Doors Open & Close Calls: Surviving Unexpected In-Flight Emergencies

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Mike (0:30): Engine spooled. Checklist complete. Welcome to the Black Box Aviation podcast, where the stories behind the headlines get unpacked by the people who actually fly the damn plane. Hosted by Tom, a former military pilot turned airline and cargo, and Mike, a lifelong civilian flyer now flying left seat as an airline captain. It's aviation news, insider insight, and real pilot perspective.

Unknown Speaker (0:55): Strap in.

Unknown Speaker (0:56): Hey, everybody. We got a great show for you today. I'm gonna take you through the show rundown to start it off for Cape Air. Don't know if you've seen this. The door opened in flight.

Tom (1:04): Pretty wild stuff. If you're a passenger, it might give you a little surprise. We had a Frontier flight. I a close call at LAX recently, and that's just gonna pile into the news that we've already been seeing. Yeah.

Tom (1:14): United flight actually swapped a little paint with a de ice truck. Not good. The Artemis rocket splashdown happened as well. Welcome to the show. I'm one your co host Tom joined by Mike.

Unknown Speaker (1:25): Mike, what's happening?

Unknown Speaker (1:26): What's up, Tom? How are doing, man?

Tom (1:27): Hey. I'm doing great. You know, I think we got a great show with the lineup here today, but I'm a hit the plugs quick for you. We got the email. Send us in any comments, anything you wanna hear or talk about, theblackbox01@yahoo.com.

Tom (1:39): We listen to them, reply to them, we figure out what you guys wanna hear, and we kinda shape the show that way. So keep sending those in. The hotline, send us a text message, or I see those as emails as well. (203) 699-6792. Go ahead and leave your name.

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Tom (2:07): Mike, you've been doing a great job with that, so appreciate that. Mike, let's jump right into this Cape Air cabin flight door. Now for both of us at Cape Air, we flew a lot out of Boston with our company, and Cape Air is right there. Like, that's their bread and butter. Right?

Tom (2:20): Have you seen this?

Mike (2:21): Yeah. I I I saw the article after you sent it to me this morning, but I had not heard about this. I haven't been up in that part of the wood, neck of the woods in quite a while, actually.

Unknown Speaker (2:30): This made national news with Tom Lammas last night too, which I

Unknown Speaker (2:32): was quite pretty

Tom (2:33): surprised That's that's kind of like where I I saw it from. Actually, no, my buddy Tad told me about it in the morning yesterday. He's like, you see the the the Cape Air flight? And I said, no. And he said, oh, the door opened up in flight.

Tom (2:45): And then I told him a story about what happened to me one time. I'll tell that story too, Mike. I I think yours is a little more interesting as far as, like, doors opening. Yeah. But the person that was on the flight said, the pilot was amazing.

Tom (2:58): That's all I have to say. As soon as the door opened, she said it was okay and no need to worry. We were up in the air for ten minutes and the door opened. Sounded like a massive gust of wind. The pilot did not panic, but safely brought us back to the island to land.

Tom (3:10): Probably flew for about six to eight minutes with the door open. This happened out of Nantucket. So they took off on Nantucket, the door opened, and then they just went back and landed. Mike, you probably flown out of Nantucket. Think, right?

Unknown Speaker (3:19): Yeah. I've done it a couple times. Not a lot, but a couple times.

Unknown Speaker (3:21): I've done it Yeah. It's little tight in there. That's a small little airport. If you ever watched Wings, they would fly to Nantucket. Think that was their airport.

Tom (3:29): Right? Wings?

Unknown Speaker (3:30): I never saw it.

Unknown Speaker (3:31): You ever saw Wings?

Unknown Speaker (3:33): No. No.

Unknown Speaker (3:33): You're gonna get blasted.

Unknown Speaker (3:35): I'm gonna get blasted for that, Mike.

Unknown Speaker (3:37): That's fine. Get blasted all the time.

Tom (3:40): Wings is a cool it's a fun show. That was, think, like a USA show. I asked two brothers that ran like a little kinda like a, you know, a Cape Air. So they fly what is it like? It's a Cessna what?

Tom (3:51): Four zero two. So it's a twin piston. Yeah. It's not Yeah. It's not

Mike (3:56): pressurized or anything, which so when the door blows open, it's not I mean, it is a big deal, but it's not what you would think of a jet airline if the door blew open, you know. It's a little different.

Tom (4:05): Yeah. That'd a whole different world of pain, but yeah. Because this thing kinda slides open, like, you're probably gonna close it. Like, person in the back doesn't know how to close it, but if you did, you could have just, like, fixed it right there, you know?

Mike (4:16): That's possible. I don't really know how that how that door operates or that window operates, but it's yeah, would be possible, I guess, because you're not pressurized, you're not doing 400 knots across the ground. Yeah.

Tom (4:29): Yeah. And there's a video with this, but we'll put it in the clips or whatever, but you can check it out as well. And I they don't seem too worried about it, and it didn't seem that bad in there. Like, it wasn't like hurricane.

Mike (4:41): I'm got windy, I'm sure it got a little loud, I'm sure it got a little cold because it was a little chilly in Boston that day, but, you know, they weren't up at altitude, so pressurization wasn't a problem.

Tom (4:53): Yeah. And the Cessna four zero two, that's their workhorse. They do so many flights back and forth. And I I would sit there as, you know, a major pilot out of Boston. Like, the weather in Boston can go up and down quite a bit.

Tom (5:03): Yeah. I would fly like two or three legs. Say we Kate went back, like, Newark to Boston or something like that or Buffalo, Boston, and, like, I'm tired, you know. I'm flying this fully glass cockpit, like, souped up jet. These guys did seven legs back and forth to the islands.

Mike (5:19): And I did that in the Beach 1900 and you get tired, but you know how it is, you're like so focused, especially them because they're hand flying, they're doing everything, there's no automation, single pilot operations, so they're working the radios, they're flying, there's no time to be tired. They're probably super tired when they're done for the day, but I think during the flight, there's no time to be tired. You don't even realize you're tired. Versus us up there, you know, with autopilot on and everything else, you kind of start to get a little sleep, get a little tired, you know, during the flight, which could be bad as well. I think they're just too they're too busy to be tired.

Unknown Speaker (5:53): Yeah. Right. Exactly. Which is a good thing. Right?

Tom (5:55): Because a lot of pilots that fly at Cape Air, like they're right out of I know Bridgewater State is a big aviation school. That's in Massachusetts, and they feed a lot of the Cape Air pilots, And the the pilots, they are trying to get, like, as many hours they can so they can get better jobs and things like that, and it's huge experience as well. So,

Mike (6:13): you know Yeah. It definitely makes you a better pilot. I mean, when I went to Great Lakes flying the beach without autopilot, that that definitely shaped my aviator skills for sure. So there's no doubt that flying these four zero twos in the Northeast as busy as airspace is and you mentioned the changing weather and everything. Definitely, you know, it definitely increases our pilot skills for sure.

Tom (6:35): It's kind of a cathartic aspect of it. Like, people like, oh, I like to mow the lawn because I have like a sense of accomplishment. Like, sometimes when you fly like one leg from, you know, whatever to Tokyo, you know, that's all you did. Right? It took a long time, and you're flying, like, a huge jet, and it's super cool.

Tom (6:50): But you you have, like, not a lot of sense of accomplishment, whereas, like, you bang out seven legs and fly the ILS, you know, seven times at minimums, like, at the end of the day, you're like, yeah, I got it done tonight, you know. That's how that's how I roll. Yeah. Whereas the guy that goes to Tokyo, he ate, like, two meals and now he's gonna go find a sushi place, you know, or something like that. So it's a totally different way of flying and stuff.

Unknown Speaker (7:13): And I like that. Like, I like flying the the Embraer one ninety and doing that kind of stuff. Somebody, oh, you're crazy.

Unknown Speaker (7:19): Could never fly at Southwest and do 400 flights a day.

Tom (7:21): Like, well, yeah, it gets tiring, it gets it's a lot of work, there's a lot of things with that too, but at the end of the day you have like a sense of like, yeah, I did the job today, like, got it done, so Yeah. I don't know

Unknown Speaker (7:31): if you ever feel that way, Mike.

Mike (7:33): Yeah, sure. I mean, but it is nice to have a more cush job in an Airbus and put your feet up and do one leg and go to the hotel. I mean, don't

Unknown Speaker (7:42): Mike, I'm not traded in. You gotta slow down here. I'm not trading anything in right now. Okay? Let's hold up.

Tom (7:48): My my company's listening now. Everything's cool. We're all good.

Unknown Speaker (7:51): Yeah. Yeah.

Tom (7:51): Yeah. Hey, you know, something else I I wanna bring up though. So you've talked about this too. So the door opening on the Cape Air flight. Tell tell us about your thing with it.

Unknown Speaker (8:00): So I can't remember,

Mike (8:01): I mean it's been years, I don't know what I was working on, what rating I was working on, but I was in high school and I'm sure it was like a Cessna 152. It was a 152 or 172, but I think it was a 152. And we took off or whatever and my door popped open. I was a student pilot, so you know, was like, you know, like, is this not like, and you're hanging out the side right there because that's like, like, elbow bumps the door, right? So like you could really lean out.

Mike (8:25): And I was kind of like, I wasn't panicked, but. You know, I was alerted. Guess there's a better way to say it. Instructure like, oh, no big deal. He pops his door open and he's like, is how you close it.

Mike (8:38): This is how you open it. It'll happen all the time. And then he's like, oh, if you want to steer, you know, then he showed me like if you if you open the right door, you'll increase drag and the plane will steer to the right. If you open the left door, it'll increase drag. It'll steer to the left.

Mike (8:49): And we kind of just just to show me that, like, it's perfectly normal. It's perfectly fine. You know, no big deal. Just close it, you know. And it

Unknown Speaker (8:56): it happened numerous steering with the doors. Yeah. The ailerons jammed up. Open the door, man.

Mike (9:02): But over the course of my like flight training, I mean, I would say my door opened. I won't say I mean, wasn't like a daily occurrence, but it happened multiple times, you know, because the doors are they're old. These planes were from like the seventies and just pop open, or you didn't get it closed good and you didn't realize it or whatever, you know, you just close it. It wasn't a big deal. And you could even open the windows in those planes, you know, you had to in Florida.

Mike (9:24): They were hot half time you were taxing with the when the door open because there's no air conditioning in there. So, you know Well,

Tom (9:32): I'd say kudos to your instructor because say that never happened, you didn't talk about it, and now you're with a student for like the third or fourth time or whatever, maybe you're solo and the door opens. Yeah. It's like Yeah. This that's an invaluable lesson to be taught Sure. Early on for sure.

Mike (9:48): Yeah. Like I said, it happened numerous times, so the first one could have been on my solo, and then you're like, or what if it's the other door across the like, you know, you're sitting in the left seat and then it's the right door that opens, you know? Just can't panic is all. You know, it's not a big deal.

Tom (10:03): Yeah. I never had anything happen that to me. We had like canopies and things like that when we were training and learning, but I remember reading a flying magazine story about this happening to somebody, and the whole point that they talked about was just stay calm, fly the airplane, that's the first thing that you have to do. And then you can figure out, like, how what what's going on and what to do. So I was flying a navy d c nine, and we picked up a jet in Indianapolis, and it was a functional check flight because they they would do depot maintenance on the airplane.

Tom (10:32): So they would take the whole thing apart and then put it back together again and Yeah.

Mike (10:34): Those are always fun because you gotta really, like, hope the maintenance guys did everything the right way.

Unknown Speaker (10:39): That's why we were there.

Mike (10:41): Those are my best pre flights, man. When I did, like, a like a like a proving run or something or like a you're picking it up from a hangar, man, you're like analyzing every little nook and cranny.

Tom (10:50): Yeah. You don't know what's gonna come up in that things. And that's how we were, you know. And we had like a tech like you had a a like a notepad of stuff, like, you know, you had to go through and, you know, flipped it off. We get to altitude, you'd be like, okay, let's do this.

Tom (11:03): And we, you know, we'd take this off and make this turn and slow down at this speed and make sure the flat all that stuff. So we're I mean, we didn't even get that far in this flight. We are rolling down the runway and, man, maybe, like, past decision speed, both the windows, like, they didn't come fully open, but they opened enough. Like, maybe, like, and they were, like, on a slide with, like, a little handle, the clip. Like, I told the story last time.

Tom (11:26): We had the handle where you would hang the the hand mic on. If you haven't heard that, that's where the mic got stuck. Listen to last week's episode. But that's where like the handle was, and both the windows went back, and it was so loud. I can't even explain to you how loud it was.

Tom (11:39): And it was so distracting. But at the end of the day, like, I totally thought about that magazine article. It'd be like, fly the airplane.

Unknown Speaker (11:46): So we just

Unknown Speaker (11:47): flew the airplane.

Mike (11:48): I mean, you start fiddling around with the window at rotation speed, you know, it's, you know, there's there's always time to get up, pull the gear up, throw the autopilot on or give controls to the other guy and then you can work on your on your on your window or whatever. But it is different in that plane versus the Cessna because you're flying a plane that's pressurized even at ground level, you're gonna start the cabin pressure is gonna start equal, you know, pressurizing itself as soon as your weight off wheels. And so you're already in a different situation there and with the jet engines and the speed, it's probably super loud.

Tom (12:17): Yeah, we're excited about fast like that jet would go crazy fast like right away too.

Mike (12:21): Because I was probably putzing around at 40 or 50 miles an hour when my door opened, like, it wasn't like

Unknown Speaker (12:26): it's like I was accelerating

Unknown Speaker (12:27): slower than the highway, you know.

Unknown Speaker (12:28): Anyways, we just like, we we were able to just kind of like, he went and closed his window first. I was flying the jet, and then he took the jet and then I closed my window and it was fine. We went on the rest of the thing, but yeah, that that was a phase of flight

Mike (12:39): for the door for something to open. I mean, you're at Yeah. You're cruising down the runway at 100 something knots and there it goes, you know. It was loud. I bet.

Mike (12:50): I've never had anything like that in a jet. When I was at flight school, same flight school up there in Orlando, Sanford, a guy I should have talked about this when we were talking about, you know, hitting animals and stuff. He was in this I think he was a solo student. He was in the pattern, but I'm just thinking about it because you said fly the airplane and hit a bird, like big buzzard bird, went through the windshield, was in the back seat of the one seventy two, like flapping around while it was dying.

Unknown Speaker (13:17): Still alive.

Mike (13:18): And he's just in the traffic pattern on his solo flight and you know, he came in So landed and you lost your windshield, so now you're, you know, it's chaotic, you know, and loud. I'm sure even in a Cessna, it's probably still loud. And you got a bird flapping around in the back of the airplane and but you gotta put the plane down. You can't just pause the game and walk out, you know, like, it's real world. So Yeah.

Mike (13:43): That's what we're talking about, man. Just balance out our balance out our emergencies and and whatever no matter how small or big they are.

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Tom (14:16): But that's how you fall back to fundamental stuff, you know, like fly the airplane. Well, what my brain can't think of anything else. What do I need to do right now? You're gonna fly the airplane. It's the first thing you gotta do.

Unknown Speaker (14:24): You gotta keep doing it too. Matter what driving that car,

Mike (14:27): you know, and try to communicate that to my kids and stuff like, hey, this is what this is gonna happen and you still gotta keep going, know, I mean

Unknown Speaker (14:34): Yeah. That's interesting because Grace just got her license last week, so let's keep working on that.

Unknown Speaker (14:41): Daniel got his last, what, two weeks ago now? So yeah. Yeah. Definitely a yeah.

Tom (14:46): Let's keep rolling with things in the news, man. This is a Frontier flight that had a close call at LAX. This is just yesterday. They were taxiing, and there were two trucks that came out in front of them. They had a slam on the brakes.

Tom (15:00): Have you seen too much about this, Mike, or is that pretty much

Unknown Speaker (15:02): I saw it on x. And there's some audio. I can post the audio audio here for the people.

Unknown Speaker (15:07): Hey, Grant. Do you see this? No. We said two trucks just cut us off. We had to slam on the brakes not to hit them.

Unknown Speaker (15:13): Who's who's asking? Is that Frontier? That's Frontier.

Unknown Speaker (15:17): Beyond the building. City off telegram. Go ahead. Two trucks cut off Frontier at Kilo and bravo there at the service road.

Unknown Speaker (15:25): Frontier, do

Unknown Speaker (15:25): you have eyes on them? Which direction are they going?

Unknown Speaker (15:28): They were going eastbound. Eastbound.

Unknown Speaker (15:30): And they're still there next to you?

Unknown Speaker (15:32): One turned off, one kept going, I think. One turned left, one kept going straight.

Unknown Speaker (15:35): Okay. Do you have any markings, company name, or

Unknown Speaker (15:38): anything like that on them? No. It happened so fast. Both of us are just like, shit. You know, we just slammed on the brakes.

Unknown Speaker (15:43): I might have to call the flight attendants, make sure everybody's alright in the back. It was real close, close as I've ever seen.

Unknown Speaker (15:47): Another one that's off your their 10:00 there?

Unknown Speaker (15:50): Yeah. K. That is the one off your 10:00? No. He's turning left now.

Unknown Speaker (15:55): He's up further up. It looks like Charlie Charlie ten maybe.

Unknown Speaker (15:59): Okay. I see him. Sorry. I know. I see the officers there.

Unknown Speaker (16:01): One of them might be the one that's entering Charlie10. 253216. Let me know if you require any assistance.

Unknown Speaker (16:07): No. We're good. It was just it was our best closest I've ever seen it.

Mike (16:10): And let them listen. But yeah. I mean, people are like, you know, you kind of forget, like or especially the layman probably doesn't realize how much traffic there really is in and around airports. It's not just, it's not just airplanes, it's, you know, operations vehicles, it's fire trucks, you know, whether they're going to emergency or they're just driving around training or going to get to terminal to get food. It's, you know, security cars, it's catering trucks, it's tugs, it's baggage carts.

Mike (16:38): It's there's constant traffic on every airport, not just the small ones, but every airport. There's some good ones out there, you know, Chicago's got a spot where they can actually go under the taxiways to get the cars out of the way, but man, a lot of times and they are supposed to yield to airplanes, I mean, you would think you'd see or hear a big airplane air an Airbus that Frontier's flying. But

Tom (17:02): He's got the reggae music on there, man. He can't hear nothing. He's driving the truck, man.

Mike (17:06): Yeah. And and and the fact that was I two of mean, it it kinda and it might have been the the lead guy wasn't paying attention. The other one was just following his buddy or something. I don't know. I mean, they're definitely gonna investigate it.

Unknown Speaker (17:16): And somebody has a radio. But sometimes those roads too, like, don't some of them aren't that controlled. I I don't know. But

Mike (17:22): Yeah. I mean, if they're not crossing the taxiway, mean, well, they obviously would be if they taxied in front of Frontier. They should be talking to somebody or at least monitoring ground control or ramp control or somebody. But, you know, all these trucks have numbers on them and you can call up ground and say, hey, this truck, and I saw that, you know, it's like a license plate, but it's on the side of the truck. You could just spit it out.

Unknown Speaker (17:43): I mean,

Unknown Speaker (17:44): there's been times

Mike (17:44): I haven't had like a close call where I to slam on the brakes, but there was times where they didn't yield to me and it's annoying. But I never had to slam on the brakes like that. And you know, and they and their their concern was for like, hey was the flight attendant standing up? Because if I just slammed on the brakes that hard, maybe they fell over. Maybe maybe we talked about it last week how people just get up and go to the bathroom when they want.

Mike (18:04): Maybe there's a customer that was going to the bathroom and you just slammed on the brakes and they just fell down. I mean so that was you could see in the radios, that was part of their concern too, seeing if, you know, their crew and people were okay because, I mean, I guess they hit the brakes pretty hard, but it's better than hitting the truck.

Tom (18:19): Yeah. Michael pulled the tapes when he said, we just had two trucks cut us off. We had to slam on the brakes not to hit them, and that was off the ATC. And then he said, it happened so fast, both of us were just like holy blank, and then we just slammed on the brakes. I might have to call the flight attendants to make sure everybody's alright in the back.

Tom (18:35): It was real close, the closest I've ever seen.

Unknown Speaker (18:38): Did the

Unknown Speaker (18:39): That's true.

Unknown Speaker (18:39): Did you

Unknown Speaker (18:39): say the bad word on the radio? Did you hear it?

Unknown Speaker (18:42): I didn't hear the tape. I'm just reading the transcript.

Unknown Speaker (18:44): So Yeah. I saw the

Unknown Speaker (18:45): might have. If he were that scared, he might have been that upset.

Unknown Speaker (18:48): Yeah. Not even thinking.

Unknown Speaker (18:49): I wouldn't say that on the radio.

Unknown Speaker (18:51): I try not to.

Tom (18:52): I try to say it on the podcast. Frontier is aware of the incident. No injuries reported to the passengers or crew, so that's good. But, like, you know, it's a surprise. So, obviously, you know, it's it's this ties into the LaGuardia crash where you had the trucks on the runway.

Tom (19:06): Now these are firefighting equipment that were responding to another emergency in LaGuardia, and this doesn't seem like that's the same case here in Los Angeles. But No. It's part of your awareness, and which makes that more difficult because maybe these guys got a clearance from another frequency and they're just going catering trucks or maybe there's, you know, security. They're not emergency vehicles.

Mike (19:24): I think a lot times these guys just aren't if it was like a catering truck or something, I mean, like, not to put them down, but I mean, it's not like they had a doctorate degree. I mean, they should they they gotta have a clean record, I would assume, to drive on the airport property. And I'm sure that they're gonna get some sort of driving privileges revoked at the airport after that maneuver. I don't really know how it works, but

Tom (19:48): But it shows to you, like like Mike said, like LAX is like the terminal everything is like right in the middle. And then on the other side, you have four runways. There's two runways on one side and two on the other side. And there's all kinds of stuff going on. Where I land on the on the southern side of the runway, or the airport complex, that's where all the cargo stuff is.

Tom (20:04): But all that stuff is going across all those runways too. And there use some runways for takeoff, they're using some for landing, and then on the other side, the same thing's going on. So there is just so much stuff going on that, you know, there's so much happening around the airport and everything else that it's just not about the

Mike (20:20): Like I said, that's every airport. I mean, it's every airport. You know, we we we've been talking about LaGuardia and DCA because they're smaller and they've been in the news a lot lately, but the traffic like that is every airport and they're not all on radios. I think they if they're taxed across taxiways and runways, I think they need to be. I know they do if they're on runways.

Mike (20:38): Maybe someone else can chime in and and let us know how that works, but I know the catering trucks aren't on there, and they taxi around our ramp and stuff all the time.

Unknown Speaker (20:46): So Oh, yeah. Yep. And and, you know, kinda like we talked about God last forbid,

Unknown Speaker (20:51): you hit a fuel truck, you know?

Tom (20:52): My god. We talked about the other day though, like, and then I think we're waiting to kinda find out what happens with the cockpit voice recorder from the the LaGuardia crashes, like, what awareness were did the pilots have? Because you really have to have that. Just like, you know, when you teach your kids how to learn how to drive, like, that kid with the ball, you know, in the corner that's looking at you,

Unknown Speaker (21:12): how long

Unknown Speaker (21:12): till he lets go of the ball and it's in the road in front of you? Like, need to be aware of these things.

Mike (21:16): Just went to LaGuardia yesterday. First time I've been there since the accident. First time I've been there in a while. But I'm not gonna lie, when we were landing, I was kinda like watching both sides of the road, was, you know, when we got cleared for takeoff I was looking at both sides of the road, you know. Yeah.

Mike (21:29): And it kind of gave me that realization that yeah, it does happen fast and we talk about it and we think about it, but you know, I'm actually processing it while I'm looking at it, it's man, it happens quick.

Tom (21:41): Yeah, does and you're going how fast are you going? A 150 miles an hour and then maybe the car's going 30 miles an hour, like there's you're at a constant bearing decreasing range, there's not a lot of time.

Mike (21:50): And it's another reason why, you know, we need when we taxi, we need to, you know, abide abide by our taxi speeds and not speed. I mean, it it sounds simple, but sometimes you almost gotta ride the brakes if you're light because these planes will start rolling pretty good even at idle thrust. Yeah. You know, I mean, there's a an airline known for taxiing fast out there and thankfully, they haven't killed anybody yet, but they they go pretty quick.

Unknown Speaker (22:14): Yeah. They get bad when I'm going slow because I got contract problems. Contract problems, Can I get another taxi route?

Mike (22:19): Remember American back in like the February and stuff? Yeah. You get behind them and you really were taxing like two knots, like Yeah. That frustrating going into Dallas behind their old MD eighties and stuff, their super eighties.

Unknown Speaker (22:30): Don't bang on that MD eighties.

Unknown Speaker (22:31): My gosh. I'm not banging on it, but they were taxing like negative knots, man.

Unknown Speaker (22:36): There you go back. We're gonna we're gonna back this one in today. The MD 80 has the same cockpit as the DC nine that I flew with that same avionics upgrade. Yeah. It was pretty cool.

Tom (22:46): Yeah. I was gonna say else too. Oh, do you give, like, a brief part of your, like, taxi briefing, do you brief the first officer to be like, hey, if you see, you know, certain things, like, you can please step step on the brakes. The brakes are both of ours. Do you ever see something like that?

Mike (23:02): Yeah. I have. You know, I'll say, hey, if you if you feel we need to stop, stop on them, and we can talk about it later. You know? You don't have to be like, oh, like because by the time you explain it, I process it, maybe we hit it, you know?

Mike (23:12): But

Tom (23:13): Well, Mike, I think that kinda leads into our next topic, which is United flight that was in Denver in the de ice pad, and they managed to swap some paint with a couple de ice trucks. So this was March 6, A United Airlines Boeing seven thirty seven eight hundred collided with two de icing trucks at Denver after the jarts jet started taxing prematurely. Its crew having apparently believed the de icing was complete. Now I will say that de icing is a little bit of a complicated event. It's not impossible rocket science, but there is a script, there's a procedure, there's a flow to it.

Tom (23:48): The way you get to call the deice man, he you know, you get a slot, then you taxi over there. The ground control knows you have the slot. They put you in a certain place. There's an area set out with the deice pads where there's lines that go in specifically numbered, and then you get over that area, you call another guy, you call the ice man. He tells you what slot you're gonna go in, and then you wait for that.

Tom (24:08): Once that guy tells you to go in, you go into your slot, and then you talk to the guy that's actually in the truck. And then that guy gets the trucks going, he asks you what you need, and in the meantime, he's gonna ask you if you're fully configured for de icing. And at that point, you run your checklist. You gotta turn off the air from the outside so that you don't get the fumes from the the glycol glycol what is it? Glycol?

Unknown Speaker (24:29): Yeah. Glycol.

Mike (24:30): Yeah. The glycol mixtures. Yeah.

Tom (24:32): Yeah. Because it just stinks and it's not it's probably not, obviously, it's not good for you.

Mike (24:35): It's probably not healthy to be breathing, dude.

Tom (24:37): Right. I think it's a corrosive material too. But anyways, so that's the dance that you do to get in there. Was that

Mike (24:44): Is that the is that the procedure for Denver specifically? I don't know. I haven't de iced in Denver. I don't know if I ever have. If it has, it's been years.

Unknown Speaker (24:51): So I don't know, but that's a good point.

Mike (24:53): So that's that's my that's the thing is that's where it becomes kind of complicated is every airport is different. Every airline is different. Maybe you have maybe they have a united employee doing the de icing. Maybe they have contract. I'm assuming Denver, they got United employees doing it there because that's their major hub, right?

Mike (25:09): Where their headquarters is and everything. That's where their training and everything is, so I'm assuming it's, you know, they got it down there. That's why this is kind of surprising that they did this in Denver to me and not, you know, some outstation where they're not they're unfamiliar with the procedure. Maybe maybe they are so familiar with the procedure in Denver, they got a little lax and a little complacent. I don't know.

Tom (25:30): I think that's a really good point too, Mike, because when I go to some place, like, I go to Toronto and I get de ice there, that is a complex place. Now, the Air Canada guys, they're used to doing that all the time, but I'm not. You're on Yeah. And it's you get, like, there's like lights that bring you in, there's signs

Unknown Speaker (25:46): It's like

Unknown Speaker (25:46): a car

Unknown Speaker (25:46): wash there.

Mike (25:47): Yeah. And you I remember doing it at Calmer, you know.

Tom (25:49): It really is. But you if you're not playing the game to get, like it'd be like you driving up with, like if I took Grace to the car wash right now, she'd be like, what? How do I put the what how do I make it go? Like, where do I start? Where do I start?

Tom (26:02): It's kinda feels like that because you don't know what it's like, and there's this procedure that's going on to ultimately get you into the spray down area. But if you don't have what it takes to get in there, like, you got a problem. You're not gonna get sprayed off. Like, if you don't pay for the the car wash back of the thing, you're It's not gonna turn on.

Mike (26:19): But then when the de icing is done, and this is pretty uniformity, like, they will make a a de icing report or anti icing report, and they will talk to the captain over the radio and say, hey, we started the last time at this. You are all clear. Have a good day or whatever. So I'm just kinda wondering where that call was, if they got that call, if they thought they got that call, if they were busy doing something else, whether they should have been or not and they got distracted. I don't know.

Mike (26:45): I don't know. And they hit two trucks. It wasn't like they nicked one. They flipped one over and the guy got hurt, like

Unknown Speaker (26:52): Yeah. It's not funny. I'm sorry.

Unknown Speaker (26:54): It's I mean but it's like how does that happen?

Tom (26:57): Well, I'm laughing because according to the flight crew statements, they were parked at the De Ice Pad C, so in Spot C 5, which like we said, they get a number and all that stuff. The de ice procedures occurred, but the flight crew stated they were engaged in a conversation, and that's when the first officer heard the de ice team communicate the post de icing briefing, which is what you just said, Mike. They give you the briefing that's at the end of everything, and that's the most important thing that you need to hear when you That's how

Mike (27:22): you calculate that's how you calculate your hold over time and everything, cause your time is depicted on when do they start that at last application and what kind of glycogen milk, what kind of glycol mixture did they use, you know, like so then you can figure out, hey, I'm good for twenty minutes, I'm good for an hour, I'm good forever, I'm good, you know, whatever it is. So you need to know that time. Like you have to know that time if there's active precip. I mean, if there's not active precip, then it's not as important, but they're still gonna give it to you.

Unknown Speaker (27:50): Yes. They have to, you know. So And you guys still have to put it into your computer because you went to the dice pad, they the company needs to know that, like, that happened.

Unknown Speaker (27:57): Yeah. We only

Unknown Speaker (27:58): do it for

Unknown Speaker (27:58): we only do it when we're when we're anti icing. If we just de ice, we don't have to submit the report, but they still will read you this read you the, you know, read

Unknown Speaker (28:08): you And we don't know what they were getting. I don't know what the weather was I don't know. With this. But if you are in a conversation I mean, it can happen because you could sit there, you

Mike (28:16): know, ideas When when did that when did that story come out with United and JetBlue possibly hooking up? Was that March 6 during this? Were these guys talking about merger talks?

Unknown Speaker (28:27): That's not distracting in the cockpit. Mean They might just got it on their phone. Hey, did you get that alert? I got the alert. Here we go.

Unknown Speaker (28:33): We go. Let's go.

Mike (28:33): Or whatever, like, I mean, we're we're human beings. We get, you know, we, you know, contract talks, you know, it gets very distracting. I remember when I was at Comair and we were short staffed, you'd be calling in range because we didn't have a cars and they'd be like, hey, f o Nicholas, you need to call, you know, blah blah blah and call crew services and and it became distracting and our ASAP reports like went way up. So the union was like, hey, you need to stop doing that and call people after they set the parking brake.

Unknown Speaker (29:02): Stop telling

Mike (29:03): them other because then for the next fifteen, twenty minutes during the critical phase of flight of approach, all you're doing is and like, I don't know how else to say it, you know? So

Tom (29:14): Yeah. And if you're sitting in the in the like, the MD 11 could take, like, forty five minutes of DI, so you'd be sitting there with a parking brake. It won't take that long, but it's gonna take more than two or three minutes. So you'd sit there and there's nothing like, you just start talking about stuff. Because the parking brake's on, you're set up, you just wait for the iceman to call you and say, you're good to go with this time and this fluid, you know, then they'll and what they will do is they'll say, when you're fully ready or something like that, contact so and so Ground for

Mike (29:39): taxi or ramp or whoever. Yeah. So there's a lot of things there and I feel like Denver's gotta be busy enough that, I don't know. I just don't know how to get so many things in motion like that. Or maybe they gave clearance to somebody another plane next to them and they were distracted and they thought it was their clearance.

Mike (29:55): I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (29:56): Yeah. And I forget how

Mike (29:59): And when you start moving the plane, clear left, clear right, pretty standard stuff. But then you get complacent and you say it without looking, mean, happens, I'm sure.

Tom (30:10): This is a three twenty it's a seven thirty seven eight hundred. So, you know, and I'm the m b 11, I can't see the tail. I can't see well, obviously, nobody can see the tail, but I can't see the wing. I can't even see the wing in the m v 11.

Unknown Speaker (30:22): You can't see the wing tip?

Unknown Speaker (30:24): No. We can't see anything. It's too far back. It's too swept. Yeah.

Tom (30:27): So I don't know where those guys are. But when you're in the De Ice area, like, all those trucks, like, have the things up and you can kinda see them. They'll regroup, like, they'll come forward. There's probably well, I wouldn't say there's only usually two because there could be more. You never know because they can have other trucks come up There's Yeah.

Tom (30:45): There could be one, but you usually see them, like, come forward or everything and but, yeah, you need to clear that left and right, and you need to make sure, and I I mean, I personally, I double checked like three times before we roll the thing out

Mike (30:57): of And then again, like, you talked about how you, like, shut a lot of things down and you know, some places you can they want you to de ice with the engines off. I'm assuming Denver they're good with you leaving them on because these guys clearly taxied right away, so they didn't take the time to start an engine. So but you do have, like, checklist to run. I feel like by the time you ran that, these trucks would be out of the way. I don't know.

Tom (31:23): Yeah. You have to have it. May and maybe they just didn't didn't do that. Maybe they got told that they thought that the ice guy was like, hey, guys need to go. But yeah, you have to reset all the stuff you have, because sometimes you'll run your trim, it'll be like full nose down.

Tom (31:33): You'll have you need you have to reset your flaps for takeoff and things like that. Interesting. And I'm all I'm real concerned too about anytime I have a flap handle or I'm gonna move something that's outside the airplane that nobody is around there because that's the last thing you need to do is move something when someone's out there now. Probably not critical for the de ice trucks, but just in general. I'm just saying in general that's like Yeah.

Mike (31:54): But there was a de ice, one of the guys got injured, you know, when they when they got hit. So it's probably the guy in the bucket, I'm assuming.

Unknown Speaker (32:00): Yeah. If that thing hit the hit the

Unknown Speaker (32:03): And when I talk about bucket, it's basically like you see like a power truck. It's kinda like that. A guy goes up in the bucket and sprays the airplane.

Tom (32:09): Yeah. So Yeah. He goes yep. Exactly. Yep.

Unknown Speaker (32:12): And you see him up there and he's got like his microphone on and he's

Mike (32:14): Think about being in that bucket of a of a power truck and the plane flips you over. It's probably not, you know, it's it's lucky the guy only got injured and wasn't something worse.

Unknown Speaker (32:23): Did you say, Mike, you think the guy can drive the d i's truck from up in the bucket on the top part?

Unknown Speaker (32:28): I I someone said that. I don't I don't

Unknown Speaker (32:31): think don't know the answer to that.

Mike (32:32): I don't know about all of them. I I think just like you got the really nice ones where it's like enclosed and everything, know, the cancer free ones.

Unknown Speaker (32:42): Yeah. Right. Because you

Mike (32:44): see those guys in the old school one where the open bucket that really is like the power truck and it's like on a windy day and he's just spraying and he's spraying but it's just backwashing his

Unknown Speaker (32:52): He's got like a a hose, like a nozzle, right? Like It's like a fire hose, yeah.

Unknown Speaker (32:57): And it's just a spraying all over him and I'm like, oh my god. Now you gotta get in your car and drive home with all because you get it on your shoes when you do the walk around, and it's kinda slick and slimy, and you wouldn't want it all over your face. No.

Unknown Speaker (33:11): K pop demon hunters, Haja boys breakfast meal and huntrix meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you

Speaker 8 (33:19): say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boyz could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

Unknown Speaker (33:26): It is an honor to share.

Speaker 8 (33:27): No. It's our honor.

Unknown Speaker (33:29): It is our larger honor.

Unknown Speaker (33:31): No. Really. Stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side.

Unknown Speaker (33:39): By participating McDonald's while supplies last.

Unknown Speaker (33:42): Ever tell a story about when I worked at the phone company in the bucket truck?

Mike (33:47): I don't know. Tell it again.

Tom (33:48): So we had we had to go to, like you learn I worked for the phone company for the summer times in when I was at the phone company or in the college. So we had to go up the ladder. So you go up the ladder, and one time this guy got a call because this other guy was up on the ladder, and he he got scared, like, he got he was afraid of heights. He didn't wanna be up there. And so he

Unknown Speaker (34:12): I get that.

Tom (34:13): Called the guy on the because you could clip into the phone lines, like, you went up there, you know, to work on them. So he called the guy on, like, you had, like, this little hand thing that you had and he goes, can you do you have your bucket truck? The guy's, like, yeah. And he goes, can you come over here? I need help.

Unknown Speaker (34:27): And so he goes over to the guy's address or whatever, and there's a guy up in the pole smoking cigarettes, and his legs are shaking. He had to go up in the bucket truck, get him down. He was scared. I didn't like it. I didn't like being up on those poles either.

Unknown Speaker (34:41): Especially on a windy day, bet that's a little

Unknown Speaker (34:44): The pole moves. It really does. It's not cool.

Unknown Speaker (34:46): For

Tom (34:46): sure? Yep. Yeah. Not not good at all. So the flight crew is informed that they had not been cleared to exit the the ice pad when they contacted the ice man and they had collided with two d ice trucks.

Tom (34:57): There's pictures of that, Michael. I'm sure you're gonna pop those up there too so you'll see them. But, yeah, not good. And especially now, you know, because it kinda comes up as kind of the end of the winter where the beginning of winter, everyone's

Unknown Speaker (35:07): like, you gotta get ready your de ice procedure.

Tom (35:08): Well, now it's the end of winter. Maybe you're thinking about spring and things like that, but hey, you might still have to spray off, so you gotta keep those procedures kinda in mind still. Hey, Mike. A big thing happened yesterday with the Artemis two mission splashdown came back in San Diego. Do you have any idea what speed they reenter the atmosphere at?

Unknown Speaker (35:25): I don't. I know

Tom (35:27): 24,000 miles per hour.

Mike (35:30): Yeah. See, can't even comprehend what that means. Know, it's such a big number, like it doesn't you don't have any realization of really how fast that is.

Unknown Speaker (35:38): No. You have no clue, right?

Unknown Speaker (35:39): You're just like Elon Musk money. I really don't know how much money that is. It's

Unknown Speaker (35:43): it's What's it's that? I don't know.

Mike (35:45): Your brain just turns off at a certain point, you know?

Tom (35:47): Yeah. So they they technically call the reentry at 400,000 feet. Do you remember the guy who did, like, he jumped Skydive? Parachute?

Mike (35:58): Yeah. The skydive He from just died recently.

Unknown Speaker (36:02): Did he really? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (36:03): I don't know if he had cancer or something. I don't know. But yeah, he just died like, I don't know, within the last six months.

Unknown Speaker (36:10): That's awful. I didn't know that.

Unknown Speaker (36:12): Yeah. Because I saw it in news and then I started watching that with my with my boys, you know, like the skydiving from there's a Red Bull skydive from space or whatever. That's crazy.

Unknown Speaker (36:19): Yeah. And he rode like a balloon up there, right? That had like a platform, like a helium or some kind of balloon? And then he got to but he jumped from like a 120,000 feet, not 400,000.

Mike (36:31): Well, he's gotta jump where there's some sort of gravity, I guess. Right? I mean

Unknown Speaker (36:35): Well, you because yeah. And then I think there has to be kind of friction because he got into, like, some kind of a turn or something too when he was coming down. You just saw it. Right?

Mike (36:42): I think he started getting, like, a little out of control, if I remember. But

Tom (36:46): And it can knock you out. Like, if you start spinning too fast up there, like, I mean, I guess the shoot would come out automatic. Anyways, that's not the

Unknown Speaker (36:53): point of the story. Plan.

Tom (36:54): Yeah. So Artemis two came back, and they came back from the moon. I they keep talking about the toilet issues, but I haven't heard too much more about that. But when it comes through the atmosphere, the parachutes open at 22,000 feet. So I thought that was kinda cool.

Tom (37:09): There's three big parachutes that that come out. But anyways, this was a big mission for research for the next possible manned mission to the moon in '20 Yeah. '28. So I guess the capsule keep going. You guess the The capsule capsule for yeah.

Tom (37:25): I guess it worked good. Like, that was pretty much what they wanted to do. They just wanna check on it to see if it everything worked right, you know?

Unknown Speaker (37:31): Yeah. I mean, I guess the people walked off the ship, so I guess it worked good enough.

Tom (37:36): Yeah. I guess it has like a like, there's something else like a there's like a main body to it, and then the the the thing that reentered, like, popped off, and then they just left the the other thing behind. I don't know.

Mike (37:47): There's some people on x saying that cause the footage was so grainy when it showed like them getting the helicopter picking or the boat picking them up and everything. The footage was from a helicopter like, how can they get, you know, perfectly clear pictures from space, but they can't get perfectly clear pictures on and I'm like, that's how you know NASA's fake and dah dah dah I'm like, this is a Navy helicopter that's probably miles away from the splashdown zone so that they don't get hit by the freaking, you know, capsule, right? Zoomed in as best they can as opposed to a plane or a camera that's right there on a ship, like, completely different, you know, so people Yeah. It's totally different.

Unknown Speaker (38:26): It's a soundstage. That's soundstage 12 in LA. I can see it. Do you see it? I can see why is the wind blowing?

Unknown Speaker (38:31): I can why is it there should be no wind in the in the ocean. I don't like the conspiracy stuff, man. I just did a big conspiracy rant with my buddy Ryan. He's like, need to get your tinfoil hat, man. I was like, yeah, you're right.

Unknown Speaker (38:41): I get to calm down.

Mike (38:43): But this one, I mean, like, you know this went to space, you know they came back, like, I mean, there's there's so much evidence to that, you know, so I don't know. People just I don't know. It's grainy footage because that it's a navy helicopter, it's not a news helicopter with movie cameras on it and it's x mile miles away.

Unknown Speaker (39:01): Then where's the WiFi? Who's got the WiFi out in California anyways? Out of this a 100 miles

Unknown Speaker (39:05): Pacific Ocean.

Tom (39:06): But I'll tell you what, Mike though, if you look at the Tic Tac video, that's where that stuff happened. Don't think about that. But like I was saying, so the the cone shaped section with the astronaut sat, that detached from the the reentry module and the the the thing that they detached from that had all the power and the propulsion, the comms equipment for most of the missions. So they don't need it. It it it was going on its way back into Earth anyways, so it burned up on the reentries.

Tom (39:34): That's that with that. Welcome back the NASA astronauts, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and also the Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the first people to leave low earth earth orbit since 1972. So we hope all the space nerds enjoyed our coverage of the Artemis rocket mission, maybe, as well as the toilet talk discussion that we had before. I got some feedback from that. People enjoyed that.

Unknown Speaker (40:04): I don't know if you heard anything about it.

Unknown Speaker (40:05): I haven't heard anything about it.

Unknown Speaker (40:07): If you didn't hear tell stories about the broken toilet, you need to go back and listen to last week's episode because I thought it was pretty funny. We snuck some jokes in there that were kinda fun.

Mike (40:16): There's always room for potty jokes.

Tom (40:18): Of course. Of course. We gotta bring the show back down to the lower lows. Mike, you wanna talk about anything else?

Unknown Speaker (40:25): No, man. Get out of here. I know you're going out of town, so have a good trip.

Tom (40:28): Coming to Florida. I hope so. I I'm the second jump seat listed on a flight and the flight is full, so we will see. Maybe Grace is coming to Florida. We'll see if I make it.

Unknown Speaker (40:38): Alright, man. Alright, Mike. See you next time.

Unknown Speaker (40:40): Stay tuned.

Mike (40:41): You've been listening to the Black Box Aviation podcast. Real pilots, real stories, and aviation news the way it's actually talked about in the cockpit. If you like what you heard, make sure to like, subscribe, and follow so you miss an episode. Until next time, keep the blue sign up, and we'll see you at Al

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Unknown Speaker (41:31): The two.