WestJet London Problems in the News

[anonymous]

Quote

airline analyst Ben Cherniavsky, of financial services company Raymond James, wrote in a research report earlier this month, "The passengers were accommodated in hotel rooms, two 737s were flown in to retrieve them to YEG [Edmonton] and a new engine was delivered (on a chartered 747) to repair the plane."

Does Ben get his payroll cheque on the same date as other WJ employees or is it cut separately?

[FA@AC]

57 minutes ago, anonymous said:

Does Ben get his payroll cheque on the same date as other WJ employees or is it cut separately?

I don't think he was gushing about how well WestJet handled the situation, but rather expressing concern as an analyst about the enormous cost of the recovery for planeloads of people paying very low-yielding fares.

He is a big WestJet cheerleader, though.

[Outside Looking In]

2 hours ago, anonymous said:

Does Ben get his payroll cheque on the same date as other WJ employees or is it cut separately?

Ben has been covering WS for forever and a day and as mentioned earlier he has been a supporter of the product. That said his report seemed to be critical of the 767 issues. Given that fact one might conclude that these issues may be starting to wear on the Brand?  It one thing when your critics keep mentioning your shortfalls and another when your own camp points them out? maybe someone should take a poll to see if any westjetters are avoiding a standby trip on the WB's?

[thor]

It is near impossible to fly to Europe standby on Westjet wide body during the summer months and not for lack of trying.

[boestar]

MrLupin:

Between those heavy maintenance visits there are several smaller maintenance visits performed in the order of every 500 flight hours.  Based on 18 hours a day of flying, that's about once a month.  These inspections should allow for clearing up any discrepancies that are ongoing from the heavy maintenance visit.  Usually these issues are cleared up in fairly short order but yes, some can linger.

There are 3 things working against this program.  Older airframes with an obviously questionable maintenance history, Lack of experience with the type and utilization.  Cleaning up someone elses mess is never easy but in reality the reliability should have been increased by now.  Lack of experience on type is going to be an issue when expanding to different fleet types.  These are not just big 737s, these are early generation digital aircraft....very early. Utilization on long haul flying is also an issue since there is limited downtime to "clean up the mess" unless you have an aircraft to cover off the downtime.  18 hours a day in the air does not leave much time for maintenance.

This is a growth issue.  Growing into an entirely new realm of operation which is vastly different than domestic short haul flying.

 

[mrlupin]

Hi Boestar,

I didn't know Westjet flew these airplanes that much. 18 hours a day is a very high utilization rate for these old birds.

The checks you refer to are A checks. They are usually done on an overnight by a crew of 15-20 technicians. The work performed is mostly servicing, lubrication, and general visual inspection... The depth of check is quite light (compared with heavy maintenance where, gears, flight controls and engines would come off). You would have a hard time compensating for bad heavy maintenance during an A check. The work carried out is just not at the same level.

That having been said, I am sure the teal airline is improving... your assessment is probably correct. A combination of older aircraft that probably needed a more thorough cleaning up, an airline at the lower end of the learning curve for operating and maintaining this older generation aircraft.

 

[DEFCON]

Is anyone capable of 'reliably' flying the type 18 hours a day? Would a spare help, or would that approach destroy the economics of the plan?

 

 

 

[boestar]

1 hour ago, mrlupin said:

Hi Boestar,

I didn't know Westjet flew these airplanes that much. 18 hours a day is a very high utilization rate for these old birds.

The checks you refer to are A checks. They are usually done on an overnight by a crew of 15-20 technicians. The work performed is mostly servicing, lubrication, and general visual inspection... The depth of check is quite light (compared with heavy maintenance where, gears, flight controls and engines would come off). You would have a hard time compensating for bad heavy maintenance during an A check. The work carried out is just not at the same level.

That having been said, I am sure the teal airline is improving... your assessment is probably correct. A combination of older aircraft that probably needed a more thorough cleaning up, an airline at the lower end of the learning curve for operating and maintaining this older generation aircraft.

 

Their utilization may Vary but 18 hours a day is not far off for long haul widebody aircraft.    YYC - LGW alone return is 17.5 hours.

I have not looked deeply at their actual flight schedule and utilization to see what maintenance opportunities there are but with a small fleet like that, there are but a few opportunities to keep up with the maintenance.

This is part of what I do.  I look at this data DAILY to make sure things are up to date and any opportunities are utilized to the fullest.  While our fleet is easy as there are alot of ways to create opportunities. it is more difficult on long haul birds.

As for the A-Checks and Heavy maintenance checks there are different level of Heavy.   A C-Check for example is mostly Visual inspection with some components and interiors removed for access.  Structural Inspection and Overhaul is where the aircraft is disassembled.  Thesea re usually on higher time airframes or airframes on a SLEP program.  The A-Check cycle is used for interim mechanical servicing.  The A-Check opportunity can and should be utilized to clean up ongoing aircraft defects so it is placed cleanly back into service.  I know it doesn't always work that way but that is the desired outcome.

 

[boestar]

1 hour ago, DEFCON said:

Is anyone capable of 'reliably' flying the type 18 hours a day? Would a spare help, or would that approach destroy the economics of the plan?

 

 

 

yes. yes. Maybe

 

[blues deville]

Surely they have some down time built into their 767 schedules to clean up any defects or other recent issues? And 18 hours seems very high for trans-Atlantic ops but I suppose that includes western canada flights. 

[DEFCON]

If the number of cycles were reduced by realigning aircraft routings in a manner that still allowed for high utilization, but eliminated the shorter leg intermediate stops, would that not help with reliability?

[better4me]

There is all ready a lot of slack built into the WS 763 schedule. From the cheap seats it appears the schedule is based on 3 airplanes but they have 4 on the property. Are all four aircraft ever in the air at the same time? 

Couple of simple adjustments:

WS 3/4 (YYZ-LGW), move the arrival into YYZ 2-3 hours earlier and this will provide for about 4 hours maintenance time within a 6 hour window. 

WS 1/2 (YYC-LGW), Current schedule appears to have WS 1/2 swap at LGW with another route.  A quick turn in LGW and perfect slot pair timing in LGW could yield a little bit of time for mtce to look at the aircraft at the gate. However this is where WS would have to place the maintenance spare.

WS 22/23 (YVR-LGW) The longest route and near impossible to schedule slack time because the round trip is 20 hours long. 

I'm not going to bother looking at YEG or YWG to LGW routes as I'm hearing a lot of rumors that both routes will  not be around next summer.

The new SVP Network and Commercial Strategy will likely have summer LGW operations as the first item of business. We should hear shortly what the next steps will be to shore up the operations. 

I'm also hearing a lot of rumors that WS is looking at acquiring additional widebody lift. They have hired a part time Treasury Analyst to run the numbers on a  numerous scenarios for capital raising. This Treasury Analyst reports directly to the CFO and not to VP of Finance for Fleet Mgmt (who is also working full time on the file. 

[boestar]

If they are running with an operational spare then why were 2 737s needed for the rescue mission?  Should the spare not have been thrown in to do that flight?

[better4me]

20 minutes ago, boestar said:

If they are running with an operational spare then why were 2 737s needed for the rescue mission?  Should the spare not have been thrown in to do that flight?

From the Q2-2016 earnings announcement last August, for the fall shoulder season WS is performing additional mtce on the 763 fleet in anticipation of the winter seasonal flying to Hawaii. The additional Q4-2016 mtce plus EU261 compensation and the mtce performed in Q2-2016 will result in a material negative earnings adjustment for 2016. IIRC correctly the extra expenses will pull down CASM by 0.5 cents. 

[AIP]

On 2016-10-03 at 11:02 AM, Malcolm said:

Another rescue flight in the works or have they this time transferred their guests to other carriers?

WS1 left CYYC 6 hours late last night.

Do European compensation rules only apply leaving Europe ???

 

[FA@AC]

2 hours ago, AIP said:

WS1 left CYYC 6 hours late last night.

Do European compensation rules only apply leaving Europe ???

 

They apply to flights departing the EU on any carrier, and to flights arriving in the EU on EU carriers.

WS4 LGW-YYZ was over 4 hours late today.  Likely the aircraft from last night's delayed YYC-LGW.

[Outside Looking In]

The 767 is having the odd rough day in and out of HNL. Any word on the WS 1860/1861 cancellation JAN 7TH?