Sherry Walker

The people out of the mix, right, because it's all about buy more airplanes. It's about driving that score so we can drive the share prices so that we can then get the lower financing rate to get airplanes. We go away from that time when a Gordon Bethune or a Herb Kelleher said, you take care of your internal people. They'll take care of your customer. So everything's bottom line now, Tucker.

It is, it was astounding.

I'm sure they do, based on, I mean, the voices, one was a female, one was a male, right? So the flying pilot is never the talking pilot. So just listening to the tapes, you could tell if it's a female voice, then the male was flying. If it was a male voice, the female was flying. So I don't know.

Oh, no, no. It's not hesitance to assign blame. This is the initial, right? This is just the fact piece. It takes up to a year. They go through all the flight data. We don't know if she was off her location because of mechanical failure. Right. You know, we all want the answer as to why, but we in the industry want the fix.

So so was that were the altimeters off? Was it a training issue? Was somebody in the wrong place? Was it air traffic control, et cetera? So we've got to go through all of that and they'll recreate it, superimpose it and fly it in a simulator and check these all these different pieces and parameters. And then they'll start looking at.

The system was broken and it should have never happened.

Great job by the flight attendants. Right.

To save you? Yeah. But that's what they're trained to do. So that was actually perfect.

They haven't given out the preliminary. I have my personal opinion. It's only opinion.

We know the female was flying, right? Because of the radio calls. I'm a human factors expert. Part of that involves vision. So I'm thinking that they were coming down and you've seen the snow kind of swirl across the road a little bit.

I think she was looking at the point and she was ready to transition her eyes and land and she got a swirl. I think she lost a little bit of, you know, essay situational awareness with the runway. That's what I think because she flew it right into the runway.

She hit too hard and it collapsed. It broke the gear and one wing went up. High wing is flying. Low wing is not. And it flipped right over.

Some people think it is involving, you know, a gust, a last minute shear. But I don't see the ailerons moving on the wings to counteract that. So I still think it has something to do with just a little bit of situational awareness at the end. We'll know. We'll know in 30 days.

Right. You got to fill the seats.

Especially when the pilots are more worried about their rock videos and they're part of a clique, if you've seen it. The girls at Endeavor embarrassed me.

You didn't see the video.

Yeah, there was some promo video done by a bunch of young ladies. And they were talking about, you know, all-female crew. And I think it was a recruiting video, but it was embarrassing to those of us who worked hard. What airline was this? That was the airline. Endeavor, I think it was. Endeavor. The one that flipped in Toronto. Yeah.

But it was before that. Girl power TikTok. Yeah, girl power TikTok came out. And of course, it broke the internet after the accident. And so I want to fly with professional adults, not children. And that was kind of embarrassing.

Oh, yeah.

You can tell if their heads in the game. I had one young man who had a broken heart and we solved that problem. I had him replaced on the next trip. He was a little distracted. Um, some guys kind of all over the place with a stick. It's interesting to watch your military single seat guys transition to transport category because they want to do this, you know, but they settled down. Um,

Most recently, and the most scary one I've had, I was flying. And I was flying a visual approach into Houston. And we're at 1,500 feet and runways in sight. We're all set. And he'd watched me fly for a little bit. And he says, can I ask a question? Of course, it's a sterile cockpit. You're not supposed to. But I go, yeah. He goes, what are you looking at when you fly a visual approach?

I was astounded. Yeah.

I said, when we get on the ground, we'll talk about this. No, you're cross-checking your instruments. You're double-checking the ILS. There's some outside light indicators. There's all the inside, outside to aviate an airplane, right? And you're checking your speed. And he really didn't understand. And I said, why do you not understand?

He said, because in the simulator, they told me, fly the autopilot to 50 feet, click it off, look up and land. I almost fell over, Tucker. And I've talked to a lot of people about this, and I don't really think that that's what they were training. I think what they were trying to train was how to do a visual approach in a simulator that doesn't allow it. They just need to check the block.

So you'll learn this out on the line. You know, this is how we're going to teach you to fly the simulator only. But he understood that to be how you would operate in an airplane. So the disconnect is there because the experience level wasn't there. So if I have a pilot approaching me saying, what are you looking at when you land an airplane? That's a problem.

A school like, sure.

My alma mater.

Wash the airplane for a lesson.

No, most have that experience or at least come up through the civilian world. Military is getting harder to find. Right. We're not the military is shorthanded as it is. People aren't leaving. You know, we haven't had a war recently. So they're not leaving the military. They've all left the military. Right. Because because the policies and they're here already. There's no one in the pipeline.

And so that's the problem. It's who's out there. You know, and so people that weren't necessarily the creme de la creme, now we're stuck with what's left and we're trying to fill seats. I will say, well, the economic demise of something like a spirit is a bad thing for those people. we're now starting to get them coming to the big airlines. And so that's good for the passengers.

It's good for them. They do have experience, but, but that rapid desire to grow, um, post pandemic, uh, My airline went from 10,000 pilots to, as of last week, 18,000 in two and a half, three years.

I would agree, but because people at the corporate level want to drive the interest rates down to be able to grow because it's all about expanding, who is the biggest, right? And so they have to follow some of those mandates.

Everywhere.

Mostly... Microsoft Flight Seminar?

Mostly, you know, the regionals. We'd already drained the military, so they're coming up as fast as they can. And they... Out of college, restricted ATP at 1250 hours, flight of 1500, interview and right in the door, right in the right seat of a 7557. And two years later, you're a captain. And you're talking about 26, 25. Ooh. So that slowdown judgment isn't there either.

The hardest thing I have to do at work, Tucker, is explain to my new first officers that when you see on your papers that the van leaves at 8 o'clock, that's go, not show. Don't show up and pay your credit card bill and all these things. They're young. I don't want to generationalize this and say that whole entire, because my son's of that generation and he's responsible.

They're just irresponsible, want to do it their own way. They're just green at life. Not just at piloting. They're green at life. They haven't dealt with responsibilities and things. And, you know, they don't want to fly. They call fatigued a half hour before the flight. And it's like, dude, you had better be where you need to be. That's what they pay us for.

right you've had people crap out a half an hour before saturday night in newark and i was a passenger yeah no way like just too hung over to fly no he'd flown he'd flown from one airport into newark he started at nine o'clock at night flew a 30 minute flight they were going to reassign him to cover the late flight and he just said no i'm fatigued oh wow So that becomes a problem too.

So all of these reasons that we need to maybe hold on to our senior pilots to mentor our junior pilots a little longer, they add up.

We talked about it. He's good. He'll be just fine. And I've talked to the training department and explained to them that we have some questions out there. So I'll see him again shortly on another trip and we'll talk about it again.

And so then we start looking at a particular CEO who said in 21, 50% of my incoming pilots will be women or people of color. First of all, that number is impossible. They don't exist.

Never.

Don't have time to, Tucker. Instinct takes over. Genuine takes over. If your pilot's afraid, they probably shouldn't be there.

In fact, everything just slows down. As fast as I go, and I am, you know, most people say, sir, you talk too fast. No, I say you listen too slow. But, you know, when it comes down to the emergency, everything just stops. And that's what you want.

I've been blessed. No. My husband, however, has a black cloud over his head.

He looks very calm, I must say. 1998 on St. Paddy's Day. Yesterday was the anniversary of his almost near death. It was near midair at Newark. Let's see, he's had a rapid decompression, an explosive decompression, a full hydraulic system failure. And he took one of my flights because we were on the same airplane at the time.

And he flew to Santiago, Chile, and he had a complete standby power system failure, which is something that should have never happened in a Boeing 767. So what does that mean? It means they armed the autopilot for the approach. An explosion came out of the dash. Everything goes crazy. The first officer flies. They have no auto brakes. They have no speed brakes. They have no number one radio.

Everything is gone. And he landed the airplane and stuck his big cowboy boots on those brakes and slid the airplane a little sideways, blew six trucks, I think, melted the wheels to the runway or to the taxiway. And they shot him with water for, what, two hours. And he called me up and he goes, you owe me. Yeah. And I went, don't wait me up for another hour. Bye. I had no idea what had happened.

He was on the news. It was crazy.

Some sort of an electrical short out in the system.

That's my biggest fear.

Fire is the one thing you don't want to deal with.

I haven't seen it in a while. What was it, Air Transat? Or was it Swiss Air? Up in the North Atlantic going in... They diverted into Gander or one of them, and they didn't quite make it.

But when you take merit out of it and you start hiring people based on an attribute that has nothing to do with flying airplanes or controlling them, you start moving down a path of incompetence and it breeds itself all the way down throughout every department in the airline.

Fire. We take lithium batteries very seriously, right? Because we have containment bags if your laptop lithium starts to go because, you know, that's kind of an uncontrollable fire. We want to get that out. So, you know, again, everything that happens happens in blood, and we change the rules.

Boy, you, I'm not familiar. It comes with the dangerous goods report. But, you know, you can have whatever you have on the plane. But if you check something with a lithium battery and you don't disclose it, it's a big deal. Because, you know, all of that, as long as we know about it, they package it properly, like a wheelchair or something like that. But they just want you to disclose it.

I don't know. Damn. I don't know. I don't think there's a sensor.

Yeah, fire is it. But, you know, I also worry about the mental health of the person flying next to me.

Yes.

Yeah. You had German wings. That was a big one. And that was in 2016. And the pilot, you know, captain left the flight deck and the first officer punched a hole in the Alps and took everybody with him. And that's a bad thing. But the worst thing now or the fear of mine is as we're moving through this whole, Kathy says she's a woman, but she's really not.

It's the FAA certification process, and I'm concerned.

Well, we can go back and see what the FAA says about it. No, I mean, I'm not being mean.

Or taking gender-affirming hormones.

But you have to look at the FAA certification process and how we got here. I still question how those people with the new executive orders that says, you know, birth gender has to be on your medical certificate. It has to be on your pilot's license. I don't know if that's been done yet. But I question how these people got certified to begin with. So we go back and we do a little history.

2012, some lobbying. They lighten the requirements for psychological testing if you're transgender from massive amounts of reports down to one or two.

Yeah. Lobbying.

There is a particular female pilot, or excuse me, transgender pilot, who was able to get some folks in Congress. But it gets worse. In 16, when the federal air surgeon, Dr. Michael Berry, was distracted about pilot mental health dealing with the outcome of the German wings, the several transgender organizations and another pilot said,

really pushed and they got Barney Frank and Congressman out of California to take up their charge. And the way they did it was pretty brilliant. The Diagnostics and Statistics Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, the DSM, had changed from revision four to five the definition from gender dysphoric disorder to gender dysphoria. Now, they did it for a reason.

They wanted to take the stigma off for the poor transgender people, right? But they couldn't fully pull it out because then there wouldn't be a diagnosis code and they could not then use their insurance to cover their surgeries or their home real replacements. There's articles all over the internet about it, right? That's fascinating.

They were playing the game because the American Psychiatric Association, of course, supports all of that. So they're absurd.

Yeah, exactly. The inmates are running the asylum. So they did this move on and Barry was kind of looking one way or maybe he was on it, but this was under the Obama administration. So we're just starting to see this push. Right. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The original 21 female airline pilots broke the glass ceiling. I didn't break it, but I kind of crawled through because of them. And, you know, on we go. But in all of my career, I've always been one of the guys. I'm an airman. I'm proud to be an airman. You can't call me an air person. I've earned it because I've done exactly what everyone else has done.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And so when a passenger comes on and they look in the cockpit now today... They look a little sideways that there's a woman up here. Definitely. And especially if I might be sitting next to a Hispanic or an African-American, they're wondering how we got our jobs.

So DEI hurts those that weren't a product of it as well. And that's unfair to me and to my coworkers.

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know that I noticed the standard changing, but I know what's expected of me has changed. Quarterly, we have a computer-based training, and it was kind of insidious the way they crept it in here. First, it's a little, don't discriminate against people. The next thing is a little more. At my airline last year, I was asked in the DEI training to certify that Tom says he's

Well, I mean, it's in the press. We all know there were three airlines that mandated the vaccine. Hawaiian, Coletta Air Cargo, and United. That's it? That was it. The rest were mandated eventually because nobody would follow along, right? They knew better.

Well, Hawaiian's domestic, technically. Not red. I know.

Contiguous United States.

Right.

Mm-mm. No, they were united when nobody followed. Then the president, Joe Biden, instituted the OSHA mandate. Right. For contract. If you have more than 100 employees, you have to mandate this or the government contractor mandate. If you do work and everybody flies the mail. Right. Four point six billion dollar business every year to the airlines and flying U.S. mail.

So as a contract, you had to mandate it. But the guys at SW Freedom Flyers in North, me up in Dallas, they, you know, they did a little pushback, the American boys, the Delta folks. And so the exemption process for them was just kind of a paper mill. Their bosses were cool about it. They were just like, whatever. And eventually both those mandates were overturned in court.

Be kind to your employees.

But it played into a marketing campaign.

Well, it was made by the CEO. I mean, it's in the court testimony. And the judge ruled that it was a pretextual situation whereby there was a marketing campaign at the bottom line. So there was a desire for that CEO to be able to come out publicly and say, in my opinion, at least, that they were the first fully vaccinated airline.

If they could do it by the holidays of December, maybe people would come back.

To his credit, his argument has always been it's been about safety. Safety for my employees. Look, I'm an adult. I can make my own medical decisions. So I don't need my CEO deciding my safety situation. But that was his argument. I want to just get that on the record.

I've never had COVID.

Yep.

I'm sorry?

who is now Kathy, that he's a woman. Therefore, he's always been a woman. Now, wait a minute. I'm a faithful person. He's a dude in a dress. And I am not going to agree that I will believe that he's always been a woman. So I said no. Several people said no. We had to apply for religious accommodations. And then we were asked to do what we always do, which is just...

Oh, yes, a board of directors. But, you know.

But everybody after the pandemic, remember, after this went away and then we got, we went in court and we get called back. Oh, we're on to the next big thing, which is, you know. Pilots, male pilots, or excuse me, male flight attendants with beards wearing lipstick or whatever the issue of the day is. So, you know, that's over. That's over. Don't worry about it.

We don't get the injunction.

We're out.

In my house, too. Yes, two of us. And my son, God bless him, you know, he was going to school and dealing with two pilots being home, which is unusual for him.

Instantly overnight.

It was very heavy. You know what happened? 2,000 people came together. Rampers, mechanics, flight attendants, pilots. We became a family overnight. I mean, over the last three years, I consider them my dearest, most wonderful friends. And I want to say thank you to every one of them for the support. Because, I mean, to me, servant leadership, it's the real deal.

I, I led them. They blessed me to the ability to lead them. Right. With my, with my friend, Laura and Danielle, you know, these people are incredible, but we've been to birth together. We've been through marriages, we've been through deaths. And I will tell you, those 2000 people are more important to me than anything in this world. And, and, And they're there for each other.

We had battle buddies. Somebody was feeling bad, you'd call a friend. We kept chat groups. And most of the time, they're pretty prayerful. We've debated books of the Bible. I mean, we are just like this. It's amazing.

And 20,000 down to 8,000 down to this, you know.

Plus or minus, you had 2,000.

I have no knowledge of that. I know a lot of people who have, in my community, not at my company, my husband's PA says, you know, her mom and dad walked in and somebody said it on the counter and there's the trash when you're done. I mean, you know, we have doctor friends that are saying this.

Except for there's only one way to get fired from my airline. It's to lie. Other than that, you can. You're right. No, I'm not going to do it.

That's OK. So you were able to live your life and good.

Yeah. We went through the EEOC process and then on through the courts. And right now we sit in the fifth circuit on appeals.

In fact, You should have been able to tap your 401k in an emergency situation, right? They locked us out. What? Like you're a criminal? I could not access my 401k. They said, well, you can apply for another job in the company. I'm 57 years old. I'm going to go throw bags. Well, OK, if you want to pay me myself. Oh, no, no. You're going to do it for a baggage rate.

I'm going to have to drive to the airport every day and go through.

You're not saying you're welcome. Right. That's my opinion. I just want to be clear.

If you know Michael Berry in Houston, he's a radio man.

treat people with dignity and respect i've done that forever you know i don't care what who you love right but i do i will always treat you with dignity and respect but only because of the pushback now this year's training they've dialed it back but they're trying to creep the things in that don't matter tucker what matters is how to fly an approach do you know the regulations are you safe right this other stuff is distracting and it's distracting at the fa as well

But we get called back because we won in the Fifth Circuit.

I think it was around February 17th. So we were out November, December, January, four months.

No.

Yeah, but, you know, we're old enough to have had some savings. Savings, right.

Yeah, we are burning reserves. I mean, but, you know, we don't live a grandiose lifestyle. So, you know, cars were paid for and things like that. And, you know, we were able to be... But there had to be people... Oh, there were people that were selling everything. Laura, her husband sold his dream, which is a small fishing boat.

I mean, it was not like anything big, but that was his dream because they needed to pay their bills. You know, people were selling everything and some were taking other jobs. Mental health side of it was scary. You don't understand the number of people Brett or myself talked out of suicide. And it was tough, but we made it.

360 plus or minus pilots. There's about seven. That's 350. There was about 50 to 100 what we call agents, you know, ticket agents. And the balance would have been flight attendants, the mechanics, the stores, people, the majority of the agents that worked in larger cities. Avionics technicians, management, they were able to work with a masking and testing regime, but it was punitive.

It wasn't masking. It was N95 respirators from the moment you pulled on property to the moment you left. You ate outside, didn't matter if it was snowing, raining, cold. You put it back between every bite and sip.

that mask was the yellow star. And then you had to be tested on a rolling every seven days. And it didn't matter if you were out on family medical leave, if you got hurt at work or were on vacation, you missed one test, you were terminated.

That's a whole other issue. I never did that. I would never do it.

So it was all punitive and it was all punishment. But they justified it in that those people didn't work on board the airplane. So for safety reasons, they were away from us.

Well, in our organization, I know I have seven Jewish members. Yes. I have a handful.

Very much so.

Yeah, very much religious, very faithful.

One is actually fighting a battle to get an accommodation for wearing a very tight beard. So we have those seven or so. We have at least one or two Muslims that I know of. One of our lead plaintiffs was a Buddhist, the majority Christians.

Very well. I take that back. We had a handful of people who are very observant, but that had a medical issue and their doctor told them don't get it. And so they applied for medical accommodation, backed up with a religious because of their faith. But I would say ninety nine point nine percent are.

But yes, you know, anywhere where they're punishing religious people. Anywhere there's a large group, you know, of employees, places, yes, I would agree. But it's also religious people also happen to believe in the Constitution. They also happen to be free thinkers. Oh, I've noticed. And, you know, I think there's even... more insidious things.

And they were after the religious people, sure, but they were also after anybody who would not stand, would comply. Right? I think to them, it was a test to see how they could trample people's rights. That's my personal.

That's my personal belief.

Mm-hmm. I know 2,000 heroes.

We're invited back to work eventually because of the court ruling. But then we're told, but you can't fly anywhere. You have to be careful. You can't fly anywhere? They wouldn't let us. We had restricted cities, right? Because countries might require a vaccine. Well... Of those restricted cities, there weren't any countries that wouldn't let pilots in. But it was a big battle.

We had to fight through this until Canada dropped the mandate for passengers. And so there were just things that were done, the constant retaliation pieces, getting called in the office because of a Facebook avatar or just dumb things.

No, I have no idea.

So Laura and I had changed our Facebook, you know, symbol to the Star of David. It said unvaxxed on it. Right. Because we felt like we were being abused. You know, I didn't want to make any light of previous situations, but, you know, it was out there.

And some pilot who disagreed with us anonymously reported us to the corporation, and we had to go to the office and do the carpet dance and explain why that wasn't discrimination.

Because we offended the Jewish people because we co-opted their star. So the first thing I did is call my seven Jewish members and say, does this offend you? They're like, no, we stand with you. Okay, fine.

Exactly.

But it was one more reason. Four times, five times in one year, I had to go sit in there and explain myself. It just goes on. I got one coming up.

This time, two years ago, I was trying to be kind to a very famous elderly person. We were going to do an engine run, and I couldn't leave them on the jetway with the engines running and doors open.

And so we got the person up to the top, and unfortunately, then she wrote a nasty letter, so I have to go do the carpet dance and explain why you can't sit unattended on a jetway with the door open and the engine running and the mechanic with an arm in an engine, so... We'll get through it. It's just constant.

No, or, you know, whether they wear a dress or pants.

I've never had anyone come up and say, you guys are causing a problem. Now there's keyboard warriors on certain, you know, social media sites, but at work. Nine out of 10 have said, I wish I could have stood with you. I'm sick. My friend is sick or something. I will never do it again. Ever, ever, ever. And I'm sorry I didn't stand with you.

In my case. So, you know, in the U.S., 96.4% of all pilots are male. Yeah. Right? So there's like less than 4% female airline transport pilots. We can do everything, and I'm an advocate for doing everything we can to get people interested in the job. But, Tucker, there are some people who just don't need to be doing the job either. Yeah. And you can't fit a square peg in a round hole.

No.

They were victims too. Some are just stronger than others.

So I had a lot of free time there while I was off of work. And I'd been working on my doctoral dissertation. And when this started to go down, I shifted gears. So my organization, Airline Employees for Health Freedom, we started getting phone calls. I know somebody that's sick or I know this or I know that. So we just put a data collection link up.

And it got so intense that I said, you know what, I'm going to stop everything. I'm going to write my dissertation and I'm going to study the vaccine injury amongst commercial airline pilots. And so it was about seven months of data collection. 1,600 plus respondents across the industry. And understand the population is about 80-20 vaxxed, right?

My study actually came out about 50-50 because a whole bunch of my unvaccinated friends wanted to help, which watered down my numbers, but it actually makes them that much more powerful. Because at 50-50, if I found this, what would I have found at 80-20? And what I found is...

Commercial airline pilots in the United States are suffering pericarditis and myocarditis at rates exceeding the CDC's national average. And I proved it to a 98% plus or minus four in that regards.

It goes back to that incapacitation thing, right? Pilots got to have a healthy heart. But what it really means for the short term, we're losing pilots. It's anecdotal. It's in my dissertation. But I have the charts from American Southwest and from the Union at United. The disability rates post-December of 21 shoot through the ceiling. Right.

They're off the charts and they're getting worse by the day. So pilots are going on long term disability. It's one more way to get rid of those high dollar workers, I guess. I don't know. And we just that way we have to have more young people come in. And so where it goes, I don't know. But I found things from kidney stones to serious, you know, mental, excuse me, neurological problems, cardiac.

It's really scary. And nobody wants to know about it. And the problem is, I went to the union and I said to the national president in an email, and I have it in my dissertation, it's published online. I found this. We need to address this. And he says, oh, no, no. You know what? That's in the past. We don't, that might be disruptive to unity.

I'm a former rep. I've seen the sausage making from the inside. We were, quote, a professional organization that focuses on safety. That's their number one point. Secondly, it's collective bargaining. I pay a lot of money for them to abuse me.

I can teach anyone to fly, sure. But there's some that I would not want to fly in my family. Have you seen those people? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

They weren't interested in them putting us on the street. They stepped back and said, company can do what they want. What? No, it's not in the collective bargaining agreement. That is a terming condition. That is an EEOC problem between you and the airline.

The Airline Pilots Association, ALPA, and ALPA is working against helping the pilot shortage by upping the age. ALPA worked against all of us in any of the airlines. I can't say that because actually, you know, the ALPA people at Delta, they worked with Ed Bastian and they actually came up with a pretty good system during this mandate piece. But ours washed our hands of us.

Unfortunately, yes.

Oh, and it even gets better. They take my money and they have a DEI committee. It's staffed by a transgender pilot who then sends me emails explaining what my language should be.

Oh, yeah.

One of my first students, female, I tried to teach her how to fly. She could fly. But she just couldn't put it back together. You know, when you go around, it's pushed the power up. And it was dainty. It was just some skill sets that they just don't have. An aggression and, you know, a willingness to get out there and learn it. You know.

Let's just say we have people in the union, in the legal department, who are not the best and brightest. You'd obviously work at somewhere other than a union. But the rumor is I've been told that I'm the fifth rail. They don't even know the saying. It's the third rail, right? So trust me, the union and I don't get along really well, Tucker.

I was.

I had a desire to go in there and help people and clean up the mess that was.

Unions are, in this case, at least I use the phrase, unions are like the tick on the dog, right? They suck from the dog, but they can't kill it because that's the way they live. So in the case of the Airline Pilots Association, they collaborate a lot with management. They get what they need. They get the dues from it. And they'll do a little bit, but they can't do too much, right?

Because they need the company to stay profitable or they'll be gone.

But they shouldn't be the disciplinary arm of the airline. And in a lot of cases, they are.

Sure.

Yeah. Which is bad. Yeah.

Yeah. Wash their hands of all of us. And it didn't happen just at the Airline Pilot Association. It happened at the AFA, Association of Flight Attendants, right? It happened. The Teamsters, no, it wasn't the Teamsters. The dispatch union leader was the only one that fought back against the mandates, right? All the rest of them just rolled over.

Airline people, okay, so we have a few of the hardcore union people, of course, that are going to lean left, right? Airline people are of the ilk of where they live, okay? Houston base is very conservative, very Texas, very red. I see in the San Francisco base a much more liberal opinion. So I think they're just people. I don't think it's... We're not in the days of fighting Lorenzo, right?

So I don't think it's really a political thing with the airline people. I think they're just part of their community.

Yeah, you have to be in control, especially in a Cessna, right? You know, it's not like my auto throttle, big 767, autopilot, et cetera. But the bigger problem we're having today is because it's a lucrative career, a lot of people want, they've been talked into getting involved. And so they see the money. They might not be quite fit for it. I'm also a college professor.

Bernoulli is a fact, right? We can't change that.

We acknowledge them and we, and we're risk averse, right? So we're going to be conservative and take the most conservative way. So I don't, that also, there still are some liberal ones.

They're usually the big union dogs, you know, the high power ones.

Most of them are not faithful at all, too.

As well. I mean, they're not faithful as well. They're not religious people. Oh, of course not.

What, how are you going to behave when I'm not here? You know, we got pilots that are asking those questions right now. They're saying, you know, I'm not comfortable leaving the flight deck.

When we're flying with somebody of that nature.

I'm in the top 10%. Yeah, right.

Mm-hmm. Well, I'm required legally to go take a break. I mean, I have to go to bed for over eight hours. You have to take a nap. We rotate. We have three pilots and we rotate. Yeah.

For me, it's anecdotal because I haven't flown with one yet, except for when I was on the 737 years ago and there was a captain, who, by the way, was a terrible pilot.

Yes, terrible pilot. He's more focused on other things.

I want to be funny, but making sure his voice sounded right or, you know, there was a lot of distraction. He was just known as not a very great pilot. And so, you know, I did a lot of the flying. But that was years ago when I was really young, former airline before the merger. So but so I haven't in in my world, there hasn't really been any in the 767, but a lot of dear friends.

I teach human factors for Indiana Wesleyan. So I deal with a lot of the undergraduates and the people coming up. People quit their jobs midlife. I'm going to chase the money. I don't realize what they're doing. And it's a different generation. And my son is of that generation. So I don't want to speak badly of them. But the priorities are different. Right.

And the more junior airplane, 737 and Airbus were just like, I'm not comfortable. You know, they don't fly the long haul so they can usually get to where they're going.

Yeah. Thank you. But yeah, they just they don't want to leave. We're not sure. What could happen? They've read the same studies as I have. Damn. And it's not just here. It's across the industry.

No, I'm meaning in domestic airlines. It's not just my carrier. It's pilots from a lot of different carriers.

Come into the office. Let's have another carpet dance. For real? Yeah. Now, so the thing is you have to observe a safety concern. You must report it as a whistleblower. Then it might get changed. But I haven't actually officially observed it. but I can understand where we're going.

I mean, it might not be as dramatic as somebody not wanting to fly with somebody, but one very real piece is you can be called in the office and get in trouble for, say, misgendering somebody or using the wrong pronoun. Actually? Yes. Unfortunately, I work in a safety-sensitive world. I have a common safety language, right? If we're in the middle of... of a massive emergency at altitude.

And I pick up that and I call them back and I say, hey guys, prepare the cabin. Oh, wait a minute. Was I supposed to remember was a guy or a girl or what? It's just a word I use? In the heat of battle, I don't want to have an Abbott and Costello who's on first discussion with the person at the other end of the phone. No, I'm a he. No, she's at door one. No, he's at door three.

We have something to do and deal with. And I don't want to have to stop and think in my job before I react the way I've been trained. Oh, did I say the wrong thing? Am I going to, if we survive this, have to go answer for it? And that's a very real piece. That one is one that pilots worry about probably more than actually flying with a trans.

I hope never again in my lifetime. Because the people at the front of the airplane, me and my partner, we're going to do what we know how to do. And it doesn't matter to me if I get called in because I misgendered somebody. There are still good people out there. But we're getting to that critical mass point where we need a little time. We need a pause.

We need this new incoming FAA administrator whom I've read a lot about. I really like him. He looks like a very faithful person and he's going to fit in the administration and be confirmed rather quickly. We need to get the pilot age up. The standards do not need to be lowered for the incoming. And then we're going to need to take some time and mentor. And I think we can get there.

And so to get them to understand the commitment that it takes to succeed in this career and to get all the way through it. And then to have them, you know, it's kind of entitlement, if I can say that, you know, and they grow up. And I don't want people to think I'm saying, you know, I walked a mile in the snow to school, therefore you're not qualified, right? But airplane technology has changed.

But the clock is ticking. So the Trump administration, I think, is on the right track to fix four years of complete dismantling of the U.S. aviation industry. I hope, I pray they can get there. But I think they've got the right people in place.

I'm sure I have. I'm more nervous when I stand on like the edge of a tall building or I'm scared of heights, Tucker. Absolutely. I refuse to go to the Grand Canyon. I won't do it.

depends 28 to 38 somewhere in there you know we we climb as we burn fuel we get lighter so we climb um but you know 36 37 38 what is that almost seven miles high in the air and passengers think about it you're sitting in a chair doing eight to nine tenths the speed of sound that's a pretty awesome thought that's incredible isn't it where we are yeah i think the whole thing is is absolutely wonderful what do you think of the new planes

Well, I fly the old planes. I'm a Boeing girl. My husband flies the 787 and he likes it. I mean, you know, technology is wonderful. It just goes further, faster and higher. We'll see. I'm more worried about coming technology with regards to single pilot or autonomous flight. I don't know about you. I'm not getting in an airplane without a pilot.

It's coming.

Get rid of the people.

Well, we have them now.

Right. They're called drones. I mean, they in Houston, we have pilots. They're in the Garden Reserve. They get in their car in the morning. They drive down to Ellington. They walk into a trailer. They're flying a drone over in Afghanistan, bombing the bad guys and they drive home. I mean, it happens all the time. It's not coming this generation. We have cars, autonomous taxi cabs in Austin, Texas.

Right. They drive around and you just jump in one and it charges your credit card. First time I saw it, it was crazy. But they have it. So what's coming is, first of all, is the move to reduce one pilot in the cockpit.

It's a way it'll work, most likely. They said, aviation and space magazine had this about four or five years ago. They'll have a control room, drone operators, me, when I retire, all these people will be sitting in a control room and you'll take off. Remember that old V1 rotate engine failure we talked about? You'll just push the Boeing button.

And I'll come on, I'll say, hey, captain, I've got the airplane. You get the checklist. So a room of eight people can work the whole thing.

Wouldn't it be? You know the old joke, we have a dog in the cockpit, right? You know why the dog is there? To keep the pilot from touching anything. Bite him if he comes. So yeah, that's the first step. They're going to start, it'll start in cargo carriers and trying to push to eliminate one body. For cost reasons.

Because you can only control the price of the airplanes, the price of the people, or the price of fuel. Right? Fuel's pretty set. Airplanes, you can get the better financing if you play the game. But we cost money.

Well, but it gets better. The next generation or two might go there. But at the same time, the drone world, and I think they call it VTOL, vertical takeoff and landing, whereby you, Tucker Carlson, can have your own VTOL and you can fly yourself to the airport and you can get on the big airplane. And this stuff is all in the crazy works behind the scenes at the FAA. You can read about it.

We learned to manhandle those Cessna 172s. And from that, we learned how to manhandle the next biggest airplane. These kids are growing up in glass cockpits with computers. They're learning to fly with their fingers. when they get to the airlines, it's not an aviator that's coming there, it's an operator.

It's there. They're establishing corridors and plans. It'll start with pilots operating, but eventually they're looking for an autonomous situation where you just, the Jetsons, you walk out, get in your little hovercraft, go to the airport, get in the big hovercraft.

I surely will be.

So thank you. Thank you enough for the opportunity. And I really pray for the president, Secretary Duffy, the incoming FAA administrator, that we can get ahead of this before it gets out of control.

And so when they take off, put the autopilot on, fly the autopilot with auto throttles to landing. Ask Al Haynes in Sioux City, Iowa, how to fly an airplane without an autopilot. He saved a lot of lives. That skill is not there. And it takes time to build that skill. We could even take those young 1500 hours and we're doing it. But It takes a long time to mentor.

Legitimately, there's been a corporate change in this country. ESG started to take over. You've got the Larry Finks of the world that are driving corporations or CEOs toward issues that not necessarily are customer oriented.

So we've got pilots now that are coming in at minimum skills, having learned on glass cockpits and in a year upgrading to captain. I had 12 years of watching the good and the bad of the airline world. And I took the good from them and I left the bad behind. And I think I'm a pretty decent captain now. But those kids are jumping so fast.

And then they're running the unions because they're young and they're eager. And so as old people are saying, hey, you know what? We're at a critical moment where we don't have qualified pilots. We'd like to keep them a little longer. We'd be willing to work an extra couple of years. But they vote and they say, no, get out of my seat, old man or old woman. Excuse me.

They don't want to raise the pilot age. So the Airline Pilots Association is complicit in the problem.

I would agree.

Well, the most dangerous part of your flight, most people don't know it, is takeoff in a jet.

As we get to the end of the runway at critical speed, V1 we call it, V1, liftoff, the airplane is at full power and you have an engine failure. Now you have asymmetrical thrust. And so it's very critical to lower the nose, do the proper steps. And a lot of times there's critical terrain. So we have a path we have to fly and a lot of things are happening very quickly.

And so doing it by the book, it's what we train for over and over and over again.

It is the most critical point of your entire flight. And so that's what we train for. That's what they pay me for. They don't pay me for the simple stuff, the landings and cruise at altitude and all that. They pay me for that V1 cut.

Right at the speed, we call it V1, velocity one. So at that critical speed is when we V1, rotate the airplane off the runway, engine failure, asymmetrical thrust, kicks in a whole bunch of rudder and a 7.6. It takes a lot. You know, you stand on it, get it straight and fly it up to roughly 800 feet, lower the nose, work the checklist. And it's a two-man job.

That's a critical reason we can't go to single pilot.

Because somebody's got to read the checklist and somebody's got to fly the airplane. I can't fly that airplane looking down at that checklist.

And everyone we've had. that I can remember, has been extremely successful.

People survived. The last actual death in the U.S. transport category outside of the commuters, 2005, Southwest, and it actually wasn't on board the plane. It was at the gas station across the street of Midway. So we have an incredible safety record. But we have that safety record because of the people up front, right? The system's kind of working against us, though.

Well, not the internal customer anyway. So as we go through this process, this slow creep, those need to set an investment score. People with differing ideas of customer service and what's important are able to drive forward their message. So we get away from customer service. Airlines run on three things, right? They run on fuel, planes, and people. When we start taking...

I don't know if you've seen the preliminary results of the DCA midair.

We have a serious problem.

It's not what I think happened.

Right, the helicopter that hit the airplane over the Potomac.

Sorry, I shouldn't speak in language.

Thank you. Now, I know what I know from watching the NTSB press conference.

And the chairwoman was speaking. She explained several things. It's only preliminary. No blame was assigned at this point. I have my personal belief on blame. But the design of the system failed those passengers, okay? The way that route through there was designed, they looked back for 11 years, 945 plus thousand potential incursions in 11 years. My teeth hit the floor.

We do, but the problem she detailed is the design of the system. That approach, if the helicopter is in the right place, the perfect ideal place, the clearance between the approaching aircraft and the helicopter at one point is as low as 75 feet. Come on. Watch her debrief. I was astounded. The rotor blades on that helicopter are like 30 feet radius. Holy cow.

And now we know the helicopter was outside of the ideal place. And obviously, 75 feet, Tucker, when I pre-flight an airplane, between my first officer and myself, the regulation says they have to be within 75 feet. So right there, we've taken out the protection. What in the world was the FAA doing?

Yeah, Wichita or, you know, Boma. LAX, yeah. Yeah, who knows? Who knows? Where does the data go? The problem is the FAA is two-fold master, right? A regulatory body and a promotion of the industry. So... What is it?

The charge to the FAA is to promote air travel in the United States and to regulate it. Huh. That's been their mandate from the beginning, yeah.

Yes.

I guess, because how did Boeing get the right to self-certify the MAX, right?

So an inspector didn't have to go look at the 737 MAX. Boeing had the right to certify itself. Really? That's been pulled back. Everything that happens in aviation, every regulation happens as the result of blood. Right. And so nobody's being proactive in this agency. Now, I love I love Secretary Duffy and I love his attitude. And it looks like the new nominee for the FAA administrator is great.

But the question is the next level bureaucrats. These are people who have for their entire careers, be it at and a lot came from the military. They like sitting behind green government desks and drinking green government or excuse me, drinking government coffee. And so. You don't have to get up and go over there and look at those reports or do something with them. That's that's got to change.