“Is Turbulence Getting Worse?” + Asking A Pilot All Of My Other Fear Of Flying Questions

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] KK: Well folks, uh, we’ve leveled off at 36, 000 feet. Air traffic control has advised that it should be smooth rides ahead, so the seatbelt sign is off.

[00:00:06] LM: Is there any reason to believe that a discount carrier in the U. S. or abroad would be less safe than a non discount carrier?

[00:00:14] KK: I don’t recall a single time in my career that I’ve ever rejected an airplane.

[00:00:17] We sit here and talk about all these things, but it just doesn’t make sense. It really doesn’t happen very often. Big thing here is the turbulence is not going to bring an airplane down. It’s not going to break the airplane apart. The seatbelt sign is not something to be afraid of. I don’t want to sit in turbulence either, but it’s not something that scares the pilots.

[00:00:32] LM: And then I felt like this whole system that I had counted on to protect me was no longer protecting me. I’m curious how you viewed that as a pilot. Hello friends, podcast, where every week we are sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I’m your host, Liz Moody, and I’m a bestselling author and longtime journalist.

[00:00:53] And as many of you know, I am a very nervous flyer. I had to fly back and forth between my parents as a [00:01:00] kid, and I’d be like screaming and crying on the plane. And I guess that trauma just stuck. I still fly a lot, and I’m really intent on not missing out on a big, beautiful life because of my fears. But those fears have been getting worse lately with all the stuff I’ve seen on social media and in the news about flying.

[00:01:22] I feel like the scariest stuff makes its way online and then finds me because I watch that and then my algorithm’s like, Oh, you’re interested in that. So I’m like, Oh, okay. So I know that a lot of you share those fears and I want all of us to be able to live the lives that we deserve and to not let fear get in the way.

[00:01:40] So, I invited on Kyle Cockel, who is a flight instructor and a pilot for a major U. S. airline, where he flies mostly the international routes, like over the Pacific Ocean, and And he flies on multiple Boeing jets, which I obviously needed to ask him about because I’ve personally been really nervous about Boeing and he [00:02:00] was actually wildly comforting.

[00:02:02] He literally puts his life in Boeing’s hands all of the time. So definitely stay tuned toward the end of the episode because that is when we get into all of that. Kyle is also the founder of Dial A Pilot, which aims to help people overcome their fears of flying by answering any and all questions that they may have about.

[00:02:20] airplanes, traveling, and just flying in general. It’s a really awesome company. I have used it myself. You can just call them up, make an appointment right before a flight, and talk to a real pilot. And I just so support what they’re doing. This conversation helped me a ton and I really, really, really hope that it helps you.

[00:02:39] Please share it with any nervous flyers in your life. It is such a frustrating feeling. And I really want to help as many people as possible overcome it. Kyle, welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here.

[00:02:50] KK: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

[00:02:52] LM: Do you want to start us off just to calm everybody down with like a, you’re flying at

[00:02:57] KK: 36, 000 feet.

[00:02:58] You want me to hit them with the PA announcement? Yeah, [00:03:00] kind of. Yeah, there you go. Well, folks, we’ve leveled off at 36, 000 feet. Air traffic control has advised that it should be smooth rides ahead. So the seatbelt sign is off. How’s that? It’s very soothing. I appreciate it.

[00:03:10] LM: Even when you guys come on and you’re like, we have some turbulence coming up in like 15 minutes, we’re going to turn this, and I’m like, Oh, they know, they know.

[00:03:18] And it’s so comforting.

[00:03:19] KK: Yeah, absolutely. No, we have a lot of really good resources for actually forecasting turbulence and knowing where it is. Like we now have a new app. That are on all of our iPads that actually records the accelerometer data from all the other pilots that are out flying and then plots it on a map for us.

[00:03:35] So not only do we have the forecast from ground based radar, and we can talk about all these things, but now we have somebody’s iPad that’s actually going through the turbulence and drops a pin for us. So I can sit there and see. Even though that we’re in the middle of the Pacific, you know, 400 miles north of Midway Island, I can see that the airplane in front of us is at 34, 000 feet and has light turbulence.

[00:03:54] And then we can make a decision to change our altitude based on that. So the amount of data that we have now to [00:04:00] be able to change those things is just unbelievable. So it’s pretty nice now.

[00:04:04] LM: Will you usually change routes to avoid that turbulence or how do you decide?

[00:04:09] KK: Yeah. So normally what we’ll do is actually change altitudes.

[00:04:11] So when we’re up at cruise, we will experience this specific type of turbulence called sheer turbulence, or the scary term is clear air turbulence. Yeah.

[00:04:19] LM: I

[00:04:19] KK: hate that.

[00:04:19] LM: Cause I’m like, I understand if there’s a storm, I understand if there’s something I can predict, I hate the idea that I can be flying and there’s not a cloud in the sky.

[00:04:27] And All of a sudden, I don’t know where turbulence is going to come.

[00:04:29] KK: It’s a really simple concept, really, how it all works, and it’s basically that air behaves like water. So when we talk about water moving through rivers, just the metaphor that I like to use, if we can envision two rivers that are coming from opposite directions, call it one from the left and one from the right, As they intersect with each other, the water needs to go somewhere, so some needs to go up, some needs to go down, and it creates that kind of choppiness on the surface.

[00:04:52] And so if you’re in a whitewater raft, you’re in a little tiny rapid. The way that that all comes together essentially is when two different airstreams are [00:05:00] running into each other, you run into that friction, they create a little bit of choppiness, and that’s the turbulence that we’re encountering. It’s called sheer turbulence or clear air turbulence.

[00:05:07] And clear air just means that it’s not happening within clouds. So when we’re up at altitude, 90% 7 percent of the turbulence we encounter is is that turbulence specifically well for us changing altitudes almost always can reduce our exposure to that wind current or that changing wind because it also changes not only laterally, but vertically as well.

[00:05:27] So if we’re at 34, 000 feet cruising along. We get into that turbulence, we can make a decision to climb a thousand feet, descend a thousand feet, and that’ll oftentimes get us into smoother air. If a thousand feet doesn’t work, we’ll try another thousand feet. So, especially coming across the Pacific, we’ll really make a lot of changes in the altitude because there’s just not that many airplanes out there.

[00:05:46] We’re going across something like the Atlantic, more airplanes, more of a highway in the sky type setup, and I can get into that. But it limits our ability to change our altitude so much, so we may encounter turbulence a little bit longer going over the Atlantic than we would over [00:06:00] the Pacific. But, doesn’t mean it’s unsafe, it just means that our flexibility is a little bit more limited.

[00:06:05] LM: When you’re changing altitudes, are you doing that just for safety? for our comfort? Or are you doing that for any type of safety reason?

[00:06:11] KK: Yeah, so mostly passenger comfort is the big thing. And then of course, crew comfort safety as well. But as we climb higher, we burn less fuel. So it’s also more efficient for us to climb the airplane higher.

[00:06:22] Air is a little bit less dense, if you will. So it just takes less fuel for us to push the airplane along. So I’m on the international fleet now. So when we’re flying San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, We’ll start out low because we’re so heavy. We’ve got so much gas on the airplane. 250, 300, 000 pounds of fuel.

[00:06:39] And so we have to start out low at 30, 000 feet and we’ll just slowly step our way up. That will usually get us out of that turbulence and it reduces the amount of fuel that we’re burning. So it’s just more economical for us to do that. But with that being said, if we’re at 38, 000 feet, we start to get into that turbulence.

[00:06:55] We’re not going to hesitate to descend because, oh, well now we’re burning more fuel. It really doesn’t matter in the [00:07:00] grand scheme of things, but. Over the course of a 12, 14 hour flight, we’ll try and limit the amount of fuel we burn as much as we possibly can.

[00:07:07] LM: Turbulence is probably the number one thing that fearful flyers are afraid of.

[00:07:11] And I have read that clear air turbulence is increasing because of climate change. Can you speak to that?

[00:07:17] KK: Clear air turbulence, again, is due to that wind shifting as it’s up at altitude. And what we have is different jet streams that move around the world. We have them in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.

[00:07:27] And so, as those jet streams transit the world, they’re turning. They’re reversing course back on themselves. So on and so forth. Well, that jet stream is Extremely concentrated, 150 mph, 200 mph winds moving through the upper atmosphere. So, as we encounter that, of course, we’re going to run into that turbulence.

[00:07:44] Well, we’ve seen the jet stream change a little bit as climate change has become more prevalent. Things like a little bit of increasing wind as far as velocity goes, as well as that jet stream moving further south at times and further north at other times. And so we’re just getting ourselves [00:08:00] into a situation where we’re flying the airplanes more often in an area in which that high speed, what we call jet core is actually operating.

[00:08:08] So that’s why we’re seeing a little bit more of that clear air turbulence. We also have something in the neighborhood of 50 percent more flights than we did even 10 years ago. This year, we’re on track to do 39 million flights across the world, and that’s just in the airline system alone. So we’re just flying more airplanes.

[00:08:23] Which, of course, they need to spread out a little bit. So we are seeing that increased turbulence just a little bit.

[00:08:28] LM: I’ve never connected more airplanes means you don’t have the flexibility to jump up or to jump down because it’s just more of a crowded highway and so thus it would increase the amount of turbulence you would experience even if it doesn’t increase the amount of turbulence in the air.

[00:08:41] Is that right?

[00:08:42] KK: Exactly. Again, less flexibility. That highway needs to be a little bit wider. And so maybe, you know, the right lane to give a metaphor is where all the trucks are. It’s a little bit more beat up. Well, unfortunately, there’s going to be more cars that have to go through that right lane as well.

[00:08:55] It’s kind of the same metaphor for airplanes. Again, good flexibility, a lot of [00:09:00] forecasting, and kind of live reports of where turbulence is. But yeah, that’s what we’re seeing as far as climate change goes. So kind of a little bit of both going on.

[00:09:08] LM: Would nighttime flights or times of day where there’s less planes in the sky have less turbulence because they would have more flexibility to move to different altitudes?

[00:09:17] KK: Yes and no. As far as the nighttime goes. We have less heating and cooling of the Earth’s surface, which is one of the big reasons that we have turbulence. We have hot air rises, if we go back to, you know, fifth grade science class. Hot air rises, cool air sinks, and that actually can cause turbulence as well.

[00:09:34] So we’re seeing a little bit more of a calm atmosphere during nighttime and especially during early morning. So if, if you’re a nervous flyer and you’re flying into somewhere like Las Vegas is a good example. Early morning is definitely going to be the time that you want to go because it’s going to be a lot smoother.

[00:09:48] Just everything is nice and smooth in the morning. You wake up early for sunrises. It’s calm and serene. The atmosphere acts the same way. So we do see a little bit calmer skies during those times. And then the other [00:10:00] thing that really comes into this is more so time of year, less so time of day. So when we talk about middle of the summer, we’re going to have a lot of convective activity over the middle of the United States, the Southern United States, and we’re talking thunderstorms.

[00:10:12] So we may have. A thunderstorm that’s isolated by itself, easy for us to get around, no problem whatsoever. On the autopilot, we get a deviation from the air traffic controllers, we make a turn, 5 10 degrees, we offset our course a little bit, we go right around the thunderstorm, no problem at all. Well, in the summers, we may have a squall line, and that may be 2, 3, 400 miles long, and so now we have to flight plan around that.

[00:10:35] We’re always going to go around it. We’re never going to go through thunderstorms. It’s a complete non starter. So we will add the fuel to do so we’ll add the flight time to do so. But you may end up seeing those delays a little bit more bumpiness because of that unstable air, that hot air rising, cool air sinking.

[00:10:50] And so again, summertime, a little bit more turbulence from the convective side of things. But then again, in the winter time. You have that jet core moves a little bit further. We fly into it a little [00:11:00] bit more. Some more storms coming from the Pacific. So

[00:11:03] LM: don’t fly in the summer and don’t fly in the winter.

[00:11:05] KK: Yeah. So kind of what I’m getting at here is essentially that no matter what you look at, you’re going to find a reason not to fly if you’re a nervous flyer, but it’s just understanding where all of that comes from. And oh, okay. I understand that. there may be some turbulence coming from the Hawaiian Islands this time of year because of the Pineapple Express storms, or there may be some turbulence over Oklahoma because they always have that convective activity.

[00:11:26] So, you know, there’s never one kind of easy out of the box answer for, hey, when is there never going to be turbulence? Because weather is weather, it’s always active. So that’s kind of my two cents on when and why turbulence happens.

[00:11:39] LM: Do you think that turbulence is getting perceptibly worse, like when you are flying, have you ever experienced something like the things we see on Reels or the things that we see on Instagram where planes are shaking everywhere and there’s emergency landings and stuff like that?

[00:11:54] Is that kind of stuff getting worse or are we just seeing it more on social media?

[00:11:58] KK: I think we’re seeing it more. I, [00:12:00] in my, so I’ve been flying professionally now for 10 years. I have had severe turbulence once. We were flying a private jet into Mammoth. This was my first year in professional aviation.

[00:12:10] Mammoth Mountain, which is on the eastern Sierras, about three hours, four hours south of Lake Tahoe. We were descending in and I was the co pilot at the time. We’re in this little jet that has about six passengers on it, little tiny bathroom in the back. And that’s going to come back to the story here in just a second.

[00:12:26] We were empty. It’s just the captain and myself. And as we descended in, for about five seconds, we hit what I would classify as severe turbulence. And severe turbulence is just bumpy. It’s just bumpier than normal, but the airplane was totally in control. There was no problem whatsoever. The airplane wasn’t damaged.

[00:12:41] We weren’t hurt. It just shakes around a little bit.

[00:12:43] LM: What was so much bumpier, though, than moderate turbulence or light turbulence?

[00:12:47] KK: The best way that I could describe it is your flight. feeling your seatbelt hold you in the seat a little bit more. For me, you could see the displays kind of shaking like they weren’t shaking, but you know, my eyes were bouncing around when we’re not flying past.

[00:12:59] There’s [00:13:00] just kind of fun cause we don’t experience it very often. So I know it’s crazy to think about, right? So we go in, we encounter that severe for about five seconds. Airplanes, fine. Pilots are fine. No problem whatsoever. But I turn around and look. And there’s blue juice from the toilet all over the ceiling.

[00:13:15] The toilet has come off of its mounts. Oh, wow. And so being the co pilot, I’m like, this is clearly going to be my job to clean up. And so we land, we clean it all up. It’s no problem whatsoever. But that’s the only time in my career I’ve ever experienced severe turbulence. I just think we’re seeing it more often on social media because it does, it just moves around the world so fast.

[00:13:33] When something like that gets posted, it’s scary looking. There’s no context behind it. How did this happen? What’s happening? Did they know that turbulence was coming? So on and so forth. But yeah, I think it’s just more so we’re seeing it more often than we actually are experiencing it more often, if that makes sense.

[00:13:48] LM: You said that you will never fly into a thunderstorm, and I’ve heard that from other pilots that that’s maybe the one really dangerous weather situation that planes can encounter and so they just straight up avoid it. [00:14:00] But then sometimes I’ll be going to the airport and it’ll be thunderstorms in my area or thunderstorms in the area that the plane is landing and I’m like, well, if they don’t fly into thunderstorms, what are they doing about the fact that there’s thunderstorms forecasted where we’re landing or taking off?

[00:14:11] KK: Yeah, great question. So thunderstorms are actually. Very small in diameter typically and they move through an area rather quickly now in California We don’t see that very often but for a listener in Nashville, Tennessee or Dallas, Texas, they’re gonna say oh, yeah Thunderstorm blows through in a matter of 10 15 20 minutes something along those lines and so When we’re flying out of a place that is having active thunderstorms, if the thunderstorm cell is right over the top of us, meaning the main area of the storm, a lot of convective activity, vertical development, rain, things of that nature, and I’m talking like heavy, severe rain, I’m not talking just, you know, run of the mill, moderate rain, whatever, We will not take off into that.

[00:14:49] We’ll wait for it to clear off at the airport. This happens a lot in a place like Denver would be a good example. Thunderstorm will move through. They’ll actually close the ramp down so we don’t have ramp personnel out working, moving bags into the [00:15:00] airplane because lightning strikes may be happening.

[00:15:01] There’s some number, I think it’s within five miles of the airport if a lightning strike occurs, they shut the ramp down. The whole airport kind of goes on hold for a bit. Maybe an hour, hour and a half at that point, then the rampers will come back up. They’ll start loading the bags again. We can actually get pushed back taxi out and go, but if there’s a thunderstorm sitting 10 miles off the end of the runway, no problem whatsoever.

[00:15:21] We can get a turn away from it. So we’ll fly in the vicinity of thunderstorms, which is fine. We actually are able to maneuver around them quite easily. Air traffic control has really good ground based radar. And then we have. on board weather radar as well, that we can paint exactly what’s happening in the full vertical development of that thunderstorm and recognize, okay, that’s a thunderstorm.

[00:15:40] We want to go either left or right around this. And so we’ll sit there and wait until we know that it’s safe for us to actually go flying and This is agreed to by the dispatchers who sit at our headquarters at each different airline, the air traffic controllers, and then the pilots as well. So there’s never really an opportunity for some cowboy to go out and say, okay, we’re just going to go through it.

[00:15:59] It’ll be fine. [00:16:00] That’s what I

[00:16:00] LM: always wondered too, is if there could be just like a pilot who’s like, hey, no, it’s fine. Or if there’s ever pressure on behalf of the airlines, because it costs millions of dollars when planes are delayed by weather. Have you ever felt pressured to fly in weather you wouldn’t feel comfortable with?

[00:16:16] KK: No, they actually, they take a lot of pride in making sure that they don’t pressure us. And so what they’ll actually do is define the different parameters in which we can actually dispatch an airplane into. So things like freezing rain, we’re not going to go fly into. Things like thunderstorms that are at an airport, well, we would go dispatch into that, but we’re going to take a lot of fuel so that we can go circle off of the airport area, wait for that thunderstorm to clear, and then we can go land.

[00:16:41] So our goal, of course, is to move people from point A to point B. That’s a big idea of how the airline system operates. But, we do not pressure pilots into taking airplanes, whether there’s an airplane maintenance issue, whether there’s weather issues, or any of those things, whether we’re too fatigued to go, maybe we had a long day, there were delays that happened, [00:17:00] we didn’t get appropriate food, anything of that nature, we can call in and say, hey, I’m not fit to fly, and they go, okay, no problem, we’re not penalized for it, we don’t get pushed into it, we’re It is very much up to you to make the decision on whether or not you’re comfortable to take that airplane with that crew flying on that day with those conditions.

[00:17:17] LM: Wow.

[00:17:18] KK: It works really well. Yeah.

[00:17:19] LM: Yeah. That’s really comforting. I once was flying back from England and I used all my points and I flew first class and I told the flight attendant when I got on board that I was a fearful flyer. And she’s like, Oh, we’ve got you. We’ll take care of you. They’re always so, so, so nice about it.

[00:17:33] I had one flight attendant once like hold my hand as we were coming in a really turbulent landing. It’s so sweet. But at one point during the flight, the pilot came out and sat next to me because when you’re flying first class on British Airways, you have like a little Um, and so he sat with me in this visitor’s seat and he answered all my questions and he explained everything.

[00:17:52] But one of the things that he explained is that basically at every moment in the flight, they’re kind of preparing for different things that could go wrong and how [00:18:00] they would handle the different things that went wrong, which I found really comforting. Is that something that you do?

[00:18:05] KK: You’re exactly right.

[00:18:06] So yeah, the first thing that we do when we get to the airplane is we discuss the threats. Okay, what are the threats today? Is anybody having personal trouble? Is there anything wrong with the airplane? Is there anything wrong with the environment? And wrong would be, you know, a thunderstorm in the area.

[00:18:19] Well, that presents a threat. So how do we mitigate that threat as much as we possibly can? And so that’s what we’re really focused on in aviation. And so My job as an airline pilot is mostly threat and error recognition and risk management. So that’s kind of the way that we really look at it. Flying the airplane is secondary to those things.

[00:18:37] I love flying the airplane, but once you get into the airline industry, that’s really what the main focus is, is let’s give you the tools to be successful under all circumstances.

[00:18:45] LM: And are you guys doing that throughout the flight? Like he told me when we were flying over the Atlantic. I think at that point he was like, if something went wrong right now, we would divert to, I want to say the Azores.

[00:18:55] Yeah. And I was like, Oh, beautiful. But he was like, we’re, we’re always like [00:19:00] mapping and triangulating and knowing these things throughout the entire flight.

[00:19:03] KK: Exactly. So when we’re flying from let’s say New York to London, we actually will have what are called critical points or equal time points. If any of the aviation folks are listening, there’s two different terms for it.

[00:19:14] But as you go, we actually will say, okay, Prior to this specific latitude and longitude, if we have any problems, we’re going to turn around and we’re going to go back to Eastern Canada. Once we reach that point, we’re going to continue to Keflavik, Iceland. Once we reach the next point, now we’re going to go to Shannon, Ireland, and any one of these problems.

[00:19:32] Now, each one of those airports that I just talked about all need to have the appropriate equipment at the airport for that specific airplane. So if we’re flying a Boeing 777, would they need to be able to handle that airplane? All of our dispatchers figure that out. We call these ETOPS alternates, extended operations.

[00:19:48] So we’re sitting there looking at, can the airport that we’re looking at as a potential bailout point, if you will, can they handle the airplane? Yes. Do they have the weather for us to go land at the time that we would need to go [00:20:00] there? You know, from our flight time, we need to be there either from 1 PM to 5 PM.

[00:20:04] Is the weather going to be good enough for us to go there? Yes. Okay, we can use that airport. If no, we have to find out another plan that we can use, and that may make us change our routing significantly, add an hour of flight time, so on and so forth, to make sure that all of these situations are covered.

[00:20:20] Those ETOPS airports change based on where we are, what the winds are that day, and whether or not they can actually handle the airplane. So in your case, You were farther south that day, and the Azores is what we would use instead of using something like Iceland. So these change every single time we go fly, and I usually do the Pacific stuff.

[00:20:38] So we’re looking at places like Honolulu, Midway Island, different airports in Japan. And what we’re really talking about there too is, okay, If we have an engine failure, again, that’s kind of the example that I like to use, exactly how are we going to get off of the route that we’re on right now? How are we going to descend down to the altitude that we need to be at in order to fly the airplane on the other [00:21:00] engine?

[00:21:00] Because if we lose thrust on both engines, or on one engine, we just need to get down to a lower altitude. It’s a very mellow thing. You probably wouldn’t even notice it as a passenger. Honestly, it’s a, Super slow descent, we just get down to 25, 000 feet or so, and then we make the decision to divert, but we need to get away from the other airplanes.

[00:21:15] So that’s the whole idea that we sit there and talk about the entire time that we’re up there is, okay, should something happen right now? What are the immediate action items? What are we doing? How are we getting this airplane safely on the ground? So yeah, that’s essentially what the British Airways captain was talking about as well.

[00:21:29] LM: I have two questions about that. One, if you’re sitting around every day talking about. All of the ways essentially things could go wrong and you could die. Is that not, like, scary? And then question two is on the flip side of that. If every day you talk about all these things that could go wrong and nothing goes wrong and you don’t die, are you ever, maybe I should just skip this.

[00:21:50] Like, I’ll call this in because none of this is really happening.

[00:21:52] KK: Yeah. So first question, it’s funny. No one’s ever actually asked me that. And I think about it oftentimes because, you know, [00:22:00] especially in this service, I think about what can go wrong. All the time, honestly, more so than we do in the airline industry, because I’m sitting here talking to nervous flyers all the time and answering the what if questions and then going through the process of, okay, well, this is what we would actually do in that situation.

[00:22:13] So no, it doesn’t make it more scary. I think it does make it. You just recognize how important it is that when we are up there, we may have 364 passengers in the back of the airplane. It just kind of puts the weight on you to recognize I need to make sure that I’m doing my job to the absolute best of my abilities today, and we’re not going to skip anything.

[00:22:32] And I have been just blown away by the professionalism of everybody that I’ve flown with from when I first started in flying the little jets all the way to flying the big airplanes now. Nobody skips those briefings. Everybody takes them very seriously. We slow down. And I think that that’s one of the big things about having multiple pilots in the flight tech.

[00:22:52] You have that discipline. You just have somebody watching over your shoulder and making sure you’re doing it right.

[00:22:56] LM: Yeah. It’s like the panoptic effect of like somebody’s always watching. And so [00:23:00] you got to kind of have your shit in order.

[00:23:01] KK: Right, right. Yeah. And we’re all trained to do this. You, Exact same way we go to the simulators together.

[00:23:07] We do the briefings together. These are not just okay My briefing is going to be different than the other guys or the other girls. The briefings are all the same They’re structured to be a specific way so that I know the exact cadence in which you’re gonna brief I know the exact way that you’re gonna phrase something should there be a problem or just something that you need my attention on There’s a very specific and standardized phraseology that we use, and I think that that goes a long way in making sure that things are just done the way that the airline wants them to be done every single time, and that adds to a lot of safety.

[00:23:37] I mean, standardization, it’s the same thing they do in hospitals, in, you know, the court of law. As much as you can standardize things, you just eliminate so many threats.

[00:23:45] LM: You find that in talking about these things and having it done in the same way, you don’t feel like you’re getting more and more scared by essentially, No, no,

[00:23:54] KK: and you know, we sit there and we just know to when I sit here and talk about these things, you know, I throw a lot of [00:24:00] ideas out there, engine failures, depressurizations, things that just sound really scary.

[00:24:05] But when we go through the training and we see how the airplanes are designed and built, we know that yes, these things can theoretically happen, but we’re going to be perfectly fine. And we just have our training to actually fly the airplane in accordance with its new situation, if you will. So. For us, it’s more so a, I wouldn’t say an inconvenience more than anything, but I guess an inconvenience is probably a pretty good way to put it.

[00:24:28] If something should happen like that, and we do have a system failure now, it’s just, okay, we know what we have to do. We go through the process. If you ever listened to air traffic control tapes of somebody reporting to air traffic control, that they did have an engine failure, something like that. You’ll hear these extremely calm voices on the other end, and they tell them, Okay, we’ve had an engine failure.

[00:24:47] We’re going to continue straight out from the runway. We’re going to make a right turn. Stand by. We need a second to run some checklists. Air traffic controllers have their exact phraseology they come back with, and it’s just this kind of song and dance until we’re ready to come back in [00:25:00] and come back and land at the airport.

[00:25:01] And that’s what we do in the simulators. That’s what we brief every single time. And so no, it doesn’t make me more afraid. Honestly, if anything, it gives me more confidence in the system because it just works. And that’s what these airplanes are designed to do. And that’s how the airlines are set up, if you will.

[00:25:14] LM: What’s your response when you hear about crashes?

[00:25:17] KK: First of all, data seek. I don’t look at any of the news. You know, the news will start to try and connect past accidents or incidents, or, oh, this was this aircraft type. And so they’ll try and piece things together, and of course, that’s their job, right?

[00:25:30] They need to get information out as much as they can, but So it’s in that first hour, especially, or probably 24 hours in this case, things just don’t come out the way that they actually are. And so whenever I hear of an accident, I go and look at, okay, what was the weather? What was happening in the vicinity of that accident that day?

[00:25:46] What kind of airplane was it? Where did this happen? And so I start to go look at the data and I actually have some folks that, you know, Our content creators, if you will, they’re YouTubers that go out and they actually will find that information and post it and they’re really, really good and I trust them.

[00:25:59] So whenever [00:26:00] something like this happens and they’re the first ones to actually bring that up, I’ll then go and make a little blog post on our website and say, Hey, this is where I’m getting my information from right now. I recommend that you do the same. So as we go on. And I find it so important to let the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board, do their thing.

[00:26:16] They have to go in and do an investigation and figure out what actually happened. And so I very much try not to Monday morning quarterback and speculate and say, Oh, well, this is what I would have done in a situation like that. I don’t have all of the information. So I honestly kind of take a beat and wait just to see, okay, what’s the information that’s going to come out before I start jumping to any conclusions.

[00:26:35] LM: And then you said that there’s these little like incidences that happen and We might perceive them as passengers. It’s like emergencies. Everything’s crazy. And you guys are just like, no, this is something we’ve planned for. How often are these things happening? Like, how often are you guys having to make adjustments or flying with one engine?

[00:26:52] And we just don’t even know about it.

[00:26:53] KK: Almost never, almost never. So, yeah, that’s a great question. We talk about all these things and really put a lot [00:27:00] of weight into them. It’s exclusively what we’ve talked about this entire show. But I’ve never done this in my career. The only thing I’ve ever really dealt with was that severe turbulence and that was a, okay, we laughed it off and we went in and landed.

[00:27:11] LM: Wait, since your years flying for a big commercial airline, you’ve not had a single like notable incident?

[00:27:17] KK: No, none.

[00:27:19] LM: Wow, and how much do you fly?

[00:27:20] KK: I fly, call it 14 days a month.

[00:27:23] LM: Okay.

[00:27:23] KK: Yeah.

[00:27:24] LM: Wow. And you fly over the Pacific Ocean, you fly international, these long, long distances. What about a go around? So I’ve

[00:27:30] KK: had in my career, I have personally done one in San Diego, one in Denver, one in San Francisco, Three go arounds

[00:27:40] LM: can it happen on takeoff two or just landing

[00:27:42] KK: just landing on a go around Okay, so

[00:27:43] LM: that’s when you’re landing and you almost land and then it’s like look and you go back up I’ve never had it happen, but it scares me.

[00:27:50] KK: Yeah, I’ve been a passenger on Three go arounds. Two on the same flight. Oh. And that really freaked people out.

[00:27:57] LM: Was there weather or something?

[00:27:58] KK: Yeah, it was shifting winds. We were going [00:28:00] into Boise. Anytime there’s a front moving through an area, the winds start to shift. And so we always land an airplane into the wind or with a little bit of a crosswind.

[00:28:08] We can go up to 90 degrees on the crosswind. We can land with a tailwind, but we prefer not to. So this airplane, they were coming in and the winds were really strong behind the airplane. So pushing the airplane up at altitude and then they would shift down near the runway. So a little bit of turbulence as we come down, we talk about shifting winds, changing directions.

[00:28:27] Turbulence, as you come down, well, as that wind is pushing you, it’s hard to get the airplane slowed down and on the appropriate glide path. And so this goes into what we call stabilized approach criteria. We make sure that we are within these specific gates as we go in to land the airplane. And if we’re not meeting those gates, we have to go around.

[00:28:44] It’s, it’s mandatory. And so as they were working their way in, they were a little bit too high, maybe a little bit too fast. I don’t actually know. I wasn’t in the flight deck for this. They initiated a go around. It’s actually, it’s pretty calm.

[00:28:56] LM: Yeah, I was gonna ask, what’s the vibe in the flight deck when you’re like, Oh, we [00:29:00] can’t land this plane.

[00:29:00] We got to take off again.

[00:29:01] KK: Yeah, we just go into our call outs. So you start the call outs, you start the whole procedure, the throttles come up. But are you guys

[00:29:07] LM: like sweating? No. Okay, it’s like very, does it feel dangerous at all? No.

[00:29:12] KK: No. It’s, okay. Going around. And then we just start making our slow, methodical callouts, landing gear up, you start to bring the flaps back up, okay?

[00:29:20] Make sure we have the right altitude set. And is it

[00:29:23] LM: very easy for the plane to take off? Go high. I always am much calmer. I know that takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of a flight, but I’m much calmer on landing because I’m like, Oh, gravity is on our side. We’re trying to go down and we are indeed going down.

[00:29:35] And it feels like when you’re doing a go around, you’re like, Nope, we’re gonna fight gravity again. And that feels crazy.

[00:29:41] KK: So This may be helpful in this as we go around on a Boeing product specifically. I don’t fly the Airbus, so I don’t know it well, but on a Boeing, if we just do one click of what we call the toga buttons, take off, go around button, it’ll come up to a slow go around, which is a 2000 foot per minute climb, which is actually pretty [00:30:00] slow.

[00:30:00] Comparatively speaking, if we do a second click, we get the maximum go around power and that’ll be full rated power, all hundred thousand pounds of thrust on each engine for the triple seven. And that’ll climb us away at a pretty significant clip, getting us away from the runway. So we actually prefer to slow it down as much as we can because we just don’t need all of the aircraft performance.

[00:30:19] So no, go around. Getting away from the ground is no problem whatsoever. It happens really fast. It’s not like you’re

[00:30:24] LM: fighting the air. Yeah, that’s what I pictured. This is like, uh,

[00:30:28] KK: it’s not like swimming upstream, you know, in a river. We have so much power on these airplanes. It’s almost unbelievable. So the biggest thing about it is we’re just changing the configuration quite a bit.

[00:30:38] And so we’re bringing the flaps back up and flaps are a device that changes the shape of the wing so that we can extend them when we’re taking off and landing, which increases the drag and also increases the lift on the wing. So it just helps us fly at a slower speed. And then we retract those flaps when we’re at a higher speed, which actually allows us to fly 5, 6, 700 miles per hour.

[00:30:58] So, the amount of [00:31:00] speed in which we can safely fly these airplanes is amazing, all the way, you know, 130 miles an hour to 700 miles an hour is wild to be able to do that, but as we slow down, we deploy those flaps, we extend them, and then as we accelerate and climb away from the runway, we’re actually So, Retracting them.

[00:31:15] And so just as going through those processes, it just takes a few minutes to actually do it. And so that’s what’s actually creating the busyness, if you will, on the flight deck. But it’s not, you know, a hair scramble. Oh my gosh, what are we going to do? You know, fire drill type thing. It’s just a, okay, methodical, slow, let’s get away from the ground.

[00:31:31] We’ll climb up. We’ll comply with air traffic control instructions. They’ll tell us where to go. We’re just going to come right back around, set up, and do another approach to landing. I know it sounds not that mellow, but it actually is pretty mellow.

[00:31:42] LM: And turbulence, are you mellow too?

[00:31:44] KK: Oh yeah,

[00:31:45] LM: yeah. You’re just like, whatever.

[00:31:46] KK: Yeah, it’s whatever. I mean, you know, more so what we’re considering when we’re actually up there is not the integrity of the airplane. The airplane is going to be perfectly fine. It is built to withstand So much more than we ever actually encounter in the normal flight envelope, but what [00:32:00] I’m sitting up there thinking about is, okay, number one, passenger comfort when we’re flying 1214 hours.

[00:32:05] I want everybody to be able to get up, go use the lavatory, get coffee, move around, stretch so on and so forth. And so let’s try and give everybody the smoothest ride we possibly can. And number two, And really, I should probably reverse the order of these, but safety is, of course, the number one priority.

[00:32:20] And so when we’re flying along, what can happen in turbulence is somebody losing their footing, falling down, breaking a collarbone, wrist, something along those lines. So what’s important to note here is what an aircraft accident is actually defined as. And it’s anytime substantial damage happens to the airplane, or anytime somebody on board has more than a simple fracture of the finger, nose, or toe, Or second or third degree burns.

[00:32:43] So one of the recent aircraft accidents, this one happened in 2023. Flight attendant was up, getting everything ready to go for the service. They encountered just light chop, which is the lowest turbulence that we possibly encounter. Well, as she was pouring coffee, she kind of slipped and spilled it on herself.

[00:32:59] [00:33:00] Second degree burn on her hand. Aircraft accident. Full investigation. I mean, it’s a big deal. So that’s what we’re really concerned about when we’re talking about things of that nature. And that’s why you’re hearing forceful announcements. Everybody must be in their seats with their seatbelts fastened.

[00:33:15] We’re encountering unexpected turbulence and that scares people. But the goal is, hey, if you’re in your seat with your seatbelt fastened, you’re going to be perfectly fine. And so that’s what we’re really trying to do. And we’ll go into that turbulence. We may ask the flight attendants to take their jump seats.

[00:33:28] We’ll change the altitudes. We’ll talk to air traffic controllers, other pilots, and say, hey, what are you experiencing out here? They’ll tell us, Hey, 36, 000 feet is smoother than 33, 000. We’ll make the climb. Hey, it is smooth up here. Okay. Seatbelt signs back off. So that’s kind of what’s really going through our minds, but it’s not a, you know, I’m not buckling my seatbelt down, but my seatbelts always buckled, but I’m not tightening it down and putting the shoulder harness on and hanging onto the airplane.

[00:33:52] We’re sitting there just, okay, well, let’s try and find a better altitude.

[00:33:54] LM: And again, when you’re moving the plane up and down, when you’re in the air, that’s not scary at all either. [00:34:00] That’s just like, do we go up? Do we go down? You’re not like fighting gravity, pushing the plane up into the sky.

[00:34:05] KK: It’s super mellow.

[00:34:06] You, when you’re getting a climb, you reach up, you change the altitude selector, which is on what we call the mode control panel. The dashboard, if you will, changes a thousand feet. You tell it how you want it to climb. There’s a couple of different modes that we can use. And then you just make a call out, Hey, okay, we’re leaving 34, 000 feet, climbing to 35, 000 feet.

[00:34:21] And you just go back to having your conversation that you were talking about. You know, you’re monitoring the airplane to make sure it does what you want, but it is no more challenging than changing lanes in your car. Honestly, it’s probably easier because there’s nobody in your blind spot. Air traffic control has cleared everybody away from you.

[00:34:34] So it’s, it’s mellow.

[00:34:36] LM: One of the things that freaks me out about turbulence is the idea that maybe this isn’t turbulence. Maybe this is like something going wrong with the plane in some way. Is that ever the case? Or is there ever any way for me to deduce that?

[00:34:49] KK: Anytime you’re experiencing that kind of like bouncing around shakiness of the airplane, it’s going to be turbulence.

[00:34:54] And turbulence feels a little bit different depending on the different types of turbulence that you may encounter. Some feels a little more shaky. [00:35:00] Some feels a little more kind of droppy, if you will, then different airplanes may feel a little bit different as well. The bigger airplanes feel a little more smooth and rhythmic.

[00:35:07] The smaller airplanes may feel a little bit sharper. The big thing here though, is if there’s ever a problem on the airplane, we’re going to tell you. It’s not our interest to say, Oh, there was an engine failure and we’re not telling anybody and we’re just going to go land this airplane and pretend everything’s fine.

[00:35:20] We simply don’t do that. We go through a full process and that process would look like, you know, an issue happens. We pull out the checklist, we run the checklist, we make sure that we’ve done everything that we need to in the flight deck, and then we communicate with the flight attendants, the passengers, our dispatchers on the ground, and our air traffic controllers as well, to just tell everybody, Okay, this is the situation of the airplane, everything’s safe and secure, we’re gonna go in and make a landing.

[00:35:44] At some intermediate airport, if necessary, or we’re going to continue to the destination, whatever it may be, there’s not going to be a situation in which we’re going to keep you in the dark and you have to stay guessing. By any means, we’re going to keep everybody on the same page.

[00:35:56] LM: So there’s never going to be a scenario where it’s like shaking and actually the [00:36:00] plane is coming apart or something.

[00:36:01] And you guys just haven’t, you’re up there sweating and dealing with everything. So you haven’t clued us in yet.

[00:36:06] KK: Correct? Yeah. Okay. We just can’t really run into a situation like that. Planes. Okay. They just don’t come apart, really.

[00:36:11] LM: Yeah, another thing that’s made the news a lot recently are these planes dropping hundreds, thousands of feet.

[00:36:18] Is that turbulence related?

[00:36:20] KK: No, so what they’re talking about and the reports that I’ve seen of aircraft dropping, well, what they’ll say is flight plunges 28, 000 feet in 10 minutes. That’s a normal descent rate. We descend the airplane at about 2, 500 feet per minute normally, which would be 25, 000 feet in 10 minutes.

[00:36:36] So to add an extra 3, 000 feet over the course of that 10 minutes is really nothing. I mean, it’s a little bit steeper than what we would normally do, but it’s not uncommon. Like maybe flying into New York, they may leave us high for a little bit longer than normal. And then we start our descent and we have to do that 2, feet per minute descent rate.

[00:36:53] So this is one of the articles that I saw relatively recently. Aircraft plunges and what it really was was they had what’s called a [00:37:00] pressurization issue and pressurization basically means that we take air coming off the engines. We force it into the cabin. It allows us to breathe the oxygen in the air because up at 36, 000 feet, we can’t breathe that air.

[00:37:10] Normally, you know, we’d go hypoxic so on and so forth. And so that’s what that system is designed for. So in this case, they had the oxygen mass deploy, pull those down, put them on, you start your descent. They did a normal descent rate down to that 10, 000 feet, which is where we can breathe oxygen normally again, no problem whatsoever.

[00:37:27] But you know, the news made this really big deal out of it. And it said the airplane dropped, it was a controlled descent the entire time. There was a system issue. The pressurization wasn’t working as it was supposed to, but everyone was fine. They got on the ground, no problem. Rebooked everybody and got them on their way to I think it was London that they were going to But it’s just a perfect example of okay that actually The descent had nothing to do with what was going on in that flight and more So the system issue is what was actually happening

[00:37:53] LM: and on the plane It wouldn’t have felt like we’re dropping it would have just felt like a normal felt totally normal

[00:37:58] KK: Yeah

[00:37:58] LM: Is there any reason [00:38:00] that you’re aware of that a plane would just plunge or drop a bunch of feet in air?

[00:38:06] Is that something you’re thinking about when you’re flying? No,

[00:38:09] KK: no, I mean, the airplane is bound by the laws of physics at all times, right? So we’re always creating lift on the wings. We’re always creating forward thrust. There’s four principles of flight. There’s thrust, lift, weight, and drag in all four axes, if you will.

[00:38:23] And so we’re always being enacted on, By those four things. And so what we can run into is again changing winds and that may just change the way that the airplane is kind of flying through that area and we need to change the pitch of the airplane in order to climb a little bit or descend a little bit and that’s causing some of that turbulence.

[00:38:40] But yeah, we’re not really running into a situation in which we’re just cruising along and suddenly the airplane drops. I physically it just can’t happen.

[00:38:48] LM: That’s helpful. Yeah. Because that’s something I picture. Sometimes we’re just like flying and I’m like, what if it just like plummeted out of nowhere?

[00:38:54] KK: Yeah. No, we’re supported the entire time. So we can’t just drop out of the sky. We could descend or climb, you [00:39:00] know, of course, but that’s the decision that we’re making and telling the airplane to do it. But we’re not just dropping into a hole or something along those lines.

[00:39:07] LM: And then you mentioned you often fly over the Pacific.

[00:39:10] Something I tell myself when I’m flying over the Atlantic now that I’ve understood the routes is like, there’s actually not that much ocean that you’re flying over. There’s all these different places to land like we talked about earlier. I was under the impression that the Pacific is different. It’s just this like endless stretch of ocean.

[00:39:25] Is that true? And if so, what are you guys doing to prepare for emergencies if it is just like an endless stretch of ocean?

[00:39:30] KK: You’re exactly right. I mean, the Pacific is massive. It’s the largest ocean in the world. There’s not much land, but there are enough airports for us to actually have those ETOPS alternates that we talked about.

[00:39:41] And so as we’re going. We’re using places like Honolulu, Midway Island, uh, for farther north. We may be using Anchorage or Cold Bay up in Alaska, depending on the routes that we’re actually using that day. And so although we are over the ocean for longer stretches, it really doesn’t matter if it’s land or water, as long as there’s those appropriate.

[00:39:59] And usable [00:40:00] alternate airports along the route. So we have those same exact things as we work our way across and we have those equal time points for those critical points the entire time. They’re plotted on the airplane. They’re plotted on our iPads. And so we’re talking about it the entire time. Okay.

[00:40:13] Hey, coming up on the cold Bay alternate here. If something happens, we’re going to make the right turn and go to Cold Bay. But that

[00:40:19] LM: always exists.

[00:40:20] KK: Always exists. Yeah. It’s required any time we’re farther away than 60 minutes from essentially the mainland or 60 minutes away from a usable alternate airport.

[00:40:28] We’re in that what’s called ETOPS airspace. And that makes us have those different critical points in those equal time points.

[00:40:36] LM: Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. I think, I think so. Do you view it to be any more dangerous to like fly over the Atlantic versus fly over the Pacific versus fly over land?

[00:40:45] KK: No. I mean, there’s more considerations when we’re going over the Pacific or the Atlantic.

[00:40:49] Any, anytime we’re oceanic, there’s just more considerations because we’re in that scenario where right now, if there’s an issue, we’re going to go to Honolulu. Whereas when we’re flying domestically right now, if there’s an issue, we could go to [00:41:00] Albuquerque, we could go to Santa Fe, we could turn around and go to Phoenix.

[00:41:02] We could continue and go to El Paso or whatever the. condition may be, but we just have one defined option when we’re over the ocean. And so we’re considering that a little bit more, but from a pilot’s perspective, oceanic flying is way easier. We love it up there because we’re in what’s called a CPDLC communication controller, pilot data link communication.

[00:41:24] And so we can effectively send text messages from the airplane to the controllers. They can clear us to different altitudes. We can ask them for different information. We’re not monitoring the radio the whole time. Whereas when we’re domestic, we’re monitoring it. We’re waiting to hear our own flight’s call sign.

[00:41:38] And that’s how we actually go through the communication. So when we’re oceanic, It’s just, it’s mellow.

[00:41:43] LM: I want to wrap us on turbulence, then we’ll move on to some stuff in the news, and also I want to talk about pilots and all of that type of stuff. Is there anything else that you get asked about turbulence that you found helpful to answer for people, or anything else you could just say in general, knowing that people who are really scared of turbulence are listening to this?

[00:41:59] KK: [00:42:00] Yeah, I kind of briefly hit on it a few times, but the big thing here is that turbulence is not going to bring an airplane down. It’s not going to break the airplane apart, anything along those lines. The seatbelt sign is not something to be afraid of. It’s, it’s simply a management tool, right? We’re just trying to manage the information that’s going back to the cabin.

[00:42:17] If everybody’s seated with their seatbelts fastened, we’re not going to have people falling over and breaking collarbones or wrists. I don’t want to sit in turbulence either, but it’s not something that scares the pilots or, you know, It’s something that we’re afraid of, but it is something that we do try and manage.

[00:42:29] LM: Do you think that it’s going to get net better or net worse in coming years as we’re getting more tracking and development of software and, I don’t know, all these technical things to help manage it, but also, like we talked about, climate change is making the actual turbulence potentially worse?

[00:42:45] KK: Right.

[00:42:46] Personal opinion only? Yes. Better. Okay. Yeah, because we can just see it so much better and we’re able to flight plan around it. We’re able to get that live information where it’s actually happening. I’ll give you an example. We were coming back from Seoul, South Korea, and I was looking at our little [00:43:00] drop pen map that actually plots the turbulence for us.

[00:43:02] There was a flight ahead of us that was at the same altitude. They were about 100 miles ahead and they dropped a red dot, which is they say it’s moderate to severe. I’ve had our little thing drop red dots before and I’m like, that was not, that was not even remotely close to severe turbulence. I would barely classify it as moderate, but that’s the way it classifies it.

[00:43:19] So we saw it, we called them on the radio and say, Hey, did you actually experience this? And they said, yeah, it was pretty bumpy. And so we descended 2000 feet. It was perfectly smooth the entire way through. We turned the seatbelt sign on preemptively because we’re like, well, we might encounter it. We don’t know what it’s like at 34, but the information that’s out there and the access to it now is.

[00:43:38] just so good that anytime we go fly, I am confident that we can navigate our way around turbulence for the most part. Of course, there’s some of it. That’s like, we’re not going to try and get around this. It’s pretty minor, but from a nervous flyers perspective, of course, it feels really scary. We look at it in, uh, across the spectrum, if you will.

[00:43:57] LM: Is flying harder in Turbulence?

[00:43:59] KK: No, it’s all the [00:44:00] same. The airplanes are so well built. They’re hydraulically controlled via the flight controls. A lot of them are digital, what we call fly by wire. So when I put an input in on the controls, it will send it to a computer, and the computer calculates what I want it to do.

[00:44:13] And then it’ll send it to the flight controls. So the airplane just takes thousands of data points a second and recognizes exactly what it is that I want it to do or what it wants itself to do based on what we have going on with the autopilot. So flying in turbulence is no more difficult than flying in perfectly smooth air.

[00:44:29] LM: And then you mentioned there’s a very different pilot experience flying these long oceanic routes versus over the country, domestic routes. Is there a different quality of pilot that you would encounter on different routes? Yes.

[00:44:41] KK: No, so all pilots in the United States are trained to the exact same specifications and this is true across different countries as well, but each country has their own independent certifying agency.

[00:44:52] And so all pilots here have to have specific flight times. They have to have specific qualifications. We’re all trained the exact same way on the jets [00:45:00] that we are all certified to fly. Like, when I get to a new airplane. I have to go through a full, it’s approximately a 30 day training course to actually go learn the airplane.

[00:45:08] I learn what every single switch does. If there’s an issue, what switches are going to be able to fix the issue, the checklist, so on and so forth. So, we go through this entire thing, and again, this is all about when things go wrong, what you do. It’s not so much talking about the normal day to day flying.

[00:45:24] Of course, we go and do that as well. We do our takeoffs and our landings. But you’re really training the the non normal procedures is what we call them. So pilots across the United States are trained the exact same way. Pilots in different areas are trained the exact same way to their own certifying agencies.

[00:45:38] LM: I’ve read about a potential pilot shortage, like less people are getting into the industry. And I’ve worried about that making it so maybe there will be less stringent standards, or you’re just getting less quality in the flight deck. What are your thoughts on that?

[00:45:52] KK: Pilot shortage is I mean, it’s true from what I’ve seen, but you’ll see different information about it all across the spectrum as well.

[00:45:59] But [00:46:00] we’ve seen over the years, airlines are growing. So they’re just, there’s a need for more pilots. We’ve seen the military. A lot of pilots have gotten out of the military, less pilots going in. It’s, there’s just so many different ways in which you can kind of split this out. So we do see A lot of hiring going on at the airlines, but they’re still maintaining a very strict standard that’s defined by the FAA.

[00:46:21] It’s a standard that I very much stand behind. It changed back in 2009, I believe it was, that changed how much flight time people have to have as they actually go in to fly the airliners. I’m very confident in the people that are actually out flying these airplanes. I fly with them on a daily basis.

[00:46:36] They’re just extremely professional. They do a great job. The airlines give us really, really good training. They’re not in the business of sending somebody out to the line that doesn’t feel ready. If you need extra time in the simulators and you say, Hey, I’m just not quite comfortable enough. No problem whatsoever.

[00:46:50] You get that extra time. It is not a penalized thing.

[00:46:52] LM: Well, and always, always the person, at least one person has like a ton of time, right?

[00:46:58] KK: Exactly. Yeah. The captain typically has [00:47:00] a ton of flight time. So when you get hired at an airline, you have. strict standards of which you need to meet to be able to have the experience to do so.

[00:47:06] And we hire far above what that minimum standard is. But then to go to captain as well, you also have to have a specific amount of flight time at that airline in a one 21 system, which is a subsection of the federal aviation regulations. And so those cannot be waived. It has to be, you have this flight time, you have this experience.

[00:47:24] Now you’re qualified to go fly as captain.

[00:47:26] LM: And do you feel like that’s true even on regional jets or these special new airlines like JSX and things like that?

[00:47:33] KK: Yeah. So it may be a little bit different at the different airlines. Part 135 is a different subsection of the federal aviation regulations and they have different standards.

[00:47:42] But it’s all, again, still very regulated, and their pilot training is very similar to what we do at the airlines. They go to simulator training, they have 30 days to do that, they go out and actually experience it flying with specially qualified captains, so on and so forth. And then the airline world has a little bit different set of standards in which we use, but [00:48:00] again, similar.

[00:48:01] Regional airlines, I flew for the regionals, I loved it, it was so much fun. And you get a lot of really good repetitions there. So you’re just seeing it constantly. There’s no replacement for that. So you get a ton of experience there. You’re doing four or five legs a day, climbing, descending, approaching airports.

[00:48:16] You’re seeing more go arounds there than you would at somewhere, you know, you’re flying one leg a day type thing. I’ll put it to you this way, Liz, whenever I’m flying around in the system or whatever, my wife or my family is getting on an airplane, I do not hesitate to to send them on an airplane, especially within the United States system.

[00:48:30] And that’s just what I’m comfortable with because that’s what I know. There’s never a hesitation for me to say, Oh yeah, you’re going to be perfectly safe. I mean, when you look at flying statistics, it’s, it’s just simply true. 39 million flights this year.

[00:48:41] LM: What about abroad? How do you evaluate whether an airline is safe abroad?

[00:48:44] KK: I just go with the kind of the flag carrier of each individual country. And they have good safety reputations. I would look online and see, okay, what are the safety protocols and procedures that they use? What is their track record? So on and so forth. So just using kind of [00:49:00] honestly, common sense information there and just seeing what’s happened in the past, what kind of airplanes are they flying?

[00:49:06] So on and so forth.

[00:49:07] LM: Is there any reason to believe that a discount carrier in the US or abroad would be less safe than a non discount carrier? Like, are they? getting worse pilots because they’re paying less money. Are they skimping on maintenance or ground stuff or any of that kind of stuff?

[00:49:22] KK: I’ll speak to the United States because again, that’s just what I know.

[00:49:24] No. So they still are certified under the same federal aviation regulations that all of us are certified by. They have to do the aircraft inspections the same way in which every other airline has to do them. Their pilots have to be certified the exact same way. And pilots simply are not going to go to work for a company that doesn’t treat them well, have a good contract, pay them well, especially in today’s day and age.

[00:49:44] Transcribed The contracts across the airline industry are the best they’ve ever been in reality. So no matter what, you have qualified, professional, experienced people in the flight deck. There’s a specific airline that you’re probably thinking of. It kind of looks like a big yellow school bus. [00:50:00] But they do a really good job.

[00:50:01] I have friends that fly for them. They’ve loved flying for them. I respect every other airline. I respect their pilots. I’m very proud to be in this profession. In the United States, again, they do a really good job. From a nervous flyer’s perspective, you’re not seeing the bad pilots fly for one specific airline.

[00:50:15] That just isn’t the case.

[00:50:16] LM: Okay, one more question about pilots. You do these really, really long haul flights, and we’ve done a lot of episodes about circadian rhythms and the importance of sleep. Yeah, yeah. How do you stay in top form as you’re crossing time zones? And do you feel like there’s any issue with pilots having the reaction time, the thought processes that they need to have?

[00:50:35] KK: This is a great question. So I’m going to give you kind of a rule of thumb here, and it’s, it’s much more complicated than this, but this is a good rule of thumb. Anything over eight hours, we have three pilots on board. Anything over 12 hours, we have four pilots on board. Again, it can be a little bit different than that, but that’s the idea.

[00:50:51] So. On those flight decks, we have the two pilots that are flying, so we have the flying captain and the flying first officer. The third pilot, let’s [00:51:00] say we’re going San Francisco to London, this would be three pilots. That third pilot is what we call the international relief officer. And so, they’re sitting in the flight deck for takeoff and landing.

[00:51:09] And as soon as we climb up and we climb through 18, 000 feet, they go back and sleep. We have a bunk on the airplane. It’s pretty comfortable. And so we go back there and sleep for a specific amount of time. It’s depending on how many pilots you either split in thirds or you split it in half. You go back and you sleep and then you come back up and then you fly the remaining two thirds of the flight.

[00:51:27] So you’re there for the second break and the third break. But then the original pilots that did the takeoff take the flying seats back and they actually do the landing again. So, a better, kind of easier one to understand would be San Francisco to Sydney, four pilots on that one. So, flying captain, flying first officer, they’re in the front two control seats.

[00:51:46] And then you’re going to have two other first officers, co pilots. They’re also in the flight deck for takeoff and landing. Climb up, go to the back, take our break for the first half of the flight, six, seven hours. This is the middle of the night now, so we get a normal night of sleep. [00:52:00] We come back up. Take over the flying.

[00:52:02] The other two leave. They go sleep for six, seven hours and then they come back and up an hour prior to landing and then they actually get back In the control seats and land the airplane.

[00:52:11] LM: What about with time zones and all of that? Are you always able to fall asleep and get the sleep you need to function?

[00:52:18] KK: We actually do a lot of training on circadian rhythms and sleeping and the appropriate times to do so and there’s actually all of those Charts that I was talking about that make it so that rule of thumb isn’t always Applicable is all based on the time that you reported based on your circadian rhythm

[00:52:33] LM: Oh, cool.

[00:52:34] Yeah.

[00:52:34] KK: It’s all under FAR part 117, which is again, another subsection of the federal aviation regulations that dictates all of these things go. So yes, we do talk a lot about circadian rhythm and how to fall asleep and, you know, different techniques to do so. And then each pilot has their own individual way of doing things.

[00:52:50] For me, I sleep when I’m tired. So when I’m on the road, I sleep a lot and I sleep in kind of like two hour spurts. That works well for me. It does not work well for me to try and get to [00:53:00] a new time zones time. That doesn’t work. So if we land in Korea and it’s 4 p. m. there and I’m tired, I’ll just go to bed when we get there, sleep a couple hours, wake up three hours, try and go back to sleep.

[00:53:11] Some people will stay awake until 10 p. m. Korea time, and then they’ll fall asleep for six or seven hours. The first Six months in this international flying when you’re the pilot you kind of figure out what works for you And then you stick to that but everyone’s a little bit different There’s no this is exactly how you need to sleep other than when we’re on the airplane

[00:53:27] LM: But you guys are all really conscious of your sleep.

[00:53:30] Like you’re not like, oh, I’m in Korea I want to go out and party and then you go out and party and then you come back and you’re like, well I’ve only slept two hours, but I guess I’ll fly this plane home.

[00:53:37] KK: Totally I mean, we’ll go out to dinner together and stuff like that but I You know, when we’re at work, we’re at work.

[00:53:41] We’re really, and my friends sometimes have a hard time understanding this one. They’ll say, what did you do in Korea? I slept. The pilots are always

[00:53:48] LM: though, trying to think, okay, I have a flight on this day. How can I optimize my sleep? And it’s cool that the airlines are training you in circadian rhythms and things like that.

[00:53:56] KK: Absolutely. Absolutely. So the bunkies, the international relief [00:54:00] officers, we show up tired because we’re the first ones to go to bed. So if I wake up at 2 a. m. and we’re leaving at 1 p. m. and I’m, I’m the IRO, I’m not going to try and go back to sleep because I know I’m going to want to sleep when I get on the airplane.

[00:54:11] LM: Oh, I love that. Yeah. Okay, that’s very comforting.

[00:54:13] KK: Yeah, it’s well managed.

[00:54:15] LM: Okay, cool. You’ve mentioned the FAA a few times and said, oh, like they have all these certification standards and this is why I trust this. I feel like when all the news about Boeing came out, one of my biggest problems with that was it made me trust the FAA less.

[00:54:29] It seemed like. They were potentially getting paid off, they were being paid to look the other way, things like that. And then I felt like this whole system that I had counted on to protect me was no longer protecting me. I’m curious how you viewed that as a pilot.

[00:54:43] KK: During that time, the FAA was allowed to designate other entities to maintain overwatch of themselves.

[00:54:51] This has gone on for a long time, it always worked well. When the issues happened with the maxes, they took that. Responsibility [00:55:00] away from Boeing. So now the FAA says, okay, we’re actually going to come back in and resume oversight from our own independent, you know, third party operator essentially. And I’m not even sure third party is the right term, but resuming it from the FAA standpoint.

[00:55:12] So the FAA has a lot of different ways in which they manage things as they move forward. So they kind of took that, okay. We saw what happened here. We need to remove that here and then they can issue what’s called emergency airworthiness directives or airworthiness directives. An emergency airworthiness directive basically says you need to ground every airplane that’s under this subsection of a fleet until further notice until this specific issue is fixed.

[00:55:35] That’s what happened with the Maxis back in, I think it was 2019. And then again, when that door plug came out in January, Same thing, emergency airworthiness directive, shut it down. Those airplanes cannot fly anymore until this situation is fixed. And so the FAA really, their responsibility is to maintain aviation safety and maintain the best interest of passengers, pilots as well.

[00:55:56] I mean, obviously we’re on those airplanes too. And so their job [00:56:00] is to use the resources that they have to actually enact procedures that, that enhance safety is what I’m trying to say. So in those airworthiness directives, which are a lot of the things that we’ll see online nowadays. There was a, a article that came out recently on the 777, which is Boeing’s international airplane, or one of them, that they were having thrust link cracking, I think it was, which is a part in the wing, and there was cracking on it.

[00:56:23] Well, they found it, and then they investigated another airplane in the test procedures. And they said, oh, this one has it too. So they shut them all down. Well, it’s an airworthiness directive that comes out and they say, okay, we just need to fix this. We need to recognize what the problem is and fix this.

[00:56:35] And it got blown up all over the media. Well, that’s just the FAA doing what the FAA does. And this happens across all of the airplanes, little airplanes, big airplanes, it doesn’t matter. Airworthiness directives come out as things change and we see airplanes age, we’re going to notice that, oh, okay, this little area is subject to corrosion or the landing gear needs to be changed.

[00:56:55] at a more frequent clip than we originally thought because they’ve just seen over time all the [00:57:00] maintenance data coming out that indicates to them what they need to do. So the FAA, their whole idea is really to just use those tools to designate things and to make it so that these airplanes are maintaining an extremely high level of safety and extremely high Dispatch reliability, meaning when it’s scheduled to go fly a flight, it actually goes and accomplishes it versus pushes off the gate has, you know, some small system malfunction that would have us do a gate return.

[00:57:25] We need to have maintenance come on the airplane. So we’re just trying to catch those things before they ever happen. And again, what’s important to note here in my 10 years of professional flying, I have really have not run into these. I’ve done a gate return the other day because somebody lost their passport once they got on board.

[00:57:40] We had to go back to the gate, but I don’t think I’ve added a gate return for a maintenance issue that I can think of.

[00:57:45] LM: So do you think the FAA is compromised in any way?

[00:57:48] KK: I do not believe so. I think they do a good job from everything that I’ve seen. They have maintained a high level of safety and There’s not a time that I have gotten on an airplane and thought that I shouldn’t be on this where the FAA isn’t [00:58:00] doing enough.

[00:58:00] LM: Can we talk about Boeing stuff for a second?

[00:58:02] KK: Yes.

[00:58:03] LM: You fly Boeing planes.

[00:58:05] KK: Yes.

[00:58:05] LM: Obviously Boeing planes have been in the news a lot recently. Why do you feel safe flying Boeing planes?

[00:58:12] KK: So I’ve gone through all of the training procedures that we need to as we go through all of our, you know, training for each individual airline.

[00:58:19] This is now my Technically fourth Boeing product that I’ve flown and every single time I’ve gone through the training there is Unbelievable redundancies in systems. So should we have a hydraulic system failure? We have plenty of other hydraulic systems on board that can maintain that 100 percent levels, you know, safety of flight.

[00:58:37] For example, on the triple seven, we’ve got, let me think about this. 1, electrical generators on board. We can lose all of those. All but one in the airplane can still automatically land itself, which is pretty impressive. Like pilots completely off the controls and it’ll go in and land. Boeing has just done a really good job of building airplanes that pilots love to fly.

[00:58:56] The human factors that they go through to actually make sure that the [00:59:00] switches are in the right position and that everything makes sense when we’re, you know, doing our pre flight checks and all the buttons, if they’re pushed in and they’re dark, they’re on. Things that just make it really, really easy for us to recognize that, okay, The airplane is perfectly set up for exactly what I want it to do right now.

[00:59:15] Boeing has done a really, really good job of that. They’ve maintained a lot of standardization across all of their fleets. So when you fly the first Boeing product, you learn their philosophy as you go into the second, the third, the fourth, that philosophy stays the same, but the technology changes a little bit.

[00:59:28] And so they’ll say, Oh, well, that one is now an automatic system. Yeah. Anti ice would be a good op, a good example of this one on an older product. When you take off and you start flying into clouds that have ice in them, you need to turn that on manually. on a newer product, they stay in automatic mode the entire time.

[00:59:44] You don’t even have to think about it. So the switches are still in the exact same position on the overhead panel. Effectively, they’re, they’re very close, but it just allows you to trust the system. You know it really well. You know what Boeing is thinking as they put things into their airplane, their autopilots all fly the same [01:00:00] way.

[01:00:00] So So for me to go from the first Boeing to the fourth Boeing, it’s a really, really simple process and just learning the new phraseology that they want us to use effectively.

[01:00:08] LM: So when you see incidences around Boeing planes and you know the next day you’re gonna leave your wife and go get on a Boeing plane, what’s your thought process and what would you say to anybody who is maybe feeling a little bit more scared about flying on a Boeing plane?

[01:00:22] KK: When you see things in the news about Boeing. Oftentimes, my perception of it is that it’s fear mongering, you get a lot of clicks on it, it’s something that’s a hot topic in the industry. There are also issues with other airplanes that happen. There may be airworthiness directives that come out about an Airbus, an Embraer, a Bombardier, which is a Canadian product.

[01:00:42] And so, these airworthiness directives come out. And issues happen. And so, you know, there may be an Airbus that had an engine shut down in flight and engine failure the day prior, but there also was a Boeing and that’s the one that gets the attention on it. So again, my reaction to all of these things is take note of it and then look at actually what happened the [01:01:00] day prior and not even to say, well, did, did something else happen to Airbus?

[01:01:03] It’s more so like, well, is this just another one of the Okay. You know, kind of run of the mill, like, this is a machine. A machine is going to have system issues at some point in the day. There’s going to be 25, 000 flights per day. There’s going to be something that happens at some point. And that something that happens is likely, and I mean, the likelihood of this is, is almost unbelievable and hard to understand.

[01:01:23] There’s going to be no impact to the passengers other than inconvenience. And so when I see those things, you know, I look at them and I go, okay, what happened? I like to listen to their traffic control tapes, hear from the pilot’s voices, you know, okay, did they make the turns that I would have made? I never look at it and go, oh, it’s a Boeing issue again.

[01:01:40] LM: You think the media is almost grouping a lot of issues as Boeing issues, but they could be because that’s the narrative that’s come out.

[01:01:47] KK: Absolutely. So here’s a perfect example. The engines on our airplanes are not Boeing engines. They’re Rolls Royce or Pratt Whitney. They’re Trent. Whatever the engine manufacturer is, but if an engine fails, [01:02:00] it’s going to be a Boeing plane problem.

[01:02:01] So, yeah, that’s the way that I look at these things is, there was a 747 that took off out of Miami not too long ago. It was a cargo carrier. My brother actually flies for a cargo carrier that flies 747s. And they had an engine failure. Or it was actually an engine fire was the indication that they had.

[01:02:17] There were sparks coming out of the engine. There’s a video of it. Pilots were super calm. They had three other engines that came back around and landed normally. You can imagine what the headlines were though. Boeing cargo plane has engine fire after takeoff. And in reality, it’s like, well, okay, yeah, they had an engine issue and they came back around and landed.

[01:02:34] They had three other engines to get them back around again. But that’s not a Boeing thing necessarily. So whenever I see stuff like that, I, I try and get to the root cause of what actually happened and then leave it there.

[01:02:45] LM: I like the idea that. Boeing makes planes that pilots like to fly. Like I find that comforting.

[01:02:50] We

[01:02:50] KK: love them. Yeah, they’re great The triple is my favorite airplane. I’ve ever flown.

[01:02:53] LM: The triple seven. The

[01:02:54] KK: triple seven. Yeah. Thank you.

[01:02:55] LM: Why?

[01:02:56] KK: It’s just it’s big It’s comfortable. It’s got all of these [01:03:00] redundancies. It’s fast. It’s smooth and turbulence

[01:03:04] LM: Are there planes that are smoother in turbulence? I mean That we could be booking?

[01:03:08] KK: Yes and no. Like, the bigger the airplane, typically the smoother it is, because it just has so much mass as it flies through the air.

[01:03:15] LM: I get more nervous on the big planes, because I feel like, again, it’s like the gravity idea. Like, it feels like taking off, you’re fighting so much more gravity, you’re rumbling down the runway for so much longer, whereas when I’m on, maybe like an Embraer flight to L.

[01:03:28] A., it’s just like, whoop! And then I also feel like we can land anywhere, even though it’s probably not The case, the big planes feel scarier to me. Can you get rid of that fear?

[01:03:37] KK: Yeah, they’re not scarier.

[01:03:38] LM: Does it feel like you’re fighting gravity more as you’re taking off?

[01:03:42] KK: No, I mean, you just have more thrust as you go through your aviation career.

[01:03:45] Like when I’m mentoring the next generation of pilots or talking to them, I always tell them, Hey, when you go into the jets, everything is the same. It just moves a decimal point. Everything happens a little bit faster. Instead of 20 feet prior to your altitude and you’re leveling off, you’re now leveling off 200 feet prior to your altitude [01:04:00] because we’re just climbing faster.

[01:04:01] So. As far as when we go to the bigger airplanes, it’s all the same. It’s just the aircraft, the aerospace engineers, if you will, have to then add the decimal point. They need to put bigger engines on them.

[01:04:13] LM: The last thing I want to touch on is the air traffic control system because that’s something else that’s made a lot of news headlines recently.

[01:04:20] People are saying that it’s outdated, that the people aren’t being trained to the level they were, that there’s a whole group of people who are trained really well that are essentially going to retire out of the system, that there’s all these, you know, near misses, things like that. So first of all, let’s just start with, have you ever experienced a near miss or a situation that made you anxious as a pilot?

[01:04:37] KK: A near miss as they’re defined kind of by the media, if you will, would be in what we in aviation call a TCAS, Traffic Collision Avoidance System Resolution Advisory. So traffic collision avoidance system sits on all the airplanes. It’s a system that monitors other aircraft in the area, monitors their trends.

[01:04:55] Are they climbing or descending? How close to us are they in our [01:05:00] paths, putting ourselves on a collision course? So there’s two different things that we can get from this. We can get a traffic advisory, which is a TA, and that’ll simply say traffic. And we’ll look, it’ll light up yellow on our screens, it’ll be a thousand feet below us or a thousand feet above us, or any other number of altitudes.

[01:05:15] If it’s climbing, it’ll show it to us lower than it would if it’s just level. And so we look at it and we go, okay, TCAS TA, and we just kind of watch it and see, okay, is anything changing? Do we need to get ready to be on the controls here? Is he or she not doing what they’re supposed to be doing? Because air traffic control keeps everybody away from us.

[01:05:33] They do have systems that. We’ll alert them to what we call conflicts, meaning, okay, you’ve cleared this airplane to climb, but there’s another airplane in the way, so it’ll alert them. They figure out all those conflicts and change everybody’s altitude, clearances, so on and so forth. The next thing that can happen is what’s called a resolution advisory.

[01:05:49] So if a resolution advisory happens, why it would happen would be that that airplane that was a thousand feet below us now starts climbing with or without a clearance, maybe unintentional from air traffic [01:06:00] control. It may be that the pilots misheard the clearance, they start to climb and we’re above them.

[01:06:05] Our TCAS is going to go traffic, climb, climb, and it paints a big green square on our, on our primary flight display. And we pull the airplane up into that, we disconnect the autopilot, we climb into it. It’ll say clear of conflict, we level off, we go back to our previous clearance, go ahead.

[01:06:20] LM: Wait, how does it know?

[01:06:21] Is it, it’s info coming from air traffic control or is it like radar around the plane?

[01:06:27] KK: It’s transponder, which is how we tell air traffic control who we are. It’s just a little computer system on the airplane. It’s talking to every other transponder that’s out there flying.

[01:06:36] LM: Okay.

[01:06:36] KK: And so it will see that that airplane starts doing something and then we get the TCAS, TA and RA.

[01:06:42] And again, RA’s don’t happen very much. And then we get that climb.

[01:06:46] LM: So if there was a zombie apocalypse and air traffic control no longer existed, you would still get that alert?

[01:06:51] KK: Yeah. Yeah. And air traffic control can go down to no radar environments. They’re fully trained for that. That’s their version of the engine failure, right?

[01:06:58] That’s what they sit there and go, OK, how do [01:07:00] we make sure that even when we can’t see the airplanes now, we can separate them? That’s what they’re really trained for. And they do a great job of it. I’ve had nothing but professional experiences with air traffic controllers. Now, you could sit here and go, okay, well, what if the airplane starts to do something that it’s not supposed to do, the other one?

[01:07:15] Well, our TCAS is constantly monitoring and will tell us, increase climb, decrease climb, descend, crossing, descend. And so there’s all these different modes that it can go into to get us away from that traffic. And all we do at Air Traffic Control is we make a call out to them and we say, our flight number, responding to a TCAS RA.

[01:07:33] And they go, roger. And they just wait until the airplane sorted itself out. Cause now you don’t want to add the human element to it. And so we’re trained to, this is what we do. We’re going to get a TCAS RA to climb. That other airplane is going to get a TCAS RA to descend and they’re going to level off.

[01:07:48] Once we’re clear of the conflict, the airplanes will tell us, we can tell air traffic control, Hey, we’re clear of conflict. They’ll give us a new clearance to fly, which is an altitude and a direction to go. Some of the smaller airplanes, they don’t have TCAS, but they have a [01:08:00] transponder. So we still get alerted off of them.

[01:08:02] If we’re flying in somewhere and there’s a little airplane flying around underneath the approach corridor, flying inappropriately through airspace it’s not supposed to go through, we will still detect them and receive the appropriate resolution advisory if we need to. Thank you. In my career, I’ve had one of these going into Los Angeles, and I was, and it wasn’t LAX, we were flying into Van Nuys, again in my private jet days, and we had one off of a little small airplane, said, uh, traffic climb, we climbed 300 feet, leveled off, descended back down, went in and landed normally.

[01:08:34] It was a total non event.

[01:08:35] LM: Do you have any concerns about the air traffic control system being out of date or needing an overhaul in some way?

[01:08:43] KK: So I think it’s always important to keep the technology moving forward on the air traffic control side of things, but I have never run into something that has made me think that, oh, this technology is crazy out of date.

[01:08:53] I mean, the things that we experience now with the controller pilot data link systems and, and, you know, Their ability to create what we [01:09:00] call in trail spacing, which allows us to fly through an area of thunderstorms going way back to the beginning here, but be able to get around them and create the spacing that we need to be able to appropriately fly around them.

[01:09:10] Because there’s not, you know, there’s no traffic that’s restricting us. That all works really well. They’re constantly changing things. So is there always room for improvement? Certainly. Is it something that I’ve ever seen flying the system? And I thought this is not working. This is crazy. Yeah.

[01:09:24] LM: Is there anything else that you can tell us as nervous flyers?

[01:09:29] Like fears that you’ve heard people call in to dial a pilot. You’ve heard probably every fear in the book. What do you say to people that, that seems to resonate?

[01:09:37] KK: We really take each call as a, as somebody that comes in and you know, if it’s somebody that’s, uh, you know, science backed like yourselves, we’ll go the science route.

[01:09:44] If it’s somebody that just needs the comfort of knowing who is actually on the other side of the flight deck, we’ll kind of go that route. So, We take each one as it comes. We don’t have a standard script by any means. But, often times what we always talk about is turbulence being the big one and, you know, the airplane’s not going to be [01:10:00] brought down by turbulence.

[01:10:01] The other big ones that we’ve seen are pilots are not pushed to take an airplane. We can make a decision not to take an airplane. We don’t have to justify it to anybody. We don’t go get called in to anybody. There’s no jury that says whether or not that was the right decision. It’s, okay, we respect your decision.

[01:10:15] You are paid to make these decisions. You are a professional. We expect you to make these decisions. But oftentimes it never gets to that point. The dispatchers are sitting there and analyzing what’s going on ahead of time. We’re making sure that the airplane is ready to go. The airport is ready to accept us.

[01:10:28] The weather is appropriate for that given day. Again, I don’t recall a single time in my career that I’ve ever rejected an airplane. I mean, you know, we sit here and talk about all these things, but it just, it really doesn’t happen very often. Those are kind of the big things that we see in the dial a pilot calls is just The what if questions and knowing that yes, your fear is reasonable, it’s okay to be nervous about this.

[01:10:52] That’s fine. You’re getting in a metal tube at 40, 000 feet, 500 miles an hour, somebody you’ve never met in charge. That’s okay. You can be nervous about that. But to [01:11:00] know that there’s a plan, we’ve trained for this, this is what we do. Every single one of the pilots that are on board those airplanes, they did not fall into this job by accident.

[01:11:08] They love it. They’re passionate about it. They’re excited to be here. Every single day we get there. I have cannot tell you how many times we’ve had the conversation. Can you believe how lucky we are to do this? This is so cool. And we really genuinely do feel that way. Even when we’re sitting there waiting on a gate and things are delayed and it’s moving slower than it needs to, it’s just a part of the game.

[01:11:26] And unfortunately. Those things are inconvenient, especially when you’re sitting in the back and it’s maybe hot back there and you just want to get off because you’ve been on for 13 and a half hours. That makes sense, but you’ve got the right people for the job that are in the front of the airplane.

[01:11:39] You’ve got the right people for the job that are the flight attendants, the dispatchers, the air traffic controllers. It’s not a career field that you fall into by accident. And to me, that brings me a lot of comfort every time I’m putting my safety or my family’s safety in somebody else’s hands. So much so that it’s not a consideration I even really have because I just intrinsically trust them.

[01:11:56] LM: All right. Well, Kyle, do you want to tell us a little bit in your own words about [01:12:00] DialPilot?

[01:12:00] KK: DialPilot was started about a year and a half ago. My sister in law was afraid of flying. It all started with a guy that she dated that was afraid of flying and that fear rubbed off on her. Yeah. Long story short, you know, when I started dating my now wife, we would talk about the fear of flying and those sorts of things.

[01:12:15] And I just tried to figure out the best way that I could possibly help. And so I started looking and seeing what different resources were out there. And there were a lot of great resources as far as cognitive behavioral therapy and EMDR and things of that nature, but there wasn’t really an intermediary between nothing at all, or maybe, you know, drinking before a flight.

[01:12:34] And then those kind of. more committed type therapies. And so I thought, you know, I think we might be able to do something here in the middle. And so our whole principle is just 30 minute phone calls with pilots. We’ve run some group courses on the fear of flying. We talk a lot about the things that we’ve talked about today.

[01:12:48] How does dispatch work? How does maintenance work? You know, what is the procedure? If we find something broken, how we actually deal with that. And so we just went through all of those things. And over the course of the last year and a [01:13:00] half or so, it’s shaped into kind of what it is today, which is Now the one on one calls, 30 minutes.

[01:13:05] We now have what’s called the no fear flight club coming out, which is kind of a online digital community. We do office hours with the pilots, a lot of people supporting each other. We have kind of a text group of all the nervous flyers supporting each other, which is fun. And then the podcast. So it’s been fun.

[01:13:19] It’s been really enjoyable to do. We love working with folks and helping them out as much as we can. And something that, that all of us pilots that are a part of it really, really enjoy doing.

[01:13:29] LM: Yeah, I was telling you before we got on that I used Dial A Pilot before my book tour because I was flying every other day for weeks on end, and it was really, really helpful.

[01:13:36] It was a very comforting conversation.

[01:13:38] KK: That’s awesome. I’m so glad to hear it. Yeah, it’s amazing at how much comfort it can provide to just meet and talk to the folks that are kind of, you know responsible for ensuring that those questions that you have in your mind are actually addressed in a way that it’s going to get us on the ground every single time safely.

[01:13:53] LM: I also think it’s just helpful to remind yourself that pilots are human beings and, oh, I trust this human being. I think a really [01:14:00] scary part about flying as somebody who’s afraid of flying is the lack of control. And like you said, you don’t know who is flying this plane. And so even humanizing The whole world of it is helpful for me.

[01:14:10] KK: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that our pilots talk a lot about is, Hey, at the end of the day, we have the same goal as you and that’s to get back home safely to our families. And we’re not going to make a decision that ever jeopardizes that. And we’re not going to allow somebody to push a decision that jeopardizes that on us.

[01:14:26] And I think that that’s a really important thing to point out here too, is that. Everybody’s got the same goal. And oftentimes when you get on the airplane, you turn right. You never get an opportunity to go into the flight deck or see the pilots or talk to them, but we’re all really happy to be there and thrilled to make everyone’s acquaintance and, you know, show off the flight deck.

[01:14:41] And it’s been so rewarding to do this and to meet different pilots and talk to different folks and just understand more of flying from the nervous travelers perspective. So very grateful to have the opportunity.

[01:14:51] LM: I always thank you guys when I get off the plane, because I’m like, if they’re appreciated enough, maybe they’ll be inspired to not crash the next plane.

[01:14:58] So I feel like it’s like a service that I’m [01:15:00] doing. I’m like, Oh my gosh, thank you so much, sir. Thank you for getting us here live.

[01:15:03] KK: I love it. Everybody has a role in aviation safety.

[01:15:06] LM: Thank you so much, Kyle. This was wonderful.

[01:15:08] KK: My pleasure.

[01:15:08] LM: If you loved this episode, you will love the episode that we did with Jenny Tate.

[01:15:12] It is called Science Backed Hacks to Majorly Reduce Stress When the World Gets Overwhelming. Jenny is a therapist and a professor who’s done a ton of research into stress and anxiety and the really easy practices that we can do to overcome those feelings. She helped me with my fear of flying in our conversation.

[01:15:31] And there’s also just so much more there. It’s a lot of like little quick hacks that you can apply immediately and feel better. In that episode, I will link it in the show notes so you can go and listen next. Oh, just one more thing. It’s the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.

[01:15:48] It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.