The Cranky Flier » MD80

Alaska Retires the MD-80

CF — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:24:50 +0000

Another week, another airline retires the good ole’ MD-80. This past Sunday, Alaska flew its last MD-80 operation, and the airline is now an all-737 fleet. Alaska had a particularly interesting relationship with the MD-80 that brings out all different kinds of emotion in people.

The MD-80 really gave Alaska some long legs to expand their route map. They pushed into Mexico, Russia (yep, they used to fly over the Bering Strait), and eastern cities like Toronto with that airplane. This truly was a workhorse of a plane for the airline, and it served them well, for the most part.

Of course, we can’t forget about the horrible memories that Alaska and the MD-80 spawn in people. Those who live up and down the west coast have never forgotten Alaska 261, the aircraft that spiraled into the ocean off the coast of Point Mugu. That accident brought the word “jackscrew” into our lexicon, and put a lot of fear in many people when they had to fly the MD-80. Of course, we later learned the crash was caused by poor maintenance and not the airplane itself, but that initial impressions still stayed with many fliers.

Personally, I had only one experience flying the Alaska MD-80. In July 2004, I was scheduled to fly a 737 from Seattle to Anchorage. My family and I arrived at the airport early and we stood by for an earlier flight. That flight was on an MD-80, and I will always associate it with the beautiful twilight views we encountered descending upon Anchorage after midnight. Then again, we didn’t have to sit in the dreaded seat next to the engine (above left, thanks to P.C. Loadletter on Flickr) that so many people rightfully despise.

The airplane may have been officially retired by Alaska yesterday, but the most significant goodbye in my eyes happened Monday, August 18. That day, Alaska flew its final MD-80 into Long Beach, the proud former home of Douglas Aircraft Co and the location where those MD-80s were born.

The saddest part of all of this is that each time an MD-80 retires, we get closer and closer to the end of seeing Douglas-born planes in regularly scheduled service. That will be a very sad day when they’re all gone.

Midwest Rolls Out Its Post-MD80 Schedule

CF — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:27:37 +0000

We knew it was coming. When Midwest said it would ditch its MD-80s, that had to mean a lot of flight cuts and schedule shuffling. Well, now we know the extent of the damage. The new schedule not only cuts 11 cities, but it shuffles a lot of service around as well. This all begins on September 8.

That day, Midwest service to San Diego, Ft Lauderdale, and Ft Myers will end completely. Midwest Connect will also drop Baltimore, Hartford, Louisville, Muskegon (Michigan), Raleigh/Durham, St. Louis, San Antonio, and Wausau/Stevens Point (Wisconsin). Madison (Wisconsin) will lose flights to Kansas City but it will keep Milwaukee flights.

Los Angeles and Seattle will lose Milwaukee flights, probably because the MD-80 was the only plane in the fleet that could make it nonstop. The 717 will serve both those cities from Kansas City instead. Here’s a crudely drawn map as only I (or an untalented 5 year old) could put together. The slashes are Midwest Connect drops and the “x’s” are Midwest drops.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Midwest is also expanding its Northwest codeshare to include many more city pairs as part of this. Anyone get the sense that Midwest is quickly slipping into irrelevance? They’ve already asked for draconian pay cuts from their employees, but part of me thinks the ones who keep their jobs are the unlucky ones. My guess is that as the airline strengthens its ties with Northwest, more and more Midwest service will slip away.

As you can see in the map above, the airline now is essentially connecting Milwaukee and Kansas City with a handful of cities on the coasts. Is that not something Northwest could build up overnight if they really wanted to? It may just be a matter of time.

Don’t Blame the MD-80 For This Mess

CF — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:55:10 +0000

There’s no question that American has done an absolutely terrible job of managing the latest round of MD-80 maintenance issues from a PR perspective. It’s been so bad, that I’ve seen articles start to question the MD-80 as an airplane, even though there’s no reason for them to do so. The MD-80 is a safe plane, and it’s unfortunate that American has let this thing get away from them. So, as Milli Vanilli might say . . . blame it on AA, yeah, yeah. (No? Too ridiculous?)

It all comes back to American’s unwillingness to push out a full explanation of what was happening. Finally, yesterday, they did, though curiously it came from their EVP of Marketing and not from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. Airline Biz blog has the info here.

Basically, a couple years ago, there were concerns that wiring could arc and start fires or cause a variety of other problems. The FAA put out an Airworthiness Directive (AD) and made the airlines comply within 18 months. Now, they clearly didn’t think this was a problem of imminent doom, or they wouldn’t have allowed the airlines to make the fixes over 18 months.

By now, the fixes had been finished, but not 100% to spec. Now the FAA, fresh off being burned by the Southwest fiasco, is getting anal. They’re enforcing every little detail, so when they found that the spacing between ties holding the wire bundles together weren’t exactly one inch apart, they called foul.

So, the airlines flying the MD-80 are making these tiny changes to meet the requirements, even if it isn’t really a safety issue. How American wasn’t able to fix this last week when the planes were first grounded, I’ll never know. But it’s probably the FAA’s attempt to show the public that they’re doing something that’s making all this happen. It could have happened to any aircraft, but this is like the one kid in class who gets pulled to the front of the room so the teacher can make an example out of him.

Since it took American awhile to finally discuss the full details, it gave the media plenty of time to cook up stupid, stupid stories. The worst piece of irresponsible journalism comes from the AP. They put out a story entitled “Plane type Under Review Has Had Mishaps.” Uh oh. This awful piece of work goes on to link completely unrelated incidents, most of which were not even due to problems with the aircraft. And now CNN is jumping into the ring by talking about some landing gear problems that American MD-80s have had on extremely rare occasions over the last few months. The scaremongers are revving up. Let’s put a stop to that.

The MD-80 is a safe plane. Douglas built planes like tanks, and they tend to last forever. It’s no surprise that Northwest continues to operate 40 year old DC-9s. They may not be fuel efficient compared to newer planes, but they’re definitely solid aircraft.

I mean, take a look at this plane. Does it look unsafe?

Ok, so maybe it looks like a giant flying wiener, but it’s not unsafe. I know a lot of Americans living out here on the West Coast often associate the MD-80 with the Alaska Airlines crash off the coast of Southern California. It’s not often that we see accidents of that magnitude in our own backyard, so it tends to leave a mark. But once again, that wasn’t the fault of the plane. That was improper maintenance by Alaska Airlines.

If you’d like to review all the previous accidents the MD-80 has had, the Aviation Safety Network can help. You’ll see that most if not all the accidents in there were not due to problems specific to the MD-80.

Don’t believe me that the plane is safe? I actually booked a flight on one yesterday. My fiancee and I will be flying on a Midwest MD-80 in August, and I didn’t think twice about it from a safety standpoint. American, Delta, Allegiant, Midwest, and Alaska all still fly the MD-80 in the US thousands of times per day without incident. There’s no reason you should avoid them.

Contrary to Press Reports, Not Every Airplane is Unsafe

CF — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:47:19 +0000

Recent media reports might make it seem like the sky is falling; as if every airplane you encounter may be unsafe. Just over the last few days, we’ve seen a rash of very public maintenance issues:

It’s a pretty long and scary list, huh? Well, let me just say this.

You still shouldn’t worry about flying on any of these airlines. Many of these things have to do with record keeping issues. It’s usually just double checking something that’s already been addressed, and I haven’t heard of any major problems discovered in any of these inspections so far.

Now that the FAA has been scared into action after they messed up the whole Southwest debacle, they need to look like they’re doing good things. (And to be honest, they are, I think.) The carriers are going to comply as quickly as possible with this stepped up oversight. This can only be good, because it’ll clear out the cobwebs. I’m not expecting to see any major safety issues come out of this.

So, now that we have that out of the way, let’s discuss this from the perspective of someone flying this week. You guys might want to panic. Ok, ok. Panic is a little strong, but all of these checks are causing a ton of canceled flights. If you’re booked on an MD-80/90 type aircraft (also known as Super 80 in American’s marketing speak), you might want to rethink your travel plans while the airlines scramble to get these checks done.

Who the F*** is Allegiant Air?

CF — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:09:00 +0000

If I went up to 100 people in the US asked them about Allegiant Air, my guess is almost all of them would pose the question asked in the title of this post. I’ve mentioned some of their seemingly random route announcements before, and you’ve probably asked the same question. So, who the f*** IS Allegiant Air?

On the surface, these guys seem like a train wreck. They fly a couple times a week bringing small town folk to places like Las Vegas and Orlando using gas-guzzling MD-80 aircraft. That does not sound like a recipe for success, but believe it or not, these guys are on to something. In fact, even the New York Times (username required) is paying attention these days.

The airline now has 21 planes radiating from its three operational bases in Las Vegas, Orlando/Sanford, and the newest one in St Petersburg/Clearwater. This is a route map only a mother could love.

You might wonder how an airline could fly to all those cities with only 21 planes. Well, it’s because they fly to most of them only 2 to 4 days a week. Most airlines wouldn’t dare fly a schedule like that because it doesn’t help you attract the business traveler, but Allegiant isn’t looking for the business traveler.

Start with their hubs. Vegas, Orlando, and Tampa are all big leisure destinations, so there should be decent traffic from just about anywhere in the country if you fly it twice a week. Think about it from the perspective of a local. If I live in Topeka, Kansas, I can fly to Vegas on Monday or Friday. Well, going out Friday night and coming back Monday afternoon is the perfect gambling weekend. And what are my alternatives?

Well, you have no choices locally – nobody else even flies to Topeka. So you can drive 75 miles to Kansas City and fly out or you can fly Allegiant. Plenty of people are willing to drive 75 miles though, so the key is also making sure you have low fares. Allegiant has extremely competitive low fares and that combined with convenience make them hard to beat in these smaller markets.

The obvious caveat to having low fares is making sure your costs are lower than that. Allegiant has done an excellent job of keeping costs down. While those MD80s burn a lot of fuel, they are downright cheap to acquire on the used market. And who do you think will charge more for landing fees – Topeka or Kansas City? There are some serious cost advantages to flying from these smaller airports. According to the NYT, they also keep crew costs down by having out-and-back routings so that they don’t have to pay for crew hotels or meals on the road. Crew wages are also lower. A 10 year captain will make $105 an hour whereas a 10 year captain for American makes $154 per hour on the same plane.

In addition, they’ve embraced the Ryanair model and have boosted ancillary revenues onboard. Want an assigned seat? That’ll cost you. How about a drink onboard? Fork over the cash. Oh and by the way, if you need a hotel or car rental at your destination, Allegiant will be happy to help and take a commission from the sale.

These guys are doing things right and they’re making it work profitably. If you live in a small town, they either fly there already or they’re thinking about it.