IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Time of the Chann nine weather forecast is going to
be a breezy day to day. We're going to see
a high of thirty two under cloudy sky seventeen for
the overnight low skis will clear up. Got a partly
sunny day tomorrow with a high thirty six, rain over
Friday night low of thirty and then it sounds like
a full day rain on Saturday because there's a floodwatch.
It kicks in at four pm and for the most
of the tri state all the way through Sunday afternoon.

(00:22):
Saturday's high forty five. It's thirty one right now for
about Kercy Talk station. Let's get an update on traffic.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
From the UC up Train Thingks Center. For more than
two hundred years, the experts that you see health have
been giving hard patients and chance and better outcomes. Boundless
care you can trust, expect morey you see health dot com.
North Bend seventy five. They cleared the wreck of Kyles.
The right plane is now open again. Traffic continues heavy
from Turf Way into town. You're looking at just under

(00:50):
an extra half hour southbound seventy five slows through Walkland,
Kingram On fifty five KRS the talk station.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Here, fifty five KRC de talk station. It's Thursday. I
always look forward to this time and this day of
the week for one reason and one reason only, and
it's a good one. Welcome back to the fifty five
KRS Morning Show. I heard media aviation expert Jay Ratliff.
Good head back on my program.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
My friend, Hey, pleasant, pleasant, good.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Morning, and let us I saw the late addition to
the lineup this morning, Notice to Airmen.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yes, well you know it.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
Was I think it was two thousand November twenty twenty one.
The FAA spent a tremendous amount of time and money
hosting a virtual inclusive language summit. They were trying to,
you know, adopt gender neutral terms within the aviation world.
And the thought was notice to airmen was a bit

(01:50):
you know, masculine, We might offend people, so we're going
to change that to notice to air missions, which made
no sense at all. Cock has got to be flight deck,
airman got to be aviator.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
If they talked about the.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
UAVs or the unmanned aerial systems need to be uncrewded
aerial system I mean, it went on and on and on,
and you can't say man made. It's got to be
machine made or fabricator at whatever. They spent millions of
dollars throughout this. Now that Donald Trump's in office, that
stuff's going away. We're going back to the terms we
use for like seventy some years, which was which was

(02:26):
perfectly fine. So, I mean, I'm sure that there are
things that we need to adjust over time, but this
type of stuff was just so far over over the edge.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
It just made no sense.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
And a lot of the pilots within the industry, male
and female, said, why are we spending tens of millions
of dollars on this program when we desperately need to
upgrade the systems we've got, Please spend the money where
it's needed. And certainly I think that that was the
most rational approach from the men and women that are
directly involved in all of this, them saying, look, spend

(03:01):
money upgrading the systems that need to be upgraded. And
when I see Musk and Trump together teaming up, I
can only imagine what Elon Musk thought of when he
started looking over the FAA systems of the day and
recognizing so much of it was last century, given how
you know, technically savvy he is, and it's obvious it's

(03:25):
not going to work that way.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
So we'll see just how fast some of this stuff
can start to turn around.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Did did the Biden administration seek to revise the word amen?

Speaker 4 (03:37):
I'm sure it's in there somewhere, because you know that
could be offensive to well. I could go on a
religious ramp with some of my left friends.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
I just I can't go there. I get even more emails.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
I get about one hundred and sixty unread already this morning.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
I don't want to add to that.

Speaker 4 (03:54):
But it's it's it's just, you know, Brian, it's it's
the common sense stuff your dad talked about for decades,
You've talked about for decades. It's just it's it's what
you spend your time on. And we can go after
the real issues of the day, or we can manage
the perception of going after issues. And it's just it's
just ridiculous. But you know, but I'll tell you this,

(04:16):
The stuff we've seen over the last two to three weeks,
I never thought I would see in my life. Because
I've heard every politician at every debate for presidential or
Congress or Senate talk about the waste the waste, the waste,
and not a single one of those buzzards did anything
about it when they got in office other than contribute
to it. And I had some you know, high regard

(04:37):
for a lot of our elected officials, but they got
there and got you know, neck deep in all the
garbage and you know, just played ball like everybody else.
So for the President to go in there and do this,
because I've always been saying, look, you know, the national
debt's going up a trillion dollars every hundred days. That's
not sustainable. And the idea that he can come in

(04:57):
and maybe slow that, maybe we're.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Versus a bit.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
Yeah, all it's going to do is is save us.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
From driving over the cliff at an earlier date. And
I'm really glad for that.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
We can only pray. But those who are listening to
my conversation with Congressman Massa the other day probably had
their bubble burst a little bit in that regard, because
we are our own worst nightmare. And he can even
point to a lot of members within the Republican Party
which seeks to sustain this overspending.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
It's power, Brandon power, and when you take away money,
you're taking away people's power. And that's why I'm praying
for President Trump now more than ever, because he is
going after the power of the people in d C.
In ways that's never been done before. And you talk
about a threat to the It was one thing to
drain the swamp, round one you do with what he's

(05:45):
doing now is I mean, you're going after the power
base of everybody. And I'm telling you I love seeing
it because he's doing exactly what he promised. I still
tell my friends, if the election was redone today we
had to redo, he would be elected by a bigger
margin today than he was in November. What because I
think even I think even some Democrats can say, look

(06:07):
some of this stuff that's happening, where money's being spent.
How many people in North Carolina are still sleeping in
tents in the winter, and we're giving all these hundreds
of millions of dollars to other countries on some of
the dumbest things ever there. No, let's take care of
the people that need it in California, in North Carolina
and every other place. School programs. I'd love to see,
you know, meals provided for our kids in school that

(06:30):
as opposed to that money going elsewhere. So many things
that have been wasteful, and I'm glad that the spickett
is starting to get turned off.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Amen to that. Oh, I said that word again, hang out.
I do not care if I heard avia for Jay
ratlip bore to talk about coming up. I hope you
can stick around fifty five KRC dot com at you line.
They know first Jay Ratler has he's a heart media
aviation expert and he's on the Thick About Jersey morning

(06:58):
show every Thursday at eight thirty, and I certainly appreciate
him being here really quick. Ifore we get through the
topics you mentioned the system upgrade, Like gee, if they
had only spent all that DEI and Woke money training
people how to use appropriate pronouns or whatever on a
new f air traffic control system, we'd be a lot
better off. My understanding is it's so antiquated they still

(07:19):
use those big floppy disc if I recall you mentioning
that bit right.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
There, there are some systems that do fewer than what
we've had before. But yes, it's it's so old. You
have to google the terms and to find parts. Ryan
wants some miss up breaks, and then to find people
that are qualified to replace those parts legacies because most
of them retired twenty years ago.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, so real quick here if I mean how realistically speaking,
if they dedicated the money and resources toward it, how
long would it take to upgrade the system?

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Five to six years? Easy?

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Okay, all right, and probably billions of dollars.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
President Trump just has to get the ball moving in
that direction, and once he does, it will not be
finished by the time he leaves office.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
But it's needed.

Speaker 4 (08:05):
And when you recognize that the aviation industry is the
integral part to our nation's economy, why it's only getting
money that falls off the table the scraps has always
bothered me, But I know why.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Because it works. In the minute, excuse me.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
The men and women that are within the air traffic
control system to a very good job of making it work,
even though they're understaffed and they've got things that are
so some of them have to have umbrellas in the
air traffic control towers because of leaks in the roof
that haven't been fund Oh my god, you've got all
of these things taking place, Brian, and they find a
way to make it work. So since we've not had

(08:39):
issues the idea of well, do we have to spend
money there, No, we don't have to. And it just
boggles my mind because we are so far behind where
we need to be, and aviation is expected to double
over the next fifteen to twenty years. We can't handle
what we're doing now alone for what's coming.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
And we are a moment in technological time away from
our own individual flying health, helicopter, drone kind of devices,
and that's only going to complicate matters. It's crazy, crazy.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Exciting times. We just need it to be. You know,
we didn't need to be safer.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
We definitely do because sometimes helicopters fly into airplanes. It's
amazing how that was Donald Trump's fault. I mean Donald
Trump's fault. Seriously, I actually heard that out loud anyhow,
of course.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
Yeah, anything that has but I will I will take
issue with the president when he immediately came out and
said it.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Was a DEI issue. Oh, I didn't agree with that
at all, because.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, that's ready ready fire aim anyhow, airlines asking the
president to abandon the what is called the passenger compensation Review.
What's this all about?

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Jay?

Speaker 4 (09:39):
You know you heard me's talk for years that the
Biden administration went after airlines like any other administration, and
I appreciated the job that the Biden administration did. It
was the only thing that they did that I really liked.
But they tried to hold airlines accountable. So one of
the things that President Biden's administration tried to do was
create a a passenger protection a bill and they were

(10:03):
soliciting comments on it, still in the solicitation comment phase,
and they're considering whether or not airlines should be required
to pay us for delays now, not weather delays, but
delays they create through mechanical or you know, flight cruise shortages.
Whatever might have to be three hundred dollars if we're
delayed for up to three hours, five hundred dollars if

(10:23):
we're delayed up to six or maybe even seven hundred
dollars if it's a nine hour delay. It's what Europe
and Canada are doing as a way of trying to
make customers it just protected. The airline's taking better care
of them and it's working well there, and it's something
that I like because it's holding airlines accountable.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Well.

Speaker 4 (10:42):
Now, the Airline Lobbying Group and others have gone to
the President saying, you know, maybe we should just kind
of push this off to the side for now.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Maybe later we can talk about this.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
One of the reasons airline stocks went up right after
Trump was elected was because many people thought, and rightfully so,
that some of this oversight, some of this pressure was
going to be alleviated throttled back. You had airlines like Delta,
United and others contributing a million dollars to the Trump
inaugural campaign. Has did Boeing in hopes I'm sure that

(11:16):
there would be a little bit more cooperation between the
government and the airline industry. So it'll be interesting to
see if Donald Trump decides to throttle back and.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
Kind of push this off to the side.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
I hope not, but it's one of the things that
I said was going to happen when President Trump was elected,
was that we were going to see Trump term one.
There was a very good relationship between Donald Trump administration
and the airline industry, where the airline industry, I don't
want to say went off unchecked or without supervision. That's
the wrong a picture to paint, but they weren't hell

(11:51):
as accountable as what the Biden administration had done. And
I will forever be grateful for what they've done. Pete
Buota check in the first couple of years was a joke.
The last couple of year, look, he was doing what
he could to try to help force airlines to provide
better service for the airlines, and this latest move could
suggest the step back from that. Left to see what

(12:11):
the official Trump response is going to be to the
lobbying efforts by the airline industry.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, I just think I'm at the ripple effect. You know,
you'd get flights delayed. Of course, then that impacts the
connecting flights and whether that plane is going to be
able to operate on time. I mean that it just
has an impact that just keeps going and going. It's
like the butterfly effect almost that they have.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
And it is and that's a good point because some
airlines have a very aggressive if everything goes perfect, this
is how many flights we.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Can operate in the day. Well, we know things aren't
going to go perfect.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
So one of the reasons that Jet Blu and other
airlines have been fined by the FAA for chronically or
by the Department of Transportation for chronically delayed flights is
because the DOT is telling the airlines. Look, you know
this isn't going to operate on time. You know passengers
are going to be impacted. You should not have this
scheduled this way because it's next to impossible for it

(13:02):
to go the way you have it scheduled. So as
a result, we're gonna we're gonna find you how many
millions of dollars to because of the fact that you
were putting out a schedule and selling a schedule to
the public that you can't possibly maintain. So that's what
I like, because when airlines do things like that where
they come out with these unrealistic schedules, Brian, it's it's

(13:25):
not something that the traveling public can really count on
as something that is going to get them to their
destination without you know, some sort of a problem in between. So,
you know, that's what I like from the DOT over
the last few years is they were really calling the
airlines out for a lot of the craft that they
were trying to push and when they had these schedules
that were simply just just not sustainable, they were not realistic.

(13:47):
They were selling tickets anyways, and the administration was saying, uh,
and the.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Fines were minimal.

Speaker 4 (13:53):
You know from a monetary standpoint, and of course they're
reduced if the airlines promised never to do it again,
which always drives me crazy because I don't think I
can do that with the irs. If I've got a
problem with them, I don't think I can negotiate it down.
But airlines can do it with the government, and we
know they're going to do it again because they always do.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, well, it's not too much of an imposition. I'll
hold you over. We can talk a little bit more
when we come back from a break.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Is that okay, Jack?

Speaker 4 (14:16):
I'd love to because tomorrow's Valentine's Day and for Delta
Airlines that's a big datamorrow.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Fantastic One more with Jay Ratliff Hang on to be
right back fifty five KRC, the talk station.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Your Hands Work Hard.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
One more time from the Channel nine. Weather forecasts going
to be breezy, cloudy, and a high thirty two today,
clearing up over night down to seventeen, a partly sunny
day Tomorrow with a high thirty six, rain kicking in
overnight Friday low thirty, and then a big rainy day
Saturday with a floodwatch starting at four pm through Sunday
afternoon for most of the tri state forty five degrees,
with the high on Saturday closing out of thirty one

(14:51):
time for final traffic Chuck from the UCL Tramfic Center.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
For more than two hundred years, the experts at u
SEE Health have been giving hard pay since a chance
at better outcomes. That's boundless care. You can trust, expect more,
and you see help dot com. Northbound seventy five continues
heavy Donaldson into downtown. The light times have dropped under
the fifteen minute mark. Southbound seventy five continues slow in

(15:15):
and out of Lackland. Northbound fourth seventy one have been
heavy from Grand into town. Chuck Ingram on fifty five krs.
The talk station.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
A fifty fifty five KRCIT talk station Bryan tim with
the Jay Ratliffe, I Heart mediaviation expert and lucky man.
He married out of his element, just like I did.
Smart man he is. I would like to point that out.
And you mentioned Valentine's Day. That's the day that Paula
accepted my proposal of marriage thirty thirty three years ago.
So I'm excited it is stuck. Yes anniversary in June.

(15:47):
The thirty three year anniversary in June. So lucky man
I am. And you mentioned Valentine's Day is a special
day for who is it American.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Delta Delta Air Delta had a really good year last year,
and on Valentine's Day every year they can, they give
their employees profit sharing and they do it on Valentine's Day.
So if you're flying tomorrow and your deltas employee seems
to be, oh, let's say, in a really good mood,
it's because Delta is giving them collectively one point four

(16:16):
billions dollars God tomorrow, it's like four to five weeks
of pay in a check as a thank you for
doing a great job. Now, deltas my carrier of choice.
They've let me down more than a few times, but
still they're the airline that sharing and I go to
anywhere in the world. We're going to Asia, Europe or
anywhere in the United States. But Delta does a very

(16:38):
good job at giving back to their employees, and it's
one of the reasons that you know, they continue to
lead the industry in a lot of different things. But
look casts off to Delta for the job they did
last year. And I cannot be more happy that the
employees are getting a part of that success as they
are tomorrow. So to all our Delta friends, enjoy your
day tomorrow. It's gonna be a great day.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
That's fantastic. And you know they I'm guessing they probably
lead the airline industry and employee retention for that reason.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
Well, for a lot of a lot. I can send
twenty minutes on that. They do for all the right reasons.
And you know a lot of times when I see
some of the going above and beyond stories it different airlines,
but Delta does it as well. And when you're talking
about making sure that flights are on time and that
flights are completed, and from the pilots down to the mechanics,

(17:27):
the flight attendants, the folks in the tower, maintenance control
from all aspects of the operation.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
They do a good job.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
And it starts with you at Bastian's who's at the
top CEO, and he does a good job. Used to
work for comm Air here many years ago, and he
communicates a good message. Now, they've been big on the
DEI side of things over the years, they have obviously
kind of tilted the other direction, but they do a
good job. But you know, when they had a school shooting,

(17:56):
they announced that, hey, we're not going to do anything
more at the NRA and things. So they're obviously always
looking to do things in a reactive way, which I
never think is a good idea from a business standpoint,
but from an operational standpoint, you know, Delta does a
great job, and they do a great job here in Cincinnati.
They take good care of our customers, and obviously we

(18:16):
wish we had more Delta flights for anybody who's listening,
that would be great. Yeah, but look, I'm just thrilled
that tomorrow is going to be their day, and anytime
sharing air flying up to or near or after Valentine's Day,
I'm constantly congratulating the crews everybody that we interact with
on their special day because they've earned it.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
They've earned it well from the idiots doing idiot things
because they're idiots. To the file containing information about actions
do have consequences. Don't point lasers at airplanes.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Two thousand and I think twenty three is last numbers.
I have thirteen three and four laser strikes on the
ground by these handheld powerful lasers to aircraft that were
reported by the Federal ABA's administration at night. When these
powerful lasers hit the ceiling of a cockpit, it can
blind the flight crew temporarily during a critical moment of flight,

(19:12):
on takeoff and landings.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
People do this.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
I don't know why, but you're putting everybody's life at risk.
We've had pilots that had to retire because their eye
was so damaged in the attack that they no longer
can fly. Well, there was somebody outside of Kalasville, Montana.
He's a thirty two year old man that was using
a handheld laser and there was a flight instructor that

(19:35):
was in a smaller aircraft assessmin and she followed him.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Called the police.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
They were able to finally nab one of these people
and he's going to jail for two and a half
years and I'm sure he's going to be fined by
the FAA. And I hope that this will at least
serve as a small reminder. I'd like it to be
a big one for anybody that is involved in this.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Why it is.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
It's like, I don't know, it's like dropping rocks off
of an interstate overpass.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yes, you're putting people's lives.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
At risk without the road in thought for the well
being of anybody else.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
It just I don't know.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
But but again, this individual is going to jail for
two and a half years, and hopefully we can catch
more people that are doing this because these handheld laser
attacks brand they're on their way up.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Oh, I'm certain they're just literally everywhere everywhere. We have
one for our dog. He loves chasing it all around
the park, just absolutely insane.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
Never has gotten uses it for a cat, and I
always think it's unfair because the cats never going to
catch it.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
But.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Keep the busy to gives them exercise. All right, real quick,
we'll end on hub delays as we always do.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
Jay, Well, my.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
Friend, we've got issues in the northeast, Boston and New
York today are giving us fight Boston or New York's
getting better. Boston's going to be a mess the rest
of the day. And if you're flying to or through
the West Coast, uh San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, big
time issues there middle part of the country. Though, it's
getting better and hopefully he'll stay that way at least
for today.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Enjoy your Valentine's Day and kiss your wife. Jay Ratliffe.
Thank you for being on the Prossy Morning Show every Thursday.
I'll look for to next Thursday. Already, take care, brother
Hey fifty five fifty five KRC Talk Station. Dan Hills
from FOP President on the reaction by the Hemilton County
Commissioners blaming the police for the Nazi incident over on
the bridge, Donald and Neil Americans Prosperity. Go to Buckeye
Blueprint dot com. Help get the Rains Act passed here

(21:22):
in Ohio. Dennis Neil fascinating book, The Leadership Genius of
Elon Musk, most notably for business owners. Great book. Get
it at fifty five KRC dot com. Have a wonderful weekend.
Thank you as always Joe Strekker for the great work
that you do for the morning show. Tune in tomorrow
Tech Friday with Dave Otter every Friday at six thirty.
Have a great day and stick around because Glenbeck's coming
right up. News happens fast, stay up to date at

(21:45):
the top of the hour.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
You're moving very quickly.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
At fifty five KRC, the talk station