How Airline Pilot Scheduling Works: Seniority, Bidding, & Cockpit Secrets

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Tom (0:29): 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 (0:56): Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Another episode of the Black Box Aviation podcast. I'm on your co host, Tom. Joined by Mike Mike Mike Mike

Unknown Speaker (1:02): Mike Mike What's happening, sir? What's going on, Tom? How are doing, man?

Mike (1:06): I'm doing great, dude. We got a fun episode today. It's kinda some stuff like throwback. Throwback the clock Thursday. Well, it's not Thursday, but remember they just had, like, throwback

Unknown Speaker (1:16): It's Friday.

Unknown Speaker (1:17): It's Friday. Yeah. So we're Yeah.

Mike (1:19): Usually don't record on Friday, so my head's spinning.

Mike (1:21): I know. So we got some stuff coming up between the two of us. I'm going to training, so we're trying to move some episodes in here, which kinda messes you up sometimes because you wanna hit hot topics, especially if something is timely and in the in the news. You wanna

Mike (1:34): stay current. You wanna stay relevant.

Mike (1:35): Yeah. Absolutely. So today, we're gonna do a text shout out that came up a little while ago, and it comes back to a topic that we discussed a while ago. But also, we're gonna talk about a day in the life. So we're gonna go back in the back episodes in the archives, if you will.

Mike (1:48): And I had to sit back, Mike. There's a lot of episodes and scripts to go back in the archives and and shuffle shuffle through until I find it.

Mike (1:54): We've done a lot, man. We've pumped out

Mike (1:55): a I know, which is awesome. I love it. So we're gonna talk about what it's like to be a line pilot when you get to the gate and some things that kinda come up. And and we'll just talk about like what what we do in our job and some goofy things and and how they go. And then we got an email from Scooby.

Mike (2:10): We're gonna talk about Scooby. He is a military pilot who's getting Mike was laughing at the guy. That's his call. I asked him

Unknown Speaker (2:16): if it

Unknown Speaker (2:17): was real.

Unknown Speaker (2:17): I was like, is this a real thing?

Mike (2:19): It's totally real. So I talked to Scooby little bit this morning and anyways, so he did send this in. So we're gonna talk about this. He is a military guy that doesn't have currency and he doesn't have a lot of hours, but he's trying to get his break into the airlines. And it's kind of an interesting story, and I I hope that maybe he can come on the show, and we can kinda track his progress.

Mike (2:40): And I think it'll help a lot of the other listeners out there as they get into pilot training, airline career talk, where are they going, how does this make sense. And, Mike, this is what we bring to the table is we have experience with all this stuff from the military to regionals to furloughs to you name it, Mike. We got it. We got it here for you. That's why we're here.

Mike (3:00): That's why we do this show. That's why we had this conversation over and over again for the last ten, fifteen years. And we finally sat down and did a podcast for you over a year and a half ago. So now we're here with everybody, and we're here with you, and we're glad to do this. So again, if something comes up, I I'm going to training next week.

Mike (3:19): I'm gonna bring my mic and gear and everything. We'll do shows from there from Mississippi. That's where I'll be. And then Mike's gonna go on vacation the following week. So we got content for you, so we're gonna drop it out there.

Mike (3:31): And then if something comes up that's interesting to talk about, we'll go ahead and and cut what we can and and get it out there for you guys as well. So this, we're gonna start here. This is a a text shout out that came from Rick, and I think that this is I kinda interpreted his his question that came to us. Involves, like, how do you get your schedule? And Mike, how many times have you been asked, like, what's your route, man?

Mike (3:57): What's your route? That's the big thing that everybody wants to know. What's your route? Well, it's different. Every week, every month, every day.

Mike (4:08): The only time I had any consistency, it was when I was doing the Europe line. It was only because we went to a handful of places, so it was like two or three different destinations. But on a normal airline basis, it varies. I mean, it varies so much. It makes your head spin.

Mike (4:25): And and when Mike talks about the European flying, so he was specifically qualified to do the Transatlantic flying because you're flying a three twenty one ETOPS, so you have the engine distances, engine out alternates, and things like that. But he's specifically qualified to do that whereas the rest of the fleet pilots weren't. So you knew what destinations that you were gonna bid specifically. Now me flying, you know, the triple seven or even the MD 11, you know, in the bid pack, that's like what we look at for all the schedules. It could be anything.

Mike (4:56): Like, we're all qualified to go everywhere and anywhere. And that's just the way the company your company does it, and you it was just because too, they had just started doing that European flying. So it was very specific and new. I don't know if it's changed for you guys since that started, but maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. I'm not sure.

Mike (5:12): No. Whether you're either qualified or not.

Unknown Speaker (5:16): Okay.

Mike (5:16): It's like its own base.

Mike (5:18): Yeah. And since the MD eleven's had problems at my company, we're hopefully we talk about that at the end MD 11 update, but the seven sixes had to take over some of the flying and we do have seven six that are ETOPS, but I think that you might need that special qual as well in the seven six. So that could be a factor as well. So back to the original about how we get our schedule. Now I've talked to people about this, Mike, and you can tell me if this is not true or true.

Mike (5:47): But when I start explaining, like, how this goes down, you can see people's eye. Now they brought the question to me. Right? You asked me how do I get my schedule. Now I see their eyes glaze over as I start bringing telling them, like, how this goes.

Mike (5:59): And I'm like, like, do I just keep going with this? Do I just give up? And no. It's me. So I just keep As a matter of fact, the other day, was in this is so bad.

Mike (6:09): So I've been around so long since I've been out of work, not going to MD eleven at work, but I would let I love I was yucking it up in the locker room at the y, and I get everybody's laugh, and I'm telling stories, and then I leave. And, like somebody else comes out of the door and I can hear the maintenance guy, he's in there and he's like, geez, it's all of a sudden a lot quieter in here. I was like, it's it's brutal. He's talking about me. I almost went back in to be like, what?

Mike (6:33): Are you kidding? You talk. I was like, you know what? That he's got a good joke. I could hear them laughing.

Mike (6:37): I'm like, he can have his joke. I'll I'll move on. I'm gonna leave anyways and go back to work on Monday. Any any who's, but, yeah, it's a complicated process of like how it goes down. So and our companies are different in how we do it.

Mike (6:53): My company is does what they call line bidding. So the the all the schedules are built from like so I will dumb it down from like the first of the month to the thirtieth, and you can see him lying

Unknown Speaker (7:05): on the line. Crew the whole time, the whole month?

Mike (7:08): No. Because well, to yes. The answer is yes.

Unknown Speaker (7:12): Fly with the same crew.

Mike (7:13): That is true. You will bid with the same captain, but he's gonna drop and trade, you're not it's not gonna happen that

Mike (7:19): way. There's things that change, but originally awarded the same schedule as the captain.

Mike (7:25): Yes. You will see the captain. And what you will do

Unknown Speaker (7:29): I know you

Mike (7:29): guys are. So when I was in Anchorage, there weren't a lot that many pilots. It's a much smaller base than Memphis. Like, I would go through the guys that I did not wanna fly with. So the captain bids come out first, and I would go down and look at what they got, and then I would compare it to what the schedule that I wanted.

Mike (7:48): And I'd be like, are you kidding me? Son of a bitch. Like that guy's got because you'd see what he got. So if you get that trip, you're gonna be with him. It was only a couple guys, but I'd like, no, I can't handle that.

Unknown Speaker (7:59): Especially if

Mike (8:00): you're the whole month. It's one thing to work for a day or two, but if you're with guy for a month

Mike (8:06): Yeah. And It's a long time. And sometimes it's fun because you do fly with a guy that you like, and a lot most of the time, you don't know that person at all. Like, you so you get to know him or whatever. For the most part, if you don't if you don't gel with the personality that you're flying with, then for the most part, you guys just kinda don't see each other, like, while you're doing the trip, you know, it's it's easy enough to avoid one another or you just you go down and have dinner and, you know, you just make small talk about whatever it is.

Mike (8:34): Just don't bring up Trump because that that can open a can of worms. Look, he's a great topic of conversation, but not not at work. Leave it alone. Leave it alone.

Unknown Speaker (8:43): Try not to talk about, you know, whole politics and religion thing. It's a real thing in the cockpit, you know.

Mike (8:49): Yeah. So but, you know, so that's how we do it at my company. And, Mike, your company's a little different. How do you guys do it?

Mike (8:55): It's called preferential preferential bidding system, something like PBS. So you just basically bid the trips you want, the days off you want, the layovers you want. There's different ways to do it. I mean, there's a million ways, and there's probably ways that I don't know about. And then you just reward it based on your seniority, what you get.

Mike (9:15): And I might fly with one captain today. I might fly with a captain another captain tomorrow. So it awards the trip so that for that trip, I'll be awarded with the same first officer or whatever, but it's not month to month. It's trip to trip. It's day by day.

Mike (9:30): So It

Mike (9:31): was different with my bidding is that, like, so if I get a trip that's, like, seven days or something. Now I know I have vacation over that, and this is why guys PBS is like a dirty word at my company. No one wants to

Mike (9:42): I'm surprised that you guys that wasn't a change in your contract.

Mike (9:46): Yeah. Because I can bid if I have vacation that month, if I have a trip that's seven days and four days off, and then another trip that's like four days long, if I have vacation in the middle of that, the vacation will yeah. Knock those Those those two trips go away. So now essentially, instead of having like seven days vacation, I have from the first until like, could be like the eighteenth or nineteenth off. So you just created this huge thing, and depending on how much vacation you have, it charges you based on the credit of those trips and that gets a little confusing, but I can manipulate my schedule with more flexibility.

Mike (10:19): Now Mike still has vacation too, but it sees the vacation and essentially you have to build that schedule around that placeholder. It

Mike (10:28): the as credit time already. Let's say my vacation is thirty five hours, so it'll say, hey, we can only build you a line if we can give you a trip up to 70 or enough trips to get you to seventy hours of credit. Well, you have a week of vacation, there's thirty five hours. So now they only gotta get you thirty five more hours and they can give you a schedule. If not, if your seniority doesn't allow it, if all the trips are taken before they can give you that extra credit, that that seventy hours worth of credit, now you're on reserve.

Mike (10:53): And that's how that

Mike (10:55): Yeah. And, like, we still have reserve too, but, like, you'll see the reserve. You can bid reserve, avoid reserve. Some guys like that because they live local and they like to do do the reserve. Again, my company month,

Mike (11:09): but I live here, so I think as long as the budget works out, we'll be alright. It'll be kinda nice. So

Mike (11:15): Yeah. And you can kinda see too, like, based on your seniority, like, much did the person get called last month? Like, what were they calling people for? My company will be like, it's like a faucet. It's on and off.

Mike (11:26): Like, they'll be assigning trips, like, a week in advance to the reserve guys, and then the next month, like, nobody gets called. So Yeah.

Mike (11:31): We're coming up on the summertime here in Florida with the thunderstorm, so I'll probably get called, but it's all good. It's just expected.

Mike (11:38): Yeah. And I think right now in the triple seven, because the MD 11 is not flying, like, though everybody's flying, like, everybody's working. They can't they're begging people to fly, so, you know, but so let's go back to that. So so the very beginning when someone asks you like, what's your schedule? So explain some of it like kinda what it is.

Mike (11:54): But the the you'll get the for me, it's like the first Thursday of the month. That's when the bid opens. So it could be like, you know, the third or fourth or fifth or sixth, something like that. So, you know, that's when it opens. And then the bid is open for about seven days.

Mike (12:12): So that's when I get all the trips and I can look at everything. And I have about a week to figure it out. And that's for the next month's schedule. So when the bid closes, the bid comes out the same day. I'm gonna get my whole schedule for the next month probably by, the fifteenth of the previous month.

Unknown Speaker (12:30): That's not good either.

Mike (12:34): Maybe. I maybe I'm wrong. I I think that's about right. Twelve to fifteen. It's Yeah.

Mike (12:38): It's somewhere in the first part of the month. So if you bid like a secondary line, like you guys bid what do you call them? Build up lines? When you host with Cutwater canned cocktails, expect company. Entertain effortlessly.

Unknown Speaker (12:53): Cutwater, real cocktails, perfectly mixed. Copyright 2026. Cutwater Spirits San Diego, California. Enjoy responsibly.

Mike (13:02): Yeah. And that comes out later based on what trips weren't able to be reward awarded. And then you take a couple guys that weren't able to build their lines up to seventy hours, and they'll be like, well, we'll give you, like, five reserve days ending these two trips, and that'll give you over seventy hours or whatever. And you can bid for it. You don't have to accept it.

Unknown Speaker (13:21): So Some guys like that.

Mike (13:24): Yeah. People like that because you can you can get better trips than you would versus just getting all reserve. And we have that. They're called secondary lines, but that might for for us, the secondary line comes comes out Thursday before the the next month starts.

Unknown Speaker (13:40): So you

Mike (13:40): could have like two days to get ready for like

Unknown Speaker (13:42): That's terrible.

Unknown Speaker (13:42): A twelve day to chime in.

Mike (13:43): So in comparison, I have my schedule about the seventh or eighth of the month for the next month, and then our secondary line is probably by the fifteenth. So by the time that you're getting your first run at your schedule, we're getting our final schedule, if that makes sense. Because there's a couple of days there where you can drop and trade and drop and trade and drop and trade before those secondary lines come out. Right? So that's why those are so late.

Mike (14:10): But, you know, usually ours is by the fifteenth. We're we're solid. So And I

Mike (14:15): I would say that most airlines are similar. Everyone's gonna have their little nuances

Unknown Speaker (14:20): of they want two weeks notice for me, then they need to give me two weeks notice too. Not two days. You go you go tell your boys over there that you need two weeks notice.

Mike (14:33): Yeah. So yeah. I I don't know. No one's gonna listen to me over here. Like, that's that's the way we've always done it, man.

Mike (14:39): If I had a nickel for any time somebody told me that, I'd I'd have a big money silo like Scrooge Scrooge McQuack McDuck.

Unknown Speaker (14:46): You're doing somersaults into it off the diving board.

Mike (14:49): Oh, I love that. Those memes and gifts. I love it. I mean, every time somebody says something about the contract or, you know, something happens, I I send them that one with Scrooge McDuck swimming in his money silo. Yeah.

Mike (15:02): But so so that's how it works. Like, that's how we get our schedule beforehand. And of course, like, everything that can go down with that like, when you when I look at my schedule, like, I'm not immediate. I'm not looking for, like, who the guys I don't wanna fly with. Like, that's not my priority.

Mike (15:17): So I'm looking at the trips that I want to fly. And a lot of times you're you're bidding around, like, days that you wanna have off, like your kid's baseball game, swim meets. Exactly. And dates like anniversaries or birthday. And sometimes you'd be like, I'll say Nicole, I'm like, hey, we got these three things on on the calendar.

Unknown Speaker (15:33): Like, give me a priority number. Like, which which one is higher? Like because I'm not gonna get them all.

Unknown Speaker (15:39): So That's fair.

Mike (15:40): Yeah. We'll we'll take a shot at it and and go from there. So and, like, I we've been doing this a long time, Mike. So I think there's a lot of understanding in how that game goes. Like, she knows, like, I'm gonna do the best I can to get those

Mike (15:52): For the most part, in my experience, you can usually get the first day or two that you request. Unless it's like Christmas or something, then it's a total crapshoot. If it's like September and there's a two days that you need to have off for wedding, you can usually get that. But if you need that third, fourth day, oh, good luck.

Mike (16:11): Yeah. And and Mike, like you said earlier, the summertime is a big deal for your company because it's vacation traveler max. Yeah. A lot

Mike (16:17): of the leisure airlines, that's that's when they make their money. Allegiance, you know, spirit, God rest their soul. JetBlue, Southwest, Frontier, that's where they make their money is over the summertime. They lose money in the spring and the fall when they make money in the summer. They just hope to make enough money to carry their bags the rest of the way home.

Mike (16:34): Just saw a thing. Southwest says it's gonna be a record breaking bookings for the summertime, which probably everybody's already made those bookings, you know. I think they might have some budget crunches happening, but the summer's already in motion.

Mike (16:47): Yeah. They have a good day. They they seen the they they know. I mean, they know by now. I mean, summer down here, our our seniors are graduating tonight, and Wednesday is my last kid's exam day.

Mike (16:58): So, I mean, our summer starts next Thursday. That's why we're going out of town next week. So summer is here. Whether you like it or not in the Northeast, summer is here.

Mike (17:06): Well, you said that my buddy, Jay, he he did a funny meme last night. He was listening to last week's show, so I gotta put that out in the Instagrams. But yeah, it's not it's not summertime yet. Although tomorrow, I think it's gonna be heating up here. But for more importantly, we have these things called snow days.

Mike (17:21): So they've tacked on, like, another eight days to the calendar for the school year. Have hurricane days. Yeah. You guys do have hurricane days, but these guys are tacked on to the end of the year, so they're not done until June 17, something like that. This school year keeps going.

Unknown Speaker (17:37): Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Jerry. Yep. It keeps on going. June 17.

Mike (17:41): Yeah. It's a bummer. But I do when I bid, I do look at, like, the days off. I also look at I like destinations. Like, I'm gonna bid places that I want to go, things maybe I want to do.

Mike (17:53): We got in this job because we like to travel and we like to fly, right? So you wanna go to the places you wanna go to. Nobody wants to just fly in the middle of the night to, you know, Timbuktu, like, wanna go you wanna enjoy your life while you're gone, right? I mean, it's not a vacation, it's work, But try to enjoy it while you can.

Unknown Speaker (18:12): Anna and I were watching Ancient Aliens last night. You ever watched that show?

Unknown Speaker (18:16): I have not. I know what you're talking about, but I've not watched it.

Mike (18:19): I love it with the with Giorgio. And they have these things, what we were watching about, like, megaliths and stuff like that, and these weird stones and things like that. But I didn't know that Japan and Osaka has a bunch of them. So I I looked them up, and there's one called Ishii No Hoden, and that's just West of Kobe, which is only, like, an hour and a half from Japan, but it's like a floating stone that they built like it looks like it's floating. And but that I'm gonna go to Osaka, and I'm going to go there.

Mike (18:53): Like, I want to do that. So I would look in the bid pack and be like, oh, that's Osaka. I can hold that, and it's forty eight hour overnight. So I'm gonna go do that. So that's kind of fun.

Mike (19:03): Yeah. Yeah. So there's things like that that come up and and you can do, like, I like to swim in Hawaii. If I can swim in Hawaii, I'm gonna go do it. But, you know, I think the days are like some of the big things that you you kinda look at.

Unknown Speaker (19:15): We have I this bid thing days off

Mike (19:16): with kids, you know, kids at home, I bid for days off, right? Because I wanna be home for their things. Once they graduate and they move out, then I can get a little more my time kind of thing and bid the trips that I want. But right now, I'm not senior enough to hold the days off and the trips, so I just get the days off. You know, be thankful what you can get, I guess.

Mike (19:38): And that's you just said the magic word. You said seniority, and so that's how this works. So everything that you want is based on your seniority number. So every plane has a guy that got when they hire, they got a number. So there's a guy that's hired number one above you or whatever it is, top above you would and you're gonna get a number ranking on your jet.

Mike (19:59): And like right now, I'm like 80% on the triple seven. So, you know, 80 to 80% of the people get to pick before I get to pick in my seat. So that's what I'm gonna get as far as selection down the line. Now you kind of know what what's gonna happen based on historical, like, you look back at what other people did last couple months, what people got around you, and you can kinda make a guesstimate of what's going on. But that's how you get the award.

Mike (20:24): So it pays to be senior in your seat. And a lot of that's out of your control, but some of it's not. Because if you are getting more senior because senior guys are in the on the on your in your seat, like triple seven first officers are bidding to captain in different airplanes, like, I'll slowly creep up that list. And maybe it's my turn. Maybe I can hold captain.

Mike (20:46): But if I bid captain another airplane, I'm going to the bottom of the seniority. Yeah. You're looking

Mike (20:49): from, like, 60% on the FO list to 95% on the captain list. And that's where I'm at. Being a captain in Orlando, it's one of most senior bases in the country for any airline. So I'm super junior at 95%. If I bid Captain Kennedy, I'd probably be down around 65 or 70.

Mike (21:06): I mean, it can change that drastically just by and if I went back to a first officer, I could be like 10%. So it's what's more important to you and you just gotta balance that out with your family and your life and your expectations and I don't know, everyone everybody has something different. So like everyone says when you bid, bid for what you want because you don't know what anybody else wants. So you may get something you weren't expecting, whether it's a seat, a base, a schedule, a trip, you don't know. Don't bid for it if you don't want it.

Mike (21:34): And that's so true because people do make decisions where you're like, why is that guy the number one guy? He just bid all Toronto, like, night hub turns, which means you're flying it all night back and forth to Toronto. He's the first guy. He could've picked anything he wanted. He could've picked all Hawaii.

Unknown Speaker (21:49): You're like

Mike (21:50): because he wants to be home for his daughter's softball games. You know, you just don't know. He's a PTA volunteer. You know, he's a PTA president. You just don't know.

Mike (21:57): Yep. You have no clue. So like Mike said, you pick what to bid what you want, and and you just hope you get it, and that's that's all you could do. And like you said, Mike, too, lifestyle choices. Some people go for the money in the captain's seat, so they want that.

Mike (22:09): Some people had enough to listen to the other guy tell him what to do. So, like, I need to be the captain, and you have to make that decision for yourself just like you do when you're bidding, you know. Do you have any of this, Mike, when you're bidding? We had this thing called the wolf pack at our company where the dudes would they would hold trips and they'd call their buddies and be like, hey, you want this? Yeah.

Mike (22:27): Yeah. Yeah. And they're like changing and swapping.

Mike (22:30): No. It's kinda made it hard to do stuff like that. Now you can buddy bid. Like, if I get worded trips, you know, an FO that might wanna fly with me can bid those trips because our schedules come out as captains, like, five days before the FOs, about five days. So there's time for them to bid what they see the captains get.

Mike (22:49): But you can't just it's hard to do what you're talking.

Mike (22:51): Yeah. Some of the guys are asked to leave. They all got put on, like, non qualified status, and for about a year, they were begging. These guys are senior guys too, like but they they had enough of it. Enough guys were like, that's enough of this crap.

Mike (23:03): And a couple of them, I think, got asked to retire. So hopefully, the wolf pack is done. We had another problem too with the schedulers. There were people offering the schedulers, like, bribes for getting different trips. And look, you think you're like, this is crazy, but they're giving them surprised me

Unknown Speaker (23:17): at all. I don't think it's crazy.

Mike (23:19): They're yeah. They were given the schedulers, like, gift cards. They were giving them, like, miles. Like, I you can give somebody, like, the 100,000 Delta miles for, like, a better trip or to call them when, like, something good came in, and we got a we got a a crew notification, like, in our push to every all the pilots, like, it is against the company policy to offer, Like, how do you even have to do that? Like, doesn't everyone knows, like, bribery is not okay.

Mike (23:45): But yet, it goes on and it's rampant. So and I I hopefully that stopped too, but, like, I don't get involved enough in that nonsense because I I pretty much fly on my schedule and yeah. I I go home. I don't I'm not playing games about how can I get the next trip and oh, look at that one? Oh, that's gonna make this no.

Unknown Speaker (24:02): I pretty much do what I do and and I go home

Mike (24:04): because I wanna I'd rather move off. The system that we use for our schedule, you can get text messages sent to you when a trip opens up or someone calls out six or there's a trip. And you can pay for the service so that you get the text messages and I used to do it, but people are so quick with that. Like, get the text and by the time I look the trip up, it's already gone. It's gone.

Mike (24:23): So I don't pay for it anymore. I'm like, these guys are just they just live on there. Like, there's guys that just live on there because they just I want every trip I can get. I want every dollar I can make. I want there's those guys out there and, you know, mean, more power to them, I guess, but

Mike (24:37): I was flying with this guy one time. He's first officer, and this was back in things weren't good because the contract was ugly. This was at another company, and I got called on reserve. I knew this guy. We did, like, a quick turn to, Charleston, and I knew this guy was on, like, premium pay already.

Mike (24:54): And I was like, alright, man. You going home? He's like, yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm going home.

Mike (24:58): And I I watched him. I was like, we'll see you later. And I watched him, like, take out his phone as he's, like, slowly slowed down behind me as I was walking and would go to my car and go home. And I see him on the phone, he turns around, and I was like, no. F this.

Mike (25:10): I'm gonna go see what this guy's up to. So he turns around and goes back, and I I watched him go to the gate, and he gets on another plane. He picked up another trip on the phone because he called the scheduler or he called somebody, and he got another trip and went back out. Right. Because he had to persevere.

Mike (25:24): He's just like yeah. Easily. And I'm like, that guy makes more than me, and it's my butt that's on the line about making decisions has four

Unknown Speaker (25:31): ex wives and 12 kids he I has to pay

Unknown Speaker (25:34): don't know what they his what he's up to, but I just like, can't believe, like, he that's it.

Unknown Speaker (25:37): And And that's the whole balance. Right?

Unknown Speaker (25:39): Yeah. All he was is back had to.

Mike (25:41): Maybe he has no life, maybe he doesn't isn't married, but like, I got kids, you have kids, I wanna get home. So I mean, we do leave a lot of money on the table because of that, but it's fine. It's what I wanna do. I wanna be home for my kids, I wanna be home, I wanna go to the baseball games, I want to go to church on Sunday with my family. Like there's things I want to do, but everybody's different.

Mike (26:03): Everybody's different, but there are those guys that are just every little trip they can pick up, they're picking it up, and they're calling for extra trips, and it's just dude, love my job. I love flying, that's why I did it, but man, I like being home too. And that's we said last week, I was like, man, was nice to go back on the road. I do too. By day two, by day three, I was like, I'm ready to go home, man.

Mike (26:29): Like, I so I can't imagine finishing a four day trip, coming home, turning around and going out for another three or four days. I I always told myself I don't wanna have to do laundry on the road and so far in my career, knock on wood, I've not had to do that. So hopefully, I can keep that stack going for the next twenty years.

Mike (26:46): You know, know, bring laundry bombs in to do laundry in the bathtub?

Unknown Speaker (26:50): No. Not at all.

Unknown Speaker (26:55): I've I've I've heard guys a lot of triple seven guys do that, so hopefully that's not what I end up doing.

Mike (27:00): Man, four days, five days tops.

Unknown Speaker (27:01): Alright, dude. Let's move on. Let's get back yeah. Alright. Let's let's head on to another topic.

Mike (27:10): Just let's go back to a back in the day replay for At The Gate. What do you think? Alright. So I guess we should set this up kinda better to to say. So let's say that you just you you already traveled to the airport and you you got you made it through security.

Mike (27:27): If you went or not to the crew room or not, who knows? But now you made it down to the jet and you're going you're at the gate. So you you say hi to the gate agent and what are some things that might that you would like the gate agent to show you or welcome you with?

Mike (27:44): A smile. I always like to be welcomed with a smile. But you know, as simple as that sound A happy smile. You don't always get it. You don't always get it.

Mike (27:54): So yeah. I mean, just, hey, captain. How are you doing? You know, a little respect, passenger loads, what's going on? Hey, the plane's here, the plane's not here.

Mike (28:05): I've gone there and they looked at me like I'm cross eyed or something and I look out the window and the plane's on the air. Right. Like, well hey, you could like tell me what's going on, know. There's delays, if the the plane's got a maintenance if they know there's something going on, tell me. But a lot of times they don't.

Mike (28:23): But I mean, that's I don't have high expectations. Just smile. How are doing captain? You know, That's it.

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Mike (29:00): The I think the worst thing that I ever got from an agent, like, is if you came from another flight and they were like, where, like, where have you been? Like, that's the last thing that I wanna hear about.

Mike (29:12): Yeah. And it happens, but it's not often. Maybe once a year something like that happens. That's not often. They usually know.

Mike (29:21): And maybe the psychology or maybe the expectation has changed since you have moved on, where that's they know what they can and can't get away with, if that makes sense.

Unknown Speaker (29:36): Yeah. I hope that's

Mike (29:38): There's a lot of guys who are gonna lose their minds on something like that and and to a degree rightfully so, right? It's not their fault that they're late. They don't wanna be late. The last thing they want is the stress of having to run up to an airplane board and go right away. They want time to look at things over and make sure everything's safe and orderly and, you know, so

Mike (29:58): Yeah. Like and and I I I totally agree with that. Like, yeah. Like and if that's a culture change because it wasn't like that when I was there, like, they they were very much like, what are you doing? Like you said, there was almost like a blame and I'm like, why are you blaming me?

Mike (30:12): Honestly, I haven't seen that in a long time. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. That's good to hear. I just personally haven't seen And maybe it's because I'm in Orlando now and people are more relaxed. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (30:21): Maybe you're uptight in the Northeast.

Unknown Speaker (30:22): Yeah. You need to go to Kennedy more. Everybody here's got a problem. So I got a real problem with you people.

Mike (30:29): I mean, there's and there's a lot of truth to that. The the personality differences between the bases, and and there's a lot of truth to that. When I fly with flight attendants that are based in other places, I have different expectations. And whether it's right or wrong, I would wager to bet my expectations are pretty damn accurate.

Mike (30:46): Yeah, I mean you get a feel for that. And our new releases,

Mike (30:49): like I can see like the hot data hire, and if I see a 2012 hire from Orlando, 2011 hire from Fort Lauderdale, I'm like, alright, this is gonna go good. If I see a 2023 hire post COVID JFK, flip the coin, oh god, I hope nothing happens today. Like, you know, like, that's kinda where mean, as bad as that sounds, it's the truth.

Mike (31:11): I mean, I don't think it's that bad because you're I mean, you can kinda judge, like, the different people that are attracted to that job through that, you know, post and post COVID, pre and post COVID, and the people that have made it through COVID, there's definitely a different

Mike (31:24): realm of Now that being said, they're not all bad. Not all the twenty twenty three JFK hires are bad, and but you know right away. Once you start talking to them, it's it's obvious, like you know right away.

Unknown Speaker (31:34): I've done a 50%

Unknown Speaker (31:35): shot, Mike. What's that?

Unknown Speaker (31:37): When you flip when you flip the coin, already gave him a fifty fifty shot. That's I

Unknown Speaker (31:40): mean, that's better than a lot. Something happens probably give him lower odds than that. That means I'm a nice guy. Yeah. I'd agree.

Unknown Speaker (31:46): But you know right away. Like, as soon as you start talking to him, you're like, okay. Well, this is gonna work out just fine. Otherwise, you're like, like and you don't have to deal with that anymore, flying by. I don't.

Unknown Speaker (31:56): Like

Unknown Speaker (31:56): No. I don't. I don't deal with that at all, man. That's a wrap.

Mike (32:00): And we could like, we I was in Kennedy the other day, you know, stories from the road. At Kennedy the other day, and we're taxiing out and I hear a flight. It was JetBlue 123. I know I remember the flight number because 123 was easy. Kennedy to

Unknown Speaker (32:12): That's easy.

Mike (32:13): Yeah. And they were returning the gate for passenger disturbance. We were coming in and we're doing a turn going back to Orlando and I had time. So I went in and nosy Mike, I walked by the gate. I'm like, I wanna see what's going on.

Unknown Speaker (32:25): I bet someone can body slam

Unknown Speaker (32:26): that gate. Hey, you know, so

Unknown Speaker (32:28): I You

Mike (32:28): got your ass purely taken out your ass.

Mike (32:30): Oh, yeah. I'm like, I'm showing up for this. Let me get my phone out, get a little Instagram action. And

Unknown Speaker (32:35): there's this

Mike (32:36): little petite blonde girl that gets pulled off the plane. I'm like, it just didn't look right. I'm like and I don't know, maybe she did something she shouldn't have done. But I'm also thinking maybe these flight attendants are looking for a little drama. And and I just because I've seen it.

Mike (32:52): I have a 100% seen it. And I don't know. I don't I know you know what I'm talking about. And I don't know. Maybe I should I do.

Mike (32:59): I've seen a flight attendant get into it with a guy in the front of the cabin about like where he was putting his newspaper or something and she came up and was like, he has to get off the flight. They they've been on the jet for like less than five minutes. And I was kinda watching, she was just like coming at the guy and I'm like, this this is not not good. But Yeah. Sometimes like you said Customer's always right

Mike (33:22): unless you think they're a safety issue. Right? Then then but other than that, I mean like, come on man, like

Mike (33:28): Yeah. This guy was, like, 65. He was got his newspaper, like, he was

Unknown Speaker (33:32): going stressed out because he's going to his mom's funeral or something. Like, we don't know their story. Yeah. Unless you think they're gonna be a a like, a safety risk or a security risk or a violent risk, let it be, man.

Mike (33:43): I'm not a good judge of that, Mike, since if if you haven't heard the story, go back and listen to when I'll I accepted the general agreement of everyone, the the two brothers that look like golfers and one of them end up naked under the seats, like, so I was like, oh, that's that's poor poor judgment. They everybody else said it was okay. I'm like, alright. It didn't go okay, but if you haven't heard that story, go back and find out. I'm sure I'll tell it again.

Unknown Speaker (34:07): That's Where were you then?

Unknown Speaker (34:09): You you you're gonna have to

Mike (34:10): tell the story again because that was before we went to video. So

Unknown Speaker (34:12): I it was and

Mike (34:13): our off listener base has, like, quadrupled since then. So

Mike (34:17): yeah. Actually, talking about doing the the show with the crossover show, Lower the Bar, and the the Sky King episode. I talked to Jay about that the other day, and he was saying he thinks he can do it, and then he's like, it's gonna get goofy though because it will tell us crazy stories. I said, yeah. But I was standing at the gate one time, and Jay had come from Seattle.

Mike (34:37): He was in Boston, and I just happen just happenstance. I was talking to the other captain that was on the flight. He was the able-bodied body person. So Jay from lower the bar actually met the captain that was happened to be jump seating on that flight.

Mike (34:52): Dude, it's such a small world. Like, it just popped up on my Facebook memory the other day. My best friend growing up, they flew to Boston like twelve years ago, and you were their captain, and I saw a picture of a little girl in the cockpit, and I'm like, like,

Mike (35:03): I knew that guy, like, that's Tom. I can distinctly as a matter of fact, I remember distinctly because the the the ramp was all clogged up, and it was making me crazy because I was done, and I'm like, somebody pushed that airplane, and then you were texting me like, hey, think my buddy's on that flight or whatever. Yeah. He's actually the ER doctor.

Unknown Speaker (35:23): He's actually the ER doctor I talked about maybe having on the show because he's been on the plane sometimes when they're like, Is there a doctor on board?

Unknown Speaker (35:28): Oh, he'd be a great, great doctor. And one time I had,

Unknown Speaker (35:31): he was on the show, was on, not on the show, he was on a flight and he went back to help and they were like kind of disrespected him. So he's like, fine. I'll go back to my seat and sit down. Let that guy die. It's like it was out of Vegas early in the morning.

Unknown Speaker (35:43): He knew that this guy was just drunk and hungover. He's like, let him be. And then the other flight attendant was

Unknown Speaker (35:48): like, what are you doing? And he's

Unknown Speaker (35:49): like, I went back there. Your other flight attendant yelled at me. Like, you tell her to, like, let me do my job. So yeah, we gotta get him. That would be a good story.

Unknown Speaker (35:57): Yeah. He'd be great. That's great. I remember that. I can remember that clear as day.

Unknown Speaker (36:00): He flies a lot. So it's he's got

Mike (36:02): a bunch of those stories because it's amazing. We talked about it before. How often something goes wrong, security, medical, whatever, there is an able-bodied person that is very knowledgeable on board to handle the situation. I flew with an FO one time and he told me someone went into cardiac arrest on their plane, but there was a heart surgeon going to like Africa for like charitable surgeries or something. And they not only were they on the plane, but they had all their tools and everything.

Unknown Speaker (36:29): So they were able to do like open heart surgery on this guy right there in the aisle and save his life. I'm like I did, Mike. I I was about to

Unknown Speaker (36:35): do a joke. I was gonna totally get to a joke to be like, he opened up his bag and took out the scalpel and he literally had the stuff with him. That's crazy.

Unknown Speaker (36:42): I I have my question was how did he get the scalpel through security? I can't get freaking eye tweezers through the damn security line. Chapstick, and they wanna, like, strip search me.

Unknown Speaker (36:51): He just showed his badge and said, doctor. Doctor. See? Yep. Anyways, so it's okay.

Mike (36:59): Everybody sees the pilots come to the gate and may you know, like, we we maybe saunter up there. We got coffee or whatever. They're like, well, I couldn't get my coffee through security. The line's too long. Although, if you ask Pat Brew from JetBlue, he'll tell you that you can get front of the line privileges.

Mike (37:13): That is not true. Not true. But it happens. Anyways Sorry. You know, but we look.

Mike (37:19): So we everyone's like, oh, there's a rich pilot for their coffee. We don't start getting paid until the parking brake gets released. And a lot of people don't know that or understand that. And when we get there, we've already endured maybe we came from the hotel, the hotel van, like, we had to wait for the second one because the first one was full of a bunch of angry people and all the kids with their Disney balloons with the Mickey Mouse Mylar inside the the clear one.

Unknown Speaker (37:43): My wife sold them.

Mike (37:44): Yeah. So we we, you know, we're get we're getting there somehow. We got there. Maybe, you know, who knows what happened? But all that you're not getting paid for and you get through security, maybe get extra random screening.

Mike (37:55): You know, all this stuff happens and then you make it through and you still have a lot of work to do. Like, the first officer, whoever's gonna fly the leg will usually stay in the airplane and start the preflight. The captain's gotta do his interior checks. The flight attendants, they're doing their checks. Everybody's by heard.

Mike (38:10): The flight crew has arrived, and when they've completed their checks, then we'll board the airplane. Like, yeah, we gotta get to the airplane and do the stuff that we were trained to do. I don't think

Mike (38:19): it was stressful part of the job. Wouldn't you think, like, just getting through security and getting to the plane half time? Like, once I get to the plane and I'm in the cockpit, I'm kinda, like, at peace, you know? I don't know.

Mike (38:29): Totally. You're in your flow, like, that's why you came here, you know? And and you're starting to get your progress on to, like, your what you do for a job. You move people from A to B. You can't even get to A until you got on the hotel van and the security and everything, right?

Mike (38:44): The security drive is I charging mean, like, I mean, you could buy a pilot uniform and and and go to the airport. I get it. But like, goodness gracious. Like, I just feel like I've been background checked up and down so many times, and I it's just it's a lot of undue stress that I think that's unnecessary, if that makes sense.

Mike (39:04): And I think there's ebbs and flows of this with the TSA and I don't know

Unknown Speaker (39:09): there's a program and this is way off topic. This isn't even in your show notes that you wrote, but city is freaking different, man. I can go to one place and do this, and the next place they wanna like tackle me. And I'm like, what? I just was here yesterday.

Mike (39:23): And that's the problem. I've gotten into a TSA before about standardization, and I'll tell them like, have worked in the government for twenty two years, and how can you be standard when this identification works with this checkpoint and that, and you get nowhere. You literally go nowhere. And it gets you more attention and you're like, now you're treating me like you shouldn't be treating me. Just like just like

Mike (39:42): you just like I mentioned the flight attendants that are looking for drama. There's TSA agents looking for drama Yep. So And I think can bash

Unknown Speaker (39:49): on the TSA. If they can bag a pilot,

Mike (39:52): that's five points. Again, no, 99% of them were fine. Right? It's just that 1%. So there's 1% of the pilots that are terrible.

Unknown Speaker (39:59): There's 1% of everybody that's terrible. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (40:03): Think I've told the story

Unknown Speaker (40:04): Probably rounded down.

Mike (40:06): Yeah, I think so. I I think I've told this story before. The guy, he wouldn't let me he was gonna take, like, my toothpaste and something else. Like, god knows I've lost so many bottles of sunscreen. This is a long time.

Mike (40:16): Like, this is Compass era. And I just snapped. I had enough. And and this is when the rules were changing, like

Unknown Speaker (40:22): this is when making, like, $28 an hour.

Mike (40:25): Yeah. Like, a bottle of sunscreen, that's a lot of money. And he was like, well, if you're in uniform, then you can bring it. And I was like, oh, yeah. So I took my roller board off the, like, the screener thing.

Mike (40:34): It was about to, like, go in the X-ray thing.

Unknown Speaker (40:35): You put a shirt on.

Mike (40:36): Out of the X-ray. Yeah. And I'm like, watch this. And I go around the corner into the bathroom and I change I put on my pilot uniform and it's a mess. Dude, I'm just wrinkled.

Mike (40:45): Like, because I think I was going to the crash pad in the Clarion. You know, you'd iron your uniform because you had to go go on the next day, but and then I was a soup sandwich and and I walked up there, like, tie was out and, you know, I I was a mess. And I was like, how about now? And the guy was like, okay. And then I went through and kept my stuff, but not today, bro.

Unknown Speaker (41:04): That's how back it is.

Mike (41:06): Yeah. And that yeah. You're talking like 2010, like, that's a long time ago.

Unknown Speaker (41:10): Hadn't changed. It hasn't changed.

Mike (41:12): Yeah. And again, like, I I hate to bash on all TSA, but you can

Unknown Speaker (41:16): But I

Unknown Speaker (41:16): mean to an individual.

Unknown Speaker (41:17): To their to that they gotta draw the line somewhere and being in uniform, you probably should've been in uniform.

Unknown Speaker (41:22): But that's one reason why I

Mike (41:23): don't travel. Like, if I commute, I'm in uniform because of the TSA, not because of anything else.

Mike (41:27): Yeah. It it definitely although that opens a can of worms when like me, when I commute and, like, I do a double jump and I end up in Yeah.

Mike (41:35): Mean, you're you might be traveling cross country, cross continent, like, you you wanna be comfortable, you know?

Mike (41:42): Yeah. And then I end up in, the seats of I don't even know. Where where I always end up? Oh, in in Midway. And if I jump on Southwest, and then I I literally answer questions for, an hour.

Mike (41:54): I like do a whole show.

Unknown Speaker (41:55): What's route? What's your route?

Unknown Speaker (41:57): Yeah. I should I keep the to

Unknown Speaker (41:58): segue back to the beginning of the show, what's your route?

Unknown Speaker (42:02): Yeah. I gotta set up a I'm gonna set up the selfie stick next time and just press record and be be like, everybody who has questions, come on over. Anybody know where the bathroom's over that way? Bathroom's there. No.

Unknown Speaker (42:11): I don't know. You're guessing over that.

Unknown Speaker (42:12): One of those signs that says change my mind.

Mike (42:18): Oh my gosh. So, yeah. That's what you we tell. We zoomed off topic here. I don't even remember what

Unknown Speaker (42:26): we're talking about.

Mike (42:26): We were talking about getting the gate and, like, what we have to do or not do. I had some stuff written down. Let's let's go here. Let's see. Sorry.

Mike (42:36): I well, the whole point of, like, getting to the gate is, like, I guess in this kinda comes into discussion because there's things that happen. Like, sometimes, like, your crew is not together when you when you get there. Like, you could be getting the gate and, like, your flight attendants are coming from another flight. Or same for you. You could be coming to the airplane, the flight attendants are already on the jet, or you could be getting called out on reserve because the first officer just got called or captain called out sick.

Mike (43:02): So now you're meeting a crew that's already at the airplane. And, like, we kinda talked about the other day with, like, the script of how this works. Like, if that happens, like, and they're waiting for you, it's a two hour call out. So it could take you two hours to get there, which is totally in your right as far as, like, the reserve call out goes. But when you get finally get to the gate and you you stand there, like, the whole plane could be boarded ready to go.

Mike (43:25): And then you sit down in the seat and the captain's like, alright, you ready to go? Well, not really because you haven't done a preflight, you haven't like, oh, you gotta take my time. Not there.

Mike (43:36): Your head is spinning. You just went through that most stressful part of the day we just talked about. You just ran through TSA, you just got strip searched and now the gate agent just gave you grief. Where have you been? You know, and now you're like, no, I'm not ready to go.

Mike (43:47): I need to kind of like sit down, gather myself, figure out what city I'm in and what city I'm going to and, you know, let me see the logbook and make sure there's no MELs. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on. So it's not as easy as just sitting down and going.

Mike (44:00): Yeah. And luckily, in this day and age, you get some time to kinda build that picture because you can download the flight, you can pull the flight up and see like who's on it, you can see when

Mike (44:09): If you know about it. Depart. You know about it in time. You might not you might have just got emergency assigned or something and they just pulled you off one plane and said, go to Gate 12, you're due out in ten minutes, you know, and you're running over you know, like, it happens. It happens.

Mike (44:23): Yeah. Didn't even think of that. That's true too. It's like you're just suddenly, you're in a different pool of water wearing a different swimsuit, like it's I mean, I've

Mike (44:31): been I've been there where I've been boarding my flight. Flight plan in hand, everything's done, computer set, EFIN's complete, scheduling calls. Hey, you need to get off that plane and go to this plane right now. I'm like, what? Not now I'm not flying into a snowstorm, but I'm flying down to The Caribbean and it's 95 degrees outside.

Mike (44:47): Like, it's like mind boggling to The Caribbean. And and and they want and they're already boarded. They need you right now. They're ready to close the door. Yeah.

Mike (44:56): So I mean, it happens. It doesn't happen a lot. But it's one of those things, honestly, happens probably once a year. It happens more than you would think. So

Mike (45:05): It does. You're totally right. And say say you're the first officer. I mean, anybody in that case, like, you kinda gotta look at the other guys. If you're the captain that's got pulled to another flight, it's up to you and your professional training to say when am I really fully prepared to take this flight off the gate because then, like, it's on you.

Unknown Speaker (45:23): Like, you're Oh, not a

Mike (45:24): gate agent. Yeah. You can close the door. You can board close the door. That's fine.

Mike (45:28): And they can pull the jet bridge. They close the door, but it's my discretion at when to release that parking brake. So I'm gonna look through the logbook. I'm gonna make sure the plane is airworthy. I'm gonna make sure that any MELs, anything that's broken is airworthy and legal.

Mike (45:41): I'm gonna make sure it matches the release. I'm gonna make sure the weather looks good. I'm gonna make sure our flight plan is legal. I'm gonna make sure that the the release has been amended to show me as the captain because they just changed it. I'm gonna brief the flight attendants.

Mike (45:52): I'm gonna find out how many people are on board. I'm gonna find out all this information, and it's just gonna take time. Gate agent's gonna pull the jet bridge. They're gonna give me the angry face in the window because I'm gonna sit there for another ten, fifteen minutes before we release spark and break and go.

Mike (46:05): And that's good pacing. That's your call, and that that's what you should do. I think a more difficult thing to do is to be the captain fully prepared to go, and they pull your first officer, or the first officer calls out sick, and now you have to get this new first officer and take a look Get at in game. Yeah. Prepared are they to go, like and it's tough for you because you can feel that pressure to get that that flight going because you've already

Mike (46:36): been there now. Coaching t ball helps. You coach a little you're herding cats, you're coaching kids, they have no idea what's going on. You kinda get them back into the picture, one for all for one and one for all kind of attitude and that's honestly, it's just I make a joke about it, but that's true. You kinda gotta settle them in and get them, hey, this is what's going on.

Mike (46:55): Glad you're here. Good to see you.

Mike (46:58): And even if, like, they and this is what the first officer's gonna do too. I'd I'd put, like, 99% that this would happen. Yeah. I'm ready to go, Katherine. Totally ready to go.

Mike (47:08): Yeah. I I got everything. I'm ready to go.

Unknown Speaker (47:09): They're not lie. They're not gonna say that.

Mike (47:11): They're not. Yeah. Yeah. They they're not ready at all. So you have to be hyper focused on what they're doing, you know, in case something goes wrong or they miss something and they're gonna miss something.

Mike (47:22): And it's not gonna be something major, but, you know, you gotta be there to just kinda like keep keep going on. And look, if you realize after you started taxiing or something, they can't even read back the taxi instruction because they don't know and their iPad falls out of the the iPad mount, like, okay. Like, hey. We're gonna hey, ground. We're just gonna stop right here.

Mike (47:40): We're just gonna need a second or something like that. You know, that's that's where you can even take more time as you haven't even gotten to the air. Because once we oh, we talked about last week, Mike. I was listen to the show. Once we start moving, like, that's Like, you can't stop.

Unknown Speaker (47:55): Yeah.

Mike (47:56): Yeah. So that's the time to get that stuff figured out, and again, like, that just comes in time of being a captain, and there's guys out there too, like, maybe that's the last leg, and they're going to their their kid's, you know, birthday party and And to

Mike (48:09): new to new captains out there and and first officers that are about to upgrade for their first time, don't forget where you came from. Don't forget what it was like when you were the new FO that didn't know what was going on. Don't forget what it was like when you were the FO that was getting called out on reserve at the last second. So don't forget that stuff because those are the guys you're gonna work with, guys and gals, and and they're doing the best they can. And if you can keep that in perspective, that'll make you a good captain.

Mike (48:35): I think I talked about it a couple weeks ago. I was reading Colin Powell's book about things that worked for me. It's a book about leadership, and literally, that's like the main focus. Like, he still talks about what his mentors were like when he was a second lieutenant, you know, going to Vietnam. And he he he's looking at, you know, that that's what he builds his bases on, is he remembers what it was like to be in all those ranks and all those positions and not worst knowing

Mike (49:01): leaders the worst leaders are the ones that forget where they came from. And they came, like, these guys weren't born captains. They were student pilots. They were first officers, you know. They weren't born captains.

Mike (49:13): So the worst captains are the ones that think God anointed them captain at the date of birth, and it's just not how it is. I tell FOs all the time in the training department, they're they're in they're in the left seat because they got hired before you, not because they're better than you. So just remember where you came from and that's all Same kinds thing, crappy baseball coaches, they forget what it was like when they were playing, you know. Crappy teachers probably forget what it was like when they had a hard time with algebra, you know. I mean, everybody struggles in life, you know?

Mike (49:42): Just pick people up, help them

Unknown Speaker (49:43): out. The road to the NBA finals ends here with star guards setting the tone. The Cavs eye another upset, while the Knicks carry the dreams of all of New York. The Eastern Conference finals continue on ESPN and ABC. Mike showed me a video of his kid's high school baseball team.

Mike (50:18): I think they they just made the finals. Right?

Mike (50:20): Yeah. The final four was yesterday. They won that, so the state championship game is tomorrow in Fort Myers.

Mike (50:26): So the state champ so the kid throws the last pitch. I think he strikes the guy out, and then, yeah, everybody goes crazy. The kids are running out of the dugout and everything and and they're high fiving. They're throwing their gloves up in the air, you know, the works and

Mike (50:39): It's a huge game, man.

Unknown Speaker (50:41): There's the three coaches and they're all hugging each other. I was like, that's hilarious. But I guess that shows like unity that those guys Those guys awesome.

Mike (50:50): Their coaches are so cool. I went to high school with the head coach. He was a couple years older than me. He was a senior when I was a freshman, but one of the assistants was like the best man in his wedding. Another guy is this older guy that's just, they call him the glove doctor, know, he's in town.

Mike (51:04): He's like a well known guy in town. It's a good group, man. Like, their hugging was like totally expected and necessary for the for the moment. I mean, it wasn't weird because like, those are it's a brotherhood, you know? So it was cool and I'm excited for them tomorrow.

Unknown Speaker (51:25): Yeah. Good good luck to them for sure and the state championship. But yeah, no, it wasn't weird. Was just for you to say that those guys Honestly, I didn't see

Unknown Speaker (51:32): them hugging in the video till you said it, and I was like, I was like, oh, hot dang.

Unknown Speaker (51:36): It's like,

Unknown Speaker (51:37): three dudes hugging it out.

Unknown Speaker (51:38): Made it there. We really did it. We're going to the tenth.

Unknown Speaker (51:41): And they made it to the final four last year and lost the first game. This was kinda like we got to the same spot, and now we got over the hump. But now they got now they gotta bring it home. If they lose tomorrow, it's still gonna

Mike (51:50): be a disappointment. I agree. They're they're gonna be alright, though. I I got a good feeling. Alright, Mike.

Mike (51:58): We we were yacking away in this episode. Do you wanna do a quick recap on the MD 11? Just kinda hit that quick, or do you yeah. Let's do that. We I got a I got a ton more material here.

Mike (52:10): And now I look at it, like, I got a bunch of stories and stuff. There's some even ones I didn't tell about a captain that showed up late, he was a train wreck, and I had to kinda help him out. But we'll work on that story in the in the back. But here's a big news in the MD 11. So my company had this big yay ra kind of they called it a town hall, and the director of flight operations was there.

Mike (52:31): He's a pretty big shot. He had a couple other people that have been working. I think it was the director of maintenance control. She was on the stage, and there was another tech guy as well. And they had a big production setup, and they pretty much showed how as soon as they knew what what the cause was that it's that clevis, that clasp, that bearing that's inside the pylon on the MB 11 that caused a problem with the UPS aircraft to cause it to fail, that they started working on a solution right away.

Mike (53:03): This is back in November. That's all an adjustment grounded for. Now if you look at, again, so in the UPS aircraft, at that, there was a directive that came up, I think about six years before this accident. It could have been longer. I have to go back and look the dates, but my company executed those directives.

Mike (53:22): They changed the the bearings that required it. They inspected all the clevises, and UPS did not do that. And UPS immediately decided to retire their fleet of m b elevens. They have had about 30 of them ish. Now there's there's no one that can say, like, oh, that's why that plane crashed.

Mike (53:40): The UPS crashed it. Nobody's saying that. That's not come out yet. However, my company went forward saying, hey, because we did that change, we think that we can get these things back in service with another repair. So what they took a look at was they actually built tools that could bore out, like, the old bearing and essentially, like, build a new clevis clamp that goes into that pilot.

Mike (54:04): It gets complicated because there's different ways to look at the way it is. It's kinda like a I I mean, I can't even explain to you what it looks like. You'll have to go look at the diagram, but it's they created these tools to bore out the other one, and then they built new bearings. Essentially, they machined them from nothing to reengineer. And the bearing does real weird things.

Mike (54:23): You think a bearing is like something that goes around in like your wheel or something like that. It's not quite like that. It takes like different directional loads inside that clevis, which is like a circle, essentially like a hole, and the bearing kinda fits in there, and it just kinda balances all the forces of the engine as it puts on the wing that and the pylon attaches the engine to the wing. So there's a lot going on there. But what they did was they did all that.

Mike (54:49): They worked with Boeing, and Boeing was watching them the whole way, and then they practiced taking off a bunch. They took off all the engines. All the engines have dropped off all the MD elevens, but then they practiced taking the whole pylon off. The pylon is about, I would guess, it's like eight to nine feet long. It's maybe like three or four feet wide, and it attaches like a different couple ways.

Mike (55:09): So they they practice the teams taking those off the airplanes, and then they practice machining the new the new things with the tools that they had, and and then putting them back on the airplanes. So they were practicing what they were doing and saying, hey, this is the fix that probably is gonna work. And then Boeing watched again, watched them the whole way and they said, you guys, we think you got it. So they showed all this data to the FAA and on May 9, the FAA signed off and said, yep, you guys got it, good to go. So immediately, my company did it to, I think, two airplanes that are in Memphis, and they actually flew the MD 11 in Memphis on May 9, and they've been doing it since then.

Mike (55:52): The problem is that they don't have all the airplanes in Memphis. They're all over the world. So what they have to do is take the pylons off the airplanes that are all over the place, put them in a crate, and then ship them back to Memphis and Indy, Indianapolis where we have a big hub, aircraft hub, sort hub and everything in maintenance. And they're gonna do the that machining there because they've staged those those tools that they built to go ahead and do that. Then they gotta repackage them and then send them back to wherever these airplanes are.

Mike (56:22): And so that's what they need to do over the next x months or whatever it is. But they do have the aircraft flying. They built schedules for them to fly the end of this month and next month, And what they're gonna do is just start getting everybody requalified. They built some, like, short haul stuff from, like, Philly to Newark. I think, like, Newark to maybe Florida.

Mike (56:44): So they're doing, like, short runs with them just to get everybody qualified because all the check airmen have to get requalified, then they have to go out and resign offline checks. And the captain, like Mike talked about last week with the line checks and everything. So all that stuff has to happen. There's also a three day or two day two or three day refresher course for all MD eleven pilots that have they have to complete that in the simulator. And they're all, like, basics.

Mike (57:06): Like, so it's like a systems basic, then it's like a a flight trainer basic, and then you do, a short profile in the simulator. Again, none of that is, what do you call it? You can't fail it. It's just an informational thing. They want everybody to feel comfortable.

Mike (57:22): Non jeopardy. They want everybody to feel comfortable going back into the airplane, and and that's what they've got set up. And this whole program got, you know, signed off by the FAA as well, so they are well on their way of bringing back the airplanes. And I think they said the number was like 20 or 25. It could be a couple more than that.

Mike (57:39): I think my company had like 35 of them at this point. So maybe they took five or six of them out of service, then they're not gonna fly those again. But the the plan is to fly them domestically and then maybe bring them out to like Alaska and Hawaii as as the fleet gets more reliable. But they also built into it there's the new bearings have a 4,000 cycle limit on them, and then they're gonna do 450 inspections on all the pylons and clevises and bearings that are installed. So that's what's going on with the MD 11.

Mike (58:12): It is flying again. Orbis is flying their MD 10. It's not an MD 11, so it's a little bit different. That's the flying eye hospital, if you haven't seen that or look it up.

Mike (58:21): So they are flying again. Flying hospital.

Unknown Speaker (58:23): Yeah. They're flying them. Yep.

Unknown Speaker (58:24): They are.

Unknown Speaker (58:25): And we're the only company that's doing it, so I don't know if what was the other company

Unknown Speaker (58:29): that flew them? Saw one of the planes out at Fort Myers. Western Global.

Mike (58:35): That's where they have them. Western Global. Yeah. There's a couple of them down there, but I don't think they're gonna bring them back. And I don't know what the cost is to bring these back, but, obviously, my company decided that if they're gonna bring them back, there's a reason.

Mike (58:46): Like, they're paying too much for contract lift or they want these things moving cargo, so there's a reason why they're doing it. It's not just because they wanna have the queen of the sky back. No. That's not what

Unknown Speaker (58:56): they're doing.

Unknown Speaker (58:56): They they're making money.

Unknown Speaker (58:58): I'm excited to see it. It's a good looking plane, man.

Mike (59:00): It's a gorgeous airplane. I'm glad they're bringing it back. You know, they had a lot of people talking about the confidence they had in it. The director of flight ops said, I'm gonna jump seat on, like, the first flight or whatever. Personally, I'm glad that I'm flying the triple seven, but that's got nothing to do with that my fear factor of the MD 11.

Mike (59:17): I'm just happy to be on the triple because it is a sweet jet, and it's it's got so much stuff that just rocks. It's gonna be great. So I can't wait for that. Mike, we got so lots of other stuff to cover in the future. We got some cool stuff and more stories for sure, but jeez, I think we had a good conversation that just kinda rolled on.

Mike (59:38): So let's call it quits here, and we will figure out how we're gonna make more shows in the future. You got anything else you wanna add?

Unknown Speaker (59:47): Good, man.

Unknown Speaker (59:48): Okay, Mike. I'll see you then.

Tom (59:50): 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 don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep the blue sign up, and we'll see you at

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