Danny Jones Podcast - #362 - Navy Pilot Breaks Down New MH370 Search, Ghost Planes & Surviving 9/11 | Captain Steeeve
Aired: 2026-01-09
Duration: 02:12:29


=== Mandatory Retirement at 65 (05:53) ===

[00:00:07]  Are you still a pilot or are you retired now?
[00:00:10]  So I retired two months ago.
[00:00:11]  Okay.
[00:00:12]  When you turn 65, Congress fires you.
[00:00:15]  Congress.
[00:00:16]  Congress.
[00:00:16]  It's a law.
[00:00:17]  It's the only non government job that has a required retirement age in 65.
[00:00:22]  It used to be 60.
[00:00:24]  Now it's 65.
[00:00:25]  They're trying to raise the age again, but it's ridiculous because you're at the most experienced you are.
[00:00:32]  I get a physical every six months for my entire career.
[00:00:35]  Still pass all my physicals.
[00:00:36]  I don't even, I got cheaters with me, but that's about it.
[00:00:39]  Yeah.
[00:00:39]  And yeah, it's 65, you're out.
[00:00:43]  So, but now I'm retired.
[00:00:44]  I'm on Medicare and unemployed.
[00:00:45]  So, you know, is there, is there any sort of a good reason for 65?
[00:00:52]  Like, is, do they do, do any like cognitive testing or is it just because of age strictly?
[00:00:57]  No.
[00:00:58]  So they, so they, they do do cognitive testing, but it's not what you would think, like sit down, take a test.
[00:01:03]  You've got 20 minutes to pass it.
[00:01:05]  It's not like that.
[00:01:06]  Every time you take a check right, and I take a check right every nine months, and that's your cognitive test.
[00:01:13]  And in addition to that, flying the airplane with two other co pilots.
[00:01:16]  So you get thoroughly examined all the time just by doing your job.
[00:01:21]  And there's ways for other pilots to report you without having to kind of confront you like, hey, Steve, you're kind of like, you're missing a few things.
[00:01:28]  There's a professional standard set each airline, and they would just kind of call professional standards and say, hey, Captain Steve here, you kind of missed about 25 radio calls on the last trip, and we think he's missing a thing or two.
[00:01:41]  And then they'll call you up and they'll start that process.
[00:01:43]  Most pilots will catch it on their own, you know.
[00:01:46]  But the process of getting a physical every six months, it kind of identifies the issues as you're aging.
[00:01:55]  So the first medical issues show up in your mid 30s.
[00:02:01]  There's two things primarily that affect pilots, and it's substance abuse and mental illness.
[00:02:07]  So if you think about it, you know, alcoholism and, and, Depression are the two biggies.
[00:02:12]  And those show up in much younger pilots.
[00:02:14]  If you get to be 64, 64 and a half, and you haven't developed any sort of cardiac issues, any sort of cognitive issues, you don't have diabetes, you're probably one of the most physically fit.
[00:02:24]  You've come through that whole gauntlet.
[00:02:26]  Yeah.
[00:02:26]  And then six months later, they force you to retire.
[00:02:29]  And the background on that goes all the way back to 1959.
[00:02:33]  There wasn't a pilot retirement age until 1959 when C.R. Smith, who was the CEO of American Airlines, Was playing golf with his neighbor, who happened to be the head of the FAA at the time.
[00:02:48]  And he was complaining about how expensive his pilots were over age 60.
[00:02:53]  And so the two of them concocted a plan to introduce a mandatory retirement age.
[00:02:59]  They didn't hold any hearings, nothing.
[00:03:00]  They rammed it right through Congress.
[00:03:01]  They made it a law, and it's been a law.
[00:03:03]  It was a law until 2007.
[00:03:06]  And then President Bush added five years to it.
[00:03:10]  Congress passed the five year extension.
[00:03:11]  Now it's age 65.
[00:03:13]  But still, you turn 65 and you're out.
[00:03:16]  Regardless of how we're getting to the bottom of it, yeah, too expensive.
[00:03:20]  Back then, it was now, it doesn't make any difference.
[00:03:23]  I, if I stayed another two years, I wouldn't cost the company any more money.
[00:03:26]  I wouldn't make you know, I would continue to make money, but they wouldn't replace me with another captain that's making the same money.
[00:03:32]  It's just you keep the experience in the cockpit.
[00:03:34]  That's the key to it is you're taking the most experienced pilot and pulling them out arbitrarily because it's a one size fits all policy.
[00:03:43]  It doesn't make any sense.
[00:03:44]  What is it about being an airplane pilot?
[00:03:48]  Or is there anything about being an airplane pilot that predisposes certain individuals to things like depression and alcoholism and drug abuse?
[00:03:55]  Well, I think it's like any other job.
[00:03:58]  It's a lot of travel with it.
[00:04:00]  And so, and along with that, there is a certain amount of stress in the job.
[00:04:05]  You don't, it's like anything else.
[00:04:06]  Once you do it for a long time, you don't really sense the stress, but it's kind of always present.
[00:04:11]  It's like an underlying high baseline of stress in that job.
[00:04:14]  Air traffic controllers are the same thing.
[00:04:15]  You'll see the same issues show up with them depression, alcoholism, substance abuse, so on.
[00:04:20]  You're on the road all the time.
[00:04:22]  You're not eating well.
[00:04:23]  You're always jet lagged.
[00:04:25]  Right.
[00:04:25]  You're behind the clock.
[00:04:26]  You're, You know, eating processed foods.
[00:04:28]  And then what do you do to wind down at a layover?
[00:04:31]  You go to the bar, get a couple of drinks.
[00:04:33]  Maybe you go up to the room, get a couple of more.
[00:04:35]  Most pilots are very good at obeying the restrictions.
[00:04:38]  There's a 12 hour cutoff.
[00:04:40]  They'll do that, but they'll drink right up to that 12 hour cutoff.
[00:04:44]  And then when they go home, you know, the whole thing begins to snowball on them.
[00:04:48]  So, you know, alcoholism is an insidious thing and it'll take you over.
[00:04:53]  But it shows up in much younger pilots.
[00:04:54]  If you haven't developed a drinking problem by the time you're in your mid 60s, you're probably not going to.
[00:04:59]  Right, right, totally.
[00:05:01]  Well, I mean, think about like rock stars too.
[00:05:04]  They have very similar lives, but their drinking kind of goes hand in hand with doing that.
[00:05:09]  They're always on planes, they're always on the road, always traveling, never seeing their family.
[00:05:14]  You know, I always think about this stuff because I've met a lot of people who are like in different industries that live very similar lives, and they all seem to have that, follow that same pattern of like depression, being just unhappy, being always on the road, not around like their kids, if they have kids and they're always traveling.
[00:05:31]  Well, we're creatures that were created for habit.
[00:05:33]  We like our habits and our routines.
[00:05:35]  I taught a course.
[00:05:36]  I wrote a course for the Navy years ago.
[00:05:38]  And one of the things I talked about was how we are predisposed to wanting to get into a routine.
[00:05:44]  So no matter where you go, even if you're on the road, you'll have a road routine.
[00:05:48]  Most people will get up, they'll go to their layover, they'll sleep for a couple hours, they'll get up, they'll take a run, they'll take a walk, they'll go get dinner at the same place at the same time.
[00:05:55]  And that's all part of the habitual thing that gives you kind of stability.

=== Finding Stability on the Road (02:38) ===

[00:06:00]  Right.
[00:06:01]  If you're at home and you're a nine to fiver, You're going to have a lot of stability in your life more so than the person who's constantly packing their bag, unpacking their bag.
[00:06:10]  And with the airlines, many times you'll pack your bag to go someplace and you won't get there.
[00:06:14]  You know, like say you get a trip that starts in Miami and you get to the airport and they go, we canceled your Miami leg.
[00:06:18]  Now you're going to Dallas or now you're going to Minnesota and it's the middle of the winter.
[00:06:21]  Well, wait a minute, I packed my bathing suit for Miami.
[00:06:25]  No, sorry, you're going to end up in Minneapolis, St. Paul tonight.
[00:06:28]  So those kind of upheavals are the routine, the normal routine for a pilot.
[00:06:34]  So a lot of that.
[00:06:35]  That stability that most people have, it's kind of not there a lot of the times.
[00:06:39]  Right.
[00:06:40]  No, were you in like the military before you flew commercial?
[00:06:44]  Yep.
[00:06:44]  I did nine years on active duty in the military and then I did another 21 years in the reserve.
[00:06:49]  So about 30 years altogether.
[00:06:50]  As a pilot?
[00:06:52]  Yeah, I got trained as a pilot.
[00:06:54]  So this is a good story.
[00:06:57]  I had never been in an airplane before the military.
[00:07:00]  And my best friend went to the Naval Academy and he was one of those guys in high school that knew what he wanted to do.
[00:07:06]  Really super smart guy.
[00:07:08]  Got straight A's, got accepted to the Naval Academy.
[00:07:11]  I was more of a knucklehead.
[00:07:12]  I had a good time.
[00:07:14]  Same thing with college.
[00:07:15]  And I got done with college, and it was 1982, and the job market was super tight, and nobody was hiring.
[00:07:23]  And so I was on the phone with him one night, and he said, Why don't you go down to the recruiter and tell him you want to be a pilot?
[00:07:28]  I said, Okay, walk me through that.
[00:07:29]  So he did.
[00:07:30]  And so I went down to the recruiter the next day, and I walked in, and after the small talk, the recruiter said, So what do you want to do?
[00:07:36]  I said, I want to be a pilot.
[00:07:38]  Just like that, you know, that pilot voice.
[00:07:40]  And he laughed at me.
[00:07:41]  He just looked at me and he goes, Well, you and 40,000 other guys.
[00:07:43]  And I said, I said, Well, I don't want 40,000 spots.
[00:07:46]  I only want one.
[00:07:47]  And he looked back and went, Okay, well, he goes, I like the attitude.
[00:07:50]  He goes, Let's, all right, you got to take tests.
[00:07:53]  So, they gave me a whole battery of tests.
[00:07:55]  And then about three weeks later, he called me back and he goes, Hey, you did really well on the test.
[00:07:59]  He said, In fact, you aced him.
[00:08:00]  He said, Come on back.
[00:08:01]  He said, Let's get your thing going.
[00:08:03]  Let's see if we can get you that pilot spot.
[00:08:05]  And so the next thing out of his mouth was, I need your college transcript.
[00:08:10]  And I said, Can we skip that part?
[00:08:12]  He said, No, no, we got to have it.
[00:08:13]  And I said, Well, so I sent it to him and he called me up and he goes, Steve, he goes, You had a good time in college, didn't you?
[00:08:18]  I said, Yeah.
[00:08:18]  He goes, I don't know if we can send this in.
[00:08:20]  He said, I'm not sure you're going to get accepted.
[00:08:23]  I kind of sweet talked him into it and he did.
[00:08:25]  And about six weeks later, he called me back.
[00:08:28]  This is back in the day when the phone was on the wall and I answered the phone, and his voice was like three octaves higher.
[00:08:33]  And he said, You're not going to believe this.
[00:08:35]  He said, But they hired you.
[00:08:36]  He said, You better get down here right now and sign on the dotted line.

=== The Doomsday Plane Mission (06:42) ===

[00:08:39]  Wow.
[00:08:39]  I ran down as fast as I could.
[00:08:40]  And the rest is history.
[00:08:42]  Did you ever take off or land on an aircraft carrier?
[00:08:45]  No.
[00:08:46]  So just a couple of years prior to my getting hired by the Navy, they were training everybody on the carrier, whether you went there or not.
[00:08:55]  That was kind of a bad use of resources because if I'm not going to end up there in jets, then why are they training me to do it?
[00:09:01]  Sure.
[00:09:01]  So, they got rid of that.
[00:09:02]  I ended up flying an airplane called a P 3.
[00:09:04]  It's a big four engine turboprop that hunted submarines back in the day.
[00:09:07]  Oh, wow.
[00:09:08]  Yeah.
[00:09:09]  Hunted submarines?
[00:09:11]  How did that work?
[00:09:12]  That was fascinating.
[00:09:13]  I loved it.
[00:09:14]  There were 12 people on the crew.
[00:09:16]  So, there were three pilots, an engineer, and then a whole bunch of geeks in the back that ran computers.
[00:09:21]  And it's a pretty simple design.
[00:09:23]  We would drop a buoy out of the back of the airplane, a little parachute on it, and it would cascade down to the water.
[00:09:29]  And then it would drop a microphone down in the water, kind of like this.
[00:09:32]  Really?
[00:09:33]  And that little microphone would.
[00:09:36]  Transmit all of the sound in the water through a little one watt radio transmitter that's bobbing around on the ocean surface back to the airplane.
[00:09:44]  And you drop a whole bunch of them all over the place.
[00:09:47]  And then, if there was some sort of mechanical frequency sound in the water and you look down and didn't see a ship on top of the water, something underneath the surface is making that mechanical noise because everything mechanical operates on a frequency where ambient noise doesn't.
[00:10:03]  So then they would just kind of.
[00:10:06]  Localize where the sound was coming from, they triangulate, and then there's your sub.
[00:10:11]  And then you get a course and speed, and you'd never have to see them.
[00:10:13]  You'd be below the surface the entire time.
[00:10:15]  We did that for years.
[00:10:17]  Wow, that's fascinating.
[00:10:19]  It always boggles my mind how many submarines are traveling through the waters, like within miles of the coast of Florida or the coast of Southern California, and just all around.
[00:10:32]  And from every country, China, Russia, you name it, they're all circling every single ocean, like coming within.
[00:10:38]  Like within miles of, I guess, the international water zone, right before you get into like United States territory.
[00:10:46]  And some submarines, you know, need to get closer, some not so much.
[00:10:49]  The ones with the big intercontinental ballistic missiles, they can stay a couple thousand miles away.
[00:10:54]  They don't need to be all that close.
[00:10:55]  But it was back in the old Soviet Union days, it was surprising how many submarines they had deployed at any given time.
[00:11:02]  Yeah.
[00:11:03]  It's pretty terrifying.
[00:11:04]  Yeah.
[00:11:06]  Especially like during the Cold War, you know, like that whole time when it was like that constant threat of.
[00:11:12]  of nuclear war.
[00:11:14]  Right.
[00:11:14]  That's why I loved the mission we did.
[00:11:16]  It was, it was the Cold War, you know, was, it's kind of, there wasn't a lot going on, but there was actually because we wanted to keep track of where all of those Soviet submarines with the big missiles were at all times.
[00:11:29]  So there was a thing that the president could do.
[00:11:31]  I guess I can talk about this now, but it's because it's years ago.
[00:11:34]  It's called a smooth touch.
[00:11:36]  And he would, the president, it would come out of the Pentagon, but in theory, it came from the president and the president would, we would be tracking these subs in real time.
[00:11:45]  And if the bubble went up, the balloon went up, right, and we said, okay, we're going to war, we wanted to get an asset, a P-3, on top of a submarine within 30 minutes and to deliver a weapon if we had to.
[00:11:57]  And this is all simulated now.
[00:11:59]  We never really did.
[00:12:00]  To the submarine?
[00:12:01]  To the submarine.
[00:12:01]  So let's say we're going to war with the Soviet Union.
[00:12:03]  Yeah.
[00:12:04]  And the president gives out the order, you know, go after their subs.
[00:12:08]  You know, the rules of engagement have changed, and it's now DEF CON 1, and we're going to sink subs.
[00:12:13]  So we'd be tracking this guy normally.
[00:12:15]  We would localize him, come down.
[00:12:17]  Within 30 minutes, open up the bomb bays, weapon away, and sink us up.
[00:12:22]  And the aim was to do that within 20 to 30 minute time frame.
[00:12:26]  So sometimes we were more successful than others, but I only ever got a couple of those.
[00:12:29]  You know, they would simulate one.
[00:12:31]  You'd get a message, you'd be flying around on a normal night, tracking some submarine, and all of a sudden the guy, the two seats behind you, start screaming.
[00:12:38]  He'd be like, as soon as you'd hear his voice raise and he'd start screaming, I knew exactly what it was.
[00:12:43]  And he'd run up to the cockpit and he'd show, you know, if you're the mission commander, he'd show you a piece of paper and it says smooth touch on it.
[00:12:48]  And I'd be like, let's.
[00:12:48]  Let's go, man.
[00:12:49]  Let's go.
[00:12:50]  Wow.
[00:12:50]  So, you know, you'd announce that to the whole crew and then it was game on.
[00:12:55]  And so you had to do it within 30 minutes.
[00:12:56]  And we were successful the two times I had them.
[00:12:58]  So, great.
[00:13:00]  Simulated success.
[00:13:01]  We never sank anybody.
[00:13:02]  Right, right.
[00:13:03]  And the crazy thing about that is if like a nuke was ever launched, all of that's futile.
[00:13:10]  Like nothing matters now.
[00:13:11]  Right.
[00:13:12]  Because once one, I learned this from this book called Nuclear War by Andy Jacobson.
[00:13:18]  Once one nuke is launched, That means they're all launched.
[00:13:22]  Correct.
[00:13:22]  Because I guess they have this thing called launch on warning to where if the United States detects with their radar and with their satellites that there's an incoming ICBM, we have to assume that they're going to try to take out our ICBM sites that can't, like in Montana and that part of the Midwest.
[00:13:42]  So we have to get rid of them.
[00:13:44]  It's use it or lose it.
[00:13:44]  So we have to launch all those, hopefully at the place we think the ICBM is coming from.
[00:13:50]  And within like.
[00:13:52]  12 minutes or something insane like that.
[00:13:55]  So, yeah, once one launches, they're all launching, and then it's just Armageddon.
[00:14:01]  Yeah, and that was the real world back then.
[00:14:04]  The old movie War Games, which was kind of a funny, silly movie, but it was the serious side of that what happens if the computer messes up and launches a fake attack, right?
[00:14:16]  There was a bunch more serious movies made back in the 60s and 70s with the same kind of premise.
[00:14:21]  The world goes to nuclear war.
[00:14:22]  Dr. Strangelove.
[00:14:24]  Yeah.
[00:14:24]  That was a classic.
[00:14:25]  Yeah.
[00:14:25]  Because the computer got it wrong.
[00:14:27]  But, you know, we're not out of that yet, but it's not, it's not as present as it was back then.
[00:14:32]  Right.
[00:14:33]  Right.
[00:14:34]  And we have these things called doomsday planes, too.
[00:14:38]  You've seen that?
[00:14:39]  The doomsday plane?
[00:14:40]  No.
[00:14:40]  That the president has to fly on.
[00:14:42]  It's like a, find a photo of the doomsday plane.
[00:14:45]  It's like a super rugged, like tank version of Air Force One.
[00:14:54]  And apparently it's got all the windows blocked out for radiation.
[00:14:57]  It's like, it's like, coated in the special material to block out like nuclear radiation, and it's got this antenna that it drops um to like pick up radio signals.
[00:15:08]  That like drops it from underneath the plane.
[00:15:12]  Find some images of it Steve.
[00:15:14]  That's not a very good image.
[00:15:14]  That's not the doomsday plane.
[00:15:17]  It can fly 12 hours without refueling, is that normal?

=== Future of Airliner Design (15:10) ===

[00:15:21]  Well yeah, so you.
[00:15:21]  The limitation on how long those airplanes can stay airborne is not so much the fuel but the oil in the engines.
[00:15:28]  So, you can refuel Air Force One and stay airborne, in theory, as long as the pilots are, you know, okay.
[00:15:36]  But eventually the engines are going to run out of oil.
[00:15:39]  Right.
[00:15:40]  So, that's your limiting factor.
[00:15:42]  Yeah.
[00:15:43]  I guess the idea about this is like they have to maintain continuity of the government.
[00:15:48]  They have to put the president in this thing if there's a nuclear war and they fly in circles, I guess, just until they run out of gas and figure out a place to land.
[00:15:55]  Yeah.
[00:15:56]  But the people in the submarines would be the ones that last the longest because they're underwater and they're filled by nuclear power.
[00:16:02]  Correct.
[00:16:03]  You know, every year around this time, everyone wants to talk a big game new year, new me, blah, blah, blah.
[00:16:08]  But you know what?
[00:16:08]  The truth is, nothing really ever changes until you actually start.
[00:16:12]  We all have great ideas.
[00:16:13]  And if you have been sitting on one that people keep telling you to launch, Then January is the time to do it.
[00:16:18]  We launched the Danny Jones merch store about a year ago, and it's powered by Shopify.
[00:16:22]  Because Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online or in person without overcomplicating your life.
[00:16:28]  Millions of entrepreneurs have already made this jump big brands, small brands, and people launching their very first business.
[00:16:34]  Shopify makes it stupid simple.
[00:16:36]  You can pick from hundreds of beautiful templates and customize them to look exactly how you want.
[00:16:41]  Their built in AI tools even help write product descriptions and headlines, and they can even clean up your product photos.
[00:16:47]  Marketing, it's handled.
[00:16:48]  Email campaigns, social posts, all built right into Shopify so you can reach people wherever they're scrolling.
[00:16:55]  And the best part is, as you grow, Shopify grows with you.
[00:16:58]  More orders, bigger audience, new markets, you manage everything from one clean and simple dashboard.
[00:17:04]  Don't let February hit while you're still slacking.
[00:17:07]  Launch your idea today.
[00:17:08]  In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify.
[00:17:12]  Sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.comslash Danny Jones.
[00:17:18]  Go to shopify.com slash Danny Jones.
[00:17:21]  That's shopify.com slash Danny Jones to hear your first this new year with Shopify by your side.
[00:17:28]  When are we going to have nuclear powered airplanes?
[00:17:31]  Never.
[00:17:34]  It's amazing that airplanes are like.
[00:17:38]  It's so wild to me how airplanes don't like commercial airliners.
[00:17:43]  It doesn't seem like they've evolved at all in the last 50 years.
[00:17:46]  Correct.
[00:17:46]  They haven't.
[00:17:47]  It's like they're the same thing.
[00:17:48]  Yeah.
[00:17:49]  Isn't that do you find that weird?
[00:17:50]  Back when I was a kid, everything was going to be supersonic transport by this time.
[00:17:54]  By the year 2000, everything was by the year 2000.
[00:17:57]  You know, there was going to be 100 billion people on the planet, but we were all going to be traveling, you know, supersonic.
[00:18:02]  And that didn't happen only because it was too expensive and too loud.
[00:18:08]  The people around those airports hated those airplanes.
[00:18:10]  And you could only get about 80 people.
[00:18:12]  It's like a regional jet, right?
[00:18:14]  That you paid 12,000 a ticket, paid 12,000 for a coach seat just to get there a couple of hours earlier.
[00:18:19]  And so, you know, let's say you go across the Atlantic in three and a half hours.
[00:18:23]  But you got stuck in traffic going to JFK, and that ate up another two or three hours.
[00:18:28]  And it ends up being the same amount of time anyway.
[00:18:30]  So it's like, why did I do this?
[00:18:33]  And the airlines had them more as kind of a halo thing, the prestige thing to have those supersonic jets.
[00:18:41]  Now, I think the age is coming back because the technology has actually caught up with it.
[00:18:46]  There's a company called Boom out of North Carolina.
[00:18:48]  Yeah, I heard about that.
[00:18:49]  Yeah.
[00:18:49]  American Airlines has 29 options for airplanes.
[00:18:53]  I don't think they've built an airplane yet, but they're designing it still.
[00:18:57]  So, you know, we'll see.
[00:18:59]  It remains to be determined.
[00:19:00]  But I think the future will be hypersonic travel at some point.
[00:19:05]  Yeah.
[00:19:05]  So, one of the reasons they, like the Concorde, I think one of the reasons they stopped it was because, I mean, obviously the things that you mentioned, but like to me, it just seemed like that was the, that was the, basically that was what was happening with everything during the Cold War.
[00:19:25]  We were racing the Soviets.
[00:19:27]  And I think they had some sort of a prototype of a supersonic jet like this.
[00:19:31]  And then, so we were like, oh, we got to create one too, and then we can put the Concorde.
[00:19:34]  And then it was like, oh my God, this is like insane to manage.
[00:19:37]  It's like, this is way too hard.
[00:19:39]  It's like sprinting to try to get this done.
[00:19:42]  And it's costing so much money.
[00:19:44]  It was breaking.
[00:19:45]  I think they had to keep one on standby in New York.
[00:19:46]  And it was like, that was not very cost effective.
[00:19:52]  And I think one crashed in France, if I remember correctly, a year before 9 11.
[00:20:00]  And then 9 11 happened.
[00:20:01]  And then all of the stock or all of the airline companies, their stock plummeted because of 9 11.
[00:20:07]  And that was like dark ages of air travel.
[00:20:10]  Yeah.
[00:20:10]  And that Air France crash is what doomed the.
[00:20:13]  Concorde altogether because it wasn't cost effective.
[00:20:17]  It was a nightmare to maintain.
[00:20:19]  Again, it was a prestige airplane for the airlines and they were looking for a way to back out.
[00:20:23]  And when that airplane finally crashed, I think they said, you know, this is our exit strategy.
[00:20:27]  Right, right.
[00:20:28]  On the Concorde and it never came back.
[00:20:30]  Now it will sometime in the future, but it's got to be cost effective.
[00:20:33]  Right.
[00:20:33]  Because at the end of the day, an airline, you have to have your head examined to run an airline because even in a great year for an airline, you maybe make 2% or 3% profit in a year.
[00:20:44]  It's just, there's too many moving parts.
[00:20:46]  Think of all the things that have wheels and are associated with running an airline.
[00:20:51]  It's just a nightmare that it runs as well as it actually does.
[00:20:55]  And now you throw in an expensive airplane that people don't have the appetite to pay.
[00:20:59]  At this point, they'd be paying $15,000, $20,000 a seat for.
[00:21:03]  You know, they're just not going to do it.
[00:21:04]  Even if it's not supersonic, it's like, I mean, the reason that airplanes are, from what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, we take planes from like, The 80s and 90s, and we just refurbish them right and put new engines on them, new seats inside, redo the interior.
[00:21:20]  But it's essentially the same design, everything's the same as what they were in the 80s and 90s.
[00:21:25]  Sort of, I mean, when you get down to the like, if you look at cars from the 70s and cars today, yeah, um, they have a lot of the same things they have four wheels, a steering wheel, some of them do at least steering wheels still, kind of, but um, but the technology has improved and the build quality has improved dramatically since then, so.
[00:21:47]  All of the technological advantages show up in the little things.
[00:21:50]  And so, the reliability stuff, the stuff I deal with as a pilot, is much more reliable than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
[00:21:57]  So, the airplanes, I think, they look the same.
[00:22:00]  They're kind of the same basic thing, but the 787 is a total departure.
[00:22:03]  It's all carbon fiber and it's a lighter, more nimble airplane in a lot of ways.
[00:22:09]  They had some issues rolling it out, but I think it's kind of the future of airliner design.
[00:22:16]  What makes it so because it's carbon fiber?
[00:22:19]  So, if you watch the wings on a 787, you know, it's fine.
[00:22:22]  A 787, Steve.
[00:22:23]  Yeah, when it first takes off and it rotates, the wings bend way up.
[00:22:28]  Like you'd look at it and go, Oh, that looks uncomfortable.
[00:22:30]  Is that normal?
[00:22:30]  It's normal.
[00:22:31]  It's the way they designed it.
[00:22:32]  So, it almost looks like a bird.
[00:22:34]  The wings go up, and then the airplane eventually settles in, the wings come back down.
[00:22:38]  But it's meant to have a lot of flexibility in those wings.
[00:22:41]  It's a nice, much nicer ride.
[00:22:43]  They've got, see how the wings bend up?
[00:22:45]  That's not, you know, the camera doing that.
[00:22:48]  That's actually how it flies.
[00:22:50]  And that's what it looks like when it's cruising.
[00:22:53]  Mm hmm.
[00:22:54]  Wow.
[00:22:54]  Yeah.
[00:22:55]  Just like that.
[00:22:56]  Right.
[00:22:56]  And then when it sits on the ground, they're flat as can be.
[00:22:59]  But when it gets airborne, it's designed like that.
[00:23:02]  Now, is this the same plane that there was a new plane that Boeing came out with where they had to move the engines up above the wing a little bit.
[00:23:14]  And that was causing lots of issues and like crashes.
[00:23:16]  That was the max.
[00:23:17]  So when they, yeah.
[00:23:19]  So that's, I think, the 737, all the variants are the most prolific airplane on the planet.
[00:23:27]  They at least are rivaled by Airbus, but 737s have been around forever.
[00:23:31]  They've had a dozen different versions of it.
[00:23:34]  When they came out with the Max, it was to put bigger engines on it, more fuel efficient, and so forth.
[00:23:39]  And this was to compete with Airbus, right?
[00:23:40]  Yeah, but then they kind of cut some corners.
[00:23:42]  And the corner cutting was we had to move the engines, the center of gravity of the airplane changed.
[00:23:48]  And they thought they could take care of that with a software fix.
[00:23:55]  And then when they did put the software fix in place, they didn't tell the pilots about it.
[00:24:01]  And they only had the software was forcing the nose of the airplane over.
[00:24:09]  Because it thought the airplane was stalling.
[00:24:11]  So, if the airplane is stalling, it's getting slow.
[00:24:14]  Right.
[00:24:14]  And the airflow over the wings is disrupted.
[00:24:16]  Yeah.
[00:24:16]  So, the airplane is now saying, and Airbus does this all the time, it noses the airplane over for you so that you don't stall the airplane.
[00:24:25]  It's usually based on two or three inputs from different systems telling it that you're actually stalling.
[00:24:31]  What happened with the MAX initially was there was only one input.
[00:24:34]  And if that one input gave you erroneous information, it would push the nose over.
[00:24:40]  And the pilots didn't know what was going on because they hadn't been trained in it.
[00:24:43]  And so they're like, you know, they're trying to, they're fighting the airplane.
[00:24:45]  They're pulling back, but the computer's pushing it over.
[00:24:48]  They're pulling back.
[00:24:49]  And so they crashed two of them.
[00:24:52]  They grounded the whole fleet, went back, fixed not only the software issue, but also the hardware part of it with the engines and all of that.
[00:24:59]  And so now they haven't had any problems since.
[00:25:01]  So it's been, I think it'll be reliable going forward, but it was a heck of a price to pay.
[00:25:05]  Good Lord.
[00:25:06]  Yeah.
[00:25:06]  Did you ever fly one of those?
[00:25:07]  Nope.
[00:25:09]  Nope.
[00:25:10]  I love Boeing products in general.
[00:25:11]  I get so much criticism on my channel for this because why?
[00:25:14]  Well, because I've been a Boeing guy my whole life.
[00:25:16]  And so the difference between Boeing and Airbus is this Airbus is like a computer that has an airplane attached to it.
[00:25:26]  Boeing is an airplane that has a computer assisting it.
[00:25:30]  So it's just a basic general philosophy, but you're managing a computer when you're flying an Airbus.
[00:25:37]  So it's fly by wire.
[00:25:38]  So, for instance, you got a joystick over here and you're flying the airplane.
[00:25:41]  But there's no real cable or anything going out to your flight controls.
[00:25:45]  It's a digital signal that goes to another box, it does another thing, it does another thing.
[00:25:50]  The advantages of it is it's a little more quick than the old yoke in the Boeing.
[00:25:58]  And it also saves a little bit of weight.
[00:25:59]  But beyond that, again, it's like going back to Hal from the 2001 Space Odyssey.
[00:26:06]  Right.
[00:26:07]  When Dave's trying to get the bay doors open, and Hal's saying, I'm sorry, I won't allow that.
[00:26:11]  The computer sometimes overrides the pilot.
[00:26:14]  On a Boeing, a pilot can always override the computer, but not so on an Airbus.
[00:26:19]  Except on that Max before they had that issue.
[00:26:22]  Because they didn't know what was going on.
[00:26:23]  Right, because it was brand new.
[00:26:24]  Right.
[00:26:25]  And so the initial kind of take on that was a more experienced crew would have handled it different.
[00:26:31]  I'm not sure about that.
[00:26:34]  What I do know is that they hid something, they didn't train the pilots on it.
[00:26:38]  And that was another layer of the mistake that was made with that airplane.
[00:26:43]  Do you think.
[00:26:45]  Maybe they've already done it, but at what point do you think they're going to start incorporating AI into these planes?
[00:26:50]  Well, they're already starting with that.
[00:26:52]  And I was on with Piers Morgan a few months ago, and at the end of the interview, he said, You think there's ever going to be a pilotless airplane?
[00:27:00]  And I said, Well, no.
[00:27:02]  He said, What do you mean?
[00:27:03]  He goes, There's cars that have no driver.
[00:27:05]  And he said, I was just in one out in Los Angeles.
[00:27:07]  And I said, Well, that's a different deal.
[00:27:08]  I said, You're talking about two dimensions as opposed to three.
[00:27:12]  Okay.
[00:27:13]  And if you got a problem in your car, it's just going to pull over and shut down, and you get out and go, And you call the company or you go on the app and say, send me another car.
[00:27:21]  That's different.
[00:27:22]  You can't do that in an airplane.
[00:27:24]  And now, will AI assist in technology and making the pilots load lighter?
[00:27:30]  Yeah, sure.
[00:27:31]  I'm all for that.
[00:27:32]  I think that's great.
[00:27:33]  Could I see a future where they get rid of one of the three pilots in the cockpit because of AI?
[00:27:38]  I hope not.
[00:27:40]  Only because of the few emergencies I've had over the years, that third pilot, especially on an international flight, that third pilot is worth their weight in gold because you and the co pilot are busy running checklists, flying the airplane.
[00:27:54]  That's your administrative assistant that can look everything up that you don't have time to do because you're busy.
[00:27:59]  And so having that third person there is hugely important.
[00:28:02]  Now, could AI do that?
[00:28:04]  Sure, I suppose so.
[00:28:06]  But let me ask you this, though.
[00:28:08]  Sorry to interrupt.
[00:28:09]  But Could somebody potentially take control if there was an issue with a remote control or an airplane that was not manned, it was just run by AI pilotless?
[00:28:18]  Would there be an option for someone on the ground to take remote control of the airplane if something goes south?
[00:28:24]  So, here's my idea, my business model.
[00:28:27]  You might want to invest in this.
[00:28:28]  Okay.
[00:28:32]  It's the PID program.
[00:28:35]  I used to call it the pilot in Dallas, but I think maybe the pilot in Delhi is probably better.
[00:28:39]  But at any rate, we'll find the right place to base this thing.
[00:28:43]  And then it's basically you go down to a single pilot in the airplane, and the co pilots are a guy sitting down in a room like this with a bank of computers and screens, and he's monitoring 25 flights all at the same time.
[00:28:55]  Now, the selling point on that is you have a real pilot in the airplane, right?
[00:29:01]  But now the airplane becomes hijack proof because if somebody on the airplane tries to hijack the airplane, the guy down on the ground, Steve down on the ground, says, I'm sorry, we're not going to allow that.
[00:29:12]  He just hits a button and takes over control of the airplane.
[00:29:15]  Right.
[00:29:15]  And says, we're going to fly this to a safe place where the police can intercept this airplane and so forth.
[00:29:19]  So there won't ever be another 9 11 style hijacking with this system.
[00:29:23]  But the downside of it, a couple of people have pointed out to me, is what if the guy running it on the ground gets taken over and they take over all these airplanes?
[00:29:32]  So there's no perfect system out there.
[00:29:35]  I'm trying to work out that sprinkler.
[00:29:37]  See, I would imagine that after 9 11, we would have figured out how to take over airplanes.
[00:29:42]  Because if it does get hijacked, you want to have somebody in the Pentagon who can tap into that airplane and just take control of it.
[00:29:49]  In theory, the technology would be there to do that.
[00:29:51]  But again, it's technology you would only maybe use once in a century.
[00:29:56]  It's heavy.
[00:29:57]  You'd have to carry it around all the time.
[00:29:58]  You'd have to test it all the time.
[00:30:00]  It's not, they're never going to do that because it's just too expensive.
[00:30:03]  Everybody's going to push back on that.
[00:30:05]  It seems like basic technology, though.
[00:30:07]  Like it doesn't seem like it's that complicated.
[00:30:08]  Well, then you're also talking about the government trying to do something to make sense.
[00:30:11]  And it took a couple of years for them to put reinforced doors in between us and the public.
[00:30:18]  And they still haven't put in secondary doors.
[00:30:20]  I don't understand why.
[00:30:22]  It's a $50 fix per airplane, right?
[00:30:25]  In the military, I had cargo nets that would clip, clip, and clip like that.
[00:30:30]  $50.

=== Reinforcing Cockpit Security (10:11) ===

[00:30:31]  And so you put a secondary barrier outside the cockpit.
[00:30:33]  When the pilots come out to go to the bathroom, you clip the things in place.
[00:30:37]  Nobody can get through it.
[00:30:39]  Pilots come out, do their business.
[00:30:40]  When they go back up to the cockpit and close their door, you take the clips and wad it up and throw it back in the closet.
[00:30:46]  And that's the fix.
[00:30:46]  And they still haven't done that.
[00:30:48]  Congress last year mandated that every new airplane being built, Has a secondary barrier now.
[00:30:53]  And it's a big complicated second door.
[00:30:55]  And, you know.
[00:30:57]  So, right now, the door between the cockpit and the main cabin is something that someone could break through fairly easily.
[00:31:06]  But it's a Kevlar reinforced door with lots of latches on it and it'll lock nice and tight.
[00:31:11]  Here's the problem with a single door, though.
[00:31:14]  With a single door, it works for you or it works against you.
[00:31:18]  So, that door is going to have to open at some time during the flight, right?
[00:31:22]  People from Mother Nature.
[00:31:23]  So you got to go to the bathroom.
[00:31:24]  And if you're a bad guy and you time it right and you can get in through that door and you close it, now it's you and one pilot up in the cockpit.
[00:31:33]  And you've got the door now working in your favor as the bad guy because now it's locked.
[00:31:37]  You throw the latch, nobody can get in that door.
[00:31:39]  Right.
[00:31:40]  So all your able bodied men in the back of the airplane, they're going to take on that bad guy.
[00:31:44]  He's on the other side of this barrier that you can't break.
[00:31:47]  So it's a two edge, it's a double edge.
[00:31:51]  I see what you're saying.
[00:31:52]  So there would have to be two separate locks, two separate doors.
[00:31:55]  Yes.
[00:31:56]  Yeah.
[00:31:56]  Secondary barrier.
[00:31:57]  That's the only way to fix the problem.
[00:31:59]  And there was not a willingness on anybody's part to spend $50 an airplane to fix it.
[00:32:04]  All right.
[00:32:04]  We need to talk about those so called mushroom gummies that you see at all the local gas stations and head shops.
[00:32:11]  Because most of that stuff ain't mushrooms.
[00:32:13]  It's just mystery chemicals dressed up in wizard art.
[00:32:16]  There's a wave of fake Amanita products out there.
[00:32:18]  Some lab tests have found research chemical tryptamines, benzodiazepines, and even synthetic cannabinoids being sold as mushroom gummies.
[00:32:26]  That's exactly why I've always avoided that stuff.
[00:32:28]  If it's behind the counter next to a scratch off in a boner pill, I'm out.
[00:32:32]  But here's the thing the real Amanita muscaria mushroom is legal.
[00:32:36]  And when it's legit, it's nothing like that gas station nonsense.
[00:32:40]  Then that's why I trust Amentara.
[00:32:42]  These guys are the real deal.
[00:32:43]  They're one of the main importers and processors of actual Amanita muscaria in the US.
[00:32:48]  No synthetics, no secret ingredients, just properly prepared mushroom, ethically sourced and lab tested.
[00:32:54]  For the last seven days, I've been taking two Amanita caps with the Blue Lotus Gummy every night before dinnertime when I get home because it uplifts all the stress from the day and sort of keeps me in my bubble at home with my family.
[00:33:08]  Where I'm not worrying about the next day, not worrying about work.
[00:33:12]  What it does is dissolve the stress from the previous work day and it deletes any anxiety I would have had about the following day, which allows me to stay present when I'm around my family.
[00:33:25]  We often spend our lives reminiscing about the past or worrying about the future when the only thing that matters is right now.
[00:33:31]  And that's why I love Amentara.
[00:33:32]  If you're curious about Amanita, please don't grab something random off the counter.
[00:33:36]  Use the brand that people in this space actually respect.
[00:33:39]  Amentara's 500 milligram capsules and Amanita gummies are consistent and beginner friendly.
[00:33:45]  Just start low and go slow.
[00:33:46]  Go to amantara.comslash goslash DJ and use the code DJ22 for 22% off your first order.
[00:33:55]  That's amantara.comslash goslash DJ.
[00:34:00]  And make sure to use the code DJ22 for 22% off your first order.
[00:34:05]  It's linked down below.
[00:34:06]  Now back to the show.
[00:34:07]  Yeah.
[00:34:08]  We don't really have hijackers anymore.
[00:34:11]  Like since 9 11, there haven't been any like.
[00:34:13]  Planes that have been hijacked, have there?
[00:34:15]  Well, they haven't.
[00:34:15]  There's been a few attempted cockpit breaches, but it was usually somebody that was out of their mind or, you know, on ambient and alcohol.
[00:34:22]  And, you know, there was, it wasn't an organized, you know, thing that was going on now.
[00:34:27]  Right, right.
[00:34:28]  I was watching a video the other day on, I think it was on Instagram, of this dude just joyriding this plane.
[00:34:34]  Like this, have you seen this?
[00:34:35]  This guy's like, he's communicating with the tower.
[00:34:38]  And they're like, have you ever flown before?
[00:34:40]  He's like, nope.
[00:34:41]  He's like, I just got bored.
[00:34:42]  And, I wanted to take this thing for a ride.
[00:34:45]  My life's not going too good right now.
[00:34:47]  And they're like, well, we're going to try to get you to land this thing.
[00:34:50]  He's like, I don't know.
[00:34:51]  I don't know if I want to come back.
[00:34:53]  Yeah.
[00:34:53]  And then I think he crashed it.
[00:34:55]  Yeah.
[00:34:55]  I saw that video.
[00:34:56]  There was another guy over in Vancouver that stole an airplane and he wanted to make a political protest.
[00:35:01]  So he stole this little Cessna and flew it up.
[00:35:04]  And he was just flying over top of Vancouver airport for hours, disrupting traffic, broadcasting his manifesto over the radio.
[00:35:13]  And then the controller on the ground finally got it.
[00:35:16]  And this guy is brilliant.
[00:35:17]  So the controller makes a fake call at first.
[00:35:21]  It was actually real, but at first he makes a fake call to somebody else, but he broadcasts it.
[00:35:25]  He says, Hey, yeah, the F 16s are inbound and they're about eight minutes out.
[00:35:32]  And he said, Yeah, it's weapons away.
[00:35:34]  He's just making all this stuff up.
[00:35:36]  It was about an hour later that the actual F 16s made it up, but this guy, he hears it on the thing.
[00:35:41]  He's like, Yeah, I'm going to get shot down.
[00:35:42]  I better land.
[00:35:43]  Oh, God.
[00:35:44]  He brings it around and lands on the next thing.
[00:35:46]  The cops arrest him and take him off.
[00:35:48]  Oh, my God.
[00:35:49]  But that air traffic controller should get an award for that.
[00:35:51]  Yeah, that's a great idea.
[00:35:52]  That's a very creative idea.
[00:35:54]  I like that.
[00:35:56]  So out of all the airplane.
[00:35:59]  Disasters or conspiracies, which one is most interesting to you or your favorite?
[00:36:08]  Well, I've got a 9 11 story.
[00:36:10]  Oh, really?
[00:36:11]  Yeah.
[00:36:11]  So my background goes like this I was originally scheduled to be the co pilot on the first airplane that was hijacked on September 11th.
[00:36:18]  What?
[00:36:20]  Yeah.
[00:36:20]  And so I was based in Boston at the time.
[00:36:22]  There's a film called In My Seat on YouTube.
[00:36:26]  And it's actually what got the Captain Steve channel started back in 2011 for the 10th anniversary of 9 11.
[00:36:32]  We made.
[00:36:33]  Just a 15 minute documentary about my story.
[00:36:36]  So, my story goes like this I was a first officer, a co pilot at American Airlines at the time, based in Boston.
[00:36:43]  And I was on reserve.
[00:36:43]  And reserve means that you're on call to fill in for another pilot that can't make it.
[00:36:47]  They're sick or they have to get training or whatever.
[00:36:49]  They'll call you the day before and assign you a trip that's not assigned.
[00:36:53]  And on September 10th, 2001, which is a day that means more to me than the 11th, actually, on the 10th, I had been watching a trip.
[00:37:02]  It had been open all weekend.
[00:37:03]  It was a really nice trip.
[00:37:04]  It was a morning departure out of.
[00:37:06]  of Boston to Los Angeles and very senior trip and nobody picked it up.
[00:37:10]  It was just there in open time.
[00:37:11]  Nobody picked it up.
[00:37:12]  So the day before then at three o'clock in the afternoon, they will assign the trip to somebody on reserve.
[00:37:17]  So I looked on the list of reserve pilots and there was only one guy on call for the 11th and that was me.
[00:37:23]  So the computer then will automatically assign your name to the trip.
[00:37:27]  And then about 30 minutes after the assignment, somebody, a real person will call just to make sure that you've seen the assignment and know that you're going to work tomorrow.
[00:37:36]  So I had three o'clock in the afternoon, I went over the computer and I looked and and sure enough, I had been assigned the trip.
[00:37:41]  My name was assigned to it.
[00:37:42]  I told my wife I'm going to Los Angeles tomorrow.
[00:37:44]  I packed my bags, put them in the car, set my alarm and just waited for the phone to ring.
[00:37:49]  And we kind of lost track of it because sometimes they take more than a half an hour to call.
[00:37:53]  And about, I don't know, about 730 that night, I said to her, I go, did they ever call?
[00:37:57]  And she goes, I don't think so.
[00:37:58]  I looked at her phone, I looked at mine.
[00:37:59]  I thought, well, I better double check.
[00:38:00]  So I go back to the computer and I logged in and sure that some other guy's name was on the trip.
[00:38:05]  Okay, I don't care.
[00:38:06]  I would still get paid to stay home.
[00:38:08]  And, um, So, I went into work.
[00:38:10]  I went into the Navy the next day.
[00:38:11]  I was doing some Navy work then.
[00:38:14]  And I'm watching 9 11 on the screens like everybody else.
[00:38:16]  Like, I walked in and I'm watching these airplanes crash.
[00:38:19]  And I never connected because they were talking at first like 10 airplanes had been hijacked and it was American Airlines and some United they didn't know.
[00:38:26]  It was a lot of confusion in those first few hours.
[00:38:29]  And I was on the Navy base and we were going to war and it was nuts.
[00:38:33]  So, later on that evening, I went home and we.
[00:38:40]  I got in on my computer because I thought maybe I can look up the names of the crews that were on those flights because I know the back doorway in at American.
[00:38:48]  So I logged in and tried to find the names of them on the manifest.
[00:38:52]  And when the screen came up in front of me, it looked exactly like it did 24 hours ago, the day before when I saw my name assigned to the trip.
[00:39:01]  And I looked at the screen and all the names were scrubbed off the trip.
[00:39:04]  Really?
[00:39:04]  Yeah.
[00:39:05]  All it said was sequence failed continuity, which is a code that they put on every flight that doesn't.
[00:39:11]  Make it to its destination.
[00:39:13]  So if you have to divert for weather or some other reason, well, you talk about an understatement, you know, sequence failed continuity.
[00:39:20]  No kidding.
[00:39:22]  And I just looked at the screen.
[00:39:23]  I was just like in shock.
[00:39:25]  I just stared.
[00:39:27]  And a few minutes later, my wife came around the corner and she said, You know, what are you doing?
[00:39:30]  I said, Remember, I told you I was going to LA today?
[00:39:31]  And she said, Yeah.
[00:39:32]  I said, That was the first airplane that got hijacked this morning.
[00:39:37]  And it's still a moment, right?
[00:39:41]  And so all the radio interviews and everything over the years, they always ask me the same question How does that make you feel?
[00:39:47]  And I don't have an answer.
[00:39:49]  It's, there's the best I can come up with is there's an empty space where a feeling should be.
[00:39:55]  Because you can't get angry.
[00:39:56]  You can't get sad.
[00:39:57]  You're, you know, It's just hard to describe.
[00:40:01]  It's just, it was a vacant feeling.
[00:40:04]  And I still, I was watching, okay, this, I don't normally get political and I'm not trying to now, but after Trump got shot in the ear in Butler, two days later, three days later, was the Republican National Convention.
[00:40:18]  He's sitting there with that bandage on his ear and the camera's going over to him.
[00:40:22]  And he's got that, he's got that thousand yard stare in his eyes.
[00:40:26]  And I was looking at him, I thought, oh, I know exactly what's going through his brain.
[00:40:29]  He's sitting there and all this hubbub is going on around him.
[00:40:32]  And he's having that moment where he's searching for a feeling that he should feel, and there isn't one.
[00:40:37]  And he's going through the, he's nodding and being polite, but inside, there's a vacant feeling right now.

=== Pastoring a Church in the Air (07:00) ===

[00:40:43]  Because the reality of a bullet whizzing by your head that close and taking off the top of your ear, there's nothing like that.
[00:40:51]  There's no way to describe that feeling other than, wow, okay, now what am I going to do next?
[00:40:58]  So there's an obligation that comes with that, I think.
[00:41:02]  The talk I give associated with it is living on borrowed time, because I am.
[00:41:06]  I can mark on the calendar when I should have died and I didn't.
[00:41:10]  So the rest of my life has been marked by, you know, let's make the most out of this thing that I can.
[00:41:16]  Oh my God.
[00:41:18]  Yeah.
[00:41:20]  I'm sure you think about that all the time.
[00:41:22]  Yeah, it does.
[00:41:23]  It's like Groundhog Day for me because I still spend probably 20 times a year going around and we show the film, the in my seat film, and then I go and tell my story in various venues.
[00:41:32]  And it's like reliving it over and over again.
[00:41:34]  But, you know, there's an obligation.
[00:41:37]  You have to tell the story.
[00:41:39]  Right, it's not my story to keep myself, yeah, totally.
[00:41:42]  Right, so when you logged back onto the thing, the computer backed backdoored into the computers the next day, it still hadn't updated.
[00:41:52]  So it said that you were still assigned to it.
[00:41:54]  No, it they had taken all the names off of it, oh, it had all been scrubbed so that other guys like me trying to find the names couldn't report them to the media.
[00:42:01]  They wanted to keep the they'll that's one of the protocols right away.
[00:42:03]  Like if there's an incident or an accident, they'll scrub the names off the list right away so the media can't get a hold of them.
[00:42:08]  They want to make sure they can get to the families first.
[00:42:11]  Let them know what's going on.
[00:42:13]  And then, you know, it was about a week later, I think they finally came out and we'll hear the names of the crew members that were on those flights.
[00:42:18]  Right.
[00:42:19]  Yeah.
[00:42:20]  Good Lord, man.
[00:42:24]  How much attention did you pay to all of the media about that directly right after it happened?
[00:42:32]  Like they played phone calls and stuff like that from people from in the air calling their loved ones.
[00:42:39]  And like you hear them, the one, I think the one in Pennsylvania, like they were like talking about like trying to go like. breach through the door or something to get him.
[00:42:45]  And there was so much.
[00:42:47]  There was a lot.
[00:42:48]  And you couldn't get away from it for a while because right after 9-11, it was just all the news was absorbed with it.
[00:42:54]  But if you ever go to the Flight 93 Memorial, the one in Pennsylvania, it's a really, really good memorial.
[00:43:00]  And they have all of those recordings playing there.
[00:43:03]  So you can go around and there's little walls hanging.
[00:43:05]  There's phones hanging on the walls.
[00:43:07]  And you can go and there's pictures and memorabilia from the flight.
[00:43:10]  And you can go and listen to those various recordings.
[00:43:14]  And, you know, after, for me, after listening to about three or four of them, I was like, I'm done.
[00:43:18]  You know, that's enough.
[00:43:19]  Because it's just, it's even now, it's still hard to kind of bring all this up.
[00:43:24]  Yeah.
[00:43:25]  Because the ramifications of all of it, it just is, you know, the more you talk about it, the more real it still becomes.
[00:43:34]  And you were living where at the time?
[00:43:36]  I was living in Maine at the time.
[00:43:37]  You were living in Maine at the time?
[00:43:39]  Yeah.
[00:43:39]  I was pastoring a church up there.
[00:43:41]  We started a church in Topsham, Maine.
[00:43:44]  Oh, wow.
[00:43:44]  I was a senior pastor of a church we started.
[00:43:47]  And it was an ideal job, me being on reserve with the airlines.
[00:43:53]  And starting in church because there's no money to plant a church up in that part of the country.
[00:43:56]  So I didn't have to take a salary, but we could, I could be more or less a full time pastor as long as they would give me up like for two trips a month.
[00:44:04]  That's about what I would fly in those days on reserve.
[00:44:07]  And the church is more than happy.
[00:44:08]  They're like, yeah, great.
[00:44:08]  You know, if we can have a full time pastor, we'll, you know, if you want to go, you know, Monday through Wednesday and fly two trips a month, awesome.
[00:44:14]  Yeah.
[00:44:15]  It worked out.
[00:44:16]  Oh, wow.
[00:44:17]  So that could fund everything for you in just a couple flights, just a couple flights a month.
[00:44:20]  Yep.
[00:44:21]  Yeah.
[00:44:21]  I get you when you're on reserve, you get paid just a straight salary no matter how much you fly.
[00:44:25]  So like, I mean, not to linger on the dark stuff, but how did that affect your work after that and people around you being an airline pilot after 9 11?
[00:44:42]  I'm sure it had to have been weird, to say the least.
[00:44:48]  Yeah, it is.
[00:44:50]  It's not the first near death experience I had in an airplane.
[00:44:53]  So the Navy time, there were a couple of moments where.
[00:44:58]  You know, my knees were knocking after a flight.
[00:45:00]  And so you kind of get a little inoculated of that.
[00:45:02]  And remember, my 9 11 story wasn't like I was on the airplane and I escaped.
[00:45:08]  I just didn't get the assignment.
[00:45:11]  And so here's the rest of the story.
[00:45:14]  So people will ask, well, how did you get off the flight?
[00:45:17]  So I had seen my name assigned to the flight.
[00:45:19]  There was a guy, the guy who eventually took it, his name was Tom McGinnis.
[00:45:24]  And Tom was celebrating his 42nd birthday on the 10th of September with his wife and his two kids.
[00:45:30]  And Tom had been, he was a line holding pilot.
[00:45:33]  He was one of the guys I would fill in for.
[00:45:36]  He could pick up extra trips if he wanted to, to kind of fill out his schedule.
[00:45:40]  Tom had been looking at that trip all weekend and doing the, we do this all the time.
[00:45:43]  It's like, ah, do I want it?
[00:45:44]  I don't know.
[00:45:45]  You go back and forth and do I want to go to work?
[00:45:48]  So he got his birthday celebration out of the way and he looked at the trip one last time and I had already been assigned to the trip.
[00:45:54]  But there was a little code next to my name that says they hadn't made the phone call yet.
[00:45:59]  So until they make the phone call, it's not.
[00:46:01]  Final, final.
[00:46:02]  So he said to his wife, Hey, I'm thinking about taking a trip tomorrow.
[00:46:06]  She's like, Yeah, it's fine.
[00:46:06]  So he calls up and says, Hey, is it too late?
[00:46:08]  Can I still get that trip?
[00:46:09]  And the scheduler says, Well, no, but you got to let me know.
[00:46:13]  So he talks to his wife, gets back on the phone, says, Yeah, I'll take the trip.
[00:46:16]  So at that moment, they erased my name from the trip.
[00:46:17]  They put Tom's on it.
[00:46:19]  Oh my God.
[00:46:20]  And then the rest is history.
[00:46:21]  So Tom was just trying to provide for his family, pick up an extra trip.
[00:46:25]  It was a wonderful trip.
[00:46:26]  It was the most senior trip on the schedule.
[00:46:28]  Early morning departure out of Boston, early return the next day.
[00:46:32]  It was a A luxury trip.
[00:46:35]  Direct flight to LA.
[00:46:36]  Direct to LA, direct back, got back.
[00:46:38]  You got back home by five o'clock the next day, time for dinner.
[00:46:42]  So, you know, really nice trip.
[00:46:45]  And, but so he took the trip.
[00:46:47]  They erased my name.
[00:46:48]  And that stuff happens all the time in scheduling with the airlines.
[00:46:52]  Sometimes you don't see it.
[00:46:54]  I only met him once.
[00:46:55]  I didn't really know him.
[00:46:56]  I wouldn't even call him an acquaintance.
[00:46:58]  I remember bumping into him once.
[00:46:59]  I know much more of his story now.
[00:47:01]  His son, Tom Jr., followed in his dad's footsteps.
[00:47:05]  So my son and his son are about the same age.
[00:47:07]  They're like in their late 30s now.
[00:47:10]  My son's a filmmaker and he's a producer of my channel.
[00:47:13]  And his son became a pilot.
[00:47:15]  And he, I talked to him one time on the phone.
[00:47:19]  I text him almost every September 11th to just say, Hey, thinking about you and so forth.
[00:47:24]  But he was about to get his interview with American Airlines, mainline American.
[00:47:28]  And he said, You know, do you think they're going to hire me?
[00:47:30]  And do you have any advice?
[00:47:31]  And I said, Tom, I said, I don't know what the hiring practices are these days at American.
[00:47:35]  This was back in like the 2011, 2012 timeframe.
[00:47:39]  I said, But if they don't hire you, they're crazy.

=== Stories from an Air Marshal (05:40) ===

[00:47:43]  Just for the story of it all.
[00:47:44]  And they hired him.
[00:47:46]  And he might be a captain now for all I know.
[00:47:48]  He's a super sharp guy.
[00:47:50]  His dad was a Top Gun trained pilot to really sharp people.
[00:47:56]  Yeah.
[00:47:58]  Have you ever thought about, or like maybe there's training that goes into this for like those kinds of situations?
[00:48:06]  For like a couple of dudes come in with box cutters or whatever it is to try to like breach the cockpit.
[00:48:11]  Like I'm sure you've spent hours and days probably processing this kind of stuff hypothetically in your head.
[00:48:18]  Yeah, well, the paradigm shifted after 9-11 because the paradigm prior to that was the old hijack model of they want to hijack an airplane, land at some place, publish a manifesto in the newspaper, get their names on the news to get their cause out there.
[00:48:35]  And they might threaten to kill some people and they might even do it, but they're not going to fly an airplane into a building.
[00:48:40]  Like who in the world would do that?
[00:48:42]  They'd be killing themselves by doing that.
[00:48:44]  So that was the old model until it all changed on 9-11.
[00:48:47]  And it shows you how quickly a paradigm can shift.
[00:48:51]  That paradigm changed on September 11th, 2001.
[00:48:55]  By the time the fourth airplane, United 93, was still being hijacked, the people in the back of the airplane had gotten a word hey, you guys aren't going to go land someplace to publish a manifesto.
[00:49:07]  These guys are serious.
[00:49:09]  They're flying these airplanes into buildings.
[00:49:11]  You're all going to die.
[00:49:12]  So, with that information, Todd Beamer and the rest of the guys in the back of the airplane said, well, if we're going to die, we're going to die fighting.
[00:49:18]  So, they tried to take over the airplane.
[00:49:19]  They did break into the cockpit.
[00:49:21]  There was a fight in the cockpit.
[00:49:24]  It's all in the cockpit voice recorder.
[00:49:25]  Oh, really?
[00:49:26]  Yeah.
[00:49:27]  And the guy, the terrorist at the controls, was shaking the airplane back and forth to try to get these guys to hit the overhead and come off of him.
[00:49:36]  And then he finally just turned the airplane around and just nosed it right into the ground.
[00:49:39]  So the only fortunate part of that is they didn't hit the Capitol or the White House or wherever they were headed.
[00:49:46]  I've never heard that recording.
[00:49:48]  I didn't know that that was.
[00:49:49]  Yeah, if you go to the Flight 93 Memorial, all that stuff is there.
[00:49:52]  And they got the transcripts of what.
[00:49:54]  What took place.
[00:49:54]  You know, it's just in the cockpit.
[00:49:56]  There's just a lot of yelling and screaming.
[00:49:58]  But they actually got back into the cockpit and I don't know if they had a pilot on board that could have flown the airplane, but they, they never did regain total control of the airplane.
[00:50:08]  Good lord, yeah.
[00:50:10]  And whatever happened to the black boxes?
[00:50:11]  Do they ever find those?
[00:50:13]  Yeah, they found all those.
[00:50:14]  They did, yeah.
[00:50:15]  Yeah, that's so scary man.
[00:50:19]  So so now, what is the protocol?
[00:50:24]  So now the protocol has changed, and it's Because of 9, 11, it's, you know, we've got the armored door between us.
[00:50:32]  I don't come out unless it's a positive handoff.
[00:50:34]  We have to have somebody else, a flight attendant, come in, close the door.
[00:50:37]  There's strict security over opening and closing the door.
[00:50:41]  All of that stuff is, they put carts out, you know, serving carts out to block people from trying to run into the cockpit.
[00:50:47]  Right.
[00:50:48]  And then the backup option is able bodied passengers.
[00:50:53]  So if somebody is on board, there's a lot more federal air marshals than there ever used to be before, but, you know, I wouldn't.
[00:50:59]  Be stretching the truth to tell you there's not a federal air marshal on every single flight.
[00:51:03]  You know, you can't have that big a government agency, but there are on a lot of flights.
[00:51:08]  What is a, for people that don't know, what is a federal air marshal?
[00:51:11]  They're just a cop on an airplane.
[00:51:14]  So they're there, they blend in, and they do.
[00:51:16]  Undercover cop.
[00:51:17]  Undercover cop, and their whole job is to be the law on an airplane.
[00:51:22]  So essentially, they're there to make sure the airplane doesn't get hijacked, right?
[00:51:27]  So if you're pulling a misdemeanor, they're allowed to carry a gun on them.
[00:51:30]  Oh, yeah.
[00:51:31]  And if you get sideways with a flight attendant and there's a little argument, the federal air marshal is not going to intervene.
[00:51:36]  This is for the serious stuff that they're there for.
[00:51:40]  But without federal air marshals on every airplane, the conventional wisdom is that able bodied passengers will.
[00:51:46]  Tackle and subdue somebody that tries to get in the cockpit.
[00:51:49]  Right.
[00:51:50]  Right.
[00:51:50]  You would jump out of your seat and jump on somebody right away.
[00:51:55]  If they're yelling something and they break into the cockpit, you'd be out of your seat in a heartbeat and you'd be all over that guy.
[00:52:00]  So, right, right, right.
[00:52:02]  You know, that reminds me.
[00:52:03]  I was watching, there's this professional skateboarder.
[00:52:09]  His name's Bam, Bam Margera.
[00:52:12]  And he said he was on, I was just, this is like totally random, but it's relevant.
[00:52:16]  He said that he was on a flight back from like, Uh, Abu Dhabi or something like this, and one of his fans was like walking by him going, Bomb, Bomb, oh, his name's Bam.
[00:52:30]  He's like, Dude, shut up, shut up.
[00:52:32]  He's like, Bomb, Bomb, like pointing at things you don't want to say.
[00:52:36]  That's like, Yeah, hopefully, there's an air marshal.
[00:52:38]  Yeah, we had a guy, I just did a video on this.
[00:52:41]  We had a guy, um, I was walking down the jet bridge, I was in uniform going down the airplane, and this passenger makes a joke about, You know, I hope you weren't up drinking too late last night or something along those lines.
[00:52:51]  I'm like, Sir, please.
[00:52:53]  You know, you can't make those jokes.
[00:52:55]  And he doubled down about the accusing me of being drunk thing.
[00:52:59]  And I'm like, so the third time he made the joke, I'm just like, stop, give me your ticket.
[00:53:03]  What seat are you sitting in?
[00:53:04]  Let's go back out.
[00:53:06]  And I had to get pulled off the flight.
[00:53:07]  Because at that point, all these other passengers have heard, you know, the whisper down the lane this guy, he's accusing me of being drunk.
[00:53:15]  So I had to go down and get the blood test and the urine analysis and all that stuff.
[00:53:20]  And he got pulled off the flight.
[00:53:22]  I'm sure he got reaccommodated.

=== Confronting a Flat Earth Pilot (15:15) ===

[00:53:23]  But there's certain things you don't say at certain places.
[00:53:26]  Like you're going through TSA, you don't.
[00:53:28]  Say what you just said.
[00:53:31]  There's no humor there at all.
[00:53:34]  And if you accuse a pilot of drinking or being drunk as he's about to step on the airplane, there's no tolerance for that kind of joke.
[00:53:41]  Yeah, you had a video about a guy smoking weed in the bathroom.
[00:53:46]  That was it.
[00:53:47]  And I guess they had to do a mayday and land the airplane because there's a protocol that, I don't know if it's a protocol, but apparently there's like rigorous drug tests.
[00:53:57]  And if they would have got some secondhand smoke or whatever.
[00:54:00]  And there's no latitude in any of that stuff.
[00:54:02]  So let's say, for instance, they get a random drug test at the end of the flight.
[00:54:05]  And for some, now we all know if a guy is smoking weed in the bathroom and you smell some on the outside, you're not going to pop positive for that, most likely.
[00:54:15]  But nobody wants to take that chance.
[00:54:17]  And in addition to that, what's going on with this guy?
[00:54:19]  I mean, there's other ways to ingest that sort of thing without smoking a doobie in the bathroom on the airplane.
[00:54:27]  You know, you're just asking for it.
[00:54:28]  You can't eat a gummy when you're doing that.
[00:54:30]  So, There was a lot more going on, but the pilots, did they overreact?
[00:54:35]  I don't know.
[00:54:36]  Did I overreact?
[00:54:37]  Nope.
[00:54:37]  Because at some point, you got to go, hey, look, this is my livelihood, man.
[00:54:40]  I worked a lot of years to get here, and I'm not going to let you jeopardize it.
[00:54:43]  So we're going to play it right by the book.
[00:54:46]  I've always had a problem with keeping my firearm in reach and also somewhere safe and not around the kids.
[00:54:52]  Keeping it in the closet is just too far away.
[00:54:54]  I remember finding my parents' firearm, and I don't want that happening with me.
[00:54:57]  And that's what Stopbox USA solved with their Stopbox Pro.
[00:55:00]  Their customizable five button pattern is 100% mechanical and easy to open.
[00:55:04]  I love not having to fumble around with a combination lock or an electrical keypad in the dead of night.
[00:55:10]  And what a relief, it does not have to operate off of a battery.
[00:55:14]  It can stay under your pillow or under your mattress for fast access.
[00:55:17]  And the best part is, it's super safe around the kids, which means I never have to choose between security and readiness again.
[00:55:24]  I love how well made it is, and when I travel, it slips right into my bag.
[00:55:28]  No need for a separate bulky Pelican case.
[00:55:30]  This is hands down the best solution I've found, and I'm super happy to have Stopbox sponsoring the show.
[00:55:36]  Stopbox is made in the USA and it's tariff free.
[00:55:39]  Stopbox is also TSA compliant, so you don't need a separate carry case.
[00:55:42]  They also have a wall mount version and one for easy access in cars.
[00:55:47]  No longer do you have to trade safety for speed and readiness.
[00:55:50]  And for a limited time, our listeners get 10% off at Stopbox when you use the code DANNY at checkout.
[00:55:56]  Head on over to stopboxusa.comslash DANNY and use that code DANNY for 10% off your entire order.
[00:56:05]  After you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them and please support our show by telling them we sent you.
[00:56:10]  It's linked down below.
[00:56:11]  Now back to the show.
[00:56:13]  What is your take on the MH370?
[00:56:17]  Airplane that disappeared, the Malaysian Airlines.
[00:56:20]  Yeah, that's an interesting one because that's one of the craziest ones to me.
[00:56:23]  It is.
[00:56:24]  You know, all the theories came out right away.
[00:56:27]  You know, somebody stole the airplane, they're going to turn it into a bomb.
[00:56:30]  You know, I just shook my head because I'm like, first of all, there's only a few runways around the planet where you can land an airplane that big.
[00:56:38]  Then to hide the airplane, you have to have a huge hangar.
[00:56:42]  And 777s don't fit all the way into most hangars.
[00:56:45]  Like the tail will stick out.
[00:56:46]  Oh, really?
[00:56:47]  And then on top of that, you had what, how many people on 250 people, let's say, on board the airplane?
[00:56:51]  Yeah.
[00:56:52]  You would have to get, you'd have to, I guess, kill all of those people.
[00:56:57]  And then think about how many people it would take to coordinate a plot like that.
[00:57:00]  You'd have to keep everybody silent.
[00:57:03]  Nobody would come in front of a camera behind a microphone and spill the beans about what happened.
[00:57:07]  So none of that stuff was ever plausible, even though there's people that write books about it, make videos about it.
[00:57:13]  That airplane is probably down at the bottom of a very deep ocean.
[00:57:16]  Right.
[00:57:16]  And so deep that they'll never find it because they haven't found it up to this point.
[00:57:22]  Two things.
[00:57:22]  One, the fix for that is floatable airplanes.
[00:57:25]  Um, black box that you could put in the tail of the airplane that on impact ejects and floats.
[00:57:33]  Okay, then you would have found where that airplane was within an hour, connects to satellites or something.
[00:57:38]  Well, the black boxes you can put the black box anywhere in the airplane, right?
[00:57:41]  But like if it cuts in the middle of the ocean, how would you find it?
[00:57:44]  Is my question, like, how would they?
[00:57:45]  But it would float and it would have a little.
[00:57:47]  There's things called ELTs or emergency locator transmitters.
[00:57:50]  Okay, there's a bunch of them on the airplane, and on impact, those things start going off, and they've got a battery in them, they'll go off for.
[00:57:57]  You know, 24, 48 hours until the battery runs dead.
[00:58:00]  You would have found the airplane by then.
[00:58:02]  But it's again, it's a more of an expense.
[00:58:05]  The airlines don't want to incur that expense.
[00:58:07]  And the government spent, what, $300, $400, $500 million looking for that airplane?
[00:58:11]  Yeah.
[00:58:11]  So, but it wasn't any one government.
[00:58:14]  It was a bunch.
[00:58:15]  So it's a long story.
[00:58:15]  But at any rate, that.
[00:58:18]  So the prevailing theories were the captain went off the deep end and just kind of took the airplane and did what he did with it.
[00:58:24]  That's one theory.
[00:58:25]  Yeah.
[00:58:26]  I don't put a lot of credence in that.
[00:58:28]  Like that he was suicidal or he was trying to.
[00:58:30]  Or something.
[00:58:31]  He wasn't, yeah, I guess.
[00:58:34]  But he, again, why would you work that whole way to get to that point in your life than just to kill a bunch of people?
[00:58:41]  But Air India, you know, I'm stopping short of saying what I think completely happened with that airplane, but it looks like one of the pilots transitioned the fuel control switches from run to cutoff as the airplane rotated.
[00:58:58]  What one was this?
[00:58:59]  Air India 171, the airplane that crashed over in India about six months ago.
[00:59:04]  Oh, the one where it took off and it just.
[00:59:06]  And then one guy survived, right?
[00:59:08]  Yeah, the one guy walked away.
[00:59:10]  It was just amazing in all in itself.
[00:59:12]  But the one passenger, but they came out with a preliminary report on that.
[00:59:18]  And it's the fuel control switches, which are, they're spring loaded into the locked position.
[00:59:24]  You have to pick them up with both fingers, pull them up, bring them down and let go of them for them to turn off.
[00:59:30]  And one of the pilots did that.
[00:59:32]  And the other pilot said, why'd you do that?
[00:59:33]  And he said, he denied it.
[00:59:34]  He said, I didn't do it.
[00:59:36]  And then the other pilot is, there's kind of like panics a little bit and then eventually puts them back to run, but it wasn't.
[00:59:41]  quick enough to for the airplane engines to spool up oh we know this for a fact now yeah it's all in the preliminary report oh god yeah they published all that so again so there's an instance where you know was there a pilot deciding he's going to check out that day and he took everybody with him okay well did that happen on mh370 it's it's well within the realm of possibility the crazy thing about the mh370 one is that they turned off the transponders at like midnight or something like this around 12 30.
[01:00:10]  yeah And then it did a U turn, flew back like over Malaysia, I think, and there was like visual sightings of it, right?
[01:00:19]  And then the military tracked it going back out into the South China Sea, right?
[01:00:24]  Because it turned off its transponders, but for some reason the military had like some sophisticated way of tracking it and they knew it was there.
[01:00:32]  And then the military lost it.
[01:00:35]  But then I guess Boeing, it was determined months later that Boeing has some.
[01:00:43]  Sophisticated technology that can communicate with the engines.
[01:00:47]  Correct.
[01:00:48]  The engines are constantly transmitting back to satellites.
[01:00:51]  To satellites.
[01:00:52]  Right.
[01:00:52]  So these Boeing satellites traced it going, yeah, down like south into the Indian Ocean.
[01:00:59]  Right.
[01:01:00]  And all that can tell you, because that information that's transmitted to Boeing is not course, speed, altitude.
[01:01:06]  It's none of that stuff.
[01:01:07]  It's just that what parameters are the engines operating?
[01:01:10]  Are they still running so that they can monitor that stuff constantly?
[01:01:15]  But.
[01:01:15]  When you're triangulating where the transmission came from, you can get a rough track of where that airplane went.
[01:01:21]  So here's the problem with the way the media reports stuff is, in my opinion, most of the stuff, especially aviation related, is 80 to 90% wrong right on the shoot.
[01:01:35]  Completely wrong.
[01:01:36]  They have no idea what they're talking about.
[01:01:38]  And then they'll back off after a while as more facts come in and they finally get it.
[01:01:41]  Maybe they get it 50% right.
[01:01:43]  But everybody clammed onto, they turned the transponder off.
[01:01:49]  Stop.
[01:01:50]  The transponder stopped transmitting.
[01:01:52]  That's what happened.
[01:01:54]  So, there's a couple ways for that to happen.
[01:01:57]  The pilot can turn it off, but the one saying the pilot's turned it off implies a sinister intent.
[01:02:05]  All we know for sure is that the transponder stopped transmitting.
[01:02:09]  That could have been an onboard fire down in the EE compartment where all the electronics are.
[01:02:14]  There's no way to put that fire out down there, there's no fire suppression equipment.
[01:02:19]  It would eventually burn out of control and the transponder would stop transmitting.
[01:02:22]  However, the engines would keep running because they're a separate system.
[01:02:27]  So they don't depend on the gear I have underneath me in the airplane.
[01:02:32]  They'll just keep on running.
[01:02:33]  It takes a lot to get those jet engines to stop running.
[01:02:35]  As long as they have fuel and air, they'll keep running.
[01:02:38]  So there's a potential that the airplane became what they would call a zombie flight, right?
[01:02:42]  There was an out-of-control fire like Swiss Air 111.
[01:02:47]  It was an out-of-control fire.
[01:02:49]  Everybody on the airplane eventually succumbs to the fumes, but the airplane keeps flying.
[01:02:55]  Until it runs out of gas.
[01:02:57]  So that's one of the theories.
[01:02:58]  The other is the captain somehow hijacked the airplane.
[01:03:03]  He would have to get rid of his co-pilots or his co-pilot to do that.
[01:03:07]  But that's not hard to do.
[01:03:08]  And then at some point, you know, he just flies out there and I don't know.
[01:03:13]  So, yeah, so if there was a fire, basically what you're saying is it could have been, it could have, everyone could have like passed out on the plane.
[01:03:19]  Everyone would have been unconscious and it would have been a ghost plane.
[01:03:22]  Right.
[01:03:23]  Just flying on its own course until it eventually ran out of gas and crashed into the ocean.
[01:03:26]  The hybrid of those two would be, let's say the captain is trying to kill himself and everybody else.
[01:03:31]  So he gets, the co-pilot goes to the bathroom, he locks the door, doesn't let the guy back in.
[01:03:36]  And then he just depressurizes the cabin.
[01:03:38]  He puts himself on oxygen, but depressurizes the cabin.
[01:03:41]  All the masks come down in the back.
[01:03:44]  Everybody's got 15 or 20 minutes of oxygen from those.
[01:03:48]  But after that, everybody goes to sleep, including the co pilot that's locked out.
[01:03:53]  Everybody goes to sleep and he flies the airplane wherever he wants, thinking about what he's going to think about.
[01:03:57]  How much oxygen would he have on that dedicated oxygen?
[01:04:03]  He'd have a bunch.
[01:04:05]  I don't know exactly.
[01:04:06]  It depends on.
[01:04:08]  That's a good question.
[01:04:10]  He'd have more than the passengers would have.
[01:04:11]  Let me put it in that category.
[01:04:14]  Probably not hours worth at that altitude.
[01:04:16]  At some point, he'd have to come down to a breathable altitude.
[01:04:19]  But he could bring the airplane down to 10,000 feet and just breathe just fine there.
[01:04:24]  So we never found the black box.
[01:04:26]  Is that right?
[01:04:26]  They haven't found the airplane or the black boxes.
[01:04:27]  Never found the black boxes.
[01:04:29]  But allegedly, we found pieces of the airplane.
[01:04:31]  Right.
[01:04:31]  Right.
[01:04:31]  Washed up someplace.
[01:04:32]  Off Madagascar.
[01:04:33]  Right.
[01:04:33]  The coast of Madagascar.
[01:04:34]  That was like a year and a half later, I think.
[01:04:37]  So which leads me to how the airplane entered the water.
[01:04:40]  If an airplane crashes, it's going to come apart and leave an oil slick and everything else, and all sorts of parts are going to go replaced.
[01:04:46]  If it stalled at altitude, it would begin a spin and it would go in much more like a razor's edge into the water, which would mean it probably wouldn't break apart as easily as if it landed flat on the open ocean because there's swells in the ocean and you're going to hit a wall of water and the airplane's going to disintegrate.
[01:05:05]  But if they went straight in like this, it would penetrate.
[01:05:08]  Right.
[01:05:08]  So if the airplane just ran out of gas, everybody was dead, it ran out of gas.
[01:05:13]  It eventually would stall, it would start a tight spin, and it would go right straight down.
[01:05:17]  So, those are my theories on what happened to it.
[01:05:22]  But there's probably a dozen more.
[01:05:26]  Yeah.
[01:05:26]  The best one is the UFOs abducted it and made it vanish.
[01:05:30]  Absolutely.
[01:05:33]  Yeah, these UFOs sent it through a wormhole portal.
[01:05:37]  Yeah, see, I get asked that question all the time.
[01:05:39]  One of the things I did as a captain was I would ask people, I'd say, hey, if you ever had a question you wanted to ask your captain, This is your lucky flight.
[01:05:46]  Write it down on a napkin or piece of paper.
[01:05:48]  Send it up to me.
[01:05:49]  I'll answer your questions.
[01:05:50]  Right.
[01:05:51]  So about every 10th question was, have you ever seen a UFO?
[01:05:54]  And I had the same answer.
[01:05:56]  I'd write back every time.
[01:05:56]  I'd say, not from the outside.
[01:05:58]  And I'd just leave it at that.
[01:05:59]  And I'd send it back to him.
[01:06:01]  Not from the outside?
[01:06:02]  Not from the outside.
[01:06:02]  Oh, okay.
[01:06:03]  That's all I would say.
[01:06:05]  No, not from the outside.
[01:06:06]  And then the second one is, is the earth flat, right?
[01:06:08]  And is the earth flat?
[01:06:09]  Yeah.
[01:06:10]  And so the earth flat one is fun because there's a couple theories on that.
[01:06:17]  It's the.
[01:06:18]  Is it the round earth flat or the square earth flat theory?
[01:06:21]  There's two.
[01:06:21]  Oh, there's two.
[01:06:22]  Well, if it's square, then the moon going around the earth has to make 90 degree turns.
[01:06:27]  So we have to consider that.
[01:06:28]  Oh, shit.
[01:06:29]  Okay.
[01:06:30]  That's a big deal.
[01:06:30]  Now, if it's around like a plate, you know, like a round plate, then okay, the moon's cool with that.
[01:06:37]  But I think if the earth was flat, first of all, the cats would have pushed all of us off the edge at some point.
[01:06:44]  That's the top of my theory.
[01:06:47]  But the other is where are the flat mooners?
[01:06:51]  You ever heard of flat moon theory?
[01:06:53]  I've never heard of flat.
[01:06:54]  I've heard the moon is a spaceship.
[01:06:56]  I've heard that theory.
[01:06:57]  The problem with these theories are like, you got to be really careful because if you're a proponent of one, you got to be careful before you jump on the bandwagon for another one because that one can disprove the one that you've already been a part of.
[01:07:09]  So, like, you can't start saying, like, the moon's a spaceship if you believe in flat Earth because how does those two don't reconcile?
[01:07:17]  The moon can't be real if you believe in flat Earth.
[01:07:19]  It's got to be like some sort of projection, right?
[01:07:21]  Oh, this is the UFO for the MH370.
[01:07:24]  Yeah.
[01:07:25]  I mean, yeah, it's right up there with all the other theories.
[01:07:29]  And you guys actually have to fly in like curves, curvatures, right?
[01:07:38]  To like get places.
[01:07:40]  Yeah, so it's called a great circle.
[01:07:42]  And so the earth is a globe.
[01:07:45]  It's round.
[01:07:46]  Wait, I gave it away.
[01:07:47]  Sorry.
[01:07:49]  It's round in a globe.
[01:07:50]  And if you were to take a piece of yarn from New York to Los Angeles on a globe and then flatten out the globe, your piece of yarn would be.
[01:08:02]  It would be bent.
[01:08:04]  Right.
[01:08:05]  Right.
[01:08:05]  So, to fly straight to someplace on a globe, it looks like on a two dimensional flat surface, like you're going up and down, like this.
[01:08:13]  You're not.
[01:08:14]  You're actually going straight.
[01:08:15]  Oh.
[01:08:16]  When you see a straight line, like if I do a straight line from New York to London on a map, I would actually be going much farther out of my way to get there because to do it straight is not straight because it's round and you're flattening out.
[01:08:33]  It blew my mind years ago when I had to learn it and I just.
[01:08:36]  Kind of punted mentally on it and said, Yep, sounds good.

=== Navigating Parallax and Horizons (16:10) ===

[01:08:38]  It sounds good.
[01:08:39]  Yeah.
[01:08:40]  Just give me enough gas, I'll get there.
[01:08:41]  Right, right, right.
[01:08:42]  Yeah.
[01:08:42]  And that's why we have to fly like over the North Pole or over like the top of the earth to get to places like Europe or whatever.
[01:08:48]  You don't fly over the ocean, just like sideways.
[01:08:50]  You go above.
[01:08:51]  Correct.
[01:08:51]  Because it's a shorter distance.
[01:08:52]  Looking at a flat map, you go, Well, the shortest distance is here.
[01:08:55]  Well, not necessarily.
[01:08:56]  Sometimes if you go this way, it's shorter than going this way.
[01:08:59]  Yeah.
[01:09:01]  So is there, speaking of UFOs, is there a protocol if you do see an unidentified flying object?
[01:09:08]  I'm sure there's probably something in a manual someplace that says what you're talking about.
[01:09:11]  Even if it's not, I'm not talking aliens.
[01:09:13]  I'm going to get anything, like anything that you can't identify.
[01:09:15]  You would just kind of call it in.
[01:09:17]  You'd say, hey, you know, there's an object out here and it's making a light.
[01:09:21]  And what is it?
[01:09:22]  And does air traffic control have it on their radar?
[01:09:25]  And if they say no, you go, well, here's what I'm looking at.
[01:09:27]  There's lots of things that can make a light that it fools your brain.
[01:09:34]  Going up the east coast of Canada on the way over to Europe, All those North Star satellites are up there now.
[01:09:41]  And they actually light up, and it's really weird looking at them because they're all kind of in a line.
[01:09:46]  But sometimes one lights up and the other, and it looks like it's hopping around.
[01:09:51]  Huh.
[01:09:51]  You know, but it's just the way the sun is hitting one and then hits another, and it looks like the same.
[01:09:57]  Your brain goes, there can only be one light up there because of all the stars.
[01:10:02]  That star's not going to move.
[01:10:03]  Well, but that one is.
[01:10:04]  It's hopping around like this.
[01:10:06]  It's just the different satellites.
[01:10:07]  You know what I'm thinking right now?
[01:10:10]  We need to show him the video that we shot on the beach.
[01:10:13]  Oh, yes, that would be fantastic.
[01:10:16]  Love your input.
[01:10:17]  Okay.
[01:10:17]  So, we had this gentleman on the show about two years ago who has this wild ability to pray to the sky and make orbs appear.
[01:10:29]  And he said that he could do it in front of us.
[01:10:31]  Okay.
[01:10:31]  So, we went to the beach, we brought a video camera, and he started praying to God on the beach and to Jesus to bring these orbs.
[01:10:37]  He believes they're angels.
[01:10:39]  And we sat there for two hours and we saw airplanes.
[01:10:42]  Lots of airplanes.
[01:10:44]  And then we saw this orb, this little ball of light come up off the horizon and go side to side and then fizzle out.
[01:10:50]  Kind of like how you would imagine one of those Chinese lanterns that float around in the sky.
[01:10:56]  But it was too far and it was too bright and the brightness changed.
[01:11:02]  But you're a pilot, so this would be a fantastic opportunity to get your take on what this could be.
[01:11:07]  Yeah, okay, sure.
[01:11:09]  So, this is the video, it's dark.
[01:11:11]  So, start from the beginning, Steve.
[01:11:12]  One more time.
[01:11:13]  So, that's a plane flashing up there, right?
[01:11:15]  Yep.
[01:11:16]  Now, look at the bottom.
[01:11:17]  There's something right on the water, right on the water.
[01:11:21]  Thank you.
[01:11:22]  Thank you.
[01:11:24]  If you could flash for us, I'm getting it.
[01:11:32]  Right there.
[01:11:34]  It's still in the camera.
[01:11:36]  It's still in here.
[01:11:39]  And it just disappears.
[01:11:41]  Now look at this one moving.
[01:11:42]  Oh.
[01:11:42]  Here, someone needs to look through this.
[01:11:47]  It's very bright.
[01:11:48]  Thank you.
[01:11:48]  Oh, you see it?
[01:11:49]  It's right there.
[01:11:52]  You see it?
[01:11:52]  That is an orb.
[01:11:53]  That is definitely an orb.
[01:11:56]  I'm tracking it here.
[01:11:57]  Do you want to look?
[01:11:58]  Yeah, can you still see it?
[01:12:00]  Let me find it.
[01:12:03]  I lost it.
[01:12:03]  All right.
[01:12:06]  So a couple of things.
[01:12:09]  I spent a lot of time in my P3 out over the open ocean, right?
[01:12:13]  That's what we did.
[01:12:13]  We flew around at 200 feet.
[01:12:15]  So you get pretty good at nighttime, daytime, differentiating between something that's on the surface of the water and an actual star or a planet that's, you know, gazillion miles away.
[01:12:24]  Because you don't want to confuse the two.
[01:12:26]  There's been airplanes that have flown into the water thinking it was open sky and it was actually something on the surface.
[01:12:32]  Right.
[01:12:32]  So you got to be real careful about that.
[01:12:33]  But there's a thing called parallax, and parallax is always like right over the top of the water.
[01:12:38]  And at night, for instance, when the moon first comes up, it's not a brain thing.
[01:12:44]  It's because of the way the, I don't know how to describe it, the way light is transmitted just off the surface of the planet at a distance.
[01:12:56]  You'll see the moon come up and you'll go, that's gigantic.
[01:13:01]  The moon is like so much closer than it ever was before.
[01:13:04]  And eventually as it goes up into the sky, it goes back to a normal size moon.
[01:13:08]  And you're like, well, why was it so big there?
[01:13:11]  It magnifies it because it's a parallax.
[01:13:13]  So, any sort of light that's off at a distance, a boat's got a light.
[01:13:17]  Boats have red, green, and white lights, just like airplanes.
[01:13:20]  And you got it, and it gets in that parallax that's right on the horizon.
[01:13:24]  It gets real big, and then it goes away because the boat turned, and the light's not there anymore.
[01:13:30]  So, there's lots of explanations for that.
[01:13:33]  The theoretical side of all of the UFO things for me is it's always just out of touch.
[01:13:40]  Whatever it is, it's always just beyond our comprehension or just beyond our reach.
[01:13:47]  And it showed up on the horizon for just a split second and then, oh, it went away.
[01:13:51]  And the guy had been talking to you about orbs and he planted that seed in your mind.
[01:13:55]  And she goes, It is.
[01:13:56]  There it is.
[01:13:57]  It's an orb.
[01:13:57]  And your brain goes, Oh, there's only one explanation for this now.
[01:14:01]  This guy's a miracle worker.
[01:14:03]  And he prayed to Jesus to validate the whole thing.
[01:14:07]  I mean, what could be more validating than that?
[01:14:09]  Right.
[01:14:10]  Well, he takes all of those things, plants all those seeds in your mind.
[01:14:14]  And eventually, some boat is going to shine its light.
[01:14:17]  It's going to be in that parallax.
[01:14:18]  It's going to get real big and bright for a minute, and then it's going to go away.
[01:14:21]  I've seen stuff like that hundreds of times.
[01:14:23]  Really?
[01:14:24]  And it's always some surface vessel that's got a light on.
[01:14:27]  Okay.
[01:14:28]  And it was, we were using a special camera, right?
[01:14:30]  Like a night vision camera.
[01:14:31]  Yeah, it was a high sensitivity camera.
[01:14:37]  Yeah.
[01:14:38]  And a recorder.
[01:14:39]  And I don't mean to squash on your thing.
[01:14:40]  If you want it to be in orbit, it sounds great.
[01:14:41]  No, I don't want it to be in orbit.
[01:14:44]  I was just generally.
[01:14:45]  Dumbfounded by what it could be.
[01:14:46]  And I've been trying to figure it out for two years.
[01:14:48]  Chicks dig that stuff.
[01:14:49]  You know, and you can say, oh, I don't need chicks.
[01:14:51]  I saw the orb.
[01:14:51]  Yeah.
[01:14:52]  You know, that's, that's wow.
[01:14:54]  So, you think it could have been boats?
[01:14:57]  Okay.
[01:14:58]  Yeah, it was very low to the horizon.
[01:15:00]  So, that is definitely possible.
[01:15:01]  But what about the one that popped up above it that went horizontal?
[01:15:07]  So, that one, there was one above it?
[01:15:09]  Yeah.
[01:15:11]  Okay, there's one on the bottom.
[01:15:12]  Yeah, so you get your line right there.
[01:15:13]  And that could definitely be a boat.
[01:15:15]  Probably some distance, and it's in that parallax.
[01:15:17]  It's probably a very small light, but it's being.
[01:15:18]  It could be a cop boat with its lights flashing.
[01:15:22]  And the second one's even farther.
[01:15:23]  It could be farther away.
[01:15:24]  Even farther away.
[01:15:25]  Where's the horizon?
[01:15:26]  I can't see the horizon.
[01:15:28]  Right.
[01:15:28]  But it looks like that that's where the horizon is, but it's probably not.
[01:15:31]  I see what he's saying.
[01:15:32]  Or it could be another airplane.
[01:15:35]  It's moving pretty fast.
[01:15:36]  Yeah.
[01:15:37]  You know?
[01:15:39]  But that could definitely be boats.
[01:15:41]  I don't know why I didn't think of that.
[01:15:43]  It could be a UFO too.
[01:15:45]  Could be aliens.
[01:15:46]  Could be aliens.
[01:15:47]  Might be aliens.
[01:15:47]  Yeah.
[01:15:50]  That thing got bright though.
[01:15:51]  Yeah.
[01:15:53]  It was astonishing to me how many planes were coming because I never sat outside and watched the sky for that long.
[01:15:59]  It was astonishing how many planes were coming into land.
[01:16:02]  Off the freaking coast.
[01:16:04]  It was crazy.
[01:16:04]  There must have been like 200 planes we saw that were coming into land off the coast.
[01:16:09]  Was that in Miami?
[01:16:10]  No, that was right here.
[01:16:11]  Oh, right here.
[01:16:11]  Yeah, right, right, like literally right on the beach, right there.
[01:16:13]  Yeah.
[01:16:14]  Okay.
[01:16:14]  Tampa Airport.
[01:16:15]  Yeah.
[01:16:16]  So there's lots of explanations for that, but you know, it's, yeah.
[01:16:21]  Have you heard the Navy pilots talk about those things that they were seeing when they were doing their training off North Carolina and off San Diego?
[01:16:34]  What did you make of that stuff?
[01:16:36]  I, you know, again, I wasn't there, so it's hard to say.
[01:16:39]  Again, the bigger picture on those things are it's always grainy video.
[01:16:45]  Yeah.
[01:16:45]  It's always just kind of out of reach.
[01:16:48]  It happens so quickly, you can hardly tell what it is.
[01:16:50]  It's never, you know, I mean, if you're a superior being from hundreds or thousands of light years away and you traveled all the way here, don't you want somebody to see your spaceship or marvel at your technology?
[01:17:05]  You know, and why is it that they always crash in Roswell, New Mexico?
[01:17:08]  I don't understand that.
[01:17:10]  Maybe it has something to do with the local economy or something.
[01:17:13]  But again, there's probably a lot of different explanations for this.
[01:17:17]  I love this one because it's very convincing.
[01:17:19]  It's got the, he's got his FLIR radar on at night and he's doing the infrared stuff.
[01:17:24]  So this is coming off of a plane that's flying in one direction over the water and it's locked on something flying the opposite direction, which makes it look like it's going like a bajillion miles an hour.
[01:17:33]  Right.
[01:17:34]  So there's definitely a parallax.
[01:17:38]  Element involved in this video where that could, I've heard the case that that could actually be like a bird or something normal.
[01:17:43]  Or it's, if you see it's completely stationary on the scope, those scopes don't lock on like that.
[01:17:49]  Like it doesn't move.
[01:17:51]  What that tells me is that's probably something on the lens.
[01:17:54]  Like you'll get floaters in your eye that'll, you actually see something that's not really out there in front of you, it's on your eyeball.
[01:18:00]  That could be something else.
[01:18:01]  I don't know.
[01:18:02]  I don't know enough about how that technology works to, but it stays perfectly right there.
[01:18:08]  The whole time, yeah, it doesn't move around a lot, you know.
[01:18:12]  Like the camera would be looking for it, like your eyeball would be looking.
[01:18:15]  The camera does the same thing, it's trying to lock on.
[01:18:17]  It's just so I don't know.
[01:18:20]  Maybe it's bird droppings on the wall.
[01:18:21]  Yeah, there's definitely a lot of weird stuff.
[01:18:23]  It's definitely, I mean, I know that fighter pilots they have to be pretty mentally sound.
[01:18:32]  Oh, they do, I'm sure they have to go through probably the same amount of maybe not.
[01:18:37]  I would imagine they would have similar standards.
[01:18:41]  And requirements like to physicals and mental health and stuff like that for commercial pilots like yourself.
[01:18:46]  Yeah, there's guys that are into this sort of thing, and there's nothing wrong with them mentally.
[01:18:51]  I mean, sometimes it's like a hobby or a pursuit.
[01:18:56]  I flew with a guy once, an airline pilot, that was into a thing called a Course in Miracles.
[01:19:02]  And a Course in Miracles is not a course like you would take a college course, it's an actual religion.
[01:19:07]  And it's the nth degree of existentialism.
[01:19:14]  It's the idea that everything going on around us, we don't even know whether we exist or if this is reality or what is reality.
[01:19:21]  So this guy didn't know.
[01:19:22]  Whether he was alive or not, what reality was.
[01:19:25]  And we talked for four hours.
[01:19:27]  We were coming back from Los Angeles to Boston.
[01:19:28]  He told me all about what he believed.
[01:19:30]  Wow.
[01:19:32]  And I was fascinated by it, a little concerned at the same time, but fascinated.
[01:19:37]  But he said, this could be a giant movie playing in front of us right now.
[01:19:41]  And we're just all part of that movie that's playing.
[01:19:45]  And I thought, okay, well, as long as your part includes lowering the flaps in the gear before we touch down, I'm good.
[01:19:51]  I'm good with that.
[01:19:52]  And he did.
[01:19:53]  He lowered the flaps in the gear and I was good.
[01:19:55]  With the conclusion of that movie, but he was 100% convinced that he wasn't sure whether he existed or not.
[01:20:04]  And he passed all his tests and had to blow a breathalyzer before getting on that plane.
[01:20:07]  No, he wasn't drunk.
[01:20:08]  He was totally into what he believed.
[01:20:10]  And so the mind is capable of comprehending a lot of things.
[01:20:15]  There's certain substances that can enhance that, that don't necessarily, you don't have to be under the influence while you're.
[01:20:22]  Correct.
[01:20:22]  They can enhance it long term.
[01:20:24]  Yeah.
[01:20:25]  Or change your perspectives, blow your perspectives on reality out of the water.
[01:20:29]  Yes.
[01:20:29]  You know, I've heard of such things.
[01:20:32]  I bet you've had some very interesting conversations flying planes.
[01:20:36]  Yeah, I've done a lot of counseling at 37,000 feet.
[01:20:39]  You know, so I've heard that is it true that when you are making a trip on a plane, that the most dangerous point of the trip is when you're taking off?
[01:20:56]  Correct.
[01:20:57]  The first, I think, like 20 minutes when you're trying to get into the cruising altitude.
[01:21:04]  Takeoff in general is the most dangerous part of the flight because you're the heaviest you're ever going to be.
[01:21:10]  You're the slowest you're going to be.
[01:21:13]  You've got the power pushed all the way up.
[01:21:16]  And so you don't have a lot of extra power to grab a hold of if you need it.
[01:21:20]  And now you do have a little bit.
[01:21:21]  You've got a little bit of a margin, but not the way you would when you were landing.
[01:21:24]  Landing, you have burned off a bunch of your fuel.
[01:21:28]  You're.
[01:21:29]  You're still slow, but you've got your flaps out and so forth.
[01:21:31]  But the power's basically pulled all the way back to idle.
[01:21:34]  So if you need those engines, you're just going to push them up.
[01:21:37]  So that's the difference between landing and taking off.
[01:21:39]  Taking off is the most precarious because your thrust is all the way up and you're the heaviest you're ever going to be.
[01:21:46]  So if you're going to have a problem, and it's like I just did a video, it went out two days ago on United 803 took off out of, I don't remember where it was now.
[01:21:56]  It was Denver, one of those airports, but they took off and They had an engine failure between V1 and rotate, which is the go, no go speed on the runway.
[01:22:08]  So, you have to, if you lose an engine after V1, you must go flying.
[01:22:14]  You don't have enough concrete in front of you to stop the airplane.
[01:22:17]  Right.
[01:22:18]  So, it's the worst possible place to lose an engine.
[01:22:21]  They lost an engine.
[01:22:22]  They rotated.
[01:22:23]  It was out of Dulles.
[01:22:24]  They took off.
[01:22:25]  They lit the side of the runway on fire because of some of the debris that went over into the dry grass.
[01:22:32]  And these guys did an absolute master class.
[01:22:35]  In how to get an airplane off the ground with a single engine at full gross weight.
[01:22:40]  They were going to Tokyo.
[01:22:41]  Oh my God.
[01:22:42]  That was as heavy as a 777 gets.
[01:22:44]  From Dulles?
[01:22:45]  From Dulles all the way to Tokyo.
[01:22:47]  6,000 mile trip.
[01:22:48]  That's as heavy as it gets.
[01:22:50]  They lost the engine at the worst possible spot.
[01:22:53]  And just like they're training, I get trained in this every nine months.
[01:22:55]  So they fail an engine on the runway at max gross weight, and you have to get that airplane airborne.
[01:23:02]  So they're climbing out and they're doing a great job.
[01:23:04]  The air traffic controller is asking them for information.
[01:23:07]  You know, tell us about this.
[01:23:08]  Tell us about it.
[01:23:08]  Finally, the pilot just goes, I'll get back to you.
[01:23:11]  I'm busy.
[01:23:13]  Oh, because they're doing checklists?
[01:23:14]  Yeah, they're doing, he's trying to fly the airplane.
[01:23:16]  Right.
[01:23:16]  Because it's a real thin margin, but the airplane will fly fine on one engine, but you don't want to stall it.
[01:23:21]  You don't want to get too slow.
[01:23:23]  But you still got to continue to climb.
[01:23:24]  So it takes the skills of a guy that's been around for that many years to fly that airplane safely out.
[01:23:32]  And they did it right by the book.
[01:23:34]  It was a brilliant rendition of how that should go.
[01:23:37]  And they were able to turn it around and land it.
[01:23:39]  Yeah.
[01:23:39]  They got the airplane up to altitude.
[01:23:41]  They got all their checklists done, did all their communicating.
[01:23:44]  They even dumped fuel to lighten ship a little bit.
[01:23:46]  When they touched down, they blew a tire.
[01:23:47]  Over the ocean?
[01:23:49]  No, it was up over Dulles.
[01:23:50]  They were over Washington, D.C. What do you mean when you say dump fuel?
[01:23:53]  So the center fuel tank, you can get rid of the fuel in that.
[01:23:56]  You can dump it out the ends of the wings.
[01:23:58]  So if you're overweight and you need to lighten ship a little bit, you can jettison fuel.
[01:24:04]  So they have to activate the fuel jettison system.
[01:24:07]  It takes 20, 25 minutes to get rid of all the center section fuel.
[01:24:10]  But you're going to lighten the airplane maybe by 100,000 pounds.
[01:24:13]  And they just release it into the air?
[01:24:15]  Yeah, but you go above 5,000 feet and it dissipates into the atmosphere.
[01:24:18]  Oh, does it really?
[01:24:19]  Right.
[01:24:19]  So there's a hard altitude for that.
[01:24:20]  You don't want to do it below 5,000 because.
[01:24:22]  Make it rain.
[01:24:23]  Yeah.
[01:24:25]  That wouldn't be good.
[01:24:25]  As they say in the UK, it's frightfully bad for a little chap to do that.
[01:24:32]  That's crazy.
[01:24:33]  I was once flying in, I flew on this really tiny airplane to the Bahamas, and it was enough to fit the pilot, a person sitting next to the pilot, and then two people directly behind it.

=== Emergency Landing Protocols (03:43) ===

[01:24:49]  And we were flying really low over Florida, and we were just having this conversation about all the worst things that could happen right now.
[01:24:56]  Like in this plane, and we're flying like over Okeechobee or whatever.
[01:24:59]  And I'm like, what would happen if, like, what's the worst thing that could happen right now?
[01:25:02]  And he's like, I don't know, I'll lose both my engines.
[01:25:04]  And I'm like, really?
[01:25:07]  I'm like, does that not freak you out?
[01:25:08]  And he's like, no.
[01:25:10]  And he was explaining to me like how he's already, like, in his mind, he's constantly processing where he could land in an emergency, how he would land it, all that stuff.
[01:25:19]  He's like, I got that highway there.
[01:25:20]  I got that highway there.
[01:25:22]  I got that big empty farmland over there.
[01:25:26]  And he's like just constantly hyper processing like what would what the worst case scenario would be.
[01:25:32]  Yeah.
[01:25:33]  And that got me thinking like, okay, now I can understand why some of these people are like not, you know, they're not like fully mentally like stable.
[01:25:41]  Like if you're constantly in this hyper vigilant state all the time, I can imagine that can't be healthy.
[01:25:48]  Well, it goes back.
[01:25:49]  It's part of your training.
[01:25:50]  So when you first started flying, before you even got that first solo or anything out of the way, you were flying a single engine airplane, most likely a little Cessna.
[01:25:58]  And you had a single engine.
[01:25:59]  If that failed, you had to put it down someplace.
[01:26:01]  So, the first instructor you had, you got airborne, and the instructor said, Start looking, keep your head on a swivel, keep looking out for a place you can put this airplane down if you need to.
[01:26:09]  And that gets ingrained in you in those early days.
[01:26:12]  Then you get into a two engine airplane, and you're still kind of doing the same thing, right?
[01:26:16]  Now, this thing was probably a one engine now that I think of it.
[01:26:18]  Yeah, single engine airplane, your head's on a swivel all the time.
[01:26:21]  Because if you lose your one and only engine, you're going to have to put it down in a farmer's field, on the beach, on a road, someplace.
[01:26:28]  So, you're, I've got, My own airplane now, and it's a single engine airplane.
[01:26:32]  I hadn't flown single engine in 30 plus years.
[01:26:35]  And as I was flying it back from where I bought it, I had that same nervousness back when I was a young pilot.
[01:26:41]  I'm sitting there the whole time, just on edge, doing like this.
[01:26:44]  You know, like, okay, I could put it down there, I could put it down there.
[01:26:46]  And the thought, oh, I haven't lived like this for a long time.
[01:26:49]  Yeah.
[01:26:49]  Right.
[01:26:50]  Because the 777 is so reliable.
[01:26:52]  I'm not sitting up there the whole time thinking, where am I going to put this airplane down?
[01:26:55]  You know, I'm going to fly it to some major airport.
[01:26:56]  There's always so many crazy stories about single engine airplanes in Florida.
[01:27:00]  I feel like every day in the news, you get some crazy, wacky story.
[01:27:03]  Yeah.
[01:27:03]  There's a bunch of them.
[01:27:04]  There was an interview I watched with this pro golfer, a young, I think it was a younger dude.
[01:27:09]  And this was on a pod.
[01:27:10]  He went on somebody's podcast and he was explaining how he went golfing with Donald Trump at one of the golf courses in West Palm.
[01:27:19]  And they're like sitting there, like in the golf carts or whatever.
[01:27:23]  And all of a sudden, like Trump's security comes rushing over to him.
[01:27:27]  He's like, Mr. President, there's a situation.
[01:27:30]  We need to get you off the golf course.
[01:27:31]  And he's like, what?
[01:27:33]  And apparently, like this all happened so fast.
[01:27:37]  All of a sudden, these like fighter jets came in right above him.
[01:27:41]  And there was this little single engine Cessna flying over the golf course.
[01:27:46]  And I guess there's some crazy protocol where wherever the president is, there has to be a no fly zone around him.
[01:27:52]  And there was this like old guy in his 70s or 80s, maybe.
[01:27:55]  I don't know how old he was flying his single engine plane really low, right above the golf course where they're playing golf.
[01:28:01]  And these freaking fighter jets come in on both sides of it.
[01:28:06]  And it happens all so quick.
[01:28:09]  And he's like, this kid, this golfer, this pro golfer who's explaining this to these people on the podcast, he goes, Donald Trump looked at me and he goes, that's power.
[01:28:18]  It's like, God, can you imagine?
[01:28:22]  Yeah, that's so crazy.
[01:28:23]  Yeah, that's how addictive that power gets, you know.
[01:28:26]  Right?
[01:28:26]  Every place the president goes, there's a prohibited area, and they'll put it out on a notice to airmen.

=== No Fly Zones Over Golf Courses (15:27) ===

[01:28:32]  And then that's why you have to check your notums before you go flying, but you can't fly in that.
[01:28:37]  Nobody can fly in that area wherever he is.
[01:28:40]  Yeah, I couldn't imagine.
[01:28:41]  I just couldn't imagine being a poor guy in the Cessna when there's two, there's four fighter jets pull up on both sides of you trying to get you.
[01:28:47]  Yeah, you would soil your pants.
[01:28:49]  Oh, my God.
[01:28:52]  Yeah.
[01:28:53]  So, like for you, What was your personal, like, what was like the hairiest moment you've ever been in, in an airplane?
[01:29:00]  I've had two.
[01:29:03]  Not with the airlines.
[01:29:04]  Airlines are pretty mundane and very regimented.
[01:29:08]  It doesn't mean they couldn't have happened.
[01:29:09]  But back in the Navy days, I was, the first one was we were doing workups to go on deployment.
[01:29:16]  So six-month deployment, the six weeks before you go on deployment, you go out and you practice like you're going to play for real.
[01:29:22]  And you put bombs on the wings and fill the airplane up with gas and go do missions off the coast.
[01:29:27]  Right.
[01:29:28]  So it was really bad weather.
[01:29:29]  We were up in Brunswick, Maine, and a nor'easter was coming through, and we were still trying to get this mission done.
[01:29:35]  So we got out to the operating area.
[01:29:37]  It took us about 45 minutes.
[01:29:39]  The weather was so bad, we couldn't get anything done.
[01:29:41]  So we aborted the mission and came back.
[01:29:43]  So now the airplane is really pretty full of gas still.
[01:29:46]  I didn't, you know, the four hours I was supposed to be out there, I didn't burn all that gas off.
[01:29:50]  So I come back, and the weather has deteriorated from where we left.
[01:29:53]  And I'm thinking, you know, I just want to go home, right?
[01:29:55]  So we try and approach and we come down and And we had to wave off because we didn't get the runway.
[01:30:00]  And we came back a second time and the wind was whipping 90 degrees off the runway.
[01:30:04]  It was within the limits of the airplane, but it was really blowing hard.
[01:30:09]  And the rain, like just buckets of rain.
[01:30:12]  And the top, the surface of the runway, the wind was blowing so hard, there was like little bubbles in the water.
[01:30:19]  It was blowing that hard.
[01:30:20]  Whoa.
[01:30:21]  So we got the airplane down.
[01:30:22]  We touched down.
[01:30:23]  I brought the four engines on that airplane.
[01:30:25]  I brought all four engines into reverse.
[01:30:27]  And we were hydroplaning.
[01:30:29]  But I didn't know it.
[01:30:30]  You don't know you're hydroplaning until you go to touch the brakes.
[01:30:34]  And so I tried to bring it in reverse, and the airplane starts sliding sideways because the wind is blowing us that way.
[01:30:38]  And I'm like, holy moly, we're not sliding.
[01:30:42]  So I brought them out of reverse and I hit the brakes.
[01:30:44]  When I hit the brakes, nothing happened.
[01:30:46]  It was like a cheesy Saturday afternoon movie where they cut the brake lines, you know, and the guy was hitting the brakes, you know, and I'm pounding the brakes and nothing.
[01:30:55]  And so we're not slowing down.
[01:30:58]  And I tried bringing it reverse again.
[01:30:59]  We lost about another 50 feet and we're just about off the side of the runway.
[01:31:02]  So don't do that again.
[01:31:04]  My co-pilot, God bless him, we had 2,000 feet of runway left in front of us.
[01:31:11]  And he yells out to me, he goes, 2,000 feet remaining.
[01:31:14]  And I looked at my airspeed and I'm doing about 110 knots still.
[01:31:17]  And I touched down at about 125.
[01:31:20]  So, I've lost 15 knots in all the runway we've burned up.
[01:31:24]  And I'm like, oh, man.
[01:31:25]  And so I'm thinking, we're going off the end of the runway.
[01:31:27]  It was a pitch black night out.
[01:31:30]  We had bombs on the wings, full gas.
[01:31:33]  So I remember having that fleeting thought of, okay, when we come to a stop off the end of the runway, if I'm still alive, how am I going to get out of this airplane?
[01:31:41]  Like, I went through a real quick inventory of the three ways to get out of the airplane.
[01:31:46]  And then I just threw up an aero prayer.
[01:31:48]  I just said, God help stop this airplane.
[01:31:52]  And I think I even said it out loud.
[01:31:54]  And I hit the brakes one last time.
[01:31:57]  And at the far end of the runway, I guess it was dry enough that the brakes took.
[01:32:01]  Now, so the airplane is like a giant tricycle, right?
[01:32:04]  It's got a nose gear and two main mounts.
[01:32:06]  So we're sideways because of the wind.
[01:32:08]  So this tricycle is sideways.
[01:32:10]  And when I hit the brakes and they took, the airplane started to hop, you know?
[01:32:15]  And so it's like, bam, And we're coming to the end of the runway.
[01:32:19]  And I'm like, I'm going to go off the end of this runway.
[01:32:21]  So I grabbed the nose wheel, the little tillers off to my left, and there was a taxiway that went this way.
[01:32:26]  And I just grabbed it and pulled it for as much as I could to get a little bit of nose wheel action going that way.
[01:32:32]  And we stopped.
[01:32:34]  And the engines are turning like that, and the wind is blowing against it, and the airplane's shaking.
[01:32:39]  And I looked, and the nose of the airplane was off the end of the runway, but the front main tire was behind us a little bit.
[01:32:48]  That's where it sits.
[01:32:49]  It was actually still on the pavement.
[01:32:52]  We, it was a 10,000 foot runway and we used up 9,999 of it.
[01:32:56]  That's insane.
[01:32:58]  Yep.
[01:32:59]  So we stopped on the runway and now the guys behind in the back, they have no clue what's going on.
[01:33:06]  They're just along for the ride, right?
[01:33:07]  So there's four of us up in the cockpit.
[01:33:10]  So it was one of those moments where we all took our headsets off and put them in our laps because we're all just like, you know.
[01:33:16]  And eventually one of the guys in the back comes like, hey, flight, are we going to taxi off and get rid of these bombs?
[01:33:20]  And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, just give us a minute.
[01:33:24]  And then the tower called, hey, you guys okay?
[01:33:25]  Yep.
[01:33:26]  Yeah, we're okay.
[01:33:27]  We're just having a moment.
[01:33:28]  You know, just we'll be with you.
[01:33:29]  So we taxied off.
[01:33:30]  We got rid of the bombs.
[01:33:33]  I went to get out of my seat and my knees were knocking so bad I couldn't stand up.
[01:33:38]  And it's hard to describe that feeling.
[01:33:40]  I'm looking at my legs and they're doing like this inside my flight suit.
[01:33:44]  And I'm like, okay.
[01:33:45]  And that was the adrenal letdown.
[01:33:47]  So that was number one.
[01:33:50]  The other one was very similar.
[01:33:51]  I was flying students around one day in a King Air, twin engine airplane, and the rudder got stuck and the airplane started to kind of.
[01:33:59]  Go over at about 20 feet, and it's counterintuitive.
[01:34:02]  But if you pull the power back off the opposite engine, the airplane will right itself.
[01:34:07]  And I did.
[01:34:08]  I don't know why I did, but I did.
[01:34:10]  And the airplane righted itself.
[01:34:11]  We came around, I slammed on the brakes, and the same reaction.
[01:34:15]  My knees are just knocking so bad.
[01:34:17]  And the students had no idea what was going on.
[01:34:19]  They're totally clueless at that point.
[01:34:21]  And I'm like, oh, you know.
[01:34:22]  So after that second one, I went up to my ops chief.
[01:34:26]  This was a Monday.
[01:34:27]  And I told him what happened.
[01:34:29]  I said, don't put me on the schedule until next Monday.
[01:34:33]  I said, I need to go have a week and just reflect.
[01:34:36]  And he looked at me and said, okay, just let me know when you want to come back.
[01:34:39]  It didn't come off my leave or sick or anything.
[01:34:41]  I just had to have a mental health week.
[01:34:43]  And I came back the next Monday.
[01:34:44]  I said, I'm good to go.
[01:34:45]  That's good.
[01:34:46]  You know, you have the mental health.
[01:34:47]  Sometimes you just got to reflect on your life choices, you know?
[01:34:51]  Yeah.
[01:34:51]  Yeah, totally, man.
[01:34:53]  Yeah, it is.
[01:34:56]  It's funny.
[01:34:56]  I don't know if it's funny, but it's interesting how even the most devout atheists will find God on an airplane when there's turbulence or when something goes south.
[01:35:05]  I even saw this morning, I was watching just some random stuff on YouTube, and there was a, which I don't know if this is a good idea or not.
[01:35:13]  You could probably allude to this better than me, but the pilot got on the comms and he was like, everyone, priest, per, Please pray.
[01:35:20]  No, that's not a good thing.
[01:35:24]  And it was some airline over in India, or not India, somewhere over there in that part of the world.
[01:35:32]  And something happened with the engine where the plane was rattling like a closed drying machine for like an hour and a half.
[01:35:40]  And they had to land it.
[01:35:41]  Something was wrong with the engines.
[01:35:42]  And he was telling everyone to pray.
[01:35:44]  Yeah, that might, you got to know your culture and that might work.
[01:35:47]  Maybe.
[01:35:48]  And yeah, maybe in a different culture.
[01:35:49]  Back in the day when I was training students back in the early 90s, We had Saudi Arabian students that came over, and they're all Muslim.
[01:35:57]  And those guys, we'd get up in the airplane and we would give them emergencies on purpose as part of the training.
[01:36:02]  And we'd fail an engine, not fail it, but pull the power back on it.
[01:36:06]  And to a person, they'd start praying.
[01:36:08]  And so you had to work them through that.
[01:36:10]  And I'd say, you know, Muhammad, or whatever the guy's name was, I'd say, look, we're going to go up today.
[01:36:14]  I'm going to fail an engine on you.
[01:36:17]  I'd be more than happy to pray with you when we get back down on the ground.
[01:36:20]  Right, right.
[01:36:21]  But I will give you a down.
[01:36:22]  I will fail you if the first thing you do is start praying.
[01:36:25]  I need you to do your emergency procedures.
[01:36:28]  And it was about 50 50.
[01:36:29]  These guys had stopped.
[01:36:30]  They'd get in a panic and their first reflex was to pray.
[01:36:33]  They go, This is not a time to pray.
[01:36:35]  This is a time to do step one, step two, step three as you memorize them and fly the airplane.
[01:36:41]  And the guys, they would get over it.
[01:36:43]  But part of the training was to get them over their initial impulse, either to scream or to just have tunnel vision or to pray in their case.
[01:36:53]  And they did.
[01:36:53]  They'd eventually get through the training and they're good to go.
[01:36:57]  Yeah.
[01:36:57]  Yeah.
[01:36:58]  That's a weird thing.
[01:36:58]  There's a time for praying, and there's a time for praying.
[01:37:00]  There's definitely not a time when you're flying an airplane, it's not a time to pray.
[01:37:04]  No, it's a you can pray after you're in charge of flying the airplane at least.
[01:37:07]  Or if you got 2,000 feet remaining, you're still at 110 knots, throw up a little prayer.
[01:37:11]  That worked for me.
[01:37:12]  Oh, God.
[01:37:13]  Yeah.
[01:37:13]  In your own head, not on the comm speakers.
[01:37:16]  Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.
[01:37:18]  So here's my question if something is going south and you're piloting a plane with, you know, a couple hundred people, passengers on board, how do you know?
[01:37:28]  When to communicate shit and when not to communicate stuff?
[01:37:32]  Well, I try to put myself in the position of a passenger in the back of the airplane, right?
[01:37:36]  So you're trained from day one, like that head on the swivel thing.
[01:37:39]  You're also trained to aviate, navigate, communicate in that order.
[01:37:43]  Fly the airplane first.
[01:37:44]  That's your first priority.
[01:37:45]  Then get to where you're going, navigate.
[01:37:48]  That's your second priority.
[01:37:49]  The third one is communicate.
[01:37:51]  So you saw that flight out of Dulles with that 777 crew.
[01:37:54]  They finally got fed up trying to answer questions and he just said, I'm busy, right?
[01:37:58]  Leave me alone.
[01:37:59]  I'll get back to you when I can.
[01:38:01]  That's the least of my priorities.
[01:38:03]  So, same thing with the passengers.
[01:38:04]  You do want to let them in on what's going on.
[01:38:06]  And I think people appreciate honesty.
[01:38:09]  Now, there are varying degrees of honesty.
[01:38:12]  You can be totally blunt and have that shaky voice and go, I don't know what's going to happen.
[01:38:18]  You don't want to share that level of honesty.
[01:38:20]  What you do want to be is reassuring.
[01:38:22]  Most pilots are pretty good at it.
[01:38:24]  And just tell people what's going on.
[01:38:25]  Hey, folks, we've got the right engine.
[01:38:26]  We've had to shut it down.
[01:38:27]  Here's what happened.
[01:38:29]  The airplane flies just fine on one engine.
[01:38:31]  It does.
[01:38:31]  At all gross weights, we're going to come back to the airport we just took off from.
[01:38:35]  We're going to land.
[01:38:36]  It's going to take about 25 minutes.
[01:38:37]  I have a couple of checklists to get through.
[01:38:39]  Please follow the instructions of your flight attendants.
[01:38:42]  That's all you need to let them know.
[01:38:43]  And most people will be reassured.
[01:38:45]  They heard from the guy in charge and they feel reassured by that.
[01:38:49]  He cares about you and that he or she is in charge and they've got it under control.
[01:38:55]  That's very reassuring, especially if you're on the job.
[01:38:56]  Do you have to practice that?
[01:38:58]  No.
[01:38:59]  No.
[01:38:59]  It just kind of comes.
[01:39:01]  It comes with the job.
[01:39:02]  Right.
[01:39:02]  Because I imagine there's got to be certain folks, maybe from the Northeastern United States, who aren't that great at sugarcoating stuff.
[01:39:12]  Yeah.
[01:39:13]  I mean, there's all sorts.
[01:39:15]  We have all sorts of different personalities.
[01:39:16]  Yeah.
[01:39:17]  Yeah, I've run into them.
[01:39:19]  Some do it better than others.
[01:39:20]  So is turbulence ever dangerous?
[01:39:26]  Turbulence is annoying.
[01:39:27]  It can be dangerous, but we just released a course called Conquering Your Fear of Flying.
[01:39:34]  And in that course, we talk about overcoming your fear of turbulence because that's kind of like the number one thing.
[01:39:39]  People don't like when the airplane starts to bounce.
[01:39:42]  So there's light, moderate, and severe turbulence.
[01:39:44]  You're not allowed to be dispatched through severe turbulence.
[01:39:46]  If it's known, they can't fly you through it.
[01:39:48]  You have to go around it or don't go flying.
[01:39:52]  Moderate and light, yeah, all the time, right?
[01:39:54]  The airplane is not going to come apart.
[01:39:56]  It's not.
[01:39:57]  It's just completely over engineered for that.
[01:40:00]  Yeah.
[01:40:00]  If you think about turbulence like the current in a river or water currents, when it's nice and smooth, it's like you're on the lake.
[01:40:08]  There's just no currents.
[01:40:10]  But you start going down the river and the current picks up a little bit in speed.
[01:40:13]  So you start getting some light turbulence and it's kind of annoying, but it's no dangerous to you.
[01:40:18]  The moderate turbulence are like the white water rafting.
[01:40:21]  You know, you're kind of holding on to the armrest and you're holding on to your drink and you're going through the white water.
[01:40:25]  You could capsize.
[01:40:27]  You could in a boat, right?
[01:40:29]  In the water, you drown in the water, but you're in an airplane.
[01:40:32]  It's not going to capsize.
[01:40:33]  It's not going to turn over.
[01:40:34]  It's going to bounce.
[01:40:35]  It's going to make you feel uncomfortable, but the wings aren't going to come off the airplane.
[01:40:39]  It's, again, they're not nearly as dense as the water is.
[01:40:42]  It's just air currents.
[01:40:44]  But like anything else, when there's converging currents that come in together, like the jet stream is going this way and something else is going that way, it's going to cause bumps.
[01:40:51]  I try to avoid it just for the comfort level for the passengers, but there's no danger to the airplane at all.
[01:40:57]  No danger.
[01:40:57]  It's not dangerous at all.
[01:40:58]  It's just annoying in the back.
[01:41:00]  And it makes you nervous.
[01:41:02]  That's reassuring.
[01:41:02]  Right.
[01:41:03]  And the other thing is.
[01:41:04]  What the hell is this?
[01:41:06]  He's going to show me all the.
[01:41:07]  Aloha air.
[01:41:08]  He said that planes aren't going to come apart.
[01:41:09]  And this image popped up in my brain.
[01:41:14]  Yes.
[01:41:14]  Yeah.
[01:41:14]  No, Aloha.
[01:41:15]  I don't remember this.
[01:41:16]  Yeah.
[01:41:17]  That was a corrosion issue that they had with those airplanes and that whole.
[01:41:20]  Because of the pressurization.
[01:41:22]  What is that?
[01:41:23]  Those are all the seats.
[01:41:24]  Is that like three people?
[01:41:26]  Is that plane on the ground?
[01:41:27]  No, they were airborne.
[01:41:29]  How did they get that photo?
[01:41:30]  I don't know.
[01:41:31]  It's probably Photoshop.
[01:41:31]  That's got to be AI.
[01:41:33]  That's on the ground.
[01:41:34]  The other one was in the sky that you were just showing, Steve.
[01:41:37]  Yeah, that's probably Photoshop.
[01:41:39]  Yeah, that one.
[01:41:40]  Yeah, that's the ground photo.
[01:41:41]  See the guy standing?
[01:41:43]  Yeah.
[01:41:43]  Somebody put it in the air.
[01:41:44]  They put it in the air.
[01:41:44]  I see.
[01:41:45]  So, what was the story with this?
[01:41:47]  So, it was a corrosion issue, and they had a.
[01:41:51]  Basically, the airplane is pressurized from the inside.
[01:41:55]  And if something starts to give way, it'll rip.
[01:41:59]  And it ripped the whole top of that Aloha jet off.
[01:42:02]  Whoa.
[01:42:02]  That's a 737.
[01:42:03]  But look, All that damage and the airplane still flew.
[01:42:07]  Did everyone survive?
[01:42:09]  I think three people died.
[01:42:10]  I think one row of passengers was like sucked out because they weren't wearing their seat belts.
[01:42:14]  Well, that's why I tell people keep your seat belt fastened.
[01:42:18]  Yeah, that's right.
[01:42:19]  That's the worst.
[01:42:19]  I never buckle my seat belt.
[01:42:20]  That's the worst case example of that.
[01:42:23]  But, but okay, I'm gonna convert you here.
[01:42:27]  I always go like this when they're walking by so they can't see if I'm wearing my seat belt or not.
[01:42:31]  Why do you do that?
[01:42:32]  Why do you do that?
[01:42:33]  Because look above you, 12 inches, 18 inches above you is a hard surface, right?
[01:42:38]  So You're probably not going to get sucked out of the airplane like that.
[01:42:40]  That's a one in a billion shot.
[01:42:43]  What's going to happen is you're going to be in some turbulence that pops up that fast, and you're going to come out of that seat, hit that overhead, break your neck, and that's it.
[01:42:51]  And you know how much liability the airline is under?
[01:42:56]  Zero.
[01:42:56]  Zero, because that seatbelt sign was on.
[01:42:58]  And I probably came on and told you to fasten your seatbelt.
[01:43:02]  And if you unbuckled it, that's on you.
[01:43:04]  I'm converted.
[01:43:05]  Yep.
[01:43:06]  So let me ask you this Where is the best, safest seat on the airplane for somebody?
[01:43:12]  Your couch at home, there isn't one.
[01:43:14]  Really?
[01:43:16]  I mean, I'm sure depending on how the plane crashes, no two plane crashes are the same.
[01:43:23]  So it's hard to run the numbers on that.
[01:43:25]  Some people say the back of the airplane because the front of the airplane takes the impact.
[01:43:29]  Right.
[01:43:29]  Some people say, what, 11A because that guy in Air India walked away.
[01:43:33]  He was in 11A.
[01:43:34]  In India?
[01:43:35]  Yeah.
[01:43:36]  And he just.
[01:43:37]  Next to the exit.
[01:43:38]  So he was right in the leading edge of the wing, right where the back of that damage is right there.
[01:43:43]  Yep.
[01:43:44]  There's a thing called the wing spar.
[01:43:45]  And the wing spar is the heaviest, hardest part of the airplane.
[01:43:47]  It's like a big old I beam.
[01:43:49]  That goes from one wing to the other.
[01:43:51]  Right.
[01:43:51]  And he was right behind that.
[01:43:53]  So they think that that wing spar took most of the impact that he would have taken.
[01:43:58]  And then he's a pretty big, strong guy.

=== Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle (08:19) ===

[01:44:00]  Yeah.
[01:44:00]  He just got lucky.
[01:44:03]  Good Lord.
[01:44:04]  He just did.
[01:44:05]  You know, the fireball and everything else.
[01:44:07]  How did he walk out of all that?
[01:44:08]  I have to use the restroom real quick.
[01:44:10]  Yeah.
[01:44:10]  We'll take a quick five minute break.
[01:44:11]  Have you ever heard of the summer of the shark?
[01:44:15]  No.
[01:44:16]  No.
[01:44:16]  The theory is that during the summer months, there's usually.
[01:44:22]  There was one, I think there was one specific summer where there was like more shark attacks ever reported in history.
[01:44:27]  And that was like the summer that there was nothing happening in the news.
[01:44:30]  And all the news channels, they needed to make stories.
[01:44:33]  So they were just highlighting all the shark attacks that were happening.
[01:44:35]  And they thought, oh my God, the sharks are on a rampage right now, just eating people.
[01:44:39]  What's going on?
[01:44:40]  But that's all it was.
[01:44:41]  Like they were just focusing more on the sharks.
[01:44:43]  And I think that's what happens with airplanes, right?
[01:44:44]  It's like when there's an airplane crash, the news just grabs onto it and makes it a huge spectacle.
[01:44:49]  Absolutely.
[01:44:50]  And so it seems like.
[01:44:52]  There's a lot of plane crashes.
[01:44:53]  And it's been so safe.
[01:44:55]  There's been so little of that the last 15 years that it doesn't make the news.
[01:44:59]  But this past year, it started out with a DCA crash up in Washington and then Air India was after that and this UPS one a couple of months ago.
[01:45:06]  So there's been some major crashes.
[01:45:08]  It's been a long time since then.
[01:45:09]  And channels like mine, where I cover incidents and accidents three or four times a week, we're not making them up.
[01:45:15]  They're just, that stuff happens out there.
[01:45:18]  You just don't hear about it.
[01:45:19]  And now we're reporting on it.
[01:45:21]  So now it seems like, oh my word, you know.
[01:45:24]  No, it's not any more frequent than it was in the past.
[01:45:26]  It's just getting reported more than it was.
[01:45:28]  Yeah.
[01:45:29]  And when you see those graphics of all of the planes that are in the air in the continental United States at one time, it's insane.
[01:45:38]  You can't even see the actual map because it's covered in planes everywhere.
[01:45:45]  Every day, 104,000 takeoffs and landings worldwide.
[01:45:49]  Every day.
[01:45:50]  Try to find an image of that because I think people should see that.
[01:45:52]  Like how many planes are actually in the air?
[01:45:55]  Yeah, the one on the top right.
[01:45:56]  Yeah.
[01:45:58]  Oh my God.
[01:45:59]  How crazy is that?
[01:46:01]  Now, if an airplane was as big as Idaho, it would look like that.
[01:46:05]  Right, right, right.
[01:46:06]  That's true.
[01:46:08]  But that's a lot.
[01:46:10]  Yeah.
[01:46:12]  Is it true you can't fly over the North Pole or over Antarctica?
[01:46:17]  You can.
[01:46:18]  It's just, I've flown close to the North Pole.
[01:46:21]  It depends on what kind of nav equipment you get.
[01:46:23]  It gets a little squirrely as everything is south, you know?
[01:46:28]  It gets a little squirrely, but there are so many redundant systems now, especially with GPS, that you're talking to something out in outer space instead of something on the ground or something that's internal that doesn't know where to go when you get to true north or the North Pole.
[01:46:42]  But yeah.
[01:46:43]  What is that anomaly we were looking at the other day, Steve?
[01:46:46]  There's this anomaly in the South Atlantic anomaly.
[01:46:49]  Have you heard of this?
[01:46:53]  There's like this weird hole in the atmosphere where there's like a ton of radiation coming through the earth, and they call it the South Atlantic anomaly, I believe.
[01:47:01]  The South Atlantic anomaly is a large expanding weak spot in the Earth's magnetic field over South America and the South Atlantic, allowing charged solar particles to drip closer to the surface.
[01:47:14]  So, that must not be a big deal.
[01:47:16]  Well, I think it is.
[01:47:19]  There's times where solar activity is higher than other times.
[01:47:22]  And you'll get.
[01:47:23]  Hey, look at that.
[01:47:23]  That's crazy.
[01:47:24]  Yeah, we just did a video talking about a bit flip and how this airplane, I think it was a JetBlue airplane coming from Cancun, just nosed over.
[01:47:34]  And that's what started.
[01:47:36]  They grounded all the Airbuses, not all of them, half of them, about 6,000 airplanes to update the software because of this bit flip possibility.
[01:47:46]  And that they said happened because of a solar flare.
[01:47:49]  So, in spots like that, is it the incident of solar flares higher?
[01:47:54]  Yeah.
[01:47:55]  Could it cause a bit flip?
[01:47:57]  It could.
[01:47:57]  So, again, you don't want to risk that sort of thing.
[01:47:59]  Right.
[01:48:01]  But it's all kind of very rare anyway to see a bit flip.
[01:48:04]  Yeah.
[01:48:05]  Once in a lifetime.
[01:48:06]  Go back to that last graphic, Steve, that you had with all the airplanes in the sky at once.
[01:48:13]  So, what's up with those circles?
[01:48:15]  Why are there no planes in those circles?
[01:48:16]  It's called the Himalayas.
[01:48:19]  So, nobody flies over the Himalayas.
[01:48:20]  Oh, those are mountainous areas.
[01:48:23]  Correct.
[01:48:24]  Okay.
[01:48:24]  That makes sense.
[01:48:25]  It's dangerous.
[01:48:27]  Yeah.
[01:48:27]  You can't really, there's no, if, so the Himalayas are 35,000 feet.
[01:48:33]  If you got an airplane that's capable of flying over it, you've only got 2,000 foot.
[01:48:37]  Clearance.
[01:48:37]  And then, if something goes wrong and you lose an engine and you have to descend, you got no place to go.
[01:48:42]  Right.
[01:48:42]  You're in a bowl and you can't get out of it.
[01:48:44]  So, those circles are bowls where nobody can get out of it.
[01:48:49]  So, they don't frequently dispatch an airplane through those places.
[01:48:53]  You go around them.
[01:48:54]  That makes a lot of sense.
[01:48:55]  Yeah.
[01:48:55]  Mountains.
[01:48:57]  I would be remiss if I had you on the podcast or if I had an airplane pilot podcast and I didn't ask him about the Bermuda Triangle.
[01:49:05]  What's going on there?
[01:49:06]  I was into that when I was a kid.
[01:49:07]  I read like everything about the Bermuda Triangle back then.
[01:49:10]  It's fascinating.
[01:49:10]  So, the Bermuda Triangle, for people that aren't aware, is the triangle if you connect the dots between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, right?
[01:49:19]  Yeah, something like that.
[01:49:20]  And allegedly, there's been more planes disappearing in that area than ever.
[01:49:25]  Yeah, ships.
[01:49:26]  You know, there were some ghost ships where the ship was just floating and everybody was gone.
[01:49:30]  There was even a story where there was a plane that allegedly time traveled or something through the Bermuda Triangle.
[01:49:36]  Have you heard that one?
[01:49:37]  Yeah, I hadn't heard that one, but I've Tell us the story with that one, the time traveling airplane.
[01:49:40]  It was a flight of four or five World War II airplanes and they all disappeared.
[01:49:44]  And, you know, it was weird stuff.
[01:49:46]  I, you know, I was into that when I was a kid.
[01:49:49]  I haven't looked at it much.
[01:49:51]  All I know is that that's an extremely dense area for air traffic.
[01:49:55]  Is it?
[01:49:55]  Yeah.
[01:49:55]  So the odds of something happening in that area are going to go through the roof.
[01:49:58]  And then when you start to plant those seeds of, yeah, but, you know, and you name it something, the Bermuda Triangle, it just becomes fascinating.
[01:50:05]  And all of a sudden you're maybe seeing or reading something into it that's not really there.
[01:50:10]  You've never seen anything weird with your instruments or anything flying through there?
[01:50:13]  Nope.
[01:50:13]  Never.
[01:50:14]  Nope.
[01:50:14]  There's no weird magnetic force there.
[01:50:17]  And I've flown in and out of Miami bunches of times right through the Bermuda Triangle and nothing.
[01:50:23]  Really?
[01:50:23]  Yeah.
[01:50:24]  But, you know.
[01:50:25]  Wow.
[01:50:26]  Makes for great books and stories and videos.
[01:50:28]  Yeah.
[01:50:29]  Did you find the time traveling thing, Steve?
[01:50:32]  The story of the plane?
[01:50:35]  Oh, what is this?
[01:50:35]  The Ramina Triangle time travel airplane myth is fueled by real events, most notably the pilot Bruce Gurnan's 1970 claim of flying through a time bending vortex, reducing a 90 minute flight to 47 minutes.
[01:50:49]  Oh, that's not much.
[01:50:50]  The story, the stories of Flight 19's 1945 disappearance, where compasses failed.
[01:50:59]  Leading to loss, huh?
[01:51:02]  And then that's quite 19 right there.
[01:51:09]  Oh, okay.
[01:51:11]  There was an old episode of the Twilight Zone back in the day where they were coming back from Europe to Idlewild Airport back in the day.
[01:51:18]  It's what JFK was called before it was JFK.
[01:51:21]  And they go through some time warp and they're looking for the airport, but all it is is prehistoric land and there's dinosaurs on the ground.
[01:51:29]  And they're like, What happened?
[01:51:31]  They went through some time warp.
[01:51:33]  It's true because it was on an episode of The Twilight Zone.
[01:51:40]  Okay, yeah, this is a little good diagram of the Bermuda Triangle.
[01:51:43]  Yeah.
[01:51:44]  See, it's like Niagara Falls, it sucks people in like that and then fills itself in.
[01:51:48]  Right, I hate it when that happens.
[01:51:51]  Yeah.
[01:51:52]  Damn it.
[01:51:54]  You're killing all my dreams here.
[01:51:56]  You're killing all my.
[01:51:57]  No, I told you, I was into that stuff.
[01:51:59]  I mean, there's all sorts of great stories about the Bermuda Triangle.
[01:52:03]  Yeah.
[01:52:04]  And, you know, maybe I'll do a video on it sometime.
[01:52:09]  So, for you, what has been like the most, like, out of all the stuff that you've produced on your channel, like all the content that you've made, like, was there anything that surprised you?

=== NASA Physicist Describes Mars (12:23) ===

[01:52:20]  Because obviously, you're kind of like, when you were a pilot your whole career, you're kind of like living in a bubble, right?
[01:52:25]  You're not like really like dealing with the public's perception of this stuff and dealing with like the specific anxieties or interests of the public.
[01:52:33]  But now that you're kind of like in the public light doing all this stuff, you have much more of a connection to like, People's interests and what people are afraid of.
[01:52:41]  Like, what's kind of shocked you or surprised you the most about that?
[01:52:46]  Sure, that's a great question because you get in, there's the having a social media influencer position that's different than being a pilot from day to day.
[01:52:56]  But you don't realize how interested people are in what you do as a pilot.
[01:53:02]  I always told my co pilots, I said, look, we've got the greatest job on the planet.
[01:53:04]  If you're going to trade hours for dollars, this is a great job.
[01:53:08]  And it's one of the few jobs on the planet that still has.
[01:53:11]  A fair amount of respect associated with it.
[01:53:12]  Kids wave to you from the airport.
[01:53:14]  People think you're neat.
[01:53:15]  They want to know what you do for a living.
[01:53:16]  When you go to a cocktail party, you know, that people will chat it up with you.
[01:53:20]  Oh, tell me about flying an airplane, right?
[01:53:22]  So it's, it's, it, people respect that, that position.
[01:53:25]  So that, that you have to, you have to respect it as well.
[01:53:28]  In addition to that, now having a channel where we're talking about incidents, accidents, or stuff related to aviation, there's a, you take on a journalistic responsibility, which is something that I would have never associated with me years ago.
[01:53:43]  I didn't have any journalistic responsibility of anything.
[01:53:46]  But now we have a voice in the space, and people tune in because they want to know what Captain Steve thinks about something.
[01:53:53]  And that really solidified with the Air India crash, because we were the first ones to break the picture of the rat.
[01:54:01]  So the rat is the RAM air turbine that deploys if you lose both engines on a commercial jet.
[01:54:08]  And we were, everybody was in the first few days, they were talking about the different theories of what they thought could have brought the airplane down.
[01:54:15]  And you could hear.
[01:54:17]  In the audio, you could hear the rat deployed because the rat sounds like an Evan Rude engine, a little real high pitched, you know, Evan Rude screaming.
[01:54:25]  Yeah.
[01:54:26]  For its life.
[01:54:26]  Because it is, it's got a little prop on it and it provides hydraulic and electrical power to an airplane that's lost both engines.
[01:54:32]  But we were able to see it in the picture.
[01:54:35]  So we've got big monitors like you do here and we blew it up.
[01:54:38]  And I said, Oh my word, you see that right there?
[01:54:40]  That's the rat.
[01:54:41]  So we went public with that and all of the major news agencies around the planet started showing that picture that we put up first.
[01:54:51]  So that was kind of a big heavyweight moment.
[01:54:52]  I was like, Wow, we broke the news on this.
[01:54:55]  Yeah.
[01:54:56]  And then all of a sudden you become kind of the voice.
[01:54:59]  Of there's a responsibility that comes with that, you have to be real careful, yeah.
[01:55:03]  Um, that you don't jump the gun on stuff and you don't try to sensationalize something.
[01:55:08]  You know, I always want to have two or three backup sources for what I'm saying.
[01:55:11]  Um, and uh, so there's kind of a weight that comes with that.
[01:55:15]  It's it's nice, we enjoy it, but at the same time, we want to make sure we do things slowly and deliberately so we don't get out ahead of our skis, as they say, yeah.
[01:55:23]  You know, so that's the the you know, being an influencer part is you know, you'll get called by.
[01:55:29]  You know, I said Piers Morgan earlier.
[01:55:32]  One of the things that my son and I, when he's got the film studio up there in Raleigh.
[01:55:37]  And so, as he reminds me, I'm one of his clients.
[01:55:39]  And so I said, So if the Captain Steve thing ever arrives someday, whatever that means, I said, What's your measure of arriving?
[01:55:49]  He told me what his was.
[01:55:50]  And I said, Okay, here's mine.
[01:55:52]  Megan Kelly calls.
[01:55:54]  I said, If Megan Kelly calls, I'm going to.
[01:55:56]  There's the picture right there.
[01:55:58]  Oh, wow.
[01:55:59]  So that little gray thing right there that looks like a.
[01:56:02]  Like almost like an anomaly on the screen.
[01:56:04]  That's the rat.
[01:56:05]  The rat has deployed.
[01:56:07]  So they're at about 300 feet right now in a descent.
[01:56:10]  Yeah.
[01:56:10]  The rat has deployed to provide electrical and hydraulic issues so that they can still fly the airplane.
[01:56:18]  Every major news agency went with that picture of the rat deployed.
[01:56:22]  So, but back to Megan Kelly.
[01:56:25]  So I said, if Megan Kelly ever calls, I'm dropping whatever I'm doing and getting on her show.
[01:56:29]  And she called.
[01:56:30]  I was on a cruise.
[01:56:31]  And my son goes, no kidding.
[01:56:33]  She wants you on in 45 minutes.
[01:56:34]  And I said, okay, I'll make it happen.
[01:56:35]  And I did an interview with her.
[01:56:37]  She was going to have me back on, almost like your reaction to my 9 11 story.
[01:56:41]  Yeah.
[01:56:42]  I was on her program and she was asking me and a couple other people questions.
[01:56:47]  And somebody slid a piece of paper in front of her and she looks down like that.
[01:56:50]  She looks back up and she stops.
[01:56:52]  She goes, Steve, she goes, were you supposed to be one of the pilots on 9 11?
[01:56:56]  So I told her a real brief version of the story.
[01:56:58]  She's like, oh my word.
[01:57:00]  She said, all right.
[01:57:01]  And you could see her wheels turning.
[01:57:03]  And so a few weeks later, they called and said, you know, Megan wants to have you on 30 minutes on September 11th to tell your story.
[01:57:10]  So I said, yeah, absolutely.
[01:57:11]  We'll do that.
[01:57:12]  On September 10th, Charlie Kirk got shot.
[01:57:17]  So that, you know, I didn't want to come on the show after that.
[01:57:22]  Yeah.
[01:57:23]  You know, everybody was talking about that for weeks.
[01:57:25]  They're still talking about it.
[01:57:26]  And she was devastated by that.
[01:57:28]  He was a friend of hers.
[01:57:30]  So they canceled, rightly so.
[01:57:33]  And maybe next year I'll be back on to tell my story on her show.
[01:57:35]  But what did she originally want you to come on for?
[01:57:39]  To talk about, was it a specific show?
[01:57:40]  September 11th.
[01:57:41]  Tell me September 11th.
[01:57:42]  That was the original reason.
[01:57:43]  Yeah.
[01:57:43]  Because originally I was on to talk about Air India.
[01:57:46]  So we were talking about this stuff on her thing.
[01:57:48]  And then somebody slid that piece of paper in front of her and she's like, oh, really?
[01:57:52]  You know, because it really does grab you, the whole September 11th thing.
[01:57:56]  And yeah.
[01:57:57]  But so, yeah.
[01:57:59]  So there's, you have a voice and people trust your voice.
[01:58:05]  And that's a very rare commodity.
[01:58:07]  And you have to really protect that as though it's something very precious.
[01:58:12]  And it is.
[01:58:13]  Don't abuse that.
[01:58:14]  Take care of it and make sure because you won't have a voice if you abuse it at some point down the road.
[01:58:19]  You'll lose it rather quickly.
[01:58:21]  Right.
[01:58:22]  Yeah.
[01:58:22]  So, this rat thing, it's a propeller that provides power to the plane when it's lost all power?
[01:58:28]  It's a last resort.
[01:58:29]  So, if both engines fail or you have a complete hydraulic failure or a complete electrical failure on a 787, the rat will automatically deploy.
[01:58:39]  So, that was one of the things that told us that both engines had failed.
[01:58:43]  You can't tell by looking at it that both engines have failed, except for the fact that the rat has deployed on its own.
[01:58:49]  So, you can hear the rat on the audio.
[01:58:51]  It makes that high pitched squeal.
[01:58:53]  You can see it in the picture.
[01:58:54]  The guy that survived the crash said he heard a A loud bang and the lights flickered.
[01:59:00]  Now, I don't put much credibility in an eyewitness, especially a guy that just survived a plane crash.
[01:59:05]  It could have been anything that caused that, and his brain could be playing tricks on him.
[01:59:09]  But when that rat deploys, it deploys wham!
[01:59:12]  It hits real hard.
[01:59:14]  It comes out instantaneously and begins to spool up and it takes over electrical power in the airplane.
[01:59:19]  So the lights would flicker.
[01:59:21]  So what he said was right in line with the rat deploying.
[01:59:25]  And then the captain, I think, or one of the pilots had made a mayday call.
[01:59:28]  And so with all four of those things put together, We went public and said we think it's a dual engine failure, and it ended up being a dual engine failure, right?
[01:59:37]  Right, good lord, yeah, that's that's wild.
[01:59:40]  I had no idea that was a real thing, yep.
[01:59:42]  Thankfully, right?
[01:59:45]  Have you heard of the um, have you heard of the uh, the Japan Airlines incident where the guy allegedly saw this crazy object in the sky?
[01:59:57]  Remember, we had a NASA physicist on here a couple months back, probably about six months ago, a former.
[02:00:04]  Uh, employee of NASA as a he was employed as a physicist and now he's a professor and he was he was explaining to us this crazy story about this.
[02:00:15]  Uh, I think it was a Japanese airline that was flying over Alaska and uh, he said that he that this thing pulled up next to him that was the size, it was like a thousand times bigger than his airplane and he landed and he had to go through all he told, gave the testimony or whatever, And he had to go through all these psychological evaluations and all this stuff.
[02:00:41]  And one of the air traffic controllers or a radar technician or someone on the ground corroborated a story and saying, Yeah, there was something crazy on the radar.
[02:00:53]  And I think it's just like a legend now.
[02:00:55]  Do you remember this, Steve?
[02:00:57]  The story of this?
[02:00:59]  Oh, this was in, oh, wow, was that long ago?
[02:01:03]  I thought it was more recent than that.
[02:01:07]  Oh, yeah.
[02:01:08]  Okay.
[02:01:08]  So it was a cargo airliner.
[02:01:10]  Right, right, right.
[02:01:11]  It was a Boeing.
[02:01:12]  Japanese Boeing 747 2000F cargo aircraft flying from Paris to Tokyo was involved in an extensive UAP sighting in its leg over Alaska.
[02:01:24]  So go to the images of it.
[02:01:25]  There's like, there's crazy illustrations of what he explained he saw.
[02:01:31]  Just type in, just go to images from where you were.
[02:01:35]  Well, okay.
[02:01:39]  Yeah, images.
[02:01:40]  There you go.
[02:01:41]  That's how big he says he thought it was.
[02:01:44]  This thing that pulled up next to him.
[02:01:47]  Crazy.
[02:01:47]  So there's books written about it.
[02:01:50]  And apparently this guy was like totally sane.
[02:01:53]  And there was someone who corroborated it on the ground.
[02:01:57]  Yeah.
[02:01:58]  Over Alaska.
[02:01:59]  Yeah.
[02:01:59]  No, they didn't mess with the plane at all.
[02:02:00]  The plane was fine.
[02:02:02]  Right.
[02:02:02]  I think it just like pulled up next to him and then like disappeared.
[02:02:05]  So they come from thousands of light years away just to.
[02:02:08]  Harass a 747 to go home or disappear again.
[02:02:11]  Right, right, right.
[02:02:12]  You know, that makes a lot of sense.
[02:02:13]  Some people think that they're already here, that they live under the water.
[02:02:17]  You know, they could.
[02:02:18]  There's lots of water that's.
[02:02:19]  We've explored more of Mars than we've explored of our own oceans.
[02:02:22]  Yeah, which is pretty wild.
[02:02:23]  Yeah, they could, but why?
[02:02:25]  I just always go back to the question why?
[02:02:27]  Why would you come all the way here just to hide?
[02:02:29]  Well, the theory is that most people have the most rational theories that I've heard is that it's basically similar civilization to us that just lives under the oceans.
[02:02:41]  And they needed an ocean and we were the next one available or something.
[02:02:44]  Yeah, well, the way the physicist described it, which is kind of fascinating, this NASA guy, the way he described it was if you're us and we wanted to inhabit.
[02:02:55]  Other planets, we would look for planets with liquid water because the environment on the surface of other planets, the atmospheres are way all over the place with the pressure, the temperature, radiation, comets, solar flares, all this stuff.
[02:03:13]  It would be too unmanageable.
[02:03:15]  So you would find a planet that had liquid water on it because liquid water can only exist between 32 degrees Fahrenheit and 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
[02:03:24]  As well, If you're used to a certain pressure, you could just dial in your depth and figure out that pressure, right?
[02:03:31]  Like the surface atmosphere of Venus is like 800 degrees Fahrenheit, and the pressure is like being seven miles deep in our oceans.
[02:03:37]  So, if you could figure out how to get from hot from ocean to ocean, you could figure out the temperature, the pressure, and all that stuff.
[02:03:44]  That was his hypothesis, which was pretty compelling.
[02:03:47]  Yeah, which is great.
[02:03:48]  If you're intelligent enough to figure out light speed travel or more than light speed travel in something that size, then you probably could figure out the problems with where you were.
[02:03:59]  To stay there, yeah, rather than come here and hide in the ocean, but right, I'm I just I love talking about it, but it's yeah, it's not, it's you know, I think it was a Bill Nye, you know, Elon Musk is big on going to Mars, and yeah, yeah, and Bill Nye, he just finally said, Look, I love talking about this, it's really what we're never going to live on Mars, right?
[02:04:21]  Okay, just right, I'm sorry, there's no universe where that is reality, it's 200 and whatever degrees below zero Fahrenheit, there's no atmosphere, there's no water, there's no.
[02:04:32]  It's not going to happen.
[02:04:32]  You can't take enough resources there to somehow rehabilitate the planet at that temperature.
[02:04:38]  You can't.
[02:04:38]  Right, right.
[02:04:39]  But it's great to talk about.
[02:04:40]  It's fun.
[02:04:40]  I'd love to take a manned mission to Mars someday.

=== Entering the Apollo Program (05:24) ===

[02:04:43]  I hope that happens in my lifetime.
[02:04:45]  That would be crazy.
[02:04:45]  It would be.
[02:04:46]  It was like, why would you want to, though?
[02:04:48]  Because I think robots can do a better job, though.
[02:04:51]  Yeah, but it's not the same.
[02:04:52]  See, you're not old enough.
[02:04:54]  I lived through the last gee whiz in our culture, which was we landed on the moon.
[02:04:59]  Right.
[02:04:59]  And I watched that live on TV as a nine year old kid.
[02:05:01]  And I was like, I was just in amazement at that.
[02:05:05]  And everybody on the planet was like in amazement that that was going on at the time.
[02:05:10]  And it was the last kind of gee whiz moment we've had as a culture.
[02:05:15]  Everything else is kind of.
[02:05:16]  And the biggest, like the biggest achievement of humanity.
[02:05:19]  Yes.
[02:05:20]  And when you think about the monumental size of that achievement with the computer power that they had back then, that makes it even.
[02:05:27]  One one millionth the computing power of this.
[02:05:30]  Yes.
[02:05:31]  Yes.
[02:05:32]  In the entire Apollo program.
[02:05:33]  Yep.
[02:05:34]  Yep.
[02:05:35]  I ran into an Apollo astronaut.
[02:05:37]  Years ago, this is a silly Steve story because I back into everything in my life and I most of the time don't know where I am.
[02:05:43]  And I was speaking at an event.
[02:05:46]  They wanted my 9 11 story.
[02:05:49]  And so I was the keynote speaker, and it was a men's retreat in Vail, Colorado.
[02:05:52]  And there's like 80 guys there that had all, every year they come and they have a guest speaker.
[02:05:57]  So after the talk, I'm done talking to three or four guys and we're talking about flying airplanes.
[02:06:02]  And one of the guys has a name tag on, it's an older looking gentleman, and it says Charlie Duke on it.
[02:06:10]  Oh, he was just here.
[02:06:11]  Okay, so Charlie Duke.
[02:06:12]  I'm standing next to Charlie Duke.
[02:06:13]  I have no idea who I'm standing next to.
[02:06:16]  So, one of the other people in the crowd looks at me and says, Well, you must have flown fighter jets in the Navy.
[02:06:21]  And I said, Well, no.
[02:06:22]  I said, I flew an airplane called a P 3.
[02:06:24]  I'm looking at his name, thinking that sounds like an all American name.
[02:06:27]  Yeah.
[02:06:27]  Charlie doesn't know this story yet.
[02:06:29]  It sounds like an all American name.
[02:06:31]  I said, Well, that guy probably did.
[02:06:33]  And just thinking he had a great sounding name.
[02:06:35]  And 1001, 1002, somebody says, Or an astronaut, which goes right over my head.
[02:06:42]  Right.
[02:06:42]  And we, so we're, we're, we're still yucking it up.
[02:06:45]  So I go back to my room about a half an hour later.
[02:06:47]  I'm sitting there, thinking that's a strange thing to say, or an astronaut.
[02:06:50]  I've got a, I got to Google this.
[02:06:52]  Charlie Duke.
[02:06:53]  Tenth man to walk on the moon.
[02:06:54]  Right.
[02:06:55]  Everything I see Charlie Duke and I'm like, oh my God, I'm standing next to Charlie Duke.
[02:06:58]  What an idiot.
[02:07:00]  So I got to save face, right?
[02:07:02]  So next morning I come down for breakfast and I got to pretend like, you know, hey, buddy.
[02:07:07]  So he and I are sitting at the same table and I had been stalking him all night.
[02:07:12]  And I said, hey, Charlie, I said, I don't want to ask anything about your moon stuff.
[02:07:16]  I said, you probably get inundated with that.
[02:07:17]  I said, but you graduated from the Naval Academy and you got, you retired as a, a general in the Air Force.
[02:07:27]  How did that happen?
[02:07:28]  Was it because of the space program?
[02:07:30]  And he explained, he said, back in the late 50s, he said the Air Force Academy wasn't in place yet.
[02:07:35]  So to get officers for the Air Force, they would take them from the Naval Academy and from West Point.
[02:07:40]  They would ask a certain amount to volunteer.
[02:07:42]  And if they didn't, they'd get voluntold.
[02:07:44]  And he said, I just thought it would be a good transition.
[02:07:46]  So I volunteered.
[02:07:46]  He said, the Mercury program was already going.
[02:07:49]  They sent me out to Monterey for advanced master's degree.
[02:07:52]  And I just had the right background.
[02:07:54]  And I ended up in the Apollo program because of that.
[02:07:57]  Yeah.
[02:07:57]  So he explained that transition to me, which I thought was, you know, pretty neat.
[02:08:01]  But at the whole time, I'm thinking he has no idea that 24 hours ago I didn't know who he was.
[02:08:06]  Yeah.
[02:08:07]  It's so shameful.
[02:08:07]  The way I think about the Apollo program is very similar to the Concorde, right?
[02:08:12]  Like we were just in a full sprint to beat Russia.
[02:08:16]  Correct.
[02:08:17]  And put every last resource we had into the game.
[02:08:20]  We didn't care about the risk.
[02:08:23]  You know, obviously there was insane risk to like, To human life, doing that for the first time ever.
[02:08:30]  And we kind of like threw that all to the wind just for the spectacle of it, just to prove it, you know?
[02:08:37]  But there's something to be said for that.
[02:08:38]  I mean, there's something that is courageous about winning the frontier or going, stretching the bounds of possibility.
[02:08:48]  And there's a certain amount of human courage that goes into that.
[02:08:50]  I think we're so afraid now and almost even paralyzed by, well, it won't be safe.
[02:08:55]  And, you know, what if we get hurt?
[02:08:56]  And was that.
[02:08:57]  Then we lose that pioneer spirit that said, Hey, I'm going to hang it all out there.
[02:09:03]  And if something happens, it happens, but it's on me.
[02:09:05]  I'm taking the risk.
[02:09:06]  Let's go.
[02:09:07]  Right.
[02:09:07]  You know?
[02:09:08]  Yeah, I agree with you there, man.
[02:09:10]  I definitely agree with you there.
[02:09:12]  And it allegedly, we're going to have, we're going to, every president since, since what Bush won has said that they were going to get us back to the moon.
[02:09:22]  And they haven't been able to do it yet.
[02:09:24]  Yeah, we were supposed to do it two years ago.
[02:09:25]  2024 was supposed to be.
[02:09:26]  Yeah, they keep pushing it back.
[02:09:27]  Now they're saying, I think 2027.
[02:09:29]  Yeah.
[02:09:30]  We have to have a good, compelling reason to go.
[02:09:32]  Like, are we just doing it because we can do it?
[02:09:34]  Or are we doing it because we're going to make a base there?
[02:09:37]  Exactly.
[02:09:37]  And is that cost effective?
[02:09:38]  All those, the same things the airlines base their decisions on, the government has to base their decisions on as well.
[02:09:44]  So, I'd love to go back to the moon just to go back to the moon.
[02:09:47]  Is it cost effective?
[02:09:49]  Is it economic?
[02:09:51]  And is it, you know, it makes total sense that we would, if we're going to go to the moon, if we're going to go to Mars, we got to freaking get the robots there first to figure.
[02:09:59]  I mean, they can do.
[02:10:01]  Just as good of a job as far as tasks go or analysis or anything like the surveying.
[02:10:06]  Like, what's a human?

=== Signing Off as Captain Steve (02:21) ===

[02:10:08]  My five fingers are going to do a better job than these autonomous robots.
[02:10:11]  Right, right.
[02:10:13]  So, yeah.
[02:10:15]  But anyways, man, thank you.
[02:10:17]  This has been a fantastic conversation.
[02:10:19]  Well, good.
[02:10:19]  I really appreciate your time, man.
[02:10:21]  I learned a lot.
[02:10:21]  I appreciate it.
[02:10:22]  This is the time went by really quick.
[02:10:24]  Yeah.
[02:10:25]  Tell people listening or watching where they can find you, get in touch with you, all that stuff.
[02:10:30]  Sure.
[02:10:30]  On YouTube, we're approaching a million subs on YouTube and we're at Captain Steve with three E's, S-T-E-E-E-V-E on YouTube.
[02:10:38]  Why the three E's?
[02:10:39]  Is there a reason, Mike?
[02:10:39]  Okay.
[02:10:40]  So here's, there's a little story.
[02:10:41]  There's a story behind everything.
[02:10:42]  Yeah.
[02:10:42]  Yeah.
[02:10:43]  So we, we started making short videos on the, on the channel and, and I, I didn't.
[02:10:48]  I didn't want to think of a sign off.
[02:10:50]  I just started saying, Captain Steve, for fun.
[02:10:54]  There's a waiter at a restaurant over in Milan.
[02:10:56]  It's a little coffee joint that this guy's got a gift.
[02:11:00]  His name is Rafik.
[02:11:01]  And it doesn't make any difference how long it's been since you've walked into his restaurant.
[02:11:04]  He will remember your name and he will stretch it out.
[02:11:08]  So the pilots, our hotel was right across from this coffee house.
[02:11:12]  So two, three years since I've seen Rafik.
[02:11:15]  And everybody in his mind was a captain, whether you were or not.
[02:11:18]  So you'd walk through the door and he'd go, Captain Steve.
[02:11:20]  And he'd be real excited to see you.
[02:11:22]  Right.
[02:11:23]  And I thought, wow, that's this guy is I'm the opposite of that.
[02:11:26]  I don't remember anybody's name, but he remembered everybody's name.
[02:11:29]  I thought that's really great.
[02:11:29]  So when I started signing off as Captain Steve, I was thinking of Rafik saying my name out loud.
[02:11:34]  And we did it for about the first 10 or 12 shorts we made.
[02:11:38]  And then I thought, I need to get more serious.
[02:11:40]  So I'm just going to sign off Captain Steve.
[02:11:42]  Right.
[02:11:43]  So I dropped it.
[02:11:43]  And the comments just lit up Hey, I waited till the end.
[02:11:46]  What happened to the Captain Steve?
[02:11:47]  And people would spell it with 12 E's.
[02:11:49]  And I thought, well, I've backed myself into a thing now.
[02:11:52]  So it became Captain Steve that drawn out.
[02:11:55]  That's hilarious.
[02:11:56]  Yeah.
[02:11:56]  I'm glad you roll.
[02:11:57]  I'm glad you went with it, man.
[02:11:58]  Oh, that was great.
[02:11:58]  That was a great decision.
[02:11:59]  Me too.
[02:12:00]  It is.
[02:12:01]  It makes you distinctive and kind of a fun.
[02:12:03]  We try to be educational, informational, and a little snarky when we can be.
[02:12:07]  Hilarious.
[02:12:07]  I love it, man.
[02:12:08]  Thank you again.
[02:12:09]  We'll link all that stuff below.
[02:12:10]  Yep.
[02:12:11]  And we have Patreon stuff.
[02:12:13]  We do.
[02:12:13]  We have Patreon.
[02:12:15]  Do you mind answering some questions for our beautiful people at Patreon?
[02:12:19]  Sure.
[02:12:20]  We have Patreon members who ask personal questions.
[02:12:23]  We'll do an episode of that.
[02:12:24]  Ask the captain right now.
[02:12:25]  Ask the captain.
[02:12:25]  All right.
[02:12:26]  So that's it for the podcast.
[02:12:27]  Thanks again, man.
[02:12:28]  Thanks to everybody.
[02:12:29]  And we're going to Patreon.