A Pilot on Why Air Travel Is All Screwed Up

CLAY: Something that I would imagine is impacting many of you and your families, this travel disaster that is befalling the entire country and certainly overseas as well. But in the United States, if you travel very much, if you’re on airplanes — if you’re traveling for summer vacation, going to visit friends and family — it is absolutely a mess the likes of which many of us haven’t seen since 9/11 in terms of just trying to get around in the country. We’ve got a caller from Tennessee. I believe you’re a pilot; you were explaining what exactly is going on. What can you tell us about situation that you see as a pilot?

CALLER: Well, we have an equipment list that’s called a “minimum equipment list.” When we get to the end of the runway, that’s our final check to make sure everything works. And if something doesn’t work, we have to go back to the gate with that list. It’s an FAA mandated document. So we can —

CLAY: No doubt. And that’s been the case for a long time. But what Buck and I were talking about to a large extent is the amount of delays, the amount of canceled flights, we’ve never seen anything like it. And I know the same thing is true for a lot of our listeners. What are you seeing as a pilot in terms of delays and cancellations? Why is this summer such a travel nightmare for so many people?

CALLER: Well, mostly it’s gonna be the pilots are being worked too hard. They’re being pushed, and they get the call whether they’re fatigued or not. Once they push a certain limit, they actually say, “Look, I can’t safely fly anymore.” So it’s really about fatigue. And the other thing is the airplane’s sat for a long time and didn’t fly a lot, and airplanes don’t like that. So they tend to have a little more problems. Not ’cause they’re unsafe, but they do have more mechanical problems because they don’t like to sit down very long, and when they sit all that time, then some things don’t work as well. So that’s a two-edged sword. But really, it’s a fatigue issue with the pilots that are being worked too hard.

BUCK: But, Tom, why aren’t there more…? Why are we having a pilot shortage now? Was it really just during covid there were a lot of early retirements for pilots? What is causing 9t?

CALLER: I actually am an early retirement. I retired last year — or year before last. They offered me a five-year buyout to leave early ’cause they didn’t think we were ever gonna get back to flying. Every airline had some type of retirement package, and I took one, and I’m sitting at home getting paid not to fly, and I’ve considered actually it go back to flying.

BUCK: I was gonna say, I bet you could get a great deal right now if you wanted to go fly for somebody else.

CLAY: So this is interesting. I appreciate you calling in. So one of the issues was, demand went to virtually nonexistent, right? In the spring and summer of 2020 there weren’t very many people flying. Airlines were trying to cut costs, and one way they did that was by encouraging some pilots with seniority to retire, and then things have bounced back in terms of air travel so much faster that they’ve been caught now not having enough supply to fit the demand. Is that a fairly basic explanation as you would see it as a pilot?

CALLER: Absolutely. That’s a great way to put it because walking around the airports, there’s no food, there’s no people, there’s nobody on the airplanes. And, you know, it was kind of scary for me in the job. But then, you know, for the buyout, I didn’t think they would recover this quick, and I don’t think they did, either. And then all of a sudden it’s back to full capacity, and they can’t get the people back online. So it really is. It’s a problem for every airline, not just mine.

CLAY: So how long…? Thanks for the call, by the way. I think, Buck, you and I and everybody out there — and that was a really interesting call. I think a lot of us out there are just saying, “Okay, we understand the supply-demand situation has fluctuated a great deal in two years. How long is this going to take to get people rehired and back in positions where they can be flying as much as they need and working on the planes and everything else?” It’s like everywhere then you have an issue.

BUCK: I don’t believe that government is a solution to everything or even most things. It is interesting though that Biden administration pretty recently declared they wanted to invoke the usage of the Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Production Act for solar panels. And you would think that they could do a whole lot more to help the American people if they could get more oil production and more pilots. (laughing) Right? Let’s encourage them. We just had a caller who said he took the early retirement.

It’s exactly what I’ve heard which is that a lot of guys went into early retirement, the airlines total misallocated resources or didn’t plan properly for what was gonna happen as covid faded. ‘Cause what you — I think one thing they didn’t anticipate was that a lot of people feel like, “Oh, my gosh, not only did I not get to travel during covid the way I wanted to, life is short, man!”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: “My time on this asteroid that’s floating around in the Virgo supercluster or whatever is short.” It’s not an steroid, but you get what I’m saying. “This rock in space, you know, this thing, we don’t have a lot of time here, man!” I was watching these TikTok accounts that were all about travel to Scotland, Clay. Man, first chance I get I want to go check out Scotland just cuz.

CLAY: I think that you’re right. There’s a massive amount of people this summer making up for not having traveled the previous two summers. But this doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a rapid fix.

BUCK: Nope.

CLAY: It feels like during the fall is gonna be a mess, and then we always know it’s a mess during the holiday season, and that doubles the stress because you don’t have that much time built in for Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever you’re celebrating with your family. This feels like it’s gonna be a mess for the rest of the year.

BUCK: Oh, absolutely. It hurts… By the way, a lot of business travel is a huge component of the airlines’ bottom line. And think about this. You and I are doing stuff, well, we could always do it in a different station. We’re very flexible with radio, thank heaven. For a lot of people, if you missed that flight and they can only get you there two days later, meeting over. Didn’t happen.

CLAY: Vacation over.

BUCK: Or vacation over. So I mean for a lot of business travelers they’re gonna say I guess we gotta Zoom because you can’t assume you’re gonna get from New York to Minneapolis or Salt Lake in one day.

CLAY: Did you know that they’ve reinstituted the mask mandate for TSA workers? Have you noticed this? Every single TSA worker. First time I noticed it at Ft. Lauderdale where I was flying in and out of was wearing a mask. And I asked, and they said, “Yeah, a few weeks ago they told us that all TSA workers had to go back to wearing masks.” I had no idea that was going on. Did you know that TSA had the mask mandate reinstituted?

BUCK: They’re gonna keep on slowly but surely doing it. The boa constrictor of Fauci stupidity is going to start squeezing out our freedoms, Clay. That’s the way it’s gonna happen.