Hello and welcome to episode 346 of AvTalk. I am Ian Pachanick here, as always with.

Jason Rabinowitz. Hello, Ian. Welcome to the 346th episode, or as we're going to call it, the A340600 spectacular.

Indeed, indeed, indeed. As we are preparing for this momentous occasion, we have later in the show, John Walton, who is professionally the editor-in-chief

of the Up Front, a in-cabin-cabin-focused publication about all of the things that are happening

inside the aircraft in the sky. But we've got them on today because John is probably the foremost

officiato civilian expert

on the A340600.

And it's a most interesting airplane and a microcosm of how things got developed back

in the late 90s, early 2000s.

So we'll talk about that.

You might even learn a thing or two.

We might even learn a thing or two.

I know I did. So we'll talk with

John in just a little bit. But first, we begin in Washington with the Federal Aviation

Administration withdrawing its order mandating cancellations at the Focus 40 airports. I didn't know these particular airports had a name,

but they do in fact have a name. Well, now we know and we're going to use it forever. Yeah.

So I knew that there was the Core 30, which are the Core 30 airport. I mean, these aren't

inventive names in the National Airspace system, but there's an expanded list of 40 airports.

The FAA apparently did not choose these.

There was a method, a pre-method for choosing these 40 airports, and they're called the

Focus 40.

So now we know.

...