IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

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Talk station AY thirty on a Thursday, and thankfully it's everything's in working regular
order to day because it's time foriHeartMedia aviation expert Jay Rattle. If I
always enjoyed closing out a program withJay on a Thursday, segue to Friday.
Welcome back, Jay, It's greathaving you on the show as always,
It's good to be here. I'mwatching the Dow futures tick down and

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down and down, but down lessthan one percent. It's three hundred and
forty points. But you know,but the Dow isn't the Dallas some like
a relic? Does it really representanything anymore? I mean, it is
an sm P five hundred, afar better indicator of the direction of things.
Yeah, Brian, I think so, in part because you're you're dealing
that with thirty stocks at five hundred, You've got a broader base there that's

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there. But yeah, I guessyou know, you and I were talking
about late last year early this yearabout how people were talking about five six
massive rate cuts for twenty twenty four, and you and I both were like,
not going to happen. In fact, you know, I was talking
back then that we could even seean interest rate increase if they needed it.
And you know, you can't dismissbattles with inflation when you underestimate the

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Wall Street. When you try totrade stocks, you're reminded real quick that
if you if you're on the wrongside of things, that it can hurt.
And if you dismiss inflation like,oh, you know, we can
lick this in a matter of months. I mean you're ignoring history. I
mean, it's never been that easyto get by, and that reality is
catching up with Wall Street right nowas we're down to thirty eight four on

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the Dow as we talk. Butas your method proves time and time again.
Because Jay maybe his primary business,I suppose is trading people, teaching
people his methodology for stock trading.It doesn't really matter. There's always buying
and money making opportunities in any givenmarket, just depending on how you play
it, right, Oh yeah,because you know, my approach has never

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been market specific. It's been stockspecific. And I don't care if the
market's going up, down, orsideways. There's always opportunities when there's you
know, overreactions on various stocks,and if I can get in and get
five or ten percent on a stock, quickly, and you know, finish
the day with a thousand bucks andwork a half a day like you do,
And I know you don't. Youwork a lot longer than that.

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And that's one of the things thatso many people say when they mentioned talking
to you and others, you knowthey got it made. And I'm thinking,
if you knew the work that thesemen and women did after they weren't
on the air and before, youwould recognize it's a lot harder than what
they make it look. You're justgood at it, that's why you just
make it look easy. Well,I appreciate that, and I got a
bad start this morning and I wasjust as you were talking about that today

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was a perfect illustration. It isa lot more work than people think.
My alarm clocks failed me. Andmy wife's got this alarm on her phone
that goes off at three o'clock inthe morning. I normally get up at
two thirty a shower, get ready, and come into work, and three
o'clock her alarm went off, andneither of my alarm at all. Three
of my alarms apparently didn't work orI was able to sleep through them all.
And I can't believe that because mywife would have been banging me on
the head like way Gop. SoI jump out of the bed. I'm

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I'm. The biggest concern on mymind is I'm losing a full half hour
of prep time that I need inorder to get through the morning show.
So that's just like there was inpanic mode when I got in here this
morning. So it was pretty evidentin my rant at the five o'clock hour
that was a bit out of it. You know, my dad taught me
early on Jay, if you startthe day late, it controls you.

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If you started early, you controlit. And there's a lot of with
Oh, I love that. That'sawesome. All right, let's get one
in before we take a break here. Summer travel Man went off with a
huge bang this year. I guessrecord air travel when you Yeah, The
TSA told us because they give usnumbers as far as the number of people
they screen each day, Brian,and they said, last Friday on the

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twenty fourth, as we were kindof kicking off, if you will,
the one hundred days of summer travelfrom Labor Memorial Day to Labor Day,
they screened two point nine million people. Wow, that Friday, and that
broke a record that was set previouslyon the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which you
know is the busiest travel day ofthe year always, So we kicked off

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what could be a record summer travelseason, breaking a record that's normally just
kind of held reserved, if youwill, for the busiest travel day of
the year, always Sunday after Thanksgiving. So when you break that record kicking
off the summer travel season, youknow it's going to be a lot of
fun, no question about it.And of course two point nine people minion

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people going through TSA, and Ididn't see any reports of planes crashing,
so that just sort of, youknow, I get worried, But I
talk to you sometimes about the safetyof air travel because catastrophe quite often among
the topics of conversation. But lookat all the people that were able to
travel both domestically and internationally without many, if any, major incidents occurring,
some of which I guess more onthe minor side. We'll get to those

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in a minute, some comical onesas well, and some sad more with
iHeartMedia aviationers for Jay Ratliff. AfterI've put in a word from my friends
at Zimmerheating and Cooling they've been arock station. Keep your stupid mouth shut.
Actually at sixty one degrees, mytemperature was screwed up. Eddie how

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I heard mediaviation expert here to soundby from that man one of my favorite
ones that Joe plays. And movingover to aviation related issues, we have
a little windy situation in Dallas.What happened here? Oh, I had
the wind gusts of up to ninetymiles an hour, and we had a
Boeing seven thirty seven, Yes,a Boeing that was parked at the at
the gate. Now, it hadthe chocks on it as you would secure

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it, which would keep the airplane, the ninety thousand pound airplane from rolling
forward or backwards. But this gustcame from the side, and there was
a surveillance camera that caught the windgust pushing this airplane like it was a
little toy away from the jet bridgeand down the tarmac aways. And yeah,
fortunately nobody got injured, but I'mtelling you it was a reminder that

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you know, it can be dangerousout there. And of course Dallas all
week has been fighting with thunderstorms anddifferent types of issues that have been there,
and of course we've had all theturbulence around the world that's associated with
travel this time of year, andI'm just glad nobody got hurt, because
in a situation like that, alot of times you would see the airplane
moving and then you would normally seepeople that would be trying to respond by

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trying to get it to stop,by doing different things, using chalks and
things. And in a situation likethat, I mean, my advice would
be for everybody to get clear,let's let it stop rolling, and then
we'll address it, because you know, when you try to do too much,
you just are too fast. Yourpossibility of getting hurt or worse is
really there. And again, goodthat it just happened when it did,

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when you didn't have people around,and there certainly were no passengers that were
trying to board that airplane. Well, you know, I was thinking when
that weather went through, and Iread the stories about, you know,
baseball size hail coming down, andthey I mean hail of all different sizes,
but I mean, you think aboutbaseball all size hell, that is
insane. I mean, it couldkill you at the game if he got
hit by it outside. Yeah,And I was wondering, and I'm not
asking you to overcomment on this unlessyou've read something that I haven't seen,

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Because there were prior reports in hailstormsof those giant solar farms that they use
to produce green electricity just get smashedto hell and back. And the first
thing I thought in my mind waswas that. And I was waiting to
see reports of maybe, you know, solar farms getting destroyed in that kind
of hall. But what of airplanes. They don't have, you know,
a garage or a hangar to putevery single airplane. Those seem to me

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subject being subject to damage and amassive hailstorm like that, or maybe I'm
wrong. Do they build them toa stone? Absolutely? Absolutely? Yeah.
And on the on the farmer point, with the solar farms, a
lot of neighbors around those are suingbecause a lot of the things that are
within the solar panels that are maybenot environmentally friendly, toxic waste out up

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at the air and drifting over theirland and things like that. But when
you're talking about any sort of possibledamage, let's see an aircraft takes off,
has a bird strike and they turnaround and come back in the land.
You have the mechanics that will goover that aircraft to make sure that
there wasn't any damage of any kind. So when you've got a severe storm
such as this, then obviously it'sthe same sort of situation where you're trying

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to make sure that there wasn't anydamage to the aircraft that could prevent it
from flying in a normal fashion.And that's one of the reasons that a
lot of times, when you havehurricanes or other type of high wind events
that airlines know are coming, they'llcancel the flights and get those aircraft out
of the endangered areas and we'll stationthem at other airports that are nearby but

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maybe ninety miles away, and thenonce the storm moves through, we can
quickly fly the airplanes back to thatcity and resume normal operations as quickly as
possible, because when you have flyingdebris or any sort of situation like this,
you don't want those airplanes there.Now, the thunderstorm that produces hal
you really can't project that in advance, which means you simply just have to

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write it out and then have themechanics inspect the aircraft to make sure that
they are okay, and it doesslow things down, but again we're going
to air on the side of safetyevery single time, and if it means
a slight delay, even a flightcancelation, so be it, because we
simply aren't going to take a chancethey could, you know, put people
potentially in harm's way. Fair enoughon that, and that's good. I

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don't mind a little delay in thename of safety. Now, this story
would have easily been in the morningstack of stupid I did see it,
and I didn't print it out becauseI thought, you know what, I
know, Jay's going to have thisone on the list. We had an
airplane that had to turn around.Why Jay, Well, a man about
an hour into the flight just strippeddown and start of run up down the

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down the aisle naked. You know. It was interesting because the headlines when
they first came out was passenger stripsand runs down. So most people get
those and they're scrolling real fast tosee if it was a man or woman.
But it was a man. Sowhat ends up taking place. This
is a Virgin Australia flight and theyhad to turn around and come back and
land because of the fact that theguy actually knocked over a flight attendant.

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So they come back. They detainedthe individual and he went right off to
a hospital because I'm sure that,like you know, here in the United
States, the first stop is goingto be for a mental health examination so
they can see what they're dealing with. And you know, again, no
one injured so to speak. Ijust wish they'd just duct tape naked to
a seat until they got to thedebart to the arrival. I'm sure the

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fellow passages feel the same way aboutthat one. Jay. You can't do
that from a safety standpoint, Andthere was a time when that happened a
lot. But then the FAA hadto come out and say, look,
that's not really a good idea becausein an emergency, we have to evacuate
the airplane in ninety seconds or less. And if you use half a roll
of duct tape on somebody a,you're not getting them out of the seat.
That pass and be who's going todo it? Airplanes on fire,

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get the guy out of the seat, or get my butt off the plane.
It's going to be be the fullis the one who's not looking up
for his own best interest? Allright, you're going down with the ship,
Yeah, exactly, don't strip nakedrun around. You're gonna have a
problem on your hands, all right. We do have a sad one though,
And I was just kind of wonderingabout this that you can get literally
sucked into a jet engine, whichis what happened in Amsterdam. Yeah,

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it's happened here in the States afew times. It happens around the world,
and we had it this week inAmsterdam where there was a passage or
excuse me, an employee that wasworking and I got too close to an
engine that was running, and Brianwhen you and this was an embry or
aircraft, so it was a smallerI don't want to call them regional jets,
but that's probably the best way toclassify it. The engines are so

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quiet that when like when the sevenfifty sevenths first came out, we had
to really remind and train our rampcrews on a thirty foot circle of safety.
We've actually put cones out in frontand behind these engines when we park
them, because everybody would have toget in the habit of giving those engines

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plenty of room, because anything withinthirty feet of that could actually be sucked
into that engine if you're in frontof it when it's possibly running. So
we were trying to get everybody inthat habit, but unfortunately, you have
situations where a lot of times peopleget comfortable working around these airplanes and you
get in a hurry. You're tryingto do something a little bit faster than

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you should. And I used totell my agents all the time, if
I see you running on the ramp, there's a chance I may just come
out and fire you on the spot, because I would rather you be mad
at me for the rest of yourlife than put yourself in harm's way where
you could actually kill yourself. Andyou know, again, there's times when
things go a little slower on theramp than a lot of passengers would like.
But it is a very dangerous placeto be. And that's why anytime

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you have someone exit any airport andgoes running out on the tarmac, there's
a concern because there's a high elementof danger that's involved with aircraft operation,
and it's a lot you know,we know that on let's see an aircraft
carrier, and it's the same sortof thing when you're talking about an international
airport or just a regional airport.If somebody gets too close to one of

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these airplanes, So just a sadsituation, and hopefully we can learn from
this because any accident, it's investigatedthoroughly and then a report is sent out
to every airline on the planet sothat we can all learn from what happened
and do everything we possibly can totry to prevent that kind of tragedy from
happening again. And that's how youhonor the life of the person that was

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killed by trying to save other livesin the future. And certainly that's what
they're going to try to do.Man, it certainly illustrates the lack of
a better word, the sucking powerof those things. They can rift a
man off the ground and yank themthrough the jet. Yeah, it can
move ground equipments towards the engine.There's just so many things that can happen

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when you're talking about the power ofthese engines. Because look, you've got
two engines that are up the aircraft. That's the empty weight of it,
Marian. So you start throwing passengersand cargoing that bad boy, and all
of a sudden you're gonna have allkinds of issues. But again, safety
is something that just it's always onthe mind of all the operational managers.

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Around the country and the world bydoing everything you can to slow things down.
And coming out of the pandemic,when we had the reduction in the
workforce, I was really concerned becauseyou had more people doing less. Fortunately
that's eased just a bit where alot of the hiring numbers are now back
to where we were at in thepandemic, even a little bit past that,
which is good. And when you'retalking about a record summer travel season

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like this, you're going to havethose agents doing more than ever before.
And of course the airlines are allabout on time departures, so there's an
urgency to dispatch that silver revenue tubeas fast as you can. So sometimes
that tends to have people, especiallysome new hires, going a little faster
than they should and sometimes unfortunately puttingthemselves in harm's way. It kind of
reminds me of the stories we've talkedabout it with Boeing on the manufacturing line,

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trying to get things done a littletoo quickly and forgetting to put in
parts and leaving stuff that shouldn't bethere in the plane. I just I
kind of in the back of mymind as you were talking about the jet
engine sucking this guy in. Iwonder how many people died as a consequence
of just walking into a prop planeback in the old days of those it's
happened. Yeah, I'm sure thatpeople just get comfortable with it. And

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you know, when we used tohave some of the smaller regional jets with
propellers, we would many times haveto have the ground power unit that was
plugged in, and it was pluggedin normally right under the window of the
first officer, sometimes on the captain'sside, depending on but you are literally
fifteen feet diagonal of a running propeller, and talk about some things that really

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just would give us just you know, heartburn and headaches with watching that operation,
making sure that every single step ofthat was done was slowly in doing
exactly what you need to be doingbecause you had a very narrow corridor there
to get that gpu out of theway so we could dispatch the aircraft.
And I've seen people that would backin towards those propellers as it was running.

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Fortunately they stop, but yeah,it just again, safety is something
that they are always always reminding peopleabout, and we need to because you
never can be slack on safety.The same way I've talked about Boeing.
Can't be slack on them, youknow, their safety inspectors or anything else.
They've got to get better at whatthey do. Boeing is a great

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company, or has been, butthe last several years they've just been doing
a horrible job. All right,as we do, we will part company
after you give us a report onhub delays. How things looking out there
today for air traveling New York andBoston. I hope you're not going there,
especially Boston. I mean, it'slike a big weather system with a
lot of rain, lightning, andhigh wind is camped over Boston right now.

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Other than that, from a hubstandpoint, a lot of rain,
but it's staying away from most ofthe major hubs. So I'm going to
say unless you're headed towards the northeast, you should have a pretty good day
to fly today. Thank you foryour time as always, Jay Rattle,
if I Harvey the Aviation Expert,I'll look forward to next Thursday another segment,
and I wish you in your betterhalf the best of health. Appreciate
that, Brian, thank you.Take care my friend eight fifty one fifty

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five Care CD talk station. Takecare of your car,