A (2:26)

Yeah.

B (2:26)

And then six months later they force you to retire. And the background on that goes all the way back to 1959. There wasn't a pilot retirement age until 1959 when C.R. smith, who is the CEO of American Airlines, was having golf, playing golf with his neighbor who happened to be the head of the FAA at the time. And they were, he was complaining about how expensive his pilots were over age 60. And so the two of them concocted a plan to introduce a mandatory retirement age. They didn't hold any hearings, nothing. They rammed it right through Congress. They made it a law. And it's been a law. It was a law until 2007, and then President Bush added five years to it. Congress passed the five year extension. Now it's age 65, but still you turn 65 and you're out, regardless of.

A (3:16)

How we're getting to the bottom of it. Yeah, too expensive.

B (3:20)

Back then it was. Now it doesn't make any difference. I, if I stayed another two years, I wouldn't cost the company any more money. I wouldn't make, you know, I would continue to make money, but they wouldn't replace me with another captain that's making the same money. It's just, you keep the experience in the cockpit. That's the key to it, is you're taking the most experienced pilot and pulling them out arbitrarily because it's a one size fits all policy. It doesn't make any sense.

A (3:44)

What is it about being an airplane pilot? Or is there anything about being an airplane pilot that predisposes certain individuals to things like depression and alcoholism and drug abuse?

B (3:55)

Well, I think it's, it's like any other job. It's, you're, it's a lot of travel with it and so, and along with that, there is certain amount of stress in the job. You don't, it's, it's like anything else. Once you do it for a long time, you don't really sense the stress, but it's kind of always present. It's like an underlying high baseline of stress in that job. Air traffic controllers are the same thing. You'll see the same, really same issues show up with them. Depression, alcoholism, substance abuse, so on. You're on the road all the time. You're not eating well, you're always jet lagged. Right. You're behind the clock, you're, you know, eating processed foods. And then what do you do to wind down at A layover, you go to the bar, get a couple of drinks, maybe you go up to the room, get a couple of more. Most pilots are very good at obeying the restrictions. There's a 12 hour cutoff, they'll do that, but they'll drink right up to that 12 hour cutoff. And then when they go home, you know, the whole thing begins to snowball on them. So, you know, alcoholism is, it's an insidious thing and it'll take you over, but it shows up in much younger pilots. If you haven't developed a drinking problem by the time you're in your mid-60s, you're probably not going to.

A (4:59)

Right? Right, totally. Well, I mean, think about like rock stars too. They have very similar lives and they're. But they're drinking kind of goes hand in hand with doing that. They're always on planes, they're always on the road, always traveling, never seeing their family. You know, I always, I always think about this stuff because I've met a lot of people who like in different industries that live very similar lives. And they all seem to have that follow that same pattern of like depression, being just unhappy, being always on the road, not around like their kids, if they have kids and they're always traveling.

B (5:31)

Well, we're creatures that were created for habit. We like our habits and our routines. I taught a course, I wrote a course for the Navy years ago, and one of the things I talked about was how we are predisposed to wanting to get into a routine. So no matter where you go, even if you're on the road, you'll have a road routine. Most people will. They'll get up, they'll go to their layover, they'll sleep for a couple hours, they'll get up, they'll take a run, they'll take a walk, they'll go get dinner at the same place at the same time. And that's all part of the habitual thing, that it gives you kind of stability.

A (6:00)

Right.

B (6:01)

If you're at home and you're a nine to fiver, you're going to have a lot of stability in your life. More so than the person who's constantly packing their bag, unpacking their bag. And with the airlines, many times you'll pack your bag to go someplace and you won't get there. You know, like say you get a trip that starts in Miami and you get to the airport and they go, we canceled your Miami leg. Now you're going to Dallas, or now you're going to Minnesota and it's the middle of the winter. Well, wait a minute. I packed my. My, you know, my bathing suit for Miami. No, sorry. You're gonna end up in Minneapolis St. Paul tonight. So those kind of upheavals are. Are the routine, the normal routine for a pilot. So a lot of that. That stability that most people have, it's kind of not there a lot of the times right now. Were you.

A (6:40)

Were you in, like, the military before you flew commercial?

B (6:44)

Yep. I did nine years on active duty in the military, and then I did another 21 years in the reserve, so about 30 years altogether.

A (6:50)

As a pilot?

B (6:52)

Yeah, I got trained as a pilot that I was. So this is a good story. I had no. I'd never been in an airplane before the military. And my best friend went to the Naval Academy, and he was a. He was one of those guys in high school that knew what he wanted to do. Really super smart guy. Got straight A's, got accepted to the Naval Academy. I was more of a knucklehead. I had a good time. Same thing with college, and I got done with college, and it was 1982, and the job market was super tight, and nobody was hiring. And so I was on the phone with him one night, and he said, why don't you go down the recruiter and tell him you want to be a pilot? I said, okay, walk me through that. So he did. And so I went down to the recruiter the next day, and I walked in, and after the small talk, the recruiter said, so, what do you. What do you want to do? I said, I want to be a pilot. Just like that. You know, that pilot voice. And he laughed at me. He just looked at me and he goes, well, you and 40,000 other guys. And I said. I said, well, I don't want 40. 40,000 spots. Only want one. And he. He looked back and went, okay. Well, he goes, I like the attitude. He goes, let's. All right. You got to take tests. So they gave me a whole battery of tests. And then about three weeks later, he called me back and he goes, hey, you did really well on the test. He said, in fact, you aced him. He said, come on back. He said, let's get your. Your thing going. Let's see if we can get you that pilot spot. And so the next thing out of his mouth was, I need your college transcript. And I said, can we skip that part? He said, no, no, we gotta have it. And I said, well. So I sent it to him, and he called me up, and he goes, steve. He goes, Good time in college, didn't you? I said, yeah. He goes, I don't know if we can send this in. He said, I, I not sure you're going to get accepted. I kind of sweet talked him into it and he did. And about six weeks later he called me back. This is back in the day when the, the phone was on the wall and I answered the phone and his voice was like three octaves higher. And he said, you're not going to believe this. He said, but they hired you. He said, you better get down here right now and sign on the dotted line.

A (8:38)

Wow.

B (8:39)

I ran down as fast as I could and the rest is history.

A (8:42)

Did you, did you ever take off or land on an aircraft carrier?

B (8:45)

No. So just a couple years prior to my getting hired in the by the Navy, they were training everybody on the carrier, whether you went there or not. That was kind of a bad use of resources because if I'm not going to end up there in jets, then why are they training me to do it?

A (9:01)

Sure.

B (9:01)

So they got rid of that. I ended up flying an airplane called a P3. It's a big four engine turbo prop that hunted submarines back in the day.

A (9:07)

Oh, wow.

B (9:08)

Yeah.

A (9:09)

Hunted submarines. How, how did that work?

B (9:12)

That was fascinating. It, I loved it. There were 12 people on the crew. There's three PIL, an engineer, and then a whole bunch of geeks in the back that ran computers. And it's pretty simple design. We would drop a buoy out of the back of the airplane, little parachute on it, and it would cascade down to the water. And then it would drop a microphone down in the water kind of like this really. And that little microphone would, would transmit all of the sound in the water through a little 1 watt radio transmitter that's bobbing around on the ocean surface back to the airplane. And you drop a whole bunch of them all over the place. And then if there was some sort of mechanical frequency sound in the water and you looked down and didn't see a ship on top of the water, something underneath the surface is making that mechanical noise. Because everything mechanical operates on a frequency where ambient noise doesn't. So then they would just kind of localize where the sound was coming from. They triangulate and then there's your sub. And then you get a course in speed and you'd never have to see them. You'd be below the surface the entire time. We did that for years.

A (10:17)

Wow, that's fascinating. It always boggles my mind how many submarines are traveling through the waters like within miles of the coast of Florida or the coast of Southern California. And just all around and from every China, Russia, you name it, they're all circling every single ocean, like coming within, like within miles of the, I guess the international water zone, right before you get into like United States territory.

B (10:46)

And some submarines, you know, need to get closer. Some, not so much. The ones with the big inner continental ballistic missiles, they, they can stay a couple thousand miles away. They don't need to be all that close. But it was back in the old Soviet Union days, it was surprising how many submarines they had deployed at any given time.

A (11:02)

Yeah.

B (11:02)

Yep.

A (11:03)

Yeah, it's pretty terrifying.

B (11:04)

Yeah.

A (11:06)

And especially like during the Cold War, you know, like that whole time when it was like that constant threat of, of nuclear war.

B (11:14)

Right. That's why I love the mission we did. It was, it was the Cold War, you know, was, it's kind of, there wasn't a lot going on, but there was actually because we wanted to keep track of where all of those Soviet submarines with the big missiles were at all times. So there was a thing that the President could do, I guess I can talk about this now, but it's because it's years ago. It's called a smooth touch. And he would, the President, it would come out of the Pentagon, but in theory it came from the President and the President would we be tracking these subs in real time and if the, if the bubble went up, the balloon went up. Right. And we said, okay, we're going to war. We, we wanted to get an asset, a P3 on top of a submarine within 30 minutes and to deliver a weapon if we had to. This is all simulated. Now we don't never to the submarine, to the submarine. So let's say we're going to war with the Soviet Union. Yeah. And the President gives out the order, you know, go after their subs. You know, the, the rules of engagement have changed and it's now DEFCON 1 and we're going to sync subs. So we'd be tracking this guy. Normally we, we would localize him, come down within 30 minutes, open up the bomb bays, weapon away and sync us up. And the, the aim was to do that within 20 to 30 minute time frame. So sometimes we were more successful than others. But I only ever got a couple of those. You know, they would simulate one, you'd get a message, you'd be flying around on a normal night tracking some submarine and all of a sudden the guy the two seats behind you start screaming. He'd be like, as soon as you'd hear his voice raised and he'd start screaming. I knew exactly what it was. And he, he'd run up to the cockpit and he'd show, you know, if you're the mission commander, he'd show you a piece of paper and it says smooth touch on it. Let's go man. Let's go.

A (12:50)

Wow.

B (12:50)

So, you know, we, you, you, you'd announce that to the whole crew and then it was game on. And so you had to do it within 30 minutes. And we were successful the two times I had them. So. Right. Simulated success. We never sank anybody.

A (13:02)

Right, right. And the, the crazy thing about that is if like a nuke launched, all of that's futile. Like nothing matters now.

B (13:11)

Right.

A (13:12)

Because once one, Once one. I learned this from this book called Nuclear War by Andy Jacobson. Once one nuke is launched, that means they're all launched.

B (13:22)

Correct.

A (13:22)

Because I guess they have this thing called launch on warning to where if the United States detects with their, with their radar, with their satellites that there is an incoming icbm, we have to assume that they are going to try to take out our, our ICBM sites that can't, like in Montana and that part of the Midwest. So we have to get rid of them. It's use it or lose it. So we have to get. Launch all those. Hopefully at the place we think the ICBM is coming from.

B (13:50)

Yeah.

A (13:50)

And within like 12 minutes or something insane like that. So, yeah, once one launches, they're all launching and then it's. It's just Armageddon.

B (14:01)

Yeah. And that was the real world, you know, back then, the, the old movie War Games, which was, you know, kind of funny, silly movie, but it was the serious side of that was what happens if the computer messes up and, and launches a fake attack.

A (14:15)

Right, right.

B (14:16)

You know, there's, there was a bunch more serious movies made back in the 60s and 70s with the same kind of premise. You know, the world goes to nuclear war, Dr.

A (14:23)

Strange, love.

B (14:24)

Yeah, that was a classic. Yeah. Because the computer got it wrong. But you know, we're not out of that yet. But it's not, it's not as present as it was back then.

A (14:32)

Right, right. And we have these things called doomsday planes too. You've seen that. The doomsday plane.

B (14:40)

No.

A (14:40)

That the president has to fly on. It's like a. Find a photo of the doomsday plane. It's like a super rugged like tank version of Air Force One. And apparently it's got all the windows blocked out for radiation. It's like, it's like, coated in the special material to block out, like, nuclear radiation. And it's got this antenna that it drops to, like, pick up radio signals that, like, drops it from underneath the plane. Find some images of it. Steve, that's not a very good image. That's not the doomsday plane. It can fly 12 hours without refueling. Is that normal?

B (15:20)

Well, yeah. So you. The limitation on how long those airplanes can stay airborne is not so much the fuel, but the oil in the engines. So you can, you can refuel Air Force One and stay airborne in theory, as long as the pilots are, you know, okay. But the, eventually the engines are going to run out of oil.

A (15:39)

Right.

B (15:40)

So that's your limiting factor.

A (15:42)

Yeah. So I guess the idea about this is like, they have to, to maintain continuity of the government, they have to put the president in this thing. If there's a nuclear war and they fly in circles, I guess, just until they run out of gas and figure out a place to land. Yeah, but the people in the submarines would be the ones that last the longest because they're underwater and they're fueled by nuclear power.

B (16:02)

Correct.

A (16:02)

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B (17:31)

Never.

A (17:32)

Never, Never. It's amazing that airplanes are like. It's so wild to me how airplanes don't like commercial airliners. It doesn't seem like they've evolved at all in the last 50 years.

B (17:46)

Correct. They haven't.

A (17:47)

It's like they're the same thing.

B (17:48)

Yeah.

A (17:49)

Isn't that. Do you find that weirdness?

B (17:50)

Back when I was a kid, everything was going to be supersonic transport by this time. By the year 2000, everything was, by the year 2000, was going to be 100 billion people on the planet. But we were all going to be traveling, you know, supersonic. And that, that didn't happen only because it was too expensive and too loud. The people around those airports hated those airplanes. And you could only get about 80 people. It's like a regional jet, right? That you.

A (18:14)

12,000 a ticket paid 12,000 for a.

B (18:16)

Coach seat just to get there a couple of hours earlier. And so you, you know, let's say you go across the Atlantic in three and a half hours, but you got stuck in traffic going to jfk and that ate up another two or three hours and it ends up being the same amount of time anyway. So it's like, why did I do this? And they, and the airlines had them more as kind of a halo thing, the prestige thing, to have those supersonic jets. Now I think the age is coming back because the technology has actually caught up with it. There's a company called Boom out of North Carolina.

A (18:48)

Yeah, I heard about that.

B (18:49)

Yeah. American Airlines has 29 the options for airplanes. I don't think they've built an airplane yet, but they've, it's, they're designing it still. So, you know, we'll see. Remains to be determined, but I think the future will be hypersonic travel at some point.

A (19:04)

Yeah. So one of the reasons they like the, the Concorde, I think one of the reasons they stopped it was because, I mean, obviously the things that you mentioned. But like, to me it just seemed like that was the, that was the. Basically that was what was happening with everything during the Cold War. We were racing the Soviets and I think they had some sort of a prototype of a supersonic jet like this. And then so we were like, oh, we got to create one too. And then we can put the Concorde. And it was like, oh my God, this is like insane to manage. It's like this Is way too hard. It's like sprinting to try to get this done, and it's costing so much money. It was breaking. I think they had to keep one on standby in New York. And it was like, that was not very cost effective. And. And I think one crashed in France, if I remember correctly, a year before 9 11. And then 911 happened, and then all of the stock, or all like the airline companies, like, their stock plummeted because of 9 11. And that, like, wasn't. That was like dark ages of air travel.

B (20:10)

Yeah. And that Air France crash is what doomed the. The Concorde altogether because it wasn't cost effective. It was. It was a nightmare to maintain. Again, it was a prestige airplane for the airlines, and they were looking for a way to back out. And when that airplane finally crashed, I think they said, you know, this is our exit strategy.

A (20:27)

Right.

B (20:28)

Right on the Concorde. And it never came back. Now it will sometime in the future, but it's got to be cost effective because at the end of the day, an airline, you have to have your head examined to run an airline. Because even in a great year for an airline, you maybe make 2 or 3% profit in a year.

A (20:43)

It's just right.

B (20:44)

There's too many moving parts. There's. Think of all the things that have wheels and are associated with running an airline. It's. It's just a nightmare that it runs as well as it actually does. And now you throw in an expensive airplane that people don't have the appetite to pay at this point, they'd be paying 15, $20,000 a seat for. You know, they're just not going to do it.

A (21:04)

Even if it's not supersonic. It was. It's like, I mean, what. The reason that airplanes are they. From what I understand. Correct me, I'm wrong. We take planes from like the 80s and 90s and we just refurbish them. Right. And put new engines on them, new seats inside, redo the interior. But it's essentially the same design. Everything's the same as what they were in the 80s and 90s, sort of.

B (21:26)

I mean, when you get down to the, like, if you look at cars from the 70s and. And cars today, yeah, they have a lot of the same things. They have four wheels, a steering wheel. Some of them do, at least. Steering wheel still kind of. Kind of. But. But the technology has improved and the build quality has improved dramatically since then. So all of the technological advantages show up in. In the little things. And so the reliability stuff, the stuff I deal with as a pilot is much more reliable than it was, you know, 30 or 40 years ago. So the airplanes, I think they look the same. They're kind of the same basic thing, but the 787 is a total departure. It's all carbon fiber and, and it's, it's a lighter, more nimble airplane in a lot of ways. They had some issues rolling it out, but I think it's a right kind future of, you know, airliner design.

A (22:16)

What makes. So because it's carbon fiber.

B (22:19)

So if you watch the wings on a 787, you know, find a 787, Steve. Yeah. When it, when it first takes off and it rotates, the wings bend way up. Like you'd look at it and go, oh, that looks uncomfortable. Is that normal? It's normal. It's the way they designed it. So it, almost like a bird, the wings go up and then the airplane eventually settles in, the wings come back down. But it's meant to have a lot of flexibility in those wings. It's a nice, much nicer ride. They've got hum. See the, how the wings bend up? That's not, that's not, you know, the camera doing that. That's actually how it flies and that's.

A (22:51)

What it looks like when it's cruising.

B (22:54)

Wow. Just like that. Right. And then when it sits on the ground, they're, they're flat as can be. But when it gets airborne, it, they, it's designed like that.

A (23:02)

Now is this the same plane that. There was a new plane that Boeing came out with where they had to move the engines up above the wing a little bit and that was causing lots of issues and like crashes.

B (23:16)

That was the max. So when they, yeah, so that's, I think the 737, all the variants are the most prolific airplane on the planet. They at least are rivaled by airbus. But, but 737s have been around forever. They've had a dozen different versions of it. When they came out with the max, it was to put bigger engines on it, more fuel efficient. Okay. And so forth.

A (23:38)

And this was to compete with Airbus, right?

B (23:40)

Yeah, but then they kind of cut some corners and the corner cutting was we had to move the engines, the center of gravity. The airplane changed and they thought they could take care of that with a software fix and that. And that's. And then, then when they did put the software fix in place, they didn't tell the pilots about it. And they only had, they had the, the, the software was forcing the nose of the airplane over because it thought the airplane was stalling. So if the airplane is stalling, it's getting slow.

A (24:13)

Right.

B (24:14)

And the airflow over the wings is disrupted.

A (24:16)

Yeah.

B (24:16)

So the airplane is now saying an Airbus does this all the time. It, it noses the airplane over for you so that you don't stall the airplane. It's usually based on two or three inputs from different systems telling it that you're actually stalling. What happened with the MAX initially was there was only one input. And if that one input gave you erroneous information, they would, it would push the nose over. And the pilots didn't know what was going on because they hadn't been trained in it. And so they're like, you know, they're trying to, they're fighting the airplane, they're pulling back, but the, the computer's pushing it over, they're pulling back. And so they, they crashed. Two of them, they grounded the whole fleet, went back, fixed not only the software issue, but also the hardware part of it with the engines and all of that. And so now they haven't had any problems since. So it's been. I think it'll be reliable going forward, but it's a. Was a heck of a price to pay.

A (25:05)

Good Lord.

B (25:06)

Yeah.

A (25:06)

Did you ever fly one of those?

B (25:07)

Nope. No. I love Boeing products in general. I get so much criticism on my channel for this because.

A (25:14)

Why?

B (25:14)

Well, because I've been a Boeing guy my whole life. And so the difference between Boeing and Airbuses is Airbus is like a computer that has an airplane attached to it. Boeing is a airplane that has a computer assisting it. So it's just a basic general philosophy, but you're managing a computer when you're flying an Airbus, so it's fly by wire. So instance, you got a joystick over here and you're flying the airplane, but there's no real cable or anything going out to your flight controls. It's a digital signal that goes to another box that does another thing. That does another thing. The advantages of it is it's a little more quick than, than the old yoke in the Boeing, but. And it also saves a little bit of weight. But beyond that, again, it's like going back to HAL from the 2001 Space Odyssey, when Dave's trying to get the bay doors open in hell, saying, I'm sorry, I won't allow that. The computer sometimes overrides the pilot. On a Boeing, a pilot can always override the computer. But not so on an Airbus.

A (26:20)

Except on that max before they had.

B (26:21)

That issue because they didn't know what was going on.

A (26:23)

Right. Because it was brand new.

B (26:24)

Right. And so the, the initial kind of take on that was the, you know, a more experienced crew would have handled it different. I'm not sure about that. What I. What I do know is that, that they. They hid something. They didn't train the pilots on it. And that was. That was another layer of the mistake that was made with that airplane.

A (26:43)

Do you think maybe. Maybe they've already done it.

B (26:46)

But at what point do you think.

A (26:47)

They'Re going to start incorporating AI into these planes?

B (26:50)

Well, they're already starting with that. And I. I was. I was on with Piers Morgan a few months ago, and he. At the end of the interview, he. He said, you think there's ever going to be a pilotless airplane? And I said, well, no. He said, what do you mean? He goes, there's, you know, cars that have no driver. And he said, I was just in one out in Los Angeles. And I said, well, that's a different deal. I said, you're talking about two dimensions as opposed to three. Okay. And if you got a problem in your car, it's just going to pull over and shut down, and you get out and go. And you call the company or you go on the app and say, send me another car. That's different. You can't do that in an airplane. And now will AI assist in technology making the pilots load lighter? Yeah, sure. I'm all for that. I think that's great. Could I see a future where they get rid of one of the three pilots in the cockpit because of AI? I hope not. Only. Only because of the few emergencies I've had over the years. That third pilot, especially on an international flight, that third pilot is worth their weight in gold. Because you and the co pilot are busy running checklists, flying the airplane. That's your administrative assistant that can look everything up that you don't have time to do because you're busy. And so having that third person there is hugely important. Now, could AI do that? I'm sure I suppose so.

A (28:06)

But let me ask you this, though. Can. Sorry to interrupt, but could somebody potentially take control if there was an issue with a remote control or an airplane that was not manned was just run by AI Pilotless, would there be an option for someone on the ground to take remote control of the airplane if something goes south?

B (28:24)

So here's. Here's my idea, my business model. You might want to invest in this.

A (28:28)

Okay.

B (28:30)

It's the. It's the. The PID program I used to Call it the pilot in Dallas, but I think maybe the pilot in Delhi is probably better. But at any rate, we'll find the right place to base this thing. And then it's basically you go down to a single pilot in the airplane and the co pilots are a guy sitting down in a room like this with a bank of computers and screens and he's monitoring 25 flights all at the same time. Now the, the selling point on that is you have a real pilot in the airplane, right? But now the airplane becomes hijack proof because if somebody on the airplane tries to hijack the airplane, the guy down on the ground, Steve down on the ground, says, I'm sorry, we're not gonna allow that. He just hits a button and takes over control of the airplane, right? And says, we're gonna fly this to a safe place where the police can intercept this airplane and so forth. So there won't ever be another 911 style hijacking with this system. But the downside of it, a couple people have pointed out to me, is what if the guy running it on the ground gets, you know, taken over and they take over all these airplanes. So there's no perfect system out there. I'm trying to work out that.

A (29:36)

See, I would, I would imagine that after 911 we would have figured out how to take over airplanes because if it does get hijacked, you want to have somebody in the Pentagon who can tap into that airplane and just take control of it.

B (29:49)

In theory, the technology would be there to do that, but again, it's technology you would only maybe use once in a century. It's heavy. You'd have to carry it around all the time. You'd have to test it all the time. It's not, they're never going to do that because it's just too expensive. Everybody's going to push back on that.

A (30:04)

Same seems like basic technology though. Like it doesn't seem like it's that complicated.

B (30:08)

Well then you're also talking about the government trying to do something to make sense. And it took, it took a couple of years for them to put reinforced doors in between us and the public. And they still haven't put in secondary doors. I don't understand why. It's a fact. $50 fix per airplane, right? In the, in the military I had cargo nets that would clip, clip and clip like that. 50 bucks. And so you put a secondary barrier outside the cockpit. When the pilots come out to go to the bathroom, you clip the, the things in place. Nobody can get through it. Pilots come out do their business. When they go back up to the cockpit and close their door, you take the clips and throw it, wad it up and throw it back in the closet. And that's a fix. And they still haven't done that. Congress last year mandated that every new airplane being built has a secondary barrier now. And it's a big complicated second door. And you know, so right now the.

A (30:59)

The door between the cockpit and the main cabin is something that someone could break through fairly easily.

B (31:06)

It's a kevlar reinforced door with lots of latches on it and it'll, it'll lock nice and tight. Here's the problem with a single door, though. With a single door, it works for you or it works against you. So that door is going to have to open at some time during the flight. Right. For people from mother Nature. So you got to go to the bathroom. And if you're a bad guy and you time it right and you can get in through that door and you close it now it's you and one pilot up in the cockpit and you've got the door now working in your favor as the bad guy because now it's locked, you throw the latch, nobody can get in that door. Right. So all your able bodied men in the back of the airplane, they're going to take on that bad guy. He's on the other side of this barrier that you can't break. So it's, it's a two edged, it's a double edged sword.

A (31:51)

I see what you're saying. So there would have to be two separate locks, two separate doors. Yes.

B (31:56)

Yeah, secondary barrier. That's the only way to fix the problem. And, and there was not a willingness on anybody's part to spend 50 bucks an airplane to fix it.

A (32:04)

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B (34:15)

Well, they haven't. There's been a few attempted cockpit breaches, but it was usually somebody that was out of their mind or, you know, on Ambien and alcohol and, you know, there was. It wasn't an organized, you know, thing that was going on now.

A (34:27)

Right, Right. I was watching a video the other day on I think it was on Instagram of this dude just joyriding this plane like this. Have you seen this? This guy's like, he's. He's communicating with the tower and they're like, have you ever flown before? He's like, nope. He's like, I just got bored and I wanted to take this thing for, for a ride. My life's not going too good right now. And they're like, well, we're gonna try to get you to land this thing. He's like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to come back. Yeah. And then I think he crashed it.

B (34:55)

Yeah, I saw that video. There was another guy over in Vancouver that stole an airplane and he wanted to make a political protest, so he, he stole this little Cessna and flew it up. And he was just flying over top of V airport for hours, disrupting traffic. Oh no. Broadcasting his, his manifesto over the radio. And then the, the controller on the ground finally got it. And this guy is brilliant. So the controller makes a fake call. At first it was actually real, but at first he makes a fake call to somebody else, but he broadcasts and he says, hey, yeah, the, the F16s are inbound and they're about, they're about eight minutes out. And he said, yeah, it's weapons away. He's, he's just making all this stuff up. It wasn't, it was about an hour later that the actual F16s made it up. But this guy, he hears it on the thing, he's like, yeah, I'm going to get shot down. I better land.

A (35:43)

Oh God.

B (35:44)

He brings, he brings it around and lands. On the next thing, the cops arrest him and take him off, you know. Oh my God. But that air traffic controller should get an award for that.

A (35:51)

Yeah, that's a great, that was, that's a very creative idea. I like that. So out of all the airplane disasters or conspiracies, which one is most interesting to you or your favorite?

B (36:07)

Well, I've got, I've got a 911 story.

A (36:10)

Oh, really?

B (36:11)

Yeah. So my, my background goes like this. I was originally scheduled to be the co pilot on the first airplane. It was hijacked on September 11th.

A (36:18)

What?

B (36:19)

Yeah. And so I was based in Boston at the time. There's a film on, called in my seat on YouTube and it's actually what got the Captain Steve channel started. Back in 2011, for the 10th anniversary of 9 11, we made just a 15 minute documentary about my story. So my story goes like this. I was a first officer co pilot at American Airlines at the time, based in Boston. And I was on reserve. And reserve means that you're on call to fill in for another pilot that can't make it. They're sick or they have to training or whatever. They'll call you the day before and assign you a trip that's not assigned. And on September 10, 2001, which is a day that means more to me than the 11th, actually on the 10th, I had been watching a trip. It had been open all weekend. It was a really nice trip. It was a morning departure out of Boston to Los Angeles and very senior trip. And nobody picked it up. It was just there in open time. Nobody picked it up. So the day before then at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, they will assign the trip to somebody on reserve. So I looked on the list of reserve pilots and there was only one guy on call for the 11th and that was me. So the computer then will automatically assign your name to the trip. And then about 30 minutes after the assignment, a real person will call just to make sure that you've seen the assignment and know that you're going to work tomorrow. So I had three o' clock in the afternoon. I went over the computer and I looked and sure enough I had been assigned the trip. My name was assigned to it. I told my wife, I'm going to Los Angeles tomorrow. I packed my bags, put my in the car, set my alarm and just waited for the phone to ring. And we kind of lost track of it because sometimes they take more than a half an hour to call. And about, I don't know, about 7:30 that night, I, I said to her, I go, did they ever call? And she goes, I don't think so. I looked at her phone, I looked at mine, I thought, well, I better double check. So I go back to the computer and I logged in and sure some other guy's name was on the trip, okay, I don't care. I would still get paid to stay home. And so I went into work. I went into the Navy the next day. I was doing some Navy work then and I'm watching 911 on the screens like everybody else. Like I walked in and I'm watching these airplanes crash. And I never connected because they were talking at first, like 10 airplanes had been hijacked and it was American Airlines and some United they didn't know. It was a lot of confusion in those first few hours and, and I was on the Navy base and we were going to war and it was nuts. So I, later on that evening I went home and we, I, I got in on my computer because I thought maybe I can look up the names of the crews that were on those flights because I know the back doorway in at American. So I, I logged in and tried to find the names of them on the manifest. And when the screen came up in front of me, it looked exactly like it did 24 hours ago, the day before when I saw my name assigned to the trip and I looked at the screen and all the names are scrubbed off the trip.

A (39:04)

Really?

B (39:04)

Yeah. All it said was sequence failed continuity, which is a code that they put on every flight that doesn't make it to its destination. So if you have to divert for weather or some other reason. Well, you talk about an understatement. You know, sequence failed continuity. No kidding. And I just looked at the screen, I was just like in shock. I just, I just stared. And a few minutes later my wife came around the corner and she said, you know, what are you doing? I said, remember I told you I was going to LA today? And she said, yeah. I said that was the first airplane that got hijacked this morning. And it's still, it's a moment. Right. And so all the radio interviews and everything over the years, they always ask me the same question. How does that, how'd that make you feel? And I, I don't have an answer. It's, there's, the best I can come up with is there's an empty space where a feeling should be because you can't get angry, you can't get sad. You're, you know, it's just hard to describe. It's just, it was a, it's a vacant feeling. And I still, I, I was watching, okay, this, I, I don't normally get political and I'm not trying to now, but after Trump got shot in the ear in Butler, the two days later, three days later, was a Republican National Convention. He's sitting there with that bandage on his ear and the camera's going over to him and he's got that, he's got that thousand yard stare in his eyes and I was looking at him, I thought, oh, I know exactly what's going through his brain. He's sitting there and all this hubbub is going on around him and he's having that moment where he's searching for a feeling that he should feel and there isn't one. And he's going through the, he's nodding and being polite, but inside he's, there's a vacant feeling right now because he, the reality of a bullet whizzing by your, your head that close and taken off the top of your ear. There's nothing like that. You can't, there's no way to describe that feeling other than wow, okay, well, now what am I going to do next? You know, so there's an obligation that comes with that, I think, you know, when you've been the, the talk I give associated with it is living on borrowed time because I am I can mark on the calendar when I. I should have died, and I didn't. So the rest of my life has been marked by, you know, let's. Let's make the most out of this thing that I can.

A (41:16)

Oh, my God.

B (41:17)

Yeah.

A (41:20)

I'm sure you think about that all the time.

B (41:22)

Yeah, it does. It's like Groundhog Day for me because I still spend probably 20 times a year going around, and we show the film, the in my seat film, and then I go and tell my. My story in various venues, and it's like reliving it over and over again. But, you know, there's an obligation. You have to tell the story. Right. It's not my story.

A (41:40)

Right.

B (41:40)

Myself.

A (41:41)

Yeah, totally.

B (41:42)

Right.

A (41:45)

So when you logged back onto the thing, the computer back. Backdoored into the computers the next day. It still hadn't. So it said that you were still assigned to it.

B (41:54)

No, it. They had taken all the names off. Oh, it had all been scrubbed so that other guys like me trying to find the names couldn't report them to the media. They wanted to keep the. They'll. That's one of the protocols right away. Like, if there's an incident or an accident, they'll scrub the names off the list right away. So the media can't get a hold of them. They want to make sure they can get to the families first, let them know what's going on. And then, you know, it was about a week later, I think they finally came out with. Here are the names of the crew members that were on those flights. Right? Yeah.

A (42:20)

Good Lord, man. How much. How much attention did you pay to all of the media about that? Directly right after it happened, like, they played phone calls and stuff like that from people from. From in the air, calling their loved ones. And, like, you hear them. The one, I think the one in Pennsylvania, like, they were, like, talking about, like, trying to go, like, breach through the door or something and get him and. Yeah, there was so. There was so much.

B (42:47)

There was a lot. And you couldn't get away from it for a while because right after 9, 11, it was just all was. The news was absorbed with it. But if you ever go to the Flight 93 memorial, the one in Pennsylvania, it's a really, really good memorial. And they have all of those recordings playing there. So you can go around and there's little walls hanging. There's phones hanging on the walls, and you can go. And there's pictures and memorabilia from the flight, and you can go and listen to those various recordings and, you know after, for me, after listening about three or four of them, I was like, that I'm done. You know, that's enough. Because it's just, it's. Even now, it's still hard to kind of bring all this up.

A (43:24)

Yeah.

B (43:25)

Because the ramifications of all of it, it just is, you know, the more you talk about it, the more real it still becomes.

A (43:34)

And you were living where at the time?

B (43:36)

I was living in Maine at the time.

A (43:37)

You're living in Maine at the time?

B (43:39)

Yep. I was pastoring a church up there. We started a church in, In Thompson, Maine.

A (43:44)

Oh, wow.

B (43:44)

I was a senior pastor of a church we started. And, and it was an ideal job, me being on reserve with the airlines and starting in church because there's no money to plant a church up in that part of the country. So I didn't have to take a salary. But we could. I could be more or less a full time pastor as long as they would give me up like for two trips a month. That's about what I would fly in those days on reserve. And the church is more than happy. They're like, yeah, great. You know, if we can have a full time pastor, we'll, you know, if you want to go, you know, Monday through Wednesday and fly two trips a month. Awesome. You know. Yeah, it worked out.

A (44:16)

Oh, wow. So that could fund everything for you in just a couple flights. Just a couple flights a month.

B (44:20)

Yep. Yep. I get you. When you're on reserve, you get paid just a straight salary no matter how much you fly.

A (44:25)

So like, I mean, not, not to linger on the dark stuff, but what, how did that like, affect your work after that and people around you? Being an airline pilot after 9 11, like, I'm sure it had to have been weird, to say the least.

B (44:48)

Yeah, it is. It's. It's not, it's not the first near death experience I had in an airplane. So the, you know, the Navy time, there was a couple of moments where, you know, my knees were knocking after a flight. And, and so you kind of get a little inoculated that. And, and remember my 911 story was it wasn't like I was on the airplane and I escaped. I just didn't get the. They didn't finalize the assignment. And so here's, here's the rest of the story. So people will ask, well, how did you get off the flight? So I had seen my name assigned to the flight. There was a guy. The guy who eventually took it is. His name was Tom McGinnis. And Tom was celebrating his 42nd birthday on the 10th of September with his wife and his two kids. And Tom had been, he was a line holding pilot. He was one of the guys I would fill in for. He could pick up extra trips if he wanted to, to kind of fill out his schedule. Tom had been looking at that trip all weekend and doing the. We do this all the time. It's like, ah, do I want it? I don't know, you know, you go back and forth and do I want to go to work? So he got his birthday celebration out of the way and he looked at the trip one last time. And I had already been assigned to the trip, but there was a little code next to my name that says they hadn't made the phone call yet. So until they make the phone call, it's not final, final. So he said to his wife, hey, I'm thinking about taking a trip tomorrow. She's like, yeah, it's fine. So he calls up and says, hey, is it too late? Can I still get that trip? And the scheduler says, well, no, but you gotta let me know. So he talks to his wife, gets back on the phone, says, yeah, I'll take the trip. So at that moment they erased my name from the trip. They put Tom's on it.

A (46:19)

Oh my God.

B (46:20)

And then the rest is history. So Tom was just trying to provide for his family, pick up an extra trip. It was a wonderful trip. It was the, the most senior trip in this on the schedule. Early morning departure out of Boston, early return the next day. It was a luxury trip, direct flight to LA, direct to LA, direct back, got back, you got back home by 5 o' clock the next day. Time for dinner. So, you know, really nice trip and, but so he took the trip, they erased my name. And that stuff happens all the time in scheduling with the airlines sometimes. You don't know him. I only met him once. I didn't really know him. I wouldn't even call him an acquaintance. I remember bumping into him once. I know much more of his story now. His, his son Tom Jr. Followed in his dad's footsteps. So my son and his son are about the same age. They're like in their late 30s now. My son's a filmmaker and he's a producer of my channel. And his son became a pilot and he, I talked to him one time on the phone. I text him almost every September 11, just say, hey, thinking about you and, and so forth. But he was about to get his interview with American Airlines, Mainline American, and he said, you know, do you think they're going to hire me? And do you have any advice? And I said, Tom, I said, I don't know what the hiring practices are these days at American. This was back in like the 2011, 2012 time frame. I said, but if they don't hire you, they're crazy. Just, just for the story of it all. And they hired him and he might be a captain now for, for all I know. He's, he's a super sharp guy. His dad was a Top Gun trained pilot to really sharp people. Yeah.

A (47:58)

Have you ever thought about, or like, maybe there's training that goes into this for like those kinds of situations for like a couple dudes come in with box cutters or whatever it is to try to like breach the cockpit. Like, I'm sure you've pro, you spent hours and days probably processing this kind of stuff hypothetically in your head.

B (48:18)

Yeah, well, the, the paradigm shifted after 911 because the paradigm prior to that was the old hijack model of they want to hijack an airplane, land at some place, publish a manifesto in the newspaper, get their names on the, the news to get their cause out there. And, and they might threaten to kill some people and they might even do it, but they're not going to fly an airplane into a building. Like, who in the world would do that? They would, they'd be killing themselves by doing that. Right. So that was the old model until it all changed on 9 11. And it, and it shows you how quickly a paradigm can shift. That paradigm changed on September 11, 2001. By the time the fourth airplane, United 93, was still being hijacked, the people in the back of the airplane had gotten word, hey, you guys aren't going to go land someplace to publish a manifesto. These guys are serious. They're flying these airplanes into buildings. You're all going to die. So with that information, Todd Beamer and the rest of the guys in the back of the airplane said, well, if we're going to die, we're going to die fighting. Right. So they try to take over the airplane. They did break into the cockpit. There was a fight in the cockpit. There was, it's all in the cockpit voice recorder.

A (49:25)

Oh really?

B (49:26)

Yeah, they, they and the, the, the guy, the terrorist at the controls was shaking the airplane back and forth to try to get these guys to hit the overhead and come off of him. And then he, and then he finally just turned the airplane around and just nosed it right into the ground. So the only fortunate part of that is they didn't hit The Capitol or the White House or wherever they were headed.

A (49:46)

I've never heard that recording. I didn't know that that was.

B (49:49)

Yeah. If you go to the Flight 93 memorial, all that really there, and it's, they got the transcripts of what, what took place. You know, it's just in the cockpit, there's just a lot of yelling and screaming, but they actually got back into the cockpit. And I don't know if they had a pilot on board that could have flown the airplane, but they, they never did regain total control of the airplane.

A (50:08)

Good Lord.

B (50:09)

Yeah.

A (50:10)

And whatever happened to the black boxes? Do they ever find those?

B (50:13)

Yeah, they found all those. They did, yeah. Yeah.

A (50:18)

That's so scary, man. So, so now what is the protocol?

B (50:24)

So now the protocol has changed. And, and it's because of 911. It's, you know, we got that, we've got the armored door between us. I don't come out unless it's a positive handoff. We have to have somebody else, the flight attendant come in, close the door. There's strict security over opening and closing the door. All of that stuff is. They put carts out, you know, serving carts out to block people from trying to run into the cockpit. Right. And then the, the, the backup option is able bodied passengers. So if somebody is on board, there's a lot more federal air marshals than there ever used to be before. But, you know, I wouldn't be stretching the truth to tell you there's not a federal air marshal on every single flight. You know, you can't have that big a government agency, but there are on a lot of flights.

A (51:08)

What is it for people that don't know what is a federal air marshal.

B (51:11)

They'Re just a cop on an airplane. So they're there, they blend in and they. Undercover cop, undercover cop. And their whole job is to be the law on an airplane. So essentially they're there to make sure the airplane doesn't get hijacked. Right. So if you're, if you're, if you're pulling a misdemeanor, they're allowed to carry.

A (51:30)

A gun on them.

B (51:30)

Oh, yeah. And, and if they get. You get sideways with a flight attendant and there's a little argument, the federal air marshal is not going to intervene. This is for the serious stuff that they're there for. But without federal air marshals on every airplane, the conventional wisdom is that able bodied passengers will tackle and subdue somebody that tries to get in the cockpit. Right, right. You would jump out of your seat and jump on somebody. Right. Away. If they. They're yelling something and they break into the cockpit, you'd be out of your seat in a heartbeat, and you'd be all over that guy, so.

A (52:00)

Right, right, right.

B (52:01)

Yeah.

A (52:02)

That reminds me. I was watching. There's this. There's this professional skateboarder. His name's Bam. Bam Margera. And he said he was on.

B (52:13)

I was just.

A (52:13)

This is, like, totally random, but it's relevant. He said that he was on a flight back from, like, Abu Dhabi or something like this, and one of his fans was, like, walking by him going, bomb. Bomb. Oh, because his name's Bam.

B (52:29)

Oh, no.

A (52:30)

He's like, dude, shut up. Shut up. He's like, bomb. Bomb.

B (52:33)

Like, pointing at things you don't want to say.

A (52:36)

It's like, yeah, hopefully there's an air marshal.

B (52:38)

Yeah, we had a guy. I just did a video on this. We had a guy. I was walking down the jet bridge, I was in uniform, going on the airplane, and this passenger makes a joke about, you know, I hope you weren't up drinking too late last night or something along those lines. I'm like. I'm saying, sir, please. You know, you can't make those jokes. And he doubled down about the accusing me of being drunk thing, and I'm like, so the third time he made the joke, I'm just like, stop. Give me your ticket. What seat are you sitting in? Let's go back out. And I had to get pulled off the flight because at that point, all these other passengers have heard, you know, the whisper down the lane. This guy, he's accusing me of being drunk. So I had to go down and get the. The blood test and the urine analysis and all that stuff. And. And he got pulled off the flight. I'm sure he got re. Accommodated, but there's certain things. You don't say it at certain places, like you're going through tsa. You don't say what you just said. Yeah, that's. There's no humor there at all. And. And if you accuse a pilot of drinking or being drunk as he's about to step on the airplane, that's. There's no tolerance for that kind of joke.

A (53:41)

Yeah. You had a video about a guy smoking weed in the. In the bathroom.

B (53:45)

Yeah, that's it. That was it.

A (53:46)

And I guess they had to do a mayday and land the airplane because there's a protocol that. Or I don't know if it's a protocol, but apparently there's, like, rigorous drug tests, and if they would have got some secondhand smoke or whatever.

B (54:00)

Yeah, there's, there's no latitude in any of that stuff. So let's say for instance, they get a random drug test at the end of the flight. And for some. Now we all know if a guy is smoking weed in the bathroom and you smell some on the outside, you're not gonna pop positive for that, most likely, but nobody wants to take that chance. And in addition to that, what's going on with this guy? I mean, there's other ways to ingest that sort of thing without smoking a doobie in the, in the bathroom, on the airplane, you know.

A (54:27)

Right.

B (54:27)

You're just asking for eat a gummy right when you're doing that. So he, there's, there was a lot more going on. But the, the pilots, you know, did they overreact? I don't know. Did I overreact? Nope. Because at some point you got to go, hey, look, this is my livelihood, man. I worked a lot of years to get here and I'm not going to let you jeopardize it. So we're going to play it right by the book.

A (54:45)

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B (56:20)

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting one.

A (56:21)

That's one of the craziest ones.

B (56:22)

To me, it is. You know, the, the, all the theories came out right away. You know, somebody stole the airplane, they're going to turn it into a bomb. You know, I just shook my head because I'm like, first of all, there's, there's only a few runways around the planet where you can land an airplane that big. Then to hide the airplane, you have to have a huge hangar. Right. And seven triple sevens don't fit all the way into most hangars. Like, the tail will stick out.

A (56:46)

Oh, really?

B (56:47)

And then on top of that, you had, what, how many people on. 250 people, let's say, on board the airplane. Yeah, you would have to get. You'd have to, I guess, kill all of those people. Or, or. And then think about how many people it would take to coordinate a plot like that. You'd have to keep everybody silent so nobody would come in front of a camera behind a microphone and spill the beans about what happened. So, so none of that stuff was ever plausible, even though there's people that write books about it, make videos about it.

A (57:13)

Yeah.

B (57:13)

That airplane is probably down at the bottom of a very deep ocean.

A (57:16)

Right.

B (57:16)

And so deep that they, they'll never find it because they haven't found it up to this point. Two things. One, the fix for that is floatable black box that you could put in the, in the tail of the airplane that on impact ejects and floats.

A (57:32)

Okay.

B (57:33)

Then you would have found. You would find where that airplane was within.

A (57:35)

And that connects to satellites or something.

B (57:37)

Well, the, the black boxes. You can put the black box anywhere in the airplane.

A (57:41)

But, like, if it crashed in the middle of the ocean, how would you find it, is my question.

B (57:44)

Like, but it would float and it would have a little. There's things called elts or emergency locator transmitters.

A (57:50)

Okay.

B (57:50)

There's a bunch of them on the airplane, and on impact, those things start going off, and they, they've got a battery in them. They'll go off for, you know, 24, 48 hours until the battery runs dead. You would have found the airplane by then. But it's Again, it's a more of an expense. The airlines don't want to incur that expense, but. And the government's spent what, 300, 400, $500 million looking for that airplane. Yeah, so. But it's, it wasn't any one government, it was a bunch. So it's a long story. But at any rate that, so the, the prevailing theories were the captain went off the deep end and just kind of took the airplane and did what he did with it. That's one theory.

A (58:25)

Yeah.

B (58:26)

I don't put a lot of credence in that.

A (58:28)

Like that he was suicidal or he.

B (58:29)

Was trying to or something. He wasn't. Yeah, I guess. But he, he. Again, how would, why would you work that whole way to get to that point in your, in your life right then just to kill a bunch of people? But Air India, you know, I'm stopping short of saying what I think completely happened with that airplane, but it looks like one of the pilots transition the fuel control switches from run to cut off as the airplane rotated. Because the only way. What one was this Air India 171. The, the airplane that, that crashed over in India about six months ago.

A (59:04)

Oh, the one where it took off and it just. And then one guy survived, right?

B (59:08)

Yeah, the one guy walked away. It was just amazing in all in itself. But the one passenger. But the, the, they, they came out with a preliminary report on that and it's the fuel control switches, which are, they're spring loaded into the locked position. You have to pick them up with both fingers, pull them up, bring them down and let go of them for them to turn off. And one of the pilots did that and the other pilot said, why'd you do that? And he said, he denied it. He said, I didn't do it. And then the other pilot is. There's kind of like panics a little bit and then eventually puts him back to run. But it wasn't quick enough to, for the airplane engines to spool up.

A (59:45)

Oh, we know this for a fact now.

B (59:46)

Yeah, it's all in the preliminary report. Oh, God. Yeah, they published all that. So again, so there's an instance where, you know, was there a pilot deciding he's going to check out that day and he took everybody with him. Okay, well, did that happen on MH370? It's, it's well within the realm of possibility.

A (60:02)

The crazy thing about the MH371 is that they turned off the transponders at like midnight or something like this. Around 12:30.

B (60:11)

Yeah.

A (60:11)

And then it did a U turn, flew back like over Malaysia, I think. And there was like visual sightings of it. Right. And then the military tracked it going back out into the South China Sea.

B (60:24)

Right.

A (60:24)

Because it turned off its transponders. But for some reason the military had like some sophisticated way of tracking it and they knew it was there. And then, then the military lost it. But then, I guess Boeing, it was determined months later that Boeing has some sophisticated technology that can, that communicates with the engines.

B (60:47)

Correct. The engines are constantly transmitting back to satellites. To satellites. Right.

A (60:52)

So these Boeing satellites traced it going. Yeah, down like south into the Indian Ocean.

B (61:00)

And all those, all that can tell you, because that information that's transmitted to Boeing is not course, speed, altitude, it's none of that stuff. It's just that what parameters are the engines operating? Are they still running so that they can monitor that stuff constantly. But when you're triangulating where the transmission came from, you can get a rough track of where that airplane went. So the, the here's the problem with the way the media reports stuff is, you know, in my opinion, most of the stuff, especially aviation related, is 80 to 90 wrong. Right. Completely wrong. They have no idea what they're talking about. And then they'll back off after a while as more facts come in and they finally get it. Maybe they get it 50, right. But everybody clammed on to they turned the transponder off. Stop. The transponder stopped transmitting. That's what happened. So there's a couple ways for that to happen. The pilot can turn it off, but the one saying the pilots turned it off, that implies a sinister intent. All we know for sure is that the transponder stopped transmitting. That could have been an onboard fire down in the E E compartment where all the electronics are. There's no way to put that fire out down there. There's no fire suppression equipment. Right. It would eventually burn out of control and the transponder would stop transmitting. However, the engines would keep running because they're a separate system. So they don't depend on the gear I have underneath me in the airplane. They'll just keep on running. It takes a lot to get those jet engines to stop running. As long as they have fuel and air, they'll keep running. So there's a potential that the airplane became what they would call a zombie flight. Right. There was an out of control fire like Swiss Air 111. It was, it was a out of control fire. Everybody on the airplane eventually gets succumbs to the fumes and the but the airplane keeps flying until it runs out of gas. So that's one of the theories. The other is the captain somehow hijacked the airplane. He would have to get rid of his co pilots or his co pilot. Right. To do that, but that's not hard to do. And then at some point, you know, he just, he just flies out there and I don't know.

A (63:13)

So. Yeah. So if there was a fire, basically what you're saying is it could have been. It could have. Everyone could have like, passed out on the plane. Everyone would have been unconscious and it would have been a ghost plane.

B (63:22)

Right.

A (63:22)

Just. Just flying on its own course until it eventually ran out of gas and the ocean.

B (63:26)

The hybrid of those two would be, let's say the captain is trying to kill himself and everybody else. So he gets the co pilot, goes to the bathroom, he locks the door, doesn't let the guy back in, and then he just depressurizes the cabin. He puts himself on oxygen, but depressurizes the cabin. All the, the masks come down in the back. Everybody's got 15 or 20 minutes of oxygen from those, but after that, everybody goes to sleep, including the co pilot that's locked out. Everybody goes to sleep and he flies the airplane wherever he wants. Thinking about what he's going to think.

A (63:57)

About and how much oxygen would he have on that, on that dedicated oxygen he'd.

B (64:03)

He'd have. He'd have a bunch. I don't know exactly. It depends on. That's a good question. He'd have more than the passengers would have. Let me put it in that category.

A (64:13)

Yeah.

B (64:13)

Probably not hours worth at that altitude. At some point he'd have to come down to a breathable altitude, but he could bring the airplane down to 10,000ft and just breathe just fine there. So.

A (64:24)

So we never found the black box, is that right?

B (64:26)

We found the airplane or the black box?

A (64:27)

Never found the black boxes. But allegedly we found pieces of the airplane. Right, Right. Washed up some off Madagascar, the coastal Maddox. I was like a year and a half later, I think.

B (64:36)

So. Which leads me to how the airplane entered the water. So if an airplane, you know, crashes, it's. It's going to come apart and leave an oil slick and everything else and all sorts of parts are going to go replaced. If it stalled at altitude, it would begin to spin and it would go in much more like a razor's edge into the water, which would mean it probably wouldn't break apart as easily as if it landed flat on the open ocean, because there's Swells in the ocean, and you're going to, like, hit a wall of water and the airplane's going to disintegrate. But if they went straight in like this, it would penetrate, right? So if, if the airplane just ran out of gas, everybody was dead. It ran out of gas. It eventually would stall, it would start a tight spin, and we go right straight down. So those are, you know, those are my theories on what happened to it. But, you know, there's, you know, there's probably a dozen more.

A (65:26)

Yeah, the best One is the UFOs abducted it, made it vanish.

B (65:30)

Absolutely. Yeah.

A (65:31)

These UFO UFOs made it, sent it through a wormhole. Wormhole portal.

B (65:37)

Oh, yeah. See, I, I get asked that question all the time. Like, I was. One of the things I did as a captain was I would ask people, I'd say, hey, if you ever had a question you want to ask your captain, this is your lucky flight. Write it down on a napkin or piece of paper, send it up to me. I'll answer your questions.

A (65:50)

Right.

B (65:50)

So about every tenth question was, have you ever seen a ufo? And I had the same answer. I'd write back every time, I'd say, not from the outside. And I just leave it at that. And I'd send it back to him.

A (66:00)

You know, not from the outside.

B (66:01)

Not from the outside. Oh, that's all I would say. No, not from the outside.

A (66:06)

And then second one is, this. Is Earth flat?

B (66:08)

Right. And is the Earth flat?

A (66:09)

Yeah.

B (66:10)

And so. Yeah, so the Earth flat one is. Is fun because there's a couple theories on that. It's the. Is it the round Earth flat or the square Earth flat theory? There's. There's two.

A (66:21)

Oh, there's two.

B (66:22)

Well, if it's square, then the moon going around the Earth has to make 90 degree turns. So we have to consider that.

A (66:28)

Oh, okay, right, That's.

B (66:30)

That's a big deal. Now if it's around like a plate, you know, like a round plate, then, okay, the moon's cool with that. But I think if the, if the Earth was flat, first of all, the cats would have pushed all of us off the edge at some point. That's number. That's the top of my theory. But the other is, where are the flat mooners? You ever heard of flat moon?

A (66:53)

I've never heard of. I've heard, I've heard the moon is a spaceship. I've heard that theory. The problem with these theories are, like, you got to be really careful because if you're a proponent of one, you got to Be careful before you jump on the bandwagon for another one because that one can disprove the one that you've already been a part of. So like, you can't start saying like the moon's a spaceship if you believe in flat Earth. Because how, how does those, those two don't reconcile. The moon can't be real if you're believing flat Earth. It's got to be like some sort of projection, right?

B (67:21)

Yeah.

A (67:21)

Oh, this is the UFO for the MH370.

B (67:24)

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's right up there with all the other theories.

A (67:29)

And you guys actually have to, you guys have to fly in like curves, curvatures. Right. To like get places.

B (67:40)

Yeah. So it's called the great circle. And so the, the Earth is a globe. It's round. No, wait a minute, I gave it away, sorry. It's, it's, it's round in globe. And if you, if you were to draw, take a piece of yarn from New York to Los Angeles on, on a globe and then flatten out the globe, your piece of yarn would be, it would be bent.

A (68:04)

Right, right, right.

B (68:05)

So to fly straight to some place on a globe, it looks like on a two dimensional flat surface, like you're going up and down like this. You're not, you're actually going straight. Oh, when you see a straight line, like if I do a straight line from New York to London. Yep. On, on a map, I would actually be going much farther out of my way to get there. Because to, to do it straight is not straight because it's round and you're flattening out. It's, it blew my mind years ago when I had to learn it and I just kind of punted mentally on it and said, yep, sounds good. It sounds good.

A (68:39)

Yeah.

B (68:39)

Just, yeah, just give me enough gas, I'll get there. Right, right, right.

A (68:42)

Yeah. And that's why we have to fly like over the North Pole or over like the top of the Earth to get to places like, like Europe or whatever. You don't fly over the ocean just like sideways, you go above.

B (68:51)

Correct.

A (68:51)

Because it's a shorter distance.

B (68:53)

That map. You go, well, the shortest distance is here. Well, not necessarily. Sometimes if you go this way, it's shorter than going this way. So.

A (68:59)

Yeah. So is there, speaking of UFOs, is there a protocol if you do see an unidentified flying object?

B (69:08)

I'm sure there's probably something in a manual someplace that says what?

A (69:11)

Even if it's not, I'm not talking aliens. I'm like anything, like anything that you can't identify.

B (69:14)

You would. You would just kind of call it in. You'd say, hey, you know, there's an object out here and it's making a light. And what is it? And does air traffic control have it on their radar? And if they say no, you go, well, here's what I'm looking at. There's lots of things that can, that can make a. A light that. This. It fools your brain going up the. The east coast of Canada on the way over to Europe. All those North Star satellites are up there now, and they. They actually light up. And. And it's really weird looking at them because they're all kind of in a line. But sometimes one lights up and the other. And it looks like it's just hopping around.

A (69:50)

Huh.

B (69:51)

You know, but it's just the way the sun is hitting one and then hits another at this. And it looks like the same. Because your brain goes, well, there's. There can only be one light up there. And because of all the stars, you know, that star is not going to move well, but that one is. It's hopping around like this, Steve. It's just a different satellites.

A (70:07)

Like, you know what I'm thinking right now? We need to show him the video that we shot on the beach.

B (70:13)

Oh, this. Yes. I've be fantastic.

A (70:16)

Love your input. Okay, so we had this gentleman on the show about two years ago who has this wild ability to pray to the sky and make orbs appear. And he said that he could do it in front of us.

B (70:30)

Okay.

A (70:31)

So we went to the beach, we brought a video camera, and he started praying to God on the beach and to Jesus to bring these orbs. He believes they're angels. And we sat there for two hours. We saw airplanes, lots of airplanes. And then we saw this orb, this little ball of light come up off the horizon and go side to side and then fizzle out kind of like. Like how. Kind of how you would imagine like one of those Chinese lanterns that float around in the sky. But it was too far and it was too bright and the brightness changed. But you're a pilot, so this would be a fantastic opportunity to get your take on what this could be.

B (71:07)

Yeah, okay, sure.

A (71:09)

So this is the video. It's. This is dark. So start from the beginning, Steve.

B (71:12)

One more time.

A (71:13)

So that's a plane flashing up there, right?

B (71:15)

Yep.

A (71:16)

Now look at the bottom.

B (71:17)

There's something right on the water. Right on the water. Thank you.

A (71:22)

Thank you.

B (71:24)

If you could flash for us. And I'm getting it right there. It's still in the camera. It's still in here.

A (71:39)

And it just disappears.

B (71:40)

Liam.

A (71:41)

Now look at this one moving.

B (71:42)

Yeah. Oh, here. Someone needs to look through this. It's very bright. Thank you.

A (71:51)

Oh, you see it?

B (71:53)

It's right there. You see it? That is definitely an orb. I'm tracking it here.

A (71:59)

Do you want to look? Yeah. Can you still see it?

B (72:02)

Let me find it.

A (72:03)

I lost it.

B (72:05)

All right, so a couple of things. I spent a lot of time in my P3 out over the open ocean. Right. That's what we did. We flew around at 200ft. So you get. You get pretty good at nighttime, daytime, differentiating between something that's on the surface of the water and an actual star or a planet that's, you know, gazillion miles away, because you don't want to confuse the two. There's been airplanes that have flown into the water thinking it was open sky and it was actually something on the surface. Right. So you gotta be real careful about that. But there's a thing called parallax. And parallax is always, like, right over the top of the water. And at night, for instance, when the moon first comes up. This is your. It's not a brain thing. It's. It's because of the. The way the. I don't know how to describe it. The. The way light is transmitted just off the surface of the. Of the planet at a distance. You'll see the moon come up and you'll go, that's gigantic. It's a. The moon is like so much closer than it ever was before. Yeah. And eventually, as it goes up into the sky, it goes back to a normal sized moon, and you're like, why was it so big there? It's the. It magnifies it because it's a parallax. So any sort of light that's off at a distance, a boat's got a light. Boats have red, green, and white lights just like airplanes. And you got it. And it gets in that parallax that's right on the horizon. It gets real big, and then. And then it goes away because the boat turned and the light's not there anymore. So there's. There's lots of explanations for that. My. The theoretical side of all of the UFO things for me is it's always. It's always just out of touch, whatever it is.

A (73:41)

Yes.

B (73:42)

It's always just beyond our comprehension or just beyond our reach. And it showed up on the horizon for just split second and it went away. And the guy had been talking to you about orbs. And he, he put, planted that seed in your mind. And she goes, it's, it is. There it is, it's an orb. And your brain goes, oh, there's only one explanation for this. Now this guy's a, he's a miracle worker and he prayed to Jesus to validate the whole thing. I mean, what could be more validating than that, right? Well, he takes all of those things, plants all those seeds in your mind and eventually some boat is going to shine its light. It's going to be in that parallax. It's going to get real big and bright for a minute and then it's going to go away. I've seen stuff like that hundreds of times and it's always something surface vessel that's got a light on.

A (74:27)

Okay. And it was, we were using a special camera, like a night vision camera. Like a. Yeah, it was, it was.

B (74:34)

A high sensitivity camera.

A (74:37)

So.

B (74:37)

Yeah, I don't mean to squash on your thing if you wanted to be an orbit sounds.

A (74:41)

No, I don't want it to be. No, I wanted to. I don't, I'm, I'm, I was just generally dumbfounded by what it could be. And I've been trying to figure it out for two years.

B (74:48)

Chicks dig that stuff, you know, and you can say, oh, I don't need chicks. All the orb.

A (74:51)

Yeah, you know, that's, that's. Wow. So, so you think it could have been boats? Okay, yeah, it was very low to the, to the horizon. So that, that is definitely possible.

B (75:02)

But what about the one that popped up like above it that went horizontal?

A (75:07)

So that one, there's one above it.

B (75:09)

Yeah.

A (75:11)

Okay, there's one on the bottom.

B (75:12)

Yeah. So you get your line right there and that.

A (75:14)

Yeah, that could definitely be about, probably.

B (75:15)

Some distance and it's in that parallax. It's probably a very small light, but it's being, it could be a cop.

A (75:19)

But with its lights flashing.

B (75:20)

There's the second, there's the second, and the second one's even farther.

A (75:23)

It could be farther away.

B (75:24)

Even farther away.

A (75:25)

Where's the horizon? I can't see the horizon.

B (75:28)

Right. But it looks like that that's where the horizon is, but it's probably not.

A (75:31)

I see what he's saying.

B (75:32)

Or it could be, it could be another airplane. It's moving pretty fast. Yeah.

A (75:37)

You know, but that could definitely be boats. I don't know why I didn't think of that.

B (75:43)

It could be a UFO too.

A (75:45)

Could be aliens.

B (75:46)

Could be aliens.

A (75:46)

Aliens might be aliens.

B (75:47)

Yeah.

A (75:50)

That thing Got bright, though.

B (75:51)

Yep.

A (75:52)

It was astonishing to me how many planes were come because I never sat outside and watched the sky for that long. It was astonishing how many planes were coming in to land off the. Off the freaking coast. It was crazy. There must have been like 200 planes we saw like, that were coming into land off the coast.

B (76:09)

Was that in Miami?

A (76:10)

No, that was right here.

B (76:10)

Oh, right here.

A (76:11)

Yeah. Right, right, like literally right on the beach right there.

B (76:13)

Yeah. Okay.

A (76:14)

Tampa Airport.

B (76:16)

Yeah. So there's lots of explanations for that, but, you know, it's. Yeah.

A (76:20)

Have you heard the Navy pilots talk about those. Those things that they were seeing when they were doing their training off of. Off North Carolina and off San Diego. What did you make of that stuff?

B (76:35)

I, you know, again, I wasn't there, so it's hard to say. Again, the. The bigger picture on those things are. It's always grainy video.

A (76:45)

Yeah.

B (76:45)

It's always just kind of out of reach. It. It happens so quickly, you can hardly tell what it is. It's never, you know, I mean, if you're in. If you're a superior being from hundreds or thousands of light years away and you traveled all the way here, don't you want somebody to see your spaceship or marvel at your technology? You know, and why is it that they always crash in Roswell, New Mexico? I don't understand that. Maybe has something to do with the economy or something. But again, there's, you know, there's probably a lot of explanations for this. I. I love this one because it's very convincing. It's got the. He's got his FLUR radar on at night. He's doing the infrared stuff.

A (77:24)

So this is coming off of a plane that's flying in one direction over the water, and it's locked on something flying the opposite direction, which making it. Makes it look like it's going like a bajillion miles an hour.

B (77:33)

Right.

A (77:34)

So there's definitely a parallax element involved in this video where that could. I've heard the case that that could actually be like a bird or something.

B (77:42)

Something normal. Or it's. If you see it's completely stationary on the scope. Those scopes don't lock on like that like it does. It doesn't move. What that tells me is that's probably something on the lens. Like, you'll get. You'll get floaters in your eye.

A (77:55)

That'll.

B (77:56)

You actually see something that's not really out there in front of you. It's on your eyeball. That could be something else. I don't know. I don't know enough about how that technology works to. Huh. But it's, it stays perfectly right there the whole time. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't, didn't move around a lot, you know, like the camera would be looking for it. Like your eyeball would be looking. The camera does the same thing. It's trying to lock on. It's just so. I don't know, maybe it's bird droppings on the.

A (78:21)

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of weird stuff. It's definitely. I mean, I know that fighter pilots, they have to be pretty mentally sound.

B (78:32)

Oh, they do.

A (78:33)

I'm sure they have to go through probably the same amount of. Maybe not. I would imagine they would have similar standards and requirements like to physicals and mental health and stuff like that for commercial pilots like yourself.

B (78:46)

Yeah, there's, there's guys that are into this sort of thing and it's, there's nothing wrong with it mentally. I mean, sometimes it's a, like a hobby or. Yeah. A pursuit. I, I flew with a guy once, an airline pilot, that was into a thing called a Course in Miracles. And a course in miracles is not a course like you would take a college course. It's an actual religion. And, and it's a, it's the, it's the Nth degree of existentialism. It's the, the idea that everything going on around us, we don't even know whether we exist or if this is reality or what is reality. Yeah. So this guy didn't know whether he was alive or not, what reality was. And we talked for four hours. We were coming back from Los Angeles to Boston. He told about what he believed. Wow. And, and I was fascinated by it. A little concerned at the same time, but fascinated. And, but he, he said this could be a giant movie plane in front of us right now, and we're just all part of that movie that's playing. And I thought, okay, well, as long as your part includes lowering the flaps in the gear before we, we touch down, I'm good. I'm good with that. And he did, he lowered the flaps in the gear and I was good. Did with the conclusion of that movie. But he was 100 convinced that he wasn't sure whether he existed or not.

A (80:03)

And he passed all his tests before getting on that plane.

B (80:07)

No, he wasn't drunk. He was, he was totally into what he believed. And so the mind is capable of comprehending a lot of things and there's.

A (80:15)

Certain, there's certain substances that can enhance that that don't necessarily. You don't have to be under the influence while you're correct. They can enhance it. Like long term.

B (80:24)

Yeah.

A (80:25)

Or change your perspectives. Blow your perspectives on reality out of the water.

B (80:29)

Yes. You know, I've heard such things.

A (80:32)

I bet you've had some very interesting conversations flying planes.

B (80:35)

Yeah, I've done a lot of counseling at 37, 000ft, you know, so.

A (80:43)

I've heard that. Is it true that when you are making a trip on a plane that the most dangerous point of the trip is when you're taking off?

B (80:56)

Correct.

A (80:57)

The first, I think like 20 minutes when you're trying to get into crew to like the cruising altitude.

B (81:04)

Takeoff in general is the, is the most dangerous part of the flight because you're the heaviest you're ever going to be. You're the slowest you're going to be. You've got the power pushed all the way up and so you don't have a lot of extra power to grab a hold of if you need it. And now you do have a little bit, you've got a little bit of a margin, but not the way you would when you were landing. Landing, you've gotta, you have burned off a bunch of your fuel. You're. You're still slow, but you've got your flaps out and so forth. But the power's basically pulled all the way back to idle. So if you need those engines, you're just going to push them up. So that's the difference between landing and taking off. Taking off is the most precarious because you're, you're, your thrust is all the way up and you're the heaviest you're ever going to be. So if you're going to have a problem, and it's like I just did a video, it went out two days ago on United 803. Took off out of. I don't remember where it was now. It was Denver, one of those airports. But they, they took off and they had a engine failure between V1 and rotate, which is the go, no go speed on the Runway. So you have to get. You. If you lose an engine after V1, you must go flying. You don't have enough concrete in front of you to stop the airplane. Right. So it's the worst possible place to lose an engine. They lost an engine, they rotated. It was out of Dulles. They took off. They, they lit the side of the Runway on fire because of some of the debris that went over into the dry grass. And these guys did an absolute master class in how to get an airplane off the ground with a single engine at full gross weight. They were going to Tokyo.

A (82:41)

Oh, my God.

B (82:42)

That was as heavy as a triple seven gets.

A (82:44)

From Dulles.

B (82:45)

From Dulles all the way to Tokyo. 6,000 mile trip. That's as heavy as it gets. They lost the engine at the worst possible spot. And just like their training, I get trained in this every nine months. They fail an engine on the Runway at max gross weight, and you have to get that airplane airborne. So they're climbing out and they're doing a great job. The air traffic controller's asking information, you know, tell us about this. Tell us about. Finally, the pilot just goes, I'll get back to you. I'm busy doing checklists. Yeah, they're doing. He's trying to fly the airplane right. Because it's a real thin margin, but the airplane will fly fine on one engine. But you don't want to stall it. You don't want to get too slow, but you still got to continue to climb. So there it's. It takes the skills of a guy that's been around for that many years to fly that airplane safely out. And they did. They did it right by the book. It was a brilliant rendition of how that should go.

A (83:37)

And they were able to turn it around and land it.

B (83:39)

Yeah, they got the airplane up to altitude. They got all their checklists done, did all their communicating. They even dumped fuel to lighten ship a little bit. When they touched down, they blew a tire.

A (83:47)

Over the ocean?

B (83:49)

No, it was up over Dulles. They were over Washington, D.C. what do.

A (83:52)

You mean when you say dump fuel?

B (83:53)

So the center fuel tank, you can get rid of the fuel in that. You can dump it out the ends of the wings. So if you're overweight and you need to lighten ship a little bit, you can. You can jettison fuel. So they have to activate the fuel jettison system. It takes 20, 25 minutes to get rid of all the center section fuel. But you're going to lighten the airplane maybe by a hundred thousand pounds.

A (84:13)

And they just release it into the air.

B (84:15)

Yeah, but you go above 5,000ft and it dissipates into the end.

A (84:18)

Oh, does it really?

B (84:19)

Right. So there's a hard altitude for that. You don't want to do it below 5,000 because.

A (84:22)

Make it rain it.

B (84:23)

Yeah, it's.

A (84:25)

That wouldn't be good.

B (84:25)

As they say in, in the uk, It's. It's frightfully bad formal chap to do that.

A (84:32)

That's crazy. I was once flying in I flew on this really tiny airplane to the Bahamas. And it was like a, there was, it was enough to fit the pilot, the person sitting next to the pilot, and then two people directly behind it. And we were like flying really low over Florida and we were just having this conversation about like, like all the worst things that could happen right now, like in this plane and we're flying like over Okeechobee or whatever. And I'm like, what would happen if, like, what's the worst thing that could happen right now? He's like, I don't know, lose both my engines. And I'm like, really? I'm like, does that not freak you out? And he's like, no. And he was explaining to me like how he's already like in his mind he's constantly processing where he can land in an emergency, how he would land it, all that stuff. He's like, I got that highway there, I got that highway there, I got that big empty farmland over there. And he's like just constantly hyper processing, like what would, what the worst case scenario would be.

B (85:31)

Yeah.

A (85:32)

And that got me thinking, like, okay, now I can understand why some of these people are like not, you know, they're not like fully mentally like stable. Like if you're constantly in this hyper vigilant state all the time, like I imagine that can't be healthy.

B (85:47)

Well, it goes back. It's, it's part of your training. So when you first started flying, before you even got that first solo or anything out of the way, you were flying a single engine airplane, most likely a little Cessna, and you had a single engine. If that failed, you had to put it down someplace. So the first instructor you had, you got airborne and the instructor said, start looking, keep your head on a swivel, keep looking out for a place you can put this airplane down if you need to. And that gets ingrained in you in those early days. Then you get into a two engine airplane and you're still kind of doing the same thing right?

A (86:15)

Right now this thing was probably a one engine, now that I think of it, yeah.

B (86:18)

Single engine airplane. Your head's on a swivel all the time because if you lose your one and only engine, you're gonna have to put it down in a farmer's field, on the beach, on a road someplace. So you're. I've, I've got my own airplane now and it's a single engine airplane. I hadn't flown single engine in 30 plus years. And as I was flying it back from where I bought It, I had that same nervousness back when I was a young pilot. I'm sitting there the whole time just on edge, doing like this, you know, like, okay, I could put it down there. I could put it down there. And I thought, oh, I haven't lived like this for a long time.

A (86:49)

Yeah, right.

B (86:50)

Because the, the triple seven is so reliable. I'm not sitting up there the whole time thinking, where am I gonna put this airplane down? You know, I'm gonna fly to some major airport.

A (86:56)

There's always so many crazy stories about single engine airplanes in Florida. I feel like every day in the news, you get some crazy wacky story.

B (87:03)

Yeah, there's a bunch of them.

A (87:04)

There was an interview I watched with this pro golfer, a young. I think it was a younger dude, and this was on a pot. He was, Went on somebody's podcast and he was explaining how he went golfing with Donald Trump at one of, the, One of the go. I think it was the golf course in West Palm. And they're like, sitting there, like in the golf carts or whatever, and all of a sudden, like, Trump's security comes rushing over to him. He's like, Mr. President, there's. There's a situation. We need to get you off the golf course. He's like, what? And apparently, like, this all happened so fast. All of a sudden, these, like, fighter jets came in right above them, and there was this little single engine Cessna flying over the golf course. And I guess there's some crazy protocol where wherever the President is, there has to be a no fly zone around him. And there was this like, old guy in like his 70s or 80s, maybe, I don't know how old. He was flying his single engine plane really low right above the golf course where they're playing golf. And these freaking fighter jets come in on both sides of it, and it happens all so quick. And he's like this kid, this golfer, this pro golfer who's explaining this to these people on the podcast, he goes, he goes, donald Trump looked at me and he goes, that's power. Can you imagine?

B (88:22)

Yeah, that's so crazy.

A (88:23)

Yeah.

B (88:24)

That's how addictive that power gets, you know?

A (88:26)

Right.

B (88:26)

Every place the President goes, there's a, There's a prohibited area. And they'll put it out on a note on a notice to airmen. And then that's why you have to check your notes before you go flying. But you can't fly in that. Nobody can fly in that area. Wherever he is.

A (88:40)

Yeah, I couldn't imagine. I just couldn't imagine being that poor guy in the Cessna. When there's two, those four fighter jets pull up on both sides of you trying to get you.

B (88:47)

Yeah. You would soil your pants.

A (88:49)

Oh, my God. Yeah. So, like, for you, what was your personal, like, what was, like, the hairiest moment you've ever been in in an airplane?

B (89:00)

I've. I've had two. The. Not with the airlines. Airlines are pretty mundane and very regimented. It doesn't mean they couldn't have happened. But I. Back in the Navy days, I was. The first one was we were doing workups to go on deployment. So six month deployment, the six weeks before you go on deployment, you go out and you practice like you're gonna play for real. And you put bombs on the wings and fill the airplane up with gas and go do missions off the coast, right? So it was really bad weather. We were up in Brunswick, Maine, and a nor' easter was coming through, and we were still trying to get mission done. So we got out to the operating area. It took us about 45 minutes. The weather was so bad, we couldn't get anything done. So we. We aborted the mission and came back. So now the airplane is really pretty full of gas still. I didn't, you know, the four hours I was supposed to be out there didn't burn all that gas off. So I come back and the weather has deteriorated from where we left. And I'm thinking, you know, I just want to go home. Right? So we. We try an approach and we come down and. And we had to wave off because of the. The. We didn't get the Runway. And we came back a second time, and the. The wind was whipping 90 degrees off the Runway. It was within the limits of the airplane, but it was really blowing hard. And the rain, like, just buckets of rain. And the top. The surface of the. The Runway, the wind was blowing so hard, there was, like, little bubbles in the water. It was. It was blowing that hard.

A (90:20)

Whoa.

B (90:21)

So we got the airplane down. We touched down. I. I brought the four engines on that airplane. I brought all four engines into reverse, and we were hydroplaning, but I didn't know it. You don't know you're hydroplaning until you go to touch the brakes. And so I tried to bring it in reverse, and the airplane starts sliding sideways because the wind is blowing us that way. And I'm like, holy moly. We're not. We're sliding. So I brought him out of reverse, and I hit the brakes. When I hit the brakes, nothing happened. It was like A cheesy Saturday afternoon movie where they cut the brake lines, you know, and the guy's hitting the brakes, you know, and I'm. I'm pounding the brakes and nothing. And so we're not slowing down. And I tried bringing it reverse again. We lost about another 50ft, and we're just about off the side of the Runway, so don't do that again. My co pilot, God bless him, we were at. We had 2, 000ft of Runway left in front of us, and he yells out to me, he goes, 2, 000ft remaining. And I looked at my airspeed, and I'm doing about 110 knots still. And I touched on at about 125. So I've. I've lost 15 knots in that. In all the Runway we've burned up. And I'm like, oh, man. And so I'm thinking, we're going off the end of the Runway. It was black pitch, black night out. We had bombs on the wings full of gas, like. So I remember having that fleeting thought of, okay, when we come to a stop off the end of the Runway, if I'm still alive, how am I going to get out of this airplane? Like, I went through a real quick inventory of the three ways to get out of the airplane, and then I just threw up an arrow print. I just said, God help stop this airplane. And I think I even said it out loud. And I. I hit the brakes one last time. And at the far end of the Runway, I guess it was dry enough that the brakes took now. So the. The airplane is like a giant tricycle, right? It's got a nose gear and two main mounts, so we're sideways because of the wind. So this tricycle is sideways. And when I hit the brakes and they took, the airplane started to hop, you know, and so it's like, bam, bam, bam, bam. And it. We're coming to the end of the Runway, and I'm like, I'm gonna go off the end of this Runway. So I grabbed the nose wheel, the little tillers off to my left, and there was a taxiway that went this way, and I just grabbed it and pulled it for as much as I could to get the. A little bit of nose wheel action going that way. And we stopped, and the. The engines are turning like that, and the wind is blowing against it and the airplane shaking. And I looked in the nose of the airplane was off the end of the Runway and. But the front main tire was behind us a little bit. That's where it sits it was actually still on the pavement. So we, it was a 10,000 foot Runway and we used up 9,999 of it.

A (92:56)

That's insane.

B (92:58)

Yep. So we stopped on the Runway and now the guys behind in the back, they have no clue what's going on. They're just along for the ride. Right. So there's four of us up in the cockpit. So it was one of those moments where we all took our headsets off and put them in our laps because we're all just like, like, you know, and eventually one of the guys in the back comes like, hey, flight, are we going to taxi off and get rid of these bombs? I'm like, I'm like, yeah, just give us a minute. And then the tower called, hey, you guys okay? Yep, yep, we're okay. We're just having a moment, you know, just, we'll be with you. So we taxied off. We got rid of the bombs. I went to get, I went to get out of my seat and my knees were knocking so bad I couldn't stand up. And it's hard to describe that feeling. I'm looking at my legs and they're doing like this inside my, my, my flight suit and I'm like, okay. And that was the adrenaline letdown. So.

A (93:47)

Oh, my God.

B (93:48)

That was, that was number one. The other one was very similar. I was flying students around one day in a, in a King Air twin engine airplane. And we had a. The rudder got stuck and the airplane started to kind of go over at about 20ft. And it's counterintuitive, but if you pull the power back off the opposite engine, the airplane will right itself. And I did. I don't know why I did, but I did. And the airplane righted. So if we came around, I slammed on the brakes and the same, same reaction. My knees are just knocking so bad. And the students had no idea what was going on. You know, they're totally clueless at that point. I'm like, oh, you know. So after that second one, I went up to my ops chief, this was a Monday. And I told him what happened. I said, I'm, I'm. Don't put me on the schedule until next Monday. I said, I need to go have a week week and just reflect. And he looked at me and said, okay, just let me know when you want to come back. It didn't come off my leave or sick or anything. I just had to have a mental health week. And I came back the next Monday. I said, I'm good to go.

A (94:45)

That's good. You know, you have the mental health.

B (94:47)

Sometimes you just got to reflect on your life choices, you know? Yeah.

A (94:51)

Yeah, totally, man. Yeah, it is. It's funny. I don't know if it's funny, but it's interesting how even the most devout atheists will find God on an airplane with. With when there's turbulence or when something goes south. I even saw this morning, I was watching just some random stuff on YouTube and there was a. Which I don't know if this is a good idea or not. You could probably allude to this better than me, but the pilot got on the. On the comms and he was like, everyone, please, please pray.

B (95:20)

No, that's. That's not a good thing.

A (95:23)

And it was a. It was. It was some airline over in India, or not India, somewhere over there in that part of the world. And something happened with the engine where the plane was rattling like a. Like a. Like a closed drying machine for like an hour and a half, and they had to land it. Something was wrong with the engines. And he was telling everyone to pray.

B (95:44)

Yeah, that might. You got to know your culture, and that might work.

A (95:47)

Maybe.

B (95:48)

And.

A (95:48)

Yeah, maybe a different culture.

B (95:49)

Back in the day, when I was training students back in the early 90s, we had Saudi Arabian students that came over, and they're all Muslim. And those guys, we'd get up in the airplane and we would give them emergencies on purpose as part of the training. And we'd. We'd fail an engine. Not fail it, but pull the power back on it. And to a person, they'd start praying. And so you had. You had to work them through that. And I'd say, you know, Muhammad or whatever the guy's name was, I said, look, we're going to go up today. I'm going to fail an engine on you. I'd be more than happy to pray with you when we get back down on the ground.

A (96:20)

Right, right.

B (96:21)

But I will give you a down. I will fail you if the first thing you do is start praying. I need you to do your emergency procedures. And it was about 50, 50. These guys had stopped. They'd get. They'd get in a panic, and their first reflex was to pray. They go, this is not a time to pray. This is a time to do step one, step two, step three, as you memorize them and fly the airplane. And the guys, they would get over it. But part of the training was to get them over their initial impulse either to scream or to. To, you know, just gonna have tunnel vision or to pray in Their case. And they get. They did. They'd eventually get through the training and. And, you know, they're good to go.

A (96:57)

Yeah. Yeah. That's a weird thing.

B (96:58)

There's a time for praying and there's.

A (97:00)

There's definitely not a. Definitely when you're flying an airplane is not a time to pray.

B (97:04)

No, it's a.

A (97:05)

You can pray if you're in charge of flying the airplane at least, or.

B (97:07)

If you got 2, 000ft remaining, you're still at 110 knots. Throw up a little prayer. That worked for me.

A (97:12)

Oh, you know, God. Yeah. I was in your own head. Not. Not on the calm speakers.

B (97:16)

Right. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your cap.

A (97:18)

So here's my question.

B (97:19)

Question.

A (97:19)

If something is going south and you're piloting a plane with, you know, a couple hundred people, passengers on board, how do you know when to communicate and when not to communicate stuff?

B (97:32)

Well, I try to put myself in the position of a passenger in the back of the airplane. Right. So you're trained from day one. Like that head on the swivel thing. You're also trained aviate, navigate, communicate in that order. Fly the airplane first. Yeah, that's your first priority. Then get to where you're going. Navigate. That's your second priority. The third one is communicate. So you saw that. That flight out of Dulles with that Triple 7 crew. They finally got fed up trying to answer questions and he just said, I'm busy. Right. Leave me alone.

A (97:59)

Right.

B (97:59)

I'll get back to you when I can. That's the least of my priorities.

A (98:02)

Right.

B (98:03)

So, same thing with the passengers. You do want to let them in on what's going on. And I think people appreciate honesty. Now, there's. There's varying degrees of honesty. You know, you can be totally blunt and. And have that shaky voice and go, I don't know what's going to happen. No, you don't want to share that level of honesty.

A (98:20)

Right.

B (98:20)

What you do want to be is reassuring. Most pilots are pretty good at it and just tell people what's going on. Hey, folks, we've got the right engine. We've had to shut it down. Here's what happened. The airplane flies just fine on one engine. It does at all. Gross weights. We're going to come back to the airport we just took off from. We're going to land. It's going to take about 25 minutes. I have a couple of checklists to get through. Please follow the instructions of your flight attendants. That's all you need to let them know. And Most people will be reassured. They'll. They heard from the guy in charge and they feel reassured by that he cares about you and, and that he or she is in charge and they've got it under control. Right. That's very reassuring. Especially if you're.

A (98:56)

Do you have to practice that?

B (98:58)

No, no, just. It just kind of comes, you know.

A (99:01)

It comes with the job.

B (99:02)

Right.

A (99:02)

Because I imagine there's got to be certain folks maybe from like the northeastern United States who aren't that great of sugar at sugar coating stuff.

B (99:12)

Yeah, there's. I mean there's all sorts every, we have all sorts of different personalities.

A (99:16)

Yeah.

B (99:17)

Yeah, I've run into them. Some do it better than others.

A (99:20)

So is, is turbulence ever dangerous?

B (99:26)

Turbulence is annoying. It can be dangerous. But there's. We just released a course called conquering your fear of flying. And in that course we talk about overcoming your fear of turbulence because that's kind of like the number one thing people don't like when the airplane starts to bounce.

A (99:41)

Right.

B (99:41)

So there's light, moderate and severe turbulence. You're not allowed to be dispatched through severe turbulence if it's known they can't fly you through it. You have to go around it or don't go flying. Now, moderate and light. Yeah, all the time. Right. The airplane is not going to come apart. It's not, it's just completely over engineered for that. Yeah. If you think about turbulence like, like the current in a river or water currents, when it's nice and smooth, it's like you're on the lake, there's just no currents. But you start going down the river and the current picks up a little bit in speed. So you start getting into some light turbulence and it's, it's kind of annoying, but it's no dangerous to you. The, the moderate turbulence are like the white water rafting. You know, you're kind of holding onto the armrest and you're holding on to your drink and you're going through the white water.

A (100:25)

You could capsize.

B (100:27)

You could in a boat. Right, right in the water. You drown in the water, but you're in an airplane. It's not going to capsize. It's not going to turn over. It's going to bounce. It's going to make you feel uncomfortable. But the wings aren't going to come off the airplane. It's again, they're not nearly as dense as the water is. It's just air currents. But like anything else, when there's converging currents that come in together like the jet streams going this way and something else is going that way. It's going to cause bumps. I try to avoid it just for the comfort level for the passengers, but there's no danger to the airplane at all.

A (100:56)

No danger. It's not dangerous at all.

B (100:58)

It's just annoying in the back.

A (100:59)

Back.

B (101:00)

And it makes you nervous.

A (101:01)

That's reassuring.

B (101:02)

Right. And the other thing is, what the hell is this? He's going to show me all this Aloha Air. He said that planes are going to come apart.

A (101:11)

And this image popped up in my room.

B (101:13)

Yes. Yeah. No, Aloha.

A (101:15)

I don't remember this.

B (101:16)

Yeah, that was a, that was a corrosion issue that they had with those airplanes. And, and that whole. Because of the pressurization.

A (101:22)

What is that?

B (101:23)

Those are all the seats. Is that like three people?

A (101:26)

Is that plane on the ground?

B (101:27)

No, they were airborne.

A (101:29)

How did they get that photo?

B (101:30)

I don't know. It's probably Photoshopped.

A (101:32)

That's got to be AI that's on the ground. The other one was in the sky that you were just showing Steve.

B (101:37)

Yeah, that's probably Photoshop on the left.

A (101:39)

Yeah, that one.

B (101:40)

Yeah, that's. That's the ground photo. See the guy standing?

A (101:42)

Yeah. Somebody put it, ah, they put it in there. I see. So what, what was the story with this?

B (101:47)

So it was a corrosion issue. And, and they had a. The basically the airplane is pressurized from the inside and if, if something starts to give way, it'll. It'll rip. And it ripped the whole top of that Aloha jet off. Whoa. That's a 737. But look, all that damage in the airplane still flew.

A (102:07)

Did everyone survive?

B (102:08)

I think three people died. I think there. One row of passengers was like sucked.

A (102:12)

Out because they weren't wearing their seat belts.

B (102:14)

Well, that's why I tell people, keep your seat belt fastened.

A (102:18)

Yeah, that's right.

B (102:19)

That's the worst.

A (102:19)

I never buckle my seatbelt.

B (102:20)

That's the worst case example of that. But, but. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna convert you here.

A (102:26)

I always, I always go like this when they're walking by, so they can't see if I'm wearing my seat belt or not.

B (102:31)

Why do you do that? Why do you do that? Because look above you. 12 inches. 18 inches above you is a hard surface. Right. So you're probably not going to get sucked out of the airplane like that. That's a one in a billion shot. What's going to happen is you're going to be in some turbulence that, that pops up that fast and you're going to come out of that seat, hit that overhead, break your neck, and that's it. It. And you know, and you know how much liability the air, the, the airline is under?

A (102:56)

0.

B (102:56)

0. Because that seat belt sign was on. And I probably came on and told you to fasten your seat belt and if you unbuckled it, that's on you.

A (103:04)

I'm converted.

B (103:05)

Yep.

A (103:06)

So let me ask you this. Where is the best, safest seat on the airplane for somebody?

B (103:12)

Your couch at home? There isn't one.

A (103:14)

Really?

B (103:15)

Yeah.

A (103:15)

I mean, I'm sure depending on how the plane if, if a plane crashes.

B (103:21)

No two plane crashes are the same.

A (103:22)

Right.

B (103:23)

It's hard to, to run the numbers on that. Some people say the back of the airplane because the front of the airplane takes the impact.

A (103:29)

Right.

B (103:29)

Some people say what, 11A. Because that guy in Air India walked away. He was an 11A in India. Yeah. And he, he just next to the exit. So he was right in the leading edge of the wing. Right where the back of that, the damage is right there.

A (103:43)

Yeah.

B (103:44)

There's a thing called the wing spar. And the wing spar is the heaviest, hardest part of the airplane. It's like a big old I beam that goes from one wing to the other.

A (103:51)

Right.

B (103:51)

And he was right behind that. So they think that that wing spar took most of the impact that he would have taken. And then he's a pretty big strong guy.

A (104:00)

Yeah.

B (104:00)

He just got lucky.

A (104:03)

Good lord.

B (104:04)

He just did. You know, the fireball and everything else. How did he walk out of all that? That.

A (104:08)

I have to use the restroom real quick. Yeah, we'll take a quick five minute break. Have you ever heard of the summer of the shark?

B (104:15)

No. No.

A (104:16)

The theory is that during the summer months there's usually. Or there was one. I think there was one specific summer where there was like more shark attacks ever reported in history. And that was like the summer that there was nothing happening in the news and all the news channels, they needed to make stories. So they were just highlighting all the shark attacks that were happening, happening. And they thought, oh my God, the sharks are on a rampage right now, just eating people. What's going on? But that's all it was like they were just focusing more on the sharks. And I think that's what happens with airplanes. Right. It's like when there's an airplane crash, the news just grabs onto it, makes it a huge spectacle.

B (104:49)

Absolutely.

A (104:50)

And, and so it seems like there's.

B (104:53)

A lot of plane crash and it's been so safe. There's been so little of that the last 15 years that it doesn't make the news. But this past year started out with a DCA crash up in Washington and then Air India was after that and. And this ups one a couple of months ago. So there's been some major crashes. It's been a long time since then. And channels like mine where I cover incidents and accidents three or four times a week. We're not making them up, they're just. There's that stuff happens out there, you just don't hear about it. And now we're reporting on it. So now it seems like, oh my word, you know. No, it's not any more frequent than it was in the past. It's just getting reported more than it was.

A (105:28)

Yeah. And when you see those graphics of all of the planes that are in the air in the continental United States at one time, it's insane.

B (105:38)

Right?

A (105:38)

You can't even see the actual map because it's covered in planes Everywhere every.

B (105:45)

Day.104,000 takeoffs and landings worldwide every day.

A (105:50)

Try to find an image that. Because that's. I think people should see that, like how many planes are actually in the air? That. Yeah. The one on the top, right?

B (105:57)

Yep.

A (105:58)

Oh my God. How crazy is that?

B (106:01)

Now if an airplane was as big as Idaho, it would look like that.

A (106:05)

Right? Right.

B (106:06)

That's true. But that's a lot. You know.

A (106:12)

Is it true you can't fly over the North Pole or over Antarctica?

B (106:17)

You can. It's just we. I've flown close to the North Pole. It's. It depends on what kind of nav equipment you get. It gets a little squirrely as everything is south. You know, it gets a little squirrely, but there are so many redundant systems now, especially with gps, that you're. You're talking to something out in outer space instead of something on the ground or something that's internal, that doesn't know where to go when you get to true north or the. The North Pole. But. Yeah.

A (106:43)

What is that anomaly we were looking at the other day, Steve? There's. There's this anomaly in the. In the South Atlantic Anomaly. Have you heard of this?

B (106:50)

M.

A (106:53)

There's like this weird hole in the atmosphere where there's like a ton of radiation coming through the Earth and they call it the South Atlantic Anomaly. I believe the South Atlantic Anomaly is a large expanding weak spot in the Earth's magnetic field over South America and the South Atlantic, allowing charged solar particles to drip closer to the surface. So that must not be a Big deal.

B (107:17)

Well, I think it is if you, if you. There's times where solar activity is higher than. Than other times.

A (107:21)

Yeah.

B (107:22)

And you'll get.

A (107:23)

Yeah, look at that. That's crazy.

B (107:24)

Yeah. We just did a video talking about, with about a bit flip and how this airplane, I think it was a JetBlue airplane coming from Cancun, just nosed over and that's what started. They, they grounded all the air buses. Not all of them, half of them. About 6,000 airplanes. To, to update the software because this, this of this bit flip possibility and that they said happened because of a solar flare. So in, in spots like that. Is it the incident of solar flares higher? Yeah. Could it, could it cause a bit flip? It could. So again, you don't want to risk that sort of thing. Right. But it's. It all, it's all kind of very rare anyway, to see a bit flip is once in a life.

A (108:06)

Go back to that last graphic, Steve, that you had with all the airplanes in the sky at once. So what's up with those circles? Why are there no planes in those circles?

B (108:16)

It's called the Himalayas. So nobody flies over the Himalayas.

A (108:20)

Oh, those are mountainous areas.

B (108:23)

Correct.

A (108:23)

Okay, that makes sense.

B (108:26)

Yeah. You can't really. There's no if. So the Himalayas are 35, 000ft. If you got an airplane that's a capable of flying over it, you've only got 2,000 foot of clearance. And then if something goes wrong and you lose an engine and you have to descend, you got no place to go.

A (108:42)

Right.

B (108:42)

You're in a bowl and you can't get out of it. So those, those circles are bowls where nobody can, can get out of it. So they, they don't frequently dispatch an airplane through those places. You go around them.

A (108:54)

That makes a lot of sense.

B (108:55)

Yep. Mountains.

A (108:56)

I would be remiss if I had you on the podcast or if I had a airplane pilot podcast. I didn't ask him about the Bermuda Triangle. What's going on there?

B (109:06)

I was into that when I was a kid. I really like everything about the Bermuda Triangle.

A (109:09)

It's fascinating. So the Bermuda Triangle, people that aren't aware is the Triangle, if you connect, if you connect the dots between Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico, right?

B (109:19)

Yeah, something like that.

A (109:20)

And allegedly there's been more plane disappearing. Planes disappearing in that area than ever.

B (109:25)

Yeah, ships, you know, there was some ghost ships where the ship was just floating and everybody was gone.

A (109:30)

There was even a story where there was a plane that allegedly time traveled or something. Something through the Bermuda Triangle.

B (109:36)

Have you heard that one? Yeah, I hadn't heard that one, but.

A (109:37)

I, they, what's the story with that one? The time traveling flight of four or.

B (109:41)

Five World War II airplanes and they all disappeared. And you know, it was weird stuff. I, you know, I, I, I was into that when I was a kid. I haven't looked at much. I, all I know is that that's extremely dense area for air traffic.

A (109:55)

Is it?

B (109:55)

Yeah. So the, the odds of something happening in that area are going to go through the roof. And then when you start to plant those seeds of. We have. Yeah. But you know, and you name it something, the Bermuda Triangle, it just, it just becomes fascinating. Then all of a sudden you're maybe seeing or reading something into it that's not really there.

A (110:10)

You've never seen anything weird with your instruments or anything flying through there? No, never.

B (110:14)

No, there's no weird magnetic force there. And I've flown in and out of Miami but bunches of times right through the Bermuda Triangle and nothing really. Yeah. But you know, wow. Makes for great books and stories and videos.

A (110:29)

Yeah. Did you find the time traveling thing, Steve? The story of the plane. Oh, what is this? The Arena Triangle. Time travel airplane myth is fueled by real events. Most notably the pilot Bruce Gurnan's 1970 claim of flying through a time bending vortex, reducing a 90 minute flight to 47 minutes. Oh, that's not much the story, the stories of Flight 19's 1945 disappearance where comp, where compasses failed leading to loss. Huh? Oh, okay.

B (111:11)

There was an old episode of the Twilight Zone back in the day where they were coming back from Europe to Idle Wild Airport. Back in the day is what JFK was called before it was jfk. And they, they go through some time warp and they're looking for, they're looking for the airport. But all it is is prehistoric land and there's dinosaurs on the ground and they're like, you know what happened? You know, they went through some time warp. It's true. Because it was on an episode of the Twilight Zone. Okay.

A (111:40)

Yeah. This is a little good diagram of the Berrida Triangle.

B (111:43)

Yeah. See, it's like Niagara Falls. It sucks people in like that and then fills itself in.

A (111:48)

Right, right, right, right, right.

B (111:50)

It hate it when that happens. Yeah, yeah.

A (111:52)

Damn it.

B (111:53)

You're here to.

A (111:54)

You're, you're, you're, you're killing all my dreams here. You're killing all my.

B (111:58)

I told you I was into that stuff. I mean there's all sorts of great stories about the Bermuda Triangle.

A (112:03)

Yeah.

B (112:03)

And, you know, maybe I'll do a video on it sometime. Do.

A (112:09)

So for you, what has been, like, the most, like, out of all the stuff that you've, that you've produced on your channel, like, all the content that you've made, like, was there anything that surprised you? That, like, because obviously you're, you're kind of like, you're the. When you were a pilot your whole career, you're kind of like living in a bubble, right. You're not like, really, like, dealing with the public's perception of this stuff and dealing with like, the specific anxieties or interests of the public. But now that you're kind of like in the public light doing all this stuff, you have much more of a connection to, like, people's interests and, and what people are afraid of. Like, what's kind of shocked you or surprised you the most about that?

B (112:45)

Sure, that's a great question because you get into. And there's the, the having a social media influencer position that's different than being a pilot from day to day. But you don't realize how interested people are in what you do as a pilot. I always told my co pilots, I said, look, we've got the greatest job on the planet. If you're going to trade hours for dollars, this is a great job. And it's one of the few jobs on the planet that still has a fair amount of respect associated with it. Kids wave to you from the airport. People think you're neat. They want to know what you do for a living. When you go to a cocktail party, you know that people will chat it up with you. Oh, tell me about flying an airplane. Right. So it's, it's it. People respect that, that position so that you have to, you have to respect it as well. In addition to that, now having a channel where we're talking about incidents, accidents or stuff related to aviation, there's a. You take on a journalistic responsibility, which is something that, that I would have never associated with me. Years ago, I didn't have any journalistic responsibility of anything. But now we have a voice in the space and people tune in because they want to know what Captain Steve thinks about something. And that really solidified with the Air India crash because we were the first ones to break the picture of the rat. So the rat is the RAM air turbine that deploys if you lose both engines on a, a, on a commercial jet. And we were. Everybody was, in the first few days, they were talking about the different theories of what they thought could have Brought the airplane down. And you could hear in the audio, you could hear the rat deployed. Because the rat sounds like an Evan Rude engine. A little real high pitched, you know, Evan Rood screaming. Yeah. For its life. Because it is. It's got a little prop on it, and it provides hydraulic and electrical power to an airplane that's lost both engines. But we were able to see it in the picture. So we've got big monitors like you do here, and we blew it up. And I said, oh, my word. You see that right there? That's the rat. So we, we went public with that, and all of the major news agencies around the planet started showing that picture that we put up first. So that was kind of a big heavyweight moment. I was like, wow. We. We broke the news on this. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you become kind of the voice place of. There's a responsibility that comes with that. You have to be real careful.

A (115:03)

Yeah.

B (115:04)

That you don't jump the gun on stuff and you don't try to sensationalize something. You know, I always want to have two or three backup sources for what I'm saying. And so there's kind of a weight that comes with that. It's. It's nice. We enjoy it, but at the same time, we want to make sure we do things slowly and deliberately so we don't get out ahead of our skis, as they say. Yeah. You know, so that, that, that's the, the, you know, being an influencer part is, you know, you'll get called by, you know, I, I said Piers Morgan earlier. One of the things that my, My son and I, when he's. He's got the film studio up there in Raleigh. And so as he reminds me, I'm one of his clients. And so I said, so if the Captain Steve thing ever arrives someday, whatever that means. I said, what. What's your measure of arriving? He told me what his was, and I said, okay, here's mine. Megan Kelly calls. I said, if Megyn Kelly calls, I'm gonna. There's the. There's the picture right there.

A (115:58)

Oh, wow.

B (115:58)

So that, that little. That little gray thing right there that looks like a, like, almost like an anomaly on the screen. That's the rat. The rat has deployed. So they're at about 300ft right now in a descent.

A (116:10)

Yeah.

B (116:10)

The rat has deployed to provide electrical and hydraulic issues so that the power. So they can still fly the airplane. Every major news agency went with that picture of the rat deployed. So. So. But back to Megyn Kelly. So I Said Megan Kelly ever calls. I'm dropping whatever I'm doing and getting on her show. And she called. I was on a cruise, and my son goes, no kidding? She wants you on in 45 minutes. And I said, okay, I'll make it happen. And I did an interview with her. She was going to have me back on. Almost like your reaction to my 911 story. Yeah, I was on her program, and she was. Was asking me and a couple other people questions, and somebody slid a piece of paper in front of her. And she looks down like that. She looks back up and she stops. She goes. She goes, steve, she goes, were you supposed to be one of the pilots on. On 9 11? So I told her a real brief version of the story. She's like, oh, my word. She said, all right. And you could see her. Her wheels turning. And so they. A few weeks later, they called and said, you know, Megan wants to have you on 30 minutes on September 11th to tell your story. Story. So I said, yeah, absolutely, we'll do that. On September 10th, Charlie Kirk got shot. So that, that, you know, I. I didn't want to come on the show after that. Yeah, you know, everybody was talking about that for weeks. They're still talking about it. And she was. She was devastated by that. She. He was a friend of hers, so they canceled. Rightly so. And maybe next year I'll be back on to tell my story on her show. It.

A (117:36)

What did she originally want you to come on for to talk about?

B (117:39)

Was it a specific 11th. Tell me September 11th.

A (117:42)

The original reason?

B (117:43)

Yeah, because originally I was on to talk about Air India, so we were talking about this stuff on her thing, and then somebody slid that piece of paper in front of her, and she's like, oh, really? You know, because it really. It does grab you the whole September 11th thing. And. Yeah, but. So, yeah, so there's you. You have a voice, and. And people. People trust your voice, and that's a. That's a very rare commodity, and you have to really protect that as. It's. As though it's something very precious. And it is. Don't abuse that. Take care of it and make sure. Because you won't have a voice if you abuse it at some point down the road. You'll lose it rather quickly.

A (118:21)

Right? Yeah. So this. So this rat thing, it's a propeller that provides power to the plane when it's lost all power.

B (118:28)

It's a last resort. So if both engines fail or you have a complete hydraulic failure or complete electrical failure on a 787, the rat will automatically deploy. So that was one of the things that told us that both engines had failed. You can't tell by looking at it that both engines failed, except for the fact that the RAT has deployed on its own. So you can hear the RAT on the audio. It makes that high pitched squeal. You can see it in the picture. The guy that survived the crash said he heard a loud bang and the lights flickered. Now, I don't put much credibility in a. In an eyewitness, especially a guy that just survived a plane crash. It could have been anything that caused that, and his brain could be playing tricks on him. Yeah, but when that rat deploys, it deploys. Wham. It hits real hard. It comes out instantaneously and begins to spool up. And it takes over electrical power in the airplane, so the lights would flicker. So what he said was right in line with the RAT deploying. And then the captain, I think, or some. One of the pilots had made a mayday call. And so with all four of those things put together, we went. We went public and said, we think it's a dual engine failure. And it ended up being a dual engine failure. Hey, it's Brooklyn Adams, and I'm partnering with Abercrombie to tell you about the.

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B (120:06)

Right.

A (120:07)

Right. Good Lord. Yeah, that's.

B (120:10)

That's wild.

A (120:10)

I had no idea that was a real thing.

B (120:12)

Yep.

A (120:12)

Thankfully.

B (120:14)

Right.

A (120:15)

Have you heard of the. Have you heard of the. The Japan Airlines incident where the guy allegedly saw this crazy object in the sky? Remember we had a NASA physicist on here a couple months back, probably about six months ago, a former employee of NASA as he was employed as a physicist and now he's a professor. And he was. He was explaining to us this crazy story about this. I think it was a Japanese airline that was flying over Alaska. And he said that he. That this thing pulled up next to him that was the size, it was like a thousand times bigger than his airplane. And he landed and he had to go through all he told, gave the Testimony or whatever. And he had to go through all these psychological evaluations and all this stuff. And one of the air traffic controllers or a radar technician or someone on the ground corroborated a story and saying, yeah, there was something crazy on the radar, and I think it's just like a legend now. Do you remember this, Steve? The story of this. Oh, this was in. Oh, wow. It was that long ago? I thought it was more recent than that. Oh, wait, this one. Nuts. Oh, yeah. Okay, so it was a cargo airliner. Right, Right, right. It was a Boeing, Japanese. Boeing 747, 2000F Cargo aircraft flying from Paris to Tokyo was involved in an extensive UAP sighting in its leg over Alaska. So go to the images of it. The. There's like, there's crazy illustrations of what he explained he saw. Just type in. Just go to images from where you were.

B (122:05)

What? Okay.

A (122:09)

Yeah, images.

B (122:10)

There you go.

A (122:11)

That's how big. He says he. He thought it was this thing that pulled up next to him. Crazy. So there's books written about it, and apparently this guy was, like, totally sane. And there was someone who corroborated it on the ground.

B (122:27)

Yeah.

A (122:28)

Over Alaska. Yeah. No, they didn't mess with the plane at all. The plane was fine.

B (122:32)

Right.

A (122:32)

I think it just, like, pulled up next to them and then, like, disappeared.

B (122:35)

So they. They come from thousands of light years away just to harass a 747 and go home or disappear again.

A (122:41)

Right, right, right. You know, that.

B (122:43)

That makes a lot of sense.

A (122:43)

Some people think that they're already here, that they live under the water.

B (122:47)

They, you know, they could. There's lots of water that's.

A (122:49)

We've explored more of Mars than we've explored of our own oceans.

B (122:51)

Yeah.

A (122:52)

Which is pretty wild.

B (122:53)

Yeah, they could. But why? I just always go back to the question.

A (122:56)

Why.

B (122:57)

Why would you come all the way here just to hide.

A (122:59)

Well, the theory is that most people have the most of the most rational theories that I've heard is that they. It's a basically similar. Similar civilization to us that just lives.

B (123:09)

Under the oceans, and they needed a notion and we were the next one available or something.

A (123:14)

Yeah. Well, the way the physicist described it, which is kind of fascinating, this NASA guy, the way he described it was it.

B (123:21)

If.

A (123:21)

If you're us and we wanted to inhabit other planets, we would look for planets with liquid water, because the environment on the surface of other planets, the atmospheres are way all over the place with the pressure, the temperature, radiation, comets, solar flares, all this stuff, it would be too Unmanageable. So you would find a planet that was, that had liquid water on it because liquid water can only exist between 30 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit and, and 200 de Fahrenheit as well. If you're used to a certain pressure, you could just dial in your depth and figure out that pressure. Right. Like the, the surface atmosphere of Venus is like 800 degrees Fahrenheit and the pressure is like being seven miles deep in our oceans. So if you could figure out how to get from hop from ocean to ocean, you could figure out the temperature, the pressure and all that stuff. That was his hypothesis, which was pretty compelling.

B (124:17)

Yeah. Which is great. If you're intelligent enough to figure out like light speed travel or more than light speed travel in something that size, then you probably could figure out the problems with where you were to stay there.

A (124:30)

Yeah.

B (124:31)

Rather than come here and hide in the ocean. But.

A (124:33)

Right. Maybe I love talking about it, but yeah.

B (124:36)

It's not, it's, you know, I think. Is it Bill Nye, you know, Elon Musk is big on going to Mars and.

A (124:42)

Yeah, yeah.

B (124:43)

And Bill and I, he just finally said look, I, I love talking about this. It's really what we're doing. Never going to live on Mars.

A (124:51)

Right.

B (124:51)

Okay. Just.

A (124:52)

Right.

B (124:52)

I'm sorry. There's no universe where that is reality. It's 200 and whatever degrees below zero Fahrenheit. There's no atmosphere, there's no water. There's. It's not going to happen. You can't take enough resources there to somehow rehabilitate the planet at that temperature.

A (125:08)

Right, Right.

B (125:09)

But it's great to talk about. It's fun. I'd love to take a manned mission to Mars someday. I hope that happens in my lifetime.

A (125:15)

That would be crazy. It would be, it was like why would you to want, want to though?

B (125:18)

Because I think because you can.

A (125:19)

Robots can do a better job though.

B (125:21)

Yeah. But it's not the same. See you, you're not old enough. I lived through the last G Wiz in our, in our culture which was we landed on the moon. Right. And I watched that live on TV as a 9 year old kid and I was like, I was just in amazement at that and, and everybody on the planet was like in amazement that that was going on at the time. And it was the last kind of gee whiz moment we've, we've had as a culture, everything else.

A (125:46)

And the biggest, like the biggest achievement of humanity.

B (125:49)

Yes. And when you think about the, the monumental size of that Achievement with the computer power that they had back then, that makes it even 1, 1 millionth.

A (125:58)

The computing power of this.

B (126:01)

Yes.

A (126:01)

In the entire Apollo program.

B (126:03)

Yep, yep. I ran into an Apollo astronaut years ago. This is, this is a silly Steve story because I back into everything in my life and I, I most of the time don't know where I am. And I, I was speaking at an event. They were, they wanted my 911 story, and so I was the keynote speaker. And it was a men's retreat in Vail, Colorado. And there's like 80 guys there that had all. They, every year they come and they have a guest speaker. So after the talk, I'm done talking to three or four guys and, and we're talking about flying airplanes and, and one of the guys has a name tag on, it's older looking gentleman and it, it says this Charlie Duke on it.

A (126:39)

Oh, he was just here.

B (126:41)

Okay, so Charlie Duke, I'm standing next to Charlie Duke. I have no idea who I'm standing next to. So one of the other people in the crowd looks at me and says, well, you must have flown fighter jets in the Navy. And I said, well, no, I said, I flew an airplane called a P3. I'm looking at his name thinking, that sounds like an all American name. Yeah, Charlie doesn't know this story yet. It sounds like an all American name. I said, well, that, that guy probably did. And just thinking he had a great sounding name. And thousand one, thousand two, somebody says, or an astronaut, which goes right over my head, right? And we, so we're, we're still yucking it up. So I go back to my room, about a half an hour later, I'm sitting there thinking, that's a strange thing to say. Or an astronaut. I've got a, I gotta Google this. Charlie Duke.

A (127:23)

10Th man to walk on the moon, right?

B (127:25)

Everything I see Charlie Duke, and I'm like, oh my God, I'm standing next to Charlie Duke. What an idiot. So I gotta save face, right? So the next morning I come down for breakfast and I gotta pretend like, like, you know, you know, hey, buddy. So he and I are sitting at the same table and, and I, I had been stalking him all night and I, I said, hey Charlie. I said, I, I, I don't want to ask anything about your, your moon stuff. I said, you probably get inundated with that. I said, but you, you graduated from the Naval Academy and you, you got, you retired as a, a general in the Air Force. How did that happen? Did you, was it because of the Space program. And he explained, he said back in the late 50s, he said the, the Air Force Academy wasn't in place yet, so to get officers for the Air Force, they would take them from the Naval Academy and from West Point they would ask a certain amount to volunteer and if they didn't, they get voluntold. And he said, I just thought it would be a good transition. So I volunteered. He said the Mercury program was already going. They sent me out to Monterey for advanced master's degree and I just had the right background and they, I got ended up in the Apollo program because of that. Yeah. So he explained that transition to me, which I thought was, was, you know, pretty neat. But at the whole time I'm thinking he has no idea that 24 hours ago I didn't know who he was. Yeah.

A (128:37)

The way I think about the Apollo program is very similar to the Concord. Right. Like, we were just in a full sprint to beat Russia.

B (128:46)

Correct.

A (128:46)

And put every last resource we had. We didn't care about the risk. You know, obviously there was an insane risk to like, like to human life doing that for the first time ever. And we kind of like threw out that all the, all to the wind just for the spectacle of it, just to prove it, you know.

B (129:07)

But there's something to be said for that. I mean, there's, there's something that, that is courageous about winning the frontier or going stretching the bounds of, of possibility. And, and there's a certain amount of human courage that goes into that. I think we're so afraid now and almost even paralyzed by, well, it won't be safe. And you know, what if we get hurt? And was that then we, we lose that, that pioneer spirit that said, hey, I'm going to hang it all out there and, and if something happens, it happens, but it's on me. I'm taking the risk. Let's go.

A (129:37)

Right.

B (129:37)

You know.

A (129:38)

Yeah, I agree with you there, man. I definitely agree with you there. And it. Allegedly we're going to have, we're going to. Every president since, since what Bush won has said that they were going to get us back to the moon and they haven't been able to do it yet.

B (129:53)

That, yeah, we were supposed to do it two years ago. 2024 is supposed to be.

A (129:56)

Yeah, they keep pushing it back. Now they're saying, I think 2027.

B (129:59)

Yeah, well, you have to have a good compelling reason to go, like, are we just doing it because we can do it or we're doing it because we're going to make a base There or.

A (130:07)

Exactly.

B (130:07)

And is that cost effective? All those the same things the airlines base their decisions on.

A (130:12)

Right.

B (130:12)

The government has to base their decisions on as well. So.

A (130:15)

Right.

B (130:15)

I'd love to go back to the moon. Just to go back to the moon.

A (130:17)

Is it cost effective? Is it economic? Is it economic? And is it. You know, it makes total sense that we would. If we're going to go to the moon, if we're going to go to Mars, we got to freaking get the robots there first to figure. I mean, they can do just as good of a job as far as tasks go or analysis or anything like the surveying. Like, what's a human. My five fingers are going to do a better job than these autonomous robots.

B (130:41)

Right, Right.

A (130:43)

So.

B (130:43)

Yeah.

A (130:45)

But anyways, man, thank you. This has been a fantastic conversation.

B (130:49)

Well, good.

A (130:49)

I really appreciate your time, man. I learned a lot.

B (130:51)

I appreciate it. This is the time went by really quick.

A (130:54)

Yeah. Tell people listening or watching where they can find you. Get in touch with you, all that stuff.

B (131:00)

Sure. On YouTube. We're approaching a million subs on YouTube and we're @Captain Steve with three E's. S, T, E, E, E, V, E on YouTube.

A (131:08)

And why the three E's? Is there a reason behind it?

B (131:10)

Okay, so here's. There's a little story. There's a story behind everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, we started making short videos on the, on the channel. And, and I, I didn't, I didn't want to think of a sign off. I just started saying Captain Steve for fun. There's. There's a waiter at a restaurant over in Milan. It's a little coffee joint that this guy's got a gift. His name is Rafiq. And it doesn't make any difference how long it's been since you've walked into his restaurant, he will remember your name and he will stretch it out. So the pilot, that's our hotel was right across from this coffee house. So two, three years since I seen Rafiq. And everybody in his mind was a captain, whether you were or not. So you'd walk through the door and he'd go, captain Steve. And he'd be real excited to see you. Right. And I thought, wow, that's. This guy is. I. I'm. I'm the opposite of that. I don't remember anybody's name, but he remembered everybody's name. I thought, that's really great. So when I started signing off as Captain Steve, I was thinking of Rafik saying my name out loud. And. And we did it for about the first 10 or 12 shorts we made, and then I thought, I need to get more serious, so I'm just gonna sign off Captain Steve. Right. So I dropped it, and the comments just lit up. Hey, I waited till the end. What happened to the Captain Steve? And people would spell it with 12 E's. And I thought, well, I've backed myself into a thing now. So it became Captain Steve. That drawn out.

A (132:25)

That's hilarious.

B (132:26)

Yeah.

A (132:26)

I'm glad you roll. I'm glad you went with it, man. That was great. That was a great decision.

B (132:29)

Me too. It is. It makes you distinctive and in the kind of a fun. We're trying to be educational, informational, and a little snarky when we can be hilarious.

A (132:37)

I love it, man. Thank you again. We'll link all that stuff below.

B (132:40)

Yep.

A (132:41)

And we have Patreon stuff.

B (132:44)

We do.

A (132:45)

Do you mind answering some questions for our beautiful people at Patreon?

B (132:48)

Sure.

A (132:49)

We got. We have a Patreon members who ask.

B (132:52)

We'll do an episode.

A (132:53)

Personal questions.

B (132:54)

The captain. Right now.

A (132:55)

Ask the captain. All right, so that's it for the podcast. Thanks again, man. Thanks to everybody. And we're going to Patreon.