IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Canon nine weather forecast. Got breezy conditions today, overcast, isolated
snow showers, high of thirty three, cloudy overnight down of
twenty three, A sunny day tomorrow. Yeah, high thirty nine,
got a rain likely around midnight Friday night. Wintery mixes
possible if your north. Thirty three will be the low
and then a high a forty on Saturday with cloudy
skies in an a rainy overnight twenty eight. Right now,

(00:25):
time for traffic update from.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
The UC Help Traffick Center. Don't let injury slow you down.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
The u See Health Orthopedic sans sports medicine experts can
help keep you moving. Schedule the same day appointment at
u see health dot com. Southbound seventy one continues slow
below fields are at all off and on the Red Bank.
The lake times have dropped closer to the ten minute mark.
Southbound seventy five heavy in and out of Lockland. Northbound
fourth seventy one slows north of Grand Just a couple

(00:51):
of extra minutes needed there.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Chuck Ingram on fifty five KRCD talk Station.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thirty one fifty five cas DE talk Station. Happy Thursday, Slash, Friday,
Eve and a great time to be tuned in because
good we get to talk to I heard media aviation
expert Jay Ratliff every Thursday here in the fifty five
carsse Morning Shore. Welcome back, my friend. It's always a
pleasure to having you on the program.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Wait, pleasant, good morning to you.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
And you know I always add different stories to the
ones that you add, so I wanted to of.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
Course, what's the morning is that a curveballer do?

Speaker 1 (01:25):
This one is just I just one of your comments
on it because it's weird. I don't know if you
saw the article about the United Airlines seven thirty seven
Max that hit a coyote takeoff?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
What the hell?

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Well, you know what happens. Look, we've had, you know,
deer struck, moose, alligators, We've seen all kinds of things
with you know, because you can't control the wildlife you'd
like to, but sometimes you can. And if you are
a pilot and you and I are you know, tooling
down the runway and we're about to take off and

(01:58):
we hit something, well then the first thing that we
need to do, if we can, is stop the aircraft
and get it back so that the mechanics can look
at it. Because you know, if you hit anything, it
could cause problems structurally damaging the aircraft. But you're also
worried about where there were anythings there that might have
impacted the hydraulics that would have interfered with their ability

(02:19):
to control the airplane. So it happens, and we have
about three hundred thousand reports of wildlife strakes a year
or I'm sorry, that would be between I think the
last several decades, nineteen ninety in present. So it happens
all the time. Most of the birds that you can't
control where they're at, mostly yeah, but sometimes you have

(02:40):
wildlife that makes its way onto you know, we frequently
hit alligators coming out and stunning themselves on runways.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
You know, you can't land.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
With that's that's funny. You got to hire someone to
shoe the alligators away.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
Well, there's airports in several places up north that have
dogs that go out that are designed to chase birds away.
When you've got birds on the ground, and you know,
there's things that you can do to remove the plants
they feed on and other types of things to try
to help them kind of go elsewhere. But I remember
when I was in Alabama, the Tupelo airport would be

(03:15):
closed for like thirty minutes every day for bird migration
where the birds would come across the airfield and they
just knew to shut the airport down. And it was
and I'm like, wait a minute, it's like these birds
have got to watch or something, and every day and
it pretty much was. And so it's stuff that impacts
commercial aviation on pretty much an ongoing basis.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
How about that, Well, talk all but a win on
a win for common sense. Now this could be you
could substitute American Airlines for any other company. But I
don't know if you saw American Airlines alleged that their
retirement fronds were mismanaged by the ESG Investments because ESG
Investments was following the Environmental Social Governance ESG rather rather

(04:00):
ESG measures of investing. In other words, you got to
go with companies that pursue this Environmental Social governments governance,
and that ultimately resulted in harm to the pension fund
because those things weren't giving a good return on investments,
so they violated the fiduciary obligation. Big win for the
employees there and for common sense, Well.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
You know you want to invest many people saying, you know,
you can invest in green companies. You can invest it
and it looks good on a corporate balance sheet where
you can show your investors in the world that you
care by only investing in specific things solar energy, electric energy,
or whateverybod have to be things that are designed to
help the planet. The problem is if those sectors aren't

(04:43):
exactly shall we say, on fire, well, then all of
a sudden you're going to be noticing that you're going
to be losing money instead of making money. Right, So
finally get to the point where it's like, yes, we
want to help save the planet any way we can,
but our primary obligation is to make money. So it's
a lot like these companies that establish these woke policies
thinking this is going to help define us, show the

(05:05):
world who we are, and kind of help push us
in this direction. When you turn and then find out
that the majority of your consumers are not for that.
They want equal opportunity, they want the best person in
whatever job it might happen to be, regardless of what's
going on, and they go elsewhere. And how many companies
have we seen back off of those policies because they

(05:28):
just blew up in their face. If it's a Budweiser,
if it's a Disney, whoever might happen to be. It
doesn't matter the ideas they play, follow the leader in
that kind of direction, and then they find out, you know,
the rest of the country is not really following us here. Yeah,
well we never were. But somebody convinced these the people
at leadership, that this was going to be a good
idea because this is really going to establish things. It's

(05:50):
a lot like in the European Union a number of
years ago, they polled individuals, would you pay an extra
amount of money every time you fly help offset the
car an imprint that the airline industry has on commercial
aviation which around the world, which is again single digits.
It's minuscule, right compared to other industries. But yo, yeaut
seventy eight eighty percent absolutely, I will and Brian when

(06:13):
they were given that opportunity to do so, less than
three percent actually did pay more. So, you know, when
it comes down to it, it's it's not going to happen.
And that's one of the reasons that a lot of
times when you do what some people say is going
to make you look good, and when it goes flies
in the face of common sense, it turns out not
to be a good idea.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Seems so evident upfront to me, but that's what lawsuits
are for. Jay raylif hold on, we're gonna find about
a drunk pilot as well as the Department of Transportation
suing Jet Blue.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Don't go away right back fifty five KRC. Men, it's
the new year, and for me.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
It's weather time. Channa nine says breezy conditions, isolated snow
showers and a high of thirty three clouds every ninth
down to twenty three a sunny day Tomorrow thirty nine
for a high. Uh, Friday, it's gonna be a wintery mix.
Oh I'm sorry. Friday night wintery mixed towards the north,
but likely showers overnight. About midnight events is when they're
going to start. Thirty three o' beat be low and

(07:13):
then a high forty on Saturday with body skies. It's
twenty nine right now, it's time for traffic.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
From the u SEEL Traffic Center. Don't let injuries slow
you down.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
The u SEE Health Orthopedic sands sports medicine experts can
help keep you moving to schedule the same day appointment
at do You See Health dot com. Cruiser are working
with a wreck eastbound on the Reagan Highway near Galbaret
triumphic on northbound seventy five clearing out through the cut.
Southbound continues to slow through Lachlan because the wreck northbound
seventy one near reading on the right shoulder. Chuck Ingramont

(07:44):
fifty five krs deep talk station.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
We've ever been in the cockpit before day out the path.
He's iHeart media aviation expert. Get the privilege of talking
to him every Thursday here on this time. Getting at
the bottom of the hour podcast this conversation. She'll be
a fifty five cars dot com. We will find also
the podcast conversation in my conversation earlier this morning with
Donovan O'Neil about Trump's tax cuts and Senator Rand Paul.

(08:10):
So we got another drunk pilot, Jay, huh.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah, Savannah, Yeah, right down the road from where I'm
at right now.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well, I find it so.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Hard to believe just the concept of showing up to
work drunk. I let you do the details here in
a minute. But you're a pilot, you know it's against
the rules, and I would suggest that if you show
up to work drunk, that's probably an indication the guy's
an alcoholic or girls the case may be, because if
you can't resist drinking when you are responsible for any
number of lives doing your job and you know it's

(08:39):
wrong and you know you're gonna lose your situation. I
don't understand how it could even happen that people would
go to work drunk, but go ahead, Well, it happens.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
It happens far too often than we like, and of
course it's obviously an embarrassment for the airline involved, it's
an embarrassment for the for the pilot, you know, unions
around the world. But we also remember that alcohol is
an addiction that many times controls people. People don't control it,
and you have situations where occasionally you don't have pilots

(09:09):
that show up to work intoxicated under the influence. And
that's what happened here in Savannah. He was on the
flight deck, he was in the cockpit when he was
arrested and taken away, and the flight was delayed considerably.
Obviously Southwest had to come up with another crew member.
But you're right, the rules are very very clear. They
have bottled with throttle, the number of hours that's required,

(09:32):
and you just you can't take that chance. If you're
a pilot and you hear someone that you know went
to a great amount of effort to become a pilot,
it's normally a great expense or time to achieve that,
and then to have it thrown away by a decision
like that is you know, it's unfortunate. I thank god
it was caught before you know, the airplane took off.

(09:56):
I don't know if it was reported by the TSA,
which happens a lot. The TSA officers, even though we
call them officers, they have no law enforcement, uh you know,
powers at all. So what happens is when they observe
someone that appears to be under the influence it's a
crew member, they will quietly notify airport police, who'll investigate
to see if anything's going on. It may be somebody's

(10:17):
having a reaction to some medication that just got changed
or something like that that that it causes them to
appear to be maybe a bit ineberator, intoxicated to a
certain point. That's why you never say you look drunk,
know you appear to be under the influence of something.
We don't know what it is. They may wreak of alcohol,
but somebody may have spilled a drink on them. So
you really never want to conclude definitively one thing or another.

(10:40):
But what we know here is that you know, he
was arrested, the span of airport taken away, and uh again,
that just it's a really unfortunate situation for them. I
don't know if it was a crew member that reported him.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, I was going to ask, because I mean, he
made the not the case right, right, he made it
into the cockpit though, so I mean he got.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
Far enough, are flying and I'm the captain or even
find the first officer, and I noticed that you're a
bit under the weather. And again I don't know what's
going on personally in individuals' lives, but typically what happens is, look,
I got this, I'll take care of it. The bulk
of this flight's work. You just kind of, you know,
chipping in help, and you know it happens kind of

(11:21):
all the time. The problem is, if there's an emergency
situation and you need all hands on deck, you need
every crew member at the top of their game, you're
endangering the lives of everybody on that flight by reporting
for work in that condition. So that's the reason that
we take it as seriously as we do. You simply
can't allow yourself to be in that kind of impaired
state when you are driving a car by yourself down

(11:42):
a road, or yes, if you're at the controls of
an aircraft that has one hundred and fifty souls on board.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Well, based on your comments, is it a phenomenon within
the airline industry generally that pilots sort of look out
for each other nudge nudge, wink wink, much like police
officers reluctant to you to rite out a fellow officer.
Is it one of those types of it? Is?

Speaker 4 (12:03):
It does? And there's been times I've closed the door
of aircraft thinking I need an extra prayer here because
things just didn't seem to be right. But you didn't
dare say anything you didn't do in this now this
Jay would, but a younger J would not because I
was in the industry and I just kind of get
my feet what type of thing and I did what
I was told, and what I was told was shut up,

(12:25):
Everything's going to be okay. And you know, typically it
was and that's the problem. If you allow that to
happen once and nothing happens, you know, Okay, we will
just keep doing this until eventually you have a you know,
a horrific accident, and then of course it shines the
light on that kind of a practice. And you know,
the bottom line is just you just hate to see it.
But we've got so many pilots in the industry, so

(12:46):
many flights today. This is such a minor occurrence. But
it's like, you know, doctors, it's pilots, it's nurses, it's
your CPA, it's other people that have these types of issues.
You just hope they don't drive buses or planes or
anything like that where the impact of that kind of
decision can infect so many lives and place those in danger.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
No doubt about it. I see the Department's transportation is
hard at work. They already sued Jet Blue. I guess
now they got Frontier in Southwest and their crosshairs. Why
chronically delayed flights.

Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yes, and you know, Monday is a big day for
a lot of people because that's the day we see
the baton pass. The torch goes from one to another
with regards to one administration to another. But I'm going
to miss the pressure that the Biden administration is placed
on airlines. And I've said that before because when you
look at the dot, they're saying, if you have a

(13:38):
chronically late flight, we're going to hold you accountable. In
other words, if you've got a flight that's delayed at
least ten times a month where it arrives thirty minutes
or late each time, yeah, you know it's a problem,
and you as the business need to fix the problem
because you can't blame it on the weather. You can't
blame it on the ATC if it's happening ten times

(14:00):
a month. So yeah, Jeff Blue find two million dollars,
a Frontier find six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Southwest
now is also looking at fines because of these chronically
delayed flights. It's like you're scheduling something that you know
can't possibly be pulled off, but you're doing it anyways,

(14:21):
and you're putting the you know, the convenience of passengers
and their schedules at risk, and you just you're not
gonna be allowed to do that. And I can tell you, Brian,
no other industry or no other administration has applied this
kind of pressure, and it reminded me of the passing
of Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter was looked at as an

(14:41):
absolute failure as president, but he was also the man
of fact. If you go back and look at his
January nineteen seventy eight State of the Union, you would
think it's a Republican president talking. When you hear him
say there's too much government in business. There's too and
he said, I'm gonna regulate the airlines, the trucking industry,

(15:03):
and the rail to make things more competitive. And he did,
and he's the reason that we are enjoying the cheapest
fairs ever pretty much in the commercial aviation for airfares
than what we did before, because he was the one
that brought about the Deregulation Act of nineteen seventy eight Brian.
He also deregulated breweries. He said, the band on home

(15:24):
breweries and they had like five thousand at the time.
He said, no, it's now not going to be a
law where you be prevented from doing that. And they've
got what fifteen thousand breweries now, So you know, Jimmy
Carter did a lot to get government out of business,
and I'm thrilled to see it. And the Biden administration
has really held the airline industry accountable to a degree

(15:47):
that's never been seen before. Now Trump in his first
administration didn't apply this kind of pressure, and my fear
is going to be as of Monday, the airlines are
going to go. Glad that's over, yeah, and it's back
to the crappy business before. So look, I'm glad Joe
Biden is on his way out. I did not want
that administration at all, but I do wish other administrations

(16:11):
would take this kind of lead and hold airlines accountable
because for the first time in a long time, they've
been doing it and making the airlines pay when they
do these kinds of things such as chronically delayed flights.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
The burning question in my mind is always, Okay, let's
say Department Addressed Transportation wins and gets some sort of
monetary damages, lovied, who gets the money? It's the government
that puts it back in its pocket.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
I guess.

Speaker 4 (16:34):
Well, in the two million dollars Jet Blue case, a
million went to the DOT, a million or government went
and a million went to passengers and refunds. So you
know that kind of thing I like to see. But
actually some of these, some of these Brian, it's like,
we're going to find you a million dollars, but you
don't even have to pay four hundred thousand dollars as
long as you promise never to do it again. Okay,

(16:54):
I promise never to do it. I mean, just come on, please,
Do I get to negotiate with the irs if I've
got a tax bill? No? Oh, these guys. Do we
get to negotiate with the police officer?

Speaker 2 (17:03):
He pulls this over.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, I know this is the ticket, but I'd prefer to
pay that that doesn't happen. But the airlines are allowed
to get away with it. With sends the message, Well,
you know, I guess you're okay to do it again.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
I can tell by the tony your voice day. Finally,
we always close out with hub delays. How's it looking
out there for air travel?

Speaker 4 (17:20):
You know, we had some minor de icing delays this
morning as we kind of knocked the frost off of aircraft.
We had issues early in Detroit that are improving for
the most part. Right now, we're in pretty good shape.
We're gonna have some issues obviously rolling towards the northeast
later today, maybe into tomorrow, but right now, if you
picked today kind of in honor of our conversation, you
picked a great day to fly, and you know, at

(17:42):
least from a weather standpoint, things should be in pretty
good shape.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Fantastic. Thanks so much for the information, Jay Ratleff. I
always enjoy hearing from you and our conversation. We'll look
forward to next Thursday and another I Heart Media Aviation
expert report. In the meantime, hope you and your better
half are well and have a wonderful weekend.

Speaker 4 (17:59):
You too, my friend. Watch up for those coyotes on the.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Runway exactly age fifty fifty five KRC detalk station

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Be right back fifty five KRC attention near rocket