Pilot's Trifecta of Near-death Experiences & more …

Most pilots retire having never experienced 1 of these near-death experiences. Not Kelly Fox. As a 747 Pilot, he experienced all 3 ... in one ONE trip! That's correct. In just 72 hours, this pilot stared death in the face and each time his training fought back and wrestled the demon of death to the ground; each time emerging victorious and ready for the next battle. 

In this episode, we discuss the different paths one can take in becoming a pilot. Had you asked me before this episode I would have said you needed to learn flying in the military and only retired military become pilots. WoW! Was I way off! Kelly tells great stories about close calls, when planes are "covered" versus when they fall out of air traffic control, he shares his opinion on how the famous MH370 Malaysian flight can possibly disappear, and so much more. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Alright, we have such a Great treat here. A good friend of mine, Kelly Fox. He's a 747 pilot. And most of your flying is to China and to Alaska.

SPEAKER_01: 0:11

Well, you know, it's actually, I'd say most of my flying is just international. We do a lot in China and Alaska. But the cool thing is I go to Europe a lot too. Oh, okay. And middle part of Asia too. Yeah. So it can be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

Every once in a while we get to do Australia. I love it. That's so cool. All right. That was just for us to warm up our voices. We should be good. All right, folks, welcome back to another episode here. Such an interesting story. I have a 747 pilot, good friend of mine, Kelly Fox. Thanks for being here today, Kelly. Thanks for

SPEAKER_01: 0:42

having

SPEAKER_00: 0:43

me. A lot of your flights are international, but I love that you do a lot going to China. You mentioned a lot of Alaska. So you see this vast earth that we're going to unpack today. Today, folks, is going to be full of a lot of great, great stories. Your hail story has me like, I can't wait to hear the ending of it. We're going to talk Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll focus on that part too. Definitely. And then for the avid, not the true crime person, but just the person who loves a good story, that person's going to love this episode. So we got a lot of good stuff that we're going to talk about. Let's get right into it. You're on one trip. You have a lightning strike, a bird strike, okay? And then a flap failure on the same trip. I can't even get over it. Tell me the story.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58

Yeah, so this was fun. I was actually a relatively new first officer and I was flying for a company called Atlantic Southeastern Airlines. And that's, you know, you buy a ticket on Delta, but a lot of times you may actually fly on like a smaller plane. Right. And that's actually... you're not flying with Delta. It's actually a company Delta is using to fly the smaller planes around. They're called regional airlines. And so I was maybe a year or so in a fairly new pilot in the airlines. And yeah, one trip we took off, we see a little bird as we rotate and we're climbing out. We didn't think much of it. We flew, I think from like Louisiana to like Memphis, I think it was. And the engines did great. This is a testament to how great these things are built these engines are built and we land and i'm walking around and i see Something kind of up in one of the engines in the cowlings that looked kind of white. And it turned out, I think it was like a feather or something. And so I tell the mechanic, you know, the first officers, we usually do the walk around. We see anything wrong, we go tell the captain. Mechanics will come look. And the mechanic came back up to us pretty excitedly. He's like, yeah, you hit a bird. And it actually bent one of the fan blades back. No way. Yeah. But one of the neat things about the CRJ200, which is a smaller airplane 50 seat those are the same engines that they use on the a10 warthog you know the military aircraft so they were very sturdy yeah but that was the first thing um and then uh we did this was maybe a three-day trip okay um and so then i think the next day we were coming in from we flew a lot in the south and we were coming back into atlanta and it was actually just it was it wasn't really thunderstormy but we're coming down and we can't see anything all of a You just get struck and it just happens. But these planes, again, they're built for it. You know, it's startles and you see this flash and that's it. Now, luckily for us, nothing happened. I do have a friend I was in school with that he was landing one time and he got struck by lightning and he started losing all his instruments.

UNKNOWN: 4:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:16

Yeah. Luckily, that didn't happen. And then later on in that same trip, I forget the scenario exactly because it's been a while, but we were flying and we had a flaps fail. So, you know, we have a lot of big systems on airplanes, a lot of moving parts, and we practice for this stuff, but the flaps help us to slow down, whether it's for landing. This is what it was for mainly at this point in time, but they didn't come out. So instead of maybe landing at a nice 130 miles an hour, We came in at like almost 200 miles an hour, which was about the max limit of the actual aircraft's tires. And luckily, we were in Atlanta, and we used a very long runway. Yeah. But we ate up the whole runway. But the interesting part is nobody in the back knew. Anybody riding, you don't know that stuff's really happening. You don't know? They

SPEAKER_00: 5:16

didn't know. So you're not coming on saying, folks, we got to... No, it

SPEAKER_01: 5:20

depends on what it is. We might let the flight attendants know. But if it's nothing that it's like a dire, dire emergency and we know that we're not going to have control when we land... Or we're not turning back around and you need to know why we're coming back. Yeah, we're probably not going to. tell people to arouse you know a panic or

SPEAKER_00: 5:44

stress right how about you were you like were you nervous that was your first time where the flop didn't come down

SPEAKER_01: 5:49

um i wasn't that nervous you know the interesting part is when you tell atc that you have some type of emergency going on it gets really busy and i actually was really kind of overwhelmed they almost talk a little too much because they they need to know information and everything and that's fine but we were switching running And I was the one programming the computer and switching runways, so I almost didn't have time to really be that nervous on

SPEAKER_00: 6:16

it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:17

But I thought it was funny. We got down, and I told the captain. I was like, yeah, I've had all three of these things happen to me. And he's like, man, you're bad luck. I was like, no, I'm the reason why we landed okay. I'm not bad luck. You're lucky to have me on this plane. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 6:30

That's great perspective. Yeah. All right, we have so many cool stories, so many neat things we're going to get into. In order to frame this up the right way, Tell me, you had an interesting career path getting in. You didn't take the traditional. So start back from the beginning. Why don't you start when you knew you wanted to be a pilot and then what you did?

SPEAKER_01: 6:50

Well, there were a couple times for that. So when I was young, my grandfather, when he retired, he joined like an aviation club, like an airplane club. I'm not saying exactly right, but they had a couple different airplanes, and he got his private pilot license. And so he would take me up when I was little. And yeah, man, when I was little, I was like, man, this is what I want to be. I want to go in the Air Force. I had all the little airplane toys. Wow. But then I got glasses when I was in middle school. And, you know, middle school is a tough time in high school. And I just kind of lost the dream, right? And plus, I didn't necessarily think I could be. Because at the time, this is in the mid-90s, they didn't, you know, LASIK was brand new. And so from what I knew, they were very selective in the military about the pilots they had. And they could be. I mean, this is before UAVs and all that. And so for me, that's what I... thought you had to do to be a pilot was actually go into the military. So I lost that dream for a little bit. And even though I was in ROTC for a while, but I just, I lost that dream. So I went, I worked on cars, good job, nothing wrong with it. I like knowing how to do things, but I ended up being very unhappy doing it. And a friend of mine told me, a mentor was like, well, you need to do something with your life. And I prayed about it. And the next morning I kind of knew, but I What had happened, I bumped into another gentleman in his early 20s, and he was going to what was called Delta Connections Academy. It's amazing how you just start bumping into people, and things will line up, and the people you meet when you start looking for something. The cool thing about the aviation world is it's very big. It looks like when you're on the outside a small club because there's so much information, but you don't really know where to start to get that information if you don't have somebody that's in the business, right? And so to me, it seemed like it was a very small club. But I met this kid, and he started telling me, no, you don't have to go into the military. You can go to these flight schools that teach you just specifically to be a commercial pilot. And I was like, wait, what? I have glasses. Hey, you just have to have 20-20 corrective vision. And in fact, I think the medical standards, it has to be correctable up to 2040 so it can even go a little bit uh past

SPEAKER_00: 9:23

that's incredible

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

yeah so and that's when i found that out i was like oh i want to go do this and so there's a thing called a discovery flight and i highly recommend people to go do that just go to your local school local airport uh walk into any building they'll know where to tell you to go if that's not the right place and they basically it's like nowadays it's probably 150 250 dollars and they'll take you and and give you a lesson and so they'll put you in the seat and I will tell you for me I knew the second that we went up there yeah I'd heard about this thing called the vomit comet and I looked to the little instructor I was like can we do that and he was like yeah

SPEAKER_00: 10:03

what is that

SPEAKER_01: 10:04

and so the vomit comet is where we're up in a small little high wing Cessna and Basically, he starts to climb, and then he pushes it over. And so you experience the negative Gs, and you rise up out of your seat. Not uncommon to like a roller coaster, but except you're in an airplane a couple thousand feet in the air doing

SPEAKER_00: 10:25

it.

SPEAKER_01: 10:26

So if you love roller coasters, there's a good chance you'd like to be a pilot.

SPEAKER_00: 10:31

How close to the ground do you get once it probably feels like you're going to

SPEAKER_01: 10:35

hit the ground? Honestly, you may climb a couple hundred feet and go down a couple hundred feet, if even that. It actually does not take much when you're flying around at about 100 miles an hour to get the zero G feeling. I mean, it's just a good pushover.

SPEAKER_00: 10:52

You'll come up out of your seat. That's so cool. Vomit comment.

SPEAKER_01: 10:55

It was so much fun. I knew then, I was like, this is what I want to

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

do. This is what I want to do. This is it. So then what happens next? Did you say in your 20s at the

SPEAKER_01: 11:05

time?

SPEAKER_00: 11:05

Excuse me.

SPEAKER_01: 11:07

At my time, I think I was... 21. I just turned 21. So the next thing that happened for me is I knew I wanted to do it. So then I started looking at schools. Excuse me. And I knew I wanted to get a degree. And you don't have to get a degree to be an airline transport pilot. And even now, like Delta Airlines, a lot of them have actually taken that down. But let me tell you, If you don't have one, you're probably not going to get the interview, you know, because it is, it's another tool to kind of make you stand out. Yeah. Right. And having a degree shows that you're willing to learn things that you might not want to learn and you stick with it. Right. So there's, you know, we, we, we focus, I think a lot about on, well, college really isn't that important, but I think college is more actually about your, your, your learning how to learn and you show someone you can stick with it yeah so I wanted to go to a school and you know Embry-Riddle is a real big one but at the time this was back in the early 2000s it would have been over I think it was 18,000 plus dollars a semester and it didn't even include flight training you know so those guys got out of there like well over a hundred thousand dollars in debt if you didn't have somebody taking care of it and you know now if you have someone that can that can help you out Embry-Riddle is a great school I haven't For me at the time, it was the money part of it. Sure. And a lot of people love Embry-Riddle. And I also think when it comes to school and when it comes to loans, I don't like taking on debt, but student loan debt to me is you're betting on yourself and you're investing in yourself. Bingo, yeah.

UNKNOWN: 12:56

So...

SPEAKER_01: 12:56

Don't be too scared about that. You know you. And for me, I mean, I still took out student loans. At the time, I ended up finding... Actually, I was going to go to Auburn. And Auburn had a deal where if you transferred in your junior, senior year, you could pay in-state tuition. So I started going to Georgia Perimeter at the time, which is Gwinnett College now. And I started taking core classes. And like I said, along the way, I would just bump into people. And I saw this. I still worked on cars while I was going to school. And this guy had flying magazines. And I told him what I was thinking about doing in the school. And he was like, oh, there's a school like that in Georgia and I was like what yeah and it was called it was a technical college called Georgia Aviation and Technical College yeah which now is called Middle Georgia State University okay they merged they're a four-year degree yeah they are in the middle of Georgia in Macon they have campus in Eastman Georgia I believe they have one in a couple different places too, but Middle Georgia State University. And I ended up going down there, and it was a wonderful school. And six months later, I was there. Yeah. And it was all about aviation. I mean, they even have everything from mechanics, from air traffic controls, to even airport management. I mean, there's so many different jobs in aviation besides just flying. They also had the rotary wings, helicopters down there. Oh, wow. you know, I'm a guy. I don't know. I was a dumb kid. But when I found something that I wanted to do, man, it was actually fun going to school. My classes were about learning how to fly. Now, not all of them were. I did have to take physics and algebra, and that stuff was not necessarily easy. And so I became an instructor. It took me about two years to get all my ratings up to be an instructor. And then I instructed for about two, two and a half years after that. While I was in school, actually. Yep. While I was in school. And that's a neat thing. If you go to a four-year degree college, a lot of times you can get your certificates and your licenses done before you're actually done with the schooling. And hopefully they will have a position open and you could be an instructor while you're still going to school, which is great because you're building hours, you're getting paid a little bit. And for me, they were really flexible with my class schedule.

SPEAKER_00: 15:47

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 15:49

And I really highly recommend... Everybody doesn't want to do it. Everybody's not a teacher, and I get that. But I will tell you, that's when I learned how to fly. When I started trying to teach somebody how to fly... That's when I learned how to land an airplane. And that was interesting. That was kind of an insight into flying that, wow, there is something behind instructing. You really are teaching yourself so much more. And you get to see a lot of what not to do, too. Oh, yeah, which is helpful. Yeah, I had some students. I'm going to say this, too. Most people... If you have a desire, you can become a pilot. Some people might get it quicker. Some people it might take longer. But as long as you have the desire and you put the effort, you can do it. I will say there are some people who don't necessarily have the hand-eye coordination. And that's unfortunate. And sometimes I had to be the bad guy. And not really the bad guy. I just had to be honest. Like there was this one guy. You remember the movie Revenge of the Nerds? Oh, sure. You remember Ogre? Oh, yeah. So I'm not trying to talk bad about this kid. He was about half Ogre's size, but he had real puffy hair. He just reminded me of Ogre. Who Ogre actually turned out to be really smart. To be really smart, right? But this was first Revenge of the Nerds Ogre. He was not smart. at this time. He was kind of bulky, too. And, you know, there's a saying as a flight instructor, you've got to be careful because the students are trying to kill you. And we even had an examiner who he was giving an examination to a guy for a license, and he stalled the airplane coming into final, and they crashed. Luckily, they lived, but he was all burnt on the side of his face. Like, I mean, it is serious. I mean, what we're doing is very safe. Wow. But when the stars align, it can be very dangerous. So this guy, he would come in and he was strong and he would just freeze up on the controls coming in and landing. And that's very dangerous because you need to be able, especially me as an instructor, I need to be able to move those to make it land properly. I'd have to hit his arm, you know. And luckily he ended up, cheating at school and getting kicked out. So I didn't have to be that big

SPEAKER_00: 18:14

of a bad guy. You didn't have to be the guy, right. So it's as much of an art thing. as it is the science. It

SPEAKER_01: 18:20

is.

SPEAKER_00: 18:21

The feel, the feel of it all. Am I saying that right?

SPEAKER_01: 18:24

Yeah, no, you get a feel for the airplane. Yeah. And each airplane has different quirks and tendencies. You know, the one thing about a jet, the difference with a jet and a prop-driven aircraft, a prop-driven aircraft, when you add that power, it's almost instantaneous. In a jet, you add it, it thinks a little bit, and then it picks up. Whoa. So... you get a feel. You almost, you have to, you know, we kind of call it, you have to be flying in front of the aircraft. And it's easy, especially when you're learning, which, don't take it wrong. Sure. It is a learned skill. Yeah. If you don't get it from the beginning, that's normal. And you're not supposed to be good at the beginning. Right. Or why else would you need instruction? Right. Like, this is something that you can learn. Yeah. But when you first start flying, you are behind the aircraft. You know, And so you're learning the feel. And, oh, okay, well, I add the power here. What does that do? The nose rises. When I take it away, the nose goes down. When I do this, you know, okay, I see the airspeed dropping. How quick do I add power? So you're getting that feel. But what's neat, though, is once you learn to fly an airplane, they all pretty much fly the same. You know, it's just little nuances. Yeah, that makes sense. Like the 747, a neat thing about that is she's big. Oh, yeah. She's real big. She's graceful. She's big. But you put in the control movement, and then she's like, well, let me think about it a little bit. Okay, now I'll start moving. Whereas some aircraft, like I flew the 767, big aircraft also. Yeah. But you put in the control, and she goes. Instantly. Instantly. And what's interesting, I'll find new guys, and I've been there, that get in the 747, and they start moving. rocking rocking their the controls back and forth so that they put it in and they're so used to their other airplanes reacting that they take it back out i'm like you know it didn't do anything right right

SPEAKER_00: 20:27

you

SPEAKER_01: 20:27

gotta leave it there so yeah it's a feel it really is but but once you get that feel um you can do a lot of really cool things with airplanes

SPEAKER_00: 20:35

that's cool so i think up until right now for the the younger kid well actually you don't have to just be young for anybody out there that wants to fly i think the point is here there's another Yeah. And I did too.

SPEAKER_01: 20:52

Yeah. predicts it and you do it on your time you can do it fast or slow but you don't have to go to school and it's not as rigid there's part 141 which most colleges are and so there you have to meet certain criterias and certain gates and be progressing but even if that didn't work out for you there are still avenues to get in you don't have to be a flight instructor to build your time you could go fly little cargo planes You could go fly right seat in a corporate jet with somebody. There's corporate planes all over that are single pilot rated, but it's always better to have somebody else there. Four eyes are better than two, even if it's somebody that's not that experienced. It's interesting. You think, oh, you want the most experienced guy, and yeah, you do, but even someone who's kind of new, it's still a big deal to have them help you over there, and they still can really point things out. Sure it is. So I've had friends who flew right seat in corporate jets for a while, and they build up their time. Because to get in the airlines, you have to have a certain amount of time. Right. Hours. It's very complicated. But depending on what kind of school you go to... Or if it's like military, you have to have like, I think a minimum of about 700 hours and then you can get hired on. Part 141, I think you can go between a thousand hours and then you can maybe move on to the airlines. And I think part 61, it's 1500 hours. And I started with 1700 hours. So it took me, I started flying in 2006. So it actually took me actually right at about five years and I had about 1,700 hours. Now, again, you could do that faster depending on how much you're in and flying, and you can also do it slower. Slower. How

SPEAKER_00: 23:00

many hours did you get totaled at your four-year school?

SPEAKER_01: 23:04

I was about 1,700. Now, when I finished all my pilot ratings up to CFI, and that's your single engine, your instrument rating, your commercial rating, your multi-engine commercial rating, and my... flight instructor rating, I think I had about 255, 260 hours. Okay. And so the other 1500 hours I came, came from instructing.

SPEAKER_00: 23:30

From instructing. Okay. Then what did your career look like? Let's move on. So you graduate school and then what?

SPEAKER_01: 23:36

So then for me, you know, my dream was always, I wanted to go to Delta. It's like, you know, you almost see like, it's almost like Delta is like the Yankees, right? I love baseball. So I'll use some baseball analysis. Delta to me seemed like the Yankees or the Braves because we love the Braves here in Atlanta. But that's like, you know, you see Delta, United, American, and that's what most people just know, right? But that's what we see. And so the goal was to get to Delta. But you don't just hop right into Delta. At the time, and it still is, the regional airlines, or you go to the military. So after high school, I actually was able to get a job with Atlantic Southeast Airlines, so regional airlines, and they flew out of Atlanta, and they flew the CRJ-900s, 200s, and the CRJ-700s, and I was on the 200s, a little small, 50-seater. You know the plane you don't want to get on as a passenger? It was one of those. Okay, 50-seater, got it. The two most comfortable seats were the ones up front for the pilots.

SPEAKER_00: 24:48

Okay, so that's your first assignment.

SPEAKER_01: 24:49

Yeah, that was my first assignment, and I started in 2011 with them. Here in Atlanta? Yeah, here in Atlanta. Yeah, I got based in Atlanta, and they wanted me to be based up in Washington Dulles or Houston. No, Houston, because they were merging with another airline, but I had a scoop on the inside. I knew that they had another class for Atlanta, and I was like, I don't know. I'd have to I talked to my wife. I was like, I don't think I can do that. And he came back in the interview, and he's like, okay, we'll give you Atlanta. He was like, I had to try. He asked me a couple of times, would you be willing to go to Houston? I was like, eh. Because one thing you don't realize, like pilots, and a lot more people know now, but you can live anywhere, right? And you have to commute. And commuting can be a very big pain. We call it jump seating. And it's basically like we're asking for a ride to work. And we have these inner line agreements airline agreements, but it's kind of like begging for a seat. You almost have to be like, sir, may I please ride with you? And there's a whole pecking order and you may or may not get on. And the stress that that brings on a pilot, because then it's like, if you don't show up to work, I'm going to get in trouble, you know? And luckily they have contracts that help mitigate that, but it's still a stressor. I didn't want to do that. If you can live in base, it's the best thing ever for quality of life. You just drive to work and drive home.

SPEAKER_00: 26:16

What was the first flight? You had people on the CRJ, 50 people. What did that feel like, your very first one that you were?

SPEAKER_01: 26:26

Magic. I got a photo of that, too. It was so cool. So before you get in the actual airplane, you go through months of training. And even when you already know how to fly, well, now you are learning to fly a jet. And what was really cool, you get in these simulators. They're like two stories tall. They're full motion. I mean, the whole thing moved. And the inside is exactly like the inside of the real airplane. And so that's really cool. But what was really neat, right, was the first time they– a lot of airlines will have you– what's the word? Basically, you go sit in the jump seat up front of the airplane, and you kind of do a ride-along. Okay. And that was really cool because I had spent years flying prop planes. You have this big fan in front of you, and you see the engine is moving. It's working. you know why you're being propelled forward because you can see it. And I remember getting in this jet and we're lining up and I'm sitting in the middle between the two pilots and we're lining up on one of the runways in Atlanta and we get cleared for takeoff and they put the thrust up and we just start moving. And I remember it feeling like magic because there was nothing in front of us. There's just some force pushing us. And it was so much fun. I was in hog heaven. It was so cool. And then my first flight, so you usually will do a couple legs like that just as an observer. And I loved every minute of it. And my first flight, one neat thing about being in the airlines is a lot of times your family gets pass riding privileges. And so my mom and my wife were actually able to ride with me on my very first flight with passengers. That's so

SPEAKER_00: 28:14

cool.

SPEAKER_01: 28:14

And it was from Atlanta, Georgia up to Asheville, North Carolina. But the bad part, you know, pass riding is really nice. But if there's no seats available, you're not getting back on. So they got stuck up in Asheville. No. No way. But it was cool. And, you know, I'm about, what was I about? 24, 25 at the time that I'd gotten in there. And it was neat, you know, the, the gate agent that was talking to me and she took care of my mom and wife. Eventually they got home, but she was like, you know, he doesn't seem scary. Like apparently like he, he doesn't seem like he's scary new, you know, like sometimes I get it, you know, sometimes the brand new pods, they're brand new, right? I mean, sure. Yeah. Some of them can seem a little bit scary, but they got to get that experience, man. I mean, and we could talk about that other accident that was up in Canada, but that she wasn't really new yeah but anyway we won't get into

SPEAKER_00: 29:09

that yeah we're gonna get into some yeah real good ones just curious if you had to step into a c5 galaxy with no training at all no training you just go like can you get in something like that and just go

SPEAKER_01: 29:22

you know my my ego will tell you yeah That's almost probably any pilot. We would like to think, you know, here's the thing. If I can get the engine started, we're good to go.

SPEAKER_00: 29:35

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 29:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:37

What makes it so hard to start the engine?

SPEAKER_01: 29:38

Well, you know, when you get into bigger airplanes, it's actually not usually too hard, but when you get up into bigger airplanes, the buttons may be, well, first off, the buttons may be in different places. There may be different sequences and different systems you have to start up, but they're generally kind of the same. They They have what's called an APU, which is an auxiliary power unit. It's a small engine, usually in the tail or somewhere. And that is, think of it like the starter to the airplane. So I've got to get that started. So I would like to think, if I sat around long enough, I could figure out. Because then once the engines are started, I mean, it's thrust going forward and back. I mean, it's an airplane.

SPEAKER_00: 30:20

Yeah, it's just an airplane.

SPEAKER_01: 30:22

Look at the guy a couple years ago. Look this up. A kid in, it was in Lawrenceville, LZU.

SPEAKER_00: 30:30

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 30:31

I think he was in flight school or something like that. Look the story up. I may not have it right, but he did that. He, he got on a private jet, started up and like flew it to somewhere like in the Bahamas or something like that overnight. Yeah. Took off without talking to air traffic control. This was in Lawrenceville. Yeah. There was a whole thing on the story on the news. Did he ever fly before? Well, I think he, look it up. He might've had some training, probably had training, right? Like if you don't have some training, There's a good possibility you're not going to be able to take off right. So he had to have some experience. Or the guy in Seattle.

SPEAKER_00: 31:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 31:11

The Horizon kid a couple years ago who– I don't know his training level either, but he was like a ramp guy, and he ended up getting in a Q400, a prop plane, in Seattle, and he took it off out of Seattle. And there's videos, and he was talking to air traffic control. He rolled the airplane on purpose. He was flying it around and rolling it. And it's kind of sad because... Well, he ended up just diving into the ground. Like, I think he just was not in a good space. But you listen to it. Yeah, he crashed it on purpose into the ground. But he almost, to me, when you hear him talking, he didn't sound like he was that out of his mind. But he must have been. But getting back, yeah, and it's sad. It's sad all around. But could someone get in an airplane that they've not really had training? Yeah. Yeah.

UNKNOWN: 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:07

I don't want to give anybody any ideas, but there's a lot of computer programs out there that are very spot on that you can play from home that I started to play when I was a kid. I used to play Microsoft Flight Simulator. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:20

Think about what's out there now with AI and all the other stuff. Oh, yeah. Fascinating. Tell me the story about... the Southeast Asia. I know there's theories out there. Can a plane disappear? Yeah. What's going on there? That's interesting,

SPEAKER_01: 32:39

isn't it? A little scary. Right. I'm going to first off say, you know, because I don't know everything, and this is my educated guess. Yeah. You know, there's going to be pilots out there to watch, because I do this too, and I watch others. Yeah, he doesn't know what he's talking about. You're right. I'm just going to say that right there. This is an educated guess.

UNKNOWN: 32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:58

Yeah, so what I know about it is the theory is they think one of the pilots, I think it was the captain, they think that he might have turned the oxygen off so people went to sleep, right? When you're up at high altitudes, it's very interesting. You know, we're so comfortable up there, but when you're at like 35,000 plus feet... That oxygen goes... There's time of useful consciousness where you may only have a couple of seconds to get a mask on before you're almost drunk or passed out because you lose that oxygen. So the theory is they think that he might have... turn the oxygen off, or he did something. Anyway, so he's got control of the airplane, and they do have radar of him, like, turning around, and I'm sure they were trying to get a hold of him. And he was somewhere over Asia, and I forget exactly where it was, and we kind of talked about that before, but, like, you know, we're in America, and the radar coverage is very good, and a lot like Europe, very good coverage. Some places... The systems are probably a little bit older. So they were able to follow him. He turned back south. And they think he turned off his transponder, which his transponder is the electronic piece of equipment that will give a signal out to air traffic control. And we have specific numbers, and it lets them know who we are, where we're at, how fast, how high, which way are we moving, up or down, a lot of different information. And they think he turned that off. And so while he's in radar coverage over the land, typically, they're going to know where he's at. And I think we have a good video of it. But then when he starts to go over the ocean right that's where they could lose it so the oceans are big you know we it's so easy to get so wrapped up into our daily lives and you kind of forget how big the world actually is for sure it's massive right and you know we we travel at such fast speeds now that even to me, I'm like, oh, you know, I can get all the way around the world in less than a day now.

SPEAKER_00: 35:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:07

You know, like I really could. Right. I've lapped the earth a couple of times, you know, and if you only had to stop here or there, we could probably do it in less than a day. Yeah. And then think it's nothing, right? Right. Like it's just normal. Yeah. But the change is, your perception on how big the world is. That's why I always, I hope everybody gets a chance to fly. My grandfather never did. He was born in like 1911, I believe it was. He got to see like the first car come in and all that, but he never flew because it changes your perception. When you get up there, you're like, God, we're so small. We're so small. And so... I would like to think, and I think the technology is there, but the technology comes at a cost, which airlines are also in the business of making money. So when you get up over the ocean, yeah, they might not know exactly where you're at. There's a chance.

SPEAKER_00: 36:06

Where does the air traffic controller lose? I'm going to use the word jurisdiction.

SPEAKER_01: 36:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 36:11

Where do you fall

SPEAKER_01: 36:13

out? It's interesting. The whole world is actually... there's airspaces all over the world, right? And even over the ocean, there's different centers. Like you have Shanwick, which is kind of, say it's the east part of the North Atlantic Ocean. And then Gander, if you're looking kind of off, but like Iceland, like Iceland's almost like in the middle. And towards the west, towards America and Canada, that's Gander. So every airspace, even though you might not necessarily be in voice communication It is controlled by some authority. way but because the the uh systems have gotten better they actually have even lessened it down some so you know every aircraft is spaced about a thousand feet above or below each other so you're almost stacked on each other so it's not uncommon you're heading one way uh and uh excuse me, you'll see another guy coming 1,000 feet above or 1,000 feet below. Now, if they're going the opposite direction, they should be a little bit a ways away. Yeah, yeah. But you'll have people go overhead of you. So somebody is– and they still have computers that should see where we're at, and that is all relayed through satellites. So they're seeing satellites, but they're not getting necessarily that instantaneous radar return. So, you know, it really just depends. I mean– This isn't going to be necessarily right, but I'm thinking about, you know, you're several hundred miles away from land when you start losing the radar control.

SPEAKER_00: 38:15

Okay. And then you're flying by what? when you don't have the radar control, but you're flying by instrument?

SPEAKER_01: 38:21

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we're always flying by instrument. So, I mean, just like a car, we have a GPS, and the GPS is a great tool. So we're flying by our instrument. So, yeah, you know, we're not sitting– I mean, when you're over the ocean, there are no land features, you know, so you can't be like, oh, look, there's wave number 242. You know, I mean, you can't do that. So, yeah, I mean, there's so much satellite– GPS technology out there. Every airline, even when we're over... domestic airspace or land you're flying by GPS sure

SPEAKER_00: 38:54

the instruments what kind of fears do you have on a day-to-day basis when you're up there I don't want

SPEAKER_01: 38:59

to fall

SPEAKER_00: 39:01

yeah I like to say that people say I'm afraid of flying and I heard it put once it's not flying that you're afraid of it's crashing yeah just for perspective yeah yeah yeah so walk me through that what yeah so

SPEAKER_01: 39:15

that's that's my little ongoing joke that like you know people say well I'm afraid of heights I'm like I used to think about Right. Right. you know, I'm a lot, you, you, you know, you get comfortable, right? I'm very comfortable flying in an airplane. I do not feel afraid flying in the airplane. Um, now I am a passenger a lot and in the back, I still get a little nervous, like, you know, because I don't know what's going on. So the fear of the unknown is there. That's that, that can be scary. Like when I'm, I think most people's issue when they're in the back and they're, they're afraid of flying, you don't know what's going on. If you were up front

UNKNOWN: 40:05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 40:05

you would not have half

SPEAKER_00: 40:07

meaning of the fear. Like

SPEAKER_01: 40:09

if you were sitting up in the flight deck and you knew where you were going, you knew everything was fine. You knew that this bump was just, just a turbulent air. Yeah. And that's another neat thing I learned too. And so I'm dorking out a little bit is that, that air acts like liquid. It moves and floats like liquid. So like when people are talking about, like, I'll get the question all the time. Are there really like holes of air? Like there's not hole. Air's everywhere. There's not holes. Think of it like being on a lake or ocean. On smooth days, man, you get that boat. You go out there and you can walk across and it's great. But then on really windy days and those swells start happening, man, you're jostling all over the place. But there's no holes in the water. You're just getting hit by waves. And it's very similar to the same. When you're going through turbulence, it's rough air. And actually, it's Sometimes if you look at clouds, you can see waves forming in the clouds. Really? We call those wave clouds. Yeah, look it up. It's kind of neat. Oh, that's so cool. So the air is constantly moving and it's not all going in the same direction. And so that is, I like to tell people and they're like, oh, I'm afraid of flying and the bumps. I'm like, well, it's just like being on a boat. It's letting you know you're flying and the air's there. Air doesn't disappear. It will always be there. It just may be smoother or rougher. So you talk about a little bit fears or anything. You know, I think the bigger thing that would, you know, as a pilot, you always want to be, I'm not afraid of anything. But you know what? I want a real person to be my pilot because that means they're not going to take us into stupid situations.

SPEAKER_00: 41:59

That's exactly

SPEAKER_01: 42:00

right. The bigger fear or respect I also have is thunderstorms. And you know what's really interesting? In the southeast of America, we have massive storms. I mean, they're big storms. And again, it kind of goes back for me is storms present an unknown. Because they could look like this nice, fun little, it's a puffy white cloud. What's it going to do? It so amazes me that water and air and dirt particles and heat, the world, when that stuff comes together, it makes these powerful storms. And I couldn't even hold it in my hand. Right. You can't hold water. It's going to drip out. But the massive amounts of water that get up in the air and then the electricity that it makes. So anyway, I'm in awe of it, but I am in reverence of it also. There is a healthy fear. I think it is healthy to have fears. Don't let anybody tell you it's wrong to have a fear. I'm probably going to mess this up. Yeah. There are old pilots and there are brave pilots, or bold pilots. Old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.

SPEAKER_00: 43:23

That's

SPEAKER_01: 43:24

so

SPEAKER_00: 43:24

cool.

SPEAKER_01: 43:25

Which basically means, you know, part of being a pilot, you've got to keep my ego in check. Oh, I can do this. I've done it a million times. Oh, it'll be just fine. But that's the thing about flying. You know, it's 99% sheer boredom with 1% of just terror. You know, and so I don't want to fly in thunderstorms. I don't. I will go around it the best I can. But sometimes you got to break through a squall line. But at the same time, you don't always have to. You can always turn around. So again, this goes. He goes into... Yeah, we're flying straight and level most of the time. And once you get up into flying airliners, you're like a system manager. But part of that system is the weather system. So we got to be ahead of the aircraft. And, you know, you got to be looking ahead at that stuff, which is cool. And we have dispatchers and they actually give us all this information. Like, so nothing should be a surprise. Right,

SPEAKER_00: 44:25

right.

SPEAKER_01: 44:26

Like we know if there's going to be weather or not. Now, it could get worse than what it was forecasted. Sure. But we know it's going to be. there. But yeah, I avoid a storm. There's surprises in storms. I don't like surprises as a

SPEAKER_00: 44:41

pilot. We don't need surprises. What's harder to do, I guess, in general and for you? So answer it both ways. Takeoff or landing?

SPEAKER_01: 44:51

Landings. Because takeoffs are pretty straightforward. I mean, you go straight, you lift off. Yeah, no pun intended. Yeah, right. Whereas now... Landing is, and it also depends on the scenario, but every time you land an airplane, it's different. Whether the weather's different, whether the weight of the aircraft, right? That makes a huge difference. When an airplane's heavier, it's actually easier to land. When it's lighter... it's actually where you're probably going to get a lot of your harder

SPEAKER_00: 45:30

landings. Explain that. That's fascinating. So heavier is easier. It usually is. I would think it

SPEAKER_01: 45:36

would drop. Because it comes down to the feel of the airplane. right they're different feels we were talking about that before like you start getting a feel for the aircraft and when you start changing the weights that feel changes so whereas you might have you know when it's heavier you might give it a little bit more flare you do that when it's lighter well now your airplane's going to go up

SPEAKER_00: 46:00

what do you flare what do you mean so

SPEAKER_01: 46:02

flare flare is like you know we have our hands on the control and when you pull back on it the airplane goes up ground gets smaller blue gets bigger right you push down right the ground gets bigger sky gets smaller that's what we said right so flare is a maneuver when you're coming in because you're kind of sinking you're going down and the nose is actually you don't feel it but on a lot of airplanes the nose i think on ours we're actually only two and a half degrees nose pitch up some planes the crj 200 was actually two and a half degrees nose down when you're coming down so when you're coming down like that you don't just stay like that or you'll pancake right into the ground, you'll hit very hard. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 46:42

yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 46:43

Like the Canadian accident or the CRJ that... wrecked recently you can watch that they kind of come down and they don't really change their pitch and the pitch is up and down of the aircraft like raising the nose up and down and so a flare as you come in and you raise the nose slightly so a couple things happen you're you're leveling off your sink rate um does it decreases you're able to have a nice smooth touchdown and there's an art to that and a lighter aircraft you normally your air Aircraft is closer, weighs more. But every once in a while, we have an empty aircraft.

SPEAKER_00: 47:23

Yeah. And so

SPEAKER_01: 47:25

it changes it. So that is typically when you're going to have a harder landing. But look, you can have a harder landing at any point in time because that does kind of come down to the art of flying. And some days you're on and some days you're off. Really? The cool part about it is these airplanes are built to withstand both. Very, very big tolerances. And I actually was very surprised to see that that aircraft in Canada actually broke like it did. Because when I first saw it, I was like, that didn't look that bad.

SPEAKER_00: 47:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 47:59

You know? So there might have been more into that, the mechanical part of that, too. Right. I mean, they hit hard. Yeah. But I've hit hard, too. But luckily, I've not hit that hard yet.

SPEAKER_00: 48:11

That's true. Yeah. That's

SPEAKER_01: 48:12

true.

SPEAKER_00: 48:12

Oh, my gosh. Wow. So you've got a lot going on. All right. Pros and cons, would you say, of going the route of military service versus going around to college?

SPEAKER_01: 48:27

So pros, I think, on the military, and any military people, please speak up with that because I don't have that experience. I'm not going to act like I do. But what I can tell you is the pros that I see as an outsider who didn't do military are debt. They don't come out with debt. That's one of the biggest pros. They don't come out with debt. And I highly recommend, I hope I can say, Dave Ramsey. He's a great guy. I don't know if I can. You can edit it out. But debt. I like his theory, like debt, right? And that's one of the biggest pros with them. The cons I've seen with the military, they actually don't fly as much as you think they would. No way. Yeah. Like a lot of their time is not flying. It's

SPEAKER_00: 49:11

in school?

SPEAKER_01: 49:12

No. Well, I might not. I'm not sure if it's in school or if it's just doing other things, but it costs money to fly. And those are, I mean, depending on what they're flying, I mean, they're not cheap planes to fly. Yeah. So... from what I've been told, and again, not an authority, that's just what I've seen, is that they're going to get more flight hours if there's a conflict going on. So if there's not something going on, they're doing training here or there. I'm not exactly sure what they do in the meantime. I'm not sure. But I was surprised that they spent 20 years in there and really didn't come out with a lot of hours. That's incredible. Now, this was a helicopter guy, and he was an instructor at my school, a great guy. He was in the military for 20 years, and I think he only had about 1,200 hours, whereas I had 1,700 hours in a little bit, about four or five years. And so that was interesting to me, that they didn't fly. So I think that's one con. They don't fly as much. Pro, they get to fly really cool airplanes. They get to go really fast. But then again... Just because you go in the military and you have the highest scores, they're going to put you where they want you. So I've heard stories of guys that were top in their class and they graduated early. But because they graduated early, there were no fighter spots open. So they got put in like a P3 prop plane, which, look, I love flying anything. Yeah. And I think all of us pilots. But, you know, you go in the military, you want– You want to fly the F-14 Tomcat. That's dating me a little bit. Now it's the F-22, which my first instructor flew that. He got in there and flew the F-22. Pros about the military. I mean, look, they cover a lot of stuff. I mean, you've got health care. If you start to have a family, I mean, you can live on base. There's a lot of pros to it. GI Bill, all that stuff. If you go in for 20 years, these guys, they get out 20 years, and then they're– let's say they started– let's say they started flying around 22, 23, 20 years. They're my age. They're about in their early forties and they've got a pension. And so their other job doesn't really matter as much. It's almost kind of like play money. I mean, everybody's situation is different. Like, like there's, there's, I don't have that. Right. So I don't have a pension at my age that I'm working on and that's fine. Con to them, you know, when you're in the military, they get to, I think could be wrong. They control a little bit more of what you do and where you go. Yeah. Not in the military. I get to choose where I want to live, what I want to do with my life. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, um, uh, so, so I think there are a lot of pros and another cons. Look, you might have to go into war.

SPEAKER_00: 52:08

That's probably the biggest one.

SPEAKER_01: 52:11

And, and, Like I said, shock is a very interesting thing. Well, we haven't talked about it, I think, yet. But when you experience shock, that's a different thing. That could be a con.

SPEAKER_00: 52:22

That's a huge con. What would you do today? If you were 20 and everything you know now about military versus college. It's tough. What would you do? Would it be a harder decision today for you?

SPEAKER_01: 52:35

I think so. It's tough because I think that there's, you know, the military, I think, and then again, this outside point of view, there is kind of an adventure to it, right? Sure. Like there's a brotherhood kind of to that. And that's kind of neat, right? And to say you serve your country and to kind of the camaraderie and the different things, especially when you're young, that you're able to do and And at a very young age is flying very high-powered aircraft. I mean, the responsibility. So I think that could be a lot of fun. And if you do take it to 20 years, which not everybody does. I mean, the security that you have with that. And so, hey, I'll admit it. There's a little bit of jealousy in that. I look at it. I mean, it's great for them. I'm like, wow, man. So I might... that is a wonderful route to go, but, but there are, you got to understand there's a lot to it. And I bet you talked to some of those guys and they're going to have a different perspective. And, um, Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 53:55

That's the other thing. You're not going in and just going right on a plane. You still have to go to boot camp and like still do all that stuff. And I would imagine you don't just go, okay, I want to go fly. And then the next day you're flying, you might have to wait for an opening or all those things. Okay. That's cool. So I want to come back to a couple of things that you mentioned. So you said some days you have it and some days you don't. That's interesting. Yeah. Like, what don't you have? Feel?

SPEAKER_01: 54:22

Yeah, I'd say it's

SPEAKER_00: 54:23

feel. Whatever

SPEAKER_01: 54:24

it is. What is it? I mean, that's a good question. Well, here's kind of an interesting thing, too. You know, when we go flying, now for my job that I currently do right now, I usually go out in chunks of time. Okay. And where a lot of normal airlines or others, not normal. Yeah. But your passenger airlines, you may go out for three, four-day stretches. Then you're home three, four days. And that's your typical ones. And that's typical, yeah. That everybody knows, the Deltas, the United. Delta, United, and even down to the little regional guys. So you do three, four-day trips. That's it, yeah. And so you're in the plane. Then you have three or four days off, and then you get back in the airplane. Well, you know, the cool thing about this job is when you go home, you're home. Like you're not worried about your job. I don't think about my job. I'm home. Yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah. You're home, you know? So it's a different lifestyle. So that's cool for me. You know, it's interesting. Like, well, I'll just tell you, I'm, I've just had two months off. I've been away for two months and that's a very nice perk of my job. And it came with, I had vacation in one month and I do stretches of time. So we do anywhere from 14 days to 17 days. a month where I'm gone. And that sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, but even like some other airlines, you're typical to do three, four days here. If you think you do four, four-day trips, that's 16 days you're gone. And they can do less or more. Everybody's got different qualities. So the difference is mine is in one stretch, which is actually kind of nice. You just get it out, you get it done. And then if I have vacation two weeks in a month, I'm very fortunate that that basically knocks out that whole month. So I was able to position my other schedules to where I had a lot of time off. So when I go back, you know, I mean, you feel a little rusty. I mean, you still know how to ride a bike, you know, but I might let the first officer who's been here, he's going to probably fly the first leg just to get back in. Just to, you know, because there's a lot of, we call them flows, which flow is a different word. procedures we do, like to start the engine, I'm going to press this button, that button, this button, that button. So a couple nights before, I will start to study to get back into it. But some days, well, I mean, anybody that plays golf, some days your swing is there and you feel it. And some days it's not as great. And I think it's just kind of a normal cycle. And let me say this, too. When I mean some days you have it, it's the difference of, oh, this landing, I actually could feel it. And then, oh, I just greased that landing off. Like, it's not like a big, like, not like, yeah, like, oh my goodness, what am I doing? Got it. What is that button? That's a new button. It's not that. It kind of comes back to that feel.

SPEAKER_00: 57:19

That's awesome. So you're, okay, you're driving to your hotel.

SPEAKER_01: 57:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 57:24

You just landed a 747, you're driving to your hotel.

SPEAKER_01: 57:27

Scariest part of my trip.

SPEAKER_00: 57:29

Okay, that's what I want to get into. Like, what... What happened on the plane that made it a good day and a good trip back to your hotel? And what happened on the plane that made it a bad day and a bad trip back to the hotel?

SPEAKER_01: 57:41

You know, it's interesting. You don't think about this when you're learning to fly. But in my industry, crew dynamics are huge. And we call it crew resource management. And as a first officer, you have to be kind of a social chameleon because you don't know what kind of personality the captain you're going to be flying with. And the captain is the one who's going to set the tone on an aircraft.

SPEAKER_00: 58:12

You're the captain in these situations.

SPEAKER_01: 58:13

I am the captain now. And I am my favorite captain now. And that's the fun thing about becoming the captain is you get to fly with your favorite captain every time. That's right. I love it. For me, what makes a good flight? A good flight is... when the crew were really getting along and were working together. There's a standardization in the airlines that it doesn't matter who's sitting next to me. There are certain things that you expect of me and I expect of you. Nobody's perfect. What do I mean by that? Well, instead of pressing this button first, maybe he pressed that button first. Like there's a certain order of things. Is that a big deal? No, it's not. Now, what could be the big deal is say you're making some mistakes and you have a guy next to you now that's barking at you and that you're really getting down on you and micromanaging you. I found for me that when I was a first officer, And it's just, it's personality conflicts, kinda. So that's, when we're really gelling, and we're getting along, we're honestly, kind of like having conversations like we are right now. Yeah. Right? And not everybody, you know, I mean, there's some massive age differences, gender differences, religious, everything. I mean, it's interesting the conversations you have. I'll bet. We talk about on a nine-hour flight, we fix the world.

SPEAKER_00: 59:46

Yeah. Everything from,

SPEAKER_01: 59:48

you name it. And you got to be careful because you got to understand when you need to tone it down just like you know going to the family and Thanksgiving there's certain things you need to read the room right so sometimes you just have a crew you really mesh with yeah and you have fun and and that's what's cool what's the one that really was not fun. I was the first officer. This was right before I upgraded to captain. And we were flying from like Santiago, Chile, all the way up to like LA or somewhere in California. It's like a nine hour flight, older captain. And that doesn't necessarily mean anything. But maybe he was just tired and done. You don't know what's going on in people's lives. Yeah. He literally did not talk to me or the other first officer unless he was correcting us on something.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:41

No way.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:43

And I don't know about you, but when someone just sits there and corrects everything I do, I start to actually... make more mistakes because now instead of focusing on flying, I'm focusing on not making you talk to me like that. And you almost get this, this kind of tunnel vision. And I, I really don't like that. And I strive to have an open conversation. Like, look, you may see something that I miss, and that saves our life. And I want you to feel like you can tell it to me, and I'm not going to bite your head off. This guy, we trade seats because we rest during long flights. He literally did not talk to us unless he was correcting us on something, down to that I did not put the seat belt in the right position when we traded seats. And I'm just sitting there, and I'm eating it. I'm eating it, right? And, you know, you have to learn to... build up a thick skin. And sometimes you have to actually set boundaries and sometimes you actually have to bark back a little bit. And honestly, that's not my favorite thing to do. So that's something I didn't know that I'd have to learn to do is to be able, sometimes you got to say, Hey, no, you can't treat me like that. I'm sorry if you're having a bad day, but no, let's just come on. Um, and, uh, so in that van ride, the other first officer, uh, He was my hero because it was just funny. I would just watch. It was so quiet in that van ride. And that captain started yapping about something, and the other first officer just gave it right back to him. And I'm just sitting there secretly like, yes, go get him. And then the first officer got out because he was going somewhere else, and the captain's like, I don't understand what his problem was. And I wanted to be like, you don't?

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:36

It's you. You're the problem. Yeah, here's a mirror. You were a

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:42

mean SOB. that didn't talk to us unless you were telling us how bad of a job we did. Right. So that's what makes a difference. But then you get these crews, like where I had this guy's first officer. Man, we just gelled so good. And you go to the overnight, and it's so funny. My wife told me this. She's like, we had this little bromance almost on a trip because we might be with each other for a couple days. And we were in Amsterdam. We went on a boat tour. We were in Spain, and we took a bullet train down to Barcelona and he could speak Spanish. So he was like my interpreter. And so that, you know, when you get stuff like that, it's just... it just makes the job even cooler. Yeah. You know, so that, that's, that's anyway, I know it went long on that, but that's what makes the van ride people, but the van rides are the most dangerous parts actually of our flights. I actually, we had a drunk driver run into us up in Alaska and this was, this was a day where I was getting my first, what we call a line check. Every year you get a line check and a line check is where a training captain flies with you and make sure, you know, make sure the standards that captains are up to par. Sure. And I'm already nervous because the line check airman, he's new, and he's getting trained by another line check airman. So now I have two guys looking over my shoulder. And it was my first one. And then on the way to the airport, this drunk lady just creams us in the back of the car. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it was fun. Luckily, no. Wear your seatbelt.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:16

Wear your seatbelt, yeah. We can't hear that enough times. We get so complacent

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:20

about being in a van that we don't. Luckily, had she kind of clipped the right corner of the van, had she full-on hit us, I'd have been hurt. Because I was kind of turned like this, my back was turned, and I was talking to the guys behind me. But luckily... We were okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:37

Seatbelts. Oh

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:38

my gosh. That's the most scariest part, dangerous parts of our trips sometimes. Yeah, right. Especially when you go to foreign countries where lanes and signs are suggestions.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:48

Oh gosh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:49

Oh man. I can't even imagine. And thousands of people in the road. I mean, it can be very exciting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:55

You just

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:56

flew a

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:56

747 for eight hours. That wasn't as scary as the 20 minute van ride. The most dangerous thing

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:02

I have ever done on an overnight was in Bogota, Colombia and it was us three white guys on little pedal bikes and we wore helmets you know we did this coffee bike fruit tour and 21 year old student was leading us around and he was our tour guide thousands of people around buses coming with inches of you potholes everywhere it was so scary it was so much fun though highly recommend

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:29

it yeah that raises my anxiety just hearing that that's crazy alright can you tell if you were a passenger on a flight, just any, whoever, United, Delta, doesn't matter. Can you tell when a pilot lands, can you say that was a Navy pilot landing, that was an Air Force pilot landing?

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:50

No. We like to say that, and that's kind of a running joke, and the reason behind it is because Navy guys, you know, they're landing, if they're this kind of pilot, we'll land on an aircraft carrier that's a couple hundred feet, and they...

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:05

down.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:06

They're not worried about making it smooth. They got to get down and get that hook. Right. So, uh, this is where that I would say rumors, not the right word for it, but that saying came about because the Navy pilots, they land hard. So that's the going joke. Yeah. But no, because like I said, I mean, I've had hard landings and I was never in the Navy. So. Right. Right. I would like to blame it on the Navy, but I don't think that works. Yeah. That ain't gonna work. Yeah. That ain't gonna cut it. No. So no, you can't tell. Yeah. Um, No, you can't tell. The only way you're going to tell is if they tell you. Now, if you go to Delta, you might get the, oh, yeah, you've got two Navy guys up here, 20 years experience. Yeah. Every once in a while, you'll hear that. Then you know. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:50

Yeah. Then you can blame them. Otherwise, that's like just an old wives tale. Yeah, old wives tale. Because I've heard that. Old

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:55

pilots tale.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:57

Old pilots tale. I love that. All right. There's a story about hail and you got some pictures and I can't even believe the pictures are almost hard to believe. Yeah. Have you been in? Is this a fear of yours? Yeah, so thank

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:11

God, you know, we talk about the fears in the storm. That's why the respect with the storms because you don't, there's so much unknown. Yeah. And believe it or not, our radars pick up rain and precipitation. It doesn't pick up turbulence for the most part unless it's involved with rain. And one of the things that you'll start to learn as you learn about radars is there's really not much of a return on ice. So hail, yeah, like it doesn't bounce the signal back because that's radar. I mean, very rudimentary. It's sending out a signal and it gets bounced back, you know, and the radar return. Well, hail doesn't really return radar. So that's where when you talk about storms, you don't know what's going to be in there. And what's very interesting, there are stories of especially being in foreign countries. And the air traffic control is just different. And a lot of times you fly ahead of the aircraft. So we see a storm coming, we'll be like, hey, Mr. Air Traffic Control, I'd like to request 20 degrees right of course for weather. Some countries will say unable. And then what are you going to do? No way. Well... We've had to learn that in some countries, you're the pilot. Air traffic controllers are not in the airplane. The saying is, air traffic controller, a pilot makes a mistake. Pilot dies. Air traffic controller makes a mistake. Pilot still dies. Right. So we are the pilots in command. So there, you know, we, we try to work together, but sometimes there is a point where it's like, okay, no, this is my airplane. I have to do this, whether you're going to let me or not. Luckily, those instances are really rare, but there are stories of like flying in foreign countries where the air traffic controller denied them because there's so much traffic around and they, they, and maybe the rules of their country just make it a little bit more stringent, or maybe they don't want to take responsibility or authority of letting you deviate to where you actually have to declare... basically a weather emergency almost and uh if the pilots uh there was a story of some pilots that were kind of new that didn't realize that and so they flew right into the storm and there was hail and you know i can only imagine how scared they were You're flying at 600 miles an hour, 36,000 feet, and let's just pretend these are quarter-sized objects. hitting your airplane. You know how loud that must have been? You're going 600 miles an hour? Yeah, 500, 600 miles an hour. The cool thing about the 747, we fly at typically anywhere between 80% to 85% the speed of sound. We call that Mach 0.82, Mach 0.85. We're flying fast, and it's actually one of the faster airlines out there. Right. And even though it's one of the biggest, it's very fast. Very fast. So getting into physics, you think even a quarter-sized object, and you hit that at 500, 600 miles an hour, I'm sure those guys thought it was almost over. That would be really scary. And the glass can sustain it? Yeah. Now, there's so many different– the front windows are very reinforced because they have to. They have to build it to withstand stuff hitting it. I mean, think about a 50-pound– well, birds probably don't weigh that much, but even a 5-pound bird. Right. Striking something five pounds at 600 miles an hour.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:07

I can't,

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:08

I

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:08

never thought of that part of the speed. Yeah. Oh, I wonder if there's like an equation that says it multiplies it by 200.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:17

Force equals mass times acceleration, right?

UNKNOWN: 1:11:19

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:20

So you got these hail,

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:23

but there's not one hail. No. There are

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:25

pound

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:26

and pound. There are pellets

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:27

all over. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the amount of noise. It would be interesting to talk to one of those guys. Oh, I'd love to. And just hear the story. Because that's what we learn in aviation. We have a lot of buttons and a lot of instruments because people have died. And they're like, you know what? We might need this. I mean, that's the scary part about it. We've gotten to a point where we're so safe because of accidents. Now, the cool thing about the airline industry we have moved to a more proactive instead of a reactive safety state so what I mean is back in the day accidents happened and we tried to learn from it and we did well now we try to see where the accident could happen before it does right it's a safety management type system which is and the 747 if you ever want to really read a cool book it was written by I think Joe Sutter the guy that actually was the father of the 747 I believe it's the age of the jumbo and the amount of engineering that went into these planes and the backups and the safeties. I mean, we lose two engines in our airplanes and we're still flying. No way. Yeah. I mean, you lose three, you're still going to be flying. I mean, you're coming down depending on your weight, but it's amazing the systems that are in there that they've built and the safety that's around them. around this stuff. So as a pilot, you're trying to mitigate those risks. We talk about it. We sit there. We brief. As a captain, one of the first things I do when we're briefing is like, hey, man, looking over anything, is there any threat? Is there anything you see down the line that maybe made your ears perk up a little bit that we should talk about? And I try to have that open dialogue. Hey, you see something? Just say it. I don't care if you think it sounds dumb or not. We can debate that. All right. But I would rather you say something than not because maybe it's something we need to hear. For sure. Maybe I missed something. And that's the cool thing about being in the airlines too and my job is that I'm not alone. There's so much help out there. I mean, these guys are so smart in there. The amount of knowledge that I can use from the fellows I work with and to the air traffic controllers, to our dispatchers. I mean, we have so many people, people on the ground that can help us if we need to. You're not alone. That's what's interesting. I mean, for every flight, there's people. you know, 20, 30, 40 people behind, probably not even, probably even more than that. I'm probably low balling that number. Right. That are behind the scenes making those flights worse. So, going back to the hail, those guys, they flew right into it. You know, but we learned from that, hey, you've got to say, if they're not going to give it to you, you've just got to say, hey, pan, pan, pan, pan, weather, we're deviating. You know, and you've got, nowadays, we've got mayday, mayday, mayday, which means a real emergency. I need priority right now or the pan pan which is kind of like it's it's not dire but i am

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:48

have you ever called either of those two

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:50

um

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:51

hopefully not

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:51

yeah no well before it was changed it used to be called declaring emergency for the flaps failure we did because you had flight control failure there's certain things like if i have a problem my flight controls I want priority. Even though it wasn't like the stability necessarily controls like an aileron, which is what helps turn the plane. We, we called an emergency for that. And then you get priority. Yeah. Then the guy's like, okay, all right, well the plane that's working well, you can go hold over here while we're going to let this guy

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:18

in. We've got to treat them. We've called triage. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:22

Yep. Yep. So we called a fuel emergency, minimum fuel is what we kind of call it once. But, I mean, when you do that, I mean, things really start happening. And they move you and they prioritize you to get in. Luckily, honestly, it's a testament to the aviation industry that it's not uncommon, but it is kind of rare. It's not like... You don't do it on a daily basis. Not a monthly basis. But you've got to be ready for it. And that gets me back into taking off. You were asking about taking off. Taking off is easy when everything is normal. But the thing, when I take off, I actually have to be ready. And what would be really hard on taking off is if I lost an engine.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:15

During takeoff. During takeoff. Oh, my gosh. So

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:18

what's really interesting about that, there's a go-no-go point, right, where basically we have so much runway that it's calculated. There's a lot of smarter people than me, and they run these calculations, and they say based on this weight, by this point, we call it V1. That's the go-no-go, right? If you're at this speed, you're going, right? It doesn't matter what's going to happen because if you were to slam on the brakes and reject the takeoff, you're not going to have enough runway to stop. And it's actually safer to continue to try to fly unless the aircraft will physically just not fly. And so as long as you're below V1, that speed, you know, pull that thrust right back. But almost I have to go up there, right? And I have to have that mindset, okay. If I hear the bell, if I hear a bell or a whistle, I'm rejecting before V1. And this is all call-outs. We all know this. So you almost got to be ready for that because it can happen so quickly. That's what would make a takeoff more difficult. If you're at high speed, what if you're like just a couple seconds before V1? I know. Oh, my gosh. So sometimes, like I said, most times... I've been flying in the airlines since 2011. I have not had that happen yet. But every takeoff, I've got to act as if that could happen. That could happen. Because the day it does, you've got to be ready. Now, luckily, a lot of times it happens well before that. And the cool thing, when we go through training every year, we practice it at the worst-case scenario. And so I am fully confident that if it were to happen... Yeah. that I'd know what to do.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:07

What else can happen other than an engine failure?

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:10

Well, there's lots of things. You know, when you get into these airlines, there's so many big systems from generators to hydraulics and different stuff. But everything is so easy to a point. I say it's easy, but I've been doing it for a while now. But a lot of things are color-coded, right? And so we have certain speeds. So if we get up to 80 knots, you know, you might have a caution. And depending on the caution, you may reject for that. Yeah. But once 80 knots, now if you're faster than 80 knots, and let's say 80 knots, I'm just going to ballpark this, you're probably around 90 plus miles an hour. Yeah. That's 80 knots. Okay. I think it's 1.15 miles per hour per every knot. Per every knot. And so... After 80 knots, the cautions are what's called inhibited. Like, they make these systems smart. They're like, okay, if this kind of thing comes up, we don't want to bother them. Because you don't want to reject for something you shouldn't have. Because if you high-speed reject, I mean, there's possibility, one, running off runways. Who knows what's going to happen? You could blow tires. I mean, some of these airplanes, the Dash 8, can weigh almost a million pounds. So when you reject, it's a big deal. Right. happens fast but then once you get above 80 knots so it's it's almost i try to symbolize it you know for us our our system it's like past 80 knots if i hear any bells or whistles before V1, like we'll get warnings. I'm rejecting. It's almost that simple. And with things happening so fast, it's actually nice to have it kind of compartmentalized like

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:55

that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:55

Like I don't have to sit there and be reading, okay, what went wrong and pull out the, I don't have time to do that, you know? So after 80 knots, if I get any bells or whistles and I'm before V1, thrust lever's back,

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:10

Reversers out. How far down the runway? So let's just look at the 747. This wouldn't be the same answer for all planes. So 747, how far roughly down the runway are you until you hit V1?

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:20

That's what's fun, right? Because it changes. It's not the same every time. Yes. Weight. Yeah, weight changes it. Runway length, airport altitude, weather. Is it raining? No way. Is it not raining? If it's raining, I have a whole lot less time. It actually brings the runway smaller, makes it smaller before I have that no-go decision, go-no-go decision, because slippery conditions. What's really cool is, is there's so, I mean, basically we, we get the weight and balance final weight and balance information. And then I get to, I'm like a system programmer. I program it into a computer. It gets shot off into this database. My, my company has, and they run the numbers and then they will bring it back to me, um, in the flight deck performance. And it is, they're smart enough. They say, depending on what I put in there, it'll say whether I have enough room to take off on a runway or not. It'll give me the stop margin. If I were to reject at V1, how much runway will I have left when we come to a full stop? And sometimes you may only have 100 feet. Did

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:40

this ever happen to you? Did you ever have to reject on takeoff?

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:44

I've not had to have a high-speed reject, and I'm trying to think. At my current company, I haven't had one yet. I've had a couple low speeds. Those were different companies. You know, I've had situations where I've been flying before, and we have cautions and warnings. Warnings are read. That's high priority. Cautions could be just, hey... It's not as big of a deal, but you need to pay attention to it. I've had one of those go off when I was taking off, and it's like, well, like I said, you keep it simple. I'm not getting a bell. I'm not getting a whistle. I see there's something up, but we're still going. So I've not had a high-speed reject yet. But

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:29

it happened. Let's hope you never do. All right, there's another term. P-56 or protected flight zone or, right, an area you can't fly. TFR. No flight zone. Yeah, I guess there's a lot of phrases for it. What is it? Where did it originate from? Do you ever fly around them? How many are there?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:49

Oh, man, I have no clue. So airspace, every country can be a little bit different, but they all control their airspace, right? And there are military zones that you can fly in. There are restrictions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. put the answer somewhere in the comment. Okay. Yeah. But so they're all over the place. I have to tell. So I worked over to foreign country one time and I was getting examined and we were flying over South Korea, not my country. I didn't know it. And this examiner was grilling me and it was not going that great. Cause he was just asking me questions, which weren't hard, but I just wasn't prepared for. And he asked, uh, for me to ask ATC for a shortcut. And we're over South Korea, we get a shortcut. He looks back to me and he's like, why do you think we got a shortcut? And I was like, I don't know. I wanted to say, because you asked for it? I mean, what do you mean? Why don't we get a shortcut? And I was like, I don't know, sir. He's like, take a guess. I was like, well, because traffic is slow. Because in America, we get shortcuts when traffic is slow. And he was like, no. And he had me open up my iPad, and the iPad has all our maps on it. And as soon as I open it up, I see we're going through a military-restricted area. It took me two seconds to be, oh, it must be closed. When you fly... an airliner you're flying on an instrument flight plan and under instrument flight rules which is very a lot of rules regulations but we are heavily followed by air traffic control and they're telling us where to go like we are on constant in constant air traffic control communication and radar and they now we have to follow along a little bit but they have a lot of authority over certain air spaces like if it's one they don't have authority over, they will not let us go through it. And, and here's the thing too, like airspace, it's not left and right, but it's also up and down. So it could be a military, it could be a restricted airspace and usually restricted airspace is military or maybe like over Disney world. Like I think Disney world has a flight restriction over it. Like they don't want people flying, you know, buzzing, you know, uh, buzzing, uh, Disney world and all that. So there's restrictions over there. Um, But they also go up and down, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:42

Oh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:42

So there may be a military restriction, but it may only go up to 6,000 feet. Oh, and you could fly higher than that. So you're over it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:50

Oh, okay. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:52

Yeah. Or there's also other military areas that you could fly through. It's called a MOA. It's a military operational area. But they may be doing training there. And air traffic control as a small plane... they will not give you what we call flight following, like radar service through an active military operation area because there could be military training and you're kind of taking your own chances. I mean, those jets are going so fast. I mean, you can look up videos of probably almost near misses. Wow. But airliners, we're typically well above that. Yeah. You know, we're cruising, especially the 7-4. I mean, you can get up above 40-plus thousand feet. We're typically mid to high 30s

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:35

is where we're cruising at. Do they fly? So, like, Washington, D.C. is probably as tight as it can get. Are you allowed to fly 35,000 feet over D.C.?

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:44

I'd have to look on a map, but, yeah, I think so on that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Like I said, I don't know the… the restricted airspace. But yeah, that's a very, very tight corridor. But it gets really tighter when you start getting lower. When you're high, you know, They can see you. They have time.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:02

You can't be too much of a risk at 30,000

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:04

feet. Yeah. I'd have to look up the maps, and maybe I can try it. I'll look it up and send you a picture and see what

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:11

it says. Yeah, that'd be awesome. All right, so you have these regional airports like PDK. Let's use Peachtree, DeKalb Airport. What's the difference at an airport like that? You see people land, and then they park the little planes, or they park them in their hangars. Then you have a building. like note called signature. Yeah. We always wonder, we'll sit out and eat lunch there. The kids love going to the playground. What happens at signature versus other places?

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:40

Well, so signature, a lot of those places, um, Let me see a simple way to kind of put it. Private planes or something? Yeah, it's going to be, well, it's more corporate and private planes or corporate planes, which corporate would be kind of private planes, right? Like a big, a lot of these big companies, they may have a fleet of a couple different like corporate airplanes that where, you know, maybe only like five to 10 people can ride on it, but they might have a fleet or it could be very wealthy people that have their own money and they have a plane and they don't want to go through Atlanta or these big airports and go through TSA and all that kind of stuff. Even down to flight schools and stuff like that could be there. So... I'd almost put those, they're called fixed base operations, FBOs. And they're almost kind of like a valet type service slash gas station slash restroom slash business area to sit down. You may even, there are, and this is another thing about aviation, there's not just the airlines, there's not just cargo. Then you get the corporate side of the world and there are companies, I believe it's like NetJets, that they have a fleet of these small corporate jets and you know those jets are going to go to where the customer is at and so they're going to fly to like a signature and maybe that's where they pick up the customer the person that has rented that plane or has shares in that plane there's another one out of PDK I believe it's called Plane Sense and they fly these little turboprop aircraft and so they're based out of there so these are almost think of signature as like kind of like a miniature terminal Very cool. I recommend going there and just looking through. Because a lot of times, a lot of these fixed-base operations, they just have really cool pictures. And there's aviation history. Yes. And I believe EPS, which is at PDK, has something to do with one of the first pilots from Georgia, I believe. And then they also had a part where they went up and found Glacier Girl. And they've got really cool pictures of that in there. And Glacier Girl was a World War II. I think it was called a P-31 Lightning. It's a multi-engine. engine. Um, I could be wrong on the designator on it, but that had crashed. I forget exactly where, but it basically after years and years got, uh, buried in a glacier and they went up and they dug down and they got it and they brought it back up and restored it. Very cool story. But so some of those places, there's actually a lot of cool history in, in those little places. That's so neat.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:47

Yeah. They have the little monuments out there, the world war. Yeah. All the other, all the other stuff. That's cool. All right. Let's, um, Let's end on this part then. That's been incredible, man. Wow. I learned so much. This is so cool. I can't imagine people out there who actually have a desire to fly or a son or a daughter or whatever it is. This has got to be so helpful. So let's end up, put a nice bow on for the person out there who's got a desire to get into this industry. They might be frustrated. They might not know. They might be seeing different kind of opinions and ideas online. How do you advise them?

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:22

Well, you know, sometimes... There's a story someone once told me of a kid getting lost in a cornfield, right? And cornfields, you know, the corn stalks grow up real tall, six plus feet in this little kid. And he was playing and he got lost in the cornfield and he was running around and he was going back and forth between the rows and he couldn't find his way out. And he was getting a little crazy. And then finally he stopped and he remembered what his dad told. If you ever get lost in a cornfield, pick a row and follow it to the end. And then when you get to the end, take a look around and see where you're at. And I kind of like that because, yeah, you know, everybody's story is going to be a little bit different. Everybody's going to have different opinions. And they're not bad opinions or anything, but it may work for them. It may not work for you. My thing is anything worthwhile is not always going to be easy. Yeah. But this is worthwhile. If you really like this, you know why I got into aviation? Because I wanted to go to a job I liked going to. That's cool. I enjoy going there. And I've been doing this for many years, and I still enjoy going to

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:31

work. You don't even have a

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:32

job. Yeah, and don't tell my CEO that. It's very, very hard work. Yeah. No, it is. It's very hard to get to this point. You love your job, yeah. But when you find something that you like doing, and you get someone to pay you to do it, I don't feel like I'm working. And that's a blessing, because not everybody can find that, and I get that. Yeah. find something you're good at and you do it and that there's that's great and so what I would say to that person is looks there's there's going to be ups and downs there's going to be highs and lows that's life but you keep going and if you find something that doesn't work well cool now you've learned and make a decision and do something different but keep at it I would say keep at it you it's an investment you're schooling you're flying it's an investment and The thing with aviation, too, especially if you're just looking at it as I want to get into it to make money, you're probably getting into it for the wrong reason. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:34

for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:34

And you can make a very decent living off of it. But it takes a long time to get there. It doesn't happen overnight. And you're learning a lot of things that you might not want to learn. But for me, it was finding something that I enjoy going to do. So just keep at it. That's what I would tell you is... don't get discouraged. You're going to have times in your training where you feel like you're a rock star and you're learning so much and so fast. And then you just hit this wall and you plateau and you level off. And then it's like, what's wrong with me? Absolutely nothing. It's normal. That's a part of the learning process. Um, and I'd also tell you that I think the stressor of the money part of it, and some people are very fortunate that, uh, They have parents that maybe can pay for it, and that's great. But if you don't, and you can still get student loans, it's an investment in you. It's worth it. When I first got out, you want to know how much... You know how much I made my first year flying a$25 million jet with 50 souls on board? Take a guess.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:45

I made$23,000

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:46

my first year.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:48

Did you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:50

I made more being a flight instructor. I will tell you now, the airlines are paying a lot more. Where was that money when I started?

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:59

So

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:59

now a lot of the kids getting out of college have potential to earn$60,000 plus a year. Your first year, which is great. It's very cyclical but just just keep at it you know and I mean to me there's more than happiness than just the bank account yeah you know people can be making a lot of money and be miserable and I don't want to be miserable in my life and and so for me it was finding a job that I enjoyed going to and it just happens to be aviation and man I mean does sometimes it feel like work yeah sometimes but that's every job but I still it amazes me I still enjoy I enjoy going to work. I enjoy coming home. But then after a little while, I'm like, man. I'm kind of ready to get on the road again. Let's go. And my wife's like, when are you leaving?

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:49

She

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:50

can't wait for me to go. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:53

So the other big thing, too, that I want to stress and I want you to summarize, it's not just military. There's other ways. If I got this right, there's Part 61. There's Part 141. There's Ambry Riddle School. Yeah, there's schools all over. All over the place. All

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:09

over the place. Almost every state probably

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:11

has one. Not just like college kind of schools, but flying schools. Regular flying schools.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:14

Flight schools, and you know,

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:16

the pro... So you can do it. You can get in. You can go. Oh,

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:18

you can get in. You know, if there's a will, there's a way. You just got to ask questions. Perfect. Ask for help. Don't do it alone. You're not alone in this. Yeah. And what's fun, if you haven't noticed from me, most people in aviation... We love to talk about it. The joke is when you go to a party, how do you know there's a pilot there? Yeah. He'll tell you. And honestly, that's

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:42

awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:43

I'll probably tell

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:44

you. It's fun. And then

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:45

people like talking

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:46

about it. Fascinating. I just have millions of literally million questions. All right. So there's a bonus question. I said that was the last one, but now you made me think of something. We have a, I have a client who does LASIK surgery and he's done over over well over a hundred thousand cases now and he's never done one without his favorite color socks on and his favorite color is purple so do you have something like that you'll never fly without my watch on my left whatever it is

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:18

no not really i haven't got that i'm not what's that saying i love the office i'm not a little i'm not superstitious i'm just a little stitious That wasn't me, that's the office. We have things that they tell us we have to have every time we fly, like headsets, flashlights. But nothing that's like, oh, I've got to have this or I'm going to have a bad day. But I will say, although, my daughter wrote me a cool little note one time, and that's in my bag.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:17

Well, there's one. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:19

That's in my

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:20

bag. That's special. Yeah. Well, man, thanks a million. This has been so incredible. Well, thanks for having me. This has been fun. I hope y'all enjoy it. And I'm certain it'll land on ears out there that either can benefit from it or know somebody or have a child or whatever. So thanks for taking the time. Hey, thanks for having me, Jeff. Appreciate it.