IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Die for the weather shown nine says partly cloudy day
to day.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
A little more humid air quality alert is in effect
for SINCEE metro area as well as south east Indiana.
Eighty seven for the Heights Today sixty eight overnight low
with clouds. Eighty four of the Heights. Tomorrow clouds, warm, muggy,
and scattered afternoon eving storms. They predict between five and
ten pm, follow by overnight scattered showers and a few storms.
Sixty eight for the low comes Saturday, eighty two for

(00:25):
Flag Day. Mostly clouds but scattered thunderstorms are likely in
the afternoon. Right now sixty seven degrees In time for
a traffic update from.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
The UCL Trampic Center from massides there being a stress
relief and cancer surveillance. The UC Cancer Center offers the
region's largest supported services program for cancer patients and survivors,
called five one three five eighty five UCCC northbound fourth
seventy one. They moved the wreck out of the left
lane on the bridge over to the right shoulder just

(00:53):
off of the bridge.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Traffic's still heavy from before.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Grand southbound seventy five slows through Lachland chuck Ingraman fifty
five k see the talk station.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Hey thirty no on Thursday.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
It's that time when we get the joy and pleasure
talking with iHeart media aviation expert Jay ratlat sadly, and
I know this isn't a curve ball for you, Jay,
because I'm certain you found out and heard about the
plane crash in India and I saw the video and
oh my god, it is just a horror show. Jay,
Welcome back to the program.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
Good morn to Brian.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:27):
I had a lot of really fun topics in mind
for us to talk about, and that news greeted us
this morning, and it you know, as with every aviation disaster,
it's a situation.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Of okay, what do we know of anything?

Speaker 5 (01:41):
And I've been asked throughout the morning to speculate, and
obviously you can't, but you can also draw certain conclusions
and we can certainly do this with the video that's
been verified as the plane crashing. Was the weather, which
sometimes is a contributing cause to aviation disasters, did not

(02:01):
appear to be the case here. The other thing was
that the aircraft did not show any signs of outward distress,
meaning it wasn't on fire, did nothing seem to have
like a bag that would have exploded from the inside
or something shot at it from the outside. So the
plane wasn't on fire. It seemed to be intact. No
pieces of the aircraft wing or vertical stabilizers were missing,

(02:25):
so that scene to suggest everything was pretty much as normal.
We do know the airplane took off, reached six hundred
and eighty feet or so, leveled off, and then started
to glide down and the landing air was still deployed.
Now normally you'll retract that right as you hit the
rotation point as you take off, but the crew, you know,

(02:47):
had their hands full here. And there's also reports that
there was a made a call, yeah, was sent out
and Brian, I'll be really, really really surprised if that's accurate.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Can oh yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
If your flight crew, the last thing you're gonna do
when you have moments is to stop what you're doing
and communicate what's going on. Pilots are taught you aviate
first and foremost who cares. You don't tell anybody anything
until you try to get a handle on the situation
that's at hand. And if a flight crew took time

(03:22):
away from the few seconds and that's really all they
have of trying to solve this problem, whatever it was,
to stop and communicate. That's just not the norm. And
apparently they had a pretty experienced flight crew. And what's
going to happen is you're going to hear so many
reports of this and that that you're going to fight
out after the.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Fact wasn't the case.

Speaker 5 (03:44):
There's eyewitness reports that you really can't take much stock
in because you're gonna have two people stand by side
and one will say it was flying this way and
the other one says, no, it's flying that way. Because
your brains just aren't wired to process the tragedy that
you solve unfolding. But you know, if an airplane takes
off and it has a problem with one of the engines,

(04:05):
it continues to take off, they shut the one bad
engine down, they increase power to the second, use fly around,
and you come back in the land. It's a very routine.
What happened here apparently caused power for both engines to
turn off, and that's you know, that narrows it down

(04:25):
just a bit. Now, there's no conclusions that are ever
going to be drawn from just the video that we
saw have at our disposal. Boeing officials as well as
the National Transportation Safety Board as an assist agency.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
They won't be leading.

Speaker 5 (04:39):
It will arrive and they'll help with the black boxes,
and once those are retrieved and analyzed, they'll be able
to tell mechanically what was happening. And also the cockpit
voice recorder that will provide any verbal communications were going
on or any alarms that might have been sounding at
the time. That could s just what happened. But if

(05:02):
there was ever fuel contamination, in other words, if water
got in the fuel or something that contaminated the fuel enough,
it could cause an engine to shut down. We've had
that happen before. For it to have both engines shut down.
I just don't know. I just don't know. And back
to that may day call. I remember when Selenberg and

(05:24):
Jeff Skiles on the Miracle on the Hudson when they
had the double bird strike. They communicated in may day,
but they were twenty eight hundred feet so they had
some time to work the problem, thankfully, and it ended
up very well. This crew had less than seven hundred
feet and if you're at altitude, you know, thirty five
thousand feet and there's a problem, an experienced flight crew

(05:47):
can say, Okay, let's work the problem. We have X
amount of minutes to solve whatever's going on here. They
had seconds to try, and yeah, obviously very very few options.
And now the investigational continue and hopefully they'll find some survivors.
Oh my god, the images and the pictures and the

(06:07):
video are just horrific, and you just pray that the
people on the plane survived as well as nobody on
the ground was killed, and only.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Time will tell.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Time will tell, and you can pray that there are
but seeing the video and that fireball explosion and the
fact that they basically flew into a building, I find
it hard to believe anybody could survive.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
You.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
I can later get into the specifics of the investigation, yeah,
and certain things you're concerned about, But yeah, those are
my initial observations.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Real quick, No, pilot, am I I know you are
a pilot, but it didn't look like the flaps were
down there flaps down during takeoff to provide.

Speaker 5 (06:45):
The flaps were not in the position that they needed
to appear to be. But it was the air speed
that to me was the biggest indicator, because even if
you have a flap issue, the speed is going to
dictate what happens.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, the stall is stall thing, right, and.

Speaker 5 (07:04):
You know this, well, a stall would have would have
actually caused the airplane to.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Fall out of the sky. Yeah, you're right, that was Yeah.

Speaker 5 (07:12):
This one, this one flew and or glided is a
better term. So that's why on this And look the
Dreamliner you're talking about, seventy nine airlines around the world
use it. It's been been around for fourteen years. You've
had a billion passengers travel on them without any incident whatsoever. Uh,
you know, as far as a crash. So there's a

(07:32):
lot of you know, this is a workhorse for Boeing,
and a lot of people are saying, oh, here we
go Boeing again.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
I'm like, we'll time out.

Speaker 5 (07:38):
You know, there's a lot of contributing causes that could
be at play here, and we simply don't know because yeah,
it was a Boeing aircraft. But you know Boeing and Airbus,
ninety percent percent of any aviation access can involve one
of the two. So you certainly can't draw conclusions at all.
Here we go again, because that Dreamliner has a very

(07:58):
very proven track occurred behind it and is an incredibly
safe aircraft.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
I guess lucky for bowing it wasn't a seven thirty
seven max.

Speaker 5 (08:06):
Well, yeah, but you know they're going to be very
quickly over there to see what's going on, because if
it was a mechanical situation, we got to address it
because we have other seven eighty sevens that are out
there flying fair enough.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
We'll continue with Jay Ratliffe after these brief words.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Fifty five KRC JENLEMI with a horse.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
We got a warmer but more humid day to day
air quality alerting effect from the Sinney metro area in
southeast Indiana. Eighty seven for the high sixty eight overnight
low with clouds and increased humidity, eighty four muggy and
scattered afternoon and evening storms Tomorrow between five and ten GM,
mainly eighty four the high down to sixty eight over
night with a few scattered showers and storms and mostly

(08:45):
Cloudy's Saturday, and they say thunderstorms are likely in the afternoon.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
I have a two then right now sixty eight. Time
for traffics.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
You see how traffic center from massides therapy to stress
relief and cancer surveillance. So you see cancer center offers
the region's largest support services program for cancer patients and
survivors called five one three five eighty five.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
U see CC South Bend.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Seventy one continue slow from a pump two seventy five,
often on the red bank rex clear. So is the
backup North Pound four seventy one, North Pound seventy five
getting better between Florence and downtown Chuck Ingramont fifty five
krs the talk station we've.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Ever been in the cockpit before?

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Hey, forty fifty fou KRCD talk station. Jay ratherifas he's
I heard, needy aviation expert. We enjoy his company every
Thursday for a few segments. Uh, pivoting over away from
the tragic Indian aircraft we have. It's one thing to
have your flight cancel, but it's nothing to have your
entire airline shut down. What's this all about?

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Jay?

Speaker 5 (09:44):
Yeah? Silver Airways may've been around two I think fourteen
fifteen years. Maybe they're Florida based company. I fly into
Florida as well as Caribbean and Bahama destinations. They have
eight eight aircraft and either twenty eight or thirty destinations.
And yesterday they they ceased operations, ran out of money

(10:04):
and told sent messages to the passengers not to report
to the airport. Well that's fine if you're home getting
ready to go on your vacation, but quite another if
you're at your vacation waiting to get home. Oh yeah, yeah,
So those individuals would be tasked with trying to get
a hold of an airline and by a last minute

(10:25):
one way ticket back back home because the airline that
they had trusted has gone out of business. So we
it's been a while since we've seen one just totally
belly up like this without any advanced notice. But the
good news is that the you know, the number of
cities a fly or few, which means the impact is

(10:47):
going to be few. But you know, not if you're
one of the passengers who's going to end up being
stranded at one of these, especially if you're in the
Caribbean or the Bahamas and you're trying.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
To get back and depending on how they I guess
declare bankruptcy and co chapter eleven or something, getting your
money back, it's gonna be a little difficult from a
belly up airline.

Speaker 5 (11:06):
Yeah. And you know, if they filed Chapter eleven, as
many airlines have, they keep flying and from our side
of the ticket counter. You and I've talked about it.
You really you don't notice the difference if it's Spirit
American when they filed Chapter eleven and and other carriers.
I remember when United went through it a number of
years ago. It's just something that that happens. And as

(11:26):
they do, you know, they organized that they keep flying,
a far cry from just kind of you know, everything
coming to a stop.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, I guess they have assets that could be liquidated.

Speaker 5 (11:39):
You might get you pennies on your desk.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
That's typically the case because I'm sure if they are
having this kind of financial struggles, they had a lot
of creditors standing in line with their hands out for
the for the what's left over.

Speaker 5 (11:49):
And we talk a lot Brandon about the the flight insurance,
trip insurance, and those things come into play because I'm
a big fan of that because you never know what's
gonna happen. And anytime Sharry and I fly, I'll get
the trip cancelation insurance, which includes a lot of different things.
If things were to happen and it's a few bucks,

(12:09):
it's no big deal and a peace of mind, yes,
And to me, it's just a natural part. Plus if
you're really really good at planning your trip way in advance,
as so many of our listeners are.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
You're getting a.

Speaker 5 (12:21):
Very big discount on your ticket, and as a result,
many times the insurance is going to be made available,
sometimes at reduced costs. But even if not, with all
the money you've saved by booking early, you've got more
than a month of money left over to make sure
that you lock that in. And if you're buying your
making your reservations as we try to do, eleven months

(12:42):
in advance, that is very prudent to get that and
I can't you know, recommend that.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Enough, fair enough, Well, you got another minute to show
in this segment. Let's just talk real quickly about Boeing
had a great month of sales, more than three hundred aircraft. Now,
I guess the follow up question is, yeah, you sold them,
but when are you going to deliver them?

Speaker 5 (13:03):
Well, right now they're making they're cranking out airplanes at
about forty five a month, which is twice of what
he did last year at this time. But look last
year Boeing delivered three hundred and forty eight airplanes.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Wow, and the whole year.

Speaker 5 (13:17):
So if you see them getting three hundred and three
orders in a month. That's not too bad that they
had three cancel on them, so it was an at
of three hundred and they've had very few months that
were that good as far as a you know, kind
of a blockbuster kind of month for them. But what
that means is their backlog aircraft orders are now fifty

(13:38):
nine hundred and forty three, so they've got nearly six
thousand aircraft on back order. By comparison with their friends
over at the Airbus, they've got I think about eight thousand,
close to nine thousand on back order. So I don't
care who you're buying your airplane from, it's going to
be a while before you get it, which is why
we've discussed many times. Airlines will say, hey, let's go

(14:01):
buy another airline. That way we can immediately have an
influx of you know, two hundred new airplane not new,
but two hundred additional aircraft that we can add to
the fleet that will allow us to fly in US
several cities that we just can't now because we don't
have the number of airplanes to do.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
It all right, Well, and you know, if you're buying
millions of dollars worth of aircraft, and every one of
these things is a heap lot of money. The terms
of conditions and the delivery date prospects or anticipated delivered
date is certainly something they're going to discuss, so they
know in advance about when the aircraft's going to show off,
or at least some rough estimates it is.

Speaker 5 (14:35):
And look, a lot of these are incredibly fuel efficient airplanes,
and it's a lot of the planes that they are
ordering are to replace some of the planes that are
older in their fleet. So the thought is, look, let's
get this newer aircraft in so that we can a
save money on fuel but provide a better line of
service for our customers. I'd love to think that's a

(14:57):
primary consideration.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
It's not.

Speaker 5 (14:59):
And many times as because you can accommodate more passengers
on the newer aircraft than you can be old. So yeah,
there's a lot of incentives for getting the new airplanes,
and you know they can't get them fast enough.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Let's pause, bring Jay right, look back, talk about airlines
selling our personal tremble information and hub delays always conclude
with hub delays. Find out it's a good day to
fly out there. It's a forty six right now, be right.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Back fifty five KRC.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
One more time for the weather this morning, it's Channel
nine says we have a partly cloudy day, a bit
more human I guess than yesterday. Air quality a lerding
effect for since Sint Metro and south East Indiana eighty
seven the high that excuse me down to sixty eight
overnight with clouds, clouds, muggy conditions tomorrow with scattered aufternnon
and evening storms. They predict between five and ten pm
eighty four for the high, but then again we've got

(15:45):
showers and storms overnight as well. Sixty eight for the low. Finally,
for Saturday, cloudy with scattered thunderstorms likely in the afternoon.
Eighty two for the high, finishing up at sixty eight degrees.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Let's get a final traffic.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Update from the use see how traumfhic center from the
science therapy to stress relief and cancer surveillance. The u
See Cancer Center offers the region's largest supportive services program
for cancer patients and survivors, called five one three five
eighty five UCCCE northbound seventy five continues just over a
five minute delay from Turf Way into town.

Speaker 4 (16:20):
Southbound seventy five.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
That's Ober a five minute delay from Evendale down to
the lateral southbound seventy one. You're often on the breaks
from above two seventy five to Red Bank Chuck Ingram
on fifty five KRC the talk station.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
A fifty year fifty five KERR CIT talk station. Demand
in demand, most notably on days like today we have
that tragedy in India with the airline crash. But Jay Ratliffe,
what is with airlines selling our personal and travel information
to whom and why?

Speaker 5 (16:52):
Well, the airlines have an organization or come entity they own,
the Airline Reporting Corporation. It's owned in essence by several
large airlines. It does a lot of things from an
accounting standpoint and other things for the airline industry. But
it's been found out that the ARC, the Airline Reporting Corporation,

(17:12):
is selling light information personal data on passengers to the
Customs and Border Protection Agency. So the thought is why
are airlines selling this information to a government entity in
not keeping that information private? The response was that, you know,

(17:35):
we're going to support federal, state and local law enforcement
agencies if they're trying to identify persons of interest. But
the airlines have not been shall we say, fully you know,
forthcoming with regards to what they're doing. But you know,
when I look at it, it's the itinerary, it's the
payment details that are being made available, and I mean

(17:56):
the government has that kind of information anyway, So I
don't I don't feel as though it's a betrayal on
my part if my light information or whatever is provided
to a government agency for the I guess, the sake
of law enforcement. But you know, your libertarian side of things,
you might look at that and say, hey, look, you know,

(18:17):
is this something that we can look at? There's a
bobby And that was going to be a question I
had for you, because I look at this as something
that's not necessarily that big of a deal, because the
government already has access to a lot of this. I
think the thought is we're trying to find in a
timely fashion where somebody we're looking for might happen to
be traveling to.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, very mixed emotions on these kind of things, Jay,
I really do, because I don't like, you know, government
accumulation of information. I mean, it's always there, or we're
just trying to protect you, We're just trying to protect you. Yeah,
well that's what the NSA says. They vacuum up literally
every communication we make in the world. And you know
how good are they at produced at predicting future crimes?
And the usually are just like, oh yeah, we got
a file on that guy after the crime has been committed.

(19:00):
So you know what I mean, it's like gotta NDS
is that movie Costa Blanca.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
We have a complete dossier on you.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
You know, all right, great, thanks, so my eyes yeah, yeah,
all right.

Speaker 5 (19:12):
Well I don't trust airlines and you know, am I
trust for the government. Well that probably goes without saying,
but it's just, you know, the irony is the government
asked the airlines for information such as this during the pandemic,
and the airline said, no, we will not provide it

(19:35):
because we don't have the personnel. So I guess when
it was requested during a time of crisis with the pandemic,
thinking if somebody had got COVID, we need to find
out where they've been. Uh, that kind of stuff isn't
important enough. But now the airlines are okay and selling
that same information to another government agency. It just yeah,

(19:55):
really yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Come on and selling it, you know, profit profit motive. Right,
that's it, you got it all right? We always then
unhubbed DeLay's jay right left. What's it look like out
there today for air travel?

Speaker 5 (20:07):
You don't want to be in Texas, Houston and Dallas
getting absolutely hammered with some inclement weather, a lot of rain,
a lot of wind, a lot of delayed, a lot
of canceled flights. So if you're flying connecting on through
Houston on United, you might get a hold of them
just to see what options you might have available to you.
If you're going through Dallas on American, do the exact
same thing, because that's primarily where.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
The headaches today are going to be.

Speaker 5 (20:31):
With the rest of the country being pretty good shape.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
I imagine you're heading off to your next phone call
to talk about the air disaster.

Speaker 5 (20:36):
Jabisby, I'm actually trying to save my voice. I've had
a cold all week talk until about Wednesday, so I
was trying to make sure that I had enough batteries
juice to make sure.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
That we were going to be good for this.

Speaker 5 (20:48):
I'm glad, yeah, but no, it's as time allows I
do it. But you know, this is the important one
of the week. I always enjoy our conversation.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
That's so kind of you, Jay, and I thoroughly enjoy
our conversations. I do, and I know you to be
a great man with a better half. So God bless you, sir.
We'll talk next Thursday, and I hope your health improves quickly.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
I'm on the men.

Speaker 5 (21:07):
We're hit in the right direction, brother.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Great news, Take care of my friend eight fifty five
fifty five KR See the talk station taxpayer protection lines.
Dave Williams this morning on are we pushing free or
fair trade? The answer to that was known. What is
the remittance free and the food stamp fraud that's been revealed.
Bob Wetter on the tower lighting ceremony in Mount Washington
taking place tomorrow along with a Flag Day celebration. The
new lights light up at nine pm. Bob and Scott

(21:29):
Wortman from the inquiry on AFT have purvol and the
Sarah Henninger disaster, why he was fined fifty dollars for
campaign finance issues, and what's going on with this sin
Sinny fire Department. All those topics, along with my conversation
with Jay Ratliffe podcast page fifty five, care Sea dot
Com Tech Friday tomorrow and shoulds infest folks tomorrow as well.

(21:49):
Hope you have a wonderful day folks. Thanks Joe Strekker
for all the work you do for the program. I
truly appreciate what you do for the show. And if
you want to do a podcast, call Joe Strekker up.
It's what he does on the side. He does a
terrific job of producing podcasts. Folks, stick around. Glenn Beck's
coming right up from a full rundown of the biggest
headlines is minutes away at the top of the hour.

Speaker 4 (22:10):
I'm giving you a fact now the Americans should know
fifty five krs the talk station.

Speaker 5 (22:15):
This