Speaker 1: Jenn I first one to one to forecast. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have a high thirty one today to maybe some afternoon
Speaker 1: flurry showing up overnight, down to nine degrees sunny tomorrow
Speaker 1: twenty five, overnight thirteen and a little warmer on Saturday.
Speaker 1: Thankfully it's going to be cloudy but dry and a
Speaker 1: high a forty one twenty two Right now.
Speaker 2: Traffic time because the wreck that has he's been Reagan
Speaker 2: shut down nearer the blue ash and ken Wood wrote
Speaker 2: excent traffic on southbound seventy one slowing a bit passing
Speaker 2: accident below fieldsirdle thereover on the left hand side, CRUs
Speaker 2: are working with a wreck inbound seventy four before you
Speaker 2: got the seventy five schock ingram on fifty five KR
Speaker 2: see the talk station.
Speaker 1: Hey, twenty nine fifty five Krcity talk station. Happy Friday,
Speaker 1: Eve always made extra special because we get to talk
Speaker 1: with iheartby aviation expert Jay rat Left. Jay, welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show, my dear friend. It's always a pleasure
Speaker 1: to have you on Hey.
Speaker 3: The the honors mind. I always have fun. We have time
Speaker 3: to dive into things here and I love that. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's I get three minutes here, two minutes there, whatever,
Speaker 3: and it's just but here we get to dive into
Speaker 3: some some fun topics and that always makes it enjoyable.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel the same way. That's why, you know, much
Speaker 1: of the sugarn maybe of my lords and masters here
Speaker 1: at work, if I had them, if they if they're
Speaker 1: out there, I don't know who they are. But the clock,
Speaker 1: I just you know, if I'm on a roll talking
Speaker 1: about something, I hate to interrupt important topics with you know,
Speaker 1: a specific cutoff time, like you got to cut off
Speaker 1: at eight point fifteen, And even though that's recommended, I
Speaker 1: just can go over. But I must really briefly cut
Speaker 1: into our time. I must address Sue, my Indiana listener
Speaker 1: who lives in Lawrenceburg, a faithful listener, and she says
Speaker 1: to me, Indiana isn't a four letter word. Lol, says
Speaker 1: I listen to Lawrenceburg, not far from you. I keep
Speaker 1: hearing your disdain in your voice when you say Indiana.
Speaker 1: What I was talking about was the nuclear power plant
Speaker 1: that Indiana is building now. And I said, come on, Indiana,
Speaker 1: and I had it did sound like disdain. No, that
Speaker 1: was jealousy, Sue, jealousy. I love Indiana.
Speaker 4: Revenue going out the window.
Speaker 1: I totally get it, amen, brother. All right, back to aviation.
Speaker 1: Let's start with well, seats that recline without reducing the
Speaker 1: space with a person behind them. What a novel concept.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a great concept, but you know, I cautioned
Speaker 3: everyone not to get too excited because it's not gonna
Speaker 3: be something we're gonna see quite a bit. But this
Speaker 3: is This is Luthonza, the German carrier, and they rolled
Speaker 3: out a seat. It's kind of a pod that allows
Speaker 3: us to recline without invading the space of the person
Speaker 3: behind us. Now, these are again self contained seat pods,
Speaker 3: and they're being placed in their premium class for the airline.
Speaker 3: And look, while I love the idea, I'm not getting
Speaker 3: excited because I know that these will never replace the
Speaker 3: sardine canned seating that we endure and coach these days,
Speaker 3: because these specific seats require a little bit more.
Speaker 4: Room than a typical seat.
Speaker 3: And if an airline were to decide to hey, customer service,
Speaker 3: let's use these everywhere, they would see a decrease in
Speaker 3: the nunnumber of seats on a plane.
Speaker 4: That means less revenue. Now maybe not.
Speaker 3: I ain't happening, and you and I both know that.
Speaker 3: But look, if you're in premium class, you know you
Speaker 3: can do that. And it's nice because in coach, what
Speaker 3: we're going to be seeing in the coming years is
Speaker 3: a lot like we see on some of the low
Speaker 3: cost carriers, where the seats do not reclimb. They are
Speaker 3: set at a predetermined, slightly inclined spot and that's it.
Speaker 3: You can't bring them up, you can't bring them back
Speaker 3: any And they're saying that this will prevent people from
Speaker 3: getting into altercations on a plane by having these already done.
Speaker 3: It sounds so convincing, and it's a bunch of crap
Speaker 3: because the thought is, if you have these seats, you
Speaker 3: can put an extra row or two in the back.
Speaker 3: So what they're really doing is shoving an extra two
Speaker 3: rows in the back of an aircraft, giving.
Speaker 4: Themselves, you know, six eight additional seats.
Speaker 3: Per segment, per per flight, and my goodness, the revenue
Speaker 3: they generate on that is considerable, and that's why they
Speaker 3: do it because of customer service, but because of the
Speaker 3: fact they can cram more seats into that silver revenue tube.
Speaker 1: Well, IM going to miss the put your seat back
Speaker 1: on the upright, position your trade table in the lock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, reclined. Why you can enjoy it is my
Speaker 3: is my message.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I suppose that's probably the best solution because
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people that it causes. The
Speaker 1: flight attendants have to walk back, sir, can you put
Speaker 1: your seat up? We're getting ready to take off or
Speaker 1: we're getting ready to land, and as well as the
Speaker 1: uncomfortable reality of the seat in front of you taking
Speaker 1: up your leg space, if everybody suffers equally, then that,
Speaker 1: I suppose is a healthy change for the better.
Speaker 3: But when they go to the meal service and you're
Speaker 3: ready to eat in the person in front of you
Speaker 3: lace all the way back. Your tree table is now
Speaker 3: shoved into your stomach right, and it makes it impossible
Speaker 3: to use it. And the reason that that is is
Speaker 3: because the pitch or the distance between rows has decreased
Speaker 3: steadily over the years as airlines have crammed more and
Speaker 3: more seats into an airplane. And now that we are
Speaker 3: used an option they gave us as far as the
Speaker 3: ability to reclimb. Now it's a problem and now somehow
Speaker 3: that's our.
Speaker 4: Fault because of what the airlines did.
Speaker 3: No, it's a problem with what the airlines created when
Speaker 3: they made the decision to cram extra seats onto the aircraft.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, we can get one more topic in before
Speaker 1: we take a break. Here, Jay, I see that Trump
Speaker 1: has decided to replace the head of the TSA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is a guy he appointed in his first term.
Speaker 3: The guy has been around for about seven years in
Speaker 3: that office. And I have to admit this one surprised
Speaker 3: me because I thought, you know, he's doing a decent
Speaker 3: job and I really.
Speaker 4: Don't know of any serious issues that we have ongoing.
Speaker 3: And believe me, if it's the FAA or whoever it is,
Speaker 3: normally the people that are at the top of some
Speaker 3: of these aviation entities don't stick around for but like
Speaker 3: nine or ten or fifteen months and they're gone. This
Speaker 3: individual was a seven year tenure. He had a US
Speaker 3: Coast Guard background. I mean, he was very well qualified.
Speaker 3: And again, the TSA has over too million chances a
Speaker 3: day to mess up, and most of the front line
Speaker 3: people do an incredible job. So yeah, I was a
Speaker 3: little bit. I guess the thought is, Okay, if.
Speaker 4: Biden liked you, I don't, you're out of here. I
Speaker 4: don't know what the reason was, but he.
Speaker 3: Has made the move to replace the head of the TSA.
Speaker 1: Well, we've seen a lot of that stuff coming on
Speaker 1: in the upcoming days. It's already happening all across the administration.
Speaker 3: I think his team is having a hard time keeping
Speaker 3: up with President Trump with all he's done in just
Speaker 3: like a number of hours he's been our president.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, he answered more questions from the
Speaker 1: press and in one day than Biden did in the
Speaker 1: last four years. Guy's got more energet.
Speaker 3: Was like those NFL players on the sideline getting oxygen
Speaker 3: just to try to keep up with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, he's too old to be president. No,
Speaker 1: I think he's doing all right. Hell I can't keep
Speaker 1: up with me right, Indeed, I couldn't handle his work day.
Speaker 1: We'll pause, will bring Jay right left back. Apparently it's
Speaker 1: a good thing to be in the Alaska Airline employee
Speaker 1: and more information United and Delta and Boeing and suspension
Speaker 1: of a crew. A bunch of fun stories with Jay Ratliff.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. Fifty five KRC the Talk station
Speaker 1: this month NBC eight thirty eight, Come on eight thirty nine.
Speaker 1: If you bought KARCD Talk station Brian Thomas A J. Ratliff.
Speaker 1: I heard the Dadash nextpert and all round great guy.
Speaker 1: Is it good to be an Alaska Airline employee?
Speaker 4: Jay? It is? It is.
Speaker 3: In fact, a year ago you and I were talking
Speaker 3: about how Alaska Airlines was forced to ground a third
Speaker 3: of their fleet after that Boeing door plug incident. Even
Speaker 3: Saturday Night Live was having fun at their expense, and
Speaker 3: it remains a very funny video to watch. I'm not
Speaker 3: an SNL fan, but buddy, they nailed it on Alaska Airlines.
Speaker 3: But you know, then, the airline really turned things around
Speaker 3: last year in a very big way.
Speaker 4: They ended the year with.
Speaker 3: Making some significant amount of profit, and they decided to
Speaker 3: give their employees a bonus check that's equal to six
Speaker 3: weeks of their pay as a thank you. So if
Speaker 3: you told the Alaska Airline employees last year at this time,
Speaker 3: this is what you're going to enjoying a year from now,
Speaker 3: they might have had a difficult time believing it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: last Airlines continues to do a lot of things very
Speaker 3: very well.
Speaker 1: All right, And somebody else did pretty well. I'd be
Speaker 1: Donald Trump hauling in big corporate donor inaugural fund bucks
Speaker 1: and I guess the airlines were in on that too.
Speaker 3: Well, Delta, you had the United putting up a million
Speaker 3: dollars a pop for the inaugural fund, and I don't
Speaker 3: know that I like that, Brian.
Speaker 4: The reason I don't like.
Speaker 3: It is because the airlines with Trump round one, it
Speaker 3: was a very cozy relationship. And you know, of late
Speaker 3: under the Biden administration, airlines were being held accountable for
Speaker 3: a lot more than they've ever, ever, ever been held
Speaker 3: accountable for. And my fear is that we might be
Speaker 3: taking our foot off the accelerator a little bit. And
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting that the million dollar inaugural fund.
Speaker 4: Is, you know, to buy some favor.
Speaker 3: But then I see the next person in line with
Speaker 3: their million dollars.
Speaker 1: Is Boeing better get on board?
Speaker 4: Please?
Speaker 1: Yeah, please don't.
Speaker 4: If there's one.
Speaker 3: If there's one company, I want to make sure that
Speaker 3: we do not let up anything on it's certainly Boeing.
Speaker 3: So we'll just have to We'll just have to wait
Speaker 3: and see. But look again, you and I you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not a fan at all of the Biden administration
Speaker 3: at all whatsoever, but I did appreciate how they held
Speaker 3: airlines accountable In fact, they did more from the Department
Speaker 3: of Transportation against airlines, finding them holding their feet to
Speaker 3: the fire, making them accountable more than any other administration
Speaker 3: I've ever.
Speaker 4: Seen in decades.
Speaker 3: And I really wish that kind of heat can continue.
Speaker 3: But sadly, I just I don't think it's going to
Speaker 3: and I really want.
Speaker 1: To be wrong there, politics and money. Just wonder if
Speaker 1: there's any corruptive forces.
Speaker 4: That get along tend to go together.
Speaker 1: You're right easy sitting and felt. I don't know why
Speaker 1: it came to mind. Why did I just say that? Okay,
Speaker 1: so crew got suspended and for sounds like pretty good reason.
Speaker 1: On this next story here oay.
Speaker 3: Landing on the wrong runway. Uh oh, it takes and
Speaker 3: the runway lights were off. It takes a lot to
Speaker 3: mess up that bad. But the real story is which
Speaker 3: airline it was. It was Pakistan International Airlines. Now this
Speaker 3: is the airline and I were talking about last week
Speaker 3: that had the we're coming back to France ad and
Speaker 3: they put this ad up with, you know, celebrating the
Speaker 3: fact that the airline was coming back in and it
Speaker 3: was one of their planes flying directly towards the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 3: It looked like a snapshot of nine to eleven people
Speaker 3: around the world freaked out saying what what is this
Speaker 3: and a very tone deaf ad if you will. But
Speaker 3: this is also the airline that number of years ago
Speaker 3: they found out a third of their pilots had a
Speaker 3: fake pilot license.
Speaker 4: Oh ma als oh, it gets better.
Speaker 3: Also the airline that a number of years ago was
Speaker 3: getting in trouble because part of their maintenance procedure was
Speaker 3: to sacrifice a goat on the tarmac, so needless. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I know people they are having breakfast apologies or
Speaker 3: be you think I'm making this up and I'm not.
Speaker 3: It's on the internet, so it's got to be true.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Pakistan International Airlines surprisingly is not allowed to
Speaker 3: fly into the United States because they've had some past
Speaker 3: issues and they were in Lahore landing and the crew
Speaker 3: landed on the wrong run line. They fortunately, thank god,
Speaker 3: nobody got hurt, nobody was occupying the wrong runway at
Speaker 3: the time, and.
Speaker 4: The crew was immediately suspended.
Speaker 3: But for an airline that is desperately trying to rebuild
Speaker 3: their image in the in the world of aviation around
Speaker 3: the world, ran they can't catch a break and it
Speaker 3: just continues.
Speaker 1: Wow, when you said the Pakistani Airline. And apologies to
Speaker 1: my Pakistani listeners out there, and this is not an
Speaker 1: indictment of all things Pakistani, but the vision that immediately
Speaker 1: popped in my mind, you know, you get this mental
Speaker 1: image was an airplane with chicken wire windows.
Speaker 3: Oh well, we've got some of those in South America.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Pakistan International Airlines, they've just had one thing
Speaker 3: and it's all self inflicted stuff that has really caused
Speaker 3: them to have the problems they do. And when you
Speaker 3: look at the track record of the incidents that they've had, you.
Speaker 4: Just shake your head.
Speaker 3: But it also allows me to have a greater appreciation
Speaker 3: for the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration
Speaker 3: where they say that carriers, look, you're simply not safe
Speaker 3: enough to fly into any US airports and you are
Speaker 3: not going to do so. And the Pakistan International Airlines
Speaker 3: for a number of years has not been allowed to
Speaker 3: fly into any of our large gateway airports in the country.
Speaker 3: And thank god for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you got to put an exclamation
Speaker 1: point on because of concerns over safety. This isn't some
Speaker 1: political thing where you know, we have poor relations with
Speaker 1: the country politically and there go we're not going to
Speaker 1: allow them to enter our airspace. This is because we're
Speaker 1: afraid to let them into our airspace. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: you're sitting in Pakistan, you hear something like that, you
Speaker 1: get ready to board a plane, I thought you'd be
Speaker 1: very comfortable about that.
Speaker 3: You couldn't pay me to get on a Russian airline
Speaker 3: because of their part issues or certainly Pakistan International airlines.
Speaker 3: And you know this is there's also a country that's
Speaker 3: been very friendly to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and others.
Speaker 3: So it's there's always been issues there. But from a
Speaker 3: commercial aviation standpoint, look, there are reasons why we are
Speaker 3: enjoying here in the United States the safest air ever
Speaker 3: of commercial jet travel. It's because a lot of people
Speaker 3: are doing a lot of things right and very well.
Speaker 3: And you know, the FAA, even though I'll get on
Speaker 3: them all the time for some of the crazy things
Speaker 3: that we do when we manage the perception of safety
Speaker 3: or security versus actually changing things, I'm always going to
Speaker 3: point out the fact that there's a lot of things
Speaker 3: that they do right.
Speaker 4: Those men and women.
Speaker 3: That are in various roles in that agency. The one
Speaker 3: thing they're looking at is look if there's issues was
Speaker 3: how you train your pilots, how you hire your pilots,
Speaker 3: how your maintenance is done, if it is not being done.
Speaker 3: All of these things are looked at to determine whether
Speaker 3: or not it's okay for an airline to fly in
Speaker 3: the United States. And some people will say, gay, I'm
Speaker 3: flying out of Chicago. I've never heard of this airline
Speaker 3: in my life.
Speaker 4: I'm scared to death.
Speaker 3: And you know it's because the only reason that they're
Speaker 3: allowed to fly here is because they have achieved that
Speaker 3: safety standard that we have to have. But you can
Speaker 3: always go to the State Department website. As we've talked
Speaker 3: about before, they have a list of airlines you should
Speaker 3: be concerned with or destinations you should be concerned with,
Speaker 3: and if the airline that you're flying happens to appear
Speaker 3: on that list, you might want to consider an alternative.
Speaker 1: Sound advice from Jay Rodlift. All right, let's talk about
Speaker 1: hublays and couple that with the disaster that was the
Speaker 1: weather in the Southern States. Over that thousands of flights canceled.
Speaker 1: It was rather dist We had.
Speaker 3: Tens of thousands of flights impacted and affected, and things
Speaker 3: are back to I don't want to say normal because
Speaker 3: I'm looking at New Orleans where forty three percent of
Speaker 3: their flights are canceled, Charleston sixty seven percent of the
Speaker 3: flights canceled. Savannah they're losing their minds with snow sixty
Speaker 3: five percent of their flights canceled. So obviously, in some
Speaker 3: of these areas we're having issues, but when you look
Speaker 3: at the big picture, Southwest is canceled two percent of
Speaker 3: their flights, Delta one percent, American one percent, United one percent.
Speaker 3: So we're starting to see things today get back to normal.
Speaker 3: Today will be as close to normal as we've seen
Speaker 3: in the last several days, very few issues other than Detroit.
Speaker 3: Tomorrow is going to be the day of the week
Speaker 3: where everything is okay, back to normal as usual, because sadly,
Speaker 3: we had planes last night that couldn't reach their destination
Speaker 3: because of delays that affected the originating flights.
Speaker 4: Out this morning.
Speaker 3: But overall it's gotten better as the weakest progress, but
Speaker 3: what an absolute nightmare of a mess with that historic
Speaker 3: storm that stormed across the South from Houston through so
Speaker 3: many of those airports that again they lost snow.
Speaker 1: Removal as I'm just going to ask you, because I
Speaker 1: know the municipalities do not. In the houstonari they were
Speaker 1: talking about they had to bring some down from Dallas
Speaker 1: or something, but they had.
Speaker 3: Because it's like you and I getting a snowblower that
Speaker 3: we put in our garage that we might use every
Speaker 3: fifteen years, You're just not going to do it. And
Speaker 3: it's the same sort of situation with these airports because
Speaker 3: look when I was in Monroe, Louisiana my first post,
Speaker 3: and it's snow two inches. I mean it was three
Speaker 3: days of nothing happening, and you'd have these flyers from
Speaker 3: New York. They would come in and I mean they
Speaker 3: would just go crazy on us because it's like, what.
Speaker 4: Do you mean it's like a dust that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get it, but we don't have any snow
Speaker 3: removal equipment because it doesn't happen that often. And look,
Speaker 3: when you see a snowball fights on Bourbon Street on
Speaker 3: the front page of Street Journal, pretty good indication that
Speaker 3: that well two one global warming has yet to said.
Speaker 3: Is the other thing is this is a very very
Speaker 3: historic storm that you just got to shrug your shoulders
Speaker 3: and pray everybody's going to be okay, and you're sorry
Speaker 3: for everybody got hurt or killed, but from an aviation standpoint,
Speaker 3: there's just very little that can be done about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I suppose you were a bit surprised
Speaker 1: to see four inches of snow and you're Charleston home.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, oh no, in Savannah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we actually came back to Ohio to escape the
Speaker 3: Savannah snowstorm because I think the record was like three
Speaker 3: inches from eighteen something, and they got four inches.
Speaker 4: That was on top of snow. And yeah, they're.
Speaker 3: Losing their minds down there, but it's just yeah, we
Speaker 3: had to come to Ohio to escape the Savanah snowstorm.
Speaker 4: That shows you how crazy these days are.
Speaker 1: Jay rat Love. Always enjoy our conversations, my friend. We'll
Speaker 1: do it again next Thursday. Between now and then, best
Speaker 1: of health and love to both you and your better half.
Speaker 4: Same to you, my friends. Thank you, take care.
Speaker 1: It's coming at eight forty nine fifty five Carsen Talk
Speaker 1: station be right back fifty five KRC. Have you taken
Speaker 1: your family