From Growing Up Under the Flight Path to the Left Seat at Southwest Airlines | Phil Green

He quit a $60,000-a-year job, moved his wife to Farmington, New Mexico, and started flying passengers with only 250 hours of flight time — making $20K a year. Fourteen years and three airlines later, Phil Green finally earned the left seat at Southwest Airlines.

In this episode of Above & Beyond: Where Excellence Meets Elevation, host Jän Simon sits down with Captain Phil Green — a Mesa, Arizona native, the oldest of six kids, and someone whose love of aviation started by watching planes fly over his house on approach to Sky Harbor Airport.

Phil shares his unconventional path: a two-year mission in St. Petersburg, Russia, a criminal justice degree from ASU, a career pivot from law school aspirations to flight training, and the 14-year grind through regional airlines to reach his dream job. He also opens up about growing up between two very different households, losing a sister, the mentor who told him "If I had to do it over, I'd be an airline pilot," and the culture that makes Southwest different.

Now Phil gives back through Destination 225 (Southwest's pilot pathway program), Flight Path Vectors, and the FPV Foundation — which helped relocate 50 Afghan Black Hawk helicopter pilots and their families to Arizona.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

That's part of the process that creates resilience in pilots is going through the training process. So good days, bad days, stick with it. Right? Yeah. Um, it builds character when you when you make it through something that's been challenging and difficult, right? Um, it builds skill, it builds experience. All those, all those things that are important that a pilot should have, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hey there, welcome back to Above and Beyond where Excellence Meets Elevation. I'm your host, Jan Simon, and this season we're raising the bar, diving into the passion, purpose, and the finding moments of leaders who don't just aim high, they live there. Big ideas, real stories. Let's get into it. What if the thing you watched as a kid flying over your house every day eventually became the place where you learned leadership, discipline, service, and purpose? Today's guest is Captain Phil Green of Mesa, Arizona native, the oldest of six children, and someone whose fascination with aviation started simply by looking up. Growing up beneath the flight path of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, Phil watched commercial airlines pass overhead and unknowingly began building a dream that would one day become a 21-year career in commercial aviation. But Phil's story is not just about becoming a pilot, it is about the path that shaped him along the way, serving a two-year mission in St. Petersburg, Russia, studying criminal justice at Arizona State University, working through the demands of flight training, and eventually becoming a captain at Southwest Airlines. Over his career, Phil has served as a captain, instructor, mentor, Czech Airman, mediator, hiring team member, and now as a leader helping develop the next generation of aviation professionals through Destination 225, Flight Path Vectors, and the FPV Foundation. Today, we're going to talk about the boy who looked up at airplanes, the man who earned his seat in the cockpit, and the leader who now helps others find their own path. Phil, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Jan. I appreciate the uh introduction, the nice introduction. I appreciate the invite. Well, thank you. I I appreciate you coming on. And uh so, Phil, let's let's take us way back. Uh-huh. Way back. All right. You can remember. Yeah. Young Phil. Yeah. Growing up in Mesa. Yes, sir. Probably looked a lot different than it does today. Yeah, it does, actually.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

I I remember when I was uh in high school in the early 90s on the radio hearing that the the Phoenix metropolitan area just surpassed a hundred, excuse me, a million, a million citizens.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Crazy and uh Phoenix Metro. Yeah, Phoenix Metro area. And what it's like seven million or eight million now, something like that. Probably, yeah. It's crazy. Uh huh. That's crazy. Is it the youngest of six? Uh oldest of six. Oldest of six. Oldest of six kids. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:42

Oldest of six.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

All brothers, all sisters?

SPEAKER_04 2:45

Uh mostly sisters. So five sisters and one brother. That's why you dress so nice. That's right. And now my um my parents were married till I was about five or six years old. Okay. And they they split, they divorced, and uh got remarried. Okay. And so I had uh one full sister, if you want to think about it like that. So it was me and her. We're the first two, and then uh my folks through their new marriages, they uh had siblings, half half siblings, yeah. Gotcha. So I had a total have had a total of five sisters, one brother. One sister passed away about two and a half years ago.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Sorry about that. Yeah, I I actually remember that. So I probably am sorry about that. What was growing up in Mesa like for you?

SPEAKER_04 3:24

So I I enjoyed growing up Mesa. We moved around a little bit. And so I am a there's not many, I don't feel like there's many native Arizonans. It doesn't seem like it, at least our age.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Right. Well, you're right. You're a couple years younger than me, but middle age. I'm I'm following you pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not not too far. Right. I feel like the next generation, the the generation of kids, you know, in their 20s, 30s right now. Yep, definitely. But our generation, yeah. Like when I moved here in 99, uh-huh, I don't feel like anybody was from Arizona. It's like very few and far between.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

Right. And I get that a lot with work. Uh, you know, I interact with a lot of folks being based here in Phoenix, uh, a lot of uh fellow pilots, flight attendants, and uh where are you from? Oh, from Arizona. You're from here? I can't believe it. Like what everyone moves in to to be based in Phoenix for my company. Usually the people that I work with move into moved into Arizona, like yourself. But third generation, so my folks actually both grew up in a small town southeast of here, mainly east, about two and a half hours. If you take the 60 out through Globe and Miami.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 4:30

Another hour in a small town called Safford. Oh, okay. If you've ever been there. Yep. You know, desert desert town in the Gila Valley at the base of a mountain. And uh I love it because all my family's there. And you know, for me it's always felt like home, even though I never lived there. Uh so my my folks grew up there. My grandfather, my dad's side, grew up on a farm outside of that town.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_04 4:51

And rode a horse to school back when he was you know, then then he went away to uh World War II, came came back and uh brought my grandmother from Dallas, Texas, where I met her and they raised their family there. And and grandfather opened an old uh Western Auto. No kidding. And if you've ever heard of the Western Auto stores, at one point there are about four thousand of those. Yeah. And uh they're kind of like a Sears or a precursor to Walmart, started out in a catalog.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

That is insane. I mean, to think to to really, I mean, wrap your brain around the fact that he truly lived in the old west. Yeah. I mean, because it Arizona's it we haven't hit 200 yet years yet. No, uh-uh.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

Yeah, was it 1912 that Arizona?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah, I think so. So it's like yeah, I think you're right.

SPEAKER_04 5:39

So just over a hundred years. Yeah, it's not very old. We just had our centennial in Arizona not too long ago, right? Yeah, so so that's my grand my grandfather, businessman, who I I became very close to, and and the reason I'm mentioning this, it'll kind of segue into maybe later discussions about what I am doing and what I have done. Anyway, so initially I lived uh I was born here in Mesa. Okay, and my grandfather had several Western Auto stores. He had one in Safford, he opened one in Clifton, if you know where Clifton Morincy is. And so for a while he had one in Clifton, and my my folks being young parents, we lived in Clifton, Arizona for about three years, which booming metropolis. It's yeah. The you know, it's a mining tent. It's right next to Marinsey, which is I think it's the largest open pit copper mine, at least in Arizona, if not the world. Wow. I mean, it's it was at the time it was owned by uh Phelps Dodge, which became Freeport McMoran, or they're purchased by Freeport McMoran, and they're actually headquartered here in Phoenix. So we lived there for three years. My dad ran the store, he was young, he wanted to get into the golf industry. So we moved back to Phoenix so he could start pursuing golf. Uh so it was my dad, my mom, and my my sister, who was a year and a half younger than me. And so moved back to Phoenix, Central Phoenix, near the airport. And actually, we used to go to Sky Harbor Airport back when it was a much smaller, cheap entertainment. We'd go to the top of the parking garage and take some food up there and watch the planes. No kidding. Yeah. I mean, this was back in the early 80s. Wow. Before Terminal 4. I say price just Terminal 2 and through Terminal 3. Terminal 3 was the hot spot.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

No kidding. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

And so uh so he he started pursuing golf, which he became very successful. And uh, anyways, my parents, though they they did uh divorce and split up. And uh he remarried, my mom remarried, and she ended up uh initially moving us to Chandler. Okay. So speaking of places that have changed, we lived at Cooper in Williamsfield, just down the street from Williams Air Force Base, which was open at the time. Yeah. And I know you've heard this from tons of people, but back then it was just stop signs all the way across the edge of the earth there from where we lived east, and it dead ended at the Air Force Base. Yeah, it still dead ends at the airport, right? Yeah. Um, so it's just farm fields all over the place there. Yeah. So moved from there, probably about seventh grade, moved to Mesa and uh northwest Mesa. So near Mesa Country Club is where we lived. Okay. If you can think of that, Alvin School McClellan area. Yeah. And initially went to junior high there and then Westwood High School. Okay. But kind of back to what you mentioned before, uh, we were underneath the flight path of Sky Harbor Airport. So every afternoon, when the the flow of traffic, you know, they were landing to the west, by the way, so the air traffic controllers don't have to look into the sun, so the pilots have to look into the sun when we're landing. That's nice. Nice of them. You put your visor down. Right. We put our visor down. It's okay, it's fine. Anyways, but but every afternoon we'd have that flow, that consistent flow of traffic coming in. And every time I'd look up, it'd either be uh America West or Southwest. America West, Cactus. They used to be just like Southwest still is kind of a hometown airline.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:45

You know, and then they went away, they went into U.S. Airways, merged with them in uh America Now, and so that's but Southwest still remains, in my opinion, uh hometown airline. Yeah. Anyway, so that that was one of the things that sparked the love of aviation. I was always interested in it though. And you know, I'd mentioned that my folks came born and raised in Safford. When my mom was fifteen, her dad uh was a pilot in the Civil Air Patrol.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 9:08

And and probably earlier than that, but the the point that she was fifteen, he crashed and and died in a plane accident on Mount Graham looking on a civil air patrol mission looking for a lost boy. No kidding. So I never met him. Oh wow. So I don't know if if some on some level I was living through you I was inspired to get into aviation, you know, possibly you know through his love of aviation, even though I never met him. Anyway, so grew up in Mesa and uh went to Westwood High School, graduated in '95, grew up under the flight path, always loved aviation. And I had a friend of mine who I went to school with his kids. He was an attorney in Mesa, and uh he had a uh Beechcraft Bonanza VTail, if you know what that is, at Falconfield. It's a single-engine plane, and it used to be the choice for people who could afford a doctor's attorneys. Okay. Kind of like I would call maybe a Cirrus aircraft now is is kind of taking its place in some ways, even though they're very expensive. So that was my first flight in a small plane, a general aviation plane, was was with him. My first flight in a commercial plane was seventh grade, went in Southwest Airlines, going to going to San Diego. So anyways, which ironically now I'm working at at Southwest.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Yeah. My my first flight, my first flight I ever flew in was a C-140.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

Really?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:26

Is that the uh Starlifter? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

The transport. Yeah. Yeah. So we we actually flew from Spokane, Geiger. Is that what Spokane is? Geiger, I think. To Tucson for fighting fires. That was the first time I was ever on a plane. Wow. Yeah. Sitting, literally sitting in the in the cargo seats that line each side. Yeah. And the the the latrine. Uh-huh. Basically a hole in the in a cardboard box, it seemed like. But yeah. Yeah, that was my first time on a plane.

SPEAKER_04 10:56

And you fly out of the lushness and the niceness of Spokane and you drop into the Sonoran desert. Yeah. Hopefully it was the winter time.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Oh no, it was it was middle of summer. And we got to Tucson. There were several fires in Arizona at that time. We got to Tucson, got off the plane, sat on the tarmac in Tucson, and I think it was July probably for like four hours. Wow. Trying to stay in the shade for four hours. Then they decided to ship us up to near Prescott. So we got in in a bus, rode the bus up to Prescott. Yeah. Which is a little bit of a reprieve for heat. Exactly. It was like and then we fought we were down here, I don't remember how long we were down here, but we were down here with we were what they call an interday interagency crew. So interagency was the U.S. Forest Service, and then there was a Bureau of Land Management or Indian Affairs. Ten of each. Okay. So we're down here in in Prescott fighting these fires, and and these Indians, these guys that you know, Native Americans that are with us, they're like hunting tarantulas and like collecting. It was the craziest thing. They'd like stick them on sticks and walk them around. And I'm a young kid. It's my first experience of firefighting. How old were you at the time? Uh 18, probably. Oh yeah. Yeah. So getting out into the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was that was crazy. I was a that was my first, my first real true firefighting experience was was Arizona. Yeah. It was like, oh God, that was brutal. But then it got better after that.

SPEAKER_04 12:27

So did you play sports growing up? I played some golf in high school. Okay. So my dad was in the golf industry, so that was kind of a natural choice was to uh to pick up the golf clubs and which is great because it's a sport you can play for the rest of your life. Do you still play today? A little bit. Okay. Yeah, when I have time.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

My I've got a seventh which is not very very often.

SPEAKER_04 12:47

Yeah, right. Uh I got a 17-year-old son who who loves to play, so we'll get out and play once in a while. Uh every once in a while I'll play with my dad still who plays. Nice. Except for he stays up in Flagstaff all summer and plays up there.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

I was gonna say better place to stay. Yes. For sure. Yeah, for sure. As you were growing up, uh you know, and and through the divorce of family, obviously that some of that can be kind of a hardship type thing. Yeah. Was there a point at which you struggled with that separation and and what life was going to look like on the other side of it? And and through that, was there somebody that actually helped you along the way?

SPEAKER_04 13:23

That's a great question. I think I think most kids at that age, especially five or six, you know, struggle with stuff like that, I I'd imagine. And yeah, certainly did. Right. And fortunately, I was, you know, my dad was still in our lives, even though my parents divorced, you know, we we saw him quite often, and he lived nearby. And so I remember going over to see him every other weekend at least, if not more. The other thing though, speaking of people I feel like who helped us get through there, helped me personally get through that, uh, I was really close to my dad's folks, you know, who lived up in Safford. And so for all the holidays or you know, birthdays, uh, you know, summertime, I'd go there for three weeks and I'd stay with his folks. And just just great people. It's kind of kind of the unconditional love. You know, if if you have someone like that, you can remember a grandparent that you're or even a parent, you know, that you're really close to. That's that was my relationship I felt with with my grandparents. And so on my dad's side, my my dad's folks. So what kind of student were you in school? That's a that's another good question. So I was a solid I was a solid uh B and C student in high school. Okay. Except for uh, you know, weight training and in sports, I got an A, which which is uh great. But uh I um I after high school, I went to college for a semester at MCC. And then I I moved over to Russia and went over there for two years. Okay. And I feel like through that, that period, you know, it gave me some uh some opportunity, and we and we can talk about that at more length. But I I feel like I grew up through that. Yeah. I became uh more serious about my academics and right now what what am I gonna do with my future? I feel like the reason I mentioned my grandfather being a successful business owner and uh my dad, very successful business owner in the in the golf community in Arizona, has been a part of the PGA here, Southwest section for years, successful company that they sold to Trune about six years ago. Anyway, so he's been very successful in his industry, and I almost feel like you know, there's kind of a heritage of that, yeah, hereditary to some level to to work hard and have some discipline and uh pursue your goals and your dreams and and achieve success. Yeah. You know, so I had some wonderful examples.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

I think it's watching that as a kid growing up and seeing that you know, I mean, I you know, having that example set, yeah, I think is important. Yeah. And and I don't know, I mean, uh do you end up with a you know with a thought process that there is no other way, right? I mean, you the responsibility and and you know, however we instill that in our kids to make sure that you know you show up.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

That's interesting because where where do we get our work ethic from? You know, I feel like part of it you're you're born with, some of it you're born with, and and and some of it you you develop and you learn. Yeah. Right? Because you want to achieve, you're passionate about things, you want to be able to provide you know for your your kids and your your your family. Right. So I think that all factors into it. But from an early stage, I feel like there's a lot of it that's uh through good examples. I used to go to work when I was up uh in Safford, I'd go to work with my grandfather and uh help him out around the store and do things. You know, when I when I was uh a little bit older than that, I'd go to work with my dad when he he would uh go to the golf course, work at the golf course. He was at uh, you know, I I I can remember the courses he was at along the way at that time when I was kind of in the critical part of my teenage years, he was at Gold Canyon Golf Club and he was the head pro there. Jake and I just played Dinosaur Ridge.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Oh, did you? Or Dinosaur Mountain.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Is that the same one? Yep, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we just played that. Oh my god, it's a gorgeous course.

SPEAKER_04 17:37

It's isn't it pretty? So beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

I haven't played it in years. I'd love to get back out there. It's yeah, I I've played Sidewinder a number of times. Uh-huh. And everybody's like, oh, have you played dinosaur? I'm like, no. And Jake said, Hey, let's play dinosaur. I'm like, okay, let's go. Uh I probably took a picture on the first nine holes because it was just beautiful. Yeah. Every time you turn the corner, it's like, oh my God.

SPEAKER_04 17:57

Well, next time you go, let me know. I'd I'd love for me and my son to tell you.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Oh, that'd be awesome. That would be that'd be fun. That'd be yeah, a lot of fun. That would be a lot of fun. Yeah. Oh, I had a question, it totally left my head. With regards to Well, let's let's step back. Talk to me about Russia because because having served your mission in Russia, I mean, I I I find one thing quite fascinating with regards to the church, and that is that going on the mission and and having that experience to go away, right? Yeah. Were you at all prepared before you went to Russia? I mean, how how was how does that decision made? Yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

And then how do they prepare you before you go? So I'll I'll start from the beginning of that to answer that question. My my dad, my parents were separated, uh, lived in East Mesa in uh in the Orange Groves. Okay. And when he was at Gold Canyon. His neighbor across the street, this segues into my career. His neighbor across the street was a Southwest Airlines captain.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 18:52

And I hung out with his boys. In fact, one of them is Southwest with me. He's a he's he's about he got on South Southwest about six months senior to me. Anyway, so I stay in touch with with his boys, and he passed away unfortunately back in 2017. But that was a good example of an airline family and create generated some interest. The reason I mentioned that family in particular is because I went to Russia in high school with one of his boys and the Southwest Airline captain's wife. Just like on a vacation or we she uh she set up through her church, it was called the Cultural Homestay International. Okay. It was a program. And uh between my sophomore year and high school and my junior year, we went and stayed with Russian students and their families for three weeks in uh Moscow and Belarus and Minsk.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 19:40

Or Minsk and Belarus. And uh they conversely came back a few months later and stayed with us for a semester. And so that was my first exposure to Russia. So you're asking if I was prepared. After that, that generated interest. And for for whatever reason, my high school, you know, in Mesa, Arizona, Westwood High School offered Russian language class for one period each day. And so I ended up taking Russian in high school. No kidding. Which because I I got interested in the language. Yeah. It'd be great to learn how to speak that in case I ever go back to Russia, not knowing I was gonna go back to Russia ever in my lifetime. Right. Right. Right. So when the application came around that you fill out to submit for your mission, you don't get to choose where you go, but you can put things like the languages you've studied. And and so that's that's what I put on there. And here we are, or here we were in the mid-90s, and you know, Russia had only opened up, you know, Iron Curtain fell in 89. Yeah. So just a few years prior. And I don't think there were a lot of missionaries looking to go and and serve for two years who'd studied Russian language. Yeah. I'm just speculating. It wasn't a very widespread language. Right, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Especially uh, especially in Arizona. So has to to kind of jump forward now, just because of a question I popped into my head, has the fact that you went to Russian high school, served your mission for two years in high in Russia, learned Russian in high school, and probably honed the skill while you were there, has that ever impeded with your opportunities within the flight world? Because from a uh clearance perspective, I think about, you know, obviously I feel like today we all have to have a bad guy all the time, right? And Russia seems to be a great bad guy all the time. So has that ever gotten in the way of anything that you've attempted to do?

SPEAKER_04 21:32

It's it's interesting you asked that question. It hasn't hindered or gotten in the way of that I know of. However, I'd mentioned the Flight Path Vectors Foundation that we we started probably five years ago. Gosh, it's it's coming up on August. I believe it'll be four years in August. Senator McCain's son, Jack McCain, had a foundation and they helped facilitate bringing 50 Afghan Black Hawk helicopter pilots and their families to Arizona relocate. Oh wow. When when Biden you know pulled everyone out of Afghanistan because these families were gonna be actively hunted by the Taliban. Yeah. Right. And and so we we uh worked with that foundation and got involved on the pilot side. Our intentions were to try and help these Afghan Black Hawk helicopter pilots who supported U.S. troops get their ratings here in the United States so they could get jobs in the industry and the field that they've been trained in what they're passionate about.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

And that's flight flight path vectors.

SPEAKER_04 22:28

Uh that was the FPV Foundation, Flight Path Vector Foundation. Okay. The reason I mentioned that is when we were working with Jack or excuse me yeah Jack Jack what his son Jack McCain's son why can't I think of his uh you mean John McCain's son? I'm sorry John McCain's son Jack. Yes yeah yeah yeah yeah you got him switch um when we're working with uh Jack McCain's foundation he had a board that was running it because at the time when we first got involved he was still deployed in the Navy.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

So anyways long story I like to joke as as you know you know me well enough to know I like to joke and I you you've got there are multiple times just so everybody knows Bill and I know each other quite well I'd say fairly well we run into each other quite a bit because we're very close proximity neighbors. Yeah and there are so many times when you'll say something and I gotta stop and go. Is he serious? Yeah I I get that a lot.

SPEAKER_04 23:18

Anyways we were on this conference call with with people from all kinds of backgrounds you know some of them probably had worked for the agency or were currently working for the agency but you know these people as a as a Zoom meeting there's probably 15 or 20 of us on there people with blacked out screens and they they get to me to introduce myself and uh I don't know how exactly how it was brought up but I'd mentioned that I speak Russian and that I lived in Russia. Oh and they I I meant it as a joke right not because I think one of the Afghans actually spoke Russian and didn't speak English very well so spoke you know and so I was able to communicate with that particular pilot who's an older Afghan got in Russia. Anyway so I'd mentioned that and it almost hindered the work. Oh really she she actually she paused the meeting she's like what were you doing in Russia? Oh no and I had to explain that you know I I feel like at that point I kind of stuck my foot in my mouth trying to be funny a little bit and interject some humor like I usually do. One of those um just keep your mouth shut but as as far as Russian hindering that was as close as it came to hindering and uh I I have had the opportunity a few times to speak to passengers in Russian in the back of the plane. I remember in my previous airline there was a miscommunication because there's some Russian passengers in the exit row and they couldn't understand English.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Oh gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 24:33

So the our flight attendant comes up she's like hey um we've got some Russians back here who don't understand what I'm trying to ask them. I was like you guys speak Russian right? I was like well and as a matter of fact so I went back there and I spoke to him right and helped out with that situation. But uh so cool. Yeah it's very very rarely do those two paths yeah kind of connect.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

What what kind of perspective looking back because obviously in the moment there was probably a perspective that living in Russia for two years gave you and and going through what you had to go through there. But now looking back what kind of perspective does that give you as an adult on maybe what's happening on the world stage and and how how the interactions go with regards to and I don't want to go too far down a pol political road because I try to keep that out of the podcast. But with regards to you know how how you know maybe the narrative kind of controls our thought process. I mean yeah because I've never been to Europe let alone Russia but I've been overseas and I feel like most everywhere although maybe not as shiny and new as America is it all looks pretty much the same. Yeah. I mean different designs and things like that. The words are different they might drive on the wrong side of the road. But from a perspective perspective from a per perspective perspective I guess looking back retrospectively how do you feel that impacted where you are today and some of the things you have to deal with I I am uh really grateful for that experience.

SPEAKER_04 26:36

It it uh occurred in my life at a time where my mom actually my mom was going through her second divorce. Oh wow so there was some instability and uh I feel like it provided some stability and some growth opportunity and some perspective that I needed. And so I feel like there are a lot of blessings involved in me going uh not knowing at the time what I was exactly getting into. Even though I'd been to Russia when I when I first got there it was still kind of a culture shock. You know still I live here for two years and living in St. Petersburg for I thought I was gonna freeze to death. I was gonna say was it as cold as they seem to make it seem it wasn't St. Petersburg wasn't as bad. Okay. Because I feel like it's moderated by the Baltic ocean there a little bit. Okay. I feel like maybe Moscow is a little colder or maybe obviously Siberia is probably colder or you know some parts of northern Russia but so for me I felt like it was very beneficial to to go there and experience what I experienced in Russia um on many different levels. Yeah gave me a big perspective shift. A lot of people don't realize when you're when you're in you know urban suburbs of a giant Russian city like St. Petersburg we lived all around the city we didn't just we didn't just congregate and live in one place in the center of the city. You know I'd live with another uh with another missionary out out in a suburb right in in an apartment complex type they didn't really have complexes they were just big buildings concrete buildings a lot of them nine stories tall with just multiple flats they call them flats over there and uh so we we'd be amongst the Russians and in order to eat in order to communicate we had to learn the language right which which was also right a struggle. Yeah you had to you had to be able to to speak. Yeah so but there's a lot of some things people don't realize about Russia when I was there at least uh there's a lot of it that was borderline I I would call it not quite third world because it wasn't dirt floors or anything like that but it was very poor and very primitive. We couldn't drink the water out of the taps because it had some level of contamination so we ran the water through these three tier filters. None of our apartments had microwaves and we didn't have TVs. We had a telephone and that was about as you know much technology as we had you know we we didn't have well certainly didn't have portable phones or anything like that. Yeah yeah or pagers even we didn't have cars or bikes. In fact I I like to let people know when I was there we would rarely find a Russian family that owned a car. Really? Yeah if you owned a single car you're pretty you're doing pretty well most of it was all of what we did was public transportation either our feet or buses or metros. And uh most Russians did the same thing to get around. Interesting. Yeah and so it was like I said it was very primitive it was it was it was a poor even though the here they are the superpower yeah and they've got this mighty military right I feel like a lot of their money went into that mighty military. Yeah right in and into the hands of a few because most when we were there weren't you know didn't have anything yeah and so that was part of it. The other big perspective shift for me was realizing when I got back how much opportunity we have here in the United States. You know you can almost look at it as opportunity overload. Yeah. I mean there's so many choices on what I want to do for work, what I want to eat when I go in a grocery store compared to Russian small grocery stores I walked into here and it was it was colorful and full of food. All the shelves were full of food completely different yeah uh versus what I've been living in the last couple years. But just just opportunity you know and and so for me that's that's one of my personal things that I don't agree about some some folks maybe a generation of folks think that they have have it it rough you know and you know I came from pretty humble beginnings. We were on on my mom's side I kind of had this is kind of going in wherever you want to go. Okay. On on my on my mom's side we were very poor. Okay. Very very poor. Her second husband had uh you know some addiction issues we didn't have you know job to job to job didn't make a lot of money. On my dad's side that was he was very successful. So I kind of had multiple perspectives. Yeah. And so for me growing up that way I've seen from multiple perspectives then add in Russia how how important it is to try and seize an opportunity and recognize the opportunity that we have to pursue things. Me coming from no one in aviation in my family. No I I paid for I paid for my my bachelor's degree through ASU at the time it was much more affordable. You know I worked two jobs at my previous airline just so I could eventually make it to Southwest Airlines. I paid for flight school you know I I didn't have and so working and achieving in America you have opportunity to do stuff like that in my opinion in my experience. Yeah. And in Russia I realized there just wasn't as much of that.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

I I would agree with you I mean I and again I'm not worldly traveled so I am speaking out of one side of my mouth but I I do feel like from an opportunity perspective and and yes there's differences. I mean and I think I've said this on the on the podcast before where I don't know what it's like to grow up in inner city and have to try to get out of inner city right I grew up in small little town in northeastern Washington you know and but when I was 18 I'm like I'm gone. I'm going for opportunity somewhere right yep so and I didn't have money. I mean I paid for college I I mean it was basically if you're gonna go to college you got to figure it out and and you know so I but I always felt like my my ultimate goal was to to be able to give my kids more than my parents ever gave me that was the thought in my head right because we were the same we didn't have a lot of money which I now look back retrospectively and think okay my parents gave me a very balanced loving family to grow up in although we didn't have monetary things. Yeah we were very blessed to have a strong central family. Yeah um but I can I can tell you I think about some of the path that my life has taken and the ups and downs and the ability to go smack your head against the wall get knocked out lose a few teeth and get back up and go okay I'm gonna get my teeth fixed my face will heal from smacking the wall and I'm gonna go this direction.

SPEAKER_04 32:55

Yeah and it's interesting I mean tell me your thoughts on this but it's it's interesting I feel like my opinion is that through those struggles through those hard times that's where you gain your character that's where you gain your resolve and your resilience. That's what makes you stronger. And I know that sounds a little cliche but I feel like from personal experience that's really how it's been for me and it sounds like it's how it's been for you as well.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Absolutely and I would I would say I think I think there's two aspects to it. One the and and I'll liken it to jumping out of a plane.

SPEAKER_04 33:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

The first time you jump out of a plane or repel out of a helicopter because I've never really technically jumped out of a plane first time you rappel out of a helicopter at 250 feet it's scary. Yeah I'll bet right the second time it's not as bad. The third time you're Jones in for more you're like let's go do it again do it again do it again do it again. But the first time you're you're faking it until you make it exactly exactly it's like I'm not gonna let anybody know that I'm scared to death to do what I got to do, but I'm gonna do it. Right. And I feel like there is this thing with and and we'll call it failure and and and I I really truly don't like that word because I feel like the only failure that we can ever accomplish in our life is to not try is to not get up is to not take that next step.

SPEAKER_04 34:13

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

And and so as much as it sucks and man I'll tell you I've been in situations where I really truly was laying in bed praying to die where then it's like you realize okay nobody's gonna make this better but me.

SPEAKER_04 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

No hugs from mom are going to fix this no coddling from whoever's gonna fix it. I have to take control of this and I have to take the next step. Whatever that is yeah and I feel like we've gotten to a point somewhat and I'm overgeneralizing but somewhat in society where everybody feels like things are just going to be handed to them. Yes and that is not the way it works. That's right. So anyways send me down a tangent rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

Well and in and I've I've experienced that in aviation any pilot in aviation they have to study work hard they got to earn their own ratings no one's gonna do it for them. Yeah. So every every pilot rating and type rating consists of a written evaluation a test a written test an oral evaluation and a practical test where you're flying the plane and there's no one that's gonna do it for you. Yeah there there there's really I mean you can't reach out right you you've got an FAA designated examiner that's watching you and looking for reasons to fail you. You gotta you gotta you gotta perform you got to have the knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

I say it's going into the the exam of you know look I'm I I'm not here to be your friend. I'm here to figure out what you're doing wrong yeah because I don't want you in the in the seat if you can't do the right thing. You know so yeah what type of responsibility was laid upon you a as the oldest child you know obviously split so probably wasn't everybody together at all the same time but were there additional responsibilities or do you feel like you had additional responsibilities because of that position in the family?

SPEAKER_04 36:02

I do which is an interesting question as well my like I said my my mom's second husband who she had three more siblings mine with he was you know he had a lot of struggles so he wasn't he wasn't a great example wasn't a great role model at all and so not for me by any stretch. And so he was he was gone quite a bit out philandering if you want to call it that not in the home and so by virtue of that there's a vacuum there right and there's for my especially for my siblings and I felt I I feel still feel like I've had partly a responsibility to be a good example and a good role model and also uh to to them and also to put myself in a position to be able to help them you know as needed right yeah and so I've kind of I've always felt like that being the oldest and I don't know maybe it was just a mindset from when I was I was younger but you know I had my sister that was a year and a half younger me that I used to always try and watch out for as older brother. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

And so so yeah there there was that definitely has has there ever been a a and this is kind of going to the dark side of that has ever been a part where you I mean you say you you you want to you want to be in a position to be able to help them if you can right has there ever been a situation where you've helped one of them and it's backfired and you just want to sit them down and tell them the what for?

SPEAKER_04 37:23

Yeah gosh I mean it could go deep on that when I went when I moved away and uh went on my mission to Russia my sister was a year behind me in high school and I we hung out all the time. You know she was she was a an example to me in a lot of ways. She was life of the party cheerleader in the in high school I used to hang out and date her you know some of her friends took a few of her friends to dances and in fact one of her best friends is going to be in town this week from Utah and over the years I've stayed me and my wife have stayed in touch with her and her husband and we're probably gonna get together with them and have dinner. Nice. You know and when I hang out with her it kind of reminds me of my sister because they were so close.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:59

But but anyways yeah so I don't know I uh I moved away went to Russia and while I was away my sister ended up dating a gentleman that I would have never approved of and I think she valued my opinion. Yeah and I can and it and it turned out to be probably one of the worst mistakes in her life I hate to say it it set her down she had a possibility for a trajectory that would have set her up you know or or or put her down. And this this gentleman use that term loosely but uh he he put her down a path that wasn't good. And and so I I can only think if I would have been around you know in to to kind of prevent that what could have been what could have what what could have been. Yeah. You know and I know you can't dwell on that too much because we've all lost people that we love. Right. And you you you kind of go there with your mind like what I could have done differently to prevent a trajectory and a life path. Yeah. Yeah. But um yeah so that's that's I mean I didn't really if if I'd have been around I I wish I could have done something for her. So it's not necessarily I did something for and it backf I guess I did something for myself and it kind of backfired in that if I'd have been around it probably would have been different.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

You'd have been different. Yeah. Let's um jump forward you you went on the mission, you came back you went to to ASU. Uh-huh at what point did you think I want to go into flight? Okay. Or did that come later?

SPEAKER_04 39:22

Yeah that I'd always been interested in it. And uh I had to make a choice. So I went to ASU I got a degree in justice studies which is criminal justice which is great for aviation.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

It's it's a natural segue into aviation I mean it totally makes I mean all the investigations you're gonna be on in the cockpit.

SPEAKER_04 39:38

Right, right. Right critical thinking skills, all that stuff so initially I was thinking I was going to go to law school. And I was working at the time that I was going through after my mission I was I was working for a process serving company that actually still exists here in uh Mesa area. A couple of friends of mine had a company and I ended up working for them. And so part of that is I was going to attorneys offices in the morning every day and then you pick up the paperwork then you'd go file it at the courts in the afternoon and then you'd uh go serve it in the evenings. And it was a great job. It paid well back in geez when I got married you know in the early 2000s late 90s when I first started doing it it paid well but I knew that I didn't want to do it for career. But the friend of mine that I'd mentioned earlier that had a beechcraft bonanza VTail who had a successful law practice in Mesa uh he said you know I I'm successful make good money I'm burnt out I'm putting in 80 hours a week if not more I mean I'm always I'm always at work I'm always attached to this office. It's like if I had to do it over again I've got a few friends that are commercial airline pilots. If I had to do it over again that's what I would do. And so that that kind of started me down that path because initially like I said I was criminal justice degree I was going to go to law school and uh that's what I was thinking and that you know that was kind of my nine degree turn and then you know I had the mentor that was Southwest Airlines captain and his his family so I could I could ask questions and I also had a friend that lived in my neighborhood this is going to date me a little bit but my wife and I when we got married we bought our first house in Morrison ranch a Shea home brand new uh 1600 square foot perfect location perfect starter home for two two young adults with no kids 14000 isn't that crazy it's I wish I still had it right yeah yeah right across the street from park at this last house next to a green belt it was just a perfect location I wish I still had that house yeah not that we'd fit into it but anyway so so yeah I I I I started I had a friend in that neighborhood his dad flew for Northwest Airlines and he said hey what do you think about have you thought about flight school and as a matter of fact I have I'm interested in it so we ended up this is post graduating from ASU we ended up going and looking at this flight program in Farmington New Mexico owned by a small airline called Mesa Airlines and the nice thing about it was if you trained with them you at the end of the training you had a guaranteed interview. Training was about a year year and a half and at the end of that program you had a guaranteed interview to fly for them. Okay and um they have things like that now but not quite and the thing that made that different was I was flying passengers around initially with only 250 hours total time. Wow because you could do it wow back you know this was 2005 yeah yeah and and now you can't now you have to have 1500 hours for that same job. That's interesting which is which is smarter. Well right more experience is is better especially if you're entrusted with people's lives even if you're the first officer not the captain you know but at the time you could do that and this was the type of company that was trying to capitalize on that so I left I left my job as a process server making 50 60 thousand a year which at the time was was quite a bit you know the dollar went farther and I went into flight training making nothing and then after all that money that I invested in my flight training I started working for Mesa Airlines and they were paying me 2000 a year gross. Yeah that wasn't take home wow okay so I gotta ask did Kelsey stay here?

SPEAKER_01 43:13

I mean I assume it was Kelsey that you were married yeah yeah yeah twenty twenty-six years mainly mainly because of her patients yeah yeah you had you had uh good examples of staying in relationships as you were growing up yeah tongue in cheek with the what was her response like when you told her I mean I had you guys talked about this up until that point or did you just drop a bomb on her and say hey guess what?

SPEAKER_04 43:38

She was pretty surprisingly she's pretty supportive. And I I lucked out in that I feel like if you're in this industry it's it's important to have a spouse that can be self-sufficient and autonomous while you're gone. Yeah independent.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Yeah I would assume you're gone a lot.

SPEAKER_04 43:53

Yeah and and I lucked out just so happens that uh she's that type of personality that she can she can function fine. Right now I we we live near her family and where she grew up here in Gilbert which is nice. So I've we've been able to keep her at least while I'm traveling a lot she has sisters and her parents and things like that that's good nearby. Yeah yeah my kids have cousins but that really helped when I had that initial discussion about that career because it's really a career decision. It's a lifestyle decision. Yeah right you're gonna be traveling you're you're embarking on a career path where you're gonna be traveling a lot. Yeah and so in fact when I'm when I'm speaking to young adults and doing some of the mentor stuff that I do and have done in the past, you know one of the things I ask them hey are you married? So no quite a few of them married maybe married with a kid it's like hey if your wife ever wants to chat with mine and ask how it's been my wife more than happy to give her your your wife that perspective because it's an important part of that decision. Yeah. If you're gonna invest all that time and effort into this career path to make sure it's the right one.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

And when when when you're setting schedules or picking up flights kind of along that same line of thinking do you have the ability to And I don't know if it's bid on or just take or deny stuff that's around holidays, birthdays, important holiday things. I mean, or do you do you get assigned and then you gotta go find somebody to take it because that's a good question.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

You you do get assigned. Now part of it depends on your your seniority. If you've got good enough seniority, then you can bid around those things, your your schedule. Okay. Especially holidays that everyone wants off. Yeah. If everyone wants Christmas or Thanksgiving or summer holidays off, you can bid around that if you've got adequate seniority. Gotcha. My my company, I think one of the things that makes it unique in regards to the pilot schedules is we have some tools in place and the ability to trade trips around with other pilots and with the company. And uh post-trips, if other pilots just want to pick up our trips and want to fly, because you get holiday pay, so sometimes that's an incentive for pilots. But we've we've got a lot of different tools that we can use to increase the quality of life. It and this is the third airline I've flown for, and it's it's by far the best as far as quality of life because of stuff like that. Yeah. And as I've compared it to other major airlines, I I think we're the most flexible in in that department. We have the greatest ability to alter and change our schedule. But overall, the the first the the first and foremost, the biggest thing affecting that is seniority, pilot seniority. Gotcha. And there's seniority in the first officer seat and how long you've been in that seat, and then once you upgraded to captain, like I just did recently, now I go to the bottom of the captain list. So my seniority starts over.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

Yeah. Nice little run on that one. Right. Farmington, New Mexico, which is a a beautiful metropolis to live in.

SPEAKER_04 46:45

You know what I like to say about Farmington? No offense to anyone that lives in Farmington and from Farmington. But but the thing I'd like to say, the the best thing about Farmington, in my humble, humble opinion. When you leave is is its proximity to Durango.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 46:59

Because you're only 40 minutes from Durango, 45 minutes from Durango is absolutely beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Oh, it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:03

It is. Farmington's high desert. You know, Durango's and oil and gas. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

I think that's the only thing in Durango, isn't it? Oil and gas. But uh yeah, and it's a it's not a pretty place.

SPEAKER_04 47:13

I I did like though the climate. You know, that high desert climate, similar to Albuquerque. Cooler. Yeah. A little cooler than the or maybe a lot cooler, depending on yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Depending on when you're there. Right. Flight training. So I I would I is is the direction you took, is that considered a traditional or non-traditional path in getting your ratings. Your ratings and and becoming a pilot.

SPEAKER_04 47:36

I think uh going to a flight school is on the civilian side. And that that's a that's interesting topic because you really can split getting your ratings into two categories, military or civilian. And within within both of those categories, there's a bunch of subcategories to get your ratings. Okay. Right. And so I I feel like though on the civilian side of the house, getting your ratings from a flight school is is probably the the most traditional way. It's it's usually what most people do, if if that's a good way to say that. You know, there's other ways to do it. You can go to an airport to a local fixed-based operator, an FBO, and you can take start taking flying lessons. Gotcha. And then eventually at some point get your instructor ratings and start teaching there. You know, it just depends. You know, in and we in the Flight Path Vectors, our you know, the company, the LLC that we started about six years ago, the main thing that we do is mentorship and and try and give information and guidance. And you know, and that's one of the questions we get, right? We and we go over different options. But there's I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions with getting into aviation. Hey, can I do it? You know, what's you know, what's going to prevent me from doing it? There could be health issues that might prevent you from holding a first-class medical, which is important to make sure you can hold that. That's probably one of the first steps if you're thinking about getting into it. Going to a designated FAA medical examiner and getting that examination done, it's about $200, $250. But make sure you can hold that first class medical because that's what the airlines want. If that's your goal, is to end up at an airline. They want that first class medical. And that would prevent you early on before you dump a bunch of money into flying planes and training. That would prevent you early on, give you the yes or no, can I do this?

SPEAKER_01 49:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:16

Uh the other thing is early on, I know you're not asking this question. Early on, though, what I would recommend is is to, and what we tell folks is uh go do a discovery flight if you haven't flown GA, right? See if it's something. I mean, we all look up, we've got, I feel like a lot of us have some kind of some level of of fascination of flight. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the the only guy that looks up into the sky and have a hard time looking away when I hear a plane overhead. My my wife makes fun of me, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

I'm the same way though. When I hear a plane, it's like I'm looking, and usually I'll hear it over here, so I'm looking over here. Yeah. Especially with helicopters, right? It's like I know it's back there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:54

But one of the big things we do, kind of getting back to maybe towards your original question, is clear up misconceptions and try and give out good information so that these adults, young adults, whoever is thinking about getting into this industry can go in with their wise, their eyes wide open. You know, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't really have a family member that was a mentor. I had the Southwest Airlines captain, he was military, so a little bit different path than I took. And so I I kind of had to find my way a little bit through, you know, some of the questions and potential pitfalls of getting into this industry and getting going through training. And so we try and lend that perspective. As a matter of fact, I was uh I was at the lake this morning and uh one of the gentlemen there on the boat, he was 56 or is 56, and he said, Man, I I would have loved to have gone into aviation for a career, but I thought you had to have perfect eyesight. And that in itself is a misconception, maybe still to this day, yeah, that that even in the military, maybe unless you're a fighter pilot, but if you're transport or bomber, I'm fairly certain military, it's correctable. You can wear glasses or contacts. Yeah. Uh certainly in civilian if you have correctable vision, that's fine. Interesting. Yeah. And so that was just his misconception of, you know, just not not knowing 30, 40 years ago when he might have decided to pursue that path.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Yeah. Right. Interesting. Yeah. When you were in when you were in flight school, was there ever a point at which you questioned whether or not you made the right decision?

SPEAKER_04 52:01

Yeah, there was that question. There was the question on whether or not am I going to be able to pass this? And am I going to be able to do this? Right. Um, it's a lot of information you got to learn, and you got a lot of skill that you have to apply. And there's you got to pass those tests, you gotta and and you gotta make sure you can do that. And and really getting those ratings is kind of a calling process if you want to or a filtering, weeding out, however, you want to think about that process. Okay. And it by design, right? That's what tests are. You know, and so if you can't pass those tests, at some point you're gonna end up maybe not being able to pursue that anymore. If you have too many check ride failures, yeah. You know, the airlines don't don't uh look kindly on that. They maybe that's not the wrong, that's not the right terminology. You're not competitive, I should say. Gotcha. They're not gonna call you in for an interview if you have too many check ride failures. Gotcha. Right. And maybe a couple's fine, depending on where you have. But yeah, so there's a process, and I talked to the uh so one of the things I do at Southwest Airlines, and I don't know if this is go for it. So in the airlines, my last airlines was Sky West. The airline I'm at now is Southwest. I worked in some ancillary positions, which I think is great. Because it it opened some doors and um when you say ancillary, do you mean like office type roles or yeah, I not not necessarily office, but for example, Sky West Airlines. I worked on a team called Professional Standards. I also was a training captain, a Czech airman. So when we hired new pilots, I would fly with the new pilots and they had to meet a certain standard, and at the end of flying X amount of hours with me, it was my role to evaluate and basically sign them off or determine if they needed more training. Right. Okay. The other thing I did at Sky West was on the high I was on the hiring team. And I worked with our SkyWest had a pilot pathway program.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 53:50

And so not only did I fly as a line pilot, I flew passengers around, I did those other ancillary positions. Right. At Southwest, uh, about four and a half years ago, once again, got involved in some other ancillary positions. I I started working in the training center in Dallas, teaching systems to new hire pilots as part of the FAA approved program to so when you got on with airline, you've got about a two-month process, even if you've flown that same plane for years somewhere else. You have to go through that airlines FAA approved flight training program. Usually it's about two months at major airlines to fly for them legally. And so within that program, I worked uh and taught systems, 737 systems to new hire pilots. And now more recently, I'm teaching in the simulators, a couple different events for new hire students, new hire pilots that we're hiring and upgrading captains. Gotcha. And recurrent training, because we have to go to Dallas, the whole all geez, 11,500 or 12,000 pilots. We have to go to Dallas every year for recurrent training.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 54:49

So it's it's a big production.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

No kidding.

SPEAKER_04 54:52

You know, and and pilots maybe they have to they lose their maybe they go and out on military deployment for a while, and then when they come back a few years later, they have to go through a certain level of re-education. Sometimes they might lose a medical for a little bit, or maybe they gotta maybe out shoulder have uh shoulder issues or something like that for six months, or they broke an arm, or they gotta come back for some level of retraining depending on how long they've been out. So the training center facilitates all that too.

SPEAKER_01 55:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 55:17

And so I work I work within that. The other thing I do, the reason I mention that, the other thing I do with Southwest is I work in their pilot pathway program, the destination 225 program. Okay. And it for a while it took me to when I first heard it, I was like, 225, what does that mean? That's just the cardinal direction for the heading southwest, right? That that's the southwest that direction is roughly 225 on a compass. Okay. That's why they named it. Okay. Destination Southwest. Yeah, I gotcha. Anyways, so within that program, I speak to a lot of cadets, and you'd mentioned me going through training. One of the things that I like to tell these guys and gals, most of them are in their early 20s. You can get into the program starting right out of high school, so 18, 19 year olds are the earliest. But I tell them, I say, hey, don't this training, you'll have good days, you'll have bad days. Don't give up. That's part of the process that creates resilience in pilots is going through the training process. So good days, bad days, stick with it. Right? Yeah. Um, it builds character when you when you make it through something that's been challenging and difficult, right? Um, it builds skill, it builds experience. All those all those things that are important that a pilot should have, right? That you'd want a pilot to have in the cockpit. Yeah. That's part of the process. So when you mentioned and asked if you had when you asked me what my experience was like, if I uh what was your question?

SPEAKER_01 56:43

If I thought if you ever felt like there was a day where you're like, didn't make the right decision.

SPEAKER_04 56:48

Yeah, there were there were hard days. There were certainly hard days. Like, holy cow. Almost like you know, when you might have some imposter syndrome. Wow, am I gonna I'm gonna fly that? You know, I mean especially when I mentioned that I started I was flying passengers around in 50 seat jets for Mesa Airlines out of Philadelphia with 250 hours. Wow. Like a little little little bit of imposter syndrome, yeah, for sure. Right. Although I'd been trained and I was legal to do, perfectly legal to do all those things. Yeah. Right. But but still. Anyways, but yeah, I I try and encourage young younger folks. I mean, I mean, I'm 49 now, so I'm I'm getting to that point. Yeah, right. Or where I'm using that vernacular. Yeah. When I was your age. When I was your age, right? And I hate to do that, but that's comes quick. It does. It does, because I certainly don't feel you know 49. My my wife would argue that mentally, uh, I'm not 49. Like 21, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

Yeah, yeah. Maybe a sophomore in high school at times.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Uh yeah. Talk to me about leadership. How has how has your vision of what leadership is or should be or what a good leader looks like morphed over time?

SPEAKER_04 58:05

I feel like I've worked with a lot of of great pilots, men and women. And I've got I've had a lot of good examples. I've I've had I've had examples of leadership in my own family, like I mentioned earlier, grandfather, father were were leaders in their industries and and and businesses. But within the aviation industry, I mean I've that's one of the things I love about where I'm at at Southwest. I feel like I consistently work with a high caliber of of people. We've got all kinds of backgrounds. I've got a we work with a lot, I've worked with a lot of military and and I love it. Uh thank you to all of our service members. I'm pretty quick to thank them for their service once I find out that they did serve. I love a lot of I love the leadership and the experience that they bring. And I've tried to hone my own leadership. My my leadership style tends to be servant leadership. I love, and that's I love to serve. I love to help others if I can. I try not to ask others to do something that I'm not willing to do myself. I try and help cabin crew out if I can and be supportive of flight attendants in flight, it's what we call them, the the flight attendants and uh you know, or my first officers now that I'm a captain, and and try and set a tone of hey, we're we're one team.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:23

And I think I think that tone and that servant leadership mentality, in my humble opinion, remaining approachable, right? And just like I said, working together, like like there's no I until there has to be coming from the left seat, I should say, right?

SPEAKER_01 59:38

Well, it's at some point you know it's interesting because I think of I think of that, and that's a great example where you you have to, I feel as a leader, allow the team to feel responsibility in their positions. Yes, right? Yep. Up until a point of failure. Yeah, I agree. And then and then it's like, okay, now now I need to step in and take control, pull this back, you know, calm the situation, whatever it is, and and then be able to go, okay, now now we move forward. Yep. And once things are calm and stable, everybody goes back to their responsibility.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:11

And I think another aspect of that that you might agree with, I firmly believe in trying to give the members of the team what they need to be successful. For sure. Right? That's a big part of it. Absolutely. Right? And and be supportive. What tools do you need to be successful in this this situation? What can I do to make that happen?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

How can I help you?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:29

And and I think that that's important. I I've been in in multiple roles where, you know, what I will consider a boss thought that they were a leader.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

And all they're doing is dictating.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

You know, and it's like, ah, just let me do my job.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:44

Kind of micro micromanaging thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:46

Exactly. Yeah. Trust me to do what I'm supposed to do. Yep. Until I don't provide you a level of competency where you can trust me to do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:56

Well, and it's it's interesting in in in my industry with some of the things that I've done not only in the cockpit, but outside the cockpit, working within the pilot pathway programs, both at my previous airline and at this airline. That's a big part of what we do within those programs is we teach professionalism and leadership. Because most of these flight schools uh that you're going to, it's strictly you're working on your ratings, right? They're re they're very good at getting you your ratings. Yeah. So we kind of fill in the gaps of everything else that goes along with becoming, and I just had this conversation last night with a gentleman that was reaching out because he wants to get into the the Southwest, the destination two to five program. And he asked, Hey, what are the benefits of the Southwest Destination 225 program? And I said, Well, we have workshops at scheduled intervals throughout the program to fill in these gaps, what I like to call soft skills for the airline industry. Yeah. And there's a lot of people, if you're not in the industry, I don't think you realize once you're at that level, a commercial airline pilot, as as a manager, as a leader, flying the plane is probably 30 to 40 percent of what you do at at work. The other 60-70% is what I call the soft skills, right? So it's how you communicate with people, your leadership, right? How you manage a team. I mean, there's a lot of other things that go decision making. There's a lot of other things that go into the job other than just what we call stick and rudder skills. Gotcha. Right. And so that's what I was kind of communicating last night to this gentleman thinking about getting into the program. He said, What you know, what's the benefit to the Southwest program? I said, Well, if you know you want to come to Southwest, it's a great program. And and beyond that, what set it set apart from other programs is all these workshops that that we run as a part of the program. Some of them are actually in Dallas where we fly the cadets, a handful of them, we fly them out to our training facility in Dallas, and we have two days that we put them through through training out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:50

Before they're even on property as pilots. Right. Nice. Yeah. Kind of helping them with those soft skills, leadership, professionalism. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:58

Yeah. So that's really cool. Yeah. That's cool that Southwest invests that. Yes. In in not only employees, but people who might never be an employee of Southwest. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:10

Well, and speaking of, Southwest is really good at hiring from within. If you have a desire to get involved or promote from within or do other things within the company, they love to do that. They love to hire from from within. And so I've I've been at Southwest. Uh October will be nine years, so coming up on that here in the fall. And uh out of the three airlines I've worked at, it's been the the best airline. And I it's been my dream job. It's where I wanted to end up.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

That's cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:39

And so I've I've for me and my family and my situation, wanting to live here in Arizona, we got a big pilot base here. Uh it's been a perfect fit. And it's been, I know, I know you're not asking this about the company, but one of the things I feel like that sets apart our company is the culture. I like to tell people that Southwest, especially in the flight deck, I'm on the pilot group, they've been hiring for a certain culture for decades. In fact, Herb Kelliher set that up. He said, Hey, we hire for personality. We can train anyone to fly. That was that was Herb Kelleher, the one of the founders of Southwest. That was that was his mindset. And they've done it for decades. That's awesome. And so I tell people I can I can jump in the cockpit with a complete stranger, then at the end of a three-day trip or friends. We we've exchanged numbers, we stay in touch, and you know, so that's one of the things I love about the airline is nine ninety percent plus of the time that happens. That's cool. Very rarely does it not happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

Yeah. So if you could go back and talk to your 16-year-old self.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:40

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

What would you what what advice would you give yourself?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:44

I would I would tell myself, make sure you go and and you uh I'd probably tell myself at 16 years old to to study harder because because high school was really much easier than college turned out to be. Yeah. Yeah, like the the workloads, the steady loads, all that stuff. Uh so study harder, let's try and be an A and a B student instead of a C and a B you know student. But I would also I would also tell myself, um, go on your mission. I'd tell myself, hey, you can do this, right? I I mean I think there's an element at that age of uncertainty, right? What what uh limitations we have as far as what we can do.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:18

Right. You kind of gain that confidence as you start excelling and succeeding and and kind of getting some wins, so to speak, under your belt, I feel like, has been my experience. So I tell myself, hey, you can do this. Yeah. Right? Work hard, have discipline, and once again, work very hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:37

Yeah, yeah. And and you'll you'll succeed. You've obviously been very successful going the path that you went with the private a avenue. Uh-huh. Do you ever feel like or wish you would have gone the military avenue? Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:50

Yeah. I wish I would have given even though I did serve for two years as a missionary, yeah. I I wish I would have given some time in the service of my country. I think I think that that would have been rewarding on different levels. Yeah. And like I said, I work around a lot of pilots that were former military. Not all of them flew in the military, but they have military backgrounds.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:12

Uh some Is there a difference between Navy pilots and Air Force pilots? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:16

In fact, I had this conversation a week ago with a friend of mine.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:19

Really?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:19

Yeah. Because we're talking about this friend I'm talking about, he uh he's been tasked, he's a team member working on rewriting some of our pilot SOPs right now. Okay. And and I had that very question from Air Force and Navy. The the Air Force folks are very uh strict on verbiage. Like they're hey, it has to be done this way. These are the exact, this is exact verb, very regimented. Okay. Like this is black and white. You do it this way or else. Navy is more like, okay, if you get the job done, we can we can flex a little bit on exactly how you got to that point. Gotcha. Like it's more that that was kind of the takeaway from our conversation. So hopefully I don't offend any naval, former naval or air force aviation. I'm all about because that's that's highly opinionated, and I'm not speaking from personal perspective.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:07

Now, okay, so I'm gonna be more direct. Okay. Landing a plane, uh-huh. Who's better? Navy or Air Force.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:14

You know, the the joke about the Navy pilots is they're they're firmer on their landings, right? They they stick them. They stick them. Set it down fast. The Air Force guys tend to have a little bit more finesse. Maybe that's a good way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know that I've ever kept tally on exactly who's better, but that's been kind of the the ongoing understanding of the two as far as landings.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

It's funny. I I I can tell you, having sat in in now the back of a lot of airplanes, uh huh, never flown one. I always think in my head, okay, that was a Navy pilot. Yeah. Because I feel like I'm landing on a carrier. It's like all of a sudden you're like, it's like, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:52

Or if you're flying to Orange County, Burbank, or Chicago Midway, you know, you could get that same feeling too because of the short runways.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:58

Yeah. Yeah. Or the the noise ordinance where you gotta go straight up.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:03

Just talking about that this morning to one of the guys on the boat flying out of Orange County, that cut back. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:08

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:09

At 800 feet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:10

I gotta ask the craziest moment on a plane. Can you share? I don't know if I can even ask you that.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:16

We had we had a very interesting day at my old company, which I thought was never gonna end. So in my old company I flew different planes, uh Canada Air Regional Jet. And the one I was on this particular day was a 50-seater, a CRJ 200, Canada Air Regional Jet 200 model. Okay. Like I said, only 50 seats, two engines up on the fuselage, not under the wings. Great, great plane for what it was. I mean it was a little dated. It'd get very hot. The air conditioning system didn't seem to keep up with the heat of the desert. But my old company, I mean, and a lot of other companies, regionals, put a lot of hours on those planes, and I feel like for how much they flew, they're pretty decent planes. So this was years ago. We were we flew into Palm Springs, which in the summertime, very hot, and um it took a while. We had a a maintenance issue on the plane, so it took a while. We had to resolve that. So it was sitting out on we're sitting out on the ramp under the sun and was hot. Yeah. We didn't have passengers on yet, but we had a maintenance issue that we had to resolve, and then we boarded the passengers, and we had we had a cargo bottle in in the cargo bay self self-deploy, right? For for cargo fire because of the heat. Jeez. And so and we had all these passengers on, we had all this this baggage, and so now we had to deplane because you can't fly with baggage in the the cargo bay without a suppression system, right? So we had to deplane, and it took a few hours, they had to cool that compartment down because otherwise they would have put a new bottle back there and it would have blown again with the heat. So they had to cool it down for a couple hours. So so then we we fixed it after a couple hours cooling that we put the passengers back on and we left, we got off the ground without it deploying again inadvertently because of the heat, and we're halfway back to Phoenix and it and it closer to Palm Springs and it it deploys. And that's a land another land at New Resuitable Airport without that. So we had to circle around, go back to Palm Springs with those passengers who'd been waiting for this was nuts. Oh my gosh. And so finally we get back to Palm Springs, they put those passengers on a different flight, and we gotta wait another we and we had a maintenance hangar in Palm Springs from our company. So we we taxied after we dumped the passengers at the D plane to the terminal. We taxied the plane over the maintenance hangar and then we fixed it there. Here we are, like almost eight hours trying to just get back to Phoenix. And so we finally, and now it's an empty plane, and it's just me and the the first officer and a flight attendant, so just the three of us in the plane, and we're flying this empty plane back to Phoenix, repositioned flight. And as we're going to Phoenix, this giant Haboob type weather system hits Phoenix. We had to divert to Tucson. No way.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:58

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:00

It was just one of those. I mean, it was we, you know, we weren't very far from home, but we just give me a car, I'll try. We just couldn't make it back to Phoenix with this plane. And it was, it was it was almost laughable. Wow. Uh you're not you're not gonna believe this. You know, as we're as we're uh messaging company from the plane because we've got the capability, we're diverting to Tucson. And we're like, oh my gosh. That's crazy. So that was one of those flights that just wouldn't end. Yeah. Another flight we had, this was Arizona. Another flight we had was uh Phoenix to Flagstaff, which was one of our routes at my old company for American Airlines. Um we flew that these were American Airlines. WestJet or something, or is it it was uh so American we were we were contracted to fly the s the shorter hops for American Airlines out of Phoenix. Okay, yeah. And we're flying to Flagstaff and there were so many storms, it was summertime, like monsoon season. There's so many storms between Phoenix and Flagstaff. You know, the uh Price is right game Plinko when they dropped the chip and it it zigzags down. Yeah, it felt like we were doing that all the way to Flagstaff, zigzagging through thunderstorm around thunderstorms. Like and we're trying to beat this storm into Flagstaff that was coming in, and anyways, it ended up hitting the airport just before we got there, and and I just I couldn't even slow the plane down to bring flaps out. It was so turbulent. No kidding. And so we just we had to but it we had to turn around and go back to Phoenix.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:16

So you got all the way there and then had to turn around.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:17

Yeah, and now fortunately it's only a 20-25 minute flight. Yeah, but still, you know, you have sympathy for the passengers who just want to get to their destination. Right. And so we waded out in Phoenix, we came back to Flagstaff, we landed Flagstaff, and it was beautiful, calm, and clear, almost like nothing happened. It's almost like the passengers are judging, you're like, Yeah, it really wasn't that bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:36

I remember one time I was in California and I was driving actually, and we were heading north. We got to Santa Clarita just before you go over the grapevine into northern you're up into central California, and they stopped traffic. Oh. And we sat there for like eight hours with traffic stopped going over the and it was stopped because there was snow on the pass.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:58

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

Which was like a weird concept in Southern California going over the grapevine that there's actually snow, let alone enough snow to stop traffic.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:08

They finally let us go over. The roads are dry, there's not a single wet spot anywhere, let alone snow. Wow. You know, and it's like, wait a second, yeah. What really happened here? It doesn't look bad at all. Yeah. You sat there for eight hours?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:24

Yeah, that was crazy. Any crazy passengers you've had to deal with over the years?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:28

Knock on wood. Next week you'll be deep. Right. Well, they they say that's that's the thing, is they say once you upgrade, and I I uh can attest to this at my old airline, they say once you upgrade as a new captain, that's when you see some of the crazier things that you haven't seen before. Because you start dealing with it. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, now I feel like you jinxed me. Knock on wood.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:51

Hopefully I didn't. I I hope you go your whole career and don't have to deal with a crazy person. Yeah. But um anything else? Anything I haven't asked you that that you thought maybe we should talk about about Phil and your journey. Would you do it all again?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:06

Yeah. I um that's that is a good question. I remember when I was going before I went to ASU, I went to MCC, Mesa Community College for a little while. And I remember one of the classes I took, we had a guest speaker. I was just thinking about this the other day. We had a guest speaker who came in and uh he was passionate about what he'd done. It was law enforcement. He was retired, maybe Mesa PD police lieutenant or something like that. And one of the things he said, he said, choose to do something you love. And he's he said the money will follow. Right. I I feel like it's important, especially in my industry, to be a pilot, to ju to choose something you love, you know, to be passionate about aviation. Yeah. Because it it's not a it's not a short journey. You know, it it takes a while. It it can take some pilots can get to a major airline, and you know, depending on the cycle, some pilots can get to the major airline in less than five years. Uh for me to get to my dream job, it took 14. And I had to work two jobs to do it because of the cycle. Yeah. Oh eight, oh nine downturn, they weren't hiring pilots. Uh the retirement age around that same time was bumped from 60 to 65, and that was an immediate five-year hold down. Yeah. And so I was at my previous airline for for quite a while. But if it's something you're passionate about, something you love, that helps with your perspective. And and and you kind of get to a point, I feel like, where you enjoy the journey. Yeah. You you genuinely enjoy what you're doing. Right. And and you you can it it creates resilience and you know, you can you can stick it out through those tough times. Yeah. And hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:43

Well right, right. Favorite air favorite airport to land in.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:47

Oh, I someone just asked me that this morning. Sorry, I keep on going back. We were talking a lot of aviation this morning to look at at 4 4 30 in the morning when we went. There's there's some really great airports, and I haven't flown a lot of international. I've done Mexico, I've done Canada, I haven't done Caribbean yet, even though we fly to Caribbean. I haven't done South America, I haven't done overseas. Most of what I do is domestic, and that's actually one of the things I like about Southwest is if something goes on at home, I'm always I can until close enough to get home.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:19

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:19

Either that same day or the very next morning. Yeah. It's you know, and I'm not traveling across six or seven time zones, which is hard on on your body, especially as you get older. You know, so I I like there's been some great airports. At my old company, I used to like to fly into Durango. It was beautiful. Some Montana Bozeman, Missoula. I think it was Kalispell, Montana. I'll never forget at my old company flying into Kalispell for the first time coming up from the south. Uh it was October. And is it Flathead Lake? Yeah. All the leaves around Flathead Lake were descending over the lake, and the leaves are all you know orange. Orange dreads.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:56

Tamrack just turn an orange fire on the mountain. Yeah. I mean, not fire litter, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:02

Incredible views. And we're descending over this lake into Calisbell. I'm like, what is this place? Yeah. You know, there there's certain times like that where you descend into some of these airports, and you're like, this is this is a beautiful view. You know, San Diego, I always like San Diego because it's a little bit steeper of a descent. It's a one one runway airport. I think it's listed like worldwide as like in the top ten of the most dangerous airports, even though because it's a single runway airport. It's it's very busy for a single runway. But San Diego's uh, you know, one of my favorite places in California to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:31

Does Southwest fly to Hawaii yet? We do. Okay. We started flying to Hawaii uh back in 2017, 2018. Oh, okay. So have been for a while. And more recently we started flying to uh Anchorage, Alaska about a month ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:43

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:43

So that's kind of a new place.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:45

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, hey, I appreciate you coming on. Yeah. Taking the time. Yeah, no problem. Good to get to know you and hear your journey a little bit. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Now I know a little bit more about you. Yeah. Everybody that comes on does get a gift. All right. And and you can drink your drink your muscle milk out of this. This is great. Yeah, but uh you I I have the same thing made for everybody. It is personalized. You go ahead and open it up and take a look at it.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:13

Oh, awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:14

Glasses went above and beyond.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:16

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:17

I love it. Got your name on the back of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:18

So wow, that is so cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:20

Elsie knows it's yours.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:21

Yeah, so she wants to. This is great. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jan.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:24

So yeah, well, thank you. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you uh taking the time out and coming to share with me and the listeners a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:32

Yeah, and thank you for the invite. Yeah, appreciate it. Genuinely uh enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:36

Awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:36

Yeah, this is Phil Green, and I went above and beyond.