IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Look cord to this time of dayon Thursdays because we get to talk to
iHeart media aviation expert Jay Ratliffe.Unless he's otherwise indisposed. Today he's not.
He's here to talk about a bunchof different stories. Welcome back,
my dear friend, Jay Ratliffe.Pleasant good morning and always a pleasant positive
message from you Lord. Thank youfor today. I may not get another
day, but today I will bethankful for what you have given me.

(00:21):
So there's your sentiment for today.I'm always uplifted by your Facebook messages,
so it's always a good place toturn for inspiration. Those are reminders to
me more than anything. No one'sworse than me. I can hand out
decent advice, but living the orwalking the walk and talking to talk quite
often impossible to reconcile. But I'msurrounded by doom and gloom news, so

(00:43):
it's tough for me to remain optimisticabout life. But can I take your
stories out of order? Can westart with Boeing please? Okay? Because
I saw the article this this thismorning about Boeing being downgraded to one notch
above junk. I looked at thestock this morning. It dropped person scipitously.
Yesterday almost three percentage point dropped,trading at one hundred and sixty four
bucks, when Geese not even sixmonths ago is trading at two hundred and

(01:07):
sixty four bucks. And now we'vegot it downgraded to one notch above junk.
Along with this quote from the Boeingwhistleblower, which came from your notes,
everyone who steps aboard a Boeing airplaneis at risk. What the hell
is going on? Jay? Well, I remember you and I talked several

(01:29):
weeks ago when you had indicated,as I recall, that a listener had
Boeing stock it was down and wasit, you know, a decent buy
it to whatever it was two thirtyeight, two twenty eight, And at
the time you and I said,hmm, probably not, because it's not
what we know right now about Boeing. It's what we don't know. And
that's always been my concern with Boeingbecause they have been so deceptive for the

(01:53):
last five, six, seven years, and a company that is that way
doesn't turn things around overnight, andthere's always something else. So when you
see that stock go from two fiftyas it was before, the kind of
the beginning of the year down toone hundred and sixty four dollars and thirty
three cents a share right now.Yeah, they continue to be under a
great deal of pressure. And thatquote was attributed to a whistleblower that appeared

(02:16):
before Capitol Hill last week saying,look, if things don't change, that's
exactly what we're looking at. Andthe whole situation is that this engineer from
Boeing, who's a part of along line of people that have come forward
that used to work for Boeing orsaying, look, the things that we're
doing, the practices that we havesimply are not safe. We're more interested

(02:39):
at Boeing in the schedule of thedelivery than we are in safety. And
his comments was when he was workingon the Boeing seven eighty seven Dreamliner production
line, he would see people jumpingup and down on parts trying to get
him to fit. Yeah, andpeople being rewarded for being able to use
parts that were previously in the scrapmen over when he did what Boeing CEOs

(03:02):
all these years have said, pleasebring us your concerns blah blah blah blah
blah, he did, and hewas reprimanded and put on the to work
for another aircraft, the seven sevenseven line to get him out of there.
And you know it's what message doesthat send? And it just reminds
me sadly of nineteen eighty six.NASA was so involved in a rush to

(03:24):
launch mindset that they skip step safetysteps. And I tell you right now,
my biggest concern is it going totake a Challenger type public disaster for
us to finally get Boeing where theyneed to be, Because remember, Brian,
we talked about this five years agowhen Boeing had the two Max crashes
where they were deceptive, lied to, withheld information from FAA inspectors, airlines

(03:47):
and pilots. They replaced the CEOand we were told those days were behind
them, no more of this sloppyproduction rush to schedule. We will return
to the Boeing of old pair graphafter paragraph after paragraph or promises, and
now here we are, all theseyears later, and guess what they're doing
the same crap they were doing before. And the FAA who promised us five

(04:10):
years ago that they were going tobe on Boeing like never before in oversight
making sure they're doing exactly what theyshould be doing. Neither party seems to
have done what they were supposed tohave done, and here we are with
Boeing with their stock continuing to drop. The last time you and I talked
about a Boeing stock nearing one hundreddollars a share was the pandemic when it

(04:30):
dropped to ninety nine dollars a share. Yeah, yeah, being heading back
in that direction, good lord.And it's kind of been a steady to
sense, sadly, and I don'tknow what it's going to take. You
can't ground every Boeing seven thirty sevenMax aircraft, nor can you ground the
Dreamliner because the shock to this economywould put us back for two years.

(04:53):
So what you've got to do ishope that Boeing's production has slowed, which
the FAA has done, thank you, making sure they can only produce so
many airplanes in a given month,and making sure that the planes that are
produced are done so up to specs, using parts not from the scrap bend,
but from wherever, tools not beingleft behind in the aircraft, and

(05:13):
the floorboards and other things that airlinemechanics find down the road. Making sure
that everything is exactly as it needsto be. The problem is when Boeing
was taken over by a bean counterversus an engineer, everything changed twenty years
ago where you saw Boeing start toshift its mindset more to a CEO who
is interested in profit than they werein the actual delivery of aircraft. And

(05:38):
when you deliver sloppy products for aperiod of time and nothing happens, human
complacency says, doesn't matter. Let'skeep doing it. Let's try to close
the gap between us and our Europeancounterpart as much as possible, to try
to make up because they're kicking ourbutt right now. Well, this is
what happens when you provide these kindof sloppy products with some assembly required.

(06:00):
When we get to the airline andbring Jay Ratliff back got a near miss
incident on a runway. Who isallowed in the in the county five K
the talk station. Have you everbeen in the cockpit before, Jay Ratliff,
hass the's are iHeartMedia aviation expert ofcourse talking aviation and we're talking about,
well, who is allowing the cockpitduring a flight? There? Jay,

(06:23):
it's only the pilot and the copilotor the train train people are supposed
to be in there. That's it. And flight attendants as they pop in
and out, because we never leavethe cockpit with just one person. So
if one of the two crew membersthe pilots need to use the lavatory,
one steps out, lead flight attendantsteps in, doors closed right behind them.
And ever since nine to eleven,we've had the idea of okay,

(06:46):
a reinforced cockpit and no unauthorized personnelin the on the flight deck at any
time. And of course you hada Colorado Rockies charter flight. That's a
flight that was you know, hired, chartered for hire by the Rockies baseball
team. They're flying Denver to Toronto, and during the course of the flight,
the cockpit door was opened for peopleto look in, which is a

(07:10):
violation of the FAA security protocol.And then for whatever the reason, the
hitting coach was asked, hey,you want to sit in one of the
pilot seats. So during the courseof the flight, one of the pilots
gets up, the hitting coach sitsthere and he's having the time of his
life. And of course, aswe all have to do it with every
breathing moment of our life, wehave to document everything for social media.

(07:31):
Brian, I can't help but thinkthat the two pilots, knowing how many
things they broke from a security standpoint, they had to have said to these
people, don't take pictures, don'ttake video and buy it whatever you do,
don't post anything. But of coursewe can't help ourselves because if we
don't post it, it didn't happen. So the video goes viral. United

(07:55):
Management sees it, they suspend thetwo pilots, and think about United Management.
They had nothing but headache after headacheafter headache, with all these headlines,
and you got two pilots that totallydisregards a security protocol. Then the
FAA here is about it. Nowthey're opening up an investigation, all because
somebody just couldn't help themselves. Theyhad to post it, and they did.

(08:16):
It's like an addiction you've seen people, have you. Have you ever
gone to a restaurant and seen mom, dad, two kids sitting there all
staring at their phones. Oh yeah, I just I look at that and
I'm thinking, in ten years,parents, you're gonna sit there and just
wish you'd have that opportunity again.And if you did, I doubt all
four of you were staring at yourstupid phones. Amen to that. Oh
my god, I'm telling you,Manana, you don't do that near my

(08:39):
wife. Oh my god. Ifyou pull your phone at you better damn
well have an unbulletproof reason for doingit at dinner time. Anyhow, near
miss on the runway, I sawthis, Like, I know we're gonna
be talking to Jay about this.Is this Swiss air flight? Is that
the one you're talking about in thisYeah, the the one up in it
was DC where we have a JetBlue flight cleared for takeoff and a Southwest

(09:03):
flight that was cleared to taxi acrossthat same active runway at the same time.
Now, when you listen to theaudio on this, and it's it's
striking. You hear both airlines aircrewsgiven permission to do what they were doing,
and the next thing you know,you started hearing air traffic controllers in
the background screaming stop, and Imean there is urgency in their voice because

(09:24):
the Jet Blue flight, which hadjust been cleared for takeoff, is starting
their roll down the runway, buildingup speed at a time when the Southwest
seven thirty seven is starting to crossthe runway and they're screaming at both crews
to stop. Both both did,and what ended up taking place was the
Southwest crew quickly told air traffic Controlthey were the ones that are going to

(09:46):
be looked at because they were theones crossing an active runway. They said,
look, we were given permission todo what we were doing. And
of course an FAA file has beenopened to look into it, but clearly
here was it was an air trafficcontrol air And when you listen to the
Federal Aviation Administration, who late lastyear reported that seventy seven percent of their

(10:07):
air traffic control centers are considered tobe understaffed, with a lot of men
and women working mandatory overtime. Imean, clearly a lot of these people
are just exhausted. I don't knowif that was the case here or not.
Thankfully they caught their mistake in time. But we had nineteen serious runway
incursions last year. And of coursethat number may not seem like a lot

(10:30):
when you're talking about nine or tenmillion departures in the course of a year,
but what you're looking at is nineteenopportunities where we could have had just
a horrific situation take place. Sothe FA is going to do what they
can to try to hire as manyqualified people as they can. But Brian,
you and I talked about maybe ayear and a half ago where the

(10:50):
FAA decided that they wanted to becomemore inclusive, so instead of having college
graduates only and people that passed avery stringent entry exam, would drop the
bar and pretty much allow anybody inif they wanted to be an air traffic
controller. My concern then, asit is now, is what level of
expertise are we dealing with with alot of these people. Plus the added

(11:11):
concern of, Okay, if we'vegot an increased number of flights that we're
looking at in the future, verynear future, and we don't have enough
qualified people, what's going to happenwhen we hire a lot of people just
to fill the holes. It's goingto take a while for us to get
back to where we need to be. And obviously those concerns remain. Well,
this may come as good news tosome folks. Airlines now, I
guess's going to be required to refundpassengers for delayter canceled flights and they just

(11:35):
can't give you a voucher anymore fora future flight. Oh no, No,
those Shenanigans are over. And youknow I've said this before and I'll
say it again and people hate mefor it. But look, I am
not a fan of the Biden administration, but they have gone after airlines like
nobody's business. And yesterday the DepartmentTransportation announced that, yeah, the airlines
are going to be required to quicklyreturn money to passengers for delayed and canceled

(11:58):
flights. Is under these rules,airlines are gonna have to issue these full
refunds all the taxes, all thefees within seven business stays that we paid
for it with a credit card,now three weeks if we paid for it
in some other way where they've gotto mail us a check. But these
refunds are going to take place whena flight is significantly delayed, and I
don't think this has to do withweather delays with something that can control with

(12:22):
the airlines, And if it's athree hour delay or longer for US carriers
domestically, or six hours for internationalflights, these kick in. And it
also goes on to say, look, if you don't get your bag within
twelve hours, you're going to haveyour bag fees refunded. Plus the airlines
are going to be a lot more, have to be upfront on what the
fees are before you buy a ticket, being a lot more transparent. Now.

(12:43):
Airlines have fought these types of thingsfor years and their very powerful lobbying
group has been able every single timeto have this from arriving. And even
with all those efforts, we nowhave it. These kick in I believe
Ladock October and again, since theairlines hated as much as they do,
I absolutely love it because think ofit. When they would give us those

(13:05):
vouchers, when they would mess updelay a fly cans, they would just
they'd hand them out like candy.Most of them had a one year expiration
date, and most airlines knew thatwhat five, six, eight percent of
the people were going to use them. It's like writing a check to a
bunch of people knowing less than tenpercent of them are going to cash it.
Yeah, so there's no incentive forthem to change how they treat us.
But now or it's going to comeout of their pockets quickly. This

(13:30):
is going to bring about some neededchanges and hopefully we'll get the airlines a
little bit more operationally sound when theycan control things knowing they simply can't throw
vouchers at us, and you knowgo from there, all right, real
quick hub delays, as we alwaysconclude on Jay yeato Seattle, don't go
there. A lot of rain,a lot of delayed flights. Resid County
in great shape. So if youpicked today, you picked a good day

(13:52):
to fly. It's always a goodday talking to you, Jay. I
look forward to the segment every week, and I am already looking forward to
next Thursday. At this time.You have a wonderful weekend, my friend.
I'll look forward to talking to youmean as well. Thank you,
Thanks brother. Eight fifty to fiftyfive KRCIT talk station getting you talked about Herbert Motors