Flight Safety Information - June 23, 2021 No. 125 In This Issue : Incident: Kalitta B744 over Atlantic on Jun 11th 2021, engine shut down in flight : Incident: Red Wings A320 near St. Petersburg on Jun 21st 2021, two generators failed : Frontier Airlines is now making passengers pay a "Covid Recovery" surcharge. : American Airlines plans to cancel 80 flights a day for the rest of June because of bad weather and a labor shortage : Airlines got billions of dollars in bailouts. So why are ticket prices rising : POSITION AVAILABLE: Aerospace (Pro Pilot), Tenure-Track Faculty Incident: Kalitta B744 over Atlantic on Jun 11th 2021, engine shut down in flight A Kalitta Air Boeing 747-400, registration N401KZ performing flight K4-335 (dep Jun 10th) from Los Angeles,CA (USA) to Brussels (Belgium), was enroute at FL370 over the Atlantic Ocean about 550nm southwest of Keflavik (Iceland) and about 1150nm west of East Midlands,EN (UK) in contact with Gander Oceanic Control when the crew received EICAS messages "ENG OIL FILT 2" and "ENG OIL TEMP" messages for engine #2 (CF6, inboard left hand). The crew worked the related checklists, shut the engine down, descended to FL330, declared emergency and decided to divert to East Midlands. The aircraft landed safely in East Midlands about 2:20 hours later. The Canadian TSB reported a post flight inspection of the #2 engine revealed internal damage. A 3-engine ferry flight departing East Midlands about 30 hours after landing was conducted to the company's maintenance facility via Columbus,OH (USA) to Oscoda,MI (USA). The engine was replaced. The aircraft returned to service on Jun 20th 2021. https://avherald.com/h?article=4e94352f&opt=0 Incident: Red Wings A320 near St. Petersburg on Jun 21st 2021, two generators failed A Red Wings Airbus A320-200, registration VP-BWX performing flight WZ-647 from St. Petersburg to Krasnodar (Russia), had just levelled off at FL330 out of St. Petersburg when the crew decided to return to St. Petersburg reporting the #1 engine (V2527) driven generator and the APU generator had failed, the #2 generator was working normally. The aircraft landed safely back on St. Petersburg's runway 10R about 30 minutes later. A replacement A321-200 registration VP-BRB reached Krasnodar with a delay of 7.5 hours. https://avherald.com/h?article=4e940464&opt=0 Frontier Airlines is now making passengers pay a "Covid Recovery" surcharge. The charge is intended to offset costs such as "increased sanitation and cleaning onboard the aircraft and in the airport, shields at the ticket counters and gate areas, and personal protective equipment for employees," according to the airline's site. The airline said in a statement to ABC News that the $1.59 charge was implemented in May, and is applied to bookings on a per-passenger, per-segment basis. "The CRC is already added to the promoted total fare at FlyFrontier.com, therefore, it is not an unexpected charge later in the booking process," a spokesperson for Frontier Airlines explained. Major U.S. airlines, including Frontier, received billions in pandemic relief. Most of them have actually decided to eliminate costs such as change fees to incentivize passengers to take to the skies again. "Budget airlines have historically been the most adventurous in testing out new fees," Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights and author of "Take More Vacations," told ABC News. "And Frontier’s COVID Recovery surcharge is true to form. While this surcharge is unlikely to be replicated by other airlines, the big question is whether yet another fee will push some Frontier customers to book elsewhere.” In May 2020, Frontier faced criticism from lawmakers for proposing to charge passengers extra to guarantee the middle seat next to them would be empty. Democratic lawmakers Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and Rep. Jesús García, D-Ill., sent a letter to Frontier CEO Barry Biffle calling the airline's middle seat guarantee policy "outrageous given the spread of the coronavirus" insisting that "the flying public should not be charged extra to stay healthy on flights." The proposed fee was rescinded. "We recognize the concerns raised that we are profiting from safety and this was never our intent," Biffle said in a letter to lawmakers at the time. "We simply wanted to provide our customers with an option for more space." https://www.yahoo.com/gma/frontier-airlines-making-passengers-pay-223227292.html American Airlines plans to cancel 80 flights a day for the rest of June because of bad weather and a labor shortage • American Airlines plans to cancel hundreds of flights through July. • American Airlines told Fox News it expected to cancel about 80 flights a day for the rest of June. The airline said it would also cancel about 1% of flights in July. American said it faced a staff shortage and bad weather across its hubs. American Airlines on Monday told Fox News it expected to cancel about 80 flights a day through June. That was up from the airline's previous statement to ABC News, which said it might cancel at least 60 flights a day for the rest of the month. American also told Fox News it would adjust a "fraction" of its flight schedules in July by canceling about 1% of its daily operation in that month. The airline had first given The Wall Street Journal the 1% figure in reference to the first half of July. It said it would help manage the surge in travel demand as labor shortages and bad weather disrupt operations at some of its hubs. An American representative told The Journal the flight cancellations would bring "additional resilience and certainty" to summer operations. The company said in a statement to Reuters that the schedule adjustments would "help ensure we can take good care of our customers and team members and minimize surprises at the airport." The airline said its cancellations were targeted at affecting the smallest number of customers "by adjusting flights in markets where we have multiple options for reaccommodation." American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights last weekend - 123 on Saturday and 178 on Sunday as well as 97 on Monday - while citing staffing shortages and maintenance issues. Airlines and other transportation operators have seen a quick increase in demand in recent weeks as travel restrictions eased and more people got vaccinated for COVID-19. According to data from the US Transportation Security Administration, nearly 50 million airport passengers were registered in May, up 19% from April. So far in June, the TSA has registered nearly 35 million air passengers. American Airlines said the higher demand also came at a time when bad weather caused hours-long delays over the past few weeks, disrupting flight and crew work hours. https://www.yahoo.com/news/american-airlines-plans-cancel-80-101516488.html Airlines got billions of dollars in bailouts. So why are ticket prices rising A shortage of pilots and a faster-than-expected takeoff in passenger demand is forcing some airlines to cut back flights and retool schedules. Passengers who have already booked their summer travel should look out for the possibility of rebookings — and those who have yet to buy their tickets should watch out for rising air fares, experts say. Last week, daily passenger levels reached 2 million — nearing 2019 levels — according to traveler checkpoint data from the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines coped with the plunge in passenger traffic during the pandemic by furloughing workers and accelerating retirement and early retirement programs at large scale, or encouraging them to take extended unpaid time off from the aviation industry. Some found new jobs in truck driving, warehouses or turned to food stamps. The airline industry received $48 billion in payroll support from coronavirus relief legislation. Airlines warned of steep layoffs if more support wasn’t forthcoming. They also issued layoff notices and then canceled them after receiving more support. At the time, the industry said it needed the relief in part to maintain employees so they could meet domestic flying demand after passengers came back. Despite these efforts, the industry is still scrambling. Airlines were already struggling with a pilot shortfall going into the pandemic to replace a swath of pilots and mechanics, hired during the 1980s boom, who had reached mandatory retirement age. They also reduced training events and flying rotations needed to maintain proficiency, said Bob Mann, industry analyst with R.W. Mann & Co., an aviation sector consulting firm “With a domestic recovery underway, the industry faces a shortage of skilled personnel and an empty replacement pipeline — except to rob and retrain pilots and [maintenance technicians] from their affiliated/vendor regional airlines, which just outplaces the shortage to the industry operating almost half of domestic U.S. flights,” Mann said. While that strategy saved cash in the short term, it only exacerbated the crunch once fliers returned. “All of this was obvious, and stated, from the start — unless you assumed demand would never recover, which it always has,” Mann told NBC News in an emailed statement. American Airlines canceled over 400 flights over the weekend, according to flight data tracked by FlightAware, and projected it will have to cancel 50 flights per day until mid-July, over 1,200 in total, or 1 percent of its total schedule. The airline cited staffing shortages, maintenance issues, and inclement weather, and said it was trying to minimize passenger disruption. "The first few weeks of June have brought unprecedented weather to our largest hubs, heavily impacting our operation and causing delays, canceled flights and disruptions to crew member schedules and our customers' plans,” American Airlines said in a statement emailed to NBC News. “That, combined with the labor shortages some of our vendors are contending with and the incredibly quick ramp up of customer demand, has led us to build in additional resilience and certainty to our operation by adjusting a fraction of our scheduled flying through mid-July.” The company said it was trying to reduce the number of customers impacted by making the changes in markets where fliers have more options, meaning passengers could be booked on a later or earlier flight, or rerouted through a different hub. Experts warn passengers should get ready for higher airfare prices. “Stimulus money on steroids will lead to inflation,” said Adam Pilarski, an industry consultant with the Avitas aviation consulting firm, in an email. “In aviation it will be more pronounced.” Airfares increased 7 percent in May after already increasing 10 percent in April, according to the latest Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Airfares are expected to keep rising and peak in July and August, at the peak of summer travel season, Mann said. They tend to decline after Labor Day with the return to school and then rise again over the winter holidays. Consumers are locking in their holiday plans early. Bookings for November and December are already 30 percent higher at this point than 2019, according to data from Adobe Analytics. Furloughed pilots and crew members need to get retrained before being brought back to service, but airlines are running behind as the surge in flier demand has everyone running behind schedule, experts say. "They need more check airmen, pilot instructors and the training department needs to run practically 24/7," said a flight attendant who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak on their airline's behalf. Airlines are trying out a range of tactics to lure crews to in-demand flights and boost hiring. Delta announced plans to hire more than 1,000 pilots by summer 2022 to cope with the travel increase. Southwest Airlines is using chatbots and says it is using A.I. to tailor messages to candidates. Airlines are reaching back out to pilot candidates whose hiring was paused due to the pandemic to resume the process. They’re also shifting blame. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby partially blamed shifting priorities in the armed forces for a narrowing of the pilot pipeline. "The military produces far fewer pilots today than they did ... in the Cold War era," Kirby told Axios on HBO this weekend. https://www.yahoo.com/news/more-people-flying-why-airlines-164859894.html Subject: POSITION AVAILABLE: Aerospace (Pro Pilot), Tenure-Track Faculty Middle Tennessee State University Position: Aerospace (Pro Pilot), Tenure-Track Faculty MTSU seeks candidates who are committed to innovative teaching, robust research/creative activity and meaningful service. We also seek to attract a culturally and academically diverse faculty who value working with a diverse student body. Salary and rank commensurate with education and experience. The Department of Aerospace at Middle Tennessee State University invites applicants for two tenure-track faculty positions (#101220 and #117010) at the rank of assistant/associate professor. Start date for the positions is August 1, 2021. Positions contingent upon funding. Successful candidates will be expected to teach classes in the Professional Pilot concentration, undertake collaborative and multi-disciplinary research within the department and university, and be actively involved in university and professional service. A Master’s degree in Aerospace, Aviation or closely related field by appointment date is required. Applicants are required to also have: 1) FAA Commercial, Multi-Engine and valid Flight Instructor Certificates (CFI, CFII, MEI) OR 2) FAA ATP Certificate and valid Flight Instructor Certificates (CFI, CFII, MEI). Candidates who possess industry or collegiate teaching experience and those with a doctorate or ABD in Aerospace, Aviation, Education, Business, or other industry-related field will receive special consideration. In order to successfully apply, applicants are required to include a cover letter, their curriculum vitae, a statement of teaching philosophy, and their Research Statement at the time of online application submittal. NOTE: In addition to the REQUIRED documents listed above for successful application, applicants must include copies of FAA Certifications held attached as Other Document 1. To apply, go to: https://careers.mtsu.edu/en-us/job/495335/aerospace-pro-pilot-tenuretrack-faculty. If you need help in applying, please contact the Faculty Recruitment Specialist at (615) 898-5128. If you have position specific questions, please contact Tyler Babb at Tyler.Babb@mtsu.edu. MTSU is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer that values diversity in all its forms. Women, minorities, individuals with disabilities and protected veterans are encouraged to apply. Proof of U.S. citizenship or eligibility for U.S. employment will be required prior to employment (Immigration Control Act of 1986). Clery Act crime statistics for MTSU available at http://www.mtsu.edu/police/docs/2020AnnualSecurityReport.pdf or by contacting MTSU Public Safety at (615-898-2424. MTSU is a drug free campus. This position requires a criminal background check. Therefore, you may be required to provide information about your criminal history in order to be considered for this position. For individuals requiring a reasonable accommodation to apply: In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA), if you have a disability and would like to request an accommodation in order to apply for a position with MTSU, please call 615-898-2929 or email emp@mtsu.edu. Curt Lewis