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Transcript

Pushing Tin Episode 194 · So There I Was

• 0:00
  Quiet numbskulls, I'm broadcasting. Hello, you're listening to the podcast, So There I Was.
• 0:06
  This is episode number 194.
• 0:10
  Pushing 10. Pushing 10. Yeah.
• 0:14
  Pushing 10. I've set a report that we cannot say that no animals were harmed.
• 0:20
  No, this is, you're right. Yes, you're right.
• 0:24
  There is a theme in our podcast and it is being carried on in this one.
• 0:30
  There was, it wasn't livestock, but there was maybe, I'm not going to give it away. Anyway.
• 0:35
  Yeah. You'll hear it. two tower air traffic controllers join us for a very good discussion.
• 0:43
  It was a fun discussion. Yeah. It's always fun to chat with controllers,
• 0:47
  you know, to see what their perspective on life is.
• 0:49
  And I think, I think they're an overlooked group of people.
• 0:54
  Well, they're super skilled and trained and.
• 0:59
  You know, it's like being a scheduler in the squadron. If everything goes right,
• 1:05
  nobody ever hears about them.
• 1:07
  Right. But if something goes wrong, well, they're the first ones that gets an ass doing.
• 1:12
  And so that's kind of like air traffic control, man. I mean,
• 1:15
  if everything goes right, well, that's what they're supposed to be doing,
• 1:18
  right? They're doing what they're supposed to do. That's right.
• 1:21
  But, boy, is that an intricate system. And those guys that keep it glued together,
• 1:25
  I got to admire them for their patience and their endurance,
• 1:29
  especially. We chatted a little bit about what it was like during the shutdown.
• 1:33
  It was interesting to hear him say the biggest problem was the morale.
• 1:36
  Well, their training regimen.
• 1:37
  And there's a lot of things that I really didn't know that we got answers to tonight.
• 1:43
  You don't just learn how to talk on a radio and get cut loose, that's for sure.
• 1:47
  No. We had some great cross talk. We had some great stories.
• 1:52
  Kimo joined us as a guest co-host. He's sitting right next to me,
• 1:56
  and there was maybe some brown liquor and a cigar going on. and there's a lot of distraction but,
• 2:01
  So it degenerated by the end is what you're trying to say without saying it. It did.
• 2:07
  There you go. Hey, we got a couple of quick thank yous we need to get out here.
• 2:12
  We got a gent by the name of Mike Andrews who cracked open his wallet and threw
• 2:16
  a Benjamin at us. It's thereiwas.us slash donate.
• 2:20
  Mr. Andrews, we're worried about you. So humbled.
• 2:24
  So thankful. But boy, are we concerned about your judgment.
• 2:30
  Just don't tell your financial advisor what you're doing with your money and
• 2:33
  we'll all be all fine. Yeah, it'd be all right.
• 2:35
  And then there's John Vestal, who also became a division leader at SoThereIwas.us slash Patreon.
• 2:43
  Thank you, Mr. Vestal. Yes, thank you. You're humbled by your generosity as well.
• 2:47
  We couldn't keep this show going without people doing this. We're humbled by
• 2:49
  your generosity and we appreciate your support more than words can express.
• 2:54
  But we truly are worried about your judgment.
• 2:58
  We are indeed. And another cool thing along the money line, we're bringing on
• 3:04
  a new sponsor this week, which we are thrilled to do, dcartworks.net.
• 3:12
  Dcartworks.net. This guy is an artiste.
• 3:17
  Hey, is that his artwork hanging behind over your left shoulder?
• 3:23
  It is, which you can't see if you're listening on the podcast.
• 3:26
  But those are my gold naval aviator wings, and they're about...
• 3:30
  Let's just call it two feet.
• 3:31
  They're made of... Two feet across in multiple layers.
• 3:34
  Laser cut steel, hand-painted.
• 3:37
  They're gorgeous. I have them. And I've seen some of his artwork.
• 3:40
  If you go to dcartworks.net, look on his website, you will see him standing
• 3:45
  by a four foot in diameter squadron patch, painted squadron patch, cut in steel. Steel.
• 3:52
  Yeah. And I actually have the exact wings over your shoulder in my fighter bar at home.
• 3:58
  He's actually an old squadron mate and he is true artist and holy cow.
• 4:05
  Yeah. So we're thrilled to be bringing Derek on board with DC artworks.net.
• 4:09
  Yes. So thank you. Thank you.
• 4:11
  DC, DC art, artworks.net.
• 4:17
  So, but you know what? We've rambled and rattled on long enough.
• 4:21
  Perhaps we should get out of the way and let them tell their stories.
• 4:25
  But Styx has put up a banner for us. Read that. That says, read that.
• 4:32
  From the movie Pushington, if you don't know about it, it's about air traffic controllers.
• 4:37
  You land a million planes safely, then you have one little midair,
• 4:40
  and you never hear the end of it.
• 4:43
  One little midair. Yeah. One little midair. Yeah, so.
• 4:49
  All right, everybody. I say. Let's get out of the way. Until next week,
• 4:52
  stay safe and, you know, watch out for a stuck mic.
• 4:55
  Don't sit on the microphone switch. Don't block the microphone.
• 5:39
  Yeah there i was san juan tower freshly certified uh air traffic controller and,
• 5:46
  nothing like watching an airbus 320 off departure
• 5:49
  roll and a of islander 500 feet
• 5:51
  off the deck cross right to left so that's my story yeah yeah that was like
• 5:59
  a week after certification we saw that so i bet it was a week after that before
• 6:04
  you take a dump so tight on that Oh, my God. It was instantaneous.
• 6:11
  Yeah, it was instantaneous that time, so.
• 6:15
  Fantastic. Oh, man. Greetings, everyone. Repeat here, recording tonight.
• 6:20
  So there I was from New Hampshire. We've got a co-host and a guest,
• 6:26
  a co-host and a guest co-host tonight.
• 6:28
  Where are my co-host?
• 6:31
  Well, I am in Denver, Colorado, with...
• 6:36
  My good friend, Kimo, we're in an undisclosed location in Denver,
• 6:40
  Colorado, in his bunker. G14 classified.
• 6:44
  However, it appears to be a cigar lounge.
• 6:48
  Well, it could be. But it is our distinct pleasure to welcome two of the FAA's
• 6:56
  finest air traffic controllers, Curtis and Paul.
• 7:00
  Welcome to So There I Was, my friends.
• 7:03
  Thanks for having us. Curtis and Paul.
• 7:08
  I want to take just a quick second to say that since they are currently with
• 7:13
  the FAA, anything they say, views and opinions and all that are strictly their own.
• 7:17
  They don't represent the FAA and nothing they say should be taken as official
• 7:21
  FAA position, policy or guidance.
• 7:24
  And no, they can't get you out of your pilot deviation or violation.
• 7:30
  So don't ask. Hold on a second.
• 7:32
  I thought these guys were going to have some pull to get this thing. Right?
• 7:38
  Sometimes. If they give us a phone number to call halfway through this, I'm signing off.
• 7:42
  There you go. Right? No brash of warnings allowed here tonight,
• 7:46
  boys. Absolutely. You got it.
• 7:49
  Oh, fantastic. All right. Well, let's start off with Paul.
• 7:53
  Paul, where are you from? And how did you become an air traffic controller?
• 7:59
  Sure. So originally from Poland, as you can probably tell by my accent.
• 8:04
  I've been coming to the States since I was a little kid. My dad was here since the 80s.
• 8:08
  And the very first time I landed at New York Tower, I believe it was 2000,
• 8:14
  and I saw this brand new tower being built.
• 8:17
  I just need that and there. That's something I want to do.
• 8:20
  So I grew up in New Jersey, went to school in Florida, I went to a CTI program
• 8:26
  and got picked up in 2020, right before COVID.
• 8:32
  I got my offer letter in 2019, took about a year to get my class scheduled,
• 8:36
  then got my offer letter, went through the academy, and here I am.
• 8:42
  So newly certified, it's been less than my year at Providence and loving every minute of it.
• 8:47
  It's been a ride. It's been a grind, a hustle, but it's definitely worth it
• 8:51
  if you enjoy the job, if you enjoy aviation, it's definitely for you.
• 8:56
  Nice. Okay. So that sounds like kind of a grind.
• 8:59
  We'll get into that a little bit then to find out just how it is you get through ATC.
• 9:04
  But, of course, nothing with the government is ever fast instantaneous.
• 9:09
  Nope. Except for a brasher warning. And we've got Curtis, who opened with watching
• 9:14
  an Airbus and an Islander trying to meet up. Yeah.
• 9:20
  Yeah. Oh, man. How'd you get into this ATC gig?
• 9:24
  Well, you know, I gave up on my hopes and dreams of becoming a pilot.
• 9:26
  I applied to a CTI school for flight ops program. I wanted to be a pilot.
• 9:30
  It was my dream to be a corporate pilot.
• 9:33
  And the year I showed up, they basically taught out the program.
• 9:37
  They were selling off all the airplanes. And they said, well,
• 9:39
  the only thing we have left in aviation is air traffic. And I had no idea what
• 9:43
  that was. I said, what do you do?
• 9:45
  And they brought me into the simulators and the rest is history.
• 9:48
  So I'm good at all abandoning the government, you know, the dream there and
• 9:52
  become a government employee.
• 9:53
  So that's a national, New Hampshire. That was Daniel Webster College. OK.
• 10:01
  Yeah. OK. And I think that's done now, too, actually. Yeah, they actually. Yeah, they closed.
• 10:06
  They taught out the program. they absorbed that program into Southern New Hampshire
• 10:10
  University they now own that program oh okay,
• 10:14
  are they continuing on with it do you know yeah they still have it and even
• 10:17
  the enhanced CTI program too that DFA now offers is based out of National Community
• 10:22
  College too so you can go there too and start learning air traffic so.
• 10:26
  Okay well do they have like full-on simulators like center and and terminal
• 10:31
  and all that kind of stuff and tower yeah the the anything that's like a an
• 10:36
  faa program that gets you basically
• 10:38
  the ability to direct higher to a facility will have to have that.
• 10:42
  Um you know multi-million dollar simulators are
• 10:45
  almost 360 degrees around you
• 10:48
  you know obviously you build up to that you don't
• 10:50
  start at that you start on a tabletop with glitter
• 10:54
  plastic airplanes and the instructors walk around the
• 10:56
  table through a pattern and then eventually yeah
• 11:00
  exactly you go to like microsoft like simulator except from air traffic's perspective
• 11:05
  and then eventually you'll get up to the big simulators and that's what that's
• 11:10
  the it's basically a screen they want to see how you handle the pressure how
• 11:14
  you handle you know things going south fast how do you recover.
• 11:18
  That's all they're looking for and if you pass that and you qualify for all
• 11:22
  the employment stuff yeah they'll take you on as an air traffic controller for
• 11:25
  the for the government so,
• 11:27
  all right i got a silly question i guess a question for
• 11:30
  you boys so you're you're both tower controllers
• 11:33
  but is there a different pipeline for like
• 11:36
  en route controllers or approach controllers when you
• 11:40
  initially get hired with the agency it's i
• 11:43
  think it's the luck of the draw some faa person that
• 11:45
  will just email you and say you're going to en route school which is the
• 11:48
  centers or you're going to terminal which is a tower school the only
• 11:51
  difference is in about an extra month of class time
• 11:54
  out in oklahoma city so i got which
• 11:57
  is a longer course the tower or the in route the in
• 12:00
  route they do an extra month of non-radar and they teach you
• 12:03
  the old way of you know counting radials and miles and time in your head and
• 12:07
  you're just looking at a clock with a strip board and that's how they're doing
• 12:10
  that and they teach you that for a month that's terrifying another silly question
• 12:15
  from me so are you guys like cross-trained or do you what's your terminal your terminal or.
• 12:24
  Yeah, once you're terminal, you're terminal. So specifically at Providence,
• 12:27
  we have both. We have a tower and a Tracon.
• 12:29
  So we're radar certified for terminal radar, and we're also tower certified.
• 12:33
  So we have two of the three ratings, Providence, which is a lot.
• 12:37
  So the center is a different world though.
• 12:40
  Like I go up sometimes and I visit Boston center and you walk under the ops
• 12:43
  floor and it's, I don't even know what's going on, you know, and I'm in the industry.
• 12:47
  So it's different, different screens, different technology, different keyboards, different sounds.
• 12:53
  It's vastly different. So it's a different world up there for sure. oh
• 12:57
  okay i'm gonna just so i make sure
• 13:00
  i understood you you're you're you guys are both tower and
• 13:03
  tracon qualified will you do both in in
• 13:06
  a day or like no shit yeah yeah literally it's just um once you're fully certified
• 13:12
  it's wherever the body's needed so i could go start my day in the tower on clearance
• 13:16
  delivery and then i can go downstairs and work our busiest radar sector and
• 13:19
  then wherever it's the rotation is needed is where i'll go so yeah hey before
• 13:24
  we get too far down range,
• 13:26
  maybe we should define TRACON. That's an acronym.
• 13:30
  Yeah, TRACON is terminal radar approach control. So it is a designed parameter
• 13:35
  of airspace that usually surrounds airports.
• 13:39
  And our job is to take aircraft from the center descending and line them up
• 13:43
  to a runway. And we take the airplanes off the runway and put them in a line
• 13:46
  for the center to put them to the end restructure.
• 13:48
  So typically, you're looking below 14,000 feet to the surface in any diameter
• 13:53
  of airspace. so okay yeah and and then one more administrative type type question.
• 14:01
  Is there a difference in pay, depending on where you are?
• 14:07
  Yes. In route, tower, TRACON?
• 14:10
  I mean, is it different levels? It's not necessarily.
• 14:15
  So, yes, there was different levels. So air traffic levels are designated by a multitude of factors.
• 14:21
  So you have complexity ratings, you have traffic counts, stuff like that.
• 14:24
  Typically, your busier facilities will pay more. So, obviously,
• 14:28
  somebody that's working in a Podunk Tower in the Midwest will not necessarily
• 14:32
  earn as much as somebody that's working Atlanta Tower or Chicago O'Hare.
• 14:36
  But, yeah, those are all predetermined through different factors.
• 14:39
  And there are ways for facilities to either increase or decrease.
• 14:43
  Those are evaluated yearly.
• 14:45
  And they have built-in thresholds to hit for traffic counts for that.
• 14:49
  But that pay is based on that, for sure.
• 14:51
  This time around the pattern just does
• 14:55
  that count someone doing touching ghosts does that help or no
• 14:58
  not as much as you think you know and
• 15:01
  it's interesting because especially in the in the terminal environment like
• 15:05
  down in the radar room you know we have 80 miles of airspace right to left and
• 15:09
  a skyhawk that's doing 60 knots that's going to be in the airspace for an hour
• 15:13
  and a half i have to miss that aircraft you know 60 times in an hour that it's
• 15:18
  going to be in my airspace,
• 15:19
  but I only get one traffic count for that entire hour on that airplane,
• 15:24
  even though I'm missing it a few times.
• 15:26
  So you want fast movers? I love fast movers.
• 15:30
  Yeah, you're speaking chemo's language. There you go.
• 15:36
  Oh, man. No kidding. Yeah, I guess I never thought about it,
• 15:40
  but that makes sense that if, yeah, if you're working at Atlanta Tower,
• 15:43
  you're going to make more money than if you're working in Paducah,
• 15:46
  Kentucky, literally. Yep.
• 15:48
  Yep, absolutely.
• 15:51
  Oh, fantastic.
• 15:53
  All right.
• 15:57
  Which of those jobs, TRACON or TOWER, requires more concentration or more mental intensity, I guess?
• 16:08
  Which one's more intense from your perspective?
• 16:14
  I wouldn't say it all depends on the facility. I mean, if you Google it,
• 16:19
  arguably LAX ground is one of the most difficult positions in ATC in the country.
• 16:27
  Yeah. Then another one, you have like N90 or SoCal, which are trekking facilities,
• 16:33
  which they tend to be the most difficult and complex.
• 16:36
  So it just depends on a facility. I think in Providence, our radar is way more
• 16:41
  difficult than our tower.
• 16:44
  Because i don't know if you can talk about boston how logan i know logan is
• 16:48
  very complex when it comes to ground operations but so is a nine group they're
• 16:52
  sequencing so i don't know about that he's taxing around logan's a full terrifies an emergency.
• 16:59
  Especially if it's dark and the runways and taxiways
• 17:02
  are wet and oh yeah plus you got two
• 17:05
  local controllers two tower controllers controlling the runways on
• 17:09
  two different frequencies yeah you don't know what the fuck they're
• 17:11
  saying half the time yeah yeah i would say yeah it depends i mean both are obviously
• 17:18
  they have their own challenges obviously but you know it's not to take away
• 17:22
  like we say yeah providence our tracon is busier and more complex but it doesn't
• 17:25
  mean that our towers doesn't have
• 17:27
  its complexities or you know not that we don't have a separate you know.
• 17:32
  The same amount of attention is given to both for sure safety obviously being number one,
• 17:38
  yeah but out of the facility then like even when i started off at san juan tower,
• 17:42
  it's a it's technically an air traffic level seven so it's
• 17:46
  middle of the pack you have airliners you've got cargo you've got flight school
• 17:49
  you've got ga you've got military it's all mixed in there and each of those
• 17:53
  carry their own complexities too and they have different rules and there's turbulence
• 17:57
  and all that stuff so yeah the tower can be complex depending on the scenario
• 18:02
  And what you got going on, taxiway closures, runway closures,
• 18:04
  construction, that all inhibits you or your abilities upstairs.
• 18:08
  Downstairs, it's, you know, volume and frequency congestion.
• 18:11
  Or if we're combining sectors and we have multiple frequencies at once,
• 18:15
  the pilots can't hear the other frequency.
• 18:17
  So there's definitely challenges associated with both for sure.
• 18:20
  Well, I'll add that we as pilots have all taxiway closures and restrictions
• 18:25
  memorized. So we aren't relying on your controllers much at all.
• 18:29
  Can I get that in writing, please? Yeah.
• 18:34
  No no no yeah okay okay and and so you know when you're when you're reading the notums,
• 18:41
  for a airport and it starts talking about taxiway closures
• 18:44
  and oh you know in between my eyes start bleeding oh yeah well and then you
• 18:49
  find out well this this notum is is expired yeah old old news or doesn't go
• 18:55
  in effect until tomorrow it doesn't get cleaned up yeah yeah yeah unfortunately as ATC,
• 19:02
  we don't write those. That's the airport itself.
• 19:05
  It's a broken system. It's horrible. You guys know it's as broken as we do, I guess.
• 19:10
  Yeah, I'm sure it's probably equally frustrating on your side as it is ours.
• 19:16
  So is there like a pinnacle position? Like, hey, I'm getting into your traffic
• 19:20
  control. Kim, we'll get closer to the mic, brother.
• 19:24
  I don't, I don't think is, I don't think is a, turn on the mic on you.
• 19:28
  Oh, my mic is now on. Sorry. There you go. Can you hear me now?
• 19:32
  Much better. But yeah, technicalities.
• 19:35
  So my question was, is there like a, like with all the positions that you can
• 19:39
  hold, is there one that's more coveted than others?
• 19:41
  You know, like in aviation, we have like certain places we want to be or go or fly.
• 19:46
  Is there a certain position that in your world that's like, this is the one
• 19:50
  that everybody wants? Or is it just like personal choice?
• 19:53
  I would say it's more personally based yeah it's geographically
• 19:57
  where do you want to be where's home for you not everybody gets
• 20:00
  to be home people are stuck at facilities for decades at
• 20:03
  a time and it's extremely frustrating i would say like yeah it has to be personal
• 20:09
  okay there are facilities that have more requests to transfer into than others
• 20:14
  like denver tower i think has a list of 60-something people every single time
• 20:19
  of people just requesting to show up there.
• 20:22
  They require only a certain amount of controllers, so they can only take so many.
• 20:26
  But there are places that are coveted. I think you learn a lot,
• 20:29
  too, through hearsay, through connections and stuff. You know,
• 20:33
  there's also a work-life balance.
• 20:35
  There's a do I want to go and, you know, chase the money and clear as much as I can every year?
• 20:40
  Absolutely. But there's a cost with that, and that's sacrificing home time and quality of life.
• 20:47
  So you know there's a balance there where are
• 20:49
  you at in your career you got some young buck that wants to go ego
• 20:52
  chase absolutely let him rip you know but as you get older it becomes harder
• 20:57
  to kind of maintain that speed and sometimes you just want to go to a nice little
• 21:01
  mid-level facility and then right off into the sunset you know so um i would
• 21:06
  have to say it's personal yeah okay thank you it's uh what's.
• 21:13
  How long have you guys been doing this years? So for me, it's 10 years this month.
• 21:19
  Oh, for me, it's just about to be six in June.
• 21:24
  Okay. So 10 and six.
• 21:27
  And where are you guys in the hierarchy of the age of our aircraft control cadre?
• 21:37
  I mean, are you guys getting senior? I mean, are we way behind in hiring?
• 21:43
  Don't you have to retire at 13? Yeah.
• 21:47
  What's that look like? Seniority for us is different than the airline world
• 21:52
  where it's not out of the airline or out of a base.
• 21:55
  I say it would more equate to being at a base. So the facility is the base.
• 22:00
  And so for every member that's at that facility, there's a date associated with
• 22:04
  them, and that's your seniority date.
• 22:06
  So I've been in 10 years as I've transferred through. This is my third facility, hopefully my final.
• 22:11
  And I'm in the middle of the pack.
• 22:14
  So every time you move to a different location, you start at the bottom of the.
• 22:17
  No. So our seniority date follows us.
• 22:19
  Okay. Yeah. Unlike the airline world as well. Yeah.
• 22:22
  So there's some stark differences in seniority with the airlines and aviation,
• 22:26
  sorry, piloting versus controllers for sure.
• 22:29
  Well, so your, your, your, your aviation, your ATC birthday is good no matter where you go. Correct.
• 22:37
  Okay. Well, so as long as we stay with the same airline, that's,
• 22:41
  that's it. But if you leave an airline and go to a different one,
• 22:44
  you're starting over from. Really?
• 22:47
  Yeah. Yeah. Does that also change? Like, let's say you change base within that
• 22:50
  airline. Does that change too? No. Okay, cool.
• 22:52
  No, you, it's your, you know, your start date, your birthday,
• 22:55
  that's your seniority date. No matter where you are.
• 22:59
  Okay. Unless you, unless you move to a different airline and then it's.
• 23:02
  Gotcha. So that's to prevent contract chasing. I'm assuming.
• 23:06
  I don't know. That's a whole nother episode.
• 23:11
  Gotcha. Yeah, at least. Sorry for asking. No, it's okay.
• 23:15
  I mean, you know, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th and all the
• 23:20
  bankruptcies and consolidations and, you know, several airlines got rolled into one.
• 23:25
  And some of them were from different pilot unions.
• 23:29
  And even, you know, we had a fairly clean merger at the airline I work for.
• 23:36
  And it's still, you know, there's still guys that are not happy with the way
• 23:40
  the seniority thing worked out.
• 23:41
  So when, anytime you're blending seniority lists, it's not good.
• 23:45
  But when you were all on the, working on the same playing team,
• 23:49
  your seniority is the same, no matter whatever, wherever you go,
• 23:53
  you know, whatever base you go to now. Yeah.
• 23:56
  We'll just leave it at that fist fights and
• 23:58
  lawsuits man i i literally almost saw fist fights
• 24:01
  in the cockpit over really over that very yeah once
• 24:04
  that discussion started get getting going between two guys from
• 24:07
  two different airlines that's crazy hey i thought i
• 24:10
  was going to get my first landing as a second officer on the dc-10 though
• 24:13
  once once these two
• 24:16
  guys started going at it i go oh one of
• 24:18
  them's going to get knocked out and the other one's going to be hurt i'm gonna get a landing on
• 24:21
  this so yeah
• 24:24
  i mean that's crazy that and lawsuits and everything else but so i got a question
• 24:29
  i actually heard a an approach controller tell me one time he says if you don't
• 24:34
  have at least one or two go-arounds of shift you aren't trying hard enough to
• 24:38
  be efficient anything there we go i get some nodding going on there nod louder boys,
• 24:44
  Let me guess, that had to be at a busy airport. Oh, yeah.
• 24:51
  Yeah, I heard that before. You get a big departure or arrival push.
• 24:56
  You want to get everyone on the ground so people don't miss their connections and stuff.
• 25:00
  And you tend to run those three miles as close as possible.
• 25:05
  And you don't know everyone's final approach speed.
• 25:08
  We kind of estimate based on the aircraft type and you know with a
• 25:11
  similar type before you came in was doing with
• 25:14
  the winds and stuff but sometimes you know once you get just too close to that
• 25:17
  three or two and a half mile mark you know someone's going around but yeah i
• 25:22
  definitely heard that it's a pride game it's a pride game for sure the approach
• 25:27
  wants to make the tower squeal the tower wants to jam the departure controller
• 25:30
  with departures right so,
• 25:32
  But it's not to the point where, you know, you're sacrificing safety for it.
• 25:37
  It's not necessarily an actual egotistical game here. Sure.
• 25:40
  But it definitely is. Some people do want to challenge themselves and then hold
• 25:44
  themselves to it. You know, I ran it once this way at a busy facility,
• 25:47
  so I'm going to do it again.
• 25:48
  You know, there's a time and a place for sure, you know, and we train to that
• 25:52
  too. We train where, you know, you're going to work like you're busy all the time.
• 25:55
  So when it does get busy, you know how to do that. And you know how to squeeze
• 25:59
  that departure out with a three-mile final, right? So, you know,
• 26:03
  that's the type of stuff that we do teach.
• 26:04
  So, but I would say specifically for us here, if, yeah, if we have one to two
• 26:10
  a day, that's a shift, that's, it's a lot. We usually do it once a week.
• 26:15
  Curtis, you triggered a question. Yeah, go ahead.
• 26:18
  So what kind of training annual, do you have annual training requirements,
• 26:23
  semi-annual training requirements?
• 26:24
  And do you take a check ride once a year, every six months?
• 26:29
  So, yeah, we're slightly different. We don't have necessarily,
• 26:33
  so we will have annual training of like special scenarios.
• 26:37
  So in the radar environment, we'll hop into the simulator and it'll be something
• 26:42
  completely made up. And like outrageous, you'll never see it.
• 26:45
  It'll be Air Force One that's fuel dumping and needs to divert, loses an engine.
• 26:50
  Like you have like the worst case scenario possible.
• 26:52
  And it's usually rare phraseology stuff that you typically will not see on a typical shift.
• 26:58
  And that's just to make sure we're hitting the right cadence with it.
• 27:01
  We're getting the right information out at the right time, stuff like that.
• 27:05
  But as far as like to get certified, you have a checkride with your supervisor for sure.
• 27:09
  And that's a lengthy process. But once you are certified, we do have more computer-based
• 27:15
  training, I would say, on a monthly basis than we have, you know,
• 27:19
  an over-the-shoulder with a supervisor. That rarely happens unless we lose currency.
• 27:23
  We are required to maintain certain hours a month, just like I'm sure pilots
• 27:28
  are required to have certain landings and takeoffs in a month or in a time period, you know.
• 27:33
  So same thing for us. We just don't have that over-the-shoulder direct monitoring
• 27:37
  type stuff once you are certified.
• 27:39
  Okay. Awesome. Well, Big Kim, I hope you're sitting at attention.
• 27:44
  We got First Sergeant Crouch here asking if pushing 10 was an accurate portrayal
• 27:48
  of the life of an air traffic controller.
• 27:49
  These guys probably have never seen it because that movie.
• 27:52
  No, we had it on our break room.
• 27:57
  There you go. Oh, my gosh. Good. We had one trainee said he's never seen it, so we put it on for him.
• 28:03
  I'll let Paul take that one. I'll let Paul take that one. Paul worked there. Do it. So let's hear it.
• 28:11
  I think most controllers look at the movie as a comedy. Obviously,
• 28:15
  like any movie, there's some aspects to it that were accurate.
• 28:20
  Some are just totally out of whack.
• 28:25
  It's not an accurate portrayal, especially in today's world.
• 28:28
  You know, the movie was shot in the 90s.
• 28:30
  Different era in the agency. different mindset, different group of controllers,
• 28:35
  a lot of military guys versus now it's a lot of civilians that go into the field,
• 28:39
  you know, of the street, quote unquote.
• 28:42
  I still want to experience the 747 wake from the engines. So if you know a place
• 28:47
  or know somebody, sign me up.
• 28:50
  But I would say overall, it was
• 28:52
  a, it was more of a comedy rather than an accurate documentary about ATC.
• 28:56
  Great movie, in my opinion.
• 28:59
  Lots of fun it's like i used to go in the crew
• 29:02
  room we'd play a midnight movie
• 29:06
  you know for the hub turns and nothing's funnier than
• 29:08
  watching 140 pilots sitting there
• 29:11
  watching the movie airplane so right right
• 29:15
  there was a scene where the
• 29:19
  the two i forgot the names of the controllers were kind of
• 29:22
  going at each other and one was trying to you know prove that
• 29:24
  he's the better one but you know speaking faster and
• 29:28
  jamming more airplanes in the final and we
• 29:32
  and we do have that type of mentality sometimes
• 29:36
  when we sit next to somebody like if i sit next to curious i'm
• 29:38
  like hey see if i can land more airplanes than you but it's you know it's not
• 29:42
  malicious it's friendly and always on in a safe manner you know kind of challenging
• 29:46
  ourselves making sure we're still you know on top of our game when you know
• 29:49
  it does get busy but not to that point where you know we'll try to unplug someone
• 29:54
  and mess the sequence up on purpose.
• 29:58
  That's not what we do.
• 30:02
  Yeah that was more a lot like a confrontational because you had the hot shot
• 30:06
  coming in from where was he from denver out west phoenix or something like that
• 30:09
  i forget you know and and we try to,
• 30:13
  there's been a shift i would say as as the agency grows in its its years that
• 30:19
  it's more of a crew based you know it's not the individual it's the team right
• 30:23
  if one person is struggling we're all going to be struggling if we can help
• 30:27
  the next person help the next person then that in turn will help everybody else.
• 30:32
  It's not accurate in that sense, but there are some moments where you're like,
• 30:35
  okay, yeah, that's pretty legit. It's also crazy.
• 30:39
  You guys know that the movie Top Gun is spot on.
• 30:43
  It's so accurate how it really was back then. Flying fighters in the Navy.
• 30:49
  It's like the most accurate spot on movie ever made. We called it riding around
• 30:55
  a motorcycle without a hammer on.
• 30:57
  I mean, Emo is an excellent volleyball player. Oh, yeah.
• 31:03
  But I didn't do too well in the whole shower scene rehearsal, so they cut me from that.
• 31:10
  Nice. Nice. So with regards to your roles and positions and whatnot,
• 31:17
  we have in the airline world, we have our crazy spot.
• 31:21
  It's like, oh, you're from there. Oh, you work there?
• 31:23
  Damn, type of thing. Do you have those places in your world where it's like,
• 31:27
  oh, hey, I'm coming from here.
• 31:29
  Where did you work before? Oh, I was in Denver or L.A. or New York or whatever.
• 31:32
  Is there like a place where you're like, holy shit, that's where the business gets done type of place?
• 31:39
  Yeah, I could see. Yeah, you could see, you know, each region has its own one, you know.
• 31:45
  So even just in the New England region, which is, you know, a very small region.
• 31:49
  Yeah, you're looking at your majors for sure. Your Boston Tower,
• 31:52
  your A90, which is your Boston TRACON, who does all the radar services for it.
• 31:57
  But yeah, it's a very small world and a lot. There is a hefty majority that are ex-military.
• 32:04
  And, you know, do you know this person? yeah
• 32:07
  well i was stationed here and it's it's constantly evolving like
• 32:10
  that yeah as far as like facilities though
• 32:13
  yeah yeah there are facilities though like
• 32:16
  there there's the n90 of the world new york tracon the new
• 32:19
  york tracon is what they'll say that that is
• 32:22
  where you know that it is the new york
• 32:26
  tracon that's where
• 32:30
  you don't say shit you just go yep they'll get
• 32:33
  to me i'll just wait yeah exactly yeah
• 32:36
  so like something like that if you if you're a controller there yeah you're
• 32:39
  the real deal because that's that's a pretty intense training program for
• 32:42
  sure sure yeah i mean just the
• 32:45
  thought of i mean in our worlds where we've come from we thought we have timelines
• 32:48
  we have execution we know when we need to turn or do things but it's just us
• 32:53
  and you're coordinating how many flight if you're working while you work in
• 32:57
  tower so it might be a speaking out of turn but when you're working to approach
• 33:00
  the sequence guys into the tower whether it's IFR or not. I mean, let's just call it IFR.
• 33:05
  I mean, what's like a busy day? How many people are you allowed to control in one sitting?
• 33:11
  I mean, how many people are you allowed in that sector? Or on the same frequency at the same time.
• 33:16
  So for Providence specifically, we don't really have like a sector saturation number.
• 33:23
  We don't have a, we can only have 20.
• 33:26
  Now your larger facilities obviously do it. The airlines will coordinate through
• 33:29
  what's called the command center based in Washington. And they submit all their
• 33:33
  proposed flight plans in and out of all the majors.
• 33:36
  And then that's where you get your flow programs. And they'll kind of schedule
• 33:40
  it so they know exactly what flight, how long it took to get from the departure
• 33:43
  in a Boston to the threshold at Baltimore.
• 33:46
  And that type of stuff is calculated.
• 33:48
  But for Providence, that's not
• 33:49
  a major hub. That's typically fly-through airspace and a regional airport.
• 33:54
  For us, it's more time on position that becomes the factor. So we're not allowed
• 33:59
  to work any, shall not normally work more than two hours on position without a break.
• 34:05
  Is there times that that breaks? Yeah, for sure.
• 34:09
  But for controllers, it's more the time in the seat versus the planes in the airspace.
• 34:15
  Gotcha thank you yeah so i've got a delicate question based on that then yeah
• 34:19
  yeah if you don't and it's okay
• 34:21
  to say no answer i can't answer it and that's fine if you don't want to.
• 34:25
  Did that break and if so how often and how much with
• 34:29
  the recent government shutdown whereupon you you guys started finding yourselves
• 34:33
  a little more strained than on the average day i'll dance around on this one
• 34:38
  um i mean did you get the bonus i i did not unfortunately i was unpatriotic.
• 34:48
  So that's that's kind of like the crazy thing and i'll touch like surface level
• 34:52
  here and i don't want to get political because it's not my wheelhouse right
• 34:55
  and we don't want you to get political but just wondering how much did it break
• 34:59
  your system i i strain it it was more of a morale hit than anything.
• 35:04
  The system is the same, no matter
• 35:06
  what we have the same equipment we have this, everything is the same.
• 35:10
  It's the morale. It's how do you keep the crew float? How do you keep the spirits
• 35:13
  high? How do you keep people motivated to keep pushing tin as people say, right?
• 35:18
  That was the hard part is, is making sure that, and then on top of it,
• 35:23
  you have people that are stressed because now, you know, they're not getting
• 35:26
  paid there. They have mortgages. They've got this, they've got that.
• 35:29
  So now you're increasing and adding unnecessary risk into a system that's already
• 35:35
  pretty stressed as it is.
• 35:37
  I mean, we're understaffed by at least 3,000 controllers.
• 35:41
  The pay has been stagnant for 13 years minimum. And it's just for a system that
• 35:48
  most Americans rely on, I think we do a pretty damn good job of holding it together.
• 35:53
  And especially when you get put in a situation for 45 days
• 35:56
  you don't get a paycheck i think we did a pretty damn good job nice i think
• 36:01
  so too yeah yeah yeah absolutely thank you yeah yeah well thank you that's a
• 36:05
  big deal so yeah i don't need you guys being like clark griswold at your breaking
• 36:10
  point out there yeah yeah no i mean at the end of the day.
• 36:15
  Yeah, go ahead, Kimo. Sorry. No, I was just going to make a statement to you guys.
• 36:18
  Spot on. You guys did great during that arduous time because for me,
• 36:21
  going from major areas to major areas, maybe it was just the timing, time of day.
• 36:26
  I don't know, but I honestly didn't notice too much of a lull or any type of backlog or whatever.
• 36:34
  I know it was probably happening, but at least where I was flying around,
• 36:37
  I'll tell you what, you guys are doing a great job through that storm. So thank you.
• 36:41
  No, we appreciate that. Yeah, thanks. And I think we kind of lucked out,
• 36:44
  too, because it happened to be the quiet part of the year after summertime and
• 36:49
  before the holiday travel season. And I think that's what helped.
• 36:52
  And it was definitely still a factor. But that's the low. That's the quiet time.
• 36:56
  Obviously, the freight dogs are still going at night and all hours of the day.
• 37:00
  But for the most part, the volume was down. But there was still some stuff there.
• 37:05
  Clear to start engines and engage rotors.
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• 40:22
  All right. You, you, uh, I was trying to get to this question earlier and then
• 40:26
  you just re-triggered it.
• 40:27
  So you got, you said you're 3000 understaffed.
• 40:30
  What, so what does that mean? Really? I mean, how, how big is,
• 40:34
  how many air controllers are there?
• 40:36
  And what's that mean? Are you 30% under or 20%?
• 40:39
  I mean, can you give me a number or get me close? Yeah, so right now we're sitting
• 40:43
  around just under 11,000 certified controllers, 10,000 and change.
• 40:48
  The exact number off the top of my head, couldn't give it to you.
• 40:50
  Where you're supposed to be is we're supposed to be sitting around 13,000.
• 40:53
  And the way they calculate that is every facility has a target certified number.
• 40:58
  So for instance, at Providence, our number is 37.
• 41:02
  Our target is 37. So it'd be 100% staff. We need 37 certified controllers. Right now we have 23.
• 41:09
  And I'm losing two in two weeks. So we're going down to 21.
• 41:13
  So now obviously you're going, okay, well, now we had 37 shifts or 37 people's
• 41:18
  shifts that you were supposed to cover. How do we cover that with 21 people?
• 41:21
  And that's just Providence. And now you're multiplying that,
• 41:24
  you know, different facilities.
• 41:26
  So that's how they get that number is just the overall total number certified.
• 41:31
  And as far as the leaving goes, is that, I mean, there's probably like multiple
• 41:34
  reasons, but is it the job or is it the retirements? or what are you seeing
• 41:40
  as the people leaving for?
• 41:42
  Yeah, so you have, I would say, retention's huge.
• 41:45
  You have, so we can retire 25 years with government, good time,
• 41:51
  government service, right?
• 41:52
  So I got hired at 22. I can punch out at 47.
• 41:57
  I get kicked out at 56. So now how do you keep me in my position from 47 to 56?
• 42:03
  So that's problem number one is there's a bunch of people in that category that
• 42:06
  are eligible before they are required to be retired.
• 42:10
  And it's also a recruitment issue. It's a very difficult job to get into.
• 42:15
  They have a screen process.
• 42:17
  Let's say quick numbers, a thousand applicants. That's not true.
• 42:21
  Every year we have 58,000 people applied to these off the street hires.
• 42:24
  We have 58,000 applicants every single time.
• 42:27
  What happens is they're going to say, we're going to select 1,800.
• 42:31
  How they do that, I don't know.
• 42:33
  And then out of that 1,800, okay, now we start the process of you need a psychological evaluation.
• 42:39
  You need a medical. That takes two-thirds out right there. Exactly.
• 42:45
  You say you got 58,000 apply every year. And as soon as they say,
• 42:50
  well, you got to have random drug testing, well, fuck, I'm out.
• 42:53
  And then so you nailed it right there. It narrows your window down.
• 42:58
  So when you see on the news, oh, we had max hiring. We had 2,800 controllers hired.
• 43:03
  They're reporting that as if they're certified. They're not.
• 43:06
  They still have three years of training before they become a certified controller.
• 43:09
  And what's the washout rate, guys? What's the average? I know that's high.
• 43:13
  You start with 10. How many do you actually graduate?
• 43:16
  So in my class, we only lost four. So that's pretty good. Out of five.
• 43:23
  That was like an extraordinary class. Pavel, if you want to talk about yours.
• 43:27
  Yeah. So when I got hired, I first got hired on the N90 New York Trecon bid,
• 43:31
  which is its own separate bid.
• 43:33
  So going through the academy, go through all three stages of radar training,
• 43:37
  the last one being specifically designed for NID and being the most difficult.
• 43:43
  So I was the first class to be called into Oklahoma City after COVID reopening in 2020.
• 43:50
  And in the five classes prior, including my own, the amount of people that made
• 43:55
  it through the last portion of training, including myself, was something like 28%.
• 44:00
  So we had 40-something students that went through, and I think eight or nine,
• 44:06
  including myself, were actually sent to N90 to start training there.
• 44:11
  And that just simulated training and book work knowledge, it's months and years
• 44:17
  away from actually being able to do it in real life.
• 44:21
  Yeah. And then even at Oklahoma, they had numbers based on, so this was back
• 44:25
  when I got hired back in 2016.
• 44:27
  Like if you got the en route section, so if you're going to go to the center,
• 44:31
  their success rate at the time at Oklahoma city was around 37%.
• 44:33
  The non radar portion is really what canned a lot of people was how do you create
• 44:39
  a 3d chess game in your head?
• 44:41
  And all you have is a clock in front of you. And that's what they were trying to teach you to do.
• 44:46
  And it's designed that way on purpose. It is a screen. It is making sure that
• 44:50
  you have the attributes.
• 44:51
  To at least be moldable into what we would consider a certified controller.
• 44:55
  And at the time, the tower class was around 70% pass rate.
• 45:00
  So only a 30% wash rate at that point. So it's changed over the years.
• 45:04
  There's different requirements each year. They reevaluate how are the,
• 45:07
  you know, the trainees that are leaving Oklahoma and going to facilities,
• 45:11
  what are they strong at? What are they weak at?
• 45:14
  How do we need to change Oklahoma? And they reevaluate that on a yearly basis.
• 45:18
  So those numbers do fluctuate, but it's, I would say it's more your facility
• 45:23
  washout rates are what gets you.
• 45:25
  So right now, Providence, I think our success rate is like 63% or 64%.
• 45:31
  So, I mean, you have 12 trainees. You're going to get five of them certified
• 45:35
  over two years. You're going to have seven washout.
• 45:39
  And that's characterized for each building. So each building is going to have
• 45:43
  its own complexities, its own training, its own everything.
• 45:47
  Okay. Well, that sparked another question for me. Yeah, go ahead.
• 45:50
  You get, so I just graduated from Oklahoma City, wherever I show up to,
• 45:57
  I'm coming to Providence to be a controller.
• 45:59
  How long is it going to take me to, you know, go safe for solo?
• 46:03
  Is that like two year thing?
• 46:05
  Two, two and a half years. Oh my gosh.
• 46:08
  From walking in the door to fully certified about two and a half years.
• 46:12
  Wow. And so do you guys have, well, are you an instructor?
• 46:16
  I mean, can you? Yeah. Once you are certified for a year, you train the next
• 46:21
  batch and that's strictly just on the floor training, like live traffic training.
• 46:25
  There's a whole other department that does all the classroom and the bookwork
• 46:29
  section and stuff like that.
• 46:31
  When you think about it, Fig, you know, we're probably two and a half years
• 46:35
  till we're able to drop a bomb in combat from the time we start.
• 46:39
  Two and a half, three years. but uh what see i
• 46:43
  was trying to figure out how to equate that to you know what so you know we
• 46:48
  you know when we showed up at the harrier rag you know we had our wings and
• 46:54
  i mean i'm i don't know is that is that like the guy showing up from from oklahoma
• 46:59
  city to the to the tower of providence,
• 47:02
  i don't i would say slightly different yeah because
• 47:05
  when you show up from oklahoma you're still technically like a probationary employee
• 47:08
  with the government so if you're within your one year
• 47:11
  mark they can fire you for whatever you're being late you know
• 47:14
  sick leave with you stuff like that so yeah
• 47:18
  i don't know how to equate how long does it take you to get wings what's that
• 47:21
  process like depending on the pipeline it's
• 47:24
  anywhere from about 16 to 20 24
• 47:28
  months and again delays are
• 47:31
  the airplanes down for some reason a safety thing is
• 47:34
  it are they out of instructors all that
• 47:37
  you know that's typically where we fell into the problems where you're
• 47:40
  tracking and all of a sudden there's a pool as they call it because they didn't
• 47:43
  have any spots for you in the rag or they didn't have any spots for you in the
• 47:46
  fleet or budget cut or there wasn't a there wasn't a boat so there wasn't a
• 47:51
  boat was in a boat so there all these classes didn't get carrier quality so
• 47:54
  they're on hold to do so that backs everybody else up the next thing you know
• 47:58
  you're sitting around doing this for four months.
• 48:01
  I mean, when I got my wings, I went to Miramar, and when I checked in,
• 48:08
  the office said, you're not starting for six months. Go do something.
• 48:11
  So I had to go. I went TDY to Boost, which is at the Naval Training Center boot
• 48:15
  camp in San Diego, for six months to be a company officer.
• 48:20
  Then other guys went to the pool to fold towels or something.
• 48:25
  But it was just ridiculous.
• 48:27
  But for whatever reason, they had those. So it took me, wow,
• 48:31
  three years total from the start of flight school to get through the rag and
• 48:36
  into an operational squadron.
• 48:38
  But I had no wings in a year and a half.
• 48:43
  So then I spent a year and a half in the rag, but I don't know how to control
• 48:45
  it. What's the rag at ATC World, I wonder?
• 48:48
  So we do have like a training backlog at some facilities. So if you look at
• 48:52
  like New York Center, New York Center is like.
• 48:56
  Kind of like it's going to sound bad and i don't want to offend anybody
• 48:59
  there but it's kind of like the plague on the system it's the
• 49:02
  plague of the faa like they don't have a
• 49:05
  great success rate they have a training backlog they can't get enough people
• 49:08
  in there i think every every month
• 49:11
  or every quarter sorry that we put out you know basically a
• 49:14
  transfer process they can accept 300 something
• 49:17
  people like that's how far behind they are and you know so those are facilities
• 49:22
  that you would show up to and they go yeah you're just going to sit in the classroom
• 49:25
  for six months until we can find you a class waiting on the classes ahead of
• 49:30
  you to get caught up and either continue training or you wash out and you do something else.
• 49:36
  For those that haven't been in New York airspace, though, that is,
• 49:40
  it's varsity ball. There's no two ways about it.
• 49:42
  I've got a recording somewhere that I took one night.
• 49:46
  I just turned on my phone and did voice recording and let it listen to New York
• 49:51
  approach as we were going into New York.
• 49:53
  And it probably goes for 20 minutes
• 49:56
  i would venture to guess the longest dead air
• 49:59
  on that entire recording might be 10 or
• 50:02
  12 seconds yeah oh that's probably way too long dude yeah yeah yeah well that's
• 50:08
  just because two guys walked on each other and are waiting for an answer yeah
• 50:12
  those are the controllers swapping out probably right so yeah yeah or that yeah
• 50:18
  so So it's, I mean, that is, that is real varsity.
• 50:20
  So I get why that's a, it's an environment, but that is intense.
• 50:26
  So, which I don't think people give enough credit to understand just how much
• 50:31
  pressure there is to get it right.
• 50:33
  Like, like doctors and pilots, when controllers make mistakes, people get hurt.
• 50:40
  You know, so. All right, let's, well, let's, let's put it, let's put it in another way here.
• 50:44
  Let's say it a different way. when a doctor makes a mistake one person's probably
• 50:49
  going to die yeah if anybody on this conversation makes a mistake we're taking out,
• 50:57
  we're taking out families yeah yeah right yeah
• 51:01
  it's not fucking pretty nope no and
• 51:04
  and so hence hence two and a half years to get
• 51:07
  certified and you're still getting watched over every time right so oh yeah
• 51:11
  and that's something that we find too that we get these new these new hires
• 51:15
  and let's say it's somebody who has no aviation background they just said you
• 51:19
  know screw it i'll throw shit at the wall and see what sticks and the air traffic
• 51:22
  happened to be it we get those people and they don't understand the severity behind certain things.
• 51:28
  You know, as, you know, Paul and I have worked for years now,
• 51:31
  we hear a tone in a pilot's voice. You hear a certain cadence.
• 51:35
  You know when something's up.
• 51:37
  You know, the spidey sensors are going. They're not picking up on that.
• 51:40
  They don't know how to pick up on that.
• 51:42
  So that's, it's like, not only do we have to teach them the book work of,
• 51:45
  this is what you say, this is the rule.
• 51:46
  This is what this plane looks like. This is the amount of miles you give.
• 51:50
  You also have to teach them like the unspoken side of air traffic and our relationship
• 51:54
  with our counterparts, you know, what do they need? What are they really asking you here?
• 51:59
  Are they saying something that you're reading through the lines on what you
• 52:03
  really need to get done here?
• 52:04
  So that would be a hard part of the job. And why I think a lot of people might
• 52:09
  not be successful is you can memorize the book back to front and recite it.
• 52:13
  But the application of it, the constant, you know, you know,
• 52:17
  how pilots are saying things, what, you know, there's an urgency there that they're not getting.
• 52:21
  So it's tough to teach that side of it. And that's not really something that
• 52:24
  we're trained well on how to teach.
• 52:27
  You know, how do you teach somebody to give a shit in lack of better words?
• 52:31
  Like, and they just don't know.
• 52:33
  They don't know that there's at the outcome at the end of that bad scenario that what could happen.
• 52:37
  So, well, that'll take me back to first Sergeant Crouch's second question there,
• 52:42
  which was, you know, it was.
• 52:45
  You've got that Spidey sense up and he talks about,
• 52:48
  we've talked about him on the show before too, a guy by the name of Bug Roach
• 52:51
  who was an LSO and he, he had the magic voice to get guys aboard the carrier
• 52:57
  that were having their night in the barrel, you know, just several attempts
• 52:59
  at trying to get aboard and couldn't do it.
• 53:02
  And he'd get on and just you know he'd
• 53:05
  fly the airplane for him by their by his voice and get him in have either of
• 53:10
  you had that experience where you've needed to you know hey take a beat take
• 53:14
  a breath we're with you we're gonna get you through this together and and that
• 53:19
  was an acceptable answer if you haven't you haven't but i mean it's just like
• 53:23
  how many times do you think back you know.
• 53:28
  Well have you ever gone home at the end of the shift and and driving home gone,
• 53:32
  that could have gone a lot further south than it did yeah i
• 53:35
  was uh yeah i i would say when i was that type of question soon because i have
• 53:40
  that question for you when i yeah when i was a trainee at boston tower and and
• 53:46
  ground control there as you all know there's no joke it's one of the hardest
• 53:49
  positions of that facility there's many days that you're driving home in silence,
• 53:54
  It's almost like a trance.
• 53:55
  You get home and you find yourself. You come out of it. You're sitting on your
• 53:58
  couch. You realize you've been home for an hour.
• 54:00
  And you just go, what the hell just happened?
• 54:03
  You know, there's definitely days. The whole switchback is gone. Damn it. Gone.
• 54:07
  And you sit there and you go, yeah, there's times I've been like,
• 54:11
  I don't know how somebody didn't die today. You know, there's been days like that for sure.
• 54:15
  I'm glad it's not. I'm glad I haven't had those experiences,
• 54:18
  but it's a good moment. It's a Tuesday for me.
• 54:26
  Oh boy i'm kidding i'm kidding yeah there you go well along those lines what's
• 54:30
  i i guess the funniest or the most baffling thing you've ever heard a pilot
• 54:35
  say and you know on frequency,
• 54:38
  have you done a double take you know what what the hell was that i don't think
• 54:43
  i have many stories i don't know call you probably a couple i wasn't working
• 54:48
  at the time but for me it had to definitely be a report of a man in a jetpack at 8,000 feet.
• 54:57
  Just it was just hovering at 8 000 feet on that jet
• 54:59
  bug and a jet just blew by him and pilot was more confused
• 55:02
  than i was when i heard that so i'd
• 55:08
  say a funny one is is you know you get there's certain i feel like i don't know
• 55:12
  maybe you can you can speak to this but i feel like when you get to a certain
• 55:16
  point in your piloting career there's not much they can do to really fire you
• 55:20
  and so i i've had a good experience with a couple of Southwest pilots and, you know,
• 55:26
  obviously they're, they're short final, they're on the visual approach, they're cranking it in,
• 55:30
  they're flying like an absolute cowboy and the flock of birds start going left
• 55:34
  to right across the runway.
• 55:34
  So I call it to him. I say, yeah, Southwest X, X, X, you know,
• 55:37
  flock of birds left to right, you approach in, he said too close switching to guns.
• 55:42
  So, you know, it's still that classic top gun line right there.
• 55:45
  So, you know, just like little things like that, where it just gets you a little
• 55:48
  chuck and gets you through the shift, you know, and it's the personality. So.
• 55:54
  Figure out you but uh yeah so hold
• 55:58
  on i've found myself saying it's not just me i feel better yeah i've found myself
• 56:03
  saying and i go after i've said it i went i probably shouldn't say that but
• 56:07
  let's the report get made but if i miss something or or misunderstand something
• 56:12
  or whatever like that i'll go oh sorry my dyslexia is acting up but have you ever,
• 56:18
  hey you know delta 122 say speed speed yep that's all the time we do that to
• 56:24
  each other yeah okay that's not what i'm gonna say okay and then you say delta 321 say brasher warning,
• 56:33
  i'm in uh i'm in the i'm in flight school i'm in
• 56:36
  meridian mississippi in jet training and we're in
• 56:39
  t2s that's intermediate jets and there's this
• 56:41
  the pattern was full of solos i was one of
• 56:44
  them and we're bouncing around the pattern and you know there's different
• 56:47
  levels of experience in that pattern and this
• 56:51
  one guy he was so tongue-tied he was turning out turning final and he was calling
• 56:57
  the tower and he couldn't remember his call sign so he said steve it's steve
• 57:03
  and i got my gear down our controller said roger that steve you're clear to land.
• 57:12
  Right. You know, conversely, we have in the military, we have base operations
• 57:17
  officer in Kingsville, Texas, you're in Viridian.
• 57:20
  So everything like the base officer, we have, it's like some old commander,
• 57:24
  some crusty dude. We had Montana, who was this crusty old.
• 57:30
  But Montana was this old F-8 guy, you know, and he kind of ran.
• 57:34
  And they brought him back, and he was like this terminal 05 commander senior guy.
• 57:38
  And he owned the tower. And when I say that, he was like the head dude for all
• 57:42
  of the ATC controllers and whatnot.
• 57:44
  So he would still fly with the students. So we had a spin hop where they'd take
• 57:47
  out a T-2, and they'd spin it, and you'd depart it, and you'd recover it,
• 57:50
  and you'd go through all this unusual stuff. And then he'd bring it back.
• 57:53
  And he was the guy. He literally, I'm in the back. I'm a new guy.
• 57:56
  And he's like, she would check in, switch the tower.
• 58:00
  And he had the crusty voice you know sectar this
• 58:03
  is montana i'm coming in and that
• 58:06
  was it and they're like roger that sir you're cleared
• 58:10
  for the option so which was like whatever the hell you want to do till full
• 58:14
  stop landing he would come in whatever do whatever landed what but it was just
• 58:17
  kind of funny i was like can you do that can i say hey i'm kimo sabi i'm here
• 58:21
  no i couldn't do that it was just montana so it's just these levels of leadership
• 58:25
  and whatnot It was Montana,
• 58:28
  but it was the military, you know.
• 58:31
  My gear's down. Please, let me land. Let me land, Steve.
• 58:39
  Hey, can we backtrack just for a second? Yeah.
• 58:44
  You were hired at 22. I'm talking to you, Curtis.
• 58:50
  Hired at 22, mandatory retirement age, 56. Yeah.
• 58:55
  So is that for any level of controller? Like it's everybody,
• 59:00
  whether you're in route or tower approach or.
• 59:03
  Yeah. Anybody that's a controller. Yeah, absolutely.
• 59:07
  But there are certain positions within the FAA that are not subject to that.
• 59:10
  So that's like usually our staff roles, staff support, front office, admins.
• 59:15
  They, they're not required. It is, you're talking to airplanes.
• 59:17
  If you're a qualified, certified air traffic controller, you're done at 56.
• 59:23
  Whether you are at the top of your game or not yep you
• 59:26
  can apply for an extension but it's like the
• 59:29
  it's a mythical thing hearing one of those get approved these days
• 59:32
  it's it's almost always no it's like a unicorn even
• 59:35
  with the shortages you think that they'd be offering those up
• 59:38
  because right now they're they're doing a program
• 59:41
  where they're they're giving anybody that's eligible 20 lump
• 59:45
  sum to stay on on top so it's
• 59:48
  just 20 of their yearly salary we'll just throw that on
• 59:50
  top lump some for you to stay in and don't punch out so to stay
• 59:54
  in past 56 no to stay in when
• 59:56
  they're eligible so like once you've hit your 25 years before
• 1:00:00
  you're 56 whatever years you have left so you
• 1:00:03
  can retire anymore i can go at
• 1:00:05
  47 how do you keep me from retiring at 47 versus 56
• 1:00:08
  like they need to start throwing a bunch of money at you when you turn 47
• 1:00:11
  yeah i wouldn't say no the age but uh
• 1:00:15
  how how often do you have to redo your medical
• 1:00:18
  under 40 years old it's every
• 1:00:21
  two years after 40 years old yearly
• 1:00:24
  okay and then
• 1:00:28
  after 40 they bring back ekgs and stuff like that too yeah and is it is it similar
• 1:00:33
  to what we do is it is it is there like a first class big class third class
• 1:00:37
  like like like we have to do more than fog a mirror fig well i don't know i'm
• 1:00:41
  asking Is that a class two medical type thing?
• 1:00:46
  No, we have a flight surgeon, yeah, with class two medical. So I think you guys are...
• 1:00:52
  Well, I mean, if you want to exercise privileges, pilot in command is first class.
• 1:00:57
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Wow.
• 1:01:01
  Well, that's sobering. I mean, you know, when I started this gig,
• 1:01:06
  and I know you did two repeat, mandatory hybrid age for pilots was 60.
• 1:01:10
  Yeah. But, you know, due to a lot. It blows my mind, the controllers.
• 1:01:13
  I mean, look, not to denigrate what you do, but you're sitting in an air-conditioned
• 1:01:19
  room or a heated room of one sort or another.
• 1:01:24
  You're not pulling Gs and you're not banging a bunch of time zones,
• 1:01:27
  which isn't to denigrate how much stress you're truly under.
• 1:01:30
  But, oh my God, 56, there's something wrong. That's broken.
• 1:01:37
  I don't expect you to yay or nay that. That's a, that's a political thing that
• 1:01:41
  you may want to avoid, but, uh, I think that's absolutely broken.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah. Me personally, I I'll fight that every day. I think 56 is,
• 1:01:49
  is where it needs to stay. I'll protect that age.
• 1:01:52
  I mean, there's more lives in our hands in a single shift than a doctor will in their entire career.
• 1:01:59
  Right. So I will protect it in the sense of, you know, we'll look at any,
• 1:02:04
  you know, any family member that, that starts slipping mentally.
• 1:02:08
  Right. How fast does that go downhill?
• 1:02:11
  31 if you're off the street. And then if it's a military hire,
• 1:02:15
  I think up to 35 with some exceptions.
• 1:02:18
  Okay. And those are pretty few and far between.
• 1:02:21
  Okay. So you're going to be at least 20, 21 years if you hit 56.
• 1:02:28
  Yeah. If I go 56, I'll be 33 years and, yeah, 34 years.
• 1:02:35
  So I'd be more ready to go after 34 years, no doubt about it, than I would after 20.
• 1:02:41
  I want to plan for 47, but if I, you know, that's the goal.
• 1:02:45
  But if I fall short, I got some fluff on the backside to help me cover up. There you go.
• 1:02:52
  There you go yeah wow okay i got uh i got i got more questions yeah man off
• 1:02:59
  off topic all right from earlier from.
• 1:03:07
  No it's on now i was getting shit because like totally off topic i was like
• 1:03:10
  so so do you like cheese sir no that's not it i wasn't going to ask you if you
• 1:03:15
  like cheese i don't give a shit Do you like cheese or not? Actually, do you like cheese? No.
• 1:03:20
  The question I was going to ask was, all right, because that was one of the
• 1:03:24
  things, it was mandatory tyranny.
• 1:03:26
  But Air Force One, it's a pain in the ass. Air Force One ever come to Providence
• 1:03:30
  when you guys were on duty?
• 1:03:33
  What a shit shit that is. Let's talk about that. Talk about that.
• 1:03:36
  Well, trial evidence is not too big of an issue. So obviously,
• 1:03:39
  I mean, it's public knowledge, but there's a ramp freeze half hour prior and half hour after.
• 1:03:44
  Air Force One for us is a pretty slick operation. They're in,
• 1:03:48
  they're out. Obviously, the less time that they're on the ground, the better.
• 1:03:51
  So they've got it down to a science. So for us, it's usually they'll fly in.
• 1:03:57
  They'll have helicopters or a motorcade waiting. They go out. They do their thing.
• 1:04:01
  If they are staying at the airport like the planes parked with us not just another
• 1:04:05
  airport we will have secret service in the building with us they oversee it
• 1:04:09
  there's a phone line that we all monitor that is the entire country is is is
• 1:04:15
  on it and it's the command center's phone so we have to start,
• 1:04:19
  it sounds super crazy but you phone this red on this no okay it's a regular
• 1:04:25
  phone but it's just a certain number you dial and a certain password and it
• 1:04:32
  gets you into this basically checkbook.
• 1:04:35
  Hold on, what's the number and password? Just between us. I won't tell the listeners.
• 1:04:40
  Yeah, password is password.
• 1:04:43
  At least it isn't monkey. So does Air Force One ask permission to take off or
• 1:04:48
  do they just tell you when they're taking off and you clear the area?
• 1:04:52
  So we clear them. But it's very ambiguous.
• 1:04:56
  So an airliner, runway 23, taxi via this, this, this, you know,
• 1:05:01
  for Air Force One, it's okay to actually as requested, they give you everything in advance.
• 1:05:05
  Everything is kept off the public frequency, because obviously it's public,
• 1:05:09
  it's a recorded line, everybody can hear it.
• 1:05:11
  It's like a clearance, you're not clear to the Baltimore airport,
• 1:05:13
  you're clear to destination airport.
• 1:05:16
  You can expect your requested altitude 10 minutes after departure.
• 1:05:19
  We're not going to tell on a public frequency what altitude they're going to
• 1:05:21
  climb to, except for their initial one. Yeah, it's kind of sexy. I like it.
• 1:05:27
  That's hot. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  You get used to it. It's funny when you hear the tapes on YouTube and somebody
• 1:05:35
  calls it a heavy and you're not supposed to.
• 1:05:38
  It explicitly says you don't call Air Force One a heavy if it's the VC-25.
• 1:05:41
  You don't want to give away what type of aircraft they're flying because there might be multiple.
• 1:05:45
  They might have something else going on right there's there's so many things
• 1:05:48
  and it's cool do they change their call signs no
• 1:05:51
  is it i don't know you want to tell me if it's but i mean do they have do they
• 1:05:55
  change their call sign it's like hey you're shark one today you're victory two
• 1:05:59
  three tomorrow i mean is it like that or can you air force one will always be
• 1:06:04
  air force one so it's whatever the president's on it's an air force plane right
• 1:06:08
  that was as we all know what will change,
• 1:06:11
  actually I don't think there's many that do change it's more so let's say it's
• 1:06:15
  marine one and marine one lands now you're smoking.
• 1:06:19
  Yes give me 30 seconds.
• 1:06:27
  Sorry it was a reflex yeah it happens okay so like let's say marine one lands
• 1:06:38
  right And then they're going to depart and they're going to do something else.
• 1:06:41
  So they'll go out now as their squadron call sign.
• 1:06:43
  That's the only time something changes is if, you know, something like that.
• 1:06:48
  But, yeah, so it's a cool operation. I think it's one of the few times.
• 1:06:51
  So when I was down in San Juan, I was there for Maria, the Category 5 hurricane
• 1:06:55
  that decimated the island.
• 1:06:56
  And within a week, Air Force One came down. And there's this – I don't know
• 1:07:01
  how true this thing is, but it was this weird moment where the Secret Service
• 1:07:05
  guy has a little laptop next to me.
• 1:07:07
  And we're like, okay. He's like, they're going to be plus or minus one minute
• 1:07:11
  to the runway. And I go, bullshit.
• 1:07:14
  And he goes, you want to put money on it? And I'm like, yeah.
• 1:07:16
  So i casually slapped down a 20 bill on the table taking off or landing taking off or landing,
• 1:07:22
  landing okay so they're coming to us and he goes there'll be
• 1:07:25
  plus or minus one minute from this time and i was like no
• 1:07:27
  way they're not that and were we like were you like an hour out or
• 1:07:30
  two hours out or like 15 minutes yeah we are we're within like an hour yeah
• 1:07:35
  somewhere within the hour though but we're not seeing them like i'm zooming
• 1:07:38
  out on the on the radar scope in the tower you're not really seeing anything
• 1:07:41
  it's not picking up anything and then all of a sudden yep there's six targets
• 1:07:45
  that pop up and there's one lead and there's five trailing and,
• 1:07:50
  I swear to God, he looked me right in the eye as the wheels were touching down
• 1:07:54
  as he's taking my money off the table.
• 1:07:57
  They were literally on the money, like wheels down at the second they said there.
• 1:08:03
  It's a slick operation. He knew better. No, he did. That was mean. Yeah.
• 1:08:09
  He was probably getting $20 back that he'd lost before on that same bet. I know, right?
• 1:08:15
  Yeah. Hey, how long were you in San Juan? And it sounds enjoyable.
• 1:08:18
  We fly to San Juan a lot. and uh how long were you there so i started there
• 1:08:23
  in 2016 i left in 2018 and i went back,
• 1:08:29
  2020 and no sorry years i was there for a total time about two and a half almost
• 1:08:36
  three years but just split up between two different times so one of my one of
• 1:08:40
  my more enjoyable layovers is is that location i thought you guys have always
• 1:08:44
  done a good job over there so i just Yeah,
• 1:08:47
  I'll text the crews back and say, hey, we got good positive reviews.
• 1:08:51
  Yeah, no, it's great positive reviews, man.
• 1:08:53
  You know what? I've operated this out of San Juan before doing C-130 work.
• 1:08:58
  It's one of the funniest things I ever heard. I've never heard it ever since,
• 1:09:01
  but on the takeoff roll on runway eight.
• 1:09:06
  My takeoff clearance was canceled because there was an iguana on the runway.
• 1:09:13
  That was every day big out there man they're fucking
• 1:09:16
  huge yep they sunbathe on
• 1:09:19
  the taxiways yes so there's i can't remember
• 1:09:22
  how many times that we had you know jet blue and delta
• 1:09:25
  and everybody stopped because they go that sort of were blocked by an iguana
• 1:09:28
  and then i had a jet blue that was there's a there's a jet blue taxi now and
• 1:09:33
  there's i don't know if you're familiar with the layout but there's two bridges
• 1:09:36
  taxiways and right before it there's a little hook it's charlie and so i had
• 1:09:40
  him charlie short of robbie's hanging out running his maintenance issue,
• 1:09:43
  and there's an iguana on the other taxiway blocking all the flow
• 1:09:46
  of traffic he's like yeah you got to get somebody out of here to take care of
• 1:09:49
  this thing i go all right yeah ops 12 you out there yep okay we know we'll go
• 1:09:53
  right to it and he proceeds to get out of his car with a little hand shovel
• 1:09:59
  it's like three feet long he just goes up and he's just smacking this iguana,
• 1:10:05
  more dead animals i'm gonna
• 1:10:08
  ask if they're like some sort of prized animal out there you
• 1:10:11
  had to like he went smacking it to kill it he was just trying
• 1:10:14
  to get it to fuck off the taxiway right no they're they're little assholes they're
• 1:10:17
  like squirrels out there they're like there's no there's no predator for them
• 1:10:21
  they are the predator right nothing hunts them so oh that's funny so i can only
• 1:10:27
  imagine like 26a is just watching this iguana get absolutely beat to shit on
• 1:10:31
  a taxiway in the middle of the day.
• 1:10:35
  Dragged it off into the grass by its tail. Yep.
• 1:10:39
  Holy shit. Tastes like chicken. Let's eat it. Yeah.
• 1:10:43
  Now, I've seen Nice France closed down for snails on the runway in taxi. No. No.
• 1:10:49
  Come on. Come on. I swear to God.
• 1:10:51
  I swear to God. I'm not buying. They got this snail's migration,
• 1:10:55
  and it takes your breaking action to zero.
• 1:10:59
  Breaking action nil because of snails? Yeah.
• 1:11:03
  No shit? Yeah. Escargot all over in France.
• 1:11:06
  Hey, I hate to be the pooper of the party, but you said something about an advertisement,
• 1:11:11
  and we're an hour and six minutes into this thing.
• 1:11:14
  Yeah, well, and it's still losing up, so we'll get it in the final show.
• 1:11:19
  Not a big deal. Not a big deal.
• 1:11:22
  We'll get it in the final. Besides, we only got about seven or eight more minutes here with Curtis.
• 1:11:26
  He's got to go back to work and keep people from killing each other.
• 1:11:30
  So well ever get
• 1:11:33
  in a pissing contest with the pilot give him a brasher warning come on
• 1:11:36
  man you can tell me hey what's brasher stand for brasher oh yeah tell them who
• 1:11:40
  brasher is i don't know if there's i i might be too young because i don't know
• 1:11:45
  if there's an actual story behind it i have no idea i don't think there's a
• 1:11:49
  story behind it but i think it's i think it was either the administrator i'll
• 1:11:52
  have to look it up and see it was either the administrator who came up with the,
• 1:11:56
  the term, his name was Brasher, that said, hey, you know, here's the phone call.
• 1:12:02
  You know, you're being advised you have a violation.
• 1:12:05
  I'll look that up while you talk about how many you've issued and for why.
• 1:12:10
  Yeah, but it's not coming up on Pornhub. I don't know why Brasher.
• 1:12:15
  Sorry. Whoa. Sorry. Ah.
• 1:12:20
  Sorry, Mom and Dad. Big, busty Brashers.
• 1:12:23
  If you notice from air traffic control to a pilot that they appear to have deviated
• 1:12:28
  from instructions, but there's, oh,
• 1:12:30
  named after Captain Jack Braster, who experienced a delayed notification for
• 1:12:34
  a 1985 altitude bus, prompting the FAA to create this system for early non-tentative
• 1:12:39
  fact-finding to enhance aviation safety.
• 1:12:44
  So it's like Miranda writes. Hold on a second. Here's the key takeaways.
• 1:12:48
  Non-punitive information gathering. Not so anymore.
• 1:12:58
  I have yet to hear Brasher. I've just heard stand by to record the phone number.
• 1:13:06
  Stand by for a phone number.
• 1:13:07
  Yeah, they're supposed to give you the whole spiel to make it sound professional and all that.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah, it's... you know, possible pilot deviation, right?
• 1:13:16
  Because we're not going to accuse you because we don't, you know,
• 1:13:19
  we know, but we don't really know.
• 1:13:21
  And it's, it's, you know, you're innocent until proven guilty in a court of
• 1:13:24
  law and the same with the FAA. So. Sorry.
• 1:13:29
  Acting up. Yeah. So I've never, I've never had like heated exchanges with them,
• 1:13:35
  but I mean, it's as simple as, you know, an IFR departs off an uncontrolled
• 1:13:39
  field when there's a hold for release clearance, right?
• 1:13:42
  That's a pretty common one we get. because quonset airport is
• 1:13:45
  six miles south of providence airport with the identical runway layouts
• 1:13:48
  and so not only do we have aircraft
• 1:13:51
  oh tons like we've had aircraft yeah
• 1:13:54
  we've had aircraft land on the almost land at the wrong airport and
• 1:13:58
  our controller caught it and then got save of the year so so stuff like that
• 1:14:02
  but it's just dumb shit like that where you're just like dude really come on
• 1:14:05
  there's a reason why we're saying it there's a reason why we're doing it and
• 1:14:08
  it was during the shutdown so my patience was kind of thinned out at that point
• 1:14:12
  and you're a hot shot in a Gulfstream, it doesn't mean you just get to avoid all the rules.
• 1:14:16
  No, you're still flying the same rules as everybody else. Gulfstream guys.
• 1:14:22
  Can I ask, and if you don't answer it, it's probably fine. I know we're time-extrained,
• 1:14:25
  but I don't mean it bad and bad, but what was your craziest net?
• 1:14:32
  I would say it was when we finally opened up in San Juan.
• 1:14:36
  So after Maria, we were daytime ops only. We had a skeleton crew.
• 1:14:41
  So we stayed that night in the tower until the hurricane passed.
• 1:14:44
  And obviously we had to evacuate the tower at 65 mile an hour winds because
• 1:14:48
  that's what the glass is rated for.
• 1:14:50
  So we come up in the morning, tech ops certifies everything,
• 1:14:53
  and they go, well, you don't have weather radar. Your localizer is pointing
• 1:14:56
  out to the ocean. You don't have electricity.
• 1:14:58
  So your daytime only and your VFR, we're non-radar.
• 1:15:02
  And we go well shit how do we start doing
• 1:15:05
  this and the faa goes well we're going
• 1:15:07
  to get the approach control up into the tower and the
• 1:15:11
  approach control said nope we're not coming upstairs we don't have enough people
• 1:15:14
  we can't get to the airport so there i was sitting there at local control on
• 1:15:19
  the tower position point and i i have the point 65 with all the the phraseology
• 1:15:24
  to vector people and i have all the flip charts on the other side and as a tower
• 1:15:28
  controller that's usually a five-mile ring in 3,000 feet airspace.
• 1:15:32
  I have 80 miles now, and I'm getting Miami Center stacking all the arrivals over the end. Oh, shit.
• 1:15:41
  So that's just the civilians. So I get the civilians, all the airliners, 40 miles out.
• 1:15:48
  The military goes direct to the VOR and holds.
• 1:15:50
  So I have two C5s, two C17s, and a couple others. I think they're 135s above them.
• 1:15:57
  1,000 feet apart. They've all got supplies for the island. It was stacked right
• 1:16:01
  over the top of your head, basically, right?
• 1:16:03
  Yep, right over the VOR at 9,000 feet was the bottom of the stack.
• 1:16:05
  So you've got to bring one out, bring the next one down, and we became an Air Force base initially.
• 1:16:11
  But that was the craziest day because it was more preservation of life than it was possible.
• 1:16:16
  You know, saying the rules, right. Did you have the right phraseology?
• 1:16:20
  And so we did that for 13 days. We lived at the facility.
• 1:16:23
  We did four hours on four hours off for 13 days.
• 1:16:27
  And after it, we finally restored all the services were somewhat back to normal.
• 1:16:32
  The FAA administrator at the time was Michael Horta.
• 1:16:34
  He came down and he came down and DOT one. It's the first time I've seen DOT
• 1:16:38
  one. It's their own call sign when he flies and he flew in with the COO and everybody.
• 1:16:42
  And he's, we got called into the chief's office. They go,
• 1:16:45
  Hey, we need you guys and we go oh shit right the first thing you know
• 1:16:48
  is like that's when you're in trouble so we all
• 1:16:50
  walk in and he's there and he he shakes it oh hey hello so
• 1:16:53
  nice to meet you nice to meet you and he goes all right gentlemen he goes you
• 1:16:57
  know he's like we're proud he's like you did a good job he goes 13 days you
• 1:17:02
  had this many operations you had this many pounds of cargo you had this much
• 1:17:06
  water you're this much food he goes you had three cell towers on the c5s he
• 1:17:10
  goes you had all this stuff.
• 1:17:11
  He's like, you restored an Island within 13 days.
• 1:17:14
  He goes, and not one loss, a separation, not one wake turbulence loss.
• 1:17:20
  And he goes, the fact that you guys managed to pull that out of your asses on the spot.
• 1:17:25
  Nobody asking you to do it. He goes, we're fucking proud of you guys. So great job. America.
• 1:17:31
  Fucking America. Hell yeah. We had those moments where you're just like, oh, shit.
• 1:17:36
  Right? So it's like, yeah, it's cool. And the tower won an award for it through the FAA later on.
• 1:17:40
  And then, of course, you all got time off with pay, and they sent you some tropical island.
• 1:17:46
  So they gave us, yeah, they compensated.
• 1:17:49
  They gave us overtime for every hour that we lived in the facility.
• 1:17:53
  So 13 days of overtime. Nice. Fantastic.
• 1:17:57
  Well done. Thank you. So it stays like that where you're just like,
• 1:18:01
  oh, shit, we weren't expecting this. And then all of a sudden, here it comes.
• 1:18:06
  That's great. Cool. Thank you. There it is. And sticks put up. Watch out for the tail.
• 1:18:12
  Yeah. Sticks put up an iguana. It was. It is. I love it. That's a long one. The dragon.
• 1:18:19
  Shark 1-1, your takeoff clearance is canceled. There's an iguana on the runway. Wait, you're sharks?
• 1:18:26
  You were a shark? When we were operating out of San Juan, our call sign was shark.
• 1:18:31
  Yeah, I remember those. I don't know if you were ever on them,
• 1:18:34
  but yeah, I remember sharks.
• 1:18:35
  Well, I was on them a lot. I commanded the debt when we were down there for a couple months.
• 1:18:41
  Oh, nice. Oh, by the way, a big cockfighting arena.
• 1:18:47
  And right next door to the cockfighting arena is a chicken restaurant.
• 1:18:52
  And the chicken there is amazing because it's fresh. It's fresh.
• 1:18:56
  Let me just take that one more step. In our downtown layover,
• 1:18:59
  downtown, right next door is something called the Condom Factory. Have you ever been?
• 1:19:06
  Okay, maybe you're married. You can tell me later. I was just curious because
• 1:19:08
  that place is pretty often.
• 1:19:11
  Condom Factory. We'll have to talk about it. There was Condom World.
• 1:19:16
  Yeah, it was like a smoke shop.
• 1:19:21
  Not just a factory. A world in and of itself.
• 1:19:25
  Well, it's a cockfight up on the screen.
• 1:19:31
  Thank you, Sticks. Thank you, Sticks. There it is.
• 1:19:37
  Oh, man. I don't think it's gotten out of control here.
• 1:19:41
  All right. Well, you have to go to work, Curtis.
• 1:19:44
  Yeah, I'm going to get back to it. We'll say our farewells and thank you for your service.
• 1:19:49
  Thank you for getting those guys in safely and getting that island put back together.
• 1:19:54
  13 days in the tower. That's something, man.
• 1:19:57
  Hey, Curtis and Paul, thank you for putting up with our bullshit and answering
• 1:20:01
  all our silly questions.
• 1:20:02
  It's really nice having a conversation with the people we never get to see when
• 1:20:07
  we're talking on the radio.
• 1:20:09
  We've got to have you back. I really appreciate you guys. Thank you.
• 1:20:12
  More pilot controller talk. This is always good. yeah no thank you so much for
• 1:20:16
  having us i appreciate the opportunity and anytime you need us you give us a
• 1:20:19
  call you got my number yeah absolutely we don't want your number wait don't give us your number.
• 1:20:26
  Let me email or something,
• 1:20:31
  stand by for a possible for a possible pilot deviation and give him a call there
• 1:20:36
  it is that's it condom world he's got sticks down has a picture of the Thor
• 1:20:42
  front of condom world up.
• 1:20:44
  And it's obvious. You know. You know. You thought I was joking.
• 1:20:49
  That's a chain, by the way. There's like 20. Oh, my God. How do you find that
• 1:20:52
  so fast? I can't even find the picture. I know. He's crazy. He's freaking crazy.
• 1:20:57
  All right. Yeah. All right.
• 1:21:00
  Oh, but before you go to 30 seconds, close out your, so there I was story.
• 1:21:04
  You got an Airbus and a, uh, and a local.
• 1:21:06
  Uh, yeah. So we used to have this low offshore transition. So all the Islanders
• 1:21:10
  coming back from the islands out East used to transition along the shoreline
• 1:21:13
  to keep under the departures.
• 1:21:15
  And, uh, normally we would keep them about a mile offshore, but they didn't
• 1:21:19
  like it a lot because the glide distance, if they lost engines,
• 1:21:22
  wasn't enough to get to the runway.
• 1:21:24
  So he was like, I'm going to cheat the system here and I'm going to just track the shoreline.
• 1:21:29
  So the shoreline is about you know 500
• 1:21:32
  feet off the departure end so as an allegiant is
• 1:21:35
  rotating we have an islander and the
• 1:21:38
  islander sees them so the islander starts climbing allegiant sees them and this
• 1:21:42
  airbus gear is still coming up ducks under the islander and comes back on the
• 1:21:48
  back side and there's a giant investigation about it yeah it wasn't pretty and
• 1:21:53
  there's a lot of conversations after the fact and we changed that transition
• 1:21:55
  it's no longer because of that so.
• 1:21:58
  Yeah it was interesting everybody puckered that was a
• 1:22:01
  that was a they're gonna hit and we're gonna watch a fireball and were
• 1:22:04
  you doing this like were you like oh but you
• 1:22:07
  know like trying to get some ball for him i was
• 1:22:10
  looking at it you're shrinking in the tower no no it's yeah
• 1:22:14
  it's like well yeah that's an islander right there it's not a very high performing
• 1:22:17
  aircraft it's uh yeah so
• 1:22:21
  twin yeah yeah it's it wasn't pretty and
• 1:22:24
  you kind of think sometimes like how would i react in that situation
• 1:22:27
  and what are you going to do what are you going to do in one second
• 1:22:29
  that's going to prevent that you kind of you just
• 1:22:33
  kind of hope and pray and whatever happens happens and you deal with it so that
• 1:22:38
  was a possible pilot deviation and that got reported up the chain and we had
• 1:22:42
  a lot of change in policy after that i'll say that much so and that was that's
• 1:22:47
  my story and i'm sticking to it i can only imagine okay,
• 1:22:51
  Well, thank you. Thank you. Yes, thanks very much. Much appreciated.
• 1:22:56
  Thank you, guys. Well, if you'll hang on for us here a little bit,
• 1:22:59
  we're going to wrap the show.
• 1:23:01
  We're going to land the airplane, and then we'll chit-chat a little bit some
• 1:23:05
  after show. There it is. Yeah.
• 1:23:10
  Crazy. I'm not lying. All right. Well, before we wrap, we want to say thank
• 1:23:14
  you to both of you for joining us, for all the work you've done. and it's necessary.
• 1:23:20
  And we all felt a little of your pain, at least, oh, what's the word,
• 1:23:26
  vicariously back in November. So I know that was a tough slog for you guys.
• 1:23:31
  So thank you. I guess it was October, November.
• 1:23:34
  Yeah. So, yeah. We also want to say thank you to all the men and women on active
• 1:23:40
  duty, our veterans and our first responders who are deeply appreciative to them
• 1:23:44
  for all the sacrifice through which they go to make our country a better place.
• 1:23:50
  Hey, thank you, families. We love you.
• 1:23:54
  Yeah, because if the families weren't there providing support and being that rock,
• 1:24:01
  those first responders and our active duty and military preserve guys and Coast
• 1:24:07
  Guard guys and Guard guys, they couldn't be out there doing their thing. Yeah.
• 1:24:12
  Absolutely not. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:24:15
  Yeah. Huge thanks to Dave Hamilton for all his knowledge, support,
• 1:24:19
  and steady hand that helps us get the show out to you every single week.
• 1:24:31
  And you got anything, Fig? No, guess not. Okay. Our band with the sandal by
• 1:24:35
  Cashfly, and advertising support comes from Beckbeat Media, online at Beckbeatmedia.com.
• 1:24:42
  Hey, can you put a Tomcat on there, too?
• 1:24:44
  I mean, the area of sexism. You probably can, but, you know.
• 1:24:46
  Yeah, it's going to be a cut. Yeah, and there it is.
• 1:24:49
  Oh, there's a lot. And you know what? Okay.
• 1:24:54
  I can't find my notes here. That's okay.
• 1:24:57
  We'll keep going here. I'll just keep going then. So if you enjoy the show,
• 1:25:00
  please head over to sothereiwas.us slash rate and give us a five-star rating.
• 1:25:05
  It really does help the algorithms. It helps people find the show.
• 1:25:09
  If you've got an idea for a guest or a way to make the show better,
• 1:25:12
  email us at repeat, R-E-P-E-T, at sothereiwas.us or fig at sothereiwas.us or
• 1:25:18
  sticks at sothereiwas.us.
• 1:25:23
  Don't forget the merch store. catcher
• 1:25:28
  i think that's right so you know if it's
• 1:25:31
  if it's made we probably have it on the merch store
• 1:25:34
  however i know it's we're i know we're in winter time and it's not winter time
• 1:25:39
  in most places right now but still south of the south of the border in in the
• 1:25:43
  southern hemisphere it's bikini season and we have a so there i was bikini which
• 1:25:48
  looks good on almost everybody want to touch.
• 1:25:53
  So hot okay anyway I'm sorry oh boy this is degraded rapidly I just said hot,
• 1:26:04
  Yeah, this is bad. So, oh, man.
• 1:26:10
  Oh, Kimo, you're killing me here, man. To our Patreon supporters,
• 1:26:15
  thank you, thank you, thank you so much for what you do.
• 1:26:19
  We know you've lost all sense of judgment and common sense with regards to your financial stability.
• 1:26:27
  We're deeply appreciative of that, though. Particularly this week, John C.
• 1:26:31
  Vestal became a division lead on Patreon, and Mike Andrews dropped a Benjamin on us, $100.
• 1:26:39
  Mike, thank you so much. He did that over at Soderowose.us slash donate.
• 1:26:44
  We're humbled by that. Thank you, gentlemen.
• 1:26:48
  I'm questioning your judgment, but thank you. It's very important.
• 1:26:53
  Yeah. We appreciate it. It is indeed. And let's see.
• 1:26:59
  Thanks to Sticks and Bagos. Sticks is out there putting up all kinds of stuff
• 1:27:02
  before we even know we need to say it.
• 1:27:04
  And right now he has a Badasses sticker at bdsaviationphotography.com who sent
• 1:27:10
  us about 18 or 20 beautiful.
• 1:27:12
  Oh, my gosh. Those are amazing.
• 1:27:16
  Yeah. That's an example of it right there. Holy shit. Yeah.
• 1:27:20
  So, yeah. So, thank you, Badasses. Thank you, Sticks. Thank you, Bago.
• 1:27:25
  And I just don't know what else to say, man. But, you know, that's the way it is.
• 1:27:30
  So it seems to me there's somebody else I should be.
• 1:27:35
  Any hints, any thoughts there? Well, as a matter of fact, I recognize that sound.
• 1:27:42
  That's the sound of the two Air Force F-16 pilots that makes the Air Force down good.
• 1:27:48
  Did you say DOS Air Force F-16 pilots? It's the DOS Air Force FC.
• 1:27:52
  The DOS Gringos, which, by the way, we are at the Joker level right now because
• 1:27:59
  with the bottles broken open, and Bingo is right about down here.
• 1:28:04
  This is their... Is that bogey dope?
• 1:28:08
  Bogey dope, and it's fantastic.
• 1:28:13
  Bottle of bogey dope, more spirits, and the DOS Gringos.
• 1:28:17
  So, good stuff. Hey, they got four albums and a bad song on any of their albums.
• 1:28:22
  And if you're having a bad day,
• 1:28:24
  you should listen to one of their songs because they're all hilarious.
• 1:28:28
  Absolutely. All right, everybody.
• 1:28:32
  Until next week, all I can tell you is stay safe and check six.
• 1:29:13
  What do you say, Fig? He says, over. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
• 1:29:24
  And we're out. Wrong week. All right.
• 1:29:28
  That was one of the most painful outros we've ever done. Sorry,
• 1:29:32
  everybody. I hope you had as much fun as Fig, Chemo, and Sticks did.