Jenn I first one to one to forecast. We're gonna have a high thirty one today to maybe some afternoon flurry showing up overnight, down to nine degrees sunny tomorrow twenty five, overnight thirteen and a little warmer on Saturday. Thankfully it's going to be cloudy but dry and a high a forty one twenty two Right now.
Traffic time because the wreck that has he's been Reagan shut down nearer the blue ash and ken Wood wrote excent traffic on southbound seventy one slowing a bit passing accident below fieldsirdle thereover on the left hand side, CRUs are working with a wreck inbound seventy four before you got the seventy five schock ingram on fifty five KR see the talk station.
Hey, twenty nine fifty five Krcity talk station. Happy Friday, Eve always made extra special because we get to talk with iheartby aviation expert Jay rat Left. Jay, welcome back to the show, my dear friend. It's always a pleasure to have you on Hey.
The the honors mind. I always have fun. We have time to dive into things here and I love that. Sometimes it's I get three minutes here, two minutes there, whatever, and it's just but here we get to dive into some some fun topics and that always makes it enjoyable.
Yeah.
I feel the same way. That's why, you know, much of the sugarn maybe of my lords and masters here at work, if I had them, if they if they're out there, I don't know who they are. But the clock, I just you know, if I'm on a roll talking about something, I hate to interrupt important topics with you know, a specific cutoff time, like you got to cut off at eight point fifteen, And even though that's recommended, I just can go over. But I must really briefly cut
into our time. I must address Sue, my Indiana listener who lives in Lawrenceburg, a faithful listener, and she says to me, Indiana isn't a four letter word. Lol, says I listen to Lawrenceburg, not far from you. I keep hearing your disdain in your voice when you say Indiana. What I was talking about was the nuclear power plant that Indiana is building now. And I said, come on, Indiana, and I had it did sound like disdain. No, that was jealousy, Sue, jealousy. I love Indiana.
Revenue going out the window.
I totally get it, amen, brother. All right, back to aviation. Let's start with well, seats that recline without reducing the space with a person behind them. What a novel concept.
Well, it's a great concept, but you know, I cautioned everyone not to get too excited because it's not gonna be something we're gonna see quite a bit. But this is This is Luthonza, the German carrier, and they rolled out a seat. It's kind of a pod that allows us to recline without invading the space of the person behind us. Now, these are again self contained seat pods, and they're being placed in their premium class for the airline.
And look, while I love the idea, I'm not getting excited because I know that these will never replace the sardine canned seating that we endure and coach these days, because these specific seats require a little bit more.
Room than a typical seat.
And if an airline were to decide to hey, customer service, let's use these everywhere, they would see a decrease in the nunnumber of seats on a plane.
That means less revenue. Now maybe not.
I ain't happening, and you and I both know that. But look, if you're in premium class, you know you can do that. And it's nice because in coach, what we're going to be seeing in the coming years is a lot like we see on some of the low cost carriers, where the seats do not reclimb. They are set at a predetermined, slightly inclined spot and that's it.
You can't bring them up, you can't bring them back any And they're saying that this will prevent people from getting into altercations on a plane by having these already done. It sounds so convincing, and it's a bunch of crap because the thought is, if you have these seats, you can put an extra row or two in the back. So what they're really doing is shoving an extra two rows in the back of an aircraft, giving.
Themselves, you know, six eight additional seats.
Per segment, per per flight, and my goodness, the revenue they generate on that is considerable, and that's why they do it because of customer service, but because of the fact they can cram more seats into that silver revenue tube.
Well, IM going to miss the put your seat back on the upright, position your trade table in the lock.
Yeah, yeah, reclined. Why you can enjoy it is my is my message.
Yeah, and I suppose that's probably the best solution because you know a lot of people that it causes. The flight attendants have to walk back, sir, can you put your seat up? We're getting ready to take off or we're getting ready to land, and as well as the uncomfortable reality of the seat in front of you taking up your leg space, if everybody suffers equally, then that, I suppose is a healthy change for the better.
But when they go to the meal service and you're ready to eat in the person in front of you lace all the way back. Your tree table is now shoved into your stomach right, and it makes it impossible to use it. And the reason that that is is because the pitch or the distance between rows has decreased steadily over the years as airlines have crammed more and more seats into an airplane. And now that we are used an option they gave us as far as the
ability to reclimb. Now it's a problem and now somehow that's our.
Fault because of what the airlines did.
No, it's a problem with what the airlines created when they made the decision to cram extra seats onto the aircraft.
Fair enough, we can get one more topic in before we take a break. Here, Jay, I see that Trump has decided to replace the head of the TSA.
Yeah, which is a guy he appointed in his first term. The guy has been around for about seven years in that office. And I have to admit this one surprised me because I thought, you know, he's doing a decent job and I really.
Don't know of any serious issues that we have ongoing.
And believe me, if it's the FAA or whoever it is, normally the people that are at the top of some of these aviation entities don't stick around for but like nine or ten or fifteen months and they're gone. This individual was a seven year tenure. He had a US Coast Guard background. I mean, he was very well qualified. And again, the TSA has over too million chances a day to mess up, and most of the front line people do an incredible job. So yeah, I was a
little bit. I guess the thought is, Okay, if.
Biden liked you, I don't, you're out of here. I don't know what the reason was, but he.
Has made the move to replace the head of the TSA.
Well, we've seen a lot of that stuff coming on in the upcoming days. It's already happening all across the administration.
I think his team is having a hard time keeping up with President Trump with all he's done in just like a number of hours he's been our president.
I mean, come on, he answered more questions from the press and in one day than Biden did in the last four years. Guy's got more energet.
Was like those NFL players on the sideline getting oxygen just to try to keep up with.
Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, he's too old to be president. No, I think he's doing all right. Hell I can't keep up with me right, Indeed, I couldn't handle his work day. We'll pause, will bring Jay right left back. Apparently it's a good thing to be in the Alaska Airline employee and more information United and Delta and Boeing and suspension of a crew. A bunch of fun stories with Jay Ratliff.
I'll be right back. Fifty five KRC the Talk station this month NBC eight thirty eight, Come on eight thirty nine. If you bought KARCD Talk station Brian Thomas A J. Ratliff. I heard the Dadash nextpert and all round great guy. Is it good to be an Alaska Airline employee?
Jay? It is? It is.
In fact, a year ago you and I were talking about how Alaska Airlines was forced to ground a third of their fleet after that Boeing door plug incident. Even Saturday Night Live was having fun at their expense, and it remains a very funny video to watch. I'm not an SNL fan, but buddy, they nailed it on Alaska Airlines. But you know, then, the airline really turned things around last year in a very big way.
They ended the year with.
Making some significant amount of profit, and they decided to give their employees a bonus check that's equal to six weeks of their pay as a thank you. So if you told the Alaska Airline employees last year at this time, this is what you're going to enjoying a year from now, they might have had a difficult time believing it. But yeah, last Airlines continues to do a lot of things very very well.
All right, And somebody else did pretty well. I'd be Donald Trump hauling in big corporate donor inaugural fund bucks and I guess the airlines were in on that too.
Well, Delta, you had the United putting up a million dollars a pop for the inaugural fund, and I don't know that I like that, Brian.
The reason I don't like.
It is because the airlines with Trump round one, it was a very cozy relationship. And you know, of late under the Biden administration, airlines were being held accountable for a lot more than they've ever, ever, ever been held accountable for. And my fear is that we might be taking our foot off the accelerator a little bit. And I'm not suggesting that the million dollar inaugural fund.
Is, you know, to buy some favor.
But then I see the next person in line with their million dollars.
Is Boeing better get on board?
Please?
Yeah, please don't.
If there's one.
If there's one company, I want to make sure that we do not let up anything on it's certainly Boeing. So we'll just have to We'll just have to wait
and see. But look again, you and I you know, I'm not a fan at all of the Biden administration at all whatsoever, but I did appreciate how they held airlines accountable In fact, they did more from the Department of Transportation against airlines, finding them holding their feet to the fire, making them accountable more than any other administration I've ever.
Seen in decades.
And I really wish that kind of heat can continue. But sadly, I just I don't think it's going to and I really want.
To be wrong there, politics and money. Just wonder if there's any corruptive forces.
That get along tend to go together.
You're right easy sitting and felt. I don't know why it came to mind. Why did I just say that? Okay, so crew got suspended and for sounds like pretty good reason. On this next story here oay.
Landing on the wrong runway. Uh oh, it takes and the runway lights were off. It takes a lot to mess up that bad. But the real story is which airline it was. It was Pakistan International Airlines. Now this is the airline and I were talking about last week that had the we're coming back to France ad and they put this ad up with, you know, celebrating the fact that the airline was coming back in and it was one of their planes flying directly towards the Eiffel Tower.
It looked like a snapshot of nine to eleven people around the world freaked out saying what what is this and a very tone deaf ad if you will. But this is also the airline that number of years ago they found out a third of their pilots had a fake pilot license.
Oh ma als oh, it gets better.
Also the airline that a number of years ago was getting in trouble because part of their maintenance procedure was to sacrifice a goat on the tarmac, so needless. Yeah, and I know people they are having breakfast apologies or be you think I'm making this up and I'm not. It's on the internet, so it's got to be true. But yeah, Pakistan International Airlines surprisingly is not allowed to fly into the United States because they've had some past issues and they were in Lahore landing and the crew
landed on the wrong run line. They fortunately, thank god, nobody got hurt, nobody was occupying the wrong runway at the time, and.
The crew was immediately suspended.
But for an airline that is desperately trying to rebuild their image in the in the world of aviation around the world, ran they can't catch a break and it just continues.
Wow, when you said the Pakistani Airline. And apologies to my Pakistani listeners out there, and this is not an indictment of all things Pakistani, but the vision that immediately popped in my mind, you know, you get this mental image was an airplane with chicken wire windows.
Oh well, we've got some of those in South America. But yeah, Pakistan International Airlines, they've just had one thing and it's all self inflicted stuff that has really caused them to have the problems they do. And when you look at the track record of the incidents that they've had, you.
Just shake your head.
But it also allows me to have a greater appreciation for the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration where they say that carriers, look, you're simply not safe enough to fly into any US airports and you are not going to do so. And the Pakistan International Airlines for a number of years has not been allowed to fly into any of our large gateway airports in the country. And thank god for that.
Yeah, and you know, you got to put an exclamation point on because of concerns over safety. This isn't some political thing where you know, we have poor relations with the country politically and there go we're not going to allow them to enter our airspace. This is because we're afraid to let them into our airspace. Now, if you're you're sitting in Pakistan, you hear something like that, you get ready to board a plane, I thought you'd be very comfortable about that.
You couldn't pay me to get on a Russian airline because of their part issues or certainly Pakistan International airlines. And you know this is there's also a country that's been very friendly to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and others. So it's there's always been issues there. But from a commercial aviation standpoint, look, there are reasons why we are enjoying here in the United States the safest air ever
of commercial jet travel. It's because a lot of people are doing a lot of things right and very well. And you know, the FAA, even though I'll get on them all the time for some of the crazy things that we do when we manage the perception of safety or security versus actually changing things, I'm always going to point out the fact that there's a lot of things that they do right.
Those men and women.
That are in various roles in that agency. The one thing they're looking at is look if there's issues was how you train your pilots, how you hire your pilots, how your maintenance is done, if it is not being done. All of these things are looked at to determine whether or not it's okay for an airline to fly in the United States. And some people will say, gay, I'm flying out of Chicago. I've never heard of this airline in my life.
I'm scared to death.
And you know it's because the only reason that they're allowed to fly here is because they have achieved that safety standard that we have to have. But you can always go to the State Department website. As we've talked about before, they have a list of airlines you should be concerned with or destinations you should be concerned with, and if the airline that you're flying happens to appear on that list, you might want to consider an alternative.
Sound advice from Jay Rodlift. All right, let's talk about hublays and couple that with the disaster that was the weather in the Southern States. Over that thousands of flights canceled. It was rather dist We had.
Tens of thousands of flights impacted and affected, and things are back to I don't want to say normal because I'm looking at New Orleans where forty three percent of their flights are canceled, Charleston sixty seven percent of the flights canceled. Savannah they're losing their minds with snow sixty
five percent of their flights canceled. So obviously, in some of these areas we're having issues, but when you look at the big picture, Southwest is canceled two percent of their flights, Delta one percent, American one percent, United one percent. So we're starting to see things today get back to normal. Today will be as close to normal as we've seen in the last several days, very few issues other than Detroit.
Tomorrow is going to be the day of the week where everything is okay, back to normal as usual, because sadly, we had planes last night that couldn't reach their destination because of delays that affected the originating flights.
Out this morning.
But overall it's gotten better as the weakest progress, but what an absolute nightmare of a mess with that historic storm that stormed across the South from Houston through so many of those airports that again they lost snow.
Removal as I'm just going to ask you, because I know the municipalities do not. In the houstonari they were talking about they had to bring some down from Dallas or something, but they had.
Because it's like you and I getting a snowblower that we put in our garage that we might use every fifteen years, You're just not going to do it. And it's the same sort of situation with these airports because look when I was in Monroe, Louisiana my first post, and it's snow two inches. I mean it was three days of nothing happening, and you'd have these flyers from New York. They would come in and I mean they would just go crazy on us because it's like, what.
Do you mean it's like a dust that.
Yeah, we get it, but we don't have any snow removal equipment because it doesn't happen that often. And look, when you see a snowball fights on Bourbon Street on the front page of Street Journal, pretty good indication that that well two one global warming has yet to said.
Is the other thing is this is a very very historic storm that you just got to shrug your shoulders and pray everybody's going to be okay, and you're sorry for everybody got hurt or killed, but from an aviation standpoint, there's just very little that can be done about it.
Yeah. Well, and I suppose you were a bit surprised to see four inches of snow and you're Charleston home.
Oh my god, oh no, in Savannah.
Yeah, we actually came back to Ohio to escape the Savannah snowstorm because I think the record was like three inches from eighteen something, and they got four inches.
That was on top of snow. And yeah, they're.
Losing their minds down there, but it's just yeah, we had to come to Ohio to escape the Savanah snowstorm.
That shows you how crazy these days are.
Jay rat Love. Always enjoy our conversations, my friend. We'll do it again next Thursday. Between now and then, best of health and love to both you and your better half.
Same to you, my friends. Thank you, take care.
It's coming at eight forty nine fifty five Carsen Talk station be right back fifty five KRC. Have you taken your family