IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Here you go.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Ten and nine. First Winning one forecasts.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Partly cloudy, warm, humid late afternoon evening storms are expected
about seventh GM. They should roll in at least that's
the forecast. Eighty five for the high, down to sixty
eight overnight with some lasting storms. Tomorrow. We got storms
to the south afternoon, and eating storms are likely for
the general area starting around five pm. They say, along
with the possible wind gus tornadoes and torrential downpoards eighty

(00:31):
two Tomorrow's high sixty two overnight, the rain moves out.
We've got a partly clotty, dry Saturday with the highest
seventy three sixty seven.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Right now, time for a traffic updea from the UCL
Tramphic Center.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
You see how TS expert traumacare focusing non prevention, treating
injuries and supporting long term recovery and rehabilitation. Learn more,
and you see hewth dot com step fan seventy five.
There's an accident your union center, left shoulder now one
in the back up above Cincinnati beaton that's on the
left shoulder. Fake facts till one twenty ninth Southbound seventy

(01:02):
one continues to run an extra fifteen minutes field Zirdle
to Red Bank northbound seventy five close to a fifteen
minute to lay out of Florence. Chuck Ingram on fifty
five KOs the talk station.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Hey thirty fifty five KRCD talk station.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Happy Thursday always made extra special because this is the
time of week when we get to talk to iHeart
media aviation expert Jay Rattlift, Jay Ratliff, welcome back, my friend.
Always love having you on the show.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
Highlight of my week. Brother.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
I appreciate that so much, and it's not much of
a curveball, and I just want to talk to you briefly,
even though it's not on your list. The jet that
cutter is offering President Donald Trump to serve as any
air force one. I think the optics of it look bad.
Just don't even go down that road, was my just
initial reaction. The Democrats pulling their hair out, saying it's

(01:50):
a bribe or whatever. It's a violation of the law anyway.
It just it serves to give them some talking point
because they literally have nothing to talk about. But it's
not just that simple, because as I've read, according to
three aviation experts speaking with NBC and is it would
cost more than a billion dollars and take years to
retrofit it. So this isn't exactly a great deal.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
Is it. It is not.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
But you know, with President Trump, it's always about he
always gets from point A to point B. We may
not like how he gets there, but he doesn't. And
I always wonder if this, a lot like the initial
tariff talks, is designed for another purpose. So I don't
know if it's hees gonna have to negotiate with Boeing
because all that's locked in as far as what the

(02:34):
government's paying for the next air Force one. But it's
been delayed, delayed, delayed, and well, I'll be interested to
see how far this progresses.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well maybe that's the point he knows about everything I
mentioned and optics and all of that. But maybe by saying, hey, listen,
I'm gonna get a brain, I'm going to get a
fairly new airport right out of the gate. It's going
to be delivered. And by the way, Boeing, where's mine?
I mean, that thing's been in order for years and
years and it's not scheduled to be delivered until what year,
Jay is like twenty.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
I don't think he'll I don't think I'll fly in
it as president, so he may get on it as
he you know, as he departs Washington, DC at the
end of this term. Maybe if he's lucky. I don't
think they'll have it ready by then, because the initial
delivery time is one thing, but this thing's been delayed
so many times. I don't believe anything Boeing says. I

(03:26):
think it's gonna be delayed, should be delayed even further.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Wow, you messing with the wrong customer.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
I would think president of the United States of America,
regardless of what political stripe he bears, if you're just
if you're not delivering on something that's been ordered forever,
you'd think that they would allocate the necessary resources to
at least getting that project done and moved ahead. Just
because the optics are so bad, given everything else that's
going on with the company.

Speaker 5 (03:48):
Well, you know, if you're if you're gonna be late
delivering aircraft to Ryan Air in Europe, that may fly
under the radar here. Yeah, if you're going to be
late in delivering air Force air Force one, excuse me,
I think somebody's going to notice. So you're right, that
should be a priority.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, and you think the Board of Directors would recognize
that as a priority since it makes the news fairly regularly,
and now even more so. Going back to your point
of reason, maybe why he wants to accept the plane
is this elevates everybody's attention to it. And in this
in the context of this conversation, you know, the American
population might be saying, hey, why don't you buy it
from an American Manufacturer's like, well, we've been trying to
do that now for the past fifteen years, but they're

(04:26):
not delivering right.

Speaker 5 (04:28):
And it also makes the people that are jump backing
up and down on the other side nipping at his heels, yeah,
look even more full. It's like when Sean Duffy, the
Transportation Secretary, had his wife's upcoming flight adjusted, or she's
gonna be flying out of JFK instead of Newark because
there's a lot of delays.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
He's going to a conference. He wants her to be
on time.

Speaker 5 (04:48):
But the minute that happens, it's a matter of, well,
you did that because it's not safe to fly out
of Newark. Yeah, it's not safe to fly out of Newark.
Because what President Trump has done in the last one
hundred days, and of course that's ridiculous. Everybody, well most
everybody recognizes that, but Brian, I mean, I've been getting
emails from people all over the country ever since this

(05:09):
mess started saying, Jay, would you go through Newark? And
I said no, not if I could avoid it, And
so all he did was a just thing as you
and I would. It's a lot like, Okay, it's January,
I'm blind united. Am I going to connect through Chicago
or Houston? I think I'll choose Houston because we know
what happens in Chicago in the month of January. So
when they make these ridiculous arguments, it's like, that's really

(05:32):
what you want to jump up and down on. That's
the point you're going to try to make to make
yourself look I don't know better. Politically, it's stupidity, and
I I just don't get Well, I'm glad I don't
get it because you and I don't think that way.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well, we don't think that way.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
We try to stay a little bit closer updated on
the actual realities that we're dealing with day in and
day out, rather than just clinging to some ridiculous SoundBite
that's not based on facts. Let's bring Jay Ratliffe back.
We will talk about the outage at Newark, which seems
to be happening more often, plus getting parts from eBay
more with Jay Ratlib. After these brief words up, you.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Can stick around fifty five KRC. I've had a number
of surgeries. He's all right.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
I heard media aviation expert. We get him every Thursday
between eight thirty and the close of the show, and
it's an enjoyable experience for me. I know my listeners
enjoy hearing from you, Jay, and maybe you can explain
what the hell is going on at Newark Airport. I
was laughing because he said would you want to would
you want to fly through Newark? And or you know,
layover in Newark? And I think my initial reaction, regardless

(06:35):
of the status of the air traffic control system, will
be no, right out of the gate. I don't want
to go to Newark for any reason. But most notably,
they have made the news regularly lately with their with
the outages. So what's the story behind this one, Jay, Well,
we've got.

Speaker 5 (06:49):
A couple of different issues. It's a technology issue as
well as a staffing issue. And what we've seen in
the last two weeks or three occasions were the FAA
technology for tracking aircraft, which of course we've talked about
how antiquated last century plus that technology is.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
Where we've had.

Speaker 5 (07:08):
Three instances in two weeks. The first two were primary
systems that failed that actually caused the scopes, the radar
screens to go blank. You could not see the air
traffic that you were managing. You could fortunately then speak
to them, which was good because you could at least
still communicate. The second instance, that happened on Sunday morning,

(07:30):
was a backup or secondary system that failed. And that's
my biggest concern is like, wait a minute. Now, we've
got the primary and the secondary systems that are being effected.
And what's happening is this technology that is so old
it's simply just wearing down. It just cannot withstand the
demands that are being placed on it. So what we're
seeing is the same system which is used across the country.

(07:52):
I look at Newark as an indication of this is
just the beginning. We could see other types of situations
like this occur, and that is certainly something that's an issue.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Now.

Speaker 5 (08:02):
The question I get is, Jay, does that mean it
is unsafe for us if we're going to be flying
in that part of the country. Now, the FAA is
doing a very good job from a traffic management standpoint,
where they keep the number of aircraft headed into a
certain region, especially that congested Northeast, limited to a certain number.
If they start to have issues with technology, they slow

(08:23):
that down. We have frequent ground stops in cities like Cincinnati, Columbus, Chicago,
anything headed towards the Northeast. If there's an issue, they'll
issue a ground stop and say, no, your plane can't
take off until this time because we're only managing a
certain number of aircraft in this vicinity in this timeframe.
So I think they do a pretty good job of
managing it. So it's something that their controllers do not

(08:47):
get overwhelmed with. Obviously, you want them to have the
technology working because look, we're forty air traffic controllers short
in Newark at this point in time that part of
the country, and what's taken place is three thousand air
traffic controllers short across the country. So you have air
traffic controllers that are working overtime because they are short staffed,

(09:10):
and you have a situation where they don't. They can't
count on their technology because it's failing. And you have
a lot of these individuals that are just saying, look,
I'm going to go get a less stressful job, like
you know, bomb detection or anything, because this is just
just We've had five of them that had to take
a leave of absence because of the emotional distress that

(09:30):
they had when they lost contact with their aircraft for
ninety seconds. Now, sometimes I would be like, oh, not
come up, but what these men and women are going through,
I totally understand that where they're taking a forty five
day leave of absence and going from there. The problem,
of course, Brian, is neither of those two systems are
two issues with the shortage of air traffic controllers or

(09:50):
technology is anything we can fix fast. In other words,
it's going to take years for us to get the
technology updated. Thank god President Trump has made this a
item of priority. And if we have a Manhattan Project
kind of approach, all hands on deck, we can knock
it out maybe two years. That's great staffing, It's going
to take years for the staffing to get up where

(10:12):
it needs to be, which means neither of these situations
are going to be resolved anytime soon. And when Sean
Duffy comes out as the Transfer taking Secretary saying that
some of these parts are so old from the last
century that they have to go to eBay to buy
the parts for the FAA, if that doesn't tell you
what we're up against, I don't know. That's terrifying and

(10:34):
scary at the same time, because it's one thing to
find people qualified to still work on equipment from the
seventies and eighties and nineties, but to find parts on
eBay to do so again. Thank god President Trump's doing
something because all these useless people in Washington, d C,
on both sides of the aisle that want to use
this as.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
A political ping pong ball.

Speaker 5 (10:55):
Excuse me, you've been in DC for forty fifty years,
thirty years, twelve and you done nothing to address this
FAA issue, which we've known it was coming. But the
idea is, it's a lot easier to give money for
a bridge where I get my picture taken versus spending
it on something boring like the FAA's.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
Upgraded computer system.

Speaker 5 (11:12):
We've waited too long, and we're behind the eight ball,
and we've got to do a lot and I'm glad
President Trump's at the helm to do something about it.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, when you talk about getting parts off EVA, that's
because no one manufactures the type of equipment that these
computers are relying on. Life for example, I think I
jokingly reference five and a quarter floppy drives with you,
but that sounds to me exactly like what they're using.

Speaker 5 (11:34):
Yeah, it's like trying to find, apart from my radio
Shack computer from nineteen ninety.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Six, realistic, where's it gonna be.

Speaker 5 (11:41):
I mean, you know, nobody's going to stock that part
because one person every three years is going to buy it.
And that's what they're running into. And some people thought
Sean Duffy was making a joke. He's like, no, I'm serious.
These are the ends that we have to go to
to try to keep this stuff working. And I've seen
some of these computers that overheat frequently that are part

(12:03):
of the air traffic control system where they have to
open up the back panels and put fans there to
try to keep them cool from overheating. And I'm thinking
we've had air traffic controllers have to have an umbrella
at their desk inside the why because it leaks at
the ceiling. I'm trying to keep water off of my
computer and look at all of these different things that
they have to deal with. Why, oh, by the way,

(12:25):
we're supposed to have fourteen people on duty, we can
only have three, four or five. It's just an emotional
mess right now with what they're going through.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
And again.

Speaker 5 (12:37):
The people that politically are saying, you know, Donald Trump
has all these issues. No, We've had issues like this
for a number of decades, and I blame both sides
of the aisle because it's been a joint effort that's
in essence ignored what the FA has needed all these years.
It reminds me of let's say, Social Security and some
of these other things that they just don't want to touch.
And you know, there're gonna spend more time seeing that

(12:59):
they can blame versus trying to fix the problem.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Well, if there were more air traffic accidents and more
loss of lives than it would have been elevated to
their attention. I think they figured, as long as it's working,
there are thousands of flights every single day and nothing
seems to be happening.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
So status quo is aoka and that is such.

Speaker 5 (13:14):
A great, great point, because yes, we were enjoying the
safest era of commercial jet travel in as long as
it's working. Why invest hundreds of billions of dollars in
something when something's working? And that's exactly the mindset these
people have. The bridge hasn't collapsed, so what do we
need to spend money to rebuild it?

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yees?

Speaker 5 (13:33):
You know, And that's why I'm glad that you're right
down the middle on things. You call it the way
you see it, because both sides of the aisle are
guilty in this. They should be held accountable. But I
think it's spent half the energy. Did they spend pointing
fingers and actually get some work done on all the
things are there for I'd feel so much better.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Oh my god, wouldn't the world be a much better place? Jeez?

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Anyway, Jay, now you talk about air traffics and controllers. Now,
if I were to go to and enroll in air
traffic control school, they're going to be training me on
how to work equipment that's fifty years old. That I mean,
that's kind of be a fact of the current situation,
right yep.

Speaker 5 (14:10):
And we only have so many we can do. We
can we can comfortably get fifteen hundred to two thousand
through at a time. Last year, the FAA had a
goal for the whole year of hiring fifteen hundred air
traffic controllers. They did that by September first. I was
bragging on a big time by hitting their goal. Early
this year, they were hoping to get two thousand hired.

(14:31):
But look, only a portion of those make it through
the training, and it could be three years, four years,
or even longer before you're final fully trained at your
post by yourself doing your job.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Let's the equivalent of getting a four year degree to college.

Speaker 5 (14:45):
Then that's why you can't turn the spicket on and
affect immediate results here, because all this stuff takes time,
and the fa does a good job of training these people,
but it takes a while to get them there. So
that's why when you look at all of this, it's
like you and I are going to be talking about
Newark and the FAA and all this stuff a whole
lot more as we move forward, because we're going to

(15:07):
see other computers around the country that are going to
start experiencing some of these similar kinds of issues. We've
already seen them in the past, but this is three
currencies in a couple of weeks, and it's in a
point part of the country that's incredibly congested, and it's
become a major talking point for all the obvious reasons.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Well, I just hope it doesn't turn into a major
talking about a point about loss of life. Well, is
it real quick here on air traffic control? Is it
a lucrative profession? Is it something that's worth pursuing as
an endeavor?

Speaker 5 (15:37):
I mean, some of these people one hundred and fifty
grand a year, sometimes more, sometimes less, especially with some
of the ones.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
That are working over time at this point.

Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, but you remember coming out of the pandemic, how
we had a lot of people that adjusted their entire
mindset on work. It was like, I'm working three jobs
to do this, I'm only going to work too, or
I'm busting my butt working two jobs quality of life's sake,
I'm only going to have one. We see pilots that
could qualify to become captains that turn it down because

(16:08):
they like the first officer. They like their seniority where
they can call the shots. If I get promoted and
I'm sitting in the left seat when I'm at the
bottom of the list, and I can't have that much
control over my schedule. Yeah, I would get paid more,
but I control my life more in this situation. And
these air traffic controllers, it's the same thing when they
get there and they're saying, I'm going through so much

(16:30):
for this when I could be happier doing something else,
and all of that stuff, not all, but a great
deal of it is stuff that we shove on them
because we're giving them tools that they can't depend on,
and we're asking them to do the job of several
people because we can't keep everything staffed as we should.
And a lot of these people are just saying I've

(16:52):
had it in a way they go and Brian, I
can't blame them, because if every single day you're in
charge of the safeguarding the lives of people that are
you know that you're helping to facilitate the movement of
those aircraft. There's no room for margin as far as
for safety. You've got to jump in there and do
your job, and everything has to work as it's supposed to,
and you're worried every day is it really gonna work?

(17:14):
Am I gonna be able to get through my shift
without a problem? And you know that's certainly a concern.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Well all right, well we always part company on hub delays.
So what's the status today for air traffic.

Speaker 5 (17:26):
I think Minneapolis is gonna be the only problem shot,
and I think it's gonna be kind of a glancing blow.
So we might see delays at most that might approach
an hour, but that's pretty much Yep. We've got these
afternoon thunderstorms which can pop up anywhere, which goes to
show why Shary and I when we fly, we catch
the first flight out in the morning because a that's
the flight. Airlines concentrate on the most to get it
out on time, so your odds go up. And to

(17:48):
these afternoon thunderstorms that can pop up any of that where,
that really create a lot of afternoon messes and delays.
You know, you've got your bags out of baggage claim,
you're driving to your destination long before those things hit.
You fly out early in the morning. I'm not telling
people to do that. I'm just explaining why we do that.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Fair enough, Jay, I appreciate your our conversations enlightening and
in today slightly scary, but got to get the info
out there, and and let's spread the truth about all
these things. I'll look forward to next Thursday and another
edition of this aviation segment. You have a wonderful weekend,
my friend.

Speaker 5 (18:22):
And looking forward to next week. This has got to
be the fastest twenty minutes of my week, to be sure,
it seems like six take ah, you.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Too, I love it. Eight fifty one fifty five KC detalkstations.
I'll be right back fifty five KRC. Did you hear
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