I spent last week at two of my favorite events – US Airways Media Day and the Phoenix Aviation Symposium. As usual, one or two big headlines will come out of these things, and they’re usually reported incorrectly. This year was no exception. So let’s talk about US Airways and why it won’t actually be merging anytime soon despite some misguided stories.

Many outlets picked up on the fact that US Airways CEO Doug Parker once again spoke about how the airline believes that eventually the legacy carrier world will come down to three main players – American, Delta, and United. And again, Doug mentioned how US Airways could merge with any of these at some point. That’s not a surprise. He’s been saying this for years. But apparently there’s enough turnover in the people covering the airline industry that some treat this as if it’s actually some kind of news. Take a look at Shira Ovide at the Wall Street Journal, for example:

Doug Parker is flagging he’s more than willing to break out the “for sale” sign on his lawn. It’s also a sign that US Air, which combined with Parker’s then company — America West — more than five years ago, didn’t get the kind of scale it wanted from that deal.

*sigh* That “for sale” sign has been out there for a long time, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has even remotely paid attention to this industry. But the chance of a merger happening anytime soon is slim at best. There simply isn’t a good opportunity for US Airways with any of those three right now.

American
Let’s start with the one that everyone points to . . . American. Since Northwest and Delta linked up as did United and Continental, that means US Airways and American will as well, right? Wrong. It would be a disaster of epic proportions if American tried to merge with US Airways now.

US Airways is never shy about pointing out how it survives as an airline. Its hubs are in less desirable locations than the big three airlines and that means it is able to generate less revenue from them. How does it compensate? It has lower costs than the big three to offset the revenue deficiency. That’s how the math comes together. If American buys US Airways, it buys a route system that doesn’t generate enough revenue to cover American’s costs, but American would naturally bring US Airways costs up to its level. That is bad.

I can only think of two ways this works. One would involve American buying US Airways and running it as a separate airline under a holding company. This would not only be a wasteful distraction for American but it might not work. If the feds decide that the airlines have single carrier status (just as Republic/Frontier/Lynx/Shuttle America/Chautauqua just received) then it would mean a single workforce and costs would start to rise. American would also get little benefit. If it really wanted this kind of benefit, it would be better off just agreeing to a codeshare.

The other way is more plausible. If American continues its downward slide and ends up in bankruptcy, I would look for a US Airways bid just as it did with Delta. Then US Airways could rework American before it took it out of bankruptcy and come out with a highly competitive airline. Right now, this is the only plausible merger scenario I see, but American isn’t going into bankruptcy anytime soon.

Delta
The Delta/Northwest merger went so smoothly that some wonder if the airline could handle another one? I imagine it probably could, if it so chose, but there are too many problems and not enough benefit. Forget about the cost issue and look at the route overlap. The feds are unlikely to allow Delta to control Atlanta and Charlotte – the only two viable hubs in the southeast US. Also, the feds were so concerned about the US Airways/Delta slot swap because it would concentrate power in Washington and New York that they blocked it. Just imagine how concentrated the power would be if the two merged. In addition, Phoenix and Salt Lake would only work to hurt each other in the same airline. This would simply be about eliminating competition and nothing else. I just don’t see it happening now.

United
These guys are so tied up with the Continental merger right now that I can’t imagine them being interested in taking on something further. Besides, how do you think the feds would look at a Newark/Philly/Dulles hubbing situation? And there are a bunch of cities in the west where US Airways and United provide the only two options (e.g. Yuma, San Luis Obispo). There could be plenty of concern in the near term.

But overall, the cost issue is going to be the biggest one for any of these airlines. Does that mean that a merger can’t happen? Of course not. There have been plenty of stupid airline mergers of the years. But the chance of one happening anytime soon is remote, and that’s being optimistic. Down the line, things can always change, so will US Airways be around in 5 years? That one is much harder to predict.

10 Signs You Should Take a Break From Traveling – Intuit Small Business Blog
A fun look at the ten signs you’ve been traveling too much.

Pay attention! Airlines stretch to make safety fun – CNN Out of the Office
Considering how many incidents there have been recently, the safety video piece is timely. But I’m looking at the lighter side of safety videos.

Sky Wars: China + Bombardier Face Off Against Boeing and Airbus – BNET Headwinds
I had a straggler BNET post from last month that just went live this week on Bombardier joining with China to challenge for aircraft sales.

In the Trenches: Reducing Dependence on Me – Intuit Small Business Blog
The hardest part for any entrepreneur – reducing self-dependence. It’s needed.

It looks like search teams have found most of the wreckage from the Air France flight that went down off the coast of Brazil back in 2009. Anyone want to guess what they’ll be able to figure out from this?

I’m sure a lot of you have been wondering why I haven’t written about the Southwest 737 that had a big hole open up inflight last week. It was big news for sure, but I just didn’t know enough beyond the basic information to make a post worthwhile. Southwest is still not saying much at all, but I was able to piece some things together from other sources to get a better idea of what’s actually going on. It all starts with a lap joint.

What Happened
Last week, a Southwest 737-300 airplane was flying from Phoenix to Sacramento when a hole opened up in the roof. The airplane lost pressurization (of course) but the pilots were able to land the airplane in Yuma and everyone was fine. You may have heard people talk about how the airplane plunged after the hole appeared, but that was on purpose.

When an airplane loses pressurization at altitude, you can’t breathe. And that’s a problem. There are oxygen masks but those don’t have an endless supply of oxygen in them. So anytime this happens, the pilots are trained to go into a steep descent until they get to around the 10,000 foot mark where the air is breathable. It may seem like you’re plunging, but it’s all part of the plan.

Once on the ground, it was easy to see that this was no small hole. It happened in the crown of the airplane along a lap joint. That’s a horizontal line where two pieces of the skin come together and are fastened to each other. As you can imagine, this area is cause for concern regarding fatigue because joints are the weakest points in a structure.

Tear Straps
The part that’s really concerning here isn’t the tear itself so much as it is the size of the tear. See, on all these airplanes, they install what are called tear straps. The aircraft of particular concern are the 737-300, -400, and -500s, collectively called 737 Classics. Next Generation (or “NG”) airplanes make up the bulk of the 737s you’re likely to fly, including all of the ones that American and Delta operate. Those had a different design and are newer so they aren’t impacted by this. I’m sure, however, that the FAA and Boeing will be watching this closely.

But back to the Classic airplanes. On the older models, these tear straps were placed every 10 inches horizontally along that lap joint. In 1993, a change was made that resulted in the straps being needed only every 20 inches. These tear straps are meant to stop any crack from spreading further. In other words, even if a hole opened up, it should never go further than 10 or 20 inches depending upon the airplane because the tear strap will stop it.

As you may have seen, this went for feet, not inches, and that means that the tear straps were breached. That is not good. So, Boeing, the FAA, and the airlines are diving in to try to figure out what exactly happened here. But for now, they are simply mandating inspections for cracks so that this never even becomes an issue. Why weren’t these being inspected before? That’s a different story.

Shouldn’t These Have Been Inspected?
For the older 737 Classic models that were built before 1993, there were directives issued that required inspections (using technology, not visual) for aircraft with more than 45,000 cycles. That was eventually lowered to only 35,000 cycles. One cycle is one takeoff and landing. This metric is used because that’s a good measure of how much stress is put on the airframe going through the pressurization process.

At US Airways media day yesterday, that airline confirmed that all of its 737s fall into this category, and they’ve been doing the inspections since the FAA mandated them early last decade. More than half of Southwest’s 737-300s fall into this category, so presumably the airline has been conducting these checks as required. But it didn’t use this as a standard 737-300 maintenance procedure for the full fleet. On those airplanes built after the 1993 manufacturing change, none of these non-visual inspections were done, because they didn’t have to be done.

With hindsight, that’s too bad, because had Southwest inspected all of its 737-300s, it would have found the cracks. The airplane that opened up a hole had more than 39,000 cycles. But the newer manufacturing process wasn’t expected to have problems this early on in the life of the airplane. In fact, Boeing thought that 60,000 cycles would have been a good conservative number for an inspection. Now, the FAA has mandated checks on these newer airplanes starting at 30,000 cycles.

So as you can see, there’s a lot up in the air. Nobody knows why cracks are showing up on these airplanes so early in life, but stepped up inspections will make sure that they are safe to fly regardless. Now the investigation can focus on why this is happening.

Today is US Airways media day and I will be there. I understand there is going to be at least one announcement with good news that travelers will want to hear so if you would like to follow along, follow me on Twitter @crankyflier.