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Jim Higgins, professor of Aviation at the.

University of North Dakota AV Nation what is going on?

And welcome back to the Pilot to Pilot podcast.

My name is Justin Seams and I am your host.

I do apologize that there was not a podcast last week and this is coming out a little bit later this week.

As you can tell my voice, I'm a little bit under the weather right now.

Since I recorded this, the stomach bug went through the house.

It's been a rough two weeks over here at our household, but nonetheless we are getting out a brand new state of the industry.

Hopefully today as I'm recording this on Tuesday it will be posted but maybe on Wednesday.

These episodes are always a favorite.

I get so many emails, DM's responses like hey, when's the next state of the industry?

When's the next state of the industry?

Well today is the day and without any further ado, here is State of the industry with Dr.

Jim Higgins.

Jim, what's going on man?

Welcome back to the Pilot the Pilot podcast.

Justin, good to see you.

Always good to be here.

First episode of 2025.

Well I should say first state of the industry of 2025.

It's just, it's still weird saying 2025.

I say it every year.

I'm really glad I'm not in like ninth grade or sixth grade anymore.

We have to write the date at the top of your paper and it seems to take you to like March where you actually get the date right.

I used to always have to scratch through it.

But anyways, no one cares about that.

But if you're young you're probably like yeah, that does suck.

Absolutely and it gets worse as you get older, Justin.

Oh, don't tell me that.

I do agree, because it does get worse as you get older.

We are here to talk about the industry.

We're here to talk about aviation.

If this is your, you know, if you just got Into Aviation in 2025, this is your New Year's resolution.

And you're like, oh, what's this?

Let me click on that.

There's a ton of episodes for you to listen to, all the way back to Covid.

And you can kind of see what was happening almost real time.

And then how we.

We're changing our tune and how we're like, I don't know what's gonna happen.

And I didn't even work for the airlines then.

I was like, I'm never gonna be an airline pilot.

And then, hey, guess what?

I'm an airline pilot now.

So I saw the light as I'm staring into three really bright lights right now.

They.

They spoke to me and it made me.

They.

They told me there was an easier way to make a living, which I am on short call.

And that does suck.

So there is caveats to it.

But it will get better.

It will get better.

I believe everyone when they say that.

And the hiring will help, which everything.

We're going to get involved when we talk about, and we are going to make sure we touch in every single aspect of the industry that we can in 45 or so minutes.

And if we don't touch on a question you want, there is always the window that you can ask on the website.

Spot HQ.com you click on the state of the industry button, you scroll down, there's a question box.

If you have angry comments, just type Jim's name in there and that way we can send them to him.

Only good things for.

No, I'm just kidding.

But we are here to talk about the industry.

We are here to talk about what's going on.

There is a lot going on.

For one, we're going to touch on really quick or maybe long, I don't know.

But hiring has picked up at certain airlines.

There was a hiring freeze for American, United, Delta.

I believe that they were hiring.

I think United stopped in the summer when the FAA was coming down on them for a while.

But they have started hiring up.

I don't know about Southwest.

I haven't heard if they are hiring or not.

I know they had a freeze for a little bit as well.

But on American side, hiring has begun.

Um, how much they hire, I'm guessing is solely dependent on Boeing and Airbus and the airplanes that they can actually produce for them.

You might have more into that for us, but what are your thoughts on, you know, we can say like quarter one through quarter four or do the whole year of what you think hiring is going to look like?

Yeah, the great question, all, all those airlines you mentioned are planning on hiring in 2025.

The question is to what extent that's going to be the, that's going to be the question.

We certainly know based on the available information today, it's not going to be as robust as it has been in the last few years, but historically speaking, it's still going to be very, very good.

There'll be some good opportunities, but the dynamic has changed a little bit.

And so there's a few things that go along with that.

One of the things is for the pilots out there, the competitive minimums to get hired at an American, Southwest, United, Delta, et cetera, that's going to increase.

So you're going to start seeing things.

So I'm sure you are.

I've been talking to some pilots that have, you know, some pretty good credentials that, you know, two years ago they would have certainly opened the door at a lot of those airlines.

And now, you know, they're not the doors not shutting on them, but they're just not getting called as quickly.

Right.

So, so that's going to be one thing I think people are going to notice.

Don't panic.

You know, especially if you're just getting into the end of the career.

You know, you have to look at this over a longer period of time.

And historically speaking, we're still in a much better spot than say post 911 or during the Great Recession 2008, 2009, where we had some, just horrible, lots of people on furlough and you know, no real movement at any of the airlines.

We're just in a little bit of a, of a stutter step now.

And so, so just keep your eye focused on, you know, what it is you want to do and you'll get through it and just keep building your, building your resume to where you need to go.

As far as what's causing it, I would say it's about 90% on supply chain, maybe even more.

And specifically Boeing and Airbus.

And Boeing, sadly, we all know the Boeing story, but, but the strike that occurred.

Plus we're back to those silly Covid era supply chain, supply chain issues.

You know, they're not as bad, but there's still some supply chain issues upstream for them and they're in a Big hole.

And they're just going to dig out, you know, where they were supposed to produce at least one or two 787 every month.

That's, you know, they might, they might get to that by the end of this year.

We're not sure they were supposed to produce, I don't know, I can't remember the numbers, but 5 to 10, 7, 37s every month, they'll be lucky to be at, you know, half that by the end of the year.

So they're in a, they're in a big hole.

And that's absolutely causing this stagnation.

There's just no doubt about it.

And it's not for a lack of passenger demand or even general economic conditions, because that's still there.

And so, yeah, I, you know, so we're going to have to see how that goes.

I mean, I think we're going have to give Boeing a pretty good year before they work things out.

Airbus, the engine issues, the GE and all the other stuff that does seem to be working its way out a little more quickly.

They haven't had, you know, the labor issues and some of the other things we've seen at Boeing.

So, you know, that I noticed that the neos are getting delivered a little faster now than they, than they were before.

And, you know, Boeing is not caught up to that.

So it'll gradually lift.

The fundamentals are still there based on all the retirements that are happening in the industry.

You know, barring something cataclysmic like another Covid or, you know, a world war or something like that, the next few years will be fine.

It'll just go a little slower and you'll see people that have to be a little more competitive to get hired initially.

Which is interesting because, I mean, I was reading the forums a couple of the other day for the airline I'm on.

I'm just kind of like trying to keep track, mainly because I want to know when they're going to start, when they're going to hire, what classes they're going to go to, and how my seniority will improve and how my schedule will improve.

But I was just looking at people listing their requirements, and a lot of people have been saying that they really are into 121 time again right now, which I had zero of a year ago, and I was getting hired and I got called immediately and I was put straight into class.

But it's just funny how, you know, there's just so many different things that maybe they're, they're, they don't care about 121 time as much and they're like, oh, 135 guys are cool or all right, now we need that college degree or now we need this.

And things just ebb and flow.

And as they need more pilots, you know, they don't have to be.

Or as the pilot market was stretched out with the last two years where everyone was hiring like crazy, you know, it just seemed like everyone was trying to just fill the numbers that they had.

Now they were still getting qualified pilots.

So I'm not saying that they weren't.

You can still be very qualified at 1500 hours versus 3500 hours or no 121 time versus a ton of 121 time.

But it's just really interesting to see how the trends change and then really interesting to see how airlines can change and what they decide they want or what the industry itself kind of decides that they want, because it seems like they would just the market kind of dictates what the airlines can hire.

You know, if there's a lot of pilots out there, they push the minimums up.

And now we're going to hire 3000 hour pilots with 121 pic time.

If the market, if everyone's trying to hire, they're like, all right, well, now we just need to try to get all the best pilots that we can, no matter what they are.

Who fits our culture, who fits being on a long layover with in Mexico City for 25 hours, you know, that's what I just did.

So a lot of stuff to look at like that.

Absolutely.

And there's no doubt that the economic concept of supply and demand, you know, inelasticity, elasticity, all the things we learned about and macroeconomics are alive and well when it comes to that.

That being said, as someone who has studied the hiring algorithms at a lot of the major airlines over the last several years, I will tell you, the airlines, you know, sometimes it doesn't seem like that it's like, what's the magic combination of things?

I need what, you know, what do I need to put in there?

So, so the first part, everyone has a different path they can take to an airline.

And you know, for instance, you could, as, you know, you can come through a corporate avenue and get there.

Some people can go right through a region, you know, probably the prototypical flight instructor, regional legacy, that's probably, you know, the tried and true.

But there's a lot of other paths as well, as we all know.

So what are they looking for?

In these algorithms, airlines have become much more data driven in the last 10 to 15 years.

What that basically means is, is every person that they hire leaves a data trail.

So they'll look and they'll see, okay, where this person come from, what was their background, you know, where do they get their training?

What was their training like?

What was their part?

Was at 61, was at 141, was 142.

How many checkride failures do they have?

Did they, how they do it?

If they came from a low cost carrier, how did that go?

And they do use pretty complex algorithms.

I've actually talked to some of the people in particular at Delta that have put these algorithms together and, you know, they, believe it or not, they'll go down to like what college you went to, you know, what regional you went to.

And so you build this algorithm.

And this algorithm is ultimately meant to predict if you're going to successfully get to training in the minimum amount of time.

Successfully get through IOE in the minimum amount of time.

Yeah.

And they've gotten pretty good, good at it.

And it upset that it is happening.

Oh, you all right?

I might have lost you.

I think if that happens, just keep talking until you finish your point and then we'll try to patch it together.

But yeah, got it.

That was it.

Cool.

All right.

I don't, I didn't hear the last part you said.

So I did.

So I just heard you say algorithms.

And Delta, okay, the algorithms are deadly accurate.

Pilots get pretty upset about this because nobody likes to be reduced to a set of numbers on a spreadsheet.

And how well you're going to do.

You know, there's certainly a lot of examples out there of people that have overcome very difficult backgrounds.

You know, you and I have friends that, you know, the dreaded dui, Right.

Which of course we always want to avoid.

For me, it's not the least of which is the fact that it's dangerous to operate that way and you're putting other people at risk.

But, but if you do happen to get something like that in your background, you know, there was a time, you know, in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, you weren't going to get hired at a major airline.

They weren't going to take that chance.

They've since changed.

Right.

And you know, I have friends and you, you might have some friends, Justin, that, that have made it to the airlines overcoming, you know, something like that.

But people get really upset about that.

They're like, well, you know, I've changed, but the Truth.

The fact, the truth is there are studies out there that show if you've got a DUI in your pat, it's not just people taking a moral high ground.

If you have a DUI in your background, you're much more likely to be involved in an aviation accident at some point in your career.

That really upsets people when they hear that.

But that is what the data shows.

And so the airlines know that.

Passengers, attorneys know that.

And so if an airline hires somebody that, you know, has that in their background, and ultimately that person has an issue, and, you know, it's going to be an issue.

And so there's risk.

The airline's looking at it from a risk point of view, you know.

You know, has this person really changed?

Maybe they have, but can we take the risk?

You know, so that's just one micro example of how complex this is.

And those algorithms, like I said, are pretty accurate at determining who's going to get through training, how much training they're going to need.

And there's some algorithms that even predict, I mean, the work that Delta has done.

They followed cohorts from the 90s all the way through to, you know, 10, 15 years into their profession.

They'll even track things like how often people call in sick, and they'll go back and look at what, what they brought in from their hiring, those, those, whatever they had, whether they went to college at this place or, or what regional they even went to, or what corporate flying they went to.

And they know now they can build a, a pretty good statistical picture of people and they know kind of what kind of employees are likely to be, you know, which is kind.

Which is kind of interesting.

So it's also a problem.

I don't mean to go on and on about this, so, for instance, let's pick on Delta for just a second.

So, you know, my wife, who does not apply for Delta, but she applies for another, another major carrier, but she, you know, early on she applied to Delta, but I knew the algorithm at Delta, and so my wife was one who left the industry.

She flew for Mesaba in the early 2000s, got furloughed, left, left Mesaba.

We decided to have kids.

And so she stayed away from flying for about a decade there while we raised our kids.

And she did tangentially stay involved at und.

She became a CRJ sim instructor.

And so she was still involved in the industry.

But I'm telling you, I know that algorithm at Delta, and that blows that up.

That's not going to.

It's going to it's going to show that here's a person that doesn't.

Is not really passionate about aviation.

And I can tell you she is.

She's wanted to fly since she was a kid.

So, so, so even though these algorithms make these predictions about people, they're not always accurate.

But you can't really blame the airlines either, because they're playing the numbers right.

It's like when you play blackjack.

You know, you may lose an individual hand, but if you play the best system possible, you're going to minimize your losses.

Or better yet, if you're a card counter, you'll squeeze out a little bit of an edge.

And they, and they know that, and they know you're still going to lose some hands.

But, but, you know, so, yeah, it's interesting.

I could talk for hours about.

I could tell you now.

Yeah, yeah.

How do you get access to the algorithms?

Is it something that they let.

What do you say?

You don't.

Because they want to avoid lawsuits.

However, there have been a couple studies, so at Delta in particular, and I can't remember the name, there was a psychologist, it was a Hoffman, I'll have to look it up.

But there was a psychologist who did a lot of this industrial psychological work for Delta, and they did publish a few studies in the aviation psychology journals.

And even though they didn't mention Delta, they were hired by Delta to help build this algorithm.

And this was a few years ago, so things might have changed, I don't know.

But they did publish the results of what they found with cohorts of major airline pilots as from hiring all the way up through 10, 15 years onto the line.

And that's about your only insight into it.

But the airlines do not like to publish their methodology wrong or right, as frustrating as it is from a pilot point of view, because it does open them up to some litigation.

Yeah, you know, like, why, why didn't I get hired?

And the, the one, the other piece is if the airlines apply an algorithm, as long as the algorithm isn't biased or doesn't like, draw from, doesn't like, prohibit underrepresented populations from making their way to line, it's really hard to sue them for anything because, because they'll be able to go to court and say, well, we have an algorithm that picks it.

And so then the lawyers for anyone that might be suing on hiring practices have to prove that the algorithm was flawed instead of the culture was flawed.

So it's a complex area.

And I will tell you, every airline that we've mentioned over the years have several times been sued by several people that did not get hired.

And it certainly isn't like the number one thing they get sued for, but they get served.

It's not going to surprise anyone at any of the airline properties.

Someone's suing them.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah.

When you said you looked at all the data, I was like, well, similar to what you just said, it's like, I know there's no way they'd give up the data unless they were forced to buy by the FBI or by anyone, any kind of three letter agency, but it just doesn't seem like something that would ever happen.

What is your take?

Looking forward to the end of the year in almost 365 days.

What's your take?

You willing to predict for pilot hiring?

Are you willing to predict that at the end of the year, you know, Boeing gets this stuff back together, Airbus, it looks like it's almost back to normal.

And when we mean normal, we probably don't mean the last two years.

We mean maybe, which is we still mean incredible hiring because certain airlines still have to hire more than others.

But what do you predict?

Yeah, so I have not done a forecast in a couple years because it's been really hard to forecast through the pandemic and the after effects of the pandemic.

It's like one thing after another just comes up.

You're like, yeah, and you know, we would have never modeled the Boeing issue.

Yeah, you know, that would have been almost, it would have been, you know, almost like a, I hate to call it a black swan event, but it's one of those events that you just would have never thought to model.

And so, so what I'm giving you is a little more on the speculative side than maybe a, more of a rigorous scientific forecast.

But I do, I do think exactly what, what you said.

I do think Boeing's going to start getting their act together toward the end of 2025, which means that you're going to start seeing the hiring, more hiring pickup later in the year than, you know, earlier.

But I do think historically it's still going to be a very, very decent haul yield of pilots.

However, downstream, the effects most people are going to see is, is, you know, three, four years ago, remember, you know, two, three years ago, I guess, you know, pretty much everyone was getting interviewed and hired, you know, and you know, they were pushing below sub 1000 pilots, our pilots and stuff like that.

And you know, I think, I think that's gone for at least a little while.

But I will tell you, those days will come back.

I don't know exactly when, but when we have the faucets open on the supply chain and the retirements are in full force, which at some airlines don't really kick in for even a few more years before you really start seeing them, the fundamentals are still there that there's going to be robust hiring.

So, you know, if you're a person entering the industry and you're contemplating a 30 to 35 year career in a 121 carrier, this really shouldn't bother you much right now.

You need to be focusing on getting the competitive minimums and getting as much into your, your resume as you possibly can, you know, to move forward as quickly as you can.

But long term, that shouldn't bother you at all.

Yeah, I understand why it would though, you know, like, because in the now, right now it's like, maybe you're the person that's like, all right, well, I, I want to keep my word, right?

Like you were just like, I want to make sure that I give this employer X amount of time.

And then by the time that comes, the airlines aren't hiring anymore.

Where your best friend was like, hey, screw my employer.

I'm going to go apply, I'm going to take.

Gets a job, gets rewarded for that.

And you're just like, what the heck?

I stuck to my word and I'm stuck here.

This sucks, you know, but it's timing, it's a risk.

Like, you take risk on both ends of that.

Like, that could have played out horribly for that person.

He didn't get hired or say the hiring freeze happens.

And then they're like, well, we're not, you have a cjo, but we're not going to give you a class date.

And then they're kind of in limbo.

So there's definitely times where it works and it doesn't work.

Yeah, I mean, for, for my sake, personally, I hope that happens.

One thing I think it's interesting is what happens if Boeing can't get it together?

Like, is there pressure the airlines put on, do they eventually just start buying more Airbus, but then Airbus will have even more demand as well?

Does Ember have an opportunity to make more?

I know they have the 190 dash 2 or whatever they call it, which you really don't see that airplane popping up.

I don't know if it's too small or what it is, but I see that airplane Instagram all the time.

Like, I haven't seen a single person or a Single person.

I haven't seen a single airline actually buy that airplane, but they're promo it really hard.

So what happens if Boeing can't get those airplanes out?

Well, that's a problem.

If Boeing, you know, if they don't return to their full production capabilities, you know, as soon as possible, you know, every month, it absolutely is going to have ripple effects and it's difficult to replace that with Airbus supply.

You know, most carriers now, most major carriers now do have the ability, they have split fleets probably, it's probably structurally speaking, philosophically speaking, just for this reason.

So they don't get overly reliant on one fleet that.

Nope, not.

I'm not talking to you Southwest, because they are.

But yeah, so you do see that.

So you will look for that.

In fact, I think United found an opportunity to pick up, I don't know if it was 10 or 15 extra NEOs this year from another carrier that.

Yeah, they're leasing.

Right.

I think.

Leasing.

Are they leasing some 320s or 321eos?

Yes.

So a lot of people don't realize that yes, airlines do order directly from the manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing, but there's also capital companies out there that will order as well.

These leasing companies, in fact, is GE Capital is a big one.

But there's some banks out there that are well known for this.

I want to say like the bank of Utah rings a bell.

But I have that account all the time at my last job.

Yeah, yeah.

Bank of Utah is always on there.

So if you to say that it's like I never heard about.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

All the time we would fly a bunch of random.

Yeah.

Anyways.

Yeah, there's some banks out there that are known for this.

And so what they'll do is some of them will even be so aggressive that they'll actually go to the manufacturers, buy these planes, knowing that there'll be an opportunity to lease them.

And I mean, it would be a really good time right now to have some Airbuses and Boeings because you're going to get some really good rates.

The airlines are going to be anchoring for that.

But like you said, there's like anything, there's risk to that too.

There's going to be times where I mean, if all of a sudden it's a grounded fleet, you know, then that's not going to be a very good thing to hold on to.

So.

So yeah, so let's just keep our fingers crossed that Boeing gets together, they have gone through, you know, Management change, you know, we won't know how quickly that's going to turn.

I, like I said, my best guess is, is toward the end of 2025, you'll see that return.

And then when you get into Q1, Q2 of 26, you'll get it back to normal.

The FAA still, and probably rightly so, the FAA is still very much up in their business and it's gonna sound really mean.

The FAA doesn't always have the internal expertise either.

So when you put some of those frontline production experts and assembly line experts from the FAA in there, they're going to be extra cautious.

Right, because they don't want to be the person that, on behalf of the regulator that approves these.

And then later on there's another problem that comes up.

So I think the FAA has definitely been extra cautious.

It will be interesting to see under the new administration that tends to be a little less, well, actually a lot less in the terms of regulatory regulation and regulatory nature.

We'll see if that has an effect.

I was asked about that the other day in a class I had, and I do think that will have an effect.

And I, I say that because I was working on a couple industry working groups during the first Trump administration and we were specifically told if your group recommends a new regulation, you have to find two regulations to get rid of, because that was the.

I didn't think it would work at the time.

I'm not making any political points.

We were able to kind of make our way through that and we were able to reduce some of the regulation and we think still keep the safety margin.

I don't know.

I mean, people can judge that for themselves.

So, so it is possible that they'll, you know, depending on who they put in charge of the transportation, who the new FAA administrator is going to be because, you know, that person's leaving, Whitaker's leaving, you know, under the, you know, to make room for someone new.

So, so we'll see.

You know, but all that's going to be a variable that plays on this giant equation as to when things are going to return to normal.

Yeah.

I was going to ask, I will.

Say this, if Boeing was at, at or near full production right now, and if Airbus was at full production right now, we would absolutely be in the same spot that we were a couple years ago when there was gangbusters hiring.

So like I said, it's 90, 95%.

There really hasn't been much of a slowdown.

We're all well aware of the inflationary issues.

But believe it or not, that does not have as dramatic an effect on passenger travel.

Inflation does not have that much of an effect on it.

Other things do, like GDP and things like that, but as far as inflation, not so much.

That has more of an effect on the cost side for the airline with fuel, labor, et cetera.

But these airlines are so profitable.

Delta just announced a big profit.

American, I'm pretty sure, is going to announce a profit.

United, they're estimating to announce a pretty good profit.

So the, you know, the, the pilots, that profit sharing are all pretty happy.

Man.

When I saw the Delta Pro, I was like, holy smokes.

Like, that's, that's different.

You know, I was told about that when I was not in the airline industry.

You know, like Delta, profit sharing buys you a new kitchen where the other airline profit sharing buys you an oven or something like that.

But, well, it's going to buy you more than a new kitchen.

Just the.

What people don't realize.

I mean, I, this is going to be shocking, but there are times I don't know how it's going to be this year.

I'm sure the calculations are being done, but if you made $300,000 a year as a narrow body captain, that at Delta, you could.

There were some years where you would get 60 to $70,000 profit sharing.

Now I think that you don't see that as much, so you're going to have to settle for 40 to 50,000.

You know, I will tell you, I'm looking at.

My wife's looking at United.

There's been some early projections.

Hers are going to be, you know, very substantial as well.

And she's just a first officer at her carrier.

I don't know, I maybe accidentally mentioned it, but they're looking at some profit sharing as well.

And so, I mean, these are some things that people don't realize that profit sharing's, you know, we have to think Delta for opening that concept up for the industry.

Absolutely.

And also for all the pilot contracts.

Right.

Like, Delta was the one that made a point.

We're paying the pilots this.

We don't know if the other airlines can pay this.

And that's what they did.

And thankfully for my sake, the other airlines did mostly match it.

I mean, there might be some differences in contracts and stuff that benefit one carrier or the other in every different way.

Right.

There's some good things about each one.

What also I think is really interesting is just because Delta is king now doesn't mean Delta isn't a king in 10 or 15 years, as you have seen.

I mean, we've seen major airlines, historic airlines at the top, and now they're not here anymore.

They've been absorbed, they've been litigated, they've been done.

Now they're names of regional airlines, you know, and it's just, it's wild to see.

And when you, I mean, this is when it goes to, when you get hired by someone, go to what you feel like is the best fit for you.

Don't just go to the airline that is the best at the time, because there's no guarantee that that airline is gonna be the best airline by the end of your career, halfway through your career, or whatever it may be.

And right now, I mean, Delta's killing it, right?

Kudos to them.

They seem to be just have it figured out right now, which is awesome to see because, you know that your airline has the potential to eventually get point as well.

But, I mean, I, I'm, I wouldn't say I'm jealous.

I'm, I'm envious and I'm happy for my friends to see him over there, but it's like, just wait, we'll get back.

I promise we'll be there.

You know, it'll be.

But it's, yeah, it's, it's great to see an airline just do so well, and it feels like they've just made great decisions and every decision has just been like anything they sign is just like his money.

I, I agree.

I, I think you are seeing some, some airlines and this is going to be, this is going to be.

I'm going to put my union hat on.

You know, in the 90s and the early 2000s, one of my biggest criticisms of airline management in general, and this is going to sound really, really mean, but I'm just being brutally honest here, Justin.

I think a lot of them that would come out of business school, not always the cream of the crop came to the airlines, right?

So, you know, like at American, for instance, at amr, and I know them because, you know, again, I was the mec chair at American Eagle, which was wholly owned by American.

At the time, we had 3,000 pilots.

And when you look at the people that would rise to the top there, they had a management rotation program where you'd come in as a management trainee and you rotate a few months like a doctor would in a rotation, kind of figure out where you were going to end up at.

And so they tried to develop a lot from within.

But I'm telling you, I remember talking to some people I knew at business school saying, hey, how come you're not coming to the airlines?

And like, are you kidding?

With all the labor problems and the fuel problems at the time, nobody had really turned a profit.

They're like, why would I go there?

I'm going to go to tech, I'm going to go to biotech, I'm going to do manufacturing.

So I do believe there was kind of at the time a big brain gap.

And I think there were a lot of decisions that were made in the airline world that were just horrible for everybody, in particular the shareholders, but, but also the employees, everyone else.

Now, I think that's not true.

I think now that we have put some people in charge of some of these major airlines, you know, even if you, if, even if you don't particularly like all the decisions they've made, you're an employee at one of them, you can't say they're incompetent anymore.

There was a time when you could say that and you could defend that argument on some levels, but you can't really do that anymore, especially, I mean, I'm going to leave Spirit out of that because, you know, I've been pretty brutal on the Spirit Spirit folks.

But, you know, I mean, I think that was well deserved.

But when you look at United, when you look at Delta, when you look at American, when you look, I mean, Southwest we know has gone through some well documented issues, but by and large, I think we're a lot better than what we have seen in the past.

And you're seeing some really good ideas.

The revenue optimization, the data science that's being applied to operational problems alone.

And then of course, we've talked about it so many times, I won't go on a di tribe about it again.

But the ancillary income opportunities and the way to bolster things, these are all unbelievable innovations that have made it very profitable now and now.

And Wall street now is taking notice.

I do get called on occasion to come in and give some expert advice to different Wall street firms, though.

They want to know how I feel about certain things, you know, and they do this with a bunch of other people.

And that's how some of those analysts get their opinions on Buy Sell hold is they talk to people that study the industries.

And so I never used to get called, but Wall Street's definitely looking at airlines a lot more in the growth side than the value side that they traditionally looked at.

Well, that's good, right?

Yeah, right.

I think so.

Yeah, absolutely.

You mentioned Spirit.

You mentioned that you're hard on them.

Try not to be hard on the day.

But what's the, what's an update with Spirit?

I guess we'll say what's an update versus.

I mean bankruptcy.

We, we both talked.

We don't, I don't remember when the last podcast came out whether we announced that the bankruptcy.

I think we did or maybe it was just after.

Anyways, everyone knows now bankruptcy, the furloughs, awful.

No one wants to see it.

What is an update that you've seen?

We talked about a timeline of this off air.

So we'll talk about the, the timeline and expedite expedited timeline that seems to be in front of us with spirits bankruptcy and then kind of an outlook or a prognosis of what you think that we might see of Spirit for the rest of the decade.

Yeah.

So.

So, so let's talk a little bit about how a bankruptcy works with an airline.

You know, there's three different types of bankruptcies, the most common being full liquidation.

But I'm sorry, one common path is full liquidation.

That's not what we're talking about here.

And then another path is reorganization.

Chapter 11 is that, that's what you more often see in these airlines.

And the idea is, is you can get as the airline, you can get relief from your creditors, you can put, you can restructure your debt, you can do lots of things like that.

And the theory is, is you put together a game plan, then you emerge from bankruptcy, you know, and then you.

Everyone's happy except for probably some of your creditors that aren't going to, are going to maybe see some kind of a ratio on what you owed them or some kind of elongated terms.

But it'll be something like that is the theory behind it.

But what happens in a bankruptcy is the court, when you file, they assign who's known as a bankruptcy trustee.

And they do try to find trustees that have domain experience.

So they will try to find a trustee that has a business background.

In particular airlines, you know, they don't always, they're not always successful in finding a really good trustee for that.

But.

But that's what they'll do.

And now what Spirit has to do is they put together.

I don't know how much you want me to get into this, Justin, but they put together a couple of committees and there's like a primary creditor committee and there's like a secondary creditor committee and they both have different names.

But.

But the primary is going to be the people that, that, you know, have what we call Senior debt obligations, which basically means they, they've given loans or the companies collateralize things that, that guarantees loans.

And, you know, if it wasn't for this bankruptcy protecting them, they could force the company to liquidate and sell off their assets and get their money back, you know, and try to live to fight another day if you're one of these companies.

So that senior committee is going to put together a plan along with management at Spirit, and they're going to give it to the trustee, and the trustee is going to take a look at it and say, I think this will work.

I don't think that'll work.

I think you can pay this person, but not that person.

And by the way, the secondary committee are the people that are not as senior, and that does often include the employees.

The employees will have a voice on that secondary committee, the different employee groups and then also shareholders sometimes are on that.

There'll be like some shareholder groups, but they get to also kind of partake, but they don't have quite the voice.

It's like sitting at the kids table.

I mean, I don't know.

I don't know how else to say it, but it's, you know, the adults are talking, but you can say stuff every now and then.

And then if the trustee buys off on the plan and they try to get consensus between the creditors and the company, they'll come back to the judge, and then the judge will ultimately be the one that approves it.

I will tell you, it's like a plea deal.

You know, probably 99 out of 100 times, the judge is going to buy off on what the trustee is going to recommend.

And by the way, the committee may be upset about that and they may try to fight in court and say the trustee's wrong for doing this.

We really should be doing, you know, this other way.

And so the judge may have to kind of work through some of that, but they'll put together a plan and they'll prove a plan.

I'm kind of being long winded here, but Spirit, their job right now, or what they want to do is they want to emerge from bankruptcy.

They're saying in Q1 of 2025.

And like you said, we talked offline.

That's a pretty aggressive schedule.

I think that's a pretty aggressive schedule.

They declared bankruptcy in November.

I mean, it certainly has happened before.

It just depends on the complexities of the debt and who's fighting it.

How many, you know, are the creditors agreeing with the company on how to restructure things or are they having to arbitrate every dispute with the trustee, etc.

Etc.

So I don't know, it seems a little aggressive to me, but I hope that's true.

And then the judge has to approve the emerging from bankruptcy plan and then at some point in time all the creditors are, there's new deals signed, new contract sign.

And by the way, this is really bad.

There are companies that specialize in giving loans to other companies that are on bankruptcy because you get a super senior position, so you get to hop on top of everybody and you get like the last nut and bolt of an airplane that you get to collateralize no matter what's existed before.

So going into bankruptcy is also another opportunity for the company to raise more funds that also get put into this equation.

And so it's a, you could probably talk to a corporate bankruptcy attorney.

I'm overly simplifying the process, but that's what's going on right now.

And there's motions being filed and meetings happening and lots of arguments behind the scenes.

But hopefully everything works well.

They emerge Q1, they put a plan back in place, they overcome whatever operational deficiencies and management deficiencies that they had before and they're able to put together a winning, a winning game plan and you know, be successful.

And a lot of like this has happened to a lot of care.

There's a lot of carriers that have declared bankruptcy, reorganize and have come out the other end just fine.

Absolutely.

There's a lot of pain in that too, right.

Like, I mean when the airline comes out just fine, there's a lot of losses in that as well.

Pilot furloughs, I believe I just read that, that they had about 200 people that they fired.

I don't remember the exact number.

I want to say a couple hundred forcibly removed them by armed security guards.

And obviously that's a lot of a show, right?

You never know how an employee is going to act and all that kind of stuff.

So the fact that they're armed, I mean that seems a little aggressive, but I mean it's just, you never know how someone's gonna react.

Right.

They're probably taking all the precautions that they can just because of, I don't know, just everything.

But it isn't like there's a lot of loss and a lot of pain that happens in these furloughs and it makes a lot of individual very difficult.

Especially I mean if you're working, you're probably working non stop for a company that you don't have full confidence will be able to pay your full check or will be there the next day.

Right.

So you're putting a lot of time in.

You're putting a lot of effort for who knows what, and it's just awful.

Yep.

Well, let's talk a little bit about that armed guard thing, because I read the same thing and I found that kind of interesting.

Like you was like, that seems like a little bit of an overkill.

Two things with that.

I agree.

It seems like, you know, and who knows?

That's what was reported.

Who knows, you know, emotions are going to be high during that time.

And so we don't.

None of you or I weren't there, so we didn't witness all that.

But I did read those same reports.

I will say this.

There's some interesting dynamics going on in the background.

Okay.

One is, is whenever you see a company that has kind of an overreaction or a perceived overreaction or something, that usually means something really bad happened in their past that they've learned from.

And so they put these new rules.

So something must have happened sometime at Spirit where some.

Someone was let go and things didn't go well.

So they passed this rule that said, from now on, we're going to have armed security there.

That's.

That's probably what happened, I'm speculating.

But there's also a greater dynamic here when you're laying people off nowadays.

And again, when you look at some of the salaries that the upper people get, it creates a very angry situation because it's like, okay, well, well, here you got somebody making 20 million a year.

I'm getting furloughed to basically as a pond to get better cost, to get more debt, to.

To basically get this, these, this group of people, this small group of people, a lot more money later on, you know, and I'm being sacrificed for it.

And then also, given the current climate, as we all know, it hasn't been a very popular time to be a CEO out there in the industry.

There's a lot of.

And so these companies are not taking chances.

I have, I have heard reports.

It's not just for a situation like this.

We're seeing a lot more that terminations and layoffs are being handled a lot differently all around the place because.

Because of this issue.

So.

Yeah.

Anyway, I read that too, though, and I found that kind of interesting and certainly seemed atypical.

I've been around a lot of people that were let go at the airlines in my union days.

I'd never, unless there was a known thing like Someone was getting removed because they were making threats or something.

But just apart from hey, this is your last day, you know, normally people would come around and say goodbye and you know, and you know, it wasn't contentious.

It was sad, but it wasn't a contentious thing.

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That's allworthairline.com pilotopilot and now back to today's episode.

You know, kind of somewhat changing gears but still staying on the same topic.

I think it was a couple weeks ago I saw that Scott Kirby was asked about Spirit.

And in my mind I don't know why I thought someone with such a public kind of Persona or that was leading such a big company in the same industry would kind of just like, you know, we're keeping a close eye on it.

Obviously we hate for anyone to go through something like that.

But you know, we're not really going to publicly comment about whether we think they're going to make it or not.

But he was essentially like, I hope they go out of business.

There's no chance that they're going to be an airline anymore.

And that really kind of shocked me a little bit that he was so forward with those comments.

I saw those same comments, I thought the same thing, you know, back in the day in the, you know, 70s and 80s, you know, the post deregulation, regulatory reform, whatever you want to call it.

But this became a very laissez faire industry.

It was very capitalistic, dog eat dog and we would call them airline deaths.

Whenever an airline would go extinct, it was called an airline death.

The problem is whenever a large market share carrier dies, goes bankrupt, liquidates.

The truth of the matter is there's a lot of meat on the bone for the other carriers to come in.

And just like any other wrong or right, whether you want to look at it more like a, like a vulture scavenger type thing, but there's a lot of opportunity there.

And so, so I think we saw a little bit of that old school mentality.

And, and I do also think that Scott Kirby believes and I mean, the jury is out.

If you would have told me three years ago that low cost carrier business models are kind of in question, I would have said, I don't know, they seem to really figure out how to generate revenue.

I will tell you I rescinded that.

And the jury is out.

And he may know that it may be difficult.

That being said, if someone like Spirit, I don't think this will happen.

But if somebody like Spirit doesn't make it out of bankruptcy or Allegiant has a problem, as we were talking about earlier Frontier, they're going through contract negotiations or you know, if there is an airline death amongst the local low cost carriers, sadly on one side for those employees, but happily on the other side there'll be a lot more opportunity for that surviving low cost carriers to pick up that bandwidth.

Even though some of them have dissimilar business plans, they'll still figure out a way to transport those passengers.

So yeah, we can't forget that it's a very competitive environment and it is a zero sum game in some instances.

And there's winners and losers.

You know, we haven't seen that as much in the last 10 to 15 years because times have been good for everybody.

But if you go back to the 90s, 80s, 70s, it very much was some, there were some years you weren't sure if your airline was going to survive.

Yeah, I mean, my dad worked for US Air.

US Airways, post 9, 11, US Airways even for a while was not a good place to be.

I remember he specifically would tell me, he'd be like, I mean, I bring everything home with me.

I mean, I guess mailboxes were more of a thing back then.

And lockers or whatever it may be.

He's like, I bring after every trip, I pack it up, I bring it home.

He's like, I don't know if I'm gonna go back there.

And obviously if the airline went under, he doesn't want to go back and pick up his stuff.

That sounds awful.

So he, she brought it back home and I was like, interesting.

So yeah, I mean, yeah, it's, it is a different time.

And I'm sure Kirby was like, I see airplanes and I see pilots.

Two of my biggest problems that I have can be solved if this goes out.

Absolutely.

So he's like, let's get it.

And I'm sure other airlines on the same page like, hey, let's, let's get it.

Let's get it.

Come on, you say it, you say it, not me.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, I laugh.

It's an awful thing to laugh at.

Like when I was laughing at that.

I'm not laughing at happening.

It's just, I don't know the reaction to have with that.

Yeah, no, I, I know exactly what you mean.

It's almost absurd on one, one sense of it, you know, how, how it, you know, so easily can happen.

But on the other side of it, it's, it's, you know, it's, people forget.

It's, it's like a capital market, you know, I mean, there are winners and losers and, you know, everyone was a winner for, for a long period of time in this industry.

But I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's going to, that's going to continue.

I personally don't see any airline deaths.

I mean, I guess if we were going to have to predict one, the closest to that would be like, well, an Air Wisconsin, which we can talk about, or, but, but a Spirit on the, on the larger carriers.

Those might be the closest to it.

But I still think that there's, there's a lot of wood to burn before you get to a situation like that.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we were getting ready to talk into it now, but we can transition there as well.

You mentioned two things that I want to talk about.

One was any updates with allegiant pilots?

They want a contract.

Frontier.

They want a contract.

And then as we just talked, Air Wisconsin lost a contract and was their only airline contract.

But as we talked about offline, from what you made it seem like they, I mean, obviously it really hurts to lose an airline contract, especially when you only have one airline contract.

But they talk a big game.

They think that they have a plan.

Yeah, I, So there's a couple things, There's a couple things about Air Wisconsin that make it very, very interesting.

They are a carrier that has found a way to survive every major downturn and every possible bad thing that can happen to a regional.

And they've always found a way to survive.

So there's that unlike any other Air Care, unlike any other regional out there.

Maybe, maybe save Mesa, maybe Mesa also has found ways to survive through tough times.

But, but, but they really have.

And you know, there were times when like the United contract was up and, you know, they picked up America and then went back to United and went back to America and you didn't know if they were going to survive those.

But they are claiming, and the management there is saying that they think they have enough auxiliary work to do in particular things like, well, for lack of a better word, charter.

But it'd be like more of a schedule charter, like, like sports teams, college sports teams and things like that.

Using the CRJ 2002 and maybe some casino runs and other specialty type flights.

They think they have that.

They think they have a market there that they've identified.

That being said, I have not seen a carrier make that jump.

I've not seen a carrier go out on their own like that and make that jump and survive.

So I don't know.

I have friends at Air Wisconsin.

I have a lot of former students there.

I hope that, that management knows what they're doing.

They do have kind of a senior management in place.

So I would be surprised if.

You know, the other thing, Justin.

We don't know.

We don't know if this was American Airlines invoking some type of a cancellation notice through the jet services agreement that they had signed or if this was something that Air Wisconsin said, hey, we have an opportunity cost here.

We're losing money with this AA fee.

We make more money on this cargo feed and we think it's a niche we can exploit.

They both kind of say the same thing.

You know, American put out a press release saying, you know, effective April 2025, Air Wisconsin no longer be doing this.

And then Air Wisconsin put out a thing saying, hey, we got these great opportunities.

So I don't know what happened there.

Certainly something happened in a boardroom somewhere or in a zoom meeting where someone was shouting at somebody probably.

But it, you know, they're.

It's definitely going to be a breakup and then the question is going to be, what's going to happen Air Wisconsin after.

They're a survivor carrier, so I would never bet against them.

But on the other side of it, I've never seen anyone else pull this out.

Yeah.

And they also have really old airplanes, which is eventually going to get expensive that they own.

Yeah.

Maintenance is still expensive though.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, look, the CRJ200, as we all know, was introduced in the early 80s and they still have some of those planes that introduced in the early 80s.

And I was there when they.

Well, it used to be the CRJ100.

A lot of people don't realize that, but they had these pressure bulkhead issues.

The planes would just crack in half because remember, they were former corporate aircraft.

They were not designed to take eight to ten cycles a day.

They were designed to take, you know, they were, they were long range.

It was, it was the Challenger 605.

Yeah, yeah.

And so they were designed to go maybe one or two cycles, you know, every 24 hours.

And all of a sudden they, they get.

So they had to beef up everything and re.

Redeploy the CRJ 200.

That's why it's the 200, not the 100.

So these, these planes have, they have seen it, man.

They have been worked hard.

And you're right, maintenance is really, really high on them.

But they don't have to make a mortgage payment either.

And so that kind of counterbalances that.

But I will tell you operationally, when you get that old of an aircraft, no matter how good your maintenance operation is expensive, it is really hard to keep that together.

And the other thing is, is, you know, when you start doing, I don't know enough about scheduled charter operations and you know, charter contracts, I don't know what the remedy is if you cancel a flight or not.

But they'll CRJs have a, have a higher cancellation than say like some of the newer aircraft just for maintenance issues.

I don't know what happens in this.

I don't know if they're.

How much reliability weighs in on these contracts.

You know, if you're a sports team and you got to go to a tournament and all of a sudden you can't go, I don't know what happens.

Well, they probably rescheduled.

Yeah.

Especially if you're working with big clientele.

Yeah.

You're not gonna have a contract for much longer.

Right.

That's my point.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

Big giant question mark.

I just wish them the best because there's a lot of good people that work there.

It's a good operation.

I hope they make it.

Also they have a pretty good contract for regional airline.

I've always admired the fact that as an alpha carrier.

Again, I'm going to put my pro union hat on here for just a second.

They've always led with a lot of really good quality of life issues.

And you know, there are some really good regional airlines out there.

You know, endeavor now kind of, kind of takes the cake maybe with the, with a really nice regional contract.

You know, they have a really good one.

But for a long time Air Wisconsin had by far, for many years they were the leader in the clubhouse in terms of, you know, they had things like men, value of the day duty rigs, tripper.

They had stuff early on that you only saw at the majors and these guys, these guys had it.

So.

So I hope the carrier makes it.

They were, they've always kind of been a survivor and they've been ahead of their game and a lot of things.

So what's a union's role when something like this happens?

Like obviously there's not much they can do when a company lose contracts, right?

Who, what are they going to fight the companies be like, we have nothing left.

But is a union supposed to get involved earlier on to raise those flags and is all they have just the voice of just, hey, things don't look good.

Things don't look good.

Please try to change something.

Yeah, well, the union.

So there's a concept known as management rights.

It exists in every collective bargaining agreement and it basically says anything that's not specifically covered in this agreement, management has the right to make a decision on.

Right.

But then there's also the reality if all of a sudden your airline, your major airline partner feed goes away, you're what can you do?

There's a reality of the situation.

So as a labor union, what you're going to do is you're going to look at the current contract, you're going to see how it contemplates irregular operations, charter flights.

You're going to see if there's enough language in there to cover what everyone needs.

If not, you're going to go to the company, you're going to say, hey, we understand you're going to do this.

I mean, I'm sure the company's been communicating with them, but just in case they haven't, you're going to sit down and if you need to work out some side letters to cover things that maybe weren't contemplated because originally they were designed to be a 121 scheduled, you know, passenger carrier and now they're going to a, you know, irregular operations.

It's going.

Or maybe that's, I say regular operations, but you know what I mean, they're going to go to non scheduled.

So then the question is what happens and what happens in that case?

Do they, do they have like what happens to duty rigs in that case?

You know, if someone has to sit in an FBO for 12 hours, you know, how much are they going to get paid for that?

Yeah.

Is it 2 to 1, 4 to 1?

You know, so there's going to be things like that that might have to be worked out.

Yeah, it's interesting but like I said, hopefully it works out for them because no one wants to lose a job.

Thankfully people are hiring now, but still it's like I don't want to see that happen.

What's an update with Frontier Pay Allegiant?

Pay.

I have a good buddy that is at allegiant.

He's trying to give me some stuff.

I don't know if you know, anything else that's going on there, you know, there.

I know that it's been contentious.

You know, there's been strike votes taken and I'm going to talk about them both together here for, for a bit.

Frontier in particular has been.

They've put out a lot of press releases lately.

They've kind of stepped it up.

I noticed there's friends with a few people that are spokespeople on the union side for them.

They've been out making the rounds with local press and stuff like that.

You know, they're starting to put out the, the concept that, hey, if we're, you know, we might go on strike soon, which of course does have an effect on future passengers.

Even though we all know there's a, there's a NMB process that has to be followed, you know, or I'm sorry, Railway Labor Law Act.

Railway Labor Act Law that has to be followed that basically says that, that, you know, you can't just go on strike.

There's no such thing as a wildcat strike.

You have to go through this process.

And.

But that being said, it's enough to kind of speak it out there.

It does start putting a little pressure on the company and ups the game.

In Frontier's case, it's a little bit more egregious because Frontier is announcing a pretty good profit.

And you know, the pilots have been talking for a year now on their contract talks after the amendable date.

And so that's not a good, it's not a good look nowadays, you know, for, for a large airline that hopes to retain and recruit, recruit and retain pilots to have to be bringing in a lot of profits.

And then you kind of have a contract that's not up to standards with a lot of the others.

You know, it's, it's a tough, it's a tough road to explain if you're there.

The case of allegiant, that's a little more of a black box to me.

Maybe you know more about that, Justin.

I do know that, you know, the pilots for years, you know, they, they do fight.

I will tell you this is just my own personal opinion.

I have met there's some parts of the allegiant management structure that are amazing.

Like if you look at like some of their predictive maintenance stuff, I mean they're, they're industry leading.

They do stuff there that we don't see at a lot of other carriers.

Were they forced to do that though, because at one point where they didn't have the most in flight emergencies out of any airline.

It may be so you may, you may be right.

I mean, that's a very fair question.

I, I don't know.

But they, they definitely are, are leading in a lot of those areas.

Maybe by necessity, you know, that very well is possible.

But then on the other side of it, they just, you know, they, they kind of had this.

Do you remember the old 88 and what was it?

80, 88.

Like, you know, I'll buy 80 hours for 80,000 a year in the MD 80.

Yeah, they call it the 80, 80, 80 anything.

And that's kind of what their business model was when they first came into existence, you know, and way below what other carriers are paying.

And, and so.

But they were enough surplus of a pilots that they were able to make it happen.

Well, then we went through the pilot shortage, you know, Very much so.

And I don't know how they were able to retain pilots.

They do certain things though, like they have this outstation basing, which is very, very different.

So instead of having, I mean, they also have large hubs, but, but instead of, say, you being based in Las Vegas, you know, maybe you're based in, I don't know, Milwaukee or maybe you're based in random places.

Yeah, right.

Places.

Yeah.

And you have to live there because commuting into a place like that is a nightmare because you're looking at just a couple carriers a couple times a day.

So, so it's like anything is, you know, you're in.

Sure.

Call reserve, which is, which is really bad when you don't live in your, when you live in the base.

It's maybe not always the best thing.

But it's a piece of cake.

Right, so.

So that's the same thing.

So maybe during these, maybe during this transition when they went to this outstation basing maybe there were enough pilots that lived in those bases, they're like, you know what?

I know I'm not making quite as much, but I'm home every day.

I just do an out and back.

I'm home with my kids every night.

I'm making an okay wage, I'd like to make more, of course.

And you know, so I think that's kind of how they survived.

They found this like labor niche where, you know, they found people that wanted to, you know, and you know how it is once you get kids, there's.

You start raising, you put roots in that community, there's zero chance you're going to want to go move to New York.

Exactly.

I mean, that's kind of the previous place that I worked at.

They kind of count on that too.

They find people that want to live in very obscure areas.

And yes, if you live in Casper, Wyoming or wherever it is, it's like your opportunity to commute is, I mean Casper, you could probably get to Denver pretty easily, but you know what I mean, Anaconda, Montana, someone would live there.

It's like you're people in Grand.

There's people in Grand Forks that work for your former company.

They're friends of mine.

They just drive down to Fargo, which is an hour away.

That's one of the, one of the approved airports.

They love it because they came from the airlines and they had to commute everywhere and they love it.

They can just show up at the gate and not worry that they're going to get to work that day.

And your commuting day counts on your schedule.

Right.

So there are big advantages for that.

There's no doubt.

But yeah, that's one of their labor niche variables.

Right.

You want to live in Casper, Wyoming.

There you go.

This is one way to do it.

Just on as an aside, not to go off on a tangent, but I do have a good friend at your former carrier and, and his plan, I don't know if he's actually go through it, but he and his wife are going to get an RV and I guess you can change your domicile city every so often.

And that's what they're going to do.

Every week in the summer.

Every what?

Every week.

Every seven days you can begin.

You have to begin and end every week in the same place.

But every, every seven days you have to give him a seven day notice to change your base.

That's hysterical.

Well, think about that.

So he's going to take his RV with his wife, they don't have kids and they're just going to go from, go say in Albuquerque during the summer for a few weeks, just find a campground and he's going to, you know, commute out of there.

And, and I mean that's amazing if you think about it.

You'd never be able to do that without commuting, you know, at a large other carrier.

Some people live on sailboats and they'll sail across the country and they'll.

Yeah, those Meet the boat up.

I need to bring, I need to release an episode more updated about like pros and cons or maybe not pros.

And cons.

But just like, like why I fully left and kind of like where I stand eight months later.

I would do it.

After you're off short call.

There you go.

Yeah, after I'm off probation.

Yeah, well, that.

But just, just because you and I both know commuting into short call is literally the worst assignment you can get in any.

I guess.

I guess the worst would be if you guys have any kind of semblance of ready reserve or on, you know, where you have to dress up and sit in a.

No, see, we used to have that on my.

That was the worst commuting into.

We used to call it ready reserve.

Every courier calls it system.

United calls it field standby.

They have different names for it.

But that was the worst.

But the second we're a close second to that was commuting into short call.

And man, is that just nasty.

I will say with everything.

And this might kill the need for the episode with everything that like being on short call for longer than I thought.

Hiring freezes.

I'm still very happy that I made the decision.

Whether that's me just focusing on more of the long term of why this decision was made.

Because there's nothing.

I mean the reason, the reason to leave was for future self.

Right.

Was for down the road.

Both of them in the meantime weren't perfect.

Like being junior at an airline for an extended period of time isn't the most amazing experience in some cases.

Some like.

Right.

I mean it's really not too bad.

It's just the schedule that is in front of me is a lot different than the schedule I was used to and just getting used to what it is and hoping for hiring to start and hoping for it to get better.

But 100% would do it again, would come back just the ORCA is so much easier.

Like it's crazy.

Like the just turning left just I mean flying one to two legs, having 16 or 25 hours off.

I had 16 hours off and I'm just like, this is amazing.

I don't know what to do.

And everyone's like 16.

That's it.

Like, dang.

I'm like, that was the most I ever had.

Right?

Oh, I know.

My wife loves the.

In the winter, like the Cancun and some of the Caribbean over especially you get like a 24, 36 hour overnight.

I yeah, I totally get that.

So.

And just as an example, you know, like we were talking off air, you know, for every person that's on short call, there's a person really loving life that's a little more senior on the other side of that.

And, you know, she's got a little bit of seniority now in Chicago.

Not.

Not like super seniority, but pretty good seniority.

And, you know, she.

She literally was.

She wanted Christmas and New Year's off so we could go hang out, and she just was able to bid it because she had the seniority.

So she was off from the 21st until, like, the 6th.

And it was just part of a regular PBS scheduling.

And so there's a lot to be said for that.

And by the way, just as an aside, a note for all other.

I don't know if Delta does this.

I'd have to look at their contract, but at this particular carrier.

I know I probably mentioned it, but I'm going to pretend I haven't.

They pay people now.

They pay people now.

5 extra hours if you work on Christmas.

5 extra hours if you work On Christmas Eve.

5 extra hours you work on New Year's.

People like working those.

It's gone senior.

Yeah.

Working on Christmas has gone senior at this carrier.

Isn't that cool?

Crazy.

So there's.

To me, it's a good solution.

Wasn't senior enough this year, but yeah.

Yeah.

The good news is I got.

They awarded our vacation weeks and one of my vacation weeks, my.

My kid's birthday is really close to Christmas, but I was able to get the vacation.

I should be able to get both his birthday and Christmas off with my one vacation week.

So that's not bad.

I vowed to myself that I'm gonna do everything I can to not get fired and make every Christmas I can.

Yeah.

For the time being.

Right.

When kids leave, you know, when they.

When they're doing their own thing.

Maybe Christmas makes sense because you want to help out younger families as well.

Because that's part of it is.

Is giving back.

Right.

When.

When you have the young kids, I mean, everyone you fly with, everyone's like, dang, I'm sorry.

You know, like, at least you get the money.

But it's like, oh, I'd rather not watch my kid open presents over FaceTime.

But that's not a soapbox.

It's just reality.

Like, I'm not trying to ask for any sympathy or anything like that.

Kind of.

Moving on from this, we have a little bit more to touch on.

What's an update with regional hiring?

I know a lot of the regional hiring was kind of just set off of the backlog that's happening over at the airlines.

Is that or not?

Sorry, not at the airlines, but at the majors, at the legacies.

Is that still the case?

I know there was, was there.

Was it region a bunch?

I can't remember what regional CEO said that, but he's like, we are so heavy with fos.

Like, we have so many fos, he's kind of saying that they're like a dime a dozen.

I don't know if you remember that article that came out with that statement, but what's an update?

Has anything changed?

No, that's, that's true.

Hiring has slowed down.

It hasn't stopped, but it's definitely slowed down.

And you do still see advertisements at, like, you know, Commute Air and Piedmont, some of the others, you know, advertising, you know, the, the direct entry captain stuff, you know, the, the bonuses.

So those still exist.

So that's exactly right.

There, there is a regional captain shortage, per se.

You know, that.

That's, that's what the, that's what the big issue is.

So I have noticed, like at und, for instance, I can talk about this.

There were maybe about 180 kids that applied to be a flight instructor here, which is about normal.

And they took 45 of them.

Oh, dang.

And like, like three years ago, it would have been.

There would have been maybe 70 people applying, and they would have taken, you know, 68 of them.

You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's just that.

So, so it has gone all the way downstream.

And again, you know, it's like we've talked about four.

There's a pendulum, right?

We saw, we, you know, during the beginning of COVID we saw the pendulum where there was.

They were talking furloughs, there was no hiring going on for a while.

And then the pendulum swung and the doors open and everyone and their brother was getting hired.

And now we're kind of back into the middle again.

And so you are seeing.

You're not seeing everybody get hired.

You're seeing that you are seeing a slowdown in things.

And it's probably frustrating if you're a person that two years ago your buddy got hired at, you know, a regional and then a year and a half after that went right to Delta.

I mean, I, I know for a fact there's some students out of und.

I'm sure there was many out of Ohio State, Amber Rudd and all the others that basically left when they got the restricted ATP minimums, went right to work, did sometimes, didn't even upgrade in about a year, year and a half and went right to their major airline.

Dang.

And I mean, so There were people that were two to three years out of college that were in the right seat at all the carriers at Delta, United, American, which is crazy if you think about that.

So if you're a student at one of these places and you see that, you're going to say to yourself, and now all of a sudden you don't see that anymore.

It's a little more traditional where you're going to have to maybe put in a couple years at your regional.

It looks all of a sudden like the sky's falling because it's very different from your reality before.

Well, I think what the problem is too is when you're being recruited like that, you're being sold that dream team, right?

Like you're, it's kind of like college recruiting, right?

You're being sold, you're the only one we want.

You're going to go to the NFL just like this person went to the NFL.

You're going to make the richest contract, you're going to have the best life ever.

Reality of the aviation industry, it is not always the case, right?

Like that's what's important about, I mean listening to this, yes, but knowing the history of the airlines, knowing the history where we were, where we're going, that things change.

And it's all about timing.

And yes, it might be great right now but, or it might be bad right now, however you want to look at it, wherever stage you're in, it's not always going to be like that.

Things change, things get better, things get worse.

It all mellows out and it starts to even out.

And your career, each career should hopefully kind of stay in the line.

Obviously if you're super junior, you're hired, you're going to be up here the whole time because you're going to be flying to 787 in like by 38, which will just absolutely insane to think about.

But yeah, it's just sold dreams, right?

Believing 100% what you're told by the recruiter because it sounds so great.

You're like, yeah, you're going to pay off your loans in a year with the money you're making.

Then you're going to go to American, Delta, United and you're going to be a captain on a seven, three in two years.

Like it's like, it's crazy.

But just seeing those not come to fruition and I think it was kind of a wake up call for a lot of the younger generation that just assumed and thought that this will never happen again, that it could never happen.

Again.

And I mean, I was kind of one of those in Covid, too.

I remember I had a podcast with my dad where, like, I just don't really see how it could get back to what it was.

Like, I just, I kind of bought into Doug Parker kind of saying, like, we will always make money, no matter what.

Every year we're going to make money.

Right?

Right.

We are always going to make money.

And it's just that mindset.

I'm not saying he's wrong and what he's saying, I mean, that I don't follow.

I kind of stay in my own lane.

But, like, it just that mindset and believing that it's never going to come back or the bad times will never come back is a little bit dangerous in this industry.

Like, always keep in the back of your head, like, all right, that's what it is.

Now.

I don't know what it's gonna be like in five years, but I can only make my decision based off the information I have right now and what has happened in the past.

That's right.

That's the critical lesson.

And that's a question that comes up to me all the time from students.

You know, well, what happens if this airline goes bankrupt?

What happens?

Well, you don't know.

You know, I think maybe I've mentioned this to you before.

I look at my dad's career.

He was hired at Northwest airlines in the 60s, but continental, he was furloughed from Northwest, Continental hired him, then Northwest recalled.

Recalled him.

And he didn't go back because at the time, Continental was the best, was way better in terms of, you know, contract stuff.

Had he went back to Northwest, he would have retired, like number 10 on the seniority list.

Left seat of the 747, 400, you know, and just loving life.

Instead, he went and got.

He was put into a strike, you know, 15 years later and lost his job.

I mean, mean, so you just.

What you said is exactly right.

And that's what I always tell people.

You just make the best decision for you based on the information that you have.

You don't know what's going to happen.

You know, like you said earlier, sometimes there's a carrier that's, you know, the.

Seems to be lead.

The leader in the clubhouse seems to be the.

The place everyone wants to work, but then give it five to 10 years, it's going to be somebody else.

You just don't know.

And also, it's such a personal decision on where people go and work.

You just.

It because what might work for you would be a place that would never work for me, you know, like, there's people that tell my wife she has to drive an hour to Fargo, hop on a plane and go to Chicago.

And there are a lot of people say, man, you know, that's planes, trains and automobiles to get to work.

That just sucks.

But that's her reality, and that works for her, and that's her choice, you know, and it's just right now that's, you know, she's living her dream.

So it's just such a personal decision, but you can only go with what the information that you have.

Have.

You're exactly right.

That's absolutely best piece of advice.

Yeah, it's tough, right?

It's hard to make, especially in the moment when it's happening.

Like, it's so personal and you take it so personal, which is hard not to take personal and be upset about it.

But you got to pivot.

You got to figure it out.

That's why we always talk about how you need a plan B.

I probably haven't preached that as much as I have in the past, but Plan B is a very important plan.

Bs don't have to be a different job completely.

It could just be, all right, this isn't working out here, or this place is going to business.

What's another airline I can go to?

Do I have to go back to regional?

Do I try NetJets?

Do I try Flexjet?

There was a lot of people in 2000s, you know, the lost gen, the lost decade that they want to say that found their way to NetJets and have made a very good career for themselves.

Some people are very happy there, some people aren't very happy there.

Just depends on who you talk about.

But there's many kind of, like you said, there's many jobs out there that aren't necessarily what you went to become a pilot to have and to become.

But you can find that it works very well for your life and it does enough.

And you make a lot of money still.

Like, I mean, you're still going to make good money where you go to one of these airlines or NetJets or Flexjet.

You're still going to do it, right?

But yeah, that's enough for that soapbox right there.

But it's important.

Yeah, it's important because it's very hard and very tough.

What else do we have?

Last thing I think we want to talk about Lost youtxt.

Yeah, this is crazy.

So two more things.

Southwest pipe pilot, the thing that's so when I say Southwest pilot and you.

But we both knew what we're talking about just came out yesterday.

Maybe.

Was it today yesterday?

Today got caught.

TSA agent smelled alcohol on him.

They got him at the gate.

He failed a sobriety test.

Dui, or is it a dui?

They technically did charge him with a dui, but if they moved it up to a felony, obviously.

Because is it like, is it almost attempted manslaughter?

Like, I mean, it could.

It really depends on what the, what the prosecutor does.

Yeah, and I hate to gossip on stuff like this because obviously, like, I don't know what's going on in this guy's mind, obviously.

Terrible decision to do this.

I was texting with, with, with a buddy that's pretty high up at a certain airline.

Not that airline as.

I just want that to be put out there.

But it was just like, hey, if, like, if you ever think that the person you're flying with, like, you need to make sure they, they call the right people before it goes down so they can have some protection and try to get better.

Because as a person, that person obviously needs, I mean, maybe he never needs to fly an airplane again, but if he has the ability to improve his life by going down the union protected action or the union protected side, maybe that's a good idea as well.

But I mean, you got to do what you got to do to make sure that pilot doesn't fly that airplane.

And they usually ask that question in interviews, right?

Like, all right, yeah, you smell alcohol, what are you going to do?

It's like, well, you're not going to cause a scene and be like, he's drinking, you know, but you can't let that flight go.

You cannot let that flight go.

Absolutely right.

Yeah.

You have to do everything you can.

Well, let's talk about that for just a brief second because this is an important thing.

And I did run into this in the labor union.

At the time we had 3,000 pilots.

And every year I'd say two, three to four pilots would be kind of caught up in some kind of a situation like this.

Not necessarily being caught by TSA or, but, but, but admitting that they had an alcohol problem.

Look, in my opinion, anyone that shows up to fly a 121 carrier that's inebriated is probably has an abuse problem.

Right?

Anyone that would take that kind of a chance, you know, it's not something that just, it's not a one time thing.

It's probably something that just was normalized.

And that's the Scary thing is that this is not like if this happened, this is not the first time this has happened for sure.

Can't say that for sure.

Statistically.

Wow.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's just terrifying.

So if you are one of those pilots out there that has.

Because pilots are people too.

We suffer just like any other segment of the population.

If you have an alcohol problem, you have what's called the HIMSS program.

It's a medical program and it's a union protected if you're at a union carrier.

But it's also now available outside of union, actually any professional pilot through the faa, they've set these up.

There's hems doctors now all over the country.

Used to be only four or five in the country, but now there's a lot.

But the trick is, and the key is you have to admit that you have a problem before you're caught.

Caught.

If you're caught and then you say, oh, I have a problem, there's nothing anyone can do.

And I will tell you this story.

I can tell you the story because I can completely de.

Identify the person.

But when I was mec chairman at American Eagle, I got a call from a captain and he said.

And I knew him because I'd flown with him.

And he said, jim, he goes, they want me to blow in a breathalyzer.

What should I do?

I said, well, blowing a breathalyzer.

He goes, well, that's going to be a problem.

I said, if that's going to be a problem, it's going to be a problem.

I said, there's nothing I can do.

He goes, well, I need help.

I want to have help.

I go, I'm not going to say his name.

But I said, I said, it's too late.

You have to ask for help before.

I said, there's nothing anyone in the world, anyone can do.

So he blew the.

He delayed for a little bit.

When you delay too long, it becomes a refusal, which is just as bad.

He finally blew in the breathalyzer and he blew a 0.03.

As you know, the FAR is 0.04.

And so he lived to fight another day.

He was pulled off the flight because he obviously had alcohol in his system.

But he was not.

It was not against the rules.

We were able to get him into the program at that point because he hadn't officially been caught.

He dodged a bullet that day.

But like you said, and by the way, the FO is the one that caught him.

The fox called me later and said, I'm really sorry, man.

I go, you don't have to be sorry for anything.

It was this guy that put you in that.

So you did nothing wrong.

I mean, it would have been better to try to confront him and say, go call in sick.

Go, go, go get help now.

But you couldn't let that plane go.

And nobody's, if anyone gives you any crap, you come talk to me.

And no one gave him any crap because most line pilots will understand that.

And by the way, it hasn't happened in a while, but the FAA will prosecute first officers or captains if the other person was drunk.

And the FAA and their wisdom, I completely disagree with this.

But there's been famous cases where they have gone after the other pilot saying that pilot should have known that they were flying with a drunkard.

I completely disagree with that because it's.

A tough thing to prove.

It's very tough thing.

Next time we talk, I'll try to bring up that instance.

But, but so, so the point is everyone's in a bad situation when someone decides to do this, right?

And so, so if you're someone out there that needs help, get the help.

You don't have to destroy your career.

There are options.

And I will tell you, the HIMSS program is extremely high success rate, very high success rate.

In a nutshell, you go through a very specialized.

You get removed from the line temporarily, but you still get paid.

You go through a very specialized treatment.

The recidivism rate on that is less than 10%.

You are subject to a massive amount of breathalyzers and drug tests from that point forward.

And you do have to go to a special hymns doctor, you know, when you go to get your medical.

But that's it.

You still get your career.

And I, I will tell you, I personally know people that have made it through that program.

They've turned their lives around and they're fine, they're great.

They're great people to fly with.

So, so you can turn that, what might be a big low in your life right now into a positive and improve yourself.

I just wanted to get that message out there, Justin, because a lot of people don't realize that that exists for sure.

I mean, moral of the story is if you ever find yourself in a bad situation like that, don't go to work the call in sick, do whatever you can.

Don't put the FL in that position, the flight attendants in the message and the gate age in that position.

The tsa, like anyone, don't put them in the position to do that because they are going to do that because what is important is the fact that you should not be operating that flight.

And you are putting everyone's career at like everyone at the airline, everyone in aviation, like, everyone, like, I mean, accident happens.

They could start proving that this is a reason why single pilot needs to go up or, I mean, I don't know.

One, I don't, maybe not that, but it's just like things happen and it's just, it's just so bad.

Man, I'm, I'm glad the flight didn't go off, obviously.

Right.

But what's scary is just thinking that they've done it before, someone else has done it before.

Who are we missing and what are they going to do to try to make sure this doesn't happen again?

The last thing to kind of talk about is what just happened with almost a Sky, sky, sky X.

But SpaceX with their rocket exploding, shut down Florida.

Yeah.

Which is crazy.

I mean, I remember I was, I was online.

I can't believe.

I don't know it was a form or what, but it's like, yeah, I mean, thankfully we had enough fuel because we had to route all the way to the south of Cuba to go around to get to where we needed to go.

And so, I mean, that's a good little stretch there.

But you, I mean when you think and you see the cool videos, you know there's a bunch of cool videos of people posting this stuff online.

You're like, wow, that's so cool.

But you're not thinking about what's going up front where the FAA scrambling like, all right, what is the radius?

And let's multiply that by two so we make sure we don't get anyone close because that has to come back.

And if that hits an aircraft, that's going to be.

Do you imagine?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Could you imagine that hits an aircraft?

Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

And you know, the lesson there is, is it does go to show that even though our system can be fragile in terms of getting people from point A to B, you know, we, we know that we're sensitive to weather, natural disasters and really again, very much unpredicted things like, you know, space explosions and you know, debris falling back, it does go to show there's some sensitivity there.

But on the other side of it, the thing that I, my takeaway from that is it's very interesting to me that they actually had a plan, plan that the FAA had already.

They, they had tabletop this and they, you know, not necessarily in Florida, but they, there's a There's a.

I've never been there because you have to have top secret clearance to get there.

There's some FAA employees that have this type of clearance.

It's.

It's the fourth floor in this building, and I've been to the base of the building.

It's.

It's in DC, but that's, that's like the nerves after 911 it was formed.

It's like the nerve center that handles all these really odd things, you know, everything from terrorist threats, jets, all the way down to things like this.

And they really, you know, it was unbelievable.

They had a shutdown.

Florida.

It's very inconvenience for all the people there, but they did keep it safe.

And they did have a plan that they put in place.

And I found that kind of interesting.

That's the first time I'd ever, from this side of it, seen that they actually.

Oh, okay.

Space explosion, debris landing.

Let's execute plan 42 Alpha or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Alien invasion.

Space.

Oh, space.

That's in there too, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah.

SpaceX rocket explodes over Florida.

Okay.

No, that's pretty impressive.

Yeah, no, it's interesting.

It's just things you never thought about.

And I've always wanted a top secret clearance, so maybe I can work my way in and I can get it.

Work your way in?

Yeah.

Actually, I was looking at an administrator.

Not that I was looking at it, but there was a job posting for an associate administrator, and they talked about a even higher clearance.

And I was like, wow.

I, I.

But I do know there is a section of the FAA that does coordinate with the Alphabet groups on terrorist threats, and it formed after 9, 11.

And so they do, they do get those intelligence reports, which I do think are highly classified.

So that's why I think there's a portion that have to get that.

Yeah.

All right, well, new goal achieved or new goal is.

It's too late for me.

But, Jim, I appreciate your time.

You know, I.

It's funny because I was.

When I first started, I was like, all right, yeah, we'll talk for like 45 minutes.

That's usually where episodes live.

But when I think we got.

I looked down, I was like, minute 32, and we're still on the second subject.

And I was like, all right, sorry.

Buckle up, let's go.

No, it's great.

I think it's my fault.

No, not at all.

I mean, the more information, the better.

It's been a while since we've done this, so we're long overdue.

For a longer podcast.

I say this every time.

And I mean, both of our schedules are pretty crazy.

You're running a tech company and doing all this crazy stuff and a new job, just trying to survive.

But we do, we do need to do more episodes, more consistent to get this out.

But like I said earlier, if you ever do have any question, obviously you can email us, you can go to the website that we talked about, give us the feedback, let us know what you like, what you don't like, what you want to hear, or if you liked what you heard.

And if you didn't, I'm.

I'm sorry.

But sometimes it's hard to hear the truth.

Yeah, well, and people may disagree sometimes.

Some of the opinions.

That's okay.

Free world.

Yeah.

Do what you want to do.

Yeah, yeah, go listen to another podcast.

No, I'm kidding.

But Jim, I appreciate your time.

It's always great you on the podcast.

I always love talking with you.

I wish you guys the best and hopefully we'll have you on here soon.

And next time I talk to you, maybe I'll be like, dude, I got long call again.

Go us.

Yeah.

Looking forward to it, Justin.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, have a good day.

That's a wrap on the state of the industry.

Thank you so much for listening.

Please follow us on Pilot the Pilot.

You can check out our Instagram page.

Follow us there.

We are also on YouTube.

You can find us there.

Pilot the Pilot.

If you like YouTube podcasts or video podcast, maybe don't just drop a subscription.

Hopefully going to do some flying content on there as well.

There's a local flying club that I'm thinking about renting a bonanza.

So lots of stuff coming there.

So if you're into YouTube, aviation or just YouTube in general, go and drop us a follow.

We're currently 3000ish followers.

The next goal is going to be 10,000 followers.

So spread the word.

Pilot the Pilot is going to take over YouTube.

Look out, Josh, I'm coming for you.

Right?

No, I'm just kidding.

But AV Nation.

Hope you're having a great day and as always, happy flying.

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