Interesting. My wife and I live along one of the approaches to IND, well away from the airport, but close enough that we can hear the planes if the house is quiet. We'd just mentioned yesterday afternoon that we hadn't heard any planes in the last few days and were wondering if it was because traffic was down. Since most of those late flights we hear are FedEx, though, that seemed unlikely, and we guessed that the winds had just been such that they were coming in the other way.

Then last night we heard a plane on approach. I wonder if our house was in the area that had been shut down and if so if it re-opened last night.

The sector that was shut down covered southeastern Ohio and the western part of West Virginia (see this map).

Of course, it’s very possible that more than one sector in the Indianapolis ARTCC was shut down. After all, this one guy could have easily worked multiple sectors over a few days.

i've heard the ability to park planes in the PacNW is very challenging due to the amount of 737 Max planes already parked.

I am sure that’s true. Boeing Field (just north of SEA) is a parking lot for the Max right now.

Ya I remember driving across the southpark bridge when they first started parking them. I drive over there quite a bit for work and it's quite impressive how many they're able to park.

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i've heard they are also being parked in other locations in the region but can't substantiate it.

While waiting to board EWR -> DEN last week, I saw four (maybe five!) uniformed people come up, tell the gate agent what seat they'd be in, then scan their boarding pass. Most I've ever seen on a flight.

Am I correct in thinking they are probably a) crew that live in Denver, just getting a ride home or b) flying out to Denver to move some planes around, as you mentioned a few days ago?

Once you guys have parked the plane where it's going to stay a while, what's the logistics of getting everyone back to their home base?

They were either scheduled deadheading crew members or they were just off duty and heading home as a non-rev passenger. Lately, non-revs often outnumber revenue passengers.

When I took the plane out to ILN two days ago, the plan was to take ground transportation from ILN to CVG and then deadhead back to JFK, getting back around 4:40. Then I’d have to wait until 9:00 pm for my commute home to DCA, landing after 10 pm.

After parking the plane at ILN, there was confusion about our transportation. My printout of the rotation (the term we use for the trip plan; it includes hotel names and the name of the company providing transportation, along with contact phone numbers) had no information regarding the ground transportation. I finally found out that the person who set up the trip simply dropped the ball. This is not an uncommon occurrence for flights which aren’t normal passenger flights (charter, ferry flights, repositions).

When they finally sent an authorization to the van service, I found that we would have to wait about an hour and forty minutes which would make us miss our scheduled deadhead flight. Obviously unacceptable, so I tried ride share services, but neither the Uber or Lyft app could find a driver (those apps were showing the cost to be around $75). A local cab company I called couldn’t take us because CVG is in Kentucky, but the dispatcher gave my number to a friend of hers who could take us. He charged me $120, which I expensed to Delta. BTW, I didn’t tip him because I figured he had set the price he was happy with.

After getting to CVG, I deviated from my scheduled deadhead and caught a flight direct to DCA on American, getting back at around 7 pm, saving me about three and a half hours. On that flight, there were probably 8 airline employees and two paying passengers. Nobody is flying now unless they have a real need.

Yep, I was just getting back home. Turned out going to Ireland for St. Patrick's Day wasn't such a good idea. (Booked ~ 6 months ago, was there when everything closed up, so scurried home).

What I understand is many big airports have become plane parking lots. Now, we'll have to kind of reverse-distribute them to get them to airports where they're needed in anticipation of a restart in <some time period>?

Did this same sort of sequence happen post-9/11?

When you're doing an airplane move, is that ever treated as a passenger flight? In other words, if somebody needed to go from X to Y, and you're doing a repositioning flight there, would the public be offered a ticket, since they're going that way anyway?

I'm trying to ask if they are something the airline expect $0 revenue, but would take passengers if it worked out by luck.

For these two planes, what is the minimum additional fuel used by a go-around, under ideal circumstances?

The immediate effect of 9/11 is that planes just stayed right where they happened to be and most crews also remained where they were. The crews in Europe stayed there because they had no choice, so they were with the plane when service resumed.

Domestically, some crews got home by other means (e.g. renting a car), so when service restarted it was necessary to get crews to those planes. In the wake of 9/11, a lot of planes were parked due to the reduction in demand by the public. The recovery of the industry was slow and measured so there wasn’t a massive effort as planes were slowly brought back. It was easily planned for.

This one could be different, but it’s not like the public is going to immediately resume past travel habits after this pandemic is “over” (whatever that means and however it’s decided). But it could be a much more accelerated process than what we had in the post-9/11 recovery.

It does occasionally happen, but it’s definitely the exception. They refer to this as “adding an extra section.” However, it’s always the case that we can carry active employees on a simple reposition flight (as opposed to a ferry flight, where the airplane might actually be operating under a special permit with some mechanical deficiency). If we’re repositioning the plane without flight attendants, we can take up to 19 employees along. More than 19 passengers requires the presence of flight attendants on board.

Not long ago, I took a 767 from JFK to ATL with one employee on board.

The approximate fuel required to complete a normal approach from the Final Approach Fix (FAF), which is usually about 5 miles from the runway, is 300 lbs for the 757 and 500 pounds for the 767.

The fuel required for a go-around and return for landing is 2500 lbs (757) and 3000 lbs (767).

So I'm checking flightradar24 from time to time recently, and I keep occasionally seeing Ryanair planes doing simple rounds like this:



What's that about?

If it’s frequent, as you imply, I really can’t imagine. A few months ago, I had a flight kind of like this out of JFK. I took a 767 up to verify a maintenance fix to a problem without some over-wing exits. A mechanic went along and the whole purpose of the flight was to verify that there was no spurious warning about an open exit door. In my flying career, I’ve had maybe 3 such flights. It’s rare.

Is this a maintenance base for RyanAir? If so, that at least makes this scenario more likely.

This is Frankfurt, and RyanAir afaik usually goes to the nearby (~100km) low-cost Airport "Frankfurt-Hahn", which could well be such a maintenance hub, and where I saw this also going down once. Another occasion was in northern Italy, and I think it was also Ryanair.

Maybe some mothballing procedure?

does this have something to do with ryanair making flights to keep their gate position?

On a slightly more cheerful note
The airline that ran the route to Aarhus collapsed.
We had to travel via Sweden unless we were prepared to put up with a day or so in Copenhagen
After a quick turnaround the hostess , who was obviously desperate to get to sleep grabbed hold of me and the only other passenger. Being Danish they spoke perfect English so we got the safety briefing done in double quick time .

Then followed carrot sticks and the realisation that Danes are stupendous map makers
I am not making any of this up

Oops forgot to mention the Swedish air hostess who lost her clothes and insisted on plying me with alcohol
I am coming to the conclusion that my life has not been as dull as I thought it had been

I don't even know what that means.

Airlines need to keep a certain number of flights at an airport to maintain their gate lease. The one that comes to mind is at Dallas Love Field one of the non-SWA airlines operates one flight a day to maintain their gate. They just hold it in care they want to increase the number of flights later on.

Makes sense, but seems wasteful.

Is that really still going on in these CV times?

WOXOF,

Sorry if I missed this, could you describe the procedure for "parking" a plane for an undetermined, extended, period of time?

Do you park it at the gate and maintenance does their thing before taking it out to the parking lot? Are you directed to taxi to it's final destination, before they pick you up w/ one of those ladder trucks?

Do you literally just park it and hop out, or is there some mothball shutdown procedure?

What about when the plane gets called back into service after 6 mos of sitting there? Do they just take you out to the plane in the ladder truck, you flip a bunch of switches, and say "Let's take 'er for a ride boys"?

https://simpleflying.com/delta-south...as-love-field/

I was almost correct. It's 5 flights a day.

The current situation is a little strange because we don’t know how long the planes will be parked. Consider all the planes we have parked on the south runway at Atlanta. That is not a long term parking area, so I suspect it’s just for the duration of this downturn in business. If this goes on long enough, I’m sure those planes will have to be moved elsewhere.

For long term storage, as when 727s were retired from airlines service back in the early 2000’s, planes are usually parked in the desert where the arid climate minimizes deteriorization. Planes parked long term are “pickeled,” meaning that fluids are drained, windows and intakes are covered, and other measures are taken to preserve the plane. The plane might ultimately be resold for parts or to fly again in another part of the world.

When I flew this 767 (tail number N1604R) to ILN, we taxied straight to a ramp area where a maintenance team marshaled us in to position and then put airstairs in place for us to deplane. I performed a normal shutdown and secure checklist just like we do after the last flight of the day. I was told that we were the first of 4 or 5 other planes coming in that day. (btw, I see that 3 more are going to ILN tomorrow.)

I believe these planes will be kept in a ready status for return to service. That means that the APU and engines will be started on some kind of regular schedule. When it’s time to bring them back, I will have no qualms about hopping back in and just flying it back. I’ll just check the logbook to ensure that it has a current Airworthiness sign-off and a Service check.

I hope that day isn’t too far off.