)

Fortunately for me, it involves the airline I love to hate . . . Alitalia. I wrote a couple weeks ago about how Alitalia’s latest turnaround plan would involve significantly slashing flights at its Milan hub and moving them to Rome instead. Well, you know the government is freaking out about losing all that service in such a major city. But guess what? Where there’s demand, other airlines will come in and fill in the hole.

This time, it’s Ryanair to the rescue. Soon after Alitalia announced its retreat from Milan/Malpensa, Ryanair said it’ll come in with 12 planes based at the airport operating flights to 50 international and 10 domestic destinations within a couple years.

See, if there’s enough demand for service, when one airline goes, another will follow in its place. You argue that Ryanair doesn’t have the same level of service as Alitalia? True. But if enough people want full service, you can bet other airlines will come in and fill the need.

This has happened time and time again. Remember when Southwest set up shop at Chicago/Midway the day after Midway Airlines went under? And how exactly did Atlanta end up being the biggest airport in the world after losing Eastern Airlines almost 20 years ago? Delta and AirTran picked up the slack.

If airlines aren’t healthy enough to survive, governments should let them go. Don’t try to prop them up. Those airplanes will still exist and someone will pick them up and start flying them if there truly is demand. And if there isn’t demand? Well that would probably explain why the airline wasn’t doing well in the first place.

You know the feeling. You’re sitting there reading your book when the seatbelt sign comes on. Then you start bouncing around. Just about everyone has heard the captain ask the flight attendants to sit down as a precautionary measure at some point. Many people have seen it bad enough that drinks start coming out of the glass. And the chosen few have seen it get so bad that people end up injured.

There has long been an effort to avoid turbulence and in general, airlines do a pretty good job today. When you think about the old days when planes would penetrate thunderstorms below 10,000 ft (sometimes with catastrophic results), things don’t look so bad. But it’s still not pleasant and it can be scary. So, the airlines are always looking for better ways to avoid the stuff.

I was interested to read this article in the Rocky Mountain News about a National Center for Atmospheric Research project that is being tested with United in the Rocky Mountain region right now. The idea is to use ground-based radar to look into areas of rain, clouds, and wind and create a plot 100 miles ahead and 40 miles on either side of a plane showing turbulence. This info can be downloaded every 5 minutes by the plane, so it’s near real-time, and that’s helpful in avoiding the rough air that you usually find over the Rockies.

The idea is to avoid large storms, so without a system like this, pilots will often be very cautious and go much further out of their way than they need to. With more accurate plots, the pilots can feel more confident deviating less and that means shorter delays and fewer airspace constraints.

This program still doesn’t appear to help with clear air turbulence, the really bouncy stuff that is harder to predict. That is a whole different area of research. Believe it or not, Northwest is one of the leaders in this area. (Yes, I know. Something positive about Northwest is hard to come by.) They actually put out a daily turbulence plot that gets sold to other airlines. So hopefully one of these days, clear air turbulence will be completely predictable, but for now just wear your seatbelt. (Note: Turbulence doesn’t hurt people, not using a seatbelt at all times hurts people. Oh, and guns hurt people too, but that’s a whole different story.)

If you’re really worried about turbulence, there’s a great site for you called TurbulenceForecast.com. Actually, it’s questionable if it’s a great site for you, because having all this info may just make you more nervous. You can get all kinds of maps ranging from areas of potential clear air turbulence to storms and cloud top heights like you see below. (Yes, that one passing through Louisiana saying 690 is the remains of Humberto and yes, the clouds are topping out at 69,000 ft. Wow.)

You can even go into the forum, post the route you’re flying within a couple days of travel, and they’ll respond with a personalized route forecast for you. For some people, this may be great. But for others, it may just make things worse, especially if you’ll be flying a projected bumpy route.

If you’d rather not know, just keep in mind that the pilots are doing everything they can to avoid the turbulence, but that’s not always possible. If you keep your seatbelt on, you’ll be fine. Otherwise, well, severe turbulence may be rare, but without a seatbelt your head might end up visiting the ceiling, and you really don’t want that.

What a strange week for the Bombardier Q400 and for Scandinavian airline SAS. After having the gear collapse on two separate landings within a couple of days, I think it’s safe to say there’s a problem here.

First, there was the landing in Aalborg, Denmark last Sunday. You can watch the really cool video coverage by clicking below.

That may look worse than it actually was. Everyone got out fine, as they usually do with gear collapses upon landing.

The second one happened yesterday on a flight to Palanga (Lithuania). According to the release from SAS, the flight apparently “experienced technical difficulties” and diverted to Vilnius (also Lithuania). Once again, everyone was fine, but there are really no details here, but I’m told it was again a landing gear collapse.

This makes sense because Bombardier immediately called for inspections on all Q400s with more than 10,000 cycles (1 takeoff and 1 landing count as 1 cycle). SAS decided to ground their entire fleet immediately until inspections could be completed even though not all of them had more than 10,000 cycles.

In the US, I believe this only affects Alaska’s regional airline Horizon Air. These guys canceled about a quarter of their flights yesterday and will do the same today. Make sure you check with them before you go to the airport to find your flight canceled. Other than that, nobody here should be affected. Continental will have Q400 flights from a regional partner starting next year but that’s not an issue now. And Hawai’i's Island Air recently got rid of their Q400s as they try to survive.

I’m curious to see what this means going forward. If they don’t find any problems on the existing fleet, will they just started requiring inspections as each plane turns 10,000 cycles old? Something tells me that the accident investigations will turn up some common thread. If not, it’ll have just been an amazing coincidence.

Marion Blakey, outgoing Grand Poobah at the FAA, gave her farewell speech to the Aero Club this week, and her comments make me throw my arms up in the air with frustration.

The big issue right now is delays (duh), and the FAA needs to be proactive in fixing these problems. But instead of outlining what the FAA could be doing, she pushed it back on to the airlines where we know it won’t get fixed.

You know you’re in trouble when the speech contains gems like this one. “I predict passengers will continue to be fed up with delays, and that’s got to be taken more seriously by all of us and particularly our airlines.” Holy crap – amazing revelation! But don’t worry, she’s on it: “If airlines don’t address this voluntarily, don’t be surprised when the government steps in.”

I WILL be surprised, because you guys don’t seem to be in a hurry. It’s clear the airlines won’t address this voluntarily. JetBlue isn’t going to reduce schedules at JFK unless they know Delta and American will do the same. And it’s not like they can all get together in a room and talk about that legally.

So until the airports and airspace can be designed to handle the amount of traffic that needs to be supported, the FAA is going to have to step in. They know this, but they aren’t doing anything about it. They’re just talking and that does nothing. Unfortunately, we know Marion Blakey is checked out. She’s done in a couple days and she’ll be on her way to a nice fat lobbying job. It’ll be up to the next administrator, which rumors say could be Mike Levine. Now there’s a guy that would be interesting in this position. He could actually get something done here. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

UPDATE 9/12 @ 205p: Someone suggested I might give a little more background on Mike Levine. If you’d like to know more about him, head to this link.

Six years later. It’s been especially strange this year as Sept 11 once again falls on a Tuesday, the first time that’s happened since 2001. As I write this on the evening of the 10th, I can’t help but think back to the same Monday night back in 2001. It wasn’t a special night by any means back then, but of course now it marks the end of an era.

Last year, I wrote about what my September 11, 2001 was like, but I didn’t know what to write about this year. Should I have a day of silence? Or should I just go on like it was any other day? Nah.

I decided that I’d like to try to help build a tradition that Holly Hegeman over at PlaneBusiness started a few years back. Every year, she’s published the names of the crews onboard the four aircraft that crashed in her weekly Banter. On a day when everyone honors all those who died, I think it’s fitting that those of us who love this industry honor those who were “in the family.”

American 11 (Boston to Los Angeles)
Crashed into World Trade Center
John Ogonowski, Dracut, Mass., Captain; Thomas McGuinness, Portsmouth, N.H., First Officer; Barbara Arestegui, flight attendant; Jeffrey Collman, flight attendant; Sara Low, flight attendant; Karen Martin, flight attendant; Kathleen Nicosia, flight attendant; Betty Ong, flight attendant; Jean Roger, flight attendant; Dianne Snyder, flight attendant; Madeline Sweeney, flight attendant

United 175 (Boston to Los Angeles)
Crashed into World Trade Center
Victor J. Saracini, Lower Makefield Township, Pa., Captain; Michael Horrocks, First Officer; Amy Jarret, flight attendant; Al Marchand, flight attendant; Amy King, flight attendant; Kathryn Laborie, flight attendant; Michael Tarrou, flight attendant; Alicia Titus, flight attendant

American 77 (Washington/Dulles to Los Angeles)
Crashed into the Pentagon
Charles Burlingame, Captain; David Charlebois, First Officer; Michele Heidenberger, flight attendant; Jennifer Lewis, flight attendant; Kenneth Lewis, flight attendant; and Renee May, flight attendant

United 93 (Newark to San Francisco)
Crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Jason Dahl, Colorado, Captain; Leroy Homer, Marlton, N.J., First Officer; Sandy Bradshaw, flight attendant; CeeCee Lyles, flight attendant; Lorraine Bay, flight attendant; Wanda Green, flight attendant; Deborah Welsh, flight attendant