Hello, I'm Channing Reed alongside Tom Boone. Welcome to a brand new episode of the
Simple Flying Podcasts, giving you the lowdown on the latest news from the world of
commercial aviation. Here's what we have for you this week.
Coming up today, Southwest Airlines shaking up its frequent flyer program. I'll tell you
the changes you can expect before Tom talks about Airbus's comments over stretching
some of its planes. Then, Delta Airlines officially unveiling a new era coming to the Delta
One experience when you can expect it to be rolled out. Those stories plus Airbus releasing
its global services forecast. Tom will discuss just how many workers the plane maker expects
will be needed within the next 20 years. And finally, I'll explore why LaFtanta is instructing
some of its planes to fly to one of its hubs with extra fuel on board. So now you know
it's in store. Let's get on with the show. And thanks for joining us this week. We do
have a lot to get to on our podcast today. We're going to begin with that story from Southwest
Airlines. Really hot off the press today, after nearly two decades, Southwest is retiring
the name that defined its frequent flyer program. That is a list. And it's replacing it
with silver, gold, and platinum. The airline laid out the changes Thursday and they're sweeping
new tier names, a brand new top tier, credit card spending that counts far more towards
status. And for the first time, rapid rewards points, you can actually spend on international
partner airlines. So let's break it down for you. Starting in 2027 and a list will become
silver, a list preferred will become gold. And above both of them, it's a new tier called
platinum. Current members get moved into the corresponding new tier automatically on January
1st. So there's nothing that passengers have to do with that. But why rename it all?
Well, Southwest's own explanation is that the old labels stopped making sense. Tony
Roach, the airline's chief customer and brand officer pointed out to CNBC that a list
was named for a boarding group. And Southwest doesn't have boarding groups A, B, and C anymore.
Nandika Suri, who runs Rapper's Rewards, put it more bluntly saying everybody understands
silver, gold, and platinum. Here's what it costs passengers now. Silver will require 25
qualifying flights or 35,000 tier qualifying points. That's five more flights than a list
takes today with the points threshold unchanged. Gold takes 50 flights or 65,000 points. That's
10 more flights than a list preferred. But the points requirement actually drops from 70,000.
And platinum takes 100 flights or 140,000 points. That 100 flight number should look familiar
because it's the companion pass threshold. And that's the real story here. Southwest
is folding the companion pass into elite status. Reach platinum and you get the unlimited
two for one benefit plus up to three free checked bags. The perk itself isn't changing.
What's changing is how you get there. Southwest is facing out companion pass qualifying
points entirely going forward. You can earn the pass through tier qualifying points, which
is the same currency as status. That sounds like simplification, but it may not be in some cases.
Today, credit card welcome bonuses count toward companions pass points. They generally do
not count as tier qualifying points. So for people who worked the card route to a companion pass,
this could get meaningfully harder. The points bar also rises from 135,000 to 140,000.
Though Southwest is softening that for one year, handing anyone who hits 130,000,
a one time boost of 10,000 points next year. And there's a philosophical shift that's buried in
that. Some could say for nearly 20 years, the companion pass sat outside the status ladder.
You could hold one whether or not you're a list now. It's the reward for reaching the top
wrong. Southwest has turned its single most famous perk into a status benefit. Two more
changes that are worth flagging here and one of them stings. Gold members today's a list preferred
will see their earning bonus cut from 100% down to 60%. Platinum members get 120. So the airline
is pulling a benefit down a wrong and dangling it in one wrong hire. Southwest is also trimming
what you can earn on its upper fairs choice preferred drops from 10 points per dollar to eight.
Choice extra will drop from 14 to 10 points. On the other side is that every Southwest credit card
will earn one tier qualifying point per dollar spent starting January 1st, including cards that
earn none today. There are new milestone rewards along the way as well, including three one off
companion pass trips at 75 flights. And next spring, rapid rewards points finally become redeemable
on partner airlines, including Iceland Air, Eddie had airways and China airlines. So some
interesting news here. But the bottom line is that it's basically the same transformation that
killed open seating and brought in the bag fees. Well, that's now arriving here at the loyalty program
as well. So some could say that this was imminent. We could see this coming, you know, essentially
Southwest rewarding the card in your wallet more and the ticket you bought a little bit less here.
And as I said, we are we've been following the changes that Southwest has been bringing on board
over the past year now. And you know, it's really aligning its identity a lot closer to the
legacy carriers here in the US and really following where the money is made, right, which is those
those premium experiences and those credit card partnerships as well. But it'll be very interesting
to see all of this come out and roll out here within the next few months as we get closer and
closer to 2027. That's another story. I can't believe we're almost there. But it will also be
interesting to see what passengers have to say about this, how they feel about the changes,
especially, you know, given that these are Southwest's most loyal passengers. We'll have to see
if they're if they become fans of this new change or they are feeling the opposite and they're not
a big fan of the chain. So time will tell as things get rolled out in the next couple of months.
And now Tom, I know you're going to talk about Airbus, but there's one word that perfectly
describes the prospect of the plane maker stretching its planes. That's the word Airbus kept
coming back to and to lose this week. There's clearly a demand for a longer Airbus A350.
There's clearly a demand for a longer A220. But what Airbus won't say is when it'll actually
commit to either one. But we did get something close to a deadline. I was back in to lose on Wednesday
where Airbus hosted its media at its headquarters to unveil its global services forecast for
2026 to 2045. Now, we'll get into that forecast in my next segment. But during the Q&A,
Lars Wagner, the CEO of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, was asked about stretches. And his answers went
a bit further than I expected. Let's start with the big one. Since the A380 and the 747 went out
of production, there's been a gap at the very top of the market and Emirates in particular has not
been shy about saying so. At last year's Dubai Airshow, Wagner's predecessor, Christian Shira,
said Airbus was exploring options for a larger variant. Now, under Wagner, that thinking clearly
hasn't gone away, he told us that when he travels and meets customers, airlines CEOs are asking
for it. And there's, in his words, clearly a demand with our high-tier customers for a longer
and stretched A350. Then there's the other variant of the family. Rumors of an A22500 have been
running all summer. Airbus has never ruled it out, but it's never gone all in either. And Wagner
held that line, while saying that there's clearly a demand for a longer A220. That fits with what
we heard back in June when Simple Fly visited the A220 line at Mirabelle just outside Montreal.
Airbus Canada CEO, Guillain Shiverson told us then that the stretch studies had been accelerated
and there'd been a particular focus on it this year. And that Airbus wanted to be ready to make
a decision soon. So, timing, this is the bit that made the headline. Wagner said that the market
is demanding these products, so Airbus doesn't want a launch to sit at the far end of a five-year window.
Airbus decides when it has a business case and when it goes to the board, but it won't be
2030. Put simply decisions on both aircraft before the end of the decade. Now, those will almost
certainly be two separate decisions, and I'd expect the A220 to come first, because the A350 is
a lot harder than the word stretch makes it sounds for three reasons. Firstly, wide-body derivatives
are slower even when you're not changing very much. Just take a look at the A350 freighter which
we covered a couple of weeks ago. It's only just made its first flight. It has around 400 hours of
flight testing ahead of it, and it was announced back in 2021. That's five years, and it uses the
same engine as the A3501000. Second, and this is the real catch, a properly stretched A350
wouldn't get to keep that engine. A bigger, heavier aircraft needs more thrust, which means new engine
development, and Rolls-Royce has previously said that it could take up to seven years.
So, even if the board signed off tomorrow, you'd be well into the 2030s before anyone flew with
one of our passengers on board. And a third, a problem that Airbus would quite like to have
have, a simple flying understands the a350 order book already runs into the 2030s. Before
you add another variant, you need somewhere to build it, which means raising production
capacity first. There's not much point selling a bigger a350 to customers who are already
queuing for the current ones. The a220 is an error body. It's a more contained engineering
job than Airbus Canada has been doing the homework for years. If one of these gets launched
in the next couple of years, my money is on the smaller jet. So two stretches, one rough
deadline and an awful lot of work in between. For airlines like Emirates before 2030 is
at least a date that you can hold Airbus to. For the rest of us, it's a reminder that
in this industry, even a clear demand can come with a very long runway.
A long runway indeed or a long fuselage for that matter. Interesting story there will
have to follow that as well. Switching gears, Delta Airlines unveiling what it calls
the next era of Delta one this week, billing it as the airline's largest investment in
the cabin. And it's most complete redesign in nearly 30 years. But there's one thing to
make very clear here. We're not talking about a new seat. Everything Delta has announced
sits in what the industry calls the soft product, the food on board, the wine, the tableware,
the bedding, the service choreography. And the hardware you sit again isn't changing
here. That's not criticism. It's just the fact here. And it's the frame that a lot of
passengers need to know. The rollout starts on trans-Oceanic Delta one routes out of Los
Angeles this fall, then expands across the global network in 2027. Individual pieces
arrive on their own schedules. However, the new Mizzoni amenity kit and desai sake on Tokyo
and eight of flights both land in on November 3rd. Blanton's bourbon comes on board December
1st and the new cocktail and mocktail program hits international routes in March, domestic
in April. So with the food, let's start with that because I am a foodie. That's really
honestly where most of the work went in terms of this new rollout here. Delta's in-house
culinary team worked with chef Simon Holstone who runs a restaurant with a 20 year Michelin
star legacy plus chefs Norio Leno and Jerem Lung on regional menus, the headline dishes.
Delta one Wago beef burger on Brioche roasted sea bass with tomato targan sauce braised
lamb with red wine demi glaze, a seasonally rotating risotto that Delta specifically
says is built to hold its texture at altitude, which tells you something about how hard that
is to do. The dessert for any sweet tooth will survive, of course, and gains a dairy-free
sorbet with an optional champagne titinger float if I'm pronouncing that correctly. On
the wine side, Delta has worked with master sommelier Andrea Robinson and a group of
skymiles members to narrow 1600 wines down to 13 from 11 wineries. And here's the detail
that matters more than it sounds. The airline is cutting from four wine rotations a year
to two. That's consistency for passengers and for flight assistants who have to know
the list. Now the part we'd actually point out as to the real improvement here. Delta
is extending Entrez pre-selection to 18 hours before departure. Six hours closer to the
flight than before. The airline says that it makes it the only US carrier with a window
that that tight. It's also adding more ways to opt out gluten-free and lighter pre-select
options. And on long hauls, passengers who want to sleep over breakfast can skip the
morning service entirely and take a coffee and croissant before landing. There's a new
arrival ritual as well. A hot towel, warm nuts, and your drink placed on the console so
you can settle in without being interrupted. Delta frames all of this as building on more
than a billion dollars already invested in the fleet and points to the wider premium push
around it. Delta Sync Wi-Fi now on roughly 1300 aircraft, more than 90% of the fleet and
the Porsche Tarmac transfer program, growing from 40 vehicles to 70 across 15 airports
by 2028. Though that one is only for passengers booking VIP select. One number from this announcement
stands out above the rest. That's more than 200 Delta flight attendants and team members
shaped this over 14 months across four phases of testing and 36 dedicated trial flights
generating more than 200 pieces of feedback. Their input drove the T service, the sauce presentation
and more than 60 new pieces of tableware. That's the difference between a cabin design and
a studio and a cabin designed by the people who have to serve it at 38,000 feet and moderate
turbulence. So the bottom line here, no new seat, no new suite, but a serious detailed rework
of everything that happens inside the one you already have in a rare case of an airline telling
you and numbers that the crew helped build it. I think this is a great story here and this product
looks amazing. Again, knowing that the Delta 1 current product is a showstopper within the industry.
So this is just going to put it on another level in my opinion. I would love to have the opportunity
to try this out, of course, and we'll have to see, you know, with that initial rollout here
out of LAX next month. And then that moving globally in 2027, it looks like we've got pretty good
experience on top for Delta's premium passengers. And we could sit here all day talking about the
premium push across airlines as we've reported on. But Tom, you're talking about the future of the
industry here. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about aircraft, orders, deliveries,
and as we just heard stretches. But Airbus's latest forecast is a useful reminder that the aircraft
is only the start of the story. Over the next 20 years, Airbus reckons the industry will need
around 2.44 million more pilots, cabin crew and maintenance technicians. And that's on top of
everyone already doing the job today. This was the centerpiece of Airbus's media day and to lose
on Wednesday, the global services forecast covering 2026 to 2045. It's the companion piece
to the better well-known market forecast that tells you how many new jets the world will buy.
This one is about everything that happens after delivery, the training, the maintenance,
the upgrades, the data. The headline is that the aviation services market is set to double,
reaching more than $420 billion USD by 2045. That's built on an average growth rate of 3.8% per year.
Over the same period, Airbus sees the global fleet growing to around 45,500 aircraft and
passengers numbers doubling to more than 10 billion a year. Now the people, Airbus breaks that 2.44
million down into roughly 1.05 million new flight attendants, 660,000 pilots and 730 maintenance
technicians. The detail I pick out here is the world needs more new technicians than new pilots.
Pilot shorts just get the headlines, but the people who keep the aircraft serviceable are an even
bigger hiring challenge. And on the training side, Airbus' Amaya Rodriguez Gonzalez said pilot
simulator hours upset double. Airbus splits the market into six pillars and this is where it gets
interesting. By far, the biggest is off-wing maintenance, especially the heavy work on engines
and components that come off the aircraft and go into a shop. Airbus expects that to double
to $217 billion by 2045, driven by more shop visits at the global fleet, both grows and gets older.
Given how much of the last few years has been defined by engines sitting in shops instead of on
wings, that one shouldn't surprise anyone. Next is maintenance operation support at 104 billion
growing at 4.3% a year, then on-wing maintenance at 36 billion, digital connectivity at 27 billion,
modifications and upgrades at 21 billion and training at around 17 billion. This bit I found
most revealing at those six numbers up and you get roughly 422 billion, which is where that
more than 420 billion figure comes from, and the free maintenance pillars on their own come to
about 357 billion. So when Airbus talks about the services market, something like 85% of it is
one way or another, maintenance. The flashy stuff is a much smaller slice, but the flashy stuff
is growing fastest. Digital connectivity has the highest growth rate of any pillar, 5.3% a year,
and Airbus expects it to roughly triple. Its argument is that digital tools and real-time data
underpin everything else, helping airlines predict faults, cut delays and cancellations and give
passengers a smoother journey. And there's real money at stake. Airbus says that disruption
and cost airlines $43 billion in 2025 alone, and that figure could climb towards 80 billion by
2045. But a digital tool says it could take around 30% off of that. By my maths, that's in the region
of $24 billion a year, which is almost the entire size of the digital connectivity market itself.
If the pitch holds up, the technology pays for itself. Of course, it's worth remembering who's
making the forecast. Airbus has a services business of its own to grow, and a forecast like this
doubles as a sales pitch, but the fundamentals are hard to argue with. More aircraft, older aircraft,
more passengers. Which brings us back to where we started.
Airbus can debate stretching the A220 and the 350 all it likes.
The bigger question of it, the next 20 years might not be how many seats can fit on a jet,
but whether there'll be enough people to fly it, crew it, and fix it.
That's a pretty big forecast there, and it just goes to show you just how many people
are involved to make everything happen in this industry.
And some of those workers we were just talking about at La Tansa telling its pilots to carry
extra fuel into Frankfurt, that's because Germany's biggest airport is having trouble
getting enough of it.
The airline confirmed on Thursday that it has increased fueling before flights bound
for Frankfurt, calling it a precautionary step as applies Titan due to reduced capacity
on a pipeline feeding the airport.
The story was first reported by Bill deciding internal instructions as it says went out
to La Tansa pilots on selected routes.
The practice has a name, it's called tankering, if you load more fuel than the flight needs
at your departure airport, so you arrive with enough fuel left over to fly the next leg
without refueling or with far less refueling at the far end.
Airlines normally do this for money, if fuel is cheap in Oslo and expensive in Zurich,
you buy it in Oslo, what's unusual here is the reason La Tansa isn't tankering to save
a few euros, it's tankering because it isn't confident that the fuel will be waiting
in Frankfurt and tankering is not free, extra fuel is extra weight and extra weight burns,
more fuel to carry, you spend fuel to move fuel, carriers run that calculation constantly
and it only pencils out when the price gap or in this case the supply risk is big enough
to justify it, and there's a hard limit built into the instruction and it's a revealing
one.
According to Bill, the extra fuel is capped at 8 tons on an Airbus A320 family aircraft
specifically, so the airplanes can still be towed on the ground, think about what that
tells you, the constraint isn't the wings or the tanks, it's the tug, load a narrow body
heavy enough to end the ground equipment that pushes it off the gate, can't do its job,
that is a genuinely unusual operational ceiling to see written into a fuel policy.
Bill also reported the instruction mainly affects short haul flying, but that it's increasingly
reached some long haul services too, it also has a safety dimension that works in the opposite
direction from the cost one, a heavier airplane blant heavier of course, which means hotter
breaks and a longer stopping distance, none of that is dangerous within limits, but it's
why a cap gets written down rather than left to judgment.
So why exactly is Frankfurt short on fuel?
There's two things that are happening together here, the pipeline that supplies the airport
with jet fuel is undergoing maintenance which has cut its capacity.
Frapport, the airport operator says that work is routine and that it was planned for,
and that an alternative supply routes and substantial storage mean that there's no bottleneck,
airport's operational capability, Frapport says, is not affected.
The second factor here is the Rhine, months of low water levels have disrupted barge deliveries
and barges are a major artery for moving fuel throughout Germany.
When the river drops, vessels have to run lighter, which means more trips to move the
same volume, which means less fuel that's arriving.
So the backup route is constrained at the same time, the primary route is throttled, each
problem alone is manageable, together their wine airlines starts fuel hedging.
And it's important to note that gap between the two statements here because it is the most
interesting part of this story.
Frapport says there's no supply problem.
Laptanza is nonetheless ordering its crews to carry extra fuel in, both can be technically
true and airport can have an adequate supply and aggregate while an airline decides it
would rather not depend on it during a peak bank.
Laptanza says it does not currently expect to flight cancellations here.
But interesting story nonetheless and hopefully they will be able to get this under control
here because as Frankfort is a major hub, you know, there could be a ripple effect here
to Laptanza and potentially other airlines as well as they manage their operation at that
airport.
So we're going to be following this story, but hopefully things will get back up and
running on a normal schedule here very soon.
Well, that's going to do it for today's podcast.
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