Uh oh. It looks like United has decided to delay its refurbishment of the premium cabins on the 777 once again. Now they won’t even start until February 2010, so the problem of dramatically different premium cabin experiences is bound to continue for quite some time.

The 767s are complete, and the 747s are almost there. They say 18 out of 24 aircraft are done with the full 747 fleet being finished by October this year. But those 777s, well, they’ll continue to limp along with the old product. Here’s how things will look when the 747s are done in a couple months.

So what’s the excuse this time? Money. In an internal memo, they blame two things, but I’m not buying the first.

While our International Premium Travel Experience (IPTE) aircraft continue to double our customer satisfaction scores, and the modifications continue to progress well, the B777 program is more complex than the B767 and B747 programs, given the three different B777 sub-fleets. In addition,
we are facing a challenging year due to the global recession, changing market demand and increasing fuel prices.

Uh huh. This thing has been delayed so many times that I find it hard to believe that the complexity is still causing the problem here. Instead, I’ll put my bet on the little blurb that followed:

The decision to postpone the start of the work also allows us to better control our costs in 2009, helping us maintain a stronger cash flow through the historical trough period of the fourth quarter.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! They say you have to spend money to make money, but how does that work when you don’t have money to spend? Sadly, the 777s make up a bit more than half the fleet, so the cost savings here are likely to turn into revenue pain as people look toward other airlines with better options.

I’ve seen many people criticize Delta for what it puts on its blog, but they’ve been putting more and more useful information on there lately. I’d encourage those interested in Delta to go back and give it another chance. My favorite posts are those from Marie Force, Delta’s archive manager. But in the last couple days, there have been a couple of posts with some current developments that are worth noting.

1) Upgrade and Standby lists on Delta.com and Soon, Mobile

Delta was the first that I can recall to invest in flat screen monitors to make all sorts of information available to the people waiting around at the gate. Included in that was the standby list. Did you make it on the earlier flight? Had they even cleared the list yet? What about the upgrade to First Class? The screen had all the info. It has taken them several years, but they’ve finally brought this functionality to the website.

Now when you’re flying, you can go online and make sure you’re on the standby/upgrade list. More importantly, you can see how many seats are available, and you can learn where you are on that list. Nice, huh?

This is only on the website right now, but they say it will be on the mobile version “shortly.” Then it will become much more valuable.

2) Wifi Progress

If you’re one of those people rejoicing at having wireless internet onboard, you’ll be happy to know that Delta has made some real progress. Just yesterday, they said 44 aircraft were outfitted, but this morning they said it was up to 59. As of today, 53 of the MD-88 aircraft (out of 113), 5 757s (out of 128), and the very first MD-90 (out of 16) have been outfitted with wireless internet. One more MD-88 and one MD-90 go in tonight.

If you include all 78 737s, all MD-88s, all MD-90s, and all 757s in the calcuation, that means that 17.6% of the domestic fleet is outfitted. Some of those 757s, however, are part of the international fleet, and some of the 767s are part of the domestic fleet, so it’s not exact. Of course, this doesn’t (and won’t) include regional aircraft.

Still, if you’re on an MD-88, you now have a 47% chance of getting a wireless-enabled aircraft. That’s very good, and it’s progressing quickly.

3) More Room for Crap on 757s

The rest of the updates weren’t exactly earth-shattering, but they’re still kind of interesting. And the blogger who wrote about them writes in pretty technical language, so I thought I could serve as a translator.

One update was on the “75E” aircraft. That’s actually just their internal code for the 757s that fly over the Atlantic. So what did they do? They added larger lav tanks. Apparently, people were cooped up a little too long on those 757s and they must have been running out of room in the lav tanks. Yuck. The modifications will be done on all the international 757s by June 1. Might want to avoid drinking too much water on those planes until then.

Other good news: they put headrests on the coach seats while this was going on.

4) More Business Class on 777-200LR

Delta’s longest haul aircraft, the 777-200LR, is slowly entering the fleet. The third aircraft was just delivered, and they’ve apparently found a way to squeeze in another two business class seats. So instead of 43, there will now be 45 onboard. The first two aircraft will be modified to have two more business class seats in the next couple months as well.

Last month, I talked about how the British Airways 777 accident and the Delta 777 incident had been connected by an interim report from the UK. The NTSB has, after review, agreed with these findings and is now requiring “urgent” action. But “urgent” is not as dire as it sounds. It does not require aircraft to be grounded, and it will take at least a year, most likely, before the work is complete.

The NTSB has told Rolls-Royce that it needs to redesign the Fuel Oil Heat Exchanger (where cold fuel passes hot oil and they cool/warm each other to proper temperatures) to prevent ice accumulation and subsequent blockage of the the fuel lines. You may remember that the hot oil wasn’t properly warming the cold fuel and ice was forming. This has, so far, only been a problem on the Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines, though Rolls believes that this could ultimately have a larger impact after further research is done on icing for long flights at very cold temperatures. But that’s another story.

Rolls is working on the fix already and expects to have it ready within a year. Once the redesign is complete, airlines will have no more than six months to implement the fix. So if this is so “urgent,” why aren’t the planes being grounded? Well, procedures have already been put into place to help avoid these types of incidents, but the NTSB doesn’t think that’s a good long term solution. In the NTSB’s words:

While the procedures may reduce the risk of a rollback in one or both engines due to [Fuel Oil Heat Exchanger] ice blockage, they add complexity to flight crew operations, and the level of risk reduction is not well established. And because the recovery procedure requires a descent, the aircraft may be exposed to other risks such as rising terrain or hazardous weather, or the inability to achieve maximum thrust during a critical phase of flight, such as during a missed approach.

So while the fix they’re using right now does work, it’s not satisfactory in the long term. So should we worry about stepping on a Rolls-Royce powered 777? I wouldn’t. But it is clear that there are problems and it’s good to see them being addressed sooner rather than later.

Ever wonder why United is (finally) working hard to upgrade the 767 and 747 aircraft with the new premium cabin seats, but the 777 is left behind? It appears, that of all things, it’s a problem in coach that’s keeping them from getting it done. The fix is going to end up changing the coach configuration on the airplane, and while it will cost the airline a fair chunk of change, it won’t really benefit coach passengers much at all.

According to sources, the new inflight entertainment system that’s being installed as part of the premium cabin makeover is incompatible with the old screens in coach. This obviously wouldn’t impact the 747 since it has no screens in coach, but it apparently doesn’t impact the 767 either. So, United now needs to fix the coach screens on the 777, and that apparently requires new seats. That obviously means it will cost money, so it’s no surprise that United is de-emphasizing the 777 project in favor of the 767 and 747 one right now.

As part of this project, I’m told that United will actually be changing the configuration in coach on the 777s from 2-5-2 to 3-3-3. I’m not sure why this change is happening, but I wonder if it has to do with how many screens each box can power. If each box can power 3 screens, then a 3-3-3 configuration would need 3 boxes per row while 2-5-2 would need 4 boxes (assuming they can’t reach across the aisle). This would certainly make the configuration change worthwhile.

But that’s speculation. If anyone knows why this change is being done, please let me know. Assuming this information is accurate, it’s going to once again mean a painful transition for United customers in coach. I assume it’s a safe bet that they won’t dedicate certain configurations to a single route. (Though they’re trying to do it now, it’s far from a guarantee.) So while the change is happening, if you booked a B seat on one plane thinking you had an aisle, you might end up with a middle seat. On the other hand, if you booked a D seat thinking you have a middle, you might be rewarded with an aisle.

On top of all this, I think it’s safe to assume that the domestic 777 fleet which has no international premium product or in seat video, probably won’t change at all. If those are all isolated to the Hawai’i and domestic routes they’re intended to fly, it’s not a huge problem but it still adds to the confusion.

What’s the worst part of all this? There won’t be any material changes for coach passengers, as far as I can see. This won’t bring video on demand or anything like that into coach. It will simply be a costly infrastructure upgrade to allow for video on demand up front.

If anyone has further information about this, hit the comments.

[There is now an updated post with info that United will have on demand in coach.]

We finally have an “Interim Report” on what happened to the BA 777 that lost power and crash-landed at London/Heathrow in January of this year. According to the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), it was probably due to the buildup of ice in the fuel system that blocked the flow of fuel, but that’s not exactly certain. The AAIB report on aircraft G-YMMM (21 pages, PDF) provides some extremely interesting reading. I’d recommend curling up with it this weekend if you have the time.

In short, here’s what they think happened:

The investigation has shown that the fuel flow to both engines was restricted; most probably due to ice within the fuel feed system. The ice is likely to have formed from water that occurred naturally in the fuel whilst the aircraft operated for a long period, with low fuel flows, in an unusually cold environment; although, G-YMMM was operated within the certified operational envelope at all times.

The interesting thing here is that they really aren’t sure what happened, but they’ve reached this conclusion through a process of elimination. Everything appeared to function as expected, but there was reduced fuel flow. What caused it? That’s where the speculation begins.

They do know that the aircraft was flying in unusually cold conditions but not cold enough to cause “fuel waxing” which is when fuel would freeze. They know that there is naturally-occurring water that builds up in fuel over time, and this would freeze at those temps, but they didn’t find anything excessive. What could have happened is that small bits of ice built up over time and were jarred into the unfortunate position of blocking the fuel flow. What would have jarred them?

Well, when the airplane was descending, it had to power up a couple times for holding and to speed up to remain lined up with the runway. This of course, happens all the time, but it was also just the type of event that could have knocked ice crystals into a bad spot. It sounds like it was truly an amazing coincidence that these events resulted in an aircraft landing short of the runway and being written off.

The AAIB examined 13,000 777 flights powered by Rolls-Royce engines and found the following:

• Of the 13,000 flights, only 118 had takeoff fuel temps below the 28 degrees F found on this flight
• On the approach, only 70 flights had fuel at or below the -8 degrees F found on this flight
• Only 10% of the flights examined had fuel flows of less than 10,000 pound of fuel per hour (pph) for the step climbs after departure (this flight never exceeded 8,896 pph)
• Only 10% of the flights examined had fuel flows of more than 10,000 pph during the approach phase (this one was more than 12,000 pph)

So as you can see, the combination of low fuel temps, low fuel flow early in the flight and high fuel flow toward the end may have doomed this aircraft. Had it happened in any other phase of flight, the ice would have disappeared quickly enough that it would have been easy to recover. This was, as usual, a series of things going wrong that combined to create a nasty accident.

The AAIB recommends requiring airlines use measures to reduce the risk of ice formation. This could include things like using fuel additives that lower the freezing point, but it didn’t actually specify what should happen as of yet, as far as I can tell. Initially these recommendations are only for Rolls-Royce powered aircraft, but they’re going to review other engines and aircraft types to see if it might be necessary elsewhere.

As I said above, this is really a fascinating read. I’d recommend taking it home with you this weekend.