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To I thirty here fifty five or see the talk station. I'm very happy Thursdays, last Friday, Eve. You love this time of the week, and of course timing couldn't be better. A man in very, very high demand. I heard media aviation r expert Jay Ratliffin was seven hundred plus stations throughout the nation. I bet you are in high demand. Jay, Welcome back to the show, my friend.
Yeah, the phone started ringing at like eleven o'clock last night through the night, about every ten minutes for most of the morning and the day. It's TV and radio stuff. So it's a I wish it had been any other topic because Brian, we've not had I've not had to talk about a plane crash in the United States for sixteen years.
I know. I mean even brought that up and I was like knocking wood here in my studio or knocking fur.
NC go too, and I'm sure a lot of people were frowning at me. But now you got to get back to the Colgan Air crash. It was February of two thousand and nine. We had the crash in Buffalo that killed forty nine passengers somebody on the ground, and it's it's been We did have a passenger that died on a Southwest flight we did have a couple of people that died in the Asiana crash in San Francisco, but for the most part, we've not had a plane
crash that we've ever had to talk about. And of course that ended last night and the questions abound, and obviously we'd have very very few answers. But what we do know is that there is a very specific designated visual corridor where helicopters are allowed to operate up and down the Potomac River. So it's an area where if you were a helicopter pilot, you are flying under visual
flight rules. You are required obviously of NonStop communication with air traffic control, but you're also responsible for making sure that you get adequate separation between you and other aircraft. That's what visual flight rules dictate. You as the pilot and command have to make sure that that is done. And that's the case, and that's what this military flight
was operating under. You then have the American Airlines Regional Jet, which was a pas Say Airlines, which is based in Dayton, is on their final approach coming in from Wichita, and they've got sixty passengers on board crew of four. They're going through their flight. You know, the last moments of flight, the most critical moments of flight, as you and I've talked about five hundred feet either taken off or landing,
a lot that's going on. They're very locked into every specific little detail they need to have, and then all of a sudden, the two aircraft occupy the same area at the same time. What we do know is that air traffic control did reach out to the military aircraft saying, do you have visual of the American Airlines jet? Now, Brian, here's one of the many, many, mini, many questions I
have is that communication took place seconds before impact. Yeah, And my thought is, why do you ask a question that's going to require a response for you then to give evasive instructions when time is of the essence. That should not have been a question me. It should have been, you know, take evasive action or whatever they needed to
do to get that aircraft out the way. Because if I've got a regional jet on final and I've got a military black Hawk helicopter, I know which of the two is going to be making the last minute maneuver. It's going to be that military crew, right, because that's the type of aircraft they're in and that's what it's designed to do. Now, we don't know if there was previous conversations with that military training flight. We don't know what conversations, if any, were going on with the flight
crew of American Airlines. Now, I do know that they communicate on different frequencies. When the military is talking to the air traffic control, they use a VHF frequency. When they're talking to pilots of commercial airlines, it's VHF, meaning that the conversations that took place between that military black Hawk crew and air traffic control would not have been heard overheard by the American Airlines crew at all because they were on a completely different frequency.
Well, and.
You know, there's video of it. It's almost impossible to believe. It's hard to watch, quite honestly, that helicopter Terrific just straight line ran into the airplane.
And those aircraft are designed with this panoramic view for all the obvious tactical reasons you would have on a military aircraft, and so they can see everything around them.
The problem is that at night, especially if you're wearing goggles, as many of them do, you've got all of these lights because that is such a densely populated area, You've got all kinds of things that are kind of competing for your attention, so to speak, and the likelihood that you might lose track of a nearby aircraft that's coming
in for landing bright as possible. And that's the reason that I have to go back to air traffic control because they see everything, and they're the ones that are ultimately responsible for the management of that airspace and keeping all of those planes safely apart and all those aircraft and distance where there's not going to be any danger to any of the particular airplanes or aircraft and their inhabitants. And here we had passengers that were put at risk
and we don't know. In the National Transportation Safety Board, who I'm a huge fan of, they will get to the bottom of it. They will do their due diligence, They will dig through everything. They will find out the mistake or mistakes that were made. We will learn from it. Then we will apply those mistakes. Well, hopefully they recommend it to the FAA and it's up to them what they do. But then we get to the point of trying to implement those changes, because as you and I've
talked about in every accident. In your accident, you honor the lives of those that were lost by making the necessary changes so that you can prevent that kind of a situation from ever happening again. And we've got to do that here.
Absolutely. It almost defies the odds that those two were able to run in each other, concern the speed that they were traveling, in the distance between the two, and they finally impacted. I'm just in a state of disbelief over the whole thing, Jay, So many many questions looming, and some are suggesting there's no way this was an accident, this was an intentional act, and you know, the rumors starts swirling and are.
They well and they always do in a situation like this, And sadly, with social media, it's a fertile ground for a lot of that stuff to happen. And we'll know what's going to take place, and there's going to be a lot of transparency that's going to take place here, and I'm very confident that we're going to find out what happened. I don't now. Look, anytime there's a crash, the FBI is immediately involved because it's treated as a
crime scene until we determine otherwise. Now, it was pretty clear here in the early ongoing that this was not a criminal event, so the FBI could kind of stand down. But the other issue is, you know, had any of the debris fallen into the non river park. The concern that we have from an investigative standpoint is people grab souvenirs and sometimes parts of an aircraft are removed from
the scene. It's critical for the investigation. So not only are you involved in a search and rescue, but you're also making sure that any of the debris that falls, as we have with the commercial airline when Columbia came down, I mean, any of these investigations that take place of a type of aircraft, it's critical that the investigators have every single piece of information that they can have, and
sometimes the black boxes will tell the story. Sometimes it's the wreckage that gives us the answers that we need. And that's why all of that is so critically important in the early stages of all this, so that all of that is contained, so that it's available for the investigators as they need it.
Well, and I guess I must observe out louds and I'm thinking about it I don't think there's any question in anybody's mind how this tragedy happened. Two aircraft ran into each other in the in mid air.
How many times have you and I talked about the near misses we've had at other airports across the country. And when I talk with pilots, they say, Jay, ask any of us your top five list of airports you don't want to fall into. Washington Reagan's always one of the five, because it's a very difficult thing. Now, there's one question here that I can't answer because it's outside my lane. But I know that on that regional jet, the Bombardier CRJ seven hundred, they have the t CAST system,
you know, the traffic collision avoidance. Yeah, yes, But the problem is that requires a like transponder to be on the other airline.
Oh and I.
Don't think well, in fact, I'm pretty pretty confident here
that's not the case. And the reason I'm confident is because that t CAST system would have alerted American Airlines flight crew of the presence of that aircraft, and you would have seen in the video some sort of last stitch moment movement, change of altitude, change of directions, something within that crew, and we didn't see it on the video, So that makes me think and again it's askedinine to draw any conclusions at this point, but they really didn't
know what was taking place until they were right on top of it, and that point it was it was simply too late.
It's just hard to get my head around that. And you might think that that system would not exist on a military aircraft anyway, because that would allow others to track where it is to get given times.
And we don't want that on our military aircraft. And if that's the case, so be it. But that's one of the reasons, because that was the question I had, was would they have been alerted to this in any sort of way from the systems that are on board that state of the art aircraft and the Bombardier they're the ones that made the fifty passenger regional jets that we all were familiar with with Calm Air and the CRJA seven hundred is simply just a larger version of
that Bombardier jet. So it's a great aircraft, state of the art. Crews love to fly them, incredibly dependable, they've got everything they need on them. But again that's dependent on a lot of other variables that have to exist with other aircraft.
And as of last reporting on this, let's say that they found twenty seven of the bodies from the airline and one of the helicopter. One from the helicopter, so it's not gone full recovery mode. There is no no one believes anyone survived. This so truly a tragedy.
Jay When you look at the video and you look at what took place, the explosion that happened when the two hit, it would be a miracle if anyone did survive. Now, look, I've seen some of the most horrific plane crashes that have happened where you would think nobody survived and there were survivors. So there's always going to be hope. But we're reaching that point where hope is running out and there's always room for a miracle. Will never sell God
short on anything, you know that. But the bottom line here is that it just appears as though that all lives were lost, sixty four on the commercial jet and then three that we know of on the military side.
And yeah, I mean, and you think of the people, and I'm thinking of also the American Airlines agents that are on the go team, because I was part of the go team on Northwest, which meant if there was a crash or an accident and there was a loss of life, the go team would be dispatched to the scene and each one of us would be assigned to family and we would work with that family through everything, getting their family members in, helping them collect the remains,
all of the things that just are horrific to go through. But you know, those people are also being dispatched to help out as well because they've got to help these families that are going to be dealing with this not only now but for years. And our family lost somebody in a very public way. And when it's public, it's everywhere, and that just makes it impossible to get away from, yes, and it just makes it even more difficult so often
for families to deal with. So, I mean, there's so many people to pray for here, because it's going to impact all kinds of people.
Huh, ripple effect, it's profound unbelievable. Well, I wish we had a lighter topic to talk about it in the interest of adding some measure of lightheartedness, moving away from the tragedy, Let's just talk real quickly about since I know you're in high demand today, the ten year prison sentence of man God, what happened on that one Jay?
This actually happened back in October. It was a man that was running to a Delta American flight in Dallas. And I understand, Brian, he was a very important individual. He doesn't need to wait in lines, so he ran to the front of the line past everybody, tried to push his way through the gate to board his flight. The poor gate agent is trying to explain to this idiot who did have alcohol involved. He was just the wrong gate. He was trying to get on the wrong plane.
So he is directed to the other one, which was the correct one, and off he goes. He misses that
flight because they won't let him on. He comes back and beats up the person who told him that it was the wrong gate, and other employees tried to get involved, and they got Some of these folks couldn't come back to work for several days, and he got to the point where he is now facing up potentially a ten year prison sentence and potentially a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars five and I hope he gets both here's here's my other aggravation. It's going to be negotiated down.
He'll be a fraction of each for both, and he's going to be allowed to fly on any other airline he wants other than American airlines who will be banning forever. Why do we allow people that are this violent to fly on other US carriers after this happens. Shouldn't be the case. And it's one of the things you and I talk about so often.
Amen to that well real quickly, how delays I imagine getting in and out of DC might be a little troubling.
Today, Yeah, a lot. With all the obvious flight activity in that area, we're seeing delays there, and really the Northeast for the next maybe forty eight hours is going to be problematic because the conditions are only going to decrease over the next two days. So if you're scheduled to fly too or through anywhere in the Northeast, by all means, make sure the airlines have a way to get.
Ahold of you. Appreciate the sound advice and the information, Jay Ratliffe, and off to your next appointed call, because I know they're lined up around the corner with you today. Jay, thanks for the time.
Of sadly heads and stopped ringing. And I just wish we had something fun to talk about because I miss our fun conversation.
We'll do it next week when the dust is settled a little bit from this tragedy. God bless you, Jay Ratler. Thanks for the time you spend my listeners with me every Thursday. I'll look forward to next Thursday already. Invest to health, you in your better half.
Thank you, my friend.
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Keep your stupid mouth shut
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