Over the last decade, Europe’s big three airline groups, IAG (owner of British Airways/Iberia), Air France/KLM, and Lufthansa Group, have all been in much better shape than their American counterparts. While US airlines floundered and filed for bankruptcy, they grew and became stronger. But now, the tables are turned as a variety of different things are conspiring to make life very difficult for the European legacies. So far, the response has been the same failed strategies we’ve seen before on this side of the Pond.

One of the biggest problems these airlines face are their own governments. As much as I complain about the state of the US government’s approach to air travel, Europe is much, much worse. Some of this is on the macro level with the European Union’s much criticized carbon trading scheme. Some, however, is country-specific.

The poster-child for terrible government policy is the United Kingdom. Not only has the country levied some of the harshest taxes ever seen in aviation (the UK Air Passenger Duty is now approaching £100 on some tickets), but it fundamentally refuses to add capacity in London where it is needed most. Discussions around a new runway at Heathrow or a new airport way out in the Thames estuary remain just that – all talk and no action. We won’t see any sort of capacity increase there for decades, and the country has already begun to suffer the effects.

Bad government policy isn’t unique to the UK. Germany has begun to stab itself in the heart with airport curfews. The biggest impact is felt in Frankfurt, where night flights have stuck a dagger in the air cargo market. (In the first three months of this year, air cargo at Frankfurt dropped more than 10 percent.) There is also over-taxation there and in most other European countries.

Fighting Low Cost Carriers With Familiar Strategies
This wouldn’t be an issue if there were no competition, but of course, there is plenty. For flights within Europe, low cost carriers have only grown stronger. Though they deal with the same governmental issues, they have operating costs far lower than the legacy airlines and they can profit with much lower fares. Does this sound familiar? It should, because it’s what happened in the US.

You’ll recall that over the last decade or two, US airlines tried all sorts of things to become competitive. They opted for “airline-within-an-airline” low cost carriers that all were complete failures. They’ve looked at b-scale wages over the years. They’ve had aggressive cost cutting campaigns. In the end, it was only Chapter 11 bankruptcy that allowed them to become more competitive. European airlines don’t have such a convenient option.

Instead, they are trying the same tactics that didn’t work in the US. IAG has started a low cost carrier in Spain called Iberia Express. Nothing is different except that the wages are lower so it’s a cheaper operation to run. Iberia employees are angry and striking, but it hasn’t stopped the airline from pushing forward. In Germany, Lufthansa has started to turn over more short haul flying to its low cost subsidiary Germanwings. Most of Stuttgart flights, for example, are now flown by Germanwings instead of Lufthansa. The French are also plotting a strategy to shift short haul flights to a low cost carrier.

The shorter distances within Europe as compared to the US make this an even more pronounced problem since people on shorter flights care less about the difference in amenities. For most legacy airlines, however, they can take solace in the fact that in the long haul world, they are still king.

Trouble in the Gulf
Traditional low cost airlines have tried and failed many times on long haul routes. The most recent was Air Asia X which canceled all of its European services. That has been the saving grace for American carriers, which have made major efforts to shift the balance away from domestic flying toward long haul. This is good for European airlines because they have traditionally had more long haul flying than short haul as compared to the US carriers.

But there’s a big problem in Europe: the Gulf carriers.

A whole host of airlines in the Middle East have sprung up with luxury service combined with lower fares. The pack is led my Emirates, which still is planning on filling about 100 A380s a day in addition to its massive fleet of 777s. Etihad in Abu Dhabi along with Qatar Airways in Doha and even Turkish in Istanbul have flooded Europe with cheap capacity thanks to lower costs.

This has created major headaches for European airline flying to Asia and Africa. While Emirates and the like don’t fly the routes nonstop, they have good, fast connections that draw away a ton of traffic. Lufthansa alone has seen this erode profits to the point where it has pulled flights to Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Guanghzou. Nanjing, Chennai, and Bangkok are now on the chopping block.

While European airlines had been relying on government intervention to keep these big guys out, that won’t work forever. At the Phoenix Aviation Symposium in March, IAG chief Willie Walsh said that he was downright jealous of the Middle Eastern carriers because they have governments that believe in the importance of aviation for economic growth. They help the airlines and provide good taxation environments to help them grow.

And grow they have. Emirates has six daily flights from Heathrow to Dubai (4 on A380s) and two daily 777s out of Gatwick. But even more importantly, Emirates flies to smaller cities like Newcastle, Glasgow, and Birmingham, providing better flight options than even BA can offer to those folks.

That leaves the European airlines in a good position only to the Americas. No low cost carrier has found a way to make that work (though many more will try and fail). But in the US, they have formed joint ventures with their American counterparts. American carriers are much more likely to take on upgrades and lower fare traffic. That puts pressure on the European carriers and their often superior options when the revenues end up being shared.

Problems are Easy, Solutions are Hard
This post has been easy for me to write because I just talk about the problems and don’t have to come up with solutions. That’s the hardest part of all and it’s what the European legacy carriers struggle with every day. If I knew what to do, I’m sure I’d be a rich man.

Does that means there’s no solution? Of course not. But it’s not a simple problem to solve. These airlines see tremendous pressure in nearly all parts of their business. With the governments not interested in budging on their terrible policies and labor not seeing the reality of the cost problem, it’s going to be tough to make much progress.

There was plenty of backlash when I wrote about the causes of the 2009 crash of Air France flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean back in May. Many of you wanted to wait until the final report came out, but I was confident that the story had become quite clear. With the latest interim report (which I can only find in French – summary in English is here), it looks like I was right on track.

Here’s what I said at the end of my last post:

Remember, the pilots were already working to pick their way through the worst of the storms. Add to that the loss of the autopilot, dozens of failure messages, and inconsistent speed readings and it seems like the answer might be simple. The pilots may have been so distracted that they forgot to do the one thing they needed to do to survive: fly the airplane. Once the final report is issued, look for training changes to come out of this and possibly even some changes in the way Airbus puts its airplane logic together.

Sure enough, the focus of the latest report is on training and puts a lot of the blame on Air France, but there is some discussion about aircraft logic as well. This has been enough for the investigators to push out safety recommendations, though not without controversy.

Throughout this 3rd interim report, a picture of normalcy is painted throughout the beginning of the flight. It was noted that when the Captain left to take his rest, he didn’t leave “clear operational instructions” and there was “no explicit task-sharing” between the two remaining pilots, but the crew composition was fine and the aircraft weight and balance was within the proper limits.

As mentioned in the last report, the crew was well aware of the weather ahead and had made course corrections to avoid the worst of it. That’s when things got ugly.

According to the report, the aircraft was flying at the “upper limit of a slightly turbulent cloud layer” when the autopilot disconnected. It’s believed that this happened because the pitot tubes froze over and that gave the aircraft incorrect speed information. When the system can’t make sense of the information it’s being fed, it shuts off autopilot and the pilots have to fly the airplane. Turbulence, however, was not a problem. The plane was perfectly flyable, but poor decision-making fed by weak training brought the airplane down.

Proper procedures were not followed for dealing with unreliable airspeed indication. To make things worse, neither of the two copilots had been trained to properly handle manual flying at high altitude. Despite the stall warning, the pilots continued to apply nose-up pressure, the opposite of what they should have done. In less than a minute, the plane went from being correctable to operating outside the design limits because of the improper recovery efforts by the pilots.

About 1 minute and 30 seconds after the autopilot disconnected, the Captain came back into the cockpit. At this point, stall warnings were going on and off and the airplane was still at 35,000 feet. Unfortunately, it was also losing 10,000 feet per minute as forward speed just disappeared. At times, the aircraft rolled from side to side as the pilots struggled to get the airplane under control. Those in the back must have felt sheer terror. The pilots never made an announcement to the passengers, and soon after, they all plunged into the Atlantic. I get goose bumps just thinking about how awful that must have been.

So after all that, what have we learned? We know the aircraft functioned properly. Were it not for the pitot tubes freezing over, this would have been a routine flight. Even when the pitot tubes failed, had the pilots been able to properly fly the aircraft manually, the passengers probably wouldn’t have even known there was an issue. Out of this, the French accident investigators have released safety recommendations that will need to be implemented by regulators in order to go into effect.

The main recommendation is around training. The idea is to make sure that all pilots have the proper training for manual flight at high altitudes, a skill which is rarely used in commercial aviation today. There is also additional training suggested around stall avoidance and recovery. Additionally, it’s suggested that the role of relief captain should be better-defined when the Captain is on rest. This way, there will be less confusion and more defined task-sharing if something goes wrong.

But the blame wasn’t solely on the training and pilots. One recommendation for aircraft manufacturers is to look at including an angle of attack indicator that pilots can see on the flight deck. There is an indicator showing the angle of the aircraft to the ground, but there isn’t one that shows the angle of the wing as compared to the direction of the air (angle of attack). That could have helped the pilots in their recovery efforts.

One recommendation not made was to revisit the way stall warnings are handled on the A330 aircraft. In fact, the pilots union at Air France is so angry about this being left out that it has decided to stop cooperating with the investigation. The on-and-off nature of the stall warning may have simply added to the confusion, and made it more difficult for the pilots to make the right moves. The investigators say that there wasn’t enough evidence to include this just yet, but it will be discussed in some form in the final report.

Regardless of what comes out in the final report, the picture is already very clear. It seems that current pilot training standards were not enough to help these pilots get out of an entirely recoverable situation. Were the Brazilians running this investigation, they probably would have already filed criminal charges against anyone they could, but the French handle this properly. Find the problem, fix the holes, and make sure that something like this never happens again.

[Photo of Sister Ship to Crashed Airplane via Flickr user Tab59|CC 2.0]

When the French found the black boxes from Air France flight 447 nearly two years after the A330 airplane crashed in the Atlantic off Brazil, it was an incredible feat. But now, the French probably are wishing those black boxes remained on the floor of the ocean, because its national airline is about to face some tough questions regarding the actions of its pilots on that flight. No airplane accident happens because of just one problem, and this is no exception, but so far pilot error is really sticking out as the single largest contributor here.

Photo of Sister Ship to Crashed Airplane via Flickr user Tab59|CC 2.0

The French accident investigation group, the BEA, has put out an update on its investigation around what caused Air France 447 to crash (pdf) in the Atlantic back in 2009. Flightglobal has a good minute-by-minute breakdown of what all of the technical verbiage means, but let’s focus here on a few key points.

Pilots Were Not Inexperienced
One thing that has been picked up on elsewhere is that the Captain was not in the cockpit when this all started happening. That’s true, and it’s not a surprise. That’s why there are three pilots on longer flights like these. They rotate taking rest and this was the Captain’s turn. Does that mean that there were two inexperienced fools manning the controls? No. The co-pilots were highly trained and should have been able to handle this situation without needing the Captain. As Flight notes, one of the co-pilots had more time on the A330 than the Captain himself (just not in command). Experience shouldn’t have been the issue.

Turbulence Was Not a Factor
The aircraft went down in an area near strong equatorial storms, so many people assumed that the storms and the likely associated turbulence played a role. That no longer appears to be the case. The pilots were actively working their way around the storms, and while there was turbulence around, it doesn’t appear to have been anything severe. The storm likely did play a role in that it caused the pitot tubes to freeze over. Let’s talk about that . . .

Frozen Pitot Tubes Are the Likely Trigger
I don’t believe this has been officially confirmed, but the belief remains that the pitot tubes froze and that kicked off the problems on the airplane. Pitot tubes are little pokey-looking things that stick off the side of the airplane and measure airspeed. If the pitot tubes froze as expected, then speed readings would have been erratic and incorrect. That would have caused the airplane to shut off the autopilot as happened here. While it is a serious issue, it shouldn’t have cause and accident on its own.

Ultimately, the Pilots Screwed Up
Regardless of what happened with the pitot tubes, what happened next seems just unbelievable and certainly casts a great deal of blame on the pilots even though we won’t have the final report until next year. About 10 minutes before the autopilot shut off, the pilots noted that they couldn’t climb any higher than the 35,000 feet they were at because of their weight and the relatively warm air outside. In other words, if they climbed higher, they wouldn’t be able to generate enough lift. That makes what happens next even more strange.

When the autopilot shut off, the pilots should have worked to keep the plane flying as it was. After all, there wasn’t an actual speed problem but just a speed measurement issue. The engines worked just fine, so it should have been quite possible to keep the airplane on its path. That’s not what happened. Over the next four minutes, the pilots pulled the airplane into a climb and right into a stall and that led to the crash into the ocean. This goes against one of the most basic rules of flight.

When an airplane stalls, that means its angle of attack (the angle of the wing as compared to the direction of the air) is too great. Fixing it is pretty straightforward and it’s something that gets trained at very basic levels. As the FAA says in its Airplane Flying Handbook:

Reducing the angle of attack is the only way of recovering from a stall regardless of the amount of power used.

That means pushing the airplane’s nose down until the air once again runs smoothly over the wings. If you’re at 35,000 feet, don’t worry about losing altitude. Just get the airplane back into normal flight. How do you know if you’re in a stall? This is where the Boeing vs Airbus people will start their “mine is better than yours” fight.

On Boeing airplanes, the control column actually shakes to warn the pilot. (It’s known, unsurprisingly, as a stick shaker.) But most Airbus types, including the A330 that crashed here, operate with little joysticks on the side and these don’t have stick shakers. Instead, there is a very loud verbal warning repeated multiple times. Either way, it shouldn’t be missed. But don’t Airbus airplanes have greater automation to prevent these things anyway? Not in this case.

Airbus normally has automation protection that prevents pilots from doing something stupid like going into a steep climb in a situation like this, but those protections weren’t in effect because of the inaccurate airspeed readings. That pushed the airplane into Alternate Law which shuts down many of the protections that are in place during Normal Law.

When the Captain got back into the cockpit, the airplane had an angle of attack at an incredibly high 40 degrees and it was losing 10,000 feet per minute in altitude. Despite his best efforts to recover, it was a failed effort. The airplane hit the water with its nose up 16 degrees but still losing more than 10,000 feet per minute in altitude. I can’t imagine how awful those few minutes were for the passengers.

But the Pilots Aren’t To Be Blamed Completely
The final report hasn’t been issued and won’t be until next year, but it’s easy to see from this that the pilots and the pitot tubes were the two biggest contributors. Why did the pilots continue to apply nose-up pressure when that was the exact opposite of what would have happened? We’ll never know what was running through their heads, but it’s easy to see that they could have been distracted.

Remember, the pilots were already working to pick their way through the worst of the storms. Add to that the loss of the autopilot, dozens of failure messages, and inconsistent speed readings and it seems like the answer might be simple. The pilots may have been so distracted that they forgot to do the one thing they needed to do to survive: fly the airplane. Once the final report is issued, look for training changes to come out of this and possibly even some changes in the way Airbus puts its airplane logic together.

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?

Over the last week, the protests in Egypt have reached a boiling point. As we all know by now, the residents of this generally peaceful country followed the lead of Tunisia and poured into the streets to try to topple the government. As people on the outside watched with great interest, those on the inside were blinded when the government shut down internet and mobile networks. Through it all, many airlines continued flying to Egypt, but as you can imagine, a lot of people didn’t want to go. In fact, most were advised not to go by their home governments. In what can only be considered a greedy money grab, some airlines like Air France effectively forced people to fly or lose money. For that, Air France (and anyone else with the same policy) has earned the Cranky Jackass award.

When you see headlines like “As Mubarak hangs on to power, Cairo’s residents fear lawlessness,” and “Looting Engulfs Cairo, Other Egyptian Cities,” it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to go to Cairo for tourism in the immediate future. Stories are surfacing about mass chaos in the airports and officials requiring bribes to allow people to get on planes out of the country. It could be months before stability returns. Some airlines recognized that and treated their customers properly. British Airways, for example, posted these options for its customers::

• Change the date of travel to a later date up to 28 February 2011.
• Cancel your booking and obtain a refund to the original form of payment.
• Use the value of your ticket towards the purchase of a new ticket to any other destination.
• If you are due to travel in or out of Cairo you may choose to travel in or out of Sharm El Sheikh.

That’s the kind of flexible policy that should be commended. BA gave its customers a lot of options, regardless of whether the flight was canceled or not. Then there’s Air France. Air France treated this like a weather event and posted this policy:

Despite the current situation in Egypt, our flights to and from Cairo continue to operate. However we are compelled to modify the schedules to comply with the curfew instated by the Egyptian authorities.
Please check your flight schedule on this website by clicking “Flight & destination information”.

Moreover, if you hold a ticket to travel to and from Cairo between January 28 and February 04, 2011, we have implemented commercial instructions that enable you to modify and/or postpone your journey. Please contact your point of sales.

Unless your flight was canceled, the only option for customers was to “modify or postpone” the journey. Air France is looking at this as a simple business issue instead of a complex scenario that demands additional flexibility. Instead of realizing the magnitude of the problem, it simply threw out an inadequate policy and refused to give reservation agents the necessary power to alter it. What’s even more strange is that wholly-owned subsidiary KLM seems to have a more flexible policy, though I didn’t put that to the test.

We had two Cranky Concierge clients that were scheduled to fly Air France to Cairo for a couple days and then go on to Rwanda for some charity work. They thought it would be best to simply bypass Cairo and go straight to Rwanda, but Air France wouldn’t allow it. Air France also wouldn’t give a refund, so the client had two choices. Go as scheduled or postpone the flight to Cairo. The latter obviously wasn’t viable because they still needed to be in Rwanda. Allowing a refund or even putting the funds back into a credit would have been perfectly fine but that also wasn’t allowed. Most of the agents we spoke with were actually Delta agents handling Air France in the US. They were very apologetic but said their hands were tied.

Eventually, after a couple of days of trying, we were able to use our agency relationship to get someone in the Preferred Account Services desk to help mere hours before their scheduled departure from Boston. Those people should be commended, because they were the only ones willing to help. Most travelers don’t have access to those services, however. To make things even more frustrating, we later found the Cairo flight did cancel, but not until hours after our clients would have been on their way to Paris from the US. What a nightmare.

Come on Air France. Even easyJet allowed customers to have a ticket refunded into a credit that could be used anytime in the next year. Your kind of restrictive policy has no place in a very fluid, dangerous situation like this one. These types of crises need quick responses with flexible options.