110724 - Jay Ratliff

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Of Jay Ratler for Aviation and Travel expert on the hotline.
He is waiting patiently, Jay Ratlff, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Sir, pleasing, good morning, And I can wait as long
as you need to, my friend. That's new problem at all,
especially when you're talking about the great work you're doing
across the pond.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Well, I appreciate it, but I realized that I told
you that, Hey, Jay, we're not on next week, and
then the next week I'm in Africa. Way wait, the
next week's Thanksgiving. So and you're like, hey, that's December
the fifth. I'm like, how can it already be December?
I mean, this is our last time to convene on
the radio since December.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
But well, and I'm glad you mentioned it because it
was my reminder because we wanted to throw it just
a couple of dollars at you to help with the
getting the gifts together for the kids, especially for that
time of year. So I am told that's been taking
care of this morning, sir. So yeah, thank you for
all you do.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I appreciate you, my friend. You're always very good to us. Jay.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
And yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm going I'm
going over this time to help do some Christmas shopping
because you know, we buy the gifts for the kids,
we buy shoes.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
It's not like there's a foot locker.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
You just got to go to these little markets and
fine shoes and there's no not like a shoe sizer
at the school.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
I don't know if you'd take one, because they don't.
They wouldn't know. They usually here's how they do it.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
They get sticks and they mark the sticks and they
mark which kid is which mark on the shoe, and
that's how they actually we go to the market and
they'll be they'll be getting the shoes the right size
by the markers on the stick.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, you know when you look at a what they have,
and if you've ever been on a mission trip where
you give things to people or kids, especially one the
very smallest of things means the world to them. And
the other thing is they look at you like why
are you here? Why do you care? So you know
that that kind of work is something that for anybody
that's been on trips like that, it's a life changing

(01:37):
event because you recognize a how fortunate we have it
as Americans, and b what our responsibility is to try
to help, even if it's just a little bit, with
the means that we have.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I got word. You'll be happy to know this, Jake,
because you're so generous to what we do. I got
word from a lady I met with. Her name is Vernetta,
and she owns a company called Budget Home Supply in Longmont.
And she heard what we were doing. She says, we
know we build houses for her Habitat for Humanity. We're
gonna put them a home. She said, I put a
check in the mail four thousand bucks. She's building a
home for a lady. And this lady, I said, well,

(02:08):
let me tell you who it is. Her name is Rose.
Rose is the survivor of the Rwandan genocide. She's in
her sixties, but she's a widow and she takes care
of orphans and she has about four in her care.
And she says she doesn't know she's getting a house.
I'm gonna announce it to her next week when we're there,
and she's gonna get to find out. But she said,
if I ever get a house, I'll take care of
two more kids at least. But right now, taking care

(02:29):
of orphans like she does, she finds lodging the only
place she's if it starts raining, she tries to find
a local Catholic school that will let her sneak in
and have coverage. Other than that, she and the kids
sleep under open sky with the banana leaves on top
of them.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
And I cannot wait to see the pictures of that
incredible blessing. You're able to tip a stop on them
by the graciousness of somebody that really cares. That's a
great story.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, it's fun. So yeah, she messed Banda messaged me
yesterday budget homes buy. She said, I'm sitting in a
check in the mail and we'll do that. I announced.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I told my guys, I said, everybody bring your cell
phone be charged. That day we're going to record the
big announcement here. And I told him, I said, if
you get the construction crew there, let's start building. Man,
they build that thing for room home. Anyway, all that said,
I'll be gone next week. Will reconvene after this, Jay Rab,
you sent me an interesting story if I can pull
up my computer here in the right direction. First of all,
we've had snow and cold in Colorado, so let's start

(03:23):
with what's it like to travel across the country today.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Is anybody else used in.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, you guys are the only problem children of the day.
I wish you get your act together there. So I get,
I understand it's it's you know, November. But right now,
anybody traveling across the country, if they're going through Denver,
they're going to hit some delays. The rest of the
country is you know, they're behaving themselves today.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
We're being problematic. We also voted problematically here too, but that's.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
How that tends to happen from time to time. That's okay, all.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Right, Now, yesterday the airline prices went up. As a matter
of fact, this stock market as a whole, which you
followed intimately, really soared big time gains. Talk about airline stock.
So how was that tied into the presidential election?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, you know, well, I mean, look, I'll never forget
the first time President Trump was elected back in twenty sixteen,
the markets dropped because markets had uncertainty. And I mean
at one point in time they were down one thy
twelve hundred points or whatever crazy thing it was overnight
because nobody saw that Trump election coming that way. And

(04:24):
of course, by the time the opening bill got there,
by nine thirty. The next morning, the futures were down
like two hundred and fifty points, but by the end
of that first day they actually were up by two
or three hundred points because the stock market understood, well,
wait a minute, this is a businessman, and if he
applies that business sense to the administration of this country,

(04:45):
it's going to be good for business. So obviously the
stock market took off after that. This time around much
less of a surprise. But when they did determine that
he was going to be the president, we saw the
markets really left off yesterday. But one thing bothered me,
and that was that the airline stocks started to soar.
Now I love to see that, but when I started
digging into why you know you and I, you've heard

(05:08):
me say on more than one occasion I am not
a fan at all about the Bide administration. But you've
also heard me say several times that I give the
Bide administration credit for going after the airline industry more
than any other administration that I've seen in twenty five years.
And this audience knows. I say, Look, I'll give them
credit when there's credit due, but I'll certainly disagree otherwise. Well,

(05:30):
the airlines were held accountable because of the Bide administration
actually forced to deliver painfully so something called customer service.
But the reason the airline stocks yesterday were going up
was because investors saw a future where the airline industry
would be under less scrutiny, less pressure, perhaps a little
less oversight. And for me, that's a very bad thing,

(05:53):
because I want this to continue. I don't want us
to take our foot off the accelerator and start to
allow airlines get to go back to this thing where
they can kind of treat this like garbage and get
away with it. I want there to be consequences. I
want there to be oversight, and I want the airlines
to recognize that they are responsible for delivering customer service.
So when I saw that yesterday, I cringe just a bit,

(06:14):
my friend, because I do not want to go back
yep to having these airlines getting away with all the
stuff that they've gotten away with for far too long.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Of course, Pete Budageg is our secretary of Transportation. Now,
if my memory serves me correctly, Trump had Laine Chow,
who is Mitch McConnell's wife.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
She was the Secretary of Transportation.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
I have not heard anybody's name being floated, but that
would be I guess the determining factor as to who
are the policies that are going to be engaged with
the airline. As to who will be the transportation secretary,
I'm guessing it's not going to be anybody apfeling with
Mitch McConnell this time.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
I'm assuming so. But you know, the other thing is
it's going to come down from the top, and you
know when. The other concern I have is, of course Boeing.
Boeing is a company that got away with two too
too much stuff for far too long. And some of
this has to do with their influence, because look, they've
got fifteen billion dollars in defense contracts, and when you've

(07:10):
got a company with that much, sometimes the oversight is
kind of a wink wink, come on, let's do a
better job kind of a thing. Instead of consequences, they're painful.
And when you have two plane crashes like Boeing had
that killed three hundred and forty six people and you
are fined and not allowed to have that go to
public trial, I'm sorry, that's a misservice to the people

(07:33):
that lost their loved ones. It should have been a trial,
There should have been a lot of that stuff exposed
for what it was. But Boeing was able to say
we never, we won't do it again, we promise, and
paid a hefty fine in a way they went. And
then of course we have the door plug blow off
of the Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year, obvious that
Boeing's up to the same stuff they've done before, which

(07:53):
screams out where's the oversight. In fact, that National Transfertation
Safety Board this week released their report on that last
Airlines like twelve eighty one from January fifth. It was
a six hundred page report. And the NTSB are the
all stars. They're the ones that dive into any accident
or near accident. They investigate it and then they give
the FAA a list of recommendations on improvements to the

(08:17):
industry that can be made to make aviation safer. Typically
they'll give five, ten, fifteen, twenty thirty different recommendations. The
FAA kind of goes on and they may implement one
of them if we're lucky. But now the NTSB said
that the Alaska Airline situation brought about because of a
lack of needed oversight on Boeing and their suppliers, and

(08:41):
I just hope that we can we can turn that
around because I just we cannot allow any company that's
involved in transportation and especially safety to be allowed to
not do everything they're required to do.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
And then some Now Boeing for a while will wrap
up here, But Boeing get for a while was announcing
some leadership changes and they were really going to get
their act together. Then the spotlight's not been on him
as much. We haven't heard as many headlines recently. What's
the latest status at Boeing. They have They changed out
enough of the top tier to get some things righted
in on the bottom levels.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Well, the new CEO is a man that is a
well he's an engineer, that's his mindset. They got rid
of the leadership that was being counters. This is a
guy that rolls up his sleeves, walks the floor, talks
to the people. And believe me, if there's anybody that
can turn this around, he is probably the best person
for it. Of course, one of the things that they
did was to get rid of their DEI department, the

(09:37):
Diversity and Inclusion department. Boeing kind of went the same
route as John Deere, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson, and so
many others saying, look, we're all about diversity, we're all
about inclusion, but we're not going to make that a mandate.
It's a lot like our friends at United Airlines who
said we are going to hire x percentage of pilots
that are either women or minorities. Now, problem is the

(10:00):
pool isn't that big. So what's going to happen is
you're going to have an opening at United where you're
going to have two candidates. Let's say one that has
twelve thousand flight hours, maybe he's a man, and a
woman that has two thousand flight hours. They're both qualified
to be pilots. My question is which one do you
want on the flight deck. I want the one with
the most experience. United, because they're pushing this, would be

(10:22):
forced to check the box of the one with less
hours because of the man that they put on themselves.
So that's one of the reasons that Boeing said, Look,
we're only interested in finding the most qualified people, the
best people, and obviously we want them to be a
diversified group of people. If the qualifications dictated, if not.
We're not going to force it, and certainly a lot

(10:44):
of companies are returning to that. I wish the FAA
and their search of air traffic controllers would take that
same approach, because right now they've lowered the standards greatly
in oops. At the same time, we're seeing a lot
of near misses this year. Hopefully those two aren't combined,
but it's certainly something we have to consider.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Jay Ratliffe. It's always a pleasure, my friend. I'm sure
you and I will chat before in between here and there,
but for the radio listeners we will reconvene together in December.
My friend, I appreciate all you've done, and I did
just get a thumbs up that this all your generous donation.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Thank you, my friend.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
God bless you my pleasure and safe travels. And obviously
you've got my cell number if you encounter anything you
need some assistance with you.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Got it, my friend. I appreciate you, Jay Ratliffe,