IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

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Time for the nine first warning weatherforecast mostly Sunday. I'll though this is
light chance of afternoon showers. Wegot a high of eighty four down to
sixty five, overnight low humidity Tomorrowwith a high of eighty five over nine
down to sixty four, and Saturdaysunny and ninety seventy one. Right now,
time for a traffic update from theUcgut Traffic Center. The future of

(00:24):
care is happening now through clinical trialsand innovative treatments. I'd give patients of
chance from better outcomes. Visit uchealth dot com. Northbound seventy five starting
to clear between Florence Am Downtown fromthe earl of r accident of buttermilk left
Laney is now open. Northbound fourseventy one continues heavy from before Grand and
West two seventy five break lights boardscorner to an accident before Montgomery Road on

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the right. Chuck Ingram on fiftyfive krc the talk station A thirty fifty
five KRCD talk station, A veryvery happy Friday, You too, always
made happier because this is the timeof week we get to talk to.
iHeartMedia Aviation. Next for Jay Rattleft Jay, Welcome back to the morning
show. My friends always read wonderfulhaving you on the show. Any pleasant,
good morning. Have we gotten overCrowdStrike yet? Let's see. Delta's

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kind of been the one we've beenwatching of late, and yesterday they had
a decent day. I think yesterdaythey Delta only canceled I think it was
what fifty four flights, which wasnot bad. They had twelve hundred and
thirty eight that were delayed, butthat's okay. It's the cancelations. It's
a big number. But fran Deltais kind of known as the carrier that

(01:37):
is known around the world as theone that has the best completion factor.
They cancel fewer flights than anyone.I remember a time when Delta went one
hundred consecutive days without a single flightcancelation anywhere on the planet. Wow.
And this past weekend they had fivethousand in a week. Can you imagine
having more cancelations in a two orthree day period of time, then you

(02:00):
have the entire year. That's howbad it was for Delta and other airlines.
It started with the low cost carriersfor some reason, on Thursday evening
after six and then come Friday,morning, we had Delta United Americans just
grounded for a period of time untilthey were able to get things back up
and running. Delta's transition was slowedbecause they were having issues with their crew

(02:23):
scheduling program as I understand it,and the communication between the systems wasn't as
rapid as it needed to be.They were doing some things manually. It
was an absolute mess. Now youknow. The one airline that was zero
affected, which Southwest. No kidding, because let me tell you why.
They computers are thirty four years old, so they're so old they didn't need

(02:46):
the updates. So they were theonly ones. Like, yeah, what
you think of us now? SoI mean it's using Apple or something like
that, didn't use crowdst Oh no, no, no, they got their
final quarter floppy ins drive still working. I tell you frequently. The seven
forty seven still receive upgrades in thecockpit using floppy discs. Oh that's hard

(03:07):
to believe. Well, on somethat's exactly the case, so you know,
but they're used for cargo and thoseare beautiful airplanes, but they're gas
guzzlers, four big engines, andthat's why around the world, for the
most part, they've been taken outof passenger service. Like here in the
US, you still have several carriersthat are flying them around the world from
a passenger standpoint, but no,sadly those have been relegated for the most

(03:30):
part of cargo aircraft. And justwhat a beautiful airplane it is. They
still using a vacuum tubes in there. Hurry, crank pedal. Yeah,
it's something, but I say,for a lot of people that I've talked
to, it's the favorite aircraft tofly, no doubt. Anyhow, it's
just a shocking illustration to me.Moving aside from you know it obviously it

(03:53):
impacted airlines, but so many businessesaround the world were impacted by this one
single company and one single upgrade tothis one single cybersecurity system. It just
freaks the hell out of me considering, you know, the other implications,
like if something else were to crash, something that we all use and you
know, like cryptocurrency or something,what happens there was a glitch on that,

(04:14):
how do you possibly you can't buyanything, You couldn't fly a plane
over the weekend because of this.It's just blah. Computer. It is
a reminder of that when things gowrong, even in a little way.
Our life can be impacted in abig way. And you know, we
talk about stocks all the time,and one of the things you do is
you diversify. You never have toomuch one in one security and when you
have too much dependence on a certainthing, which for us is automation and

(04:40):
computer and you know, as we'removing more towards the artificial intelligence and going
deeper in that regard, it's there'ssome very concerning things as you go down
that road, because if they dobackfire, if they do shut down,
if they're out for whatever period oftime, if they're hacked, or something
like this just happens where you hadmistakes that were made. Yeah, it's

(05:00):
something. And you talk about thehundreds of thousands of passengers, not only
from Delta but other airlines around thecountry where people for three and four days
that were desperately trying. We stillhave some people now at airports that are
trying to get there, and theones that have gotten a hold of me,
I've told them, look, thebest option is to give the ancient
alternatives. If you're trying to getto Orlando, tell them, look,

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Daytona Beach is okay, Tampa's okay, Saint Bete's okay, I'll go to
Jacksonville as long as I can renta cart my expense to get there.
And you always make sure there's oneavailable, trying to give them options because
the idea of every plane nearly beingfilled already because of the busy summer travel
season, and then you have aflight cancels at one hundred and three people,
we're you gonna put them. Imean, there's just no place to

(05:44):
put them. It's almost six thousandflights too. That's just an or delta
you've got. I mean again,are the number one airline and completion factor,
and that's why a lot of people, including me, making my carrier
of choice because I can count ongetting I'm always going to try to catch
you first flight out in the daybecause your chances of that being on time

(06:05):
are far greater than a flight laterin the day that may come after a
day of weather delays that sad layare going to catch up on that three
or four or five pm flight.So all right, well, we'll bring
Jay Ratliffe back. In the nextsegment, we'll talk about Katman Dude,
an Apaul plane crash, American Airlinesflight attendants reporting a deal among other topics
with Jay Ratliff, he thirty fiveif you've have a kirc detaxation, and

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with iHeartMedia Aviation expert Jay Ratler.So we're good to cot Man New real
quick, Jay, And I don'tknow if you know anything about our military
defense or nor Rad or anything.I don't know if you saw it right

(08:18):
before Biden's speech last night, therewere two Russian TU ninety five bear bombers
along with two Chinese H six bombersfound off the coast of Alaska. We
had to scramble our jets and interceptthem to keep them from coming into our
airspace or something like that. Thatjust scary in and of itself. But
you know the fact that the Chineseand the Russians apparently coordinating bomber runs near

(08:39):
the coast of Alaska, that's freaky. And knowing we're going to do absolutely
nothing about it. I mean,if you if you have certain people in
that in that Oval office, thosetypes of things tend to not happen.
Thank you for putting an exclamation pointon the subtle point I was making,
Jay Ratler. All right, let'sgo over to Catman do what the hell?

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Only one survivor and what an amazingthing that anybody could survive. Yeah,
this was a flight out of Catmandou and it was a napollion airline,
SAA Airlines, and it was aregional jet. It was a CRJ
Bombardier two hundred series. It's thefifty passenger jet that we came to know

(09:22):
under COMMA air. It's taking offbecause this particular aircraft, it was taken
out of passenger service and they weretaking it to another location for some maintenance
work to be done. So onthis flight you had nineteen total souls on
board, You had fifteen technicians,you had two extra crew members, and
you had two family members that weretraveling along, so nineteen altogether. And

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the video from the airport's just terrific. It takes off and it doesn't get
much altitude at all before it banksto one side and slams into the ground.
Of course, fully fueled up inflames, it goes and amazingly the
captain survives. Now the family asof the last report I saw of what
everyone on board this airplane, whichagain I guess you can consider mostly company
employees or contractors. They're trying tofind out what the maintenance issue was on

(10:09):
this aircraft they were going to fix, and it was serious enough that it
should have been fixed before takeoff,So a lot of questions right now,
and sadly no answers. And youknow, Nepoll's not known for its exemplary
safety record an so, yeah,and that's one of the reasons. If
you're flying to different parts of theworld where you're kind of thinking, I
don't know any of these airlines,go to the State Department's website and they

(10:33):
have lists of airlines that we shouldconsider avoiding. That's all this airline was
on there. But it's always goodwhen you're traveling because those advisories from the
State Department can really come out orcome in handy. Now they'll tell us
which parts of the world we shouldavoid or which one have a heightened risk
where we need to be aware.And so for a lot of people that
like to take some of those exotictrips, and you know sharing I've been

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on several of them, one ofthe things you do as your homework is
to find out if the airline you'reflying you need to look out for.
So, because when we were inChina for two weeks, one of the
airlines was Lucky Air and I canpromise you I checked out Lucky Air in
China before we got anywhere near it. I imagine that's just tempting fate in
China. Well, Lunky Air soundadvice in terms of to my listeners that

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the State Department has a list ofthings to avoid in terms of airlines.
That's uh oh, yes, that'ssolid information right there, Thank you,
Jay. And you know, itreminds me that what Lenyard skinnered crash.
I mean they knew the plane hadneeded had problems, and yet they got
on anyway and flew it. Imean, is this crash directly related to
the problems that this plane was goingto be treated for or do We don't
know yet. We don't know it'sway because it may have been another mechanical

(11:41):
issue, could have been pilot airIt could have been a lot of different
things that might have taken place,and it could have been in the speed
suggests not but one of the thingsto look at it was there any contaminations
in the fuel. I mean,if water gets in the fuel, it
can it can cause the engines tostop working. But the way this thing
banked and fell, it looked likesome thing more than that, because then
the aircraft turns into a glider andthe pilots have to find it what limited

(12:05):
altitude the rat a way to getthat airplane on the ground safely. Here
the crew didn't have any time atall, it would appear from what happened.
And there's lots of times that wehave mechanical issues on aircraft that are
deferable. They're not considered a nogoo situation where yeah, we've got this
situation, it's not something that's goingto be directly tied into the actual operation

(12:26):
of the aircraft, and we candefer it till this aircraft gets to the
next maintenance. Of that way,we don't have to cancel the flight.
So if you see an airplane,it's a lot like when people look out
the window and they see what appearsto be duct tape on the wings.
It's not. It's the high speedaviation tape. And what happens is sometimes
one of the many thousands and thousandsof rivets we have that are on the

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aircraft, maybe a couple of themcome off and there might be a slight,
you know, a flap issue whereyou've got with the caling engine or
something that is kind of bouncing backand forth. We slapped that high speed
tape on there by the mechanics thenuntil it gets to the next maintenance facility
that's taken off. In those thoserivets are replaced or installed. So a
lot of times you see that,you're thinking, oh my gosh. You

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know, they take the engine nownand it's a deferbile item. It's something
that's very well controlled and the pilotsand the mechanics in the airlines make sure
that everything is safe as it needsto be, so you don't panic.
It's it's not duct tape. Ipromise high speed aviation tape. Well,
i'd say a rose just go andyou'll see tons of pictures of this stuff

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with people freaking out they look outthe window. I just say a Rose
Blane in the name would still smellsweet. I still say it's a duct
tape. Anyway, moving on,I can call it that. It's not
a lot more expensive than duct tape, I imagine. So let's move to
the Southwest airplane. I thank godthis one didn't crash into the ocean to
one hundred and fifty feet. Brian, We've talked about Southwest four different times

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on them. Yeah, we hadthe flight out of Honolulu, took off,
got to a thousand feet and thenall of a sudden started to send
to four hundred feet before they correctedthe altitude and decided to come back to
land in Honolulu. Then we hada flight into Omaha that was supposed to
be at three thousand feet nine milesout, they were buzzing a neighborhood at
twelve thirty in the morning at fivehundred feet. Then there was another situation.
Then we had this one going intoTampa, which the aircraft I think

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was supposed to be at two thousandfeet or so and they were at one
hundred and seventy like fifty three metersor something off the ground, dangerously low.
And you have time after time aftertime where even with all the technology
that's at the disposal of this highlytrained crew, we've had multiple situations that,
for whatever the reason, the aircraft, yes they're boeing, but they're

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on final approach into some of theseairports are taking off and there's a very
serious altitude issue, and I can'tbegin to explain or try to understand what's
causing it. Because airlines in thecockpit, you've got so many redundant type
things that you can look at,one of them being the pilots who are
going to know when you're one hundredand eighty feet off the ground when you're

(14:54):
many miles from the airport. That'sjust it shouldn't be happening, but you
can used to it. And theFAA has opened up a safety audit to
try to find out exactly what's goingon here, and they need to because
this is unbelievably scary. Yeah,I'd have to change my shorts after I
got off a flight to front droppeddown one hundred and fifty feet. When

(15:15):
it happened to Honolulu, I thought, okay, they came back because they
said there was quote weather issues.I don't know. I thought, prabby,
it might have been something happened inthe cockpit, whe a mistake was
made, whatever. But to haveone after another after another after another,
no, that in that short periodof time. You know, I used
to think, Okay, maybe itwas a training thing that's changed or something,
but no, you've got too muchtechnology in that cockpit. And these

(15:35):
are I mean, these are professionals. These are a lot of these individuals
as we've talked about former military podcasts, and those folks are trained to the
hilt. Believe you me, theyknow what they're doing. And then some
so to have this happen like thisjust defies my ability to understand what's taking
place. Well, if you don'tget it, I certainly wouldn't. Anyway,

(15:56):
it sounds like what could be goodnews. American Airline flight attendants are
pretty reportedly reaching a deal. Yeah, it looks like they've been able to
reach a deal finally with management.And they need to because right we've talked
about how these flight attendants make liketwenty seven thousand dollars a year when they
initially begin so low. In fact, in the state of Massachusetts, they

(16:17):
actually qualify for food stamps even thoughthey're working full time, which is crazy.
But I'm glad to see it becausethe flight attendants certainly need this,
and I'll be anxious to see thedetails in the new contract because the old
one did not have them getting paidwhen the flights are boarding and deplaning,
and obviously I'm hoping that changes becausethey're there in a safety mode, taking

(16:40):
care of us in case there's anevacuation, which the one we talked about
happened when they had a computer thatoverheated and they had to evacuate at the
gate. The idea that somebody's gettingpaid as almost a first responder. That's
how I look at them in thatsituation is again, just shouldn't be happening.
I agree with you all day long. You thoroughly convinced me the value
of the flight attendance, question aboutit. And finally I guess, as

(17:03):
we always do, let's close outon Hubblaye. How's it looking out there
for air traveled Jay? Righttlift.I wanted it'd be a good news day.
I really wanted to get to endon some good news. I can't.
I mean, in essence, drawa line from Houston straight up to
Philadelphia, and anything east of thatis a mess. You've got Houston,
we're gonna have Atlanta, we're gonnahave Charlotte, we're gonna have Philadelphia,

(17:25):
Washington, d C. New Yorklater in the day. It's yeah,
if you're headed west, you're gonnabe in a pretty good shape. But
unless your airplane's being routed through someof these affected areas, you know,
you may go be going to California. Say, do you have no weather
issue? Yeah, but if thatplane's being rounded through Charlotte, you might
have some issues. So just makesure the airlines have a way to get
a hold of you. Get tothe airport again at least two hours before

(17:45):
departure has been walking in the door, and it'll better your chances if things
go a little bit awry, thatyou'll have plenty of time to get it
worked out. Sound advice as alwaysfrom my heart. Mediaba's next for Jay
ryle Loft. I always enjoy havingyou on the program. Jay, I'm
already looking forward to next Thursday andalways best to health you in your better
half. I appreciate that. Thankyou take care of my friend eight fifty
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