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Speaker 1: Happy Thursday always made extra special because this is the
Speaker 1: time of week when we get to talk to iHeart
Speaker 1: media aviation expert Jay Rattlift, Jay Ratliff, welcome back, my friend.
Speaker 1: Always love having you on the show.
Speaker 4: Highlight of my week. Brother.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that so much, and it's not much of
Speaker 1: a curveball, and I just want to talk to you briefly,
Speaker 1: even though it's not on your list. The jet that
Speaker 1: cutter is offering President Donald Trump to serve as any
Speaker 1: air force one. I think the optics of it look bad.
Speaker 1: Just don't even go down that road, was my just
Speaker 1: initial reaction. The Democrats pulling their hair out, saying it's
Speaker 1: a bribe or whatever. It's a violation of the law anyway.
Speaker 1: It just it serves to give them some talking point
Speaker 1: because they literally have nothing to talk about. But it's
Speaker 1: not just that simple, because as I've read, according to
Speaker 1: three aviation experts speaking with NBC and is it would
Speaker 1: cost more than a billion dollars and take years to
Speaker 1: retrofit it. So this isn't exactly a great deal.
Speaker 4: Is it. It is not.
Speaker 5: But you know, with President Trump, it's always about he
Speaker 5: always gets from point A to point B. We may
Speaker 5: not like how he gets there, but he doesn't. And
Speaker 5: I always wonder if this, a lot like the initial
Speaker 5: tariff talks, is designed for another purpose. So I don't
Speaker 5: know if it's hees gonna have to negotiate with Boeing
Speaker 5: because all that's locked in as far as what the
Speaker 5: government's paying for the next air Force one. But it's
Speaker 5: been delayed, delayed, delayed, and well, I'll be interested to
Speaker 5: see how far this progresses.
Speaker 1: Well maybe that's the point he knows about everything I
Speaker 1: mentioned and optics and all of that. But maybe by saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get a brain, I'm going to get a
Speaker 1: fairly new airport right out of the gate. It's going
Speaker 1: to be delivered. And by the way, Boeing, where's mine?
Speaker 1: I mean, that thing's been in order for years and
Speaker 1: years and it's not scheduled to be delivered until what year,
Speaker 1: Jay is like twenty.
Speaker 5: I don't think he'll I don't think I'll fly in
Speaker 5: it as president, so he may get on it as
Speaker 5: he you know, as he departs Washington, DC at the
Speaker 5: end of this term. Maybe if he's lucky. I don't
Speaker 5: think they'll have it ready by then, because the initial
Speaker 5: delivery time is one thing, but this thing's been delayed
Speaker 5: so many times. I don't believe anything Boeing says. I
Speaker 5: think it's gonna be delayed, should be delayed even further.
Speaker 2: Wow, you messing with the wrong customer.
Speaker 1: I would think president of the United States of America,
Speaker 1: regardless of what political stripe he bears, if you're just
Speaker 1: if you're not delivering on something that's been ordered forever,
Speaker 1: you'd think that they would allocate the necessary resources to
Speaker 1: at least getting that project done and moved ahead. Just
Speaker 1: because the optics are so bad, given everything else that's
Speaker 1: going on with the company.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, if you're if you're gonna be late
Speaker 5: delivering aircraft to Ryan Air in Europe, that may fly
Speaker 5: under the radar here. Yeah, if you're going to be
Speaker 5: late in delivering air Force air Force one, excuse me,
Speaker 5: I think somebody's going to notice. So you're right, that
Speaker 5: should be a priority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you think the Board of Directors would recognize
Speaker 1: that as a priority since it makes the news fairly regularly,
Speaker 1: and now even more so. Going back to your point
Speaker 1: of reason, maybe why he wants to accept the plane
Speaker 1: is this elevates everybody's attention to it. And in this
Speaker 1: in the context of this conversation, you know, the American
Speaker 1: population might be saying, hey, why don't you buy it
Speaker 1: from an American Manufacturer's like, well, we've been trying to
Speaker 1: do that now for the past fifteen years, but they're
Speaker 1: not delivering right.
Speaker 5: And it also makes the people that are jump backing
Speaker 5: up and down on the other side nipping at his heels, yeah,
Speaker 5: look even more full. It's like when Sean Duffy, the
Speaker 5: Transportation Secretary, had his wife's upcoming flight adjusted, or she's
Speaker 5: gonna be flying out of JFK instead of Newark because
Speaker 5: there's a lot of delays.
Speaker 4: He's going to a conference. He wants her to be
Speaker 4: on time.
Speaker 5: But the minute that happens, it's a matter of, well,
Speaker 5: you did that because it's not safe to fly out
Speaker 5: of Newark. Yeah, it's not safe to fly out of Newark.
Speaker 5: Because what President Trump has done in the last one
Speaker 5: hundred days, and of course that's ridiculous. Everybody, well most
Speaker 5: everybody recognizes that, but Brian, I mean, I've been getting
Speaker 5: emails from people all over the country ever since this
Speaker 5: mess started saying, Jay, would you go through Newark? And
Speaker 5: I said no, not if I could avoid it, And
Speaker 5: so all he did was a just thing as you
Speaker 5: and I would. It's a lot like, Okay, it's January,
Speaker 5: I'm blind united. Am I going to connect through Chicago
Speaker 5: or Houston? I think I'll choose Houston because we know
Speaker 5: what happens in Chicago in the month of January. So
Speaker 5: when they make these ridiculous arguments, it's like, that's really
Speaker 5: what you want to jump up and down on. That's
Speaker 5: the point you're going to try to make to make
Speaker 5: yourself look I don't know better. Politically, it's stupidity, and
Speaker 5: I I just don't get Well, I'm glad I don't
Speaker 5: get it because you and I don't think that way.
Speaker 2: Well, we don't think that way.
Speaker 1: We try to stay a little bit closer updated on
Speaker 1: the actual realities that we're dealing with day in and
Speaker 1: day out, rather than just clinging to some ridiculous SoundBite
Speaker 1: that's not based on facts. Let's bring Jay Ratliffe back.
Speaker 1: We will talk about the outage at Newark, which seems
Speaker 1: to be happening more often, plus getting parts from eBay
Speaker 1: more with Jay Ratlib. After these brief words up, you.
Speaker 2: Can stick around fifty five KRC. I've had a number
Speaker 2: of surgeries. He's all right.
Speaker 1: I heard media aviation expert. We get him every Thursday
Speaker 1: between eight thirty and the close of the show, and
Speaker 1: it's an enjoyable experience for me. I know my listeners
Speaker 1: enjoy hearing from you, Jay, and maybe you can explain
Speaker 1: what the hell is going on at Newark Airport. I
Speaker 1: was laughing because he said would you want to would
Speaker 1: you want to fly through Newark? And or you know,
Speaker 1: layover in Newark? And I think my initial reaction, regardless
Speaker 1: of the status of the air traffic control system, will
Speaker 1: be no, right out of the gate. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to Newark for any reason. But most notably,
Speaker 1: they have made the news regularly lately with their with
Speaker 1: the outages. So what's the story behind this one, Jay, Well,
Speaker 1: we've got.
Speaker 5: A couple of different issues. It's a technology issue as
Speaker 5: well as a staffing issue. And what we've seen in
Speaker 5: the last two weeks or three occasions were the FAA
Speaker 5: technology for tracking aircraft, which of course we've talked about
Speaker 5: how antiquated last century plus that technology is.
Speaker 4: Where we've had.
Speaker 5: Three instances in two weeks. The first two were primary
Speaker 5: systems that failed that actually caused the scopes, the radar
Speaker 5: screens to go blank. You could not see the air
Speaker 5: traffic that you were managing. You could fortunately then speak
Speaker 5: to them, which was good because you could at least
Speaker 5: still communicate. The second instance, that happened on Sunday morning,
Speaker 5: was a backup or secondary system that failed. And that's
Speaker 5: my biggest concern is like, wait a minute. Now, we've
Speaker 5: got the primary and the secondary systems that are being effected.
Speaker 5: And what's happening is this technology that is so old
Speaker 5: it's simply just wearing down. It just cannot withstand the
Speaker 5: demands that are being placed on it. So what we're
Speaker 5: seeing is the same system which is used across the country.
Speaker 5: I look at Newark as an indication of this is
Speaker 5: just the beginning. We could see other types of situations
Speaker 5: like this occur, and that is certainly something that's an issue.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 5: The question I get is, Jay, does that mean it
Speaker 5: is unsafe for us if we're going to be flying
Speaker 5: in that part of the country. Now, the FAA is
Speaker 5: doing a very good job from a traffic management standpoint,
Speaker 5: where they keep the number of aircraft headed into a
Speaker 5: certain region, especially that congested Northeast, limited to a certain number.
Speaker 5: If they start to have issues with technology, they slow
Speaker 5: that down. We have frequent ground stops in cities like Cincinnati, Columbus, Chicago,
Speaker 5: anything headed towards the Northeast. If there's an issue, they'll
Speaker 5: issue a ground stop and say, no, your plane can't
Speaker 5: take off until this time because we're only managing a
Speaker 5: certain number of aircraft in this vicinity in this timeframe.
Speaker 5: So I think they do a pretty good job of
Speaker 5: managing it. So it's something that their controllers do not
Speaker 5: get overwhelmed with. Obviously, you want them to have the
Speaker 5: technology working because look, we're forty air traffic controllers short
Speaker 5: in Newark at this point in time that part of
Speaker 5: the country, and what's taken place is three thousand air
Speaker 5: traffic controllers short across the country. So you have air
Speaker 5: traffic controllers that are working overtime because they are short staffed,
Speaker 5: and you have a situation where they don't. They can't
Speaker 5: count on their technology because it's failing. And you have
Speaker 5: a lot of these individuals that are just saying, look,
Speaker 5: I'm going to go get a less stressful job, like
Speaker 5: you know, bomb detection or anything, because this is just
Speaker 5: just We've had five of them that had to take
Speaker 5: a leave of absence because of the emotional distress that
Speaker 5: they had when they lost contact with their aircraft for
Speaker 5: ninety seconds. Now, sometimes I would be like, oh, not
Speaker 5: come up, but what these men and women are going through,
Speaker 5: I totally understand that where they're taking a forty five
Speaker 5: day leave of absence and going from there. The problem,
Speaker 5: of course, Brian, is neither of those two systems are
Speaker 5: two issues with the shortage of air traffic controllers or
Speaker 5: technology is anything we can fix fast. In other words,
Speaker 5: it's going to take years for us to get the
Speaker 5: technology updated. Thank god President Trump has made this a
Speaker 5: item of priority. And if we have a Manhattan Project
Speaker 5: kind of approach, all hands on deck, we can knock
Speaker 5: it out maybe two years. That's great staffing, It's going
Speaker 5: to take years for the staffing to get up where
Speaker 5: it needs to be, which means neither of these situations
Speaker 5: are going to be resolved anytime soon. And when Sean
Speaker 5: Duffy comes out as the Transfer taking Secretary saying that
Speaker 5: some of these parts are so old from the last
Speaker 5: century that they have to go to eBay to buy
Speaker 5: the parts for the FAA, if that doesn't tell you
Speaker 5: what we're up against, I don't know. That's terrifying and
Speaker 5: scary at the same time, because it's one thing to
Speaker 5: find people qualified to still work on equipment from the
Speaker 5: seventies and eighties and nineties, but to find parts on
Speaker 5: eBay to do so again. Thank god President Trump's doing
Speaker 5: something because all these useless people in Washington, d C,
Speaker 5: on both sides of the aisle that want to use
Speaker 5: this as.
Speaker 4: A political ping pong ball.
Speaker 5: Excuse me, you've been in DC for forty fifty years,
Speaker 5: thirty years, twelve and you done nothing to address this
Speaker 5: FAA issue, which we've known it was coming. But the
Speaker 5: idea is, it's a lot easier to give money for
Speaker 5: a bridge where I get my picture taken versus spending
Speaker 5: it on something boring like the FAA's.
Speaker 4: Upgraded computer system.
Speaker 5: We've waited too long, and we're behind the eight ball,
Speaker 5: and we've got to do a lot and I'm glad
Speaker 5: President Trump's at the helm to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Well, when you talk about getting parts off EVA, that's
Speaker 1: because no one manufactures the type of equipment that these
Speaker 1: computers are relying on. Life for example, I think I
Speaker 1: jokingly reference five and a quarter floppy drives with you,
Speaker 1: but that sounds to me exactly like what they're using.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like trying to find, apart from my radio
Speaker 5: Shack computer from nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Six, realistic, where's it gonna be.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, nobody's going to stock that part
Speaker 5: because one person every three years is going to buy it.
Speaker 5: And that's what they're running into. And some people thought
Speaker 5: Sean Duffy was making a joke. He's like, no, I'm serious.
Speaker 5: These are the ends that we have to go to
Speaker 5: to try to keep this stuff working. And I've seen
Speaker 5: some of these computers that overheat frequently that are part
Speaker 5: of the air traffic control system where they have to
Speaker 5: open up the back panels and put fans there to
Speaker 5: try to keep them cool from overheating. And I'm thinking
Speaker 5: we've had air traffic controllers have to have an umbrella
Speaker 5: at their desk inside the why because it leaks at
Speaker 5: the ceiling. I'm trying to keep water off of my
Speaker 5: computer and look at all of these different things that
Speaker 5: they have to deal with. Why, oh, by the way,
Speaker 5: we're supposed to have fourteen people on duty, we can
Speaker 5: only have three, four or five. It's just an emotional
Speaker 5: mess right now with what they're going through.
Speaker 4: And again.
Speaker 5: The people that politically are saying, you know, Donald Trump
Speaker 5: has all these issues. No, We've had issues like this
Speaker 5: for a number of decades, and I blame both sides
Speaker 5: of the aisle because it's been a joint effort that's
Speaker 5: in essence ignored what the FA has needed all these years.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of let's say, Social Security and some
Speaker 5: of these other things that they just don't want to touch.
Speaker 5: And you know, there're gonna spend more time seeing that
Speaker 5: they can blame versus trying to fix the problem.
Speaker 1: Well, if there were more air traffic accidents and more
Speaker 1: loss of lives than it would have been elevated to
Speaker 1: their attention. I think they figured, as long as it's working,
Speaker 1: there are thousands of flights every single day and nothing
Speaker 1: seems to be happening.
Speaker 2: So status quo is aoka and that is such.
Speaker 5: A great, great point, because yes, we were enjoying the
Speaker 5: safest era of commercial jet travel in as long as
Speaker 5: it's working. Why invest hundreds of billions of dollars in
Speaker 5: something when something's working? And that's exactly the mindset these
Speaker 5: people have. The bridge hasn't collapsed, so what do we
Speaker 5: need to spend money to rebuild it?
Speaker 2: Yees?
Speaker 5: You know, And that's why I'm glad that you're right
Speaker 5: down the middle on things. You call it the way
Speaker 5: you see it, because both sides of the aisle are
Speaker 5: guilty in this. They should be held accountable. But I
Speaker 5: think it's spent half the energy. Did they spend pointing
Speaker 5: fingers and actually get some work done on all the
Speaker 5: things are there for I'd feel so much better.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, wouldn't the world be a much better place? Jeez?
Speaker 1: Anyway, Jay, now you talk about air traffics and controllers. Now,
Speaker 1: if I were to go to and enroll in air
Speaker 1: traffic control school, they're going to be training me on
Speaker 1: how to work equipment that's fifty years old. That I mean,
Speaker 1: that's kind of be a fact of the current situation,
Speaker 1: right yep.
Speaker 5: And we only have so many we can do. We
Speaker 5: can we can comfortably get fifteen hundred to two thousand
Speaker 5: through at a time. Last year, the FAA had a
Speaker 5: goal for the whole year of hiring fifteen hundred air
Speaker 5: traffic controllers. They did that by September first. I was
Speaker 5: bragging on a big time by hitting their goal. Early
Speaker 5: this year, they were hoping to get two thousand hired.
Speaker 5: But look, only a portion of those make it through
Speaker 5: the training, and it could be three years, four years,
Speaker 5: or even longer before you're final fully trained at your
Speaker 5: post by yourself doing your job.
Speaker 2: Let's the equivalent of getting a four year degree to college.
Speaker 5: Then that's why you can't turn the spicket on and
Speaker 5: affect immediate results here, because all this stuff takes time,
Speaker 5: and the fa does a good job of training these people,
Speaker 5: but it takes a while to get them there. So
Speaker 5: that's why when you look at all of this, it's
Speaker 5: like you and I are going to be talking about
Speaker 5: Newark and the FAA and all this stuff a whole
Speaker 5: lot more as we move forward, because we're going to
Speaker 5: see other computers around the country that are going to
Speaker 5: start experiencing some of these similar kinds of issues. We've
Speaker 5: already seen them in the past, but this is three
Speaker 5: currencies in a couple of weeks, and it's in a
Speaker 5: point part of the country that's incredibly congested, and it's
Speaker 5: become a major talking point for all the obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: Well, I just hope it doesn't turn into a major
Speaker 1: talking about a point about loss of life. Well, is
Speaker 1: it real quick here on air traffic control? Is it
Speaker 1: a lucrative profession? Is it something that's worth pursuing as
Speaker 1: an endeavor?
Speaker 5: I mean, some of these people one hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: grand a year, sometimes more, sometimes less, especially with some
Speaker 5: of the ones.
Speaker 4: That are working over time at this point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you remember coming out of the pandemic, how
Speaker 5: we had a lot of people that adjusted their entire
Speaker 5: mindset on work. It was like, I'm working three jobs
Speaker 5: to do this, I'm only going to work too, or
Speaker 5: I'm busting my butt working two jobs quality of life's sake,
Speaker 5: I'm only going to have one. We see pilots that
Speaker 5: could qualify to become captains that turn it down because
Speaker 5: they like the first officer. They like their seniority where
Speaker 5: they can call the shots. If I get promoted and
Speaker 5: I'm sitting in the left seat when I'm at the
Speaker 5: bottom of the list, and I can't have that much
Speaker 5: control over my schedule. Yeah, I would get paid more,
Speaker 5: but I control my life more in this situation. And
Speaker 5: these air traffic controllers, it's the same thing when they
Speaker 5: get there and they're saying, I'm going through so much
Speaker 5: for this when I could be happier doing something else,
Speaker 5: and all of that stuff, not all, but a great
Speaker 5: deal of it is stuff that we shove on them
Speaker 5: because we're giving them tools that they can't depend on,
Speaker 5: and we're asking them to do the job of several
Speaker 5: people because we can't keep everything staffed as we should.
Speaker 5: And a lot of these people are just saying I've
Speaker 5: had it in a way they go and Brian, I
Speaker 5: can't blame them, because if every single day you're in
Speaker 5: charge of the safeguarding the lives of people that are
Speaker 5: you know that you're helping to facilitate the movement of
Speaker 5: those aircraft. There's no room for margin as far as
Speaker 5: for safety. You've got to jump in there and do
Speaker 5: your job, and everything has to work as it's supposed to,
Speaker 5: and you're worried every day is it really gonna work?
Speaker 5: Am I gonna be able to get through my shift
Speaker 5: without a problem? And you know that's certainly a concern.
Speaker 1: Well all right, well we always part company on hub delays.
Speaker 1: So what's the status today for air traffic.
Speaker 5: I think Minneapolis is gonna be the only problem shot,
Speaker 5: and I think it's gonna be kind of a glancing blow.
Speaker 5: So we might see delays at most that might approach
Speaker 5: an hour, but that's pretty much Yep. We've got these
Speaker 5: afternoon thunderstorms which can pop up anywhere, which goes to
Speaker 5: show why Shary and I when we fly, we catch
Speaker 5: the first flight out in the morning because a that's
Speaker 5: the flight. Airlines concentrate on the most to get it
Speaker 5: out on time, so your odds go up. And to
Speaker 5: these afternoon thunderstorms that can pop up any of that where,
Speaker 5: that really create a lot of afternoon messes and delays.
Speaker 5: You know, you've got your bags out of baggage claim,
Speaker 5: you're driving to your destination long before those things hit.
Speaker 5: You fly out early in the morning. I'm not telling
Speaker 5: people to do that. I'm just explaining why we do that.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Jay, I appreciate your our conversations enlightening and
Speaker 1: in today slightly scary, but got to get the info
Speaker 1: out there, and and let's spread the truth about all
Speaker 1: these things. I'll look forward to next Thursday and another
Speaker 1: edition of this aviation segment. You have a wonderful weekend,
Speaker 1: my friend.
Speaker 5: And looking forward to next week. This has got to
Speaker 5: be the fastest twenty minutes of my week, to be sure,
Speaker 5: it seems like six take ah, you.
Speaker 2: Too, I love it. Eight fifty one fifty five KC detalkstations.
Speaker 2: I'll be right back fifty five KRC. Did you hear
Speaker 2: a recent stay