Hello and welcome to episode 345 of AvTalk. I am Ian Petchnik here as always with Jason

Rabinowitz, and here we are the most interesting of the A340 series of podcast episodes, I think.

This is going to be a long, long episode.

Long, you know, I mean, maybe we dedicate this episode to the aircraft that once upon a time operated the longest haul flight in the world.

The A340, 500, I think the best of the A340s.

We should have John on next week for a debate.

I don't think I will win that debate.

I have, of course, referred to a good friend John Walton who may be the world's biggest

A340 600 fan. So maybe we'll

hear about that next week. This week, we begin in the United States National Airspace System,

which is just this side of a disaster. It's hanging on by a thread, but what else is new?

It seems to be hanging on by less of a thread than usual?

Smaller thread, shorter thread, some metaphor here that winds things around the way they need

to be wound.

I believe there is a lit candle underneath the thread slowly burning

through. Yes. The little pieces of fabric letting it all somehow function, kind of?

So last week, we left things where the Department of Transportation had come out with a plan to cut flights by 10% at 40 major

airports. That was Wednesday when we recorded, where we had just that amount of information

and nothing more. Hey, we weren't alone in that because it turns out the airlines and airports also had no idea

this was coming and kind of shrugged and said, hey, you guys know anything about this?

And everyone else turned around and said, no, because the FAA forgot or just didn't bother to tell

anyone until they announced it to the public, which is super cool.

...