FAA ends emergency order mandating flight reductions

Aviation Expert Jay Ratliff is back! He has the latest travel news from the Airlines

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, we need to get Jay on to bail

(00:02):
us out here. Jay Ratlift our aviation expert. You can
find them at j ratlift dot com and Jay, before
we get started in some Mariline news, you've been absent
for a couple of weeks with a minor health issue.
First of all, brothers, it's good to talk to you.
I'm glad you're okay. What were you dealing with and
how are you well?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
It was the last Sunday of October. I'm getting ready
to go to church and look up in the mirror
and the left side of my face is drooping. Oh boy,
I thought not good. And I know that anytime that
there's any sort of a health issue, I got my
butt straight to the er and they said it was
a mildcase of Bell's palsy and it was a viral infection,

(00:43):
but a lot of the initial symptoms can resemble a stroke.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
And of course I've got two daughters that were you
know ICU nurses. One that's a heart and vascular ice
you nurse, and they make sure that I promise them
anytime that there's anything that looks to be off, go
get it checked. And especially something like that where every
single moment is critical, and they very quickly assessed me
and told me what was going on and got some medication,

(01:12):
and yeah, then I took my wife to a dentist
appointment a few days later, and I'm sitting in the
waiting room and the nurses all come out and surround
me like something's going on, saying what's up and are
you okay? Because they saw my condition and feared I
was having a stroke right there in the waiting room.
So I told him that it was under control. Medication

(01:32):
and the therapy began last week, and yeah, it's just
a matter of time before things correct. But I've gotten
so many nice emails and I continue to tell everybody
thank you, and look, it's a mild case. It's something
that really didn't stress me out at all because so
many of our friends, all of us combine no people
that are fighting things that are very very serious, and

(01:54):
for something minor like this, yeah, I'm just going to
take it and be thankful that it wasn't anything more.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, Well, that's the right attitude, and that you know
that that positivity is is half the battle in a
lot of these situations. And you know, you've been very
good to us. We consider you part of the six
to ten family here. We love talking to you every week,
and so glad we're able to hear your voice this morning,
and glad everything's all right for you.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Man. We I just love tuning in and seeing what
crazy topic you two were going to be talking about
before you throw it to me and I'm like, oh, please,
come on, stop it.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, well you took you took the absolute right time
to take a couple of weeks off Jay, because that's
when all heck was hitting the field.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Get my phone. But I mean I had every TV
station in the radio station in the country that wanted me,
and I kind of had a canned response for the
tech message and email letting him know not gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
So here we are a day after the FAA and
their emergency order mandating flight reductions. That was as of
yesterday morning, so everybody's back to work and we're operating
as normal then this morning.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, pretty much. And what was nice was that the
airlines are saying we're going to be back to full
strength by the busiest travel week of the year, which
is next week. And I've had several people that I've
talked to on air, say now, Jay, come on, are
they going to get everything back as it needs to
be that quickly? And I reference and kind of compare

(03:19):
it to when there's a major winter storm that impacts
a part of the country that kind of messes things
up for several days. Airlines are normally back on schedule quickly.
They're very good at that. And the other thing that
was nice was that this adjustment's taking place in the
middle of the month, and pilots and flight crews have
a maximum number of hours that they can fly in

(03:39):
the course of a month. When we have these kind
of issues later, like the last five days of the month,
it's much more of a challenge because you're running into
pilots that are reaching the limits of what they can fly,
and the flexibility of how you can reposition all the
parts is sometimes limited. Middle of the month, no problem
at all. They're going to be in good shape, you know.

(04:00):
You reference the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration had
that mandated cuts in domestic flights at forty major airports.
They did put that they shelved that as of six
o'clock yesterday morning, but they also indicate that not every
airline was doing what they should have done. They're finding
some airlines that were not cutting back as off as

(04:23):
many flights as they were supposed to. So the FAA
right now is saying, look, they may be seeking a
fine of up to seventy thousand, seventy five thousand dollars
for every flight that was operated above that mandated limit.
So stay tuned. There might be some airlines that are
in trouble. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Interesting, Yeah, we've got to keep those silver revenue tubes
in the sky. Jay, you know, at all costs. Speaking
with Jay Ratlift Aviation Expert. You can find them at
jratlift dot com. So and then is this related to
a related story then Trump administration, is that withdrawing the
cash compensation rule that would you know, levied airlines to

(05:02):
pay cash back to travelers for any kind of delays.
Is that related to all of this?

Speaker 2 (05:06):
It is not, and it really bothers me, but I'm
not surprised. It was a year ago that the Biden
administration had a in essence, a cash compensation rule. For
the best way to talk to reference it as in
essence said, Look, if travelers are delayed more than three
hours by the airline, they're entitled to some cash compensation,

(05:27):
guaranteed meals, lodging when needed, ground transportation when appropriate, and
that was something that and I've said it here before,
I was never, ever, ever a fan of the Biden
administration personally, but I was very much appreciating the fact
that they were holding airlines accountable. And the Trump administration

(05:49):
round one very friendly to airlines. They kind of got,
you know, we're allowed to do what they wanted to do.
And when Trump was elected, airline stocks all went up.
Why because the thought was, you know, they're probably not
going to be held as accountable, not from a safety standpoint,
but from other customer service type standpoints as the Biden
administration did. So even when Trump was elected, yet Boeing

(06:11):
and all the airlines, most of them contributing a million
dollars apiece to the Trump Inaugural Fund. So what we're
seeing now is far too many things like this is
now being considered, you know, transportation departments, is we're going
to kind of table that we're not going to do it,
even though this is something that's done in other types
of countries as a way to have forced airlines to

(06:34):
try to deliver some sort of customer service it's not
going to happen here in the United States, and that's
that's really unfortunate because it was it was a good rule,
it was something that was going to hold airlines accountable.
I wish it had been allowed to continue, but unfortunately
it was not, and it's just kind of been pushed
to the sign.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
I think I kind of know the answer to this,
but I'm going to ask it anyway. I mean, shouldn't
airlines want to, as a matter of public relations, give
travelers some compensation if it's their fault, if it's a
problem with an airplane or we didn't have enough staff,
or not weather related, because that's something out of their control.
But as a matter of compensation of like, hey we

(07:13):
screwed up, you're going to miss your connection. We're going
to help you out. I mean, shouldn't they want to do.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Then they should want to. But here's the bottom line.
If we're in a boardroom, doors are shut and we're
the board of airline whatever ABC, we're saying, Look, we
treat these people like crap and they keep coming back,
do we really want to exactly money to Because look, yes,
you're right, because unless you're a mortician, you have a

(07:38):
business that should be built around repeat customers. So the
whole idea here is that if you can get these
people coming back, that's what it should be all about.
But the problem is, the airlines fell in love with
technology many many years ago, and customer service was kind
of a you know, kind of a forgotten type of skill.
And what ends up happening now is when you've got
load factors like we're going to see next week with

(08:00):
airplanes being ninety percent full and more, airlines can treat
us any way they want, and they literally know there's
no way that they can really be held accountable because
we keep showing up. And that's one of the reasons
I tell people when you have a complaint, please don't
waste your time complaining to the airline. Go to dot

(08:21):
dot gov. That's the Department of Transportation website, and when
you get to dot dot gov in the upper right
hand corner, just type in the search box airline complaint.
A very quick easy form that online can be filled
out where you can briefly tell the dot here's my problem,
here's what happened. You send it to the Department of Transportation.
They then get a hold of the airline saying we

(08:42):
have this complaint, respond in thirty days and copy us in.
That's when it becomes an issue. And I can tell
you when I was at Northwest Airlines, we hated DOT
complaints because the amount of paperwork that it required was
labor intensive on our part, plus we had to kind
of make sure we did what we were supposed to.
And when I'm on a national TV show or radio

(09:03):
show and i talk about usingdot dot Gov, I hear
from my airline friends saying, Jay, shut up, stop talking
about that, to which my response is, if you treat
us better, I promise I will. I'm not. And the
number of the DOT complaints that have gone up per
month over just the last five years has skyrocketed. Of course,

(09:25):
I like to think I'm taking a little bit of
the credit there, but airlines hate it because of the
fact that when you complain to the DOT, that's how
they measure customer service with airlines. Now, think of how
stupid that is. We're measuring the consumer relations capability or
the service level of the airline industry by a metric

(09:46):
that most people don't even know exists. And that's why
one month you have eleven hundred complaints the next month
you have nine hundred and the government says, hey, airline
service is getting better. We're getting fewer complaints. That's ridiculous,
but that's how they've measured it in the past. And
that's why I tell people, if you've got a past
or current problem, d ot dot gov.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
And then after you go to do ot dot gov,
go to j Ratliff dot com and let him know
about it too, so he can let everybody know what's
going on. That's what the whole.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
People all the time. And I'm constantly pushing him in
that direction with you know, asking them to circle back
and let me know what happened. Yeah, and many many times,
my friend, they'll come back and say, wow, you know,
obviously you're not going to get free tickets for life,
so don't don't don't throw that out there. But well,
you know, that's what people expect. It's not going to happen.

(10:35):
But you know, the bottom line is that airlines are
not going to do what they're supposed to unless they
are forced to do it.