Frontier Flight 4345 Runway Collision: The Denver Incident & Pilot Stories from the Road

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Unknown Speaker (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 (0:54): Strap in.

Unknown Speaker (0:57): Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Black Box Aviation podcast. One of cohost, Tom, joined by Mike. Mike, what's happening over there?

Unknown Speaker (1:02): Tom, what's going on, man? How you been?

Unknown Speaker (1:04): Dude, I'm cold. Why is it cold in Connecticut?

Mike (1:07): Yeah. I I just flew when I was up in Hartford, and I'm like, you guys know winter's over. Right? Like, record breaking heat in Florida, and I go up there and it's like 40 degrees and misty rain. I'm shooting a cat three approach into Kennedy, and like, what is happening in the Northeast?

Unknown Speaker (1:20): I don't know, man. Somebody needs to wake up to the Northeast and say, it is time to get warm here. And I don't know if you saw this, Mike, but speaking of getting warm, there was an accident in Denver where a Frontier flight struck a pedestrian. But pedestrians aren't supposed to be on the airport. I don't know if you knew that either.

Unknown Speaker (1:38): That's kinda supposed

Unknown Speaker (1:39): to be. There was that one in Kennedy a few years ago where the guy rode his jet ski up and then try to start walking to the terminal across the runways, but

Unknown Speaker (1:45): And he's in the track of the waterway. We gotta talk about that for sure. I got a buddy of mine from Cape Air told me something. I'll tell you about that. We got a hit last week.

Unknown Speaker (1:54): We were talking about departure weather when you get pulled over and you gotta take off, the captain says, yep. We're not going anywhere yet. We're gonna bring that up again. Stories to the road, Mike. We're bringing this segment back.

Unknown Speaker (2:03): You had a line check, so we're gonna talk about that as well, what that means, how that works. And, hey, and and United had a possible drone strike last week in San Diego. So drones keep coming up. They're not going away. I saw a video clip of Amazon had drones that they were launching and recovering.

Unknown Speaker (2:19): Let's get right into it with last Friday or late Friday night, just this past Friday. Frontier flight 4345 struck a person on the runway. That flight was going from Denver to Los Angeles. There's 221 people on board. It was an a three twenty one neo operated by Frontier

Mike (2:38): the bigger crime? Trespassing or putting that many people on an a three twenty one?

Unknown Speaker (2:43): Two hundred twenty one people used to be on, like, a wide body DC 10 back in, the seventies, you know? Like, they they would serve steak, And even on Denver to Los Angeles, they probably have steak service and and the works. But now it's a crammed Frontier two twenty. Look at it. If you're a Spirit customer and you're looking to stay in the ultra low cost company marketplace, the place to go is Frontier because they're gonna cram you in and make you feel just like you were at Spirit.

Unknown Speaker (3:10): Except they probably don't have the same staff that they did at Spirit, which were awesome. We talked about those guys before. But, this is crazy because, like you said, Mike, this doesn't happen that well, I'll preface that because I'm gonna tell talk about a statistic that I found later. But there are strange occurrences of, you know, people being on the runway and have but never has it been to the point where the this guy's in the takeoff roll and he they must have saw him. They had to see him.

Unknown Speaker (3:41): Right? Because he says we hit somebody.

Mike (3:43): Yeah. I mean, they saw him, but it was probably, you know, really close to impact. I mean, like because it was nighttime and he's you know, know, they they hit him at, a 120 some knots. So it was well down the runway too. Because you guys They were fast.

Unknown Speaker (3:57): Close to

Mike (3:58): they were close to v one. You figure three twenty one that's loaded like that. Their v one speed's probably one thirty eight ish, give or give or take a few knots, know, depending on a bunch of things, but, so if they're a 120, I mean, they're really close to that, you know, that we've talked about the decision speed of v one and not turning back, you know. So that they were smoking.

Unknown Speaker (4:20): But why do we know they're going that fast, Mike? How do we know that as bystander recappers?

Mike (4:25): The ads the ads data that people have looked up online.

Unknown Speaker (4:30): Oh, and the video that somebody shot out the window.

Unknown Speaker (4:33): Oh, yeah. Yeah. They were they were screaming.

Unknown Speaker (4:35): They're going fast. Yeah. And this is where the I think that this tragedy, I guess you'd say, comes into play because it ends up being a horrible, horrifying accident. And it's gruesome and graphic, and the people there were subject to some nasty scenes as it got off the airplane. But let's go into,

Mike (4:55): like I saw people after they evacuated, they're, like, taking selfies in front of the engine with their kids. I'm like, it's probably kinda disturbing. It's definitely graphic looking. Plus, the thing's still smoking. I mean, you you don't know what's gonna happen.

Mike (5:07): Like, get away. Like, why are we doing this? Like, I don't.

Unknown Speaker (5:10): And of course, somebody comes down the slide and they're carrying their their roller board and they're carrying There

Mike (5:16): some people that were injured had to go to the hospital. Nothing severe, I don't think, but, like, there were definitely injuries and I don't know, maybe they're, you know, lawsuit looking going to the hospital, maybe they're really hurt, I don't know. But people get hurt. We talked about the evacuations. People get hurt in every evacuation, so it's one of those things that you got to decide as a as a captain when you make that decision.

Mike (5:37): Is it safer on the airplane or off the airplane? And they said there's smoke in the cabin, and you still know what's gonna happen. So probably a good call.

Unknown Speaker (5:43): Yeah. 12 passengers reported to have minor injuries. Five were transported to the hospitals, and you can hear them like, I think this is a good example too because if you watch the video of people coming off the slide, you can actually hear their clothes, like, making, like, that friction noise on the slide. Yeah. Like, we've done it before Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (6:00): In Yeah. We have. And it burns. Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (6:04): Like, if you hit your elbow, like, and because you're wearing, like, a polo shirt and we're in, a controlled environment, but you go down a slide, you still get, a rug burn on your arm.

Mike (6:13): And they're talking about, like, the flight attendants back in the day, like, with their pantyhose and things like that, that they would just, like, melt onto their legs going down the slides and things, like, it's pretty crazy.

Unknown Speaker (6:24): Yeah. So let's go into this. So they're on the takeoff roll and the pilots reject the takeoff, and they report to tower that they have an engine fire and that they're going to evacuate on the runway. And also pastors noted that the cabin began to fill with smoke. So and then if you back that data up with the the person taking the video on the takeoff roll, which probably you probably think that almost every flight departures video.

Unknown Speaker (6:51): I video departures when I take off to put on Instagram.

Mike (6:54): A lot of people do nowadays. Right? So and then they're Yeah. Just cool, exciting. We've always talked about there's still a romance of flying, and people are excited to do it, and now that you have phone cameras on every phone, like, why not video it?

Unknown Speaker (7:06): So they they impact this person that's on the runway, and he must have gone into the engine, and it the engine reacts, like, essentially explodes. There's some kind of combustion event inside the engine, and you see the flash, like, in in the video that's being taken and so, you know, there's there's a serious event. And of course, this is why they decide to evacuate the run. They I would guess they probably had a fire indication too. Would you I mean, you think so, Mike?

Unknown Speaker (7:33): Probably.

Unknown Speaker (7:33): I don't I honestly, I don't know. It it just depends on where it was and the you know, but I don't know. Any It's possible.

Unknown Speaker (7:40): They're not showing pictures of the the engine intake because there's and they even say there's human remains on the runway. My buddy Jay texted me, he goes, human remains on the runway. I'm like Yeah.

Mike (7:49): I mean, it's basically just throwing someone into a blender and what do you think comes out the other end or, you know, I mean, like, that's exactly what happened though. I mean, it's graphic as it is. That's it was graphic scenery at that airport. I mean, it

Unknown Speaker (8:00): just Somebody told me, It's like the salad shooter. Do you remember the salad shooter?

Unknown Speaker (8:05): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (8:05): We forget if we're going down the this road of childish we're going down the road of childish antics. We might as well just go there. So, yeah. The salad shooter, that's an old school thing from maybe the nineties. You'd put the the vegetables in and it would kinda well, you get the picture.

Unknown Speaker (8:23): Maybe Mike can put that in the YouTube, the salad shooter.

Unknown Speaker (8:26): We'll see what I can find.

Unknown Speaker (8:29): But yeah. So this is something that I think as a crew, I mean, if that if they had any indications, they probably had some kind of fluctuating n one. They must have been close to v one like you're saying, Mike. But this is a reject issue and if you have continued fire notifications, then you're probably gonna evacuate the aircraft, especially if you're smoking the cabin.

Mike (8:48): Yeah. Once you hear once you hear the report that there's smoke pouring into the cabin, it's decisions kinda made for you.

Unknown Speaker (8:54): Yeah. This is because not just not you're not

Mike (8:56): just worried about you're not just worried about the plane maybe exploding, right? You're worried about the smoke, the damage it's doing people's lungs and breathing it and everything. You gotta get off the plane.

Unknown Speaker (9:04): You gotta get off. This is a bigger problem you think. So 31 major US airports between this this stat that I have is from twenty ten to twenty twenty two. It says there were over 268 incidents of perimeter breaches. So we talk about the perimeter breach of the airport.

Unknown Speaker (9:26): Now where I live in Connecticut in Hartford, I grew up in Winterlocks, is right at the airfield. We used to go to the ice cream stand that's like at the, I guess, the arrival end of Runway 24. And you get ice cream and sit there and watch the plains land. And if you rode your bike across the street, then there was a perimeter fence that's probably about, I don't know, eighteen, twenty feet high with a barbed wire on the top. So you couldn't just drive on, you know, ride your bike onto the airfield.

Unknown Speaker (9:55): But if you drove your car back around the back there, like, there's it's quite a bit of real estate. There'd be state troopers back there, and they kinda patrol. I think if cars stop, they'll tell them to move on. Now my dad told me a story last night about when he he grew up in that town as well, that they would go sometimes they'd need to go to, like, to another town, and there was a road that you could just drive across there, across the runway. Now this is probably, like, 1960, maybe late fifties, and there was no perimeter fence.

Unknown Speaker (10:26): Now you didn't have jet traffic. You didn't have, I don't know, how many departures arrival Hartford has a day, but it's gotta be quite a few. But he said you could drive across the runway, you didn't have to call the tower to do it. You could just do it. So I I don't know if there's any more to that, and he told me that anecdotally last night.

Unknown Speaker (10:43): So I I didn't delve too much into it, but I mean I was there to say about it. I I'd have to believe that that's a possibility in 1950 that you could just cross the runway.

Mike (10:52): Mean, I know La Romana down in the Dominican Republic. They've they've moved the airport. They built a newer airport, but like the runway used to

Unknown Speaker (10:58): go across the teeth of the dog golf course

Mike (11:00): And my dad played there one times, and there was, like, train tracks, and they'd come down and you'd hit and plane would land, and then you'd go across the runway because it went right across one of the holes.

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Unknown Speaker (11:37): Well, this is a good segue into my story, Mike, because when I was flying the Airbus into Santo Domingo one time, we were taking to on departure. It was the last leg, like, back to Boston, so it had enough of the day. I think I probably done, like, two or three other legs that day. I was first officer, but we started taxiing out and they told everybody to stop because there was someone loose in the airport. I don't know where they were loose from.

Unknown Speaker (12:02): I don't know. I never saw the person, but they wouldn't let anybody taxi and there were vehicles, like, driving here and there. I I forget what Santa Domingo. I think they only have, like, one active runway, but I think there's another one as well. But it's a big complex as far as, like, landmass goes except Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (12:21): Landmass is wide as big,

Unknown Speaker (12:22): but it is just one runway. It's long, but, yeah, just one runway. Yeah. We for,

Unknown Speaker (12:32): like I I, you know, I I can't say it was, like, two hours, but it was probably close to an hour just waiting to figure out, you know, what was gonna happen. Were we gonna go? Were we not

Unknown Speaker (12:42): gonna go? Were they gonna

Unknown Speaker (12:43): what was gonna happen? I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (12:44): Yeah. But what and what was the end result? We don't know. They're just like, okay, taxi now. And that's what the information you're gonna get, right?

Mike (12:52): And then part of that is the language difference too, like English isn't their first language, so when they're like loose on the airport, like, they're probably not very descriptive, you know.

Unknown Speaker (13:01): Very much, No. Not so. Yeah. And it wasn't like I was gonna start having a conversation with the tower to be like,

Mike (13:06): oh. You you you were looking around. You were you were like, where is this guy?

Unknown Speaker (13:11): As best we could, we were trying to figure out what was going on. Like, where is this guy? Wanna see what he's up to. Is he making a break for it? Like, it's like the guy that gets loose at the baseball game.

Unknown Speaker (13:19): You know? Yeah. Has he got his clothes on? What's he doing? Is this the guy in the yellow jacket gonna tackle him?

Unknown Speaker (13:26): Like, what's going on? So that's my my story about that and and the Dominican. Dominican. So, So, you you know, know, I guess it does happen.

Mike (13:33): Well, like I mentioned at the beginning, there was that one I got it pulled up here. I think it was 2012 where a guy said his jet ski broke down until he walked across the Kennedy Airport, like stranded jet ski.

Unknown Speaker (13:44): What year is that? You're a

Mike (13:45): $2,000,000 security system at JFK Airport. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (13:50): So and that's the thing. So how do you solve this solution? Or what's the solution in this? So you gotta say like, okay,

Mike (13:56): we have put snipers around the snipers around the perimeter of the of the airport.

Unknown Speaker (14:02): You might just up the game, like, way up there. I was gonna go with motion sensors, but sniper, I guess, you know, we could do that too.

Mike (14:10): I mean, don't know. And they and they did the investigation in Denver when they're still doing it, right? But they said that their perimeter fence was fully intact, so it's not like he took wire cutters and cut a hole in the fence somewhere, like so. You know, they gotta figure out where he came in from, how he came in, and then yeah, and then how do you prevent it from happening again, you know, because mental illness is a real thing and it looks like this was probably suicide by airplane. We don't but we don't know for sure.

Mike (14:32): Could be drugs, something like that, but they'll figure all that out.

Unknown Speaker (14:35): Yeah. You you probably have to would have to and that's kind of like another thing too. It's like you'd have to time this out to like how could you get like the freight train you step in front of a train, like it's not stopping. Right? I I suppose if you can't stop and you step in front of the airplane, but you have to make like, how far down do you go?

Unknown Speaker (14:50): Because at some point, the airplane's going to go in the air. Right? So like Right. But where do you go to make sure

Mike (14:54): that you're driving is the time to do it? You can't I mean, at night, it's hard to see, you know, and, you know, just is what it is. Right? And Denver is very spread out. That airport is it's like the newest commercial airport in the country, I believe still.

Mike (15:06): It was like one of the newer ones built, and it is very spread out. It's very well built for airplanes to get around, but it's so spread out that you could access one of those runways and no one's gonna see you, not with the naked eye. So you do need, like you were saying, like motion sensors and cameras and things like that to to track this down. But yeah.

Unknown Speaker (15:26): Yeah. Denver's a massive complex. And I I looked up some stuff. They have there are, like, intrusion detection systems that have, like, fiber optic cables that can be attached to fences. It can sense, like, if someone's trying to cut it.

Unknown Speaker (15:39): You know, you have, obviously, AI driven video analytics thermal imaging. You could have cameras that only trigger sensor, like, when they sense something. Interesting to this fact, this is I don't even know if I should say this, but I will now that I brought it up. But in Alaska, they have these gates on the fence that the moose know how to open and close. And, again, I'm not saying it's a human here, but but, yeah, the moose can, like, push the fence and open and close or gate certain gates.

Unknown Speaker (16:09): And maybe it's not across the runways, but in certain areas or something there's something to that effect. But and they're talking about buffer zones and things like that. But But I think technology can put a lot into play here and say, hey. Maybe they're gonna have to up the game here. But again, the bottom line of that is gonna be who's gonna pay for it.

Unknown Speaker (16:25): Right? That's the

Unknown Speaker (16:27): That's what it always comes down to.

Unknown Speaker (16:28): Comes down to. But, yeah, this is an unfortunate incident. It's just could

Mike (16:33): have been way worse because you have, like we said, 200 and what was it? 230 some people on the airplane. And you know you're right about rotation speed, cause an engine fire, it could have been it could have turned into something catastrophic and it could have been someone that was out there with menacing you know, intentions, not so much suicide, but someone, you know, with a bomb strapped to their chest or something. I mean, could have been bad. Oh, that's like What's that?

Unknown Speaker (17:00): I said that to my mom. I said, well, what if it was Johnny G. Hot and he was wearing a suicide bomber vest, you know, and he he ripped the cord when that happened and and that's what, you know, you don't know what that guy's up to. You have no idea. That's the scary part about it.

Mike (17:12): So and and I mean, know, and now you start wondering, you know, are there gonna be any of, like, you know, they have duplicates, know, where people say see that on the news and like, oh, that's a good idea, you know. Do we have like a rash of these things happening now?

Unknown Speaker (17:24): Yeah. This is another notable interest incident. On 05/07/2020, Southwest Airlines seven thirty seven struck and killed an unidentified person on runway at Austin Bergstrom Airport. That was a flight from Dallas. Was landing at 08:12 again at night.

Unknown Speaker (17:38): They saw an unauthorized individual on Runway 17 Right. It was later termed to be a security breach. It was just an adult male that was not had nothing to do with being there and he had jumped the perimeter fence. The left engine yeah. The left engine struck the person causing damage to engine calling, but the plan landed safely.

Unknown Speaker (17:58): So And that was that at all. Yeah. May 2020. Another incident, you know, we don't hear incidents of, you know, planes killing pedestrians or other things like that, but there was another Southwest incident. Mike, you probably remember this one.

Unknown Speaker (18:10): This was in Chicago that the jet landed long in the snow and went over and impacted a car that killed they killed kid in a car.

Mike (18:21): That wasn't that was trespassing.

Unknown Speaker (18:23): Yeah. That wasn't a trust that

Unknown Speaker (18:25): the jet plane The airplane breached the airport perimeter.

Unknown Speaker (18:29): Yep. So anyways but it's unusual for these things to occur. But yeah. So this made big news. I, you know, I didn't I don't know why this got so much attention.

Unknown Speaker (18:40): Maybe it was the video and the horrific

Unknown Speaker (18:43): Video helps a lot. And it is, you know, there's been a lot of stuff in the news about aviation. We talked about it last week. Are they on the rise? Are they, you know, it's starting to look like

Unknown Speaker (18:53): it because every week there's a big story. I agree.

Mike (18:55): But everything's on video now, right? And then you have the live ATC tapes on the Internet and all that stuff. So it's such it's just so much access to it nowadays.

Unknown Speaker (19:04): Yeah. Talking about the another incident that was on video, and this just came up. We did this little discussion of this a couple weeks ago. There was a Cape Air flight where the luggage door popped open. It's like a clamshell door on, what is it, Cessna 210, Mike?

Unknown Speaker (19:17): Is that right?

Unknown Speaker (19:18): 4 02.

Unknown Speaker (19:19): O 2. I think it's 402. So it opens like a clamshell. They were taken off, I think, of Nantucket. They had to go back and land.

Unknown Speaker (19:26): There's a video of that. So you can look that up. But anyways, I was talking to a Cape Bear guy, one of my buddies, John, and he told me that he flew for Cape Air for a long time, I think, like, ten years. He said that he would specifically brief the passengers, like, I guess, where that that it's like a big t handle latch where that is. And he says it looks like it's not latched if you're just sitting back there.

Unknown Speaker (19:49): And he's like, people have reached back there to be like, oh, this must not be latched. Let me let me help everybody out. And then they unlatch it and the door opens up, you know. And he would specifically tell them, like, do not touch that handle. Whatever you think it is or isn't, don't touch it or we're gonna go back.

Unknown Speaker (20:05): And he's like, it's not a big deal if you do, but that is he said, cause everyone in the news when this came up was like, oh, the door came unlatched and flat. How could that happen? Like, well, you know, you know, the the there could be a passenger back there that maybe put their hands on it. So he told me he would specifically tell people don't touch that no matter what you think you're doing or not doing. Do not touch that latch.

Unknown Speaker (20:30): So I thought that was interesting that he he brought that up to me. I don't even know why we were talking about that or something. I don't know. But so if you go back and listen to that or find that video, and you'll understand what's going on. Like, started talking about this the other day, yester last week was a technical question from the text line that came in.

Unknown Speaker (20:52): So and I and I don't know, I've been there before. I talked about it last week where you're taxiing out and you may or may not know, we were talking about departure weather last week too, that there's some kind of a storm coming. Sometimes you don't. You're all pumped up because you're going to Cancun or you're going to Hawaii or you're to see grandma. You don't know.

Unknown Speaker (21:10): And you're on your way out and the captain says, hey, we got some weather coming in. We're gonna pull off to the side and take take a minute and figure this out. So what is happening, like, when we do that and why? There could be a multiple multitude of reasons like why that actually occurs, but while you're sitting there as a passenger and the plane is rocking and heavy rain and thunder is like shaking the airplane, you start to get a little bit uncomfortable. Now, Mike, have you ever had to do this before as a captain and pull a jet over and wait for something or figure something new out?

Unknown Speaker (21:43): For sure. There could be a lot of other things that happen too, like, why you have to pull over as well. It could be Sure. It's a

Mike (21:47): It's a regular occurrence that we pull over. It might not always be weather. Right? Weather is probably not the wet a regular occurrence, but it happens probably at least once or twice a year, especially during the summertime. You're waiting for something to pass or or could just be your departure corridors closed from air traffic control because of weather.

Mike (22:02): Right? Or it could be weather that's actually on the runway and it's not safe to take off. So there's a bunch of different reasons, like you said. But, yeah, it happens. It's regular.

Mike (22:12): It's it's common.

Unknown Speaker (22:14): You could even be taxiing out and they tell you, hey, contact clearance delivery because you got a route change. Even as a as a pilot, you might not even have thought about where that frontal system is. Maybe you knew it was out there and, you know, something happened while you were boarding the jet, like some baggage got mixed up and time just goes by where you think you would have been departing way before that frontal system gets to wherever it is, but that frontal system has to be where a departure corridor is and traffic's not going through there anymore.

Mike (22:42): And thing is you don't know you may know where the weather is, but you don't know how that affects air traffic control and their flow. Right? You you just don't know. We don't have that information. So it could affect it more than you think, and then that's when you're getting the reroutes and the new clearances and things like that or departure delays.

Mike (22:56): So

Unknown Speaker (22:57): Yeah. And, you know, it kinda gets into a tough spot for us too as pilots up front too, because if you have a new clearance that just came through and you gotta talk to clearance delivery, everybody's gonna be calling clearance delivery at that time as well because Right. They're not just doing it to you. So now you gotta wait till you get your chance to talk to clearance delivery

Mike (23:17): and Now CPDLC has helped that a lot because they can push you a new clearance through the CPDLC, basically a text messaging system between us and air traffic controller, we can get that straight and and we can log it, so send it straight into our flight computer. So that's helped with a lot of what you're talking about now with multiple people trying to talk to Clarence at the same time. But it is, it is, it is, and it's chaotic and sometimes you don't know exactly what to tell to the people in the back of the plane because you don't really have the full picture anymore. So

Unknown Speaker (23:45): yeah, that's the And that's kind of my point. Yeah, because they're back there in the you know, if the plane is shaking I'm

Mike (23:50): gonna feel like you flying cargo is a little less stressful in this case because you don't really worry about what the people in behind you think, You know?

Unknown Speaker (23:57): I don't care.

Mike (23:57): Sometimes it's like sometimes it's like, I gotta how am I gonna explain this one? Or how am they gonna look out their window and they see it's sunny outside. You know? How am I supposed to tell them that we're being delayed for weather? You know?

Unknown Speaker (24:06): Like I mean, serious. And and, you know, what that

Unknown Speaker (24:10): they're talking about. Yeah. I landed in Cartagena once after we no. We landed in Barranquilla after I diverted from Cartagena because I couldn't land, and the customers are one after another coming up to me and going, I'm talking to my family and they're at the airport and it's it's not raining.

Unknown Speaker (24:27): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (24:28): I'm like, well

Unknown Speaker (24:28): My mom says that it's nice at the airport. I'm like, well, I don't know what to tell you. Like, I'm not choosing to sit here delayed, like this isn't my choice, like I don't I don't wanna be here,

Unknown Speaker (24:39): you know. That stuff makes me less stressed though when I'm upfront and I'm trying to manage, like, a time critical event that I'm getting a clearance, I'm putting it into the FMS, and I'm making sure that the first officer and I agree with the new route clearance, and we're not gonna get violated, and it's gonna keep us safe, and I got enough gas, and oh, yeah, it's thundering and lightning outside, and are the pass like, I'm trying to get all this stuff together, and I know the clock is ticking for the people in the back to be having panic attacks, for them to be on the phone calling people, you know, maybe like a severe thunderstorm from the National Weather Service alert goes off and everybody's phones are going beep beep beep, you know, like severe weather in your area, like that you're trying to juggle all that stuff. And that's really what we do as managers. And and we do this before we take off because we can't stop moving once the airplane goes in the air. Like, you don't have that luxury.

Unknown Speaker (25:31): So Yeah. You can't just pull over side of the road, you know. Yeah. Being on the ground pull under the overpass when it's raining and they're just waiting for the rain to pass. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (25:39): We can't do that.

Unknown Speaker (25:40): No. We can't. And it's a lot easier to sit there with a parking brake set while you try to figure all that stuff out.

Mike (25:46): I think I've asked you this before, but and I know that your answer is to it, but you've ever been in that spot when you're flying and you get into a cloud and you you start looking, you're like, man, I shouldn't be here, you know? Yeah. To that point a

Unknown Speaker (26:00): couple times. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (26:01): You're just kinda like full speed ahead, like, kinda, you know

Unknown Speaker (26:04): There's nothing you can do at that point. And I've said to myself on another occasion, I was a first officer, we were going into Tampa, we were watching the weather, like, back then the Airbus is the company I flew in, they had the weather channel up in the cockpit. It had, like, a closed circuit. You could see cameras in the back of the jet, and then it had one channel of DIRECTV with the weather channel up front, and they were showing, like, the frontal system. And and this is an arrival into Tampa, and the captain's like, no.

Unknown Speaker (26:31): It'll be good. And I can see the people on the weather channel, like, zooming in on Tampa, and I'm like and I could see the radar too in the cockpit. I'm like, I don't know. But, like, I just kinda went with him, and we got into it, and it was bad. And then all I could think about was and I think we talked about this before, like, you know the pictures when you those jets that go through thunderstorms and they land in the hail?

Unknown Speaker (26:52): Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. But it just looked like someone shot him up with a shotgun or something.

Unknown Speaker (27:26): Like, yeah, right to the nose of the airplane. Like, it's destroyed.

Mike (27:29): Just destroyed. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (27:31): In the nose of the airplane, that is actually like a thinner metal because the radar's right in there, and the radar doesn't need to have, like, full you know, needs to be able to get the radar waves back and forth through it. So it it gets chewed up pretty bad in hailstones and, you know, you're going, you know, 300 miles

Mike (27:51): an hour. Gets all shattered and everything and these guys how do you see the land with this shattered windscreen? You know, like, it becomes a whole another problem.

Unknown Speaker (27:58): You hope the cat three huddle landmarks. And and look, when we went through that storm, like, was really bad, and and I I you know, it's so loud because the precipitation is hitting the airplane. You're hoping that it's not hail and that didn't happen to us. There was no damage to the airplane. It was a very violent time and I don't and I told myself and I've told this in interview stories as well and told this other people to be like, don't be don't fall victim to that.

Unknown Speaker (28:25): Don't just sit there quietly next to the guy that's a captain that you think he knows it's okay because it's not. And and you're the one that can say don't do this, especially if you have that much experience than not

Mike (28:37): We have sharing much so many of resources now where like you were looking at DirecTV and being like oh this is the weather channel hyping it up or whatever. Now we have so many resources on that with the Wi Fi on the airplane and the apps and the weather apps that the company has supplied us and everything. So many more resources now to try to stay ahead of that, you know.

Unknown Speaker (28:55): Yeah. And these are things you learn about learn from that, you know, from flying because there's no way I would do that now even in a cargo jet with no one no passengers on board.

Unknown Speaker (29:03): Yeah. Your life matters too, right? Mean, know.

Unknown Speaker (29:06): Yeah. Like, I don't wanna go through that and you don't want to, you know, I don't wanna damage the aircraft with the company because, I mean, that's not good for anybody as well. So this is another interesting thing that happened to me one time in Fort Lauderdale. I was in Fort Lauderdale, and you know this, Mike, from being in South Florida, but the you know, there can be thunderstorms that pop up that they're not gonna issue. It's not a frontal boundaries, you know, system, so there's not a tornado associated with it.

Unknown Speaker (29:33): But it can get strong enough and powerful enough that it's producing downdrafts and wind shear. Like, that's totally okay. And those storms maybe only go to, 14 to 20,000 feet, but that's enough to pack a punch, especially if it's developing quickly, you know, and then dissipating. It's got enough pop to push down enough wind. So I was there was a bunch of those storms like that in Lauderdale, and we were taxing out.

Unknown Speaker (29:56): And you could see them, the big puffy clouds go up in the summertime, and you're like, that's gonna be a thunderstorm. That's normal. So we're taxing out. I forget what runway we're on, but they were calling low level winter advisories. And a Southwest jet I was at the hold short, a Southwest jet was landing in a cell that was, like, pretty much on the field.

Unknown Speaker (30:18): And my jet was shaking in the wind and and it was heavy rain and he went around. So he goes around and he said, oh, we got a low level wind shear advise alert on any aircraft. So the aircraft has wind shear detective system detection systems, and that's just detecting a loss. So you're losing essentially the wind as you're landing, and it's becoming a negative performance issue. So you need to go around, and so he did.

Unknown Speaker (30:41): And as soon as he went around, the tower called a low level winter advisory and he cleared me for takeoff. I was like, no. I'm not taking it to your takeoff clearance to go into that. That's not happening. And he was super annoyed.

Unknown Speaker (30:51): He's like, fine. Hold short. I'm like, good. I will. I'll stay here all day.

Unknown Speaker (30:56): I'm not going anywhere. But, you know, I'm surprised he

Mike (30:59): There's pressure there. There is pressure there. Yeah. I've seen guys, you know, where they've asked for extra time for wake turbulence avoidance and Tower doesn't like that. And it's like, well, you know, that's what they want.

Mike (31:10): That's you should need to give it to them. Like, God forbid you pressure them into a situation and have an accident because of it, you know?

Unknown Speaker (31:17): Yeah. I was like, no.

Mike (31:18): Forgive yourself as a pilot and make the right decision on the, you know, always go with the safety, you know. You're only talking about delaying it for a little bit. Let this thing push through and then you'll be good to go. It's not it's not a big deal.

Unknown Speaker (31:29): Yeah. Absolutely. So Let one of those other

Mike (31:31): guys be the pathfinder that we talked about.

Unknown Speaker (31:33): I knew you were the pathfinder. You found it. Oh, it's okay. I'm the pathfinder. In this case, so the there's ground sensing systems.

Unknown Speaker (31:40): That's what the tower is controlling. So it's a low level wind shear advisory system, And there's sensors on the ground that they it it compares different wind velocities, and then it detects whether, you know, there's some kind of a microburst or or gain Yeah.

Mike (31:54): You should get microburst alerts too. Microburst alerts are like a no go. Like, when that homes, it shuts the airport down. So if you get a microburst alert, it's definitely you're not getting it better not be giving you a takeoff clearance.

Unknown Speaker (32:04): Yeah. Heck, I should not be doing that. But these these are newer systems that have come into play, and because they figured out after a couple accidents we'll kinda talk about two of them in a second here. But, yeah, with the thunderstorm just it it pushes a downdraft to air, and when it hits the ground, it parallels the ground. So then depending upon where the airport is, where the runway is, and where you are, it could hit you in the face, and that's a nice headwind, and it's great.

Unknown Speaker (32:29): You're like, oh, I got this increasing performance. So you're

Unknown Speaker (32:32): Then you're gonna get to other side. Better.

Unknown Speaker (32:34): You get to the other side and now it's decreasing and that lift falls out in a second. So whenever you know, the airplane is just an airfoil, so it's just responding to that airflow over the wings. And if you're not ready for that decreasing performance, then you got a big problem. And especially because in the increasing performance, you have the power back.

Mike (32:51): You're starting to get power out. Right?

Unknown Speaker (32:53): Yeah. And you're getting lower and lower to the ground, and you have less and less time to go around, which is a massive increase in thrust, and then you're trying to escape from ground. And more and more people I talked to have said they've experienced go arounds in the airplanes. They say, all of a sudden the engines powered up, and we're we're about to land, and then next thing you know, we're back up in the air again. And and every time I hear a story like that, I'll hear the them say, oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker (33:15): And then our captain came on and he said, oh, it's the other guy's fault. He's a big idiot and they're always screwing around with us. And I'm like, yeah. It's always the other guy's fault, you know. You it's like feeding in a car on on rush hour traffic in Boston.

Unknown Speaker (33:28): Yeah. Kinda Nobody's fault.

Unknown Speaker (33:30): Sometimes it's Yeah. The I've had I got a low level winter advisory in Pittsburgh during the frontal system of boundary landing. And, you know, I went around and it wasn't my fault. It wasn't anybody's fault. It just happened to be there at time.

Unknown Speaker (33:44): That's just the way it was, you know. But yeah, so these these takeoff dangers that exist and like you said Mike, it's just being safe, right? Just defend you don't need to take a takeoff clearance, you can take off anytime you want and just hang out and wait and and that's what we did. Like, you brought this up last week with Delta Airlines flight one ninety one that was scheduled from the Fort I was going Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles for the intermediate stop at Dallas Fort Worth. This is 08/02/1985.

Unknown Speaker (34:17): It was a Lockheed l ten eleven TriStar. It encountered a microburst microburst on approach to land at DFW, and it impacted the ground just about one mile short of the runway. It struck a car near the airport, collided with two water tanks, hit some equipment, I think, like you said, and a hundred and thirty six of the hundred and sixty three people died. Twenty five other people were injured on the ground as well. And again, the NTSB determined that this crash resulted from the flight crew's decision to fly through a thunderstorm.

Unknown Speaker (34:50): Again, like we're talking about, maybe not the greatest thing. Now these guys went through at the last minute with they encountered the microburst. But this is one of the first incidents that starts bringing into question about microbursts this low to the ground and how we can detect them and then prevent something like this from happening.

Unknown Speaker (35:07): Yeah. 1985 is technology that we have now, you know. We have way more technology now to to predict this stuff, you know. So because of this.

Unknown Speaker (35:15): Yeah. And the only absolutely, this was the kind of the start of the discussion. I don't remember it was eerie because the tail of that l ten eleven. The l ten eleven is a trifestar jet, kinda like the MD 11 where there's one engine back in the tail, and they left the tail in the aft section there for, like, a long time as they looked at the investigation. It's all, like, burned up and you can see, like, the Delta logo.

Unknown Speaker (35:34): It was just an eerie, eerie situation for that jet to sit there for that long. But the other another incident that came up was US Air flight ten sixteen. That was a flight between Columbia, South Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina, 07/02/1994. It was a DC nine dash 30. I've flown a DC nine dash 30 about a thousand hours.

Unknown Speaker (35:57): They encountered a heavy thunderstorm microburst microburst induced wind shear while attempting to land and they crashed into heavy trees in a private residence near the airport. That caused a fire, caused thirty seven fatalities on board and twenty other people were injured. Again, this was an uneventful flight into Charlotte until there were thunderstorms in the vicinity. The tower told the asked the guy in front of him what was going on, and that pilot reported, quote, smooth sailing, end quote. So not good when the guy in front of you tells you it's it's smooth sailing.

Unknown Speaker (36:34): So right before the flight and final approach tower issued a wind shear warning to all aircraft, but it was on a different frequency that was the the US air flight was not using. And then a minute later that the aircraft was in a serious predicament, the captain actually tried to do a go around. They tried to go around and power up, and they didn't have the power that they could do it, and they impacted the trees. So they there was actually some detection software on that aircraft as well, but they were lowering the flaps between a setting from 15 to 40, and it actually, like, bypassed the sensor during that time. It was actually a Honeywell manufacturing.

Unknown Speaker (37:18): They shoulda had a a warning, but because of the software and the newer system, it actually didn't activate the alert. So it's kind of a bummer that that happened for them. As again, as this stuff all evolved from both these accidents into the technology that we have today. I mean, I'm going through the the computer lessons right now on the triple seven and it has all kinds of predictive wind shear. The the radar will detect and predict it.

Unknown Speaker (37:47): It's not even giving you actual warnings when you're actually in it. It's saying, hey, this might be a problem in the future, and it'll show you areas where it's saying this is not good.

Unknown Speaker (37:58): Go around. Wind shear ahead. Wind shear ahead. Wind shear ahead.

Unknown Speaker (38:05): And it's just looking at, like, precipitation returns and wind data returns, and then the computer's figuring out that solution. Oh, does the Airbus have that kind of stuff too much?

Mike (38:13): Yeah. We have predictive we have predictive and reactive wind chair, two different systems. So one's reactive, obviously, it's detecting it currently, and one's predictive. So And

Unknown Speaker (38:21): that stuff I don't know about you, but I know that it makes me feel like definitely way more comfortable that those systems are on the airplane.

Unknown Speaker (38:27): Sure. Sure.

Unknown Speaker (38:28): I mean, I like to know that stuff's there for sure. Those are two accidents there that both of them kinda say. You know, I hadn't heard about the obviously, I didn't know too much about US Air ten sixteen, I knew a lot about one ninety one.

Mike (38:40): Think one ninety has been a huge case study for microburst and things like that. So

Unknown Speaker (38:46): Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mike, I think we should bring back a segment that we haven't done, probably because I've been on hiatus for six months, which my party comes to an end on Monday, Mike. They're gonna make me go back to work on Monday.

Unknown Speaker (38:58): You're looking forward to it though. So

Unknown Speaker (39:00): I am. I can't wait. Yeah. I mean, I've I'm like almost starting to pack my bag, like like a trip, like get ready for it, you know? You say you throw the stuff in your bag, like, five minutes before you gotta go, and I'm like, I

Unknown Speaker (39:10): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (39:10): I think it's time for me to pack.

Mike (39:12): Yeah. I packed pretty quick. So but, yeah, I did did my first trip in a while and I was kinda looking forward to doing it. And then but by day two or day three, I was like, yeah, I'm over it.

Unknown Speaker (39:20): I'm ready

Unknown Speaker (39:21): to come home. Unfortunately,

Unknown Speaker (39:23): Mike, I think that I'm probably gonna have that same conclusion, like, you know, in retrospect being like, I should've held on every second I had when I was home, man. Don't ever let the time go by.

Mike (39:33): Yeah. We're pilots. We're never happy. Right? Not happy at home.

Mike (39:37): We're not happy on the road. We're not happy in, like, we're just miserable people.

Unknown Speaker (39:41): Yeah. Even you Mike did it overnight in Hartford the other night, and I said, you wanna you wanna come over? And he's

Unknown Speaker (39:46): like, no.

Unknown Speaker (39:46): I can't come over. I gotta get up at 04:00 in the morning. It kid me. I gotta wash my socks. I gotta I gotta get something to eat.

Unknown Speaker (39:52): I can't go anywhere. What are you what I'm I'm a stay here in a hotel.

Unknown Speaker (39:54): It was a 4AM 4AM wake up call, so I was like, yeah. I'm I'm good.

Unknown Speaker (39:59): And and then Mike's like, why why are we in the shorts? We're we're in the short stay hotel. This is a fourteen hour and one minute. We should be in a long stay. What am I doing here?

Unknown Speaker (40:06): There's no Marriott room here. What is there's a free coffee. I need my breakfast. Is that not what you said?

Mike (40:12): I mean, that's a good cliff note version of it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (40:16): I think that's who you're thinking too. Actually, Mike never said anything about the Marriott in the the club lounge, but I knew he was thinking, like, how am I gonna get down to the club lounge and this is a stupid Doubletree. Why aren't we in got the Doubletree cookie. Right?

Unknown Speaker (40:29): You got the Doubletree cookie.

Unknown Speaker (40:30): So Yeah. Five five thousand calories of no fun. That's all you need. I remember the the cookies would come out of the counter and I'd be like, I'm gonna pass on that and the flight attendants would be like, oh, look at you. Do I

Unknown Speaker (40:42): have your cookie? Who would

Unknown Speaker (40:42): you pass on that? You're welcome to have my cookie. Whatever. Good luck with the 500 calories that that's coming with that pain.

Unknown Speaker (40:50): But Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (40:52): Know how hard I have to run to get rid of that 500 calories. But it was good it was good to be

Mike (40:56): back on the road. It was good, you know, it was good to get back in the airplane and fly and, you know, and do my job, you know, I mean, like, you still want to have a value to society, right? And so it was good to do that But yeah, it was early morning shows the whole trip, which was good because I was home by 11:00 on Mother's Day, you know, I was able to go to baseball game yesterday. So that was good. But yeah, man, stories from the road.

Mike (41:20): Had my line check. First flight back in airplane in months and I have a line check.

Unknown Speaker (41:24): See, I don't I for for me for you to say that, like, you're an instructor, you essentially give line checks, like, all day long. So Yeah. If you mess up your line check,

Mike (41:33): then I'm the stressful thing about the the line check. Right? And what what a line check is, you'll have a check airman from the company sit in sit in the jump seat with you and just evaluate. He's just there, you know, he's he's an active crew member too. Like, if you need his help, he'll help you.

Mike (41:46): It's not like he's, you know, like slashing you with a whip or anything. So he's super friendly sitting there, more than willing to help if I need something, just another crew member, another set of eyeballs on the cockpit, but he but yeah, once every two years they'll ride with you to make sure that you're just operating your procedures in accordance with SOP, the company, wants you to operate as. But what's stressful is you don't know what's going happen. It's not a script. It's the real world.

Mike (42:12): I don't know if the flight's going be smooth. I don't know if ATC is going to give us a delay and a hold. I don't know if I'm gonna have an unruly passenger start a fight or something. I don't know if I'm gonna have an engine failure or a cargo fire or a pressurization loss or I have no idea what's going to happen. Now, was nice and smooth and good weather and everything else and you know, no complaints, know, check the box and move on good for another two years, know.

Mike (42:36): But that's what's stressful about him because your job could be on the line if he deems that you're unsafe, right? Which I can't imagine that happening, but you just you don't know what the real world is gonna bring.

Unknown Speaker (42:46): That's a really good point.

Unknown Speaker (42:47): And then and then I don't know the F. O. Maybe he's terrible. You know, I don't know. It's possible.

Mike (42:52): He was very good, thankfully. But what if he sucks, you know? And like I'm over here trying to juggle two jobs at one time, you know, like it's possible. So

Unknown Speaker (43:02): Yeah. And you you see different aspects of like people in the line checks, they get they get really excited for it. You were a check

Unknown Speaker (43:09): airman, so you've done them.

Unknown Speaker (43:11): Yeah. And you see people get a little bit, you know, over compensating for like just fears of like what could go wrong. Mean, I've said Check ride

Mike (43:22): it is, right? Like you're just like stressed out before it even starts, you know.

Unknown Speaker (43:26): Yeah. And I think the the other side of that too, Mike, is like if you say, oh god, you know, anything can happen, it's a real world. But the reality is is that before the Czech airman showed up there to sit on your jump seat or sit in the right seat, whatever they're gonna do, you were gonna operate that flight anyways as the captain. So you were a 100% prepared and confident that you were gonna handle whatever real life threw at you. Who cares?

Unknown Speaker (43:50): Well, who's sitting there and watching? Well, it could be Right. I don't know. Taylor Swift could be on the jump seat. Who cares?

Unknown Speaker (43:57): Like, I'll take taking the Hummus song because this is gonna go the same way it was gonna go whether she was here or not. It doesn't matter.

Mike (44:03): Yeah and I mean, I've had it's every two years and then I've had random FAA guys in the jump seat that have just as much authority to take my certificates if they see that I'm unsafe, mean, so it's, you know, but you just do what you normally do, like you said, you're gonna do it anyways, So just operate and that's when people get in trouble on line checks from what I've seen when I've seen them, it's because they usually don't operate the way the book says, right? And then when the line check comes, they're trying to change the way they do things as opposed to just doing it the same way every time, right? Just do it the way the company wants you to do it, they're the ones that write you your paycheck. Do it that way every time and then when you have a line check, it ain't no big deal. If you're like, can do my ways better, my ways better, and then it's time to change your procedures to the company, it's hard to do that.

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Unknown Speaker (45:20): I couldn't I could never figure that out either. I mean, I I don't know why I

Mike (45:22): got trained. There's a small few guys that do that. Right? Most people don't do that. But

Unknown Speaker (45:26): But I mean, there are people that do it. I I just don't get it because, like I've

Mike (45:30): been flying this plane for twenty five years. They're not gonna tell me how to do it. That kind of crap.

Unknown Speaker (45:35): That that totally exists out there, and you're like, I don't I don't know why you're doing that because, I mean, I I got taught by the military, so I do I do it the same way they taught me. And then when I was flying two two different airplanes, one for the military and one for the airline at the same time, like, I had to do it the way they taught me, whether it was the airline or the military because I'd get it wrong. Like, I I need a procedure to do every single time. Like I've said before, when you get in that cockpit, you're essentially like an actor in a play. And me and you can go to any playhouse whether, you know, what that means a different airplane, then get in with a different cast and you do the same script because that's what you have to do.

Unknown Speaker (46:12): Because if the other guy starts doing a different script, you're like, I don't know where we're at anymore, dude. What scene is this? I have no idea what we're doing.

Unknown Speaker (46:19): Exactly.

Unknown Speaker (46:20): And I've seen guys do that online checks. I did the company I'm at now, the guy was this old crotchety dude and we got like a runway change in Miami. It's, you know, midnight and he's trying to taxi and I gotta reload the FMS and I was relatively new and he's got the line guy and he's like, what? He starts getting all huffy and I'm like, you know what, man? I'm like, how about you set the parking brake and we talk about this?

Unknown Speaker (46:42): And he was like, what? And like, that's what he had to do because the guy was out of control and I'm like, you're in your head right now and you need to get out of it so we can get on the same page again and get through this, especially if somebody's watching you. Because I can't fail I this line check, but you

Mike (46:56): actually enjoy the line checks because I like the check airman. You know, once you get up to cruise and and you're, you know, you talk to the people, you turn the seat belts on off, now we can just chat, right? And you learn a lot, because they know what's going on at the company, they know what people are doing good at, what people are doing bad at, they know the changes that have come through the company, they know the changes that are going to come and it's just good conversation, right? So I actually enjoy them. This one was no different.

Mike (47:22): I had a good time. It was a really good line check and, you know, you always take something away from it. So yeah. No. Feel good about it.

Unknown Speaker (47:31): Yeah. They they would always tell us like you should have like something to talk about like hot topics or something like that. Yeah.

Mike (47:37): And me being in the schoolhouse, they're the same hot topics, like it's the same company, it's the same, so

Unknown Speaker (47:43): Yeah. You're like again, you were an instructor. Like I have.

Unknown Speaker (47:46): Wrote half of them. Come on, man. Like

Unknown Speaker (47:48): Alright. Especially if I, you know, if I was giving you the line check on that jet too, I'd know you were an you know, a schoolhouse instructor and I'd be like, you know probably more than

Unknown Speaker (47:57): I do. So, you know, what if He came on there

Unknown Speaker (47:59): and he's like, it's always good

Unknown Speaker (48:00): to know, like, even before he started, he's like, that is, you know, gonna be an easy line check. I was like, don't say that till it's over with. Never say never.

Unknown Speaker (48:11): Yeah and Czech Airman is just somebody that's been trained to like evaluate, they get checked out by the FAA, but they're just a line pilot essentially like you are, so they're not And

Mike (48:21): I've done Czech Airman training and it's like, and I've done like the seat support for the check airman, and they'll tell me like, hey, you do this, but then you mess something up, and then they gotta try to like save the day or whatever, like, and you you did it, right? Like

Unknown Speaker (48:32): Yeah. Yeah. You do. Yeah. We used to laugh.

Unknown Speaker (48:34): The guy the sim instructor or the the sim partner that I had for check airman training, the the guy who would lean back and the the sim instructor would like give him a note and he'd read it and he'd start laughing and then I'd like, okay, so what's what's gonna happen now, you know, in the simulator?

Unknown Speaker (48:48): And Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (48:48): He would do something goofy, like all of sudden he he couldn't do something or like every he kept bumping the throttles like full full

Mike (48:54): was taxing. I was taxing. I was taking turns at, like, 35 knots and, like, sliding around the thing. He's like, woah, woah, woah. Why don't we slow down a little bit?

Mike (49:03): This was only in the simulator. This isn't real life. This is just the sim the check airman's training. This was not my line check.

Unknown Speaker (49:11): Yeah. That is this is another sign. Yeah. You do stuff like that in the sim for for training stuff, which is fun. I'll tell another story.

Unknown Speaker (49:20): I gotta tell a story about I won't tell it now, but another time I'll tell about my checkout as a Czech airman when I met the FAA guy, and then we went to the airplane to do my flight, which was the Burlington back to Kennedy. And that it's a good story. And like you said, my real world stuff happens. Well, yeah, it was happening, especially on my FAA line check, check out, check airman, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check ride. That was that was just me doing stuff.

Unknown Speaker (49:49): What's the wiki? Sorry. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (49:51): Hey. Let's talk about this one last thing before we go out here. This was the United Airlines pilot reported a possible drone collision at 3,000 feet over San Diego. This was a United flight that took off from LAX. It was going to San Diego.

Unknown Speaker (50:04): So a real short flight, so they probably were never up that high, and that's a pretty populated area to in there. And actually, they took they departed from San Francisco, and they went ninety minutes to San Diego. But again, pretty pretty populated, you know, areas you go through there. And San Diego usually only lands to the west, which is pretty standard. That's a short runway as well.

Unknown Speaker (50:25): I've never been

Mike (50:26): in San Diego. Do you believe that? Like, I've that's one of the places I have not gone into. And I I don't know. Just not I've not been up on my schedule.

Unknown Speaker (50:33): I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (50:35): Been in there a bunch when I first went to the Airbus. I thought everyone told me, oh, when you go in the Airbus, you gotta go to the West Coast, blah blah blah. And I felt like I was red eyes and I was like, oh, was a nightmare. It was so dumb. Then another time I went out there and like the second day of that trip was like a five legger on the West Coast.

Unknown Speaker (50:51): And I was

Unknown Speaker (50:51): like Yeah. I know what you're talking

Unknown Speaker (50:52): people talking about? This is this Airbus sucks. I always go back to the one ninety, like this is a bunch of crap. But, I think my bidding strategy was poor. Then we'll talk about bidding maybe next week as well.

Unknown Speaker (51:03): That's a good topic as well. Yeah. Yeah. So the conversation between the tower and the pilot says that he says it's happened on the base leg of the flight, which is usually when you're just about to turn towards final. And the controller asked him for more details, like approximate size or how many engines or style.

Unknown Speaker (51:22): And then the pilot responded that it was so small that I couldn't tell, but he said it was red and shiny. So maybe this was, like, a really small controlled, you know, drone, but at 3,000 feet, like, it's up there pretty good. And I think for anything that goes over geez, Mike. I wish I knew the the rag on the I don't know

Unknown Speaker (51:41): the rags.

Unknown Speaker (51:42): It's a certain altitude where you need actually need like a drone pilot license. It's not that high too. It's lower than you'd think, like 300 feet or something. You need a drone pilot license. Something like that.

Unknown Speaker (51:52): Three or 500 feet. If you're in the eyes, it's a good time to hit some plugs here too. If you don't know anything about drones or whatever, send us an email in the blackbox01@yahoo.com or send us a text too. It's 220 oh, start again. (203) 699-6792.

Unknown Speaker (52:06): That's (203) 699-6792.

Unknown Speaker (52:09): Hundred.

Unknown Speaker (52:09): 400. Yeah. Mike's got it. If you got an experience flying drones or something like that, you know, we can have a drone conversation. There's nothing wrong with that.

Unknown Speaker (52:15): Or if any questions, anything you wanna send in, hit us up with that as well. So yeah. There it is. 400 feet. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (52:21): So it wasn't clear if the drone actually collided with the aircraft and that's pretty tough. The the maintenance team found no damage after inspecting the aircraft. But I mean, you know, drones are good and You've

Mike (52:32): been flying and got reports from air traffic control. Hey, be wary. There's illegal drone activity at your 02:00 and 25 miles. I'm like, yeah, like we're ever gonna see it, know, we're flying at 250 miles an hour screaming, you're not gonna see it, you know, I mean, a drone might be the size of, you know, of a laptop, you know, you're not

Unknown Speaker (52:49): gonna see it. Could be small, yeah. I although I've seen, like, happy birthday balloons

Mike (52:54): engine, you're gonna know about it, you know.

Unknown Speaker (52:56): Have you ever seen a Mylar balloon go by at, like, 10,000 feet?

Mike (53:00): Yes. I've seen that too. Usually, there's a Mickey Mouse in the middle of it here in Orlando.

Unknown Speaker (53:04): Mickey Mouse. I believe that too.

Unknown Speaker (53:06): You just see, like, the white they're they're clear, then they got, like, the they have the balloon inside the balloon in Orlando. You've seen what I'm talking about.

Unknown Speaker (53:12): See them, Michael? I I had to I was forced to buy them knowing that the next day, we were going home on the plane and you can't bring My

Unknown Speaker (53:18): wife is not my wife is not gonna appreciate the story and I'll find out if she listens to

Unknown Speaker (53:21): the This is good stuff. I like it.

Mike (53:23): She got a job in college, I think she was in college, selling the the Mickey balloons on Main Street USA, baby.

Unknown Speaker (53:30): Yes. Yeah.

Mike (53:31): And then she she said she worked one windy day and she was done. She's like, I'm not doing this anymore.

Unknown Speaker (53:36): Reassign me. I'm not doing that.

Unknown Speaker (53:39): Because you're holding on to like 500 balloons, you know, and

Unknown Speaker (53:42): She just they she starts flying away.

Unknown Speaker (53:46): She's off like a 120 pounds, you know, like it's not it doesn't work out well.

Unknown Speaker (53:50): You see her go by at 10,000 feet. What was that? Anyways We're in big trouble now. I'll tell

Unknown Speaker (53:59): you if she listened to the episode.

Unknown Speaker (54:01): She listens a lot. I know.

Unknown Speaker (54:03): I know. Anyways

Unknown Speaker (54:05): Alright. Let's wrap this show up, Mike. I think we we hit a hit a lot of covered a lot of bases here this week, so I appreciate it. It was a good show, and we were probably gonna do a couple accident shows coming up as things get a little tricky. You you got a vacation and I I'm gonna be down in training.

Unknown Speaker (54:20): So we'll maybe get you a couple accident hot topics out. So again, Mike, thanks again. Again, anything you wanna add before we close it out?

Mike (54:26): No, man. I'm happy to get we I'm glad we're getting back into these story from the roads. I think people like it. I like talking about them, so it makes us it makes I don't know. I think it flows good.

Unknown Speaker (54:34): We need to keep doing that

Unknown Speaker (54:35): even if it's old stories. Well, I I like old stories too, but I tell Nicole too, like, wherever I go, like, thing things just happen to me. So I get out there again and don't worry. Things just don't happen to me whether it's in China or Oakland or Anchorage. I'm gonna share them with you.

Unknown Speaker (54:51): So

Unknown Speaker (54:52): Yeah. It'll be fun. Looking forward.

Unknown Speaker (54:53): Okay, Michael. See you next time.

Unknown Speaker (54:59): 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 don't miss an episode. Until next time. Keep the blue sign up, and we'll see you at altitude.