IHeartMedia Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff talks about the week in aviation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 1 (00:52):
Station eight thirty fifty five KRCD talk station. It being
Thursday is the time of week I certainly look forward to.
It's a discussion with iHeartMedia aviation expert Jay Ratliffe. Welcome, back,
my friend. Love having you on the show. Good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
If I sound bummed, it's because the stock markets closed today,
so I'm kind of lost.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
June teenth and a happy Juneteenth. All those folks out
there that are celebrating the very important holiday can't discount
the importance of it. Flipping over aviation is I want
to start with the Air India plane crash. Obviously that
this story broke last week when we were talking, and
the timing couldn't have been better in light of the tragedy.
Of course, we had very little information at the time,

(01:36):
a lot of speculation, and I've seen swirling speculation since then.
Have we learned anything specifically about the cause, the nature
of the crash, or anything else along those lines, Jay Ratliff.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
We have a little bit more of brand, not much.
The good news is both black boxes have been recorded.
The we've been recovered the cockpit voice recorder is was
the last one that they found. This was one that
if it's not been damaged by the fire, the heat,
the magnetic tapes that make up the black box, they're
going to be able to hear the pilot's conversations back

(02:10):
and forth. They're going to hear the alarms in the cockpit,
they're going to hear the discussions on trying to solve
the problem at hand. The first black box they found
was the flight data recorder. That's going to give them
all the instrument readings, all the headings when things were changed,
what was operational, what was malfunctioning. Those black boxes are
going to be critical given the fact that we don't
have sadly the flight crew to interview to talk to

(02:33):
that type of thing with everybody but one soul on
board perishing, so that's important. The other thing that they
were able to determine is apparently the RAM, the RAM
air turbine was deployed. This is a little propeller thing
that is designed on these aircraft that if there's a
power loss, it drops down in this propeller speed that

(02:55):
turns it almost the speed of sound, and it provides
some basic electrical power to the flight deck. So that
issue it is in essence, yeah, it was. It was
deployed and from some of the pictures, apparently it was down.
Now that's a critical piece of data because if we're
interpreting that right, that would mean that they were experiencing

(03:19):
some sort of a power issue and that would make
sense from the standpoint that you and I remember we're
talking about, why in the world was the landing gear down? Yeah,
because typically as the airplane takes off within fifty feet,
they rotate, they come off the ground the and the
gear is immediately retracted because then it becomes more of
an aerodynamic aircraft, easier to take off. All that, although

(03:41):
the fact if it was down doesn't mean that it
would cause the airplane to crash, But if there was
a hydraulic problem where they had engine power issues, you
would not have the power required to retract the gear,
So that might explain the fact that the crew was
fighting some sort of a lack of power issues. So

(04:02):
right now, that's kind of some of the leading thoughts,
And of course the investigation. Normally about a week to
ten days after the black boxes are received, the investigated
bodies will provide some sort of an initial update letting
us know if the black boxes had any information, are
they still going to be good to look at, And
then about thirty days after we get another update, and

(04:24):
then typically nothing until the final report eight to twelve
months out. So with seventy nine airlines around the world
using these Boeing Dreamliners a nearly twelve hundred of them
flying around. If there's any sort of a mechanical concern,
we need to find out what it is as quickly
as we can, because you know you've got that. But

(04:44):
you know, this isn't like a Boeing Max issue. This
is not a new airplane that just rolled out with
a lot of new upgrades and software packages. This is
an airplane that's been flown five million times, more than
a billion passengers over the last fourteen fifteen years with
no serious issues like this. So it's a completely different

(05:04):
than what we had before. But you know, obviously some
big concerns and we got to find out what happened.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Well, I have to ask, maybe it sounds like a
stupid question to you, but if there was an electrical problem,
and would that cause both engines to shut down completely?
I mean that interconnected, that a complete electrical outage would
prevent the engines from operating.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
You're talking about two independently operating systems. That's kind of
what I was hoping failure. It's like a trillion to
one possibility. The only reason typically that you'd have a
dual engine failure would be if a you had a
bird ingestion, which apparently did not happen, even though some
people are still leaning to that like we did with

(05:50):
the miracle on the Huston. But you know, one of
the things you and I talked about last Thursday was
when I first saw that video of the aircraft, there
was no signs of aircraft to stress. There wasn't any
smoke coming out of the engines, no sparks, no flames,
the things you would typically see if there was an
ingestion of any kind that would cause the aircraft engine

(06:12):
to start to malfunction. The engines apparently had you know,
no smoke or anything like that. And the other thing
would be fuel contamination if you had water in the
fuel or something like that that has happened before, that
would cause the engines to not operate. But most of
the time you wouldn't be able to take off, you
wouldn't have the.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Power to do right.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
So that's also kind of a well it's a theory,
but and really, right now, that's all we have is
a bunch of theories to try to explain this. Because
this is the worst disaster we've had in two decades,
and to have an airplane just fall out of the
sky like that is horrific and it's also something that

(06:52):
typically doesn't happen. And that's why the investigators are going
to be you know, the Indian officials are going to
be charge the National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing is
going to be there to assist, and those investigators are
going to try to do, like we say all the time,
honor the lives of those that were lost by finding
out what happened, and Brian, I'm confident they will and

(07:13):
we'll learn from it make aviation safer as a result.
But right now there's no clear cut indication of what
caused those engines to simply not provide the thrust that's
required to get that airplane off the ground.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Hopefully were revealed by the black boxes. Will continue with
Jay Rattleff after these brief words, if you can stick
around fifty five the talk station open. Aye is a
financial abomination. I heart media aviation expert. Yeah, Jay, I
was just thinking about you. Normally I get some email
from you after our conversation telling me how much money
you made during our conversation trade and stocks and your

(07:49):
stock method. Yeah, daytrade fund dot com, but not today.
I know. Let's get ready to start off with that.
It's like, wait a second, you already got that.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
Same But I'm sure to say TGI I am because
you know our group, my students. I love Mondays because
you can't trade stocks on the weekend. But yeah, I
don't think TG I am is going to be a
phrase it's going to catch on to too easily.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
You can sell them at daytrade fund dot com.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
You gotta yeah, I mean, but nobody's gonna love Mondays
other than than those of us who use the market languages.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Amen, brother, real quick here. You may have said this already.
I know you said. The investigation of the Air India
plash crashes, it's going to be a year before they
reach final conclusions or something. How long do you think
it's going to be before the general public has an
understanding of what the black boxes suggest that the conversations
are reporting on, you know, various components or information that's

(08:41):
on those black boxes.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
I'm thinking within the next week. I'm hoping before you
and I talk again next Thursday, there will be some
sort of of an announcement because they've had the black
boxes for several days and the first question is are
we going to be able to use these for answers,
and I think that's something that they're going to come
out with in the next few days and say, hey,
the good news is they're not damaged past the point

(09:06):
of us being able to retrieve the data that we need,
and that's certainly going to be good news. And of
course the next question is going to be what are
you finding out? And they may or may not give
an indication of what the investigation is beginning to uncover.
And that's the reason that the National Transfertation Safety for
I call them an all star team here in the

(09:28):
United States. They're so good at what they do, Briant
that they allow the evidence to dictate the course of
the investigation. None of the investigative teams is going to
go into this thinking, well, this is what we think happened,
and let's look for evidence to support that they've learned.
Because of how good they are, we're going to allow
the evidence to dictate what we look at and look

(09:49):
for the sequence of events that could have led to
this type of tragedy taking place. And you know, when
you have so much video that captures this horrific event,
it's a the mindset of so many people around the world,
and you know, we want answers and we want him now,
but that takes.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Time, certainly. Well again, hopefully we'll have something sooner rather
than later on that because we are all wildly curious
a coffee spill. I mean, it's like the McDonald's case.
Woman spills coffee on herself and ends up getting millions
of dollars. And we got an airline flight attendants spilling
coffee on a passenger and enter a lawsuit.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, this happened two years ago, and typically they have
two years to.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
File the court the lawsuit.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
And yep, this happened on I think with Scandinavian Airlines
or Sitting International Airline where the coffee was spilled, and
the woman is suing for ten million dollars for all
these things that have happened to her. And the ps
to this is the husband is suing for one million
dollars because he's lost the services of his wife. Now, Brian,

(10:55):
I almost stopped reading at that point because I didn't
want to know much more past at but yeah, he
is also doing for a million dollars for those reasons.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, well, I'm guessing it landed in her lap.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
It did, and uh, she had she'd have some surgery
and some other things. And you know the thought was
that it was too and look, we all kind of chuckled,
not chuckle, chuckle, but you know when the McDonald's lawsuit
came out. But you know, we see where that went.
So you never know where this is gonna gonna go.
But I don't like drinking coffee on an airline because

(11:35):
the water lines on the aircraft are not cleaned. And
when you look at the making photos of these, yeah, bloods,
its just no. Bring it on to yourself, please leave, leave,
leave now. You don't see the flight of standing around
sipping on coffee or drinking the water for a reason.

(11:58):
And if you're not eating your bread, but you want
to google some of these images, you can. But I'm
I do not cherry, and I will bring our coffee
on board because I will not. I'm sorry, I will
not well that.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
You know valuable information. I do appreciate you passing along,
but Lord Almighty, that has just got me completely grossed out.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Give a zero for timing. I my apologies.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
No, no, listen, man, I made a comment about hotel
rooms and how I'll never use a hotel room coffee maker,
because I've seen online videos about perverts and weirdos out
there and the kind of thing they do generally speaking
in hotel rooms. You know, you don't want to hear
about it. It grosses you out, but it's valuable information. Nonetheless,
pause will.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Bring you the criminal minds of you know, black lights. Yeah,
see all kinds of things you would want to say.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll frick Jack Ratliff back for one more.
We promise not to go back down that road. Eight
forty five ify five cares at the talk station fifty
five KRC dot com more time the channel. I will
scattered storms up until midday that it'll be mostly sunny
in a high of eighty, few clouds in a low
sixty four overnight sunny and a high of eighty six
tomorrow overnight a few clouds in a low of sixty eight,

(13:11):
closing out at seventy three degrees. Time for final traffick
chuck ingram.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
From the UCF Tramphings Center. Right now, over one hundred
thousand feedpoort waiting in hoping for an organ transplant to
save their live. Sign up to be an organ donor
or explore living donation at uce Help dot com slash
transplant clean slate on the highways thanks to the Juneteenth holiday,
no accidents to deal with, not even a broken down
slowing things down, and no delays either.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Schuck Ingram on.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Fifty five KRC the talk station.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Eighty eight fifty five KRC detalk station closing out a
Thursday on a positive note with iHeart need the aviation
expert Jay rat left pivoting over Terry Bradshaw, apparently dealing
with the TSA. What's the story all about? Jay Ratlift,
who was going through.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
An airport, was selected for secondary screening, so they pulled
him off to the side. He took his shoes off,
went through all of his luggage item by item by item,
and then did the enhanced pat down and then took
him to another room, did another pat down, and he's like, look,
I'm all for security, but this is ridiculous. He cooperated,

(14:20):
he went along with it fine, but he just didn't
understand why. You know, he was the one being he said,
singled out and it's a random thing. At the security checkpoint.
One of the things that they do to add an
extra layer of security is to introduce a random element
to the screening. Every so often a passengers pulled out
for that additional screening, and there's a purpose for it,

(14:43):
and when it happens to Terry Bradshaw becomes a viral moment.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah. Well, and you know, as is so often the case,
Not that I'm racially profiling or anything, but you know,
the people that they randomly select quite often the other
like eighty nine year old women in wheelchairs and stuff
like that. It's like, are you serious You're gonna pull
something like that out and subjected to a body cavity search.
Does she look like a terrorist? Does she look like

(15:08):
someone who represents a danger to society?

Speaker 3 (15:10):
I mean no, But but Brian, I will say this,
there's a lot of times the elderly are used to
smuggle things through.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
By other people.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
So many times we're not worried about them, We're worried
about you know, especially some that may maybe from a
memory standpoint.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, okay, I get that point. I'm glad you made it,
because you know, it's easy to you know, dupe the
senior population that tend to be far more trust thing.
And of course you could handle me like a kilo
of cocaine or stuff another purse or something like that
they might not even be aware that they've got it.
All right, all right, fair enough, exactly, all right. Now,
Skytracks apparently looking into the airlines the best in the world.

(15:50):
Who should we be flying with? According to Skytracks, Jay.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Well, let's see Cutter Caman's first, Singapore second, Tata Pacific third.
And if you're interested in a see where the you know,
the top US airline came in in the top twenty, Well, scroll, baby, scroll,
because you're not going to find it. Someone go one
to twenty. Nobody's there from the US. Is that a shocker? No,
Skytracks is one of They're called the oscars of the

(16:17):
rankings because they're the ones that they do. It's such
a comprehensive. They look at customer service, maintenance, the age
of fleet, there's so many things that.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
They look at. The water lines, Jay, the plan that.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
I wish they would delta came in twenty second and
the next US carrier was United at fifty first word, yeah,
we should be embarrassed. But airlines do not care about service, period.
They care about profits, and they treat us like crap,
and we keep coming back. And as I say all

(16:51):
the time, there is zero incentive for an airline to
change how they treat us because we keep coming back,
we keep building up the airplanes, they keep making a
billion dollars a year, whatever it happens to be. You
see Delta and American and I believe United, who have
changed their upgrade procedures. I'm getting so many emails from

(17:12):
people of Delta saying, Jay, I'm a freaking flyer. I
normally can upgrade from coach to first class. I'm now
boarding flights being told I can't be putting first and
there's five empty seats in first class because now Delta
and others are like, well, you either need to burn
miles or pay for that seat. They're ticking off their

(17:32):
frequent flyers and they do not care. And that's the
reason that when you take a lot of these customer
service rankings, that there's no US airline that ever ever
makes the top twenty from the world standpoint, which you know,
we should be in the top ten, we should be
dominating some of these things, and we never are.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
I couldn't agree more but your service. But let me
ask you this. Your airlines in the business are making money.
So are the top twenty on the list. They're in
the bus some making money. That's how they exist as
a transporting people via aircraft. So how is it that
their business model allows them to provide such wonderful By contrast,
customer service and a flight experience when we dealt or

(18:14):
cant here.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
It's their focus. And when you have people that fly
international airlines many times for the first time, I get
emails from people around the country. Jay, Oh my gosh,
I'd sitting and coach and I had more room, the
food was good, that people are actually nice to me.
It was a totally different experience. It's like they've been
transported back forty years in time here in the United States.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, good time.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
When you were you felt appreciated. But you know, these days,
it's not it's a cattle call, it's Black Friday. It's
they shove you on the airplane load factors. You know,
thirty years ago, forty fifty percent of the airplane was full.
Now that's eighty to ninety five percent of the plane's full.
You've got people trying to carry on more bags than ever,
and they swing them in the aisle to making out

(19:00):
two or three passengers at a time. And it's it's
so frustrating that some people say, Jay, I just don't
want to fly anymore because of the hassle. We'll take
extra time and we'll drive.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, that'll be.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
Not as safe to drive. Then we'll share and I
do a lot more driving than flying. We're tired of it.
We instead of flying back and forth to Savannah, while
we also carry a lot of stuff back and forth
for some reason still, but you know, we load up
the truck and away we go. H And I don't
miss the flying because of the hassles that we have.
And you know airlines be at Delta United, whoever. The

(19:35):
focus on customer service has just never been there. And
if it was, it was decades ago. And when I
look at them now talking about how you know they
want to provide the best service public, No, they don't.
It's a profit oriented business. I understand that. And they're
going to treat us anyway that they feel like.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Fair enough, as we always end. Let's talk about hub delay.
Is a good day to fly out there, Jay Ratliffe.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
You know Chicago's going to have some weather issues this morning,
Atlanta this evening. Other than those two major hubs, which
represents I don't know, seventy percent of the traffic that's
going to be going through the airports today. It's going
to be a pretty good day to fly across the country.
But obviously if you're going to be going through either
of those two hubs, get to the airport early just
in case there are any problems with your high Tenori

(20:18):
gives them, the agents a chance to address any problems
and in stick them well in advance.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
I always enjoy our discussions, Jay Rattlff. Look for next
Thursday with another round of the Aviation Report with our
iHeartMedia aviation expert Jay Ratliffe. Love you brother and best
of health and love your better half as well, my friend.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Same to your pal. Thank you, Brian.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
Thanks Man eight fifty five fifty five K City Talk
Station Corey Bowman full hour in studio. Vote Corey Bowman
from May of the City of Cincinnati, Try something new seriously.
Congressman David Taylor Immigration supporting the CBP officers a word
or two about war powers considering the UH position we

(21:00):
may find ourselves in relative to the Israel Iran situation.
Podcast at five KRCY dot com. As always, thank you
Joe Strecker for the work you do. Without Joe, the
show don't go, Executive producer Joe Strecker. Folks, hope you
have a wonderful day. Tune in tomorrow for Tech Friday
with Dave Patter, and stick around because Glenn Beck's coming
up next. Big things are happening. We're coming to you
live right now. We'll tell you more at the top

(21:20):
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