IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
City Official of the Year by the Kentucky League of
City So put a feather in your cap Tech Friday
day of hatter. What a great thing to behold that.
We'll talk to him tomorrow at six thirty and like
we do every Thursday, at this time, we will talk
to iHeartMedia aviation expert Jay Ratliffe. I love talking to
him on a Thursday. Put a smile on my face
as we closed out the show. Welcome back, my friend,

(00:24):
very pleasant, good morning. And of course you're a you
trade this is what you do. Day trade fun. You
can find Jay Ratliffe and learn his teaching methodologies if
you so choose. It's obviously worked out quite well for Jay.
But your reaction to the market just blowing up yesterday,
and I and I just tell you, I am not

(00:44):
a market analyst. I don't play one on radio, and
I don't profess to know a whole lot about it.
I think one of the reasons the market performed so
well yesterday was because Trump won not just the electoral college,
but an overwhelming margin in the popular vote, thus suggesting
that there was going to be a smooth error transition.
This wasn't going to be a dangling chad, or a

(01:07):
lot of litigation, kind of wait around and find out
what the outcome is over a course of weeks. Your
reaction or thoughts on that, Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Mean it was. It was definitely an election with an
exclamation point behind it. I think it was a very clear,
resounding message. And I remember back in twenty sixteen, and
I remember, look, I've been trading stock since the nineties,
so I've gone through several presidential elections, and when it
was announced that Trump could look like he was going

(01:34):
to win twenty sixteen, I remember, the Dow futures tanked.
I mean it was it was world news from like
ten o'clock at night till one or two o'clock in
the morning. How the Dow futures were down ten fifteen percent.
It was going to be the worst ever. My gosh,
the world's coming to an end because somehow Donald Trump
got elected as president. And by that morning at seven o'clock,

(01:58):
the Dow futures were only down two one hundred and
forty points, and in that first day of trading it
actually ended up two hundred and fifty points. It was
the most unbelievable twelve hours of market reaction I'd ever seen,
and that was because the market's understood, wait a minute,
this is a businessman that's taking over as commander in chief.

(02:18):
He has an understanding of business related issues and that's
going to help businesses across the country. So it was
obvious what he did during those four years. So now
that he's been reelected, the thought process is okay, he's
going to make all of that happen again. This is
a man that understands that you can light the fuse
to this economy in such a way that it can

(02:39):
help solve a lot of the ailmentths that we have
with regards to, you know, things that are ongoing within
this economy. And for a lot of people who did
not vote for him that are trashing him on Facebook,
people that are in the service industry. Brian, I am
certain that these men and women of principle will give
back every bit of tax says they do not have

(03:01):
to pay on overtime and or tips because there's no
way to accept that money because it comes from Trump.
Do you do you think I'm correct there that these
principled men and women will stand on those principles saying
I'm not gonna accept this money because it comes from
President Trump.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
I think you're in the right ballfield. Der above.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
You've been listening to you, brother, But look and I'll
tell you it's gonna be interesting because today we find
out from the FED what they're going to be doing
as far as the interest rate cuts, and I think
we'll probably some are looking for a half point. I
think it probably a quarter point, but whatever it is,
the FED really has a challenge now because when Donald
Trump ignites this economy, and he's going to do that

(03:42):
just like JFK did when he reduced taxes and did
things to stimulate small businesses all those years ago, the
FED is gonna have our time adjusting because they're gonna
have to. They're gonna have to keep up with what's
about to happen. And I am very very excited, a
because we didn't go the far far far far far
radical left, but more so because now as a business

(04:05):
type of country that we have, men and women that
want to start their own business can do so easier.
People that want to enjoy the benefits of owning a
small business can And even though a lot of times
people say it's all tax cuts to the billionaires, no,
it's not. It's a matter of allowing men and women
who are hardworking that are trying to create a better
life for themselves to create something through a small business. Yeah.

(04:29):
I like to teach people how to trade stocks, but
there's some people that want to start a small business
doing all kinds of things. Brian, that's going to be
easier now, and that's going to be something that's going
to benefit this country in ways that could extend for
the next decade.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Well.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
And I think that optimism is backed up by I
presume he's going to be part of the cabinet, Elon
Musk being there. Who's more successful in the world in
terms of businessmen than Elon Musk And with him there
in the cabinet and making helping make decisions, and you know,
I'm sure acting as a consultant beyond just cutting government,

(05:04):
which is the primary role he's supposed to be taking on.
I think that that's like, that's like extra knowledge and
information and knowledge base to tap into little benefit everybody
as well.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
But you know, you're a very smart individual, and Brian,
you understand the best way to do your job is
to bring in people that are smarter than you.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Oh yeah, Now for a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Of people that are very insecure as business leaders. They
can't do that because they don't like feeling like people
are not as smart as are smarter than they are.
They want to be the top dog. Now. Me, when
I was in management all those years in the airline industry,
I loved having a bunch of people A who didn't
agree with me and B that were smarter than me
because it was that collaboration of opposing ideas where some

(05:52):
incredible ideas came from that nobody saw coming because people
work together. And I tell you Donald Trump is very smart.
His ego obviously is out of check in a lot
of ways, but he is not afraid to have people
around him that are smarter than he is. Now whether
or not he abides by that advice or not has
yet to be seen, but he's proven that he's done

(06:12):
that in the past, and I'm very excited to see
what's going to happen here because there's a lot of
people in politics that get very threatened on both sides
of the aisle when people who know more than they
do offer an opinion. I don't think that's going to
be the case here, because look, Donald Trump can take
people at a roast, making jokes at him in front
of his face. He'll laugh it off because he's he's

(06:33):
able to do that. It's unfortunate that, you know, Harris
decided not to be at that particular dinner that they
had for charity in Washington, DC. Because I think that
that reflects the type of leadership that we need, because look,
bringing all the smart people you can, because we've got
some challenges. You and I've talked about this national debt

(06:53):
that goes up at trillion dollars every hundred days. Donald
Trump in his first administration, let that national debt get
out check. He's got to make sure that problem isn't
repeated this time because right now the national debt and
trying to fix social Security is going to be a
big issue. But you know what I'm excited about. He's
going to be our president during the two hundred and
fiftieth birthday of this country.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Oh yeah, I mean another talk about a party patriotism.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Amen to that. We'll bring him back.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Let's pause, We'll bring Jay Rother back to talk about
airline stock specifically. Yesterday eight forty in a fifty five
ker C detalk station, Brian Thomas with iHeartMedia aviation expert
j ratlove.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Jay Boeing stocks.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Just one more thing I just have to let you
know because it's just hilarious. There's a Canadian airline. I'd
never heard of it, honestly, West Jet. They did a
very very brief ad campaign one way flights to Canada
this after the election.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
The other day.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
They apparently ran that only in California about five markets
for just a few hours. But I just thought that
was hilarious.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
I love west Jet. They are the low discount carrier.
You can kind of call them the Southwest Airlines of Canada.
But you need to look at YouTube for their April
First jokes on cargo kids, because every April April Fools
they would come out with a commercial that was just funny.
And this was to parents who travel with young kids.

(08:18):
Don't worry, we've got the perfect thing. We're gonna throw
them underneath with the luggage. You sit up front and
have a good time. These people have a lot of fun.
And I did not know about that one, but I
will look that one up. That's great to see.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, I thought over aviation news. I always check the
sites before you come on because there's always one out
there I want to throw at you.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
I did get tickled by that one. I was Brian.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
If you do go to YouTube on west Jet look
up their Christmas video for many years ago.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Oh is that the one where they bought packages or
Christmas presents for me? Yeah? I did watch that line.
I didn't know that. Okay, So they're fun in games
all the time. All right, unbelievably.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
See if I was to go back to work for
the industry, and I never would, that's the kind of
airline I want to work for them.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Day ratliff head and go to Canada. All right?

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Why did Airlong stock store? And it says here for
all the wrong reasons? Anyway, market went on fire yesterday.
This was part of it. So what's the story.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, you know you've heard me say on more than
one occasion I'm not a fan of the Biden administration
at all. But you've also heard me say many many
times that I do give the Biden administration credit for
going after the airline industry. Yeah, they've done that more
than any other administration I've seen for the last twenty
five years. Now, the airlines are finally being held accountable,
thank you. They're finally being forced to deliver something painfully

(09:32):
so called customer service. Thank you for that. But when
it became clear, Brian that Trump was going to be
our next president, airline stocks took off because, in part,
investors saw a future where the airline industry would be
under less scrutiny, uh uh, pressure, less oversight perhaps, And
to me, obviously that's not a good thing, because finally

(09:53):
the airline industry has been forced to adopt some customer
service measures that before they would. They went kicking and screaming,
dragging in that direction, and the Biden administration says, look,
you're going to treat customers this way, or you're going
to face some serious penalties. And they recognized a few
years ago they really meant business and airlines had to

(10:14):
do it. So when I saw airline stocks taking off yesterday,
and I love seeing stocks go up, I thought, uh oh.
And when I started digging into why, that was one
of the driving factors, and I thought, good lord, no,
I don't want to take a step back here. But
Donald Trump as a business owner, his first time around,
he was very accommodating to the airline industry. And Boeing

(10:38):
is one of the entities here that needs more oversight
than anybody. They've got fifteen billion dollars in defense contracts,
So a lax environment is the last thing I want
airlines or Boeing to be a part of.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, And I guess that illustrates the problem I have
with the whole scenario. It is so heavily regulated and
controlled by the federal government and obviously subject to fines
and sanctions and penalties from the federal government. No other
business is subject to that level of scrutiny. Are very few.
If you're out here in the real world and you're
trying to compete, you damn well better provide a quality

(11:12):
product or your competitors are going to put you out
of business. And that model alone just apparently isn't sufficient
enough for Boeing, even though they're flying people and our
lives depend upon the quality of their products.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Right, if we had competition, your analogy would as always
be spot on. But when you've got Airbus and Boeing
representing ninety percent plus of the aircraft that are manufactured
with Bombardier in the Canada, You've got embry Air in
South America and Comak coming out of China, which is
a new aircraft manufacturer, and I really hope that they

(11:48):
pick up because I like what they're doing. There's very
little competition, and Airbus has like nine thousand plus back
orders of airplanes, so it's not like they can jump
in and say, hey, we'll take all this Boeing business
from people that are ticked off at Boeing, because they can't.
So if you're like Southwest and some of these other airlines,
you're married to Boeing because that's the bulk of your fleet,

(12:09):
you just have to hope that they're going to turn
things around and maybe give you a nice, healthy discount
on future orders, those kinds of things. But it's the
NTSB just released their six hundred page report on that
last Airlines flight twelve eighty one where the door plug
went out, six hundred pages. These guys are the all stars.
These men and women are the NTSB that after every

(12:30):
accident near accident, they go to the FAA saying, here's
our twenty thirty or forty recommendations from this incident on
how we can make aviation safer. Now, normally the FAAI
look at that, go yawn and skip it. Sometimes they'll
take one or two of those and implement those ideas.
But these are the men and women. That's the reason
that we have the safest there ever of commercial jet

(12:50):
travel now. But one of the things that they indicated
in this six hundred page report was how the lack
of proper oversight of Boeing and the suppliers of Boeing
contributed to that situation. And Brian, how many planes have
you and I've been on that had been full that
have had an empty window seat? Very few. I'm in

(13:11):
a middle seat and I look over and in this
road there's an empty middle and window seat. I'm like,
ding ding ding, flight attendant, please, may I move? May
I move? Nobody did on that flight. And that's the
one where the door blew out. Had somebody been sitting
at that window or middle seat, they'd have been gone
because it was that is a decompression so bad that

(13:33):
it blew the secured cockpit door wide open and everything
went flying in the cockpit. So you're talking about a
horrific situation. And again because a lack of oversight, and
we cannot allow bowing off the hook.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
That that is truly miraculous that someone wasn't there.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
It is and it just It's one of the reasons
that I was so thankful that we dodged a bullet.
We learned something critical, but we we knew this was
coming now, not to this extent, because it was two
weeks before that. Boeing came out and issued an email
to airlines saying, look for those airlines that have this
kind of aircraft. We've had reports from some airline mechanics

(14:15):
that have gone in to do work that when they
were looking at specific parts of the rudder control system,
that's what helps the pilots to fly the rudder control system. Yes,
you may notice some missing or untightened hardware. In other words,
there's missing bolts and unsecured hardware where things haven't been
tightened on some of the rudder control systems. This was

(14:37):
the last two weeks of December, and I got that thinking,
oh my god, what And then of course it was
like here we go again, the same crap that we
had with the Boeing Max problems where they were rushing
airplanes through lack of oversight. All we promised to do
better five years ago, No we're not. We're going to
do the same stuff over and over. That memo scared

(14:58):
me to death. And I spent the first couple of
weeks at the beginning of this year talking about how
this is a concern, and I was on Boom there
goes the door plug on a door that didn't even
have some of the bolts even threaded, let alone titaned.
So you know, Boeing has got to get to the
point where they're going to really be held accountable. But
there's no place for any airline to go to that

(15:18):
is an alternative to Boeing, because that industry is just
not competitive enough for us to do anything. Now, it's
one thing here in the United States to say there's
some competition. Yes, thank God for the low cost carriers,
because that's why we have the lowest fairs ever in
the history of aviation. In fact, someone sent me last
week a copy of a nineteen sixty two airline ticket

(15:41):
from the West Coast to Saint Louis and back. It
was one hundred and I think eighteen dollars round trip,
and in today's dollars that would be twelve hundred and
forty two dollars. So the thought is, wait a minute,
in nineteen sixty two dollars, it would cost you to
go from the West Coast to Saint Louis and back.
Twelve hundred dollars is the cheapest coach fair. We now
can do that for three hundred, two hundred dollars something

(16:03):
like that. So you know, it's a very cheap way
to fly or to be transported these days. But the
problem is these airlines have got to be held accountable.
And I tell you I've got some real concerns moving forward.
I hope they're unfounded. But one of the things that
I can hope for is that Boeing will be given
the proper you know, oversight, because remember when we had

(16:25):
the Boeing Max issues all those years ago, airlines around
the world were grounding those airplanes because we didn't know
what was happening. We had aviation analysts in this country
coast to coast, big names that are a lot smarter
than I am, that were saying, oh, these planes are okay,
blah blah. And I was on every national show I
could be on, including Fox, for two weeks screaming against

(16:46):
those airplanes had to be grounded simply because we did
not know what was going on. The FAA did not
ground those airplanes. The airlines that flew those Boeing Max
Airplanes American United Southwest refused to do so. It took
President Trump to step in and say ground those airplanes,
and thank god he did. But far too often the
airlines tell the government what they're going to do, not

(17:07):
the other way around. And I don't want to go
back to that.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Well, we certainly want to have to face some major
catastrophe with massive casualties.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Jay Rattlers say.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Something we could have seen coming. And that's when all
those stupid politicians are going to pull a hamstring run
into the podium to say what they're.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Going to do about it.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, and you'll and you'll be going back read listen
to the podcast from the last four years on the
fifty five Case Morning Show.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
I told you so Ati.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Away at the conversation. I do not want to ask.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
I don't what to have it either, Jay, somebody's gonna
listen to you. We always end up on hub delays.
What's it like flying out there today, Jay Rattler, Up.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
You're around Savannah. I got a lot of rain here,
But other than that, Denver is going to be the
big issue. They've got some weather related snow and some
things in or slowing things down, you know. Other than that,
we're keeping an eye on this disturbance in the golf
of Mexico that could impact later Houston. But as up today,
if you're flying, avoid Denver.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Have a good day, as always, enjoy you being on
the morning show. Look forward to next Thursday. As I
always tell you, it's true, and best of health and
love to you and your better half, my friend.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Enjoy your weekend. On top of it, you too, my friend.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
It is eight fifty one here fifty five KR see
the Talks station. Our nation's problems have been building