Airfares would have to triple if aviation regulators were to re-certify aircraft to the reality of recent chaotic passenger evacuations.

The evacuation of the burning American Airlines Boeing 767 at Chicago airport on Friday is a carbon copy of the accidents over the past few years with most passengers carrying their baggage with them.

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Passengers are risking their lives, and those of fellow passengers, with the obsession of taking cabin baggage with them in an emergency.

Aircraft are certified on the basis of all passengers off in 90 seconds with half the exits out of use. 

The stark reality is it takes three times longer – and sometimes more – with passengers slowing the process by grabbing bags.

In the evacuation certification tests, the “passengers” are aircraft manufacturer employees who know the drill and they have no baggage.

If regulators were to re-certify the long-range Boeing 777 to the reality of what actually happens, the 550 exit limit aircraft would have to be recertified to just 183 passengers – half its typical load. 

But for smaller aircraft such as the widely used A320 – and Boeing 737 – which has an exit limit of 195 and a typical configuration of 180 mostly economy passengers the impact would be devastating with a new limit of just 65.

That would mean a tripling of airfares to make the aircraft economically viable.

The impact on the industry and the world economy would be devastating but something needs to be done before hundreds die in an aircraft evacuation. 

And authorities are already stirring. Last year after a British Airways incident at Las Vegas the highly respected British Civil Aviation Authority issued a blunt warning to its airlines: Stop passengers taking their hand luggage off with them in an emergency evacuation!

This is how passengers evacuated in the Airbus A380 certification test.

The airline industry needs to take decisive action, perhaps by locking overhead lockers for takeoff and landing, to prevent passengers taking their baggage with them after a plane crash.

Or an extreme measure would be to ban carry-on baggage other than a small bag such as a back pack.

It is sobering to consider that it quite often takes 40 minutes to board a plane because of passenger/ baggage congestion.

Not only does taking your baggage dramatically slow the process, there’s a distinct possibility that the bags with protruding metal parts will snag and then deflate the escape slides — rendering them useless.

And in the scramble to get overstuffed bags out of lockers, passengers may be knocked out and the aisle blocked for precious seconds.

There is also the very real prospect of passengers jumping on to the escape slide with their bag and knocking themselves or another passenger out, or even killing them.

Duty-free alcohol is even more lethal because if the bottle breaks there is flammable liquid everywhere, not to mention broken glass.

In a related development, passengers in these disasters are turning them into social media events by taking video and pictures and then trying to be the first to upload the images to Facebook or Twitter.

Complicating matters airlines are not enforcing carry-on baggage limits for competitive reasons, says Steven Reed, National Industrial Officer with the Flight Attendants Association of Australia.

“There is a very real potential for a catastrophe,” Mr Reed told AirlineRatings.com.

The combination of passengers not listening, larger and heavier bags and more aggression and defiance from air travellers is a perfect storm, suggests Mr Reed.

Tragically, it will take a disastrous evacuation with multiple deaths for the industry to act.
 

American Airlines Boeing 767-300, registered N345AN, operating flight AA383 from Chicago to Miami with 161 passengers and 9 crew, aborted its take-off and has caught fire.

The flight was well down runway 28R when the pilots rejected the takeoff  because of a suspected uncontained engine failure and fire.

Crew initiated an emergency evacuation and  20 people were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

The 767-300 sustained significant damage.

Many passengers filmed the evacuation.

Once again passengers have risked their safety and that of their fellow passengers by insisting on taking their carry-on baggage with them.

Video of the inside of the 767 taken during the evacuation shows many baggage bins open while passengers can be seen with their carry on baggage.

Read: Grab for bags could cause airfares to triple

Jet engines are designed with a containment ring to prevent the shrapnel generated by disintegrating parts from tearing through the cabin or fuel tanks but in rare cases this does not work.

A source told Reuters the failure in this case was so intense a disk from the CF-6 engine  hit a nearby building roof.

The news agency said  US National Transportation Safety Board officials were looking for clues as to whether the fault lay with the engine, with maintenance or a freak event such as debris on the runway entering the engine.

GE spokesman Rick Kennedy told it on Saturday that the plane engine dated from the 1980s or 1990s and had been serviced by the airline.

Qantas will defy a global trend to cram more people into aircraft when it launches its new Boeing 787-9 “Dreamliner” aircraft and gives back to economy class passengers an inch of legroom.

The airline announced today that it will increase the seat pitch on its new economy seats from the 31 inches (78.8cms) found on its Airbus A380s to 32 inches on its new flagship Dreamliner.

Read: Boeing 787 banishes jet lag

“The Dreamliner is an aircraft built for comfort,’’ Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said. “The windows are bigger, it helps reduce jetlag, it’s extremely quiet and there’s a system that smooths out turbulence. Customers are going to love it.

“We’re planning to make the most of the 787’s amazing range, so we’ve designed the cabin to give Qantas passengers a better experience on long haul flights.’’

The airline unveiled the business class and economy product for the new airliner but not its “class-leading and revolutionary” premium economy seats.

The aircraft will seat 236 passengers: 42 in business on seats that are an evolution of its acclaimed Thomson Aero Seating A330 suites, 166 in next generation economy seats and  28 in the premium economy cabin. The overall seat count is less than that of competitors such as  United Airlines, which seats 252 on its equivalent planes,  and Air New Zealand,  which has  292 seats on its 787-9.

Read: London to Australia non-stop

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While Qantas promised its premium economy seats will be “streets ahead of anything out there’’, all it revealed today was a roomy 2-3-2 configuration ahead of details to be released early next year. Although Qantas was a late adopter of premium economy its current product is highly regarded so industry interest in the new cabin will be high.

The brainchild of Australian industrial designer David Caon, the next generation Recaro economy seats, will be in a 3-3-3 configuration and offer a 6-inch seat recline. They are fitted with a bigger 12-inch high definition touch screen and a personal electronic device holder that will allow users to set up a tablet.

A standard personal reading light will be complemented by Individual mood lighting will be integrated into the back of each seat to help reduce disruption to other passengers.

The seats feature additional stowage for a water bottle, literature and small personal items as well as individual USB charging and shared PC power.
Qantas has also updated the “footnet” introduced in the A380 and designed to cradle the legs during sleep.

A potential downside is that the economy seats will be only 17.2 inches wide and narrower than rival Virgin Australia’s Boeing 777-300ER economy seats, which are 18.5 inches wide in a nine-across configuration and also sport a 32-inch seat pitch. The 787 seats are also marginally tighter than the 17.5-inch wide economy seats on Qantas A380s and close to the 17-inch wide seats that have caused consumer unhappiness on 10-across Boeing 777s.

However, Boeing studies have shown that most passengers would rather an extra inch of legroom over an extra inch of shoulder room.  The aircraft manufacturer also says that the 787’s much larger windows give passengers a greater sense of space.

At the Singapore Air Show in February,  Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president of marketing Randy Tinseth told Australian Aviation that an independent survey by Mindset of economy class cabins of 10 airlines showed 48.2 per cent of respondents found the 787 cabin to be “very spacious”, compared to 34.5 per cent for the Airbus A380 and 17.3 per cent for the A330.

Mr Tinseth said that on the comfort aspect the survey found that 45.3 per cent gave the 787 cabin a big tick as “very comfortable”, compared to 34.2 per cent for the A380 and 20.5 per cent for the A330.

Regardless of the width debate in economy,  it will be all smiles in the high-yielding premium economy and business class cabin. The aircraft’s 42 business class seats will be in a 1-2-1 configuration that guarantees all passengers direct aisle access and boast a comfortable 80-inch (203cm) flat bed, a new deployable privacy divider as well as 16-inch touch screens.

Like the A330 seats, they can be reclined during take-off and landing and all have ample space to work, good storage as well as in-seat USB and PC charging.

“Many of the cabin design elements reflect what our customers have told us,’’ Mr Joyce said. “Personal storage rates really highly, so we’ve created extra space in Economy for customers to store their personal devices and water bottles.

“We’re proud that our new economy seat includes features other carriers reserve for premium economy.

“We’re also redesigning the in-flight experience for the Dreamliner, from rethinking our menus to making better use of the self-service bars during different phases of flight.’’

Qantas has yet to confirm new routes for the Dreamliners but has said they will gradually take over routes currently operated by its Boeing 747s such as Sydney-Johannesburg.

But its decision to go for a lower seat count should mean it can fly further and mooted new routes include London-Perth, Dallas-Melbourne or Dallas-Brisbane.

The first international 787 flights will go on sale before Christmas and the airline will announce early next year the first ultra-long route.

The world is watching as the Obama White House, in its last months in power, forces through new rules backing air travellers that it says will lead to a more competitive market.

The rule changes in the world's biggest domestic air travel market have been rammed through by Democrat President Barack Obama's hand-picked transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx, using so-called executive orders so that they bypass debate in the hostile Republican-controlled Congress and Senate.

And, instead of being hailed as useful reforms, they have been met with either indifference or hostility by the American aviation industry media, as well as by the airlines.

In the first of the rule changes, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has announced that, by the end of the year, online travel retailers will be prohibited from "undisclosed biasing of flight offerings on behalf of certain airlines".

Foxx says the rule stems from "a concern certain agents may be offering flights based on relationships with certain carriers” rather than providing a neutral rundown of offerings based on fares or schedules.

“We want to make sure we get as much transparency as possible,” Air Transport World quoted Foxx as saying.

But, like most government meddling in competitive markets the DOT is either implementing or contemplating, critics have pointed out that the potential for unforeseen consequences is everywhere.

For a start, mandating what relationships airlines and their suppliers may have with each other effectively abolishes competition in the chosen area.

The second rule change mandated by the DOT is an expansion of the gathering of performance statistics to "stop airlines from data cherry-picking", according to a briefing by the White House – an indication of how seriously the Obama administration is taking the changes. 

From January 2018, US domestic airlines will be required to report competitive data, such as on-time performance, for all airlines that fly under their brand names and not just the mainline carriers. By expanding data-gathering to include all airlines with more than 0.5 per cent of industry revenue (market share) from the current one per cent, that rule is designed to capture regional affiliate airlines and some minor niche players that current aren't required to report.

On the face of it, though it won't affect travellers in a major way, that is a useful reform as the US has been the world leader in publishing competitive information that consumers can use to choose their carrier when booking travel.

The US was the first jurisdiction to publish on-time performance statistics so consumers can see which airlines are punctual and which aren't.
However, critics point out that by targeting smaller airlines, the compliance burden will fall on those least able to pay for the extra staff required. Regional airlines in America are notorious for their wafer-thin margins and bankruptcies are common.

The DOT has also signalled it is proposing two future rules – the first to require airlines to refund baggage fees when luggage is "substantially delayed"; the second requiring airlines to disclose an "all-up" fare that includes optional fees for items such as baggage, seat assignment and booking change or cancellation.

These two areas open a giant can of worms as they involve potentially large financial penalties for airlines.

Incredibly, the DOT doesn't even know what a "substantial delay" is. Rather than proposing that, say, a sliding scale of penalties will apply if baggage is lost for more than 24 hours, the department says it is still soliciting comments on what constitutes a "substantial delay". 

In any case, critics say the DOT appears determined to eliminate competition between airlines on conditions of carriage for baggage and incentives they may use to win business.

But it is the second area of future rule-making that has airline managers alarmed as it suggests regulation of the new centrepiece of airline pricing, optional extras or ancillary revenue.

"DOT will be conducting a rulemaking to explore whether airlines should be required to share fee information for such services or products (like baggage, advance seat assignments and priority boarding) with ticket agents, so that customers can get an all-in-one price when they shop online," the White House briefing says.  

"DOT will also determine which fees will have to be included, potentially including baggage fees, seat assignment fees, and change and cancellation fees.

The DOT is talking of forcing airlines to disclose "all-up pricing" and seems to suggest that optional items should be included.

While such a ruling looks like it would be unworkable, it would also see the government meddling with airline marketing of their products to consumers.
Other jurisidictions such as Australia have much more stringent consumer laws than the US and insist only that airlines must declare compulsory fees, while optional extras are fine.

Needless to say, the airline industry is scathing of Washington's latest actions.

"It would be difficult to find an industry that is more transparent than the airline industry; customers always know exactly what they are paying for before they buy," says Airlines for America (A4A) president and chief executive Nick Calio. "Dictating to the airline industry distribution and commercial practices would only benefit those third parties who distribute tickets, not the flying public.”

In a case of seeing is believing,  Delta Air Lines has introduced a new feature for its Fly Delta 4.0 mobile app that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to allow passengers to watch their checked luggage go through its journey.

The app is all about visibility and allows passengers to “see” where their bag was last on its domestic journey, from the  departure airport to the ramp, the belly of the airplane, a connection airport and, finally, the baggage claim.

Delta has rolled out the enabling RFID tracking technology at 84 airports in the US, where it rep[laces the barcode hand scanning used by the industry since the early 90s.

The new system uses  radio waves to capture highly accurate and consistent data stored on an RFID chip embedded in the luggage tag and Delta’s initial deployments of RFID showed that bags were tracked at a 99.9 percent success rate.

The airline’s domestic stations now offer overhead map views—complete with narratives such as “Delivered to Claim Area 5,” or “Bag Off Plane DL1196 LAX-OGG”.

Delta is the first airline “to offer this level of visibility,” according to Bill Lentsch, the carrier’s vice of airline operations and airport customer service.

“From the moment our customers drop off their bag, we want them to know we’re looking out for it every step of the way and working to take the stress out of flying one innovation at a time,” Lentsch said.

When a passenger tracks a checked bag, the mobile app’s display opens on a zoomed out map of the U.S. as the bag travels from departure airport to arrival airfield.

Then the map zooms to an overhead airport view. The display shows when the bag’s been offloaded and at just what baggage claim to find it. The last known location of the luggage is represented on your screen via a suitcase icon.

Mobile devices and assorted apps can be useful provided they’re not too complicated.  Fly Delta 4.0 offeres passengers a simplified mobile experience that automatically updates when flights change, according to Rhonda Crawford, the airline’s vice president global distribution & digital strategy.

AIRLINES often crow about having the world’s longest flights but Emirates is trumpeting its newest Airbus A380 destination as the world’s shortest for the superjumbo.

The Dubai-based carrier will upgrade one of its nine daily flights between Dubai and Doha to an A380 service from December 1 on what is the 45th A380 route for the airline and the shortest for the aircraft at just over 235 miles (379kms)  each way.

The airline justified using the long-range superjumbo on the short route by saying  demand for Doha had been steadily increasing to the point it had carried more than 700,000 passengers between the cities so far this year.

“The upgrade to the A380 will provide Emirates the increased ability to serve growing demand for travel out of Doha,’’ it said. “The double-decker has also proved tremendously popular with customers, and the upcoming service in December will give travellers from Qatar the chance to experience Emirates’ award-winning A380 onboard product and service to Dubai and seamless A380 journeys to some of Emirates most popular destinations.’’

The gulf carrier has timed the flights so that travellers will have connections of less than four hours to popular destinations such as London Heathrow, New York, Paris and Rome.

The superjumbos on the route will be in a three-class configuration with 429 seats in economy, 76 flat-bed seats in business and 14 first-class suites. They will also come equipped with the airline’s renowned in-flight bar and entertainment system, althoughit willl be a choice between a quick drink or a short program on a flight lasting about an hour.

Emirates is the world’s biggest operator of A380s with 85 in service and 57 on order and competes with Abu Dhabi-based Etihad and Doha-based Qatar. It recently upgraded its business class product and bar and is working on a new first class product.

Emirates president Tim Clark, who says the aircraft works well for airline and is popular with customers, recently warned that the world would need more A380s to cope with capacity problems at airports.

Read Sir Tim's comments.

Airbus announced earlier this year that it will more than halve production of the superjumbo from the current 2.5 per month to one a month because of lacklustre demand.

But Airbus chief executive Tom Enders, speaking at an event to celebrate the manufacturer's 10,000th aircraft delivery,  predicted there would still be a demand for the A380 "for many years to come''.

Iberia will offer a premium economy product on its long-haul fleet from next year in a move that brings the Spanish airline’s widebody cabin configuration in line with the other IAG airlines flying long-haul.

 The first premium economy-equipped Iberia aircraft will enter service next summer on routes connecting the airline’s Madrid hub to Chicago O’Hare in the U.S. and to Buenos Aires, Bogota and Lima in South America.

The oneworld carrier said it will offer premium economy class on 37 of its long-haul aircraft. It will retrofit eight of its current Airbus A330-300s and 13 of its A340-600s with the new seats, while its 16 new Airbus A350-900s will come factory-equipped with the new cabin. Delivery of the A350s will begin in 2018. The remodeling of its to A330s and A3430 will take place next year and in 2018.

Iberia did not specify how many premium economy seats it intends to install on its aircraft but said the seats would be 19 inches wide with a 37-inch seat pitch between rows, compared to 17- or 18.1-inch width and 31 to 32-inch seat pitch on its A330/ A340s in standard economy.  Seat-back entertainment screens will be 13 inches wide, as opposed to the 9-inch screens in standard coach. Iberia says the new seats recline by an additional 40 per cent over those in its standard economy cabin.

Customers flying in premium economy class, or turista premium, will also enjoy adjustable head and foot rests, get noise-cancelling earphones, a blanket and an amenities kit. In addition, premium economy passengers will have priority in boarding and leaving the aircraft, better food options and an increased baggage allowance.

Iberia may be one of the last European legacy carriers to introduce a premium economy, but it will be the only airline with the concept flying between Spain and Latin America, according to its  Chief Commercial Director Marco Sansavini.

“Iberia is the sole airline that will offer this intermediate seating class on direct flights between Spain and Latin America, which should strengthen our leadership of this market,” he said.

Virgin Atlantic was the first airline to come up with the concept of a premium economy class in 1992 as Mid Class, a service aimed at the cost-conscious business traveler who travelled economy but still required extra space in which to work or relax. The product was rebranded as Premium Economy in November, 1994.

Premium economy is well established with full-service international carriers in Europe and Asia, but it is rare in the Middle East and U.S. legacy airlines are only now jumping on the trend.

American Airlines, a partner of Iberia in the oneworld alliance, will introduce premium economy on its new Boeing 787-9 aircraft with cabins featuring 21 leather seats with a 38-inch pitch and an increased width with a 2-3-2 arrangement. Premium economy passengers receive priority check-in and boarding, enhanced meals with complimentary wine, beer and spirits and amenity kits.

The airline’s first 787-9 was delivered Sept. 13 and it will have four by the end of the year, from an order for 22. But it will only start selling a seat in premium economy from early 2017.

Delta Air Lines will introduce premium economy when it takes delivery of its first Airbus A350,  due in Spring next year.