Camp Gagnon - I Accidentally Trained The 9/11 Hijacker

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Rod “MAC” McAlear, Major USAF (Retired) flew in the Air Force and as commercial airline pilot for over 23 years. One week in March 2001, while working at a Flight School in Phoenix, AZ, he taught a ground school with a student named Hani Hanjour, the hijacker ultimately responsible for flying a plane into the Pentagon. During the course of the ground school, he and the school reported the suspicious individual to the FAA, as mentioned on page 521 of the 9/11 Commission Report. He h...

Do you feel about your involvement in 9-11? Gotten an opportunity to start teaching simulators on the side. To me, it was just a young kid from the Middle East. What was the name that he went by? It was Hanju. I will never forget that name. And did you talk with the FAA officer? Yeah, he said in the back of the class.

I told him the same things we had said is, you know, it seems a little strange. He doesn't seem to speak English as well as he should to be English proficient. Yeah, he made cash. It's really strange. Something felt fishy times. Supposedly the FBI knew that there was potential for it. They took some initial questions on the phone, find out what we knew and tell them what we'd already basically told, you know,

the FAA at the beginning, you know, oh, we didn't think the guy had belonged there. And we told him that we told the FAA and the FAA come out and said, yeah, no worries. And then six months to a year go by. Yeah. And then September 11, 2001. We heard about it and all, and as soon as they said terrorists, we were like, our first thoughts went to, could he have been one of them?

Deep in the pit of our gut, you know, we thought, yeah, that's, That's probably what it was. Well, Mac, I'm so grateful that you're here today. Thank you so much for coming into the tent. Oh, you're welcome. But just being open and willing to share your story, you have an absolutely fascinating story. And you are, unfortunately, I guess, sort of a part of this very remarkable and kind of tragic piece of American history. And I'm just really curious to kind of unpack it.

So I'm curious, could you just explain to me a little bit about. your professional history, who you are, and how you got involved in this whole, in this whole situation. Okay. Well, I was in the Air Force for, I went to the academy for four years, and then 18 and a third years before I retired. I retired in 97, got in with the airlines in 99, and started doing that. And I was actually working at a little regional aircraft or regional company and started teaching simulators on the side. They didn't pay very much of regional airplanes, especially back then. And so I had gotten an opportunity to start this teaching job. So I did it on the side.

So in 1997 you started flying commercial aircraft. Yeah. Well, 99, yeah. I took about a year off between when I retired and when I got hired. And at that point, where were you living? Well, I retired from Grand Forks, North Dakota, and we moved to Medford, Oregon. My wife was going to have a baby, and she wanted to have it. Well, she hadn't been home since she graduated from high school.

She went to the academy and was in the military as well, and that's where we met. So after I retired from the military, she's like, I said, well, we've got to live somewhere until, and I didn't really want to commit to anything until I figured out what airline was going to fly with because I didn't, you know, I wanted not have to commute if possible. Got it. And so we said, well, we'll go to Oregon because that's where her folks were and her family and all. And so it's like, she hadn't been back there in, you know, 20-some years. So it's like, yeah, it's a good deal.

So we did that. And then once I got hired on at Mesa Airlines, which was out of Phoenix. And so after the baby was born, we moved to Phoenix. And while I was still working there, I got the job at JetTech. Got it. And can you explain jet tech? Like, how do these flight simulators work? Like, what are they for?

Well, at the time, for example, Southwest Airlines required, before you could even get an interview with them, a 737 type rating. because that's all they flew with 737s, and they wanted people to, they wanted to know that when you came, when they hired you, that you were capable of getting through the course. So they made you get the type rating before you even got it. That didn't mean that when you got there,

you just started flying their airplanes. You still went through their training program, and they, you know, taught you their way to fly the airplane, even though it was basically the same thing that you'd learned at this company, because JetTech knew that that was their primary customer, so they tailored all their instruction to their way of doing it. But it was just a way for the airline to say, okay, we know this guy's committed

because he spent the money to buy this type rating and he can get through the training so they were fairly confident that you know, you wanted a job there if you got it. Got it. So a type rating was basically you just qualified for the simulator course. Yeah, well for a particular category and class

of airplane or type of aircraft. Got it. And so how long were you doing flight simulators for? Well, like I said, I'd been an instructor in the Air Force and so in the Air Force I instructed both in the airplane and we had In the Air Force, they had, we had railroad cars. They didn't have a simulator at each base in the old, well, in the old days, there were so many sack bases and they couldn't afford a simulator for everyone. So they were actually built on a railroad car, and they would go from Air Force Base to Air Force Base for the pilots of train.

By the time I was coming through, they had close enough Air Force bases at each Air Force Base had their own simulator in a railroad car sitting on a side track that, you know, abandoned track and on the base. So by 1990, 2000, you're living in Phoenix. You have a baby. You've retired from the Air Force. Yeah. I started flying airlines. Flying commercially and then teaching the simulator course. Teaching on the side, yeah.

And what are the typical clientele of these simulator courses? Well, like I said, at the time, most of the people you were getting through were people that were retiring from the Air Force or getting out of the Air Force, even if they weren't retiring. They were leaving early. And so they wanted to go fly for Southwest or whatever. So they were getting that, that. or it was somebody that had been flying regional jets for a long time, had three or four thousand hours of regional jet time and was trying to get on at the majors.

And again, getting the type rating in the 737 was one way to do it. Got it. So these simulators were not like small aircrafts. These are guys coming in to fly commercial. Yeah. And what do these simulators look like? If I signed up for one of your courses, what would I do? What would I be in?

First off, you can't, unless you take a type rating course, you have to be a minimum of a commercial pilot. Got it. So you start out as a private pilot. You know, you solo, you get your private pilot's license. You get 250 hours. You can get your commercial rating, and it's a different type rating. I mean, a different check ride that you take with the FAA.

And then once you have that, you can get your ATP, which is an airline transport pilot rating. Got it. So most of people that are signing up have like a pretty good track record of flying. Yeah, yeah. Usually most guys have 15 hundred hours more and are trying to get hired now. that's not to say we had some strange people coming through that...

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on the screen right here or the link in the description. Check it out. Smoor Camp. Now let's get back to the show. We had some strange people coming through that a couple of one class

I had a couple of crop dusters out there. They had their 15 hours and so they wanted to get their type rating because they wanted to try to fly southwest. You know, by then, you know, they saw the writing on the wall that airline pilots

were going to be coming in higher demand and stuff. So very rarely do you have hobbyist guys coming in. Oh, yeah. No, it's typically somebody that's looking to advance their career. Got it. And so are you doing classes as like a group or is it kind of one-on-one?

No, well, it's usually, you always try to get a class of two just because, you know, you need somebody in the right seat to train because it's a two-person aircraft. Got it. And so you always try to put it through an even number, you know. And how sophisticated are these simulators? Well, it depends. Back in the day when I did it, like I said, like, for example, the Air Force, the box car, the railroad car sim was it had all the right switches and stuff.

And so when you moved to switch, a light would come on. It looked like you were sitting in an airplane. But it didn't move. It just, so it was a static, if you will, display. Nowadays, the modern sims, there are six degrees of axis, six axis motion. Some of the newer ones are electric instead of hydraulics. And so you'll feel it in the seat of your pants. when you pull back, the SIM uses your inner ear, it tricks your inner ear basically to make you think you're accelerating or decelerating when you step on the brakes.

So it's as close to fly in a 747. Yeah, you can feel like, you know, I mean, you can get lost in it and go, hey, I'm, yeah, I'm really flying because you feel the airplane moving when you're, you know, when you're taxing, you feel the bumps on the runway kind of stuff as you're going out. And you can, when you turn the airplane around the corner, you can feel a little bit of movement and stuff. So, yeah, it's as close as you can get to the real thing, you know. So for a couple years, I guess, or maybe a year and some change, you're working the simulator, training, you know, prospect of, you know, pilots how to use these large commercial aircrafts. Right, right. So now what is the first day that this one specific guy comes in?

So we get a guy in there one day and I happen to be teaching the ground school. And we're, you know, at break time, we go out and talk to the scheduler. and hey, you know, this guy, well, let me backtrack. On your license, I said, you know, you have to have a commercial rating. Well, there's also a thing now, and it was even back then, it said you had to be English proficient. And because English is the international flying language and stuff. So they wanted to make sure that if somebody's coming over, at least for the FAA, I mean, if you're, if you have a foreign license, you won't, they wouldn't have that. But for the FAA, it has to say English profession.

Interesting. And so these guys came in and they had a commercial license, or this guy came in, had a commercial license with English proficiency. And I'm going to, you know, he's, it says English proficient on his license. I said, this guy speaks fairly poor English. You know, I don't know how they, how somebody judged him to be English proficient. But it's like, said he's going to have a tough time going through training. Sure.

And so in the course of a couple of the first couple of days, we're talking about, Yeah, he's, I don't know if he's going to survive this. It's not. And he's like, well, yeah, it's really strange because, you know, he wants this, but he didn't have a, he, I think he just had the bare minimums of the 250 hours. He was trying to get it. Or maybe he had the 1,500, I guess, to be able to get it. But he's, he, you know, the lady goes, the scheduler goes, well, yeah, and he paid cash.

And it's really strange. And it's like, you know, he said he got it from his rich uncle or something. And it's like, well, he's like, it's like, that something, something felt. fishy to us. So we called the FAA, the scheduler of the company, called the FAA and said, hey, you know, we got this guy. It just seems kind of sketchy. And at that time, there wasn't a lot of knowledge about, you know, I mean, I think we later found out that, you know, the FBI knew that there were there were people that were trying to infiltrate, you know, and, and get training or, you know, do terrorism in the nation. But the left hand wasn't talking to the right hand.

And so, you know, the FAA didn't apparently get the word from the FBI. I think the FBI may have reached out to some of the companies, but it wasn't getting down to the pilot levels that, hey, there's these people out here trying to learn how to fly airplanes for nefarious purposes. Yeah, because up until that time, there had been a couple high-profile hijackings, but most of them were extortion. Extortion attempts. Oh, yeah. And in fact, I think the last high, it's interesting because we knew a lady that was on one of the last. last airplanes was hijacked in the United States, but it was in the 70s. And she hadn't flown for years and all.

Well, we had, I'd been talking to her over the years, you know, because they went to school with our kids. And it's like, yeah, it's safe. There's no, you know, there's no threat of hijackings and stuff anymore. And I think she had finally gotten to the point where she was ready to take a flight. And then I don't know if she did before 9-11 or or not. I can't remember that I'd have to ask my wife. But I know she was, she was ready to take a flight or had just taken her first flight in,

you know, 30 years or whatever. and then 9-11 happened. So. And how much did these simulators cost? Well, like you said, to do the simulation. Back then, it was a $7,000, I recall it was $7,000 to get a $7.37 type rating. So $7,000 in $99,000. Nowadays, I think it's probably $11,000 or $12,000.

I don't know exactly. I don't get involved with the pay side of it. I knew that because, you know, she said he paid $7,000 cash. But, yeah, I think nowadays they're $11, $12, $13,000, and more for bigger. You know, $7.57, I think, is $15,000. Because, no, it's not cheap at all. Wow. And even back then, like I said, $7,000 wasn't real cheap.

And what is the ground school? Can you just briefly explain that? So it's five days of learning all the systems in the airplane. You never touch anything. You just talk about it. Well, no. And in most cases, that's it. You're just looking at slides and, you know, now that he's computer-based training and stuff.

The one nice thing that JetTech had at the time was we had our own level six flight training device, which is basically like the military's box car. It was a stationary device. It may have pitched up and down a little bit. It didn't do left and right, I don't think. But it was very, if it did, it was just basic up a little bit, down a little bit, left a little bit, right, a little bit, three or four degrees, nothing, you know, not like the sophisticated stuff now that'll fool your inner ear.

It was just enough to say, yeah, it's moving. I don't even, I don't even remember if it did move. It was whatever a level six FTT was. And so they had it in the back room. They were in a big warehouse. And so during ground school, the nice thing was is if I was having trouble with trying to get a concept across to people or just to be able to reinforce it, I could go back and flip on the SIM if nobody was in it, turn on the power and go, okay, here's what happens when you turn this switch off. You see, this light will come on. That light will go out and you'll get pressure in this, you know, gauge or whatever.

And so it was a really nice training aid. Right. I missed that. That was great. And so this guy that comes in. And then he pays in cash. He doesn't speak great English. What was the name that he went by?

It was Hany, Hondur. I will never forget that name. And he went by. He went by, yeah, that was his name, Honey Hondur. That's what he signed up at. So he introduced himself as Honey. Yeah. And what did he look like?

What was he dressed like? Like I said, he was, he, to me, it was just a young kid from the Middle East. And in fact, I, I, like said, we had the ground school five days a week. And so we'd always take a lunch break. And so we'd take them to a local restaurant, you know, Burger King or whatever. And we had this one little Chinese restaurant we'd go to. And so I remember the day the FAA came in, I think we had gone to the Chinese restaurant. Because the FAA, after we told him about it, they sent somebody in.

And he sat through a day or two of ground school. And he talked to the guy and all. And he'd been to Saudi Arabia. So he'd talking to him, you know, about, you know, things about Saudi. And I had been to Saudi a few times. I'd been there, four times, I guess, once in the mid-60 or mid-year. 80s and then summers of 94, 95, 96 between the wars. And so, and my dad used to fly in and out of Saudi Arabia years ago in the city that he lived in.

I had not been there, but my dad did. And I said, I just small talk with him. And, you know, you know, and I knew a couple of, you know, words in Arabic. And so I, you know, could say hello and, you know, thank you and that kind of stuff, whatever. But, um, yeah, so you meet this guy. I just kind of, you know, it's like, yeah, he, he seemed like a young kid that was just getting ahead of himself. Do you know how old he was, roughly? I don't recall, probably 23, 24 maybe.

I don't remember exactly. Got it. I just, you know, but he, like I said, to me, you know, I was in my 40s and he seemed like a young kid. And like I said, eager to learn, but I didn't think he was ready for that level of training or anything. Right. And, you know, like I said, we said so. And the FAA came and said, no, it's okay. Well, he didn't make it through my first week of ground school.

And what does that mean? He didn't. He wasn't, you take a, you do, before you even take the ground school, you do eight hours of pre-study. And so you come in, you're supposed to have read the information also that when I'm teaching it, you know, it's just reinforcing your level of understanding, giving you a better level of understanding. and then we give them an exit test to say, you know, do you know it? And you have to pass an oral exam, you know, a couple hours of oral question and answer

to see if you've retained the knowledge necessary to go on to the next level. And as I recall, he did not pass that first week, so he sat through a second week of ground school. And I'm trying to remember if, and again, if I had my notes, I could have checked, but I don't remember for sure. If he did make it through the second,

week of ground school and get into the sim for a day or two or if it only had been when, you know, he had just seen it during a brief period during ground school. And so when he's coming in, is he friendly? Is he talking with people? Yeah, he would, like I said, he, like I said, I conversed with him and all that. Now, I did have, well, it's after the fact. I can talk about that later, but, you know, one of the other instructors' opinion of him, but we'll get to that when we get to it. So anyway, so we're just sitting there and it's like, okay, and yeah, he didn't pass. We didn't give him a graduation and he didn't get his ATP.

And we didn't think anything about it, you know, and then I don't remember how long before 9-11 it was, but, you know, six months a year. And so, like I said, when we heard about it and all, and as soon as they said terrorists, we were like, you know, 19 guys from the, you know, Middle Eastern, it's like our first thoughts went to, could it have been him? Could he have been one of them? Wow. And, you know, and deep in the pit of our gut, you know, we thought, yeah, that's, that's probably what it was. Wow. And it did turn out to be. And so not to jump too, too far ahead, but when you guys are, like, having dinner or having lunch, you know, do you remember what he's talked about if he talked

much or if he just kind of like absurd? I think he, I think he just kind of answered the questions you asked or whatever. I don't think he wasn't that open, whatever, but he was not, he wasn't unfriendly. It wasn't like he was, you know, arrogant or aggressive or confrontational or anything. You know, he just, I think he was kind of a quiet, you know. And but if you'd ask him a question, you know, he'd tell you a little bit. But it was, you know, I don't remember. Like I said, I look at people, you know, and the world through rose color glasses. You know, I can make a friend of anyone and talk to somebody and converse.

And, uh, and, uh, and I make, you know, talk to a stranger on the bus and, you know, how you're done and this, that and the other. Um, and I'm sure also you're in a position where you're an instructor. This kid comes in. He doesn't really speak English. And you're like, oh, man, I feel bad for this guy. Yeah, you're trying to converse. He doesn't fit in with the group.

Yeah. And like I said, I was trying to ask him about his home country to make him feel like, you know, I'm interested. And just to make him feel a little more at home and, you know, trying to have some shared experience. Hey, I've been to Saudi and I know a few things about it, you know, and trying to get him to open up. Yeah. But he didn't really open up that much. And he said he was from Saudi. He said he grew up there.

Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. That's what I said. He was from the hometown. I mean, his hometown was, like I said, the one that my dad had flown in and out of years earlier. Wow.

And so it's like, okay, there's another common thread. I tried to, you know, talk to him about that and all. But he didn't, he just, he didn't open up that much about it from everything I recall. And you looked at his flight hours up until that point. Yeah. And so what was his, he had a commercial license. Well, yeah, he had to have a commercial to even be taking the course. And like said, I think, I think you also had to have the 1,500 hours to take the type rating course in anyway.

And do you know where he got those? from? No, I don't. That never came up in the investigation. I mean, as far as I know, I'm sure they did it. I know there were a lot of the hijackers that had gotten some training in Florida. I think there were some that had gotten some in Phoenix, too, up in Deer Valley. So, you know, and the other question that, you know, I don't know is, you know, how legitimate was that time, you know, did he have, you know, they used to always call it Parker time and the guys would talk about. where people would put time in their logbooks that they never actually flew. So I don't know if all the time that was in his logbook was legitimate or if it was penciled in.

It is possible that someone was fraudulent. It could be possible that, yeah, like I said, because he just didn't have a, that level. You know, it's like, this guy doesn't seem like he's flown that much. And, I mean, that's what rang our, you know, our bells is like he just didn't seem like he was at the stage he should have been for coming in and taking. a course like that. Did he ask any questions? Well, you know, there were stories that guys said, oh, we don't care about landing. We just, oh, we care about us, you know, taking off or flying, whatever.

I don't, he never asked anything like that directly that I recall. But, you know, he was, he was just interested in trying to learn, you know. I don't remember, like I said, even going into SIM, I don't remember if he asked questions about the transponder. You know, we talk about the transponder, and that's one of the things that tells ATC where the airplane is and what its altitude is and all that. that. And so, you know, I'm, I'm teaching it as a system saying, you know, here's how you turn it on and off and and there's a circuit breaker and, you know, and all that. So he's most likely picking up on that

information and that's one of his interests is, how do I disable this? Because once they turn, you know, once they took over the airplanes, they shut that kind of information off. So the FAA couldn't try or the, you know, couldn't find where they were. Oh, wow. And you're saying that he did ask about that? Or he just, I don't remember specifically. I just know. I just know. that's in the course of training. That's one of the things I would have been teaching about is how you operate the different systems, you know, radar and the transponder and electrics and hydraulics. Wow.

And so he goes through that first week. He doesn't pass. He goes through a second week and may or may not have. Yeah. I don't remember that because another one of my friends, you know, the instructors there taught that. Got it. And then you don't remember if he actually got into a SIM. While you were there, you never saw it.

I don't think so, but I don't remember. he may have gotten in and it may have been because they wanted to try to keep him scheduled so they may have put him in with the other student that was doing the training at least initially to get now the other thing about that is because that was a special thing about JetTech is we could do I think you were required five Sims and then a check ride or whatever and we could do the first two or three in that flight training device. You know, and then then you had to go to a level C or D, Sim, which is one that has the full motion and all that. So we could have done a couple of them there maybe to just see, okay, let's see if he's going to be.

And so he may have done a couple in ours to see, hey, is he ever, you know, even if he passes the ground school, is he going to be able to do the training? So he may have gotten in the Sim for a flight or two, I don't know. Interesting. And was there anything else about him in your, like, two weeks that you interact with him that was peculiar, that stood out, that you would find memorable specifically? Like I said, I didn't think that. One of the other instructors did, but it may have been, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking, too, because we never talked about it until after 9-11. Got it. So you've reached out to the FAA on, like, day three or four of the ground course. Yeah, two or three even maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Because the FAA attended one or two of the days of ground school. And that's pretty common if you have someone that's sort of under-qualified. That's the first time I'd ever heard of it.

Oh, really? Because every other person that had come through was, I mean, you know, you could tell, like I said, the guys that came through his crop-dowsers is like you're going, well, if these guys only have crop testing experience, are they going to be able to fly a big jet? But there's a lot of guys that do. I mean, most of the guys we had, though, came through with time in little jets or little, you know, turboprop airplanes at regional carriers or something. And so they had more than just a, you know, single-engine experience. Like I said, the crop dusters, I don't know if they've ever flown anything other than, you know, crop-dusting airplanes and maybe a couple of, you know, you had to have some twin-engine time to get your commercial, but, or to get the ATP. So I don't know, I don't remember specifically, but, I mean, you're sitting there going, you know, and they ended up graduating. And they got their type ratings, so they were good enough.

There were some guys that through the course of the week, you know, you go, yeah, they may need extra instruction. You know, say, okay, we'll put off your oral until, you know, for two days and we'll give you an extra day of specialized instruction to get them up to speed if we didn't think they were ready. Or if they failed their oral exam with the evaluator, then they'd have to get extra training. And so you'd go through and give them remedial training and then they'd have to repass their oral. You know, they'd actually have to pass an oral before they did. So that was a designated examiner. We had some within the company. Sometimes the FAA would do them, or we could have a company nominated examiner that provided the evaluation.

Got it. And so how many other people were in the course with him? Do you remember? I don't remember if that was a class of two or a class of four. Typically, that's all we did. It was two or four. So it was really small. Yeah, it's always small.

And did any of the other students say anything about him or, or, you know, notice anything like, ooh, this guy. No, again, that was all just us, you know, behind the scenes, you know, talk, like I said, on our breaks and stuff or at lunch. We, you know, like, you know, I don't know if this guy's going to make it and that kind of stuff. And expressing our doubts, too. Yeah.

And so that official notice to the FAA was the things that majorly tipped you off is like low flight hours underqualified and paying in cash. And paying and cash. Yeah. And like I said, that's the first time I'd ever heard of them calling the FAA and saying, hey, we're suspicious about this guy. Come, come check it out. Everything else, you know, like said, everybody else had been just normal.

So that was, I mean, that's what kind of stuck out, which is why after 9-11, it's like, it's like, oh, God, hope not, but it turned out it was. And then which month was this? Do you remember exactly? No, I don't remember how soon before 9-11 it was. There's probably 2001. So I started teaching Sims the end of 99, or the end of 98. So all of 99, all of 2000. So it was probably six months or a year prior, but I don't remember exactly.

Got it. Interesting. Again, I don't have the date. I pull it up maybe or look it up in the 9-11 commission and report and find out about that. Wow. So the FAA sends an officer to kind of probe him, chat with him, looked at his documents, and they had an FAA officer on site that said, no, this all looks fine. Yeah. He said, yeah, it's okay to me.

Yeah, he's a little weak or whatever, but he didn't see anything suspicious or didn't have any reason to take it any farther up his chain or take it to the FBI or anything at that point. And did you talk with the FAA officer? Yeah, he said in the back of the class. Like I said, he went to lunch or this is that one day, you know. So. Hmm. And you didn't tell him like, hey, this is, you know, right? He didn't ask you. Well, we talked.

I mean, I told him the same things we had said is, you know, it seems a little strange. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't seem to speak English as well as he should to be English proficient. to have English proficiency on his license. And he just didn't seem to have the knowledge of somebody that should be at that level in the class. Wow. So then those two weeks go by, he doesn't graduate and he kind of, you know, he just goes away. You never see him again. We didn't see or hear anything about him since.

And then six months to a year go by. And then September 11, 2001. And do you remember where you were? I was at home and bed. I was asleep. but I was supposed to have landed, be landing in JFK that morning at 7.30. Wow. And what happened? Why didn't you? Well, we had a computer program where we could change trips or whatever.

And I'd gotten my schedule and I had picked a trip over 9-11 that I wanted to try to trade with another one. And I tried to put the trip trade in and it didn't go through. And it's like, well, it should have. The computer messed up or something. I called scheduling and said, hey, I should have gotten this trip trade and I didn't get it. And they said, oh, yeah, you're right. I said, well, can I have the trip? And they said, no, we've already given it to somebody else.

But because I should have gotten the trip, they said, you're pay protected. You should have gotten that trip. We didn't. So just stay home. They paid protected me. And somebody else then got called for the other trip. So I don't remember if it was the original trip or the one I was trying to trade into. But one of them would have had me landing at JFK at 9, or 730 in the morning.

Wow. So by the time we got to the hotel, it would have been, you know, I'd have probably been in the shower about the time it happened. Wow. Because we used to stay on those long layers, we stayed in downtown Manhattan. And just to be clear, the flight that you were supposed to be on was not one of the ones that was hijacked. No, no. There were no America West airplanes. Got it. So you wake up in Phoenix.

Yeah. Well, and the kind of funny, ironic story about that is, I may not even known about it for a number of hours later, but at night, the night before I, I had been watching TV and I'm always supposed to, I was supposed to turn the TV to the cartoon channel. So my youngest son, when he got up, he knew how to turn the TV on, but he didn't know how to change the channels. So I was supposed to put it on the cartoon channel, PBS or whatever. And so he could, if he woke up before mom and dad were ready,

he could sit and watch cartoons. So he turned on the TV. And I'd gotten in late, for some reason, night before, whatever. I don't remember what I was doing. But my wife just said, yeah, let him sleep in. So she'd gotten up to take care of. of the kids and she goes downstairs and my son's in the living room but he's not

watching TV because news is on and he's just playing with his toys or whatever and she sees that they're talking about the Twin Towers but she didn't really know what that was didn't register to her but then and she I think she even heard him say that the you know the planes

or a plane had crashed into it I don't think she had heard that both planes had crashed into it about that time I think is when they came on with breaking news They were showing the towers, but they came on with breaking news that a plane had hit just at the Pentagon. And because I was in the military and she'd been to the Pentagon and all, she knew what that meant, you know, the seriousness of that. And she said, she comes running upstairs, right, right, a plane just hit the Pentagon. And I'm thinking, you know, what, a Sessna crashed into the Pentagon, you know, lost its engine or whatever and couldn't steer away from it or something.

I didn't know, you know, I'm just because I'm waking up from dead cold or dead sleep. And so I go downstairs and then, of course, I'm pinned to the TV all day. And as they're talking about terrorists and all, we're getting this, you know, getting this deep pit in my stomach. And, you know, a few hours later where I think when they, I probably waited until they announced that they were, you know, Middle Eastern hijackers or whatever, I think is when we started, you know, the instructor started calling each other a couple hours later. It's like, hey, you don't think it was honey, did you?

And it's like, yeah, I think it was, you know. And so that's, yeah. Hey guys, I know this episode might be a little bit heavy. So we're going to take just a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because it's 2024. And it's time to talk about something important. When you are seriously hurt, your injury could be worth millions.

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And so when was it released the names of the hijackers? That I don't remember if it is. I think it took them a few days to come up with the names. I don't remember exactly. But, you know, we were suspicious of it because we had been suspicious before. And so we, you know, like I said, we had that feeling that, you know, it was probably him. Wow. And that's why I was talking about.

So one of the other instructor that I was one of the guys I think that had done some of the other ground school. You know, when I said, yeah, I thought, you know, he was a good kid. He just didn't, you know, didn't belong. He didn't, you know, couldn't speak English well enough to, or didn't have the level of knowledge to be taking a course like that. And rather it was colored by his judgment of what had just happened or whatever. But he was like, nah, he said, I never liked the guy. I could see him, you know, come to my house and slit in my family's throat. And it's like, I'm going, I think that was, I think that was like Monday morning quarterback and going that, you know, because the kid didn't, I don't think he put off that vibe at all.

Like said, I do look at the world, you know, in the, that. and look for the best in people, but I thought that was a little over the top for you to make a statement like that. But in essence, that's what, you know, that's what his opinion was after the fact. Wow. So for those days before they released the names, you're just sitting at home thinking, like, holy shit. Oh, yeah, exactly.

Was this the guy that I met that came through the simulator course? Yeah, that we, that I trained, yeah. Wow. Because they, I think they had started talking about these guys had gotten flight training in Florida or what, I mean, by that time, I think they were starting to piece together. They'd gotten training in Florida. And I don't know if they said Phoenix right away. Because I think, as I recall, Florida was the first place they started talking about it. Yeah, I think Sarasota. Yeah, Sarasota. And I think there was some training in Denver, too. And then Phoenix, like

said. And I found out after the fact, too, that there had been some, I think some of the light, the commercial training had been at Deer Valley up in Phoenix. They had a small aircraft, you know, thing up there. So guys were getting the commercial training, the private and commercial stuff up in Deer Valley. But I don't know if it was, I don't know if it was our guy or not, too. So then when you see the names get released, what was your initial feeling? Oh, I said, it was just, it was just it dug that pit in the deep, you know, the deep pit in your stomach, it just kind of reinforced it and reamed it out a little bigger. Wow. And did you tell, like your wife? Did you tell? My wife obviously knew. I mean, we had talked about that, you know, from the get-go that,

I said, you know, I think it's the guy trained. And, you know, so. But we kept it to ourselves. And what I found out last night, I was talking to my son, a couple of his friends. And he reminded me, I had forgotten it. And my wife didn't remember it either. But I guess because Phoenix is three hours behind New York, you know, like I said, she had gotten up to get the kids ready for school and carpool and stuff.

And he said, yeah, I remember you guys called me into the bedroom and said, and showed me the TV and said, you know, these planes hit the World Trade Center in the Pentagon and they think it's terrorist or whatever. Just and we were just, he was in the fourth grade and so we're letting him know just because it was going to come up at school and kind of give him a little forewarning of it and stuff. And he knew dad taught in the Sim. I think he'd taken him to the Sim and I'd, you know, let him try to land the airplane and stuff a couple times, you know, so that was a nice benefit of having in the building there too.

Wow. Yeah. So, you know, and we didn't tell the second grade. and then, like I said, the youngest was, if he was in anything, it was just, you know, pre-K or whatever, kindergarten. So, yeah, but because he was in the fourth grade, we told Sam. Wow. And then, yeah, and then it was just kind of for the next couple weeks,

it was just as they're releasing information, we're talking about it amongst ourselves, but that's it, just within the family and the couple instructors and people in the SIM training area. I never, it was years before I told anybody outside of, outside of that group of people. Wow. And do you have any idea why they chose your Sim course or why they chose Phoenix or why they chose any of the places they chose? I don't know. I don't know at all. So, Hanney's day that day, where did he take off from? Do you know?

I'm trying to remember the details. They all took off from either New York or Boston, as I recall. No, maybe they took it out. I don't, I remember Boston. Boston being as part of it, because they had some of the photos were of them going through security at Boston. And I don't remember if a couple of the planes took off out of Boston and a couple of them took out of JFK or if they went through Boston to get to JFK and that they had all started out of JFK. But then a couple of them turned around and went back. And then the one went to toward the Pentagon. And then the other one went to, you know, got taken down in Shanksville. Wow.

And so a couple days go by, the names are released. And you go, oh, wow, that's honey. It was for her. You tell, you're talking with your family. You're talking with the immediate instructors that know. But then, you know, obviously, I'm assuming, you know, you probably feel a mixture of different emotions. So I get the feeling of like, okay, let's just kind of lay low. You know, I'm not going to come out and say anything.

Did the government reach out to you? Did the FBI reach out to you? Yeah. And in fact, that's where, that's when Sam found out what was going on because he was at home. And Sam, again, is your son. My oldest boy. And I just found this out last night, too. He said, the guy called and he said, yeah, is your dad home?

He said, no. He said, well, could you tell him this is so-and-so from the FBI? And I guess he thought he was somebody playing a prank on me where he said, oh, yeah, I'm in the FBI too or something. And, you know, made a joke about it. And then he got, well, just make sure your dad gets the message. And so. And then when I got home and he told, you know, he told me,

yeah, dad, some guy said from the FBI call today, he's going to call you back or whatever, he gave me in a number. And so, you know, he said, when I called him and I'm, Now he hears me talking to him. He's like, oh, this was real, not just a joke. You know, he thought it was a joke at first. So what was that call with the FBI like? Well, they wanted to, they wanted to interview us.

They took some initial questions on the, on the phone, you know, to get, find out what we knew and tell them what we'd already basically told, you know, the FAA at the beginning and all that we didn't think the guy had belonged there. And we told them that we told the FAA and, you know, the FAA had come out and said, yeah, no worries. So we did everything right as a company and as a group. But then I think, and then they, I think they called us in and actually sat down and interviewed us and asked some more, you know, detailed questions or whatever. But, wow. So, yeah. So we told them everything we could. And, you know, of course, it's, you know, after the fact, you know, closing the barn door after the horses get out, it's a little too late to do anything on that knowledge.

But what, what I learned, like I said, later on is that that there were pieces of information out there and suspicion. that, you know, had they been making the correct, you know, or, you know, left hand, been talking to the right hand and disseminating the information properly. But that's one of the things I learned or that I didn't like about the airlines in particular is, you know, in the military, the, if there was an aircraft accident, especially in your fleet, you would get the 72-hour preliminary report, you'd get a 30-day report, you'd get a 60-day report. You'd get, you know, 100, I think they did 30, 60, 90, 120, and then, uh, final,

you know, maybe a, maybe an annual and then a final report. And so we'd get them, um, and I don't even think they were redacted in any way, you know, um, maybe, maybe the crew names were left out, but, uh, I think, I think they were even fully, you know, available. And so we, you know, we could sit around and, of course, we were at the time, I was in sack alert. So you're spending the third of your life, you know, sitting in the alert facility, waiting for the big one.

And so we'd sit around and we'd kind of, you know, discuss it. Hey, what do you think happened here? Why would they have done this or what, you know, and try to learn from it? I mean, it was the Air Force did it as a learning experience. You know, we want you to know what happened and see what led up to the accident, the chain of events and all to try to learn from it and not have it happen to you type of thing. Whereas in the airlines, there were accidents that you might hear about a year or two later in ground school

when it finally got out, you know, you'd know what happened basically, but you didn't get any details from it as to what had caused it. So one of the things I think when you first approached me about, I had also remembered, you talked about the hijackings and stuff. And I didn't find this out until after the fact. Of course, after the hijackings, you know, they said, hey, we want, they came up with the federal flight deck officer program, the FFD

to arm pilots in the in the cockpits. What I found out at some point, you know, either then or shortly thereafter, is that only a few months before 9-11, pilots, they had just changed the law that pilots could not carry weapons. I don't think pilots had carried at all in, you know, but in the 70s, they had passed it saying pilots could carry weapons because of the hijackings. Well, that law was still on the books and only got pulled shortly before 9-11 just because I guess somebody's like, oh, why do we need that there? So pure coincidence. And like I said, I don't think you probably, I don't know if there was anybody that even carried in the 80s or 90s because by then the hijackings were so far behind us.

But it just seemed kind of ironic to me that now they had to go out and pass this new law saying pilots could be armed when they had just killed the law a few months earlier. Bizar. Yeah, just kind of a strange coincidence. Now, do you know if any of the other instructors or any of the other simulator companies had filed similar sort of reports to the FAA as you had? I don't know specifically. I don't know of any other type rating schools that were involved. I never heard any names of other companies.

When they talk about it, they always talk about flight training in Deer Valley and stuff like that. And for some reason, I don't even think that the name of our company necessarily. had gotten out that it happened there. You know, they said in Phoenix and all, but I don't even know if the name JetTech had gotten out at that time, which is it got bought out by, and I don't even know if it was JetTech at the time.

We had gotten bought out by Pan Am International Flight Academy. So it may have been lumped under that, but that was associated with Florida. We were like a satellite base in Phoenix, you know, because they bought out the jet tech. And so I don't even know if Phoenix, was mentioned as the as a you know type rating type school that had gotten it so I'm thinking that maybe uh either either down Pan Am down in Florida or there I think

like I said I think I heard Denver and that might have been through one of the type rating schools up there but I don't remember details about that interesting but there was nothing else that you knew about on the record where it's like some other instructor else had complained or whatever again like said I did I have to go back and look at the 9-11 report and see if there were details to that level of anybody else complaining about it or whatever. And you're named in the 9-11 commission. Yeah. Like I said, well, yeah, in fact, my oldest daughter, my, that's married to my son in Lawn San Diego,

a couple years after 9-11, for whatever reason, she was Googling stuff and called me up and said, Dad, how come when I Google your name, the first thing that comes up is the 9-11 commission? Because at that point, I hadn't told her yet. She wasn't, like said, you know, the other kids, I don't even know if I had told them because they were, like said, Sam was in fourth grade. So what's that? 10 years old, 11? Something like that, yeah. Yeah.

So I don't even think I had told the younger kids at that point yet. And, you know, pretty much just kept it to myself. I think a few years later, you know, there was one or two of the captains I was flying with that for whatever reason we had had some discussions. and it was there, they had some involvement in something else. Because I found out, well, in fact, I just found out at a retiree meeting with some of our pilots the other day and found out that one of the guys said that his wife, or I was talking to his wife, I guess, and she said that he had said, oh, yeah, I had one of those guys on my jump seat just a couple months earlier. So they had, they had been testing the system out, you know.

And so if they weren't airline pilots at that point, so they were using, or maybe they, I don't think any of them even worked at, you know, a regional air companies or whatever. They were somehow using forged documents, which allowed them to get onto the jump seat, which is why now we have a whole detailed program and computerized system to verify that you are who you say you are to get onto the jump seat of an aircraft. Because that's one of the benefits of being a pilot is, if you're having to commute to work and there's no seats in the back of the airplane, there's still one or two up front that you can commute to work on if you're a qualified pilot.

Wow. So, yeah, and so they had been apparently forging the documentation. And, yeah, he had one of the hijackers on his airplane prior to 9-11, a few weeks prior to 9-11. Wow. We had had, after the fact, we heard cases of people that were finding box cutters in the back of our seats. there's a little pull-down panel that we have our life vests in because you have to have a life vest for each of the, you know, documents and whatever. And that's one of the things we would inspect in the morning is that the life vest was there and

that it was, you know, adequately dated or whatever. But after 9-11, when we heard about the box cutters and all, we'd start actually taking them out and guys were finding box cutters in airplanes, though they had been pre-hidden in some of these airplanes, you know. So I don't know exactly if that meant that they, you know, were just trying to, you know, we're just trying to see how long it would, you know, could go on before somebody found it, or if they were putting them there and then the next guy would,

you know, they'd get the tail number and the next guy would take it out of there. Because once they got it there, it's behind security. Now they can move it a little more freely. I don't know. But yeah, there were stories that we had, you know, guys finding box cutters in the airplane.

Wow. Now, it also could have been some idiot that was just trying to, you know, be stupid. And had it and then ditched a header. Yeah, or just, yeah, or just after the fact. some guy thought it'd be funny to put it in there. I don't know.

I can't imagine that. Was it on aircrafts you were flying or just people you knew that were flying? Well, I just, we just heard about it kind of through the grapevine. Again, a lot of that information doesn't get disseminated. Airlines, you know, they're a private company. The Air Force can tell you everything and nobody's going to sue the Air Force. You know, you're worried about, the airlines are worried about somebody suing them. So they don't want any of that data to come out and, oh, well, yeah, this accident happened

because this guy did this or this guy did that. Wow. Ultimately, it does come out, you know, but they tried to be. tight-lipped about it. If it wasn't going to come out through the news, then they didn't want anybody to find out about it. So, yeah, so some of that stuff was, you know, was, you were hearing about word of mouth from somebody that said, hey, yeah, we found a box cutter on our airplane.

Wow. Truly bizarre. Yeah. Now, I'm curious. I mean, this is obviously a very heavy, you know, moment in American history, and you sort of saw it and lived through it in a way that's very different than many other people. I'm curious, do you feel or did you feel any guilt about your involvement in 9-11? No, like I said, initially it was just, it was, it, there was, it seemed like there was a stigma to it,

which is why, like I said, I just didn't, didn't want to talk to people about it. And, you know, it was a long time before I decided I was ready to go to the 9-11 memorial, just because, yeah, there was, there was, you know, just a different. feeling. I won't say it was a stigma or anything necessary, but, I mean, or, you know, it wasn't, you know, like, disgusted or sad or, or, I mean, if anything, I was pissed off about it, that, that,

that, you know, could we have done more to, to stop it? Could we have done something that would have, um, you know, you know, it's like, you know, had he chosen one of my flights to jump seat on, I'm going, wait a minute, how the hell is he a commercial pilot already? I mean, or, how has he got a job? already when he didn't even pass the type rating course or something.

So, you know, a coincidence like that would have could have possibly nipped it in the bud, you know, but it didn't. But I still, yeah, I mean, there was just, it was just a weird feeling. I know that's the best way to describe it. Just, yeah. But, you know, it may be a little embarrassed, a little ashamed, you know, but just not, didn't feel the need to talk to about it to too many people. It didn't want it getting out, you know.

Was there any part of you, like going to sleep, like, I should have done more. I could have done this. Like I said, I think we did everything we could as a company, as individuals. It's like, you know, we brought it to someone else's attention who should have had more horsepower to do something about it, you know. What are we going to do to do it? Just say, no, you can't do it here. You know, we don't want you to as a student. It's like, you know, we asked the question. We didn't, you know, should this guy be a student?

It just doesn't seem right. And if they, if the FAA says, yeah, it's okay, then it's like, well, you know, we'll take his money. But it didn't, it just, you know, just seemed like he was, you know, he was wasted his own money. And I think we probably tried to tell them that too. It's like, you know, we're not sure you're going to make through this course or whatever. And because, you know, that's the hard call you had to make, even with additional training. You've got to tell the guy, hey, you're not ready for your oral or your check ride. That means more expense for them because they've got to rent the SIM for another day or two of, you know, training.

And that's just more money, you know, than they've already paid. Yeah. Do you think the FAA could have done more? Well, like I said, in retrospect and hearing that, you know, they, well, again, I think it was the left hand, didn't talk to the right hand. The FAA, I don't know if, you know, because supposedly the FBI knew that there was a potential for it. So the FAA didn't talk to the right people in the FBI for to get to the right, you know, that's what I say. It's the cross communication didn't happen to the right people at the right levels. So, yeah, they could have elevated it more and say this, you know, I mean, I think we let them know that it just something didn't seem right.

But the guy we talked to, maybe he's the one that fell down and said, everything's okay. And he didn't bother to raise it to his superiors. You know, maybe he had he done that, maybe then it would have gotten to the right people. Who knows? It was just a breakdown in communication, you know. It's big bureaucracies and, you know, like I said. Did you ever see that FAA agent again that came in or did you ever speak with him again? after the fact?

I don't believe I ever, he was around for a few more years, but I don't think I ever had any direct contact with him now. Wow. Yeah, it's just such a fascinating time in U.S. history, and it's so morbid, and your experience with it is so close. I'm curious, did you continue teaching simulation

and courses after the fact? I did. I continued to do it for a number of years until after we bought U.S. Airways, they said we couldn't do outside training anymore. So we had to stop for a few years. And then they came back and said, oh, yeah, we were wrong. You could.

And so by that time, I was a captain. And so I didn't do it again until I retired. Just because I was, I was, as a first officer, I was living in Phoenix. And, you know, that was my base. Once I upgraded to captain, I was, my base was Los Angeles. So I continued to commute. So with the commuting, I didn't have time to, you know, and I was making enough money. I didn't need the part-time job.

Once I retired, I just wanted to keep my hand in aviation. And I enjoyed doing it. I've loved teaching and all that. So I started back up again. After September 11th, did they put any checks into place so that this type of thing couldn't happen again? Oh, yeah. That's what I said.

You know, first off, the- checks. Well, they had the system where everybody had to be certified and approved to get onto a jump seat. They strengthened that policy to the point where it was. a computerized system and their, in fact, I just heard the other day, a guy said he couldn't get on an airplane because somebody's caste system was down, the, the access system to allow him to get on to the jump seat. Wow.

Their computer system was down so they couldn't verify that he was who he said he was. And if you can't verify it on the computer, it's like you can't go on our jump seat. That's probably smart. I mean, that seems crazy that like a regular kind of pilot could get access to a jump seat. Yeah. And when you say jump seat, just so everyone knows, that's the small seat behind the two pilots. Two pilots, yeah. It's designed for the FAA or a company to go on and evaluate your proficiency.

They would do it periodically. You'd get a line check once a year or something. And then the FAA could come out and do the same thing. And so it was four official uses. But when it was unoccupied for those reasons, then they said, well, might as well let pilots get to work on it. And so this guy that your friend had said, oh, yeah, he was in the jump seat behind us. one of those eventual hijackers. How was he able to get access to the jump seat?

That's what I said. It had to have been fraudulent. You know, they had to have, but that's back before we had the cast system. So, you know, then it was just, yeah, you showed, you know, you used to be able to just walk up and say, here's my pilot credentials and, you know, for another airline. And they said, yeah, and it said pilot. And so they had just figured out a way to copy those and, you know. They look at it.

They say, hey, we have an open jump seat and you're obviously a pilot with this line. Another carrier. And yeah. And so, yeah, that's apparently how they were able to sneak on. And then what about like paying in cash or any of those other things that were? Well, the paying in cash, well, oh, yeah, for simulators now? Yeah, it used to be, you know, I could take my kids to the sim and say, hey, let's get them a, you know, playing there, you know, in the sim a little while or whatever. Because it was, well, in that case, we're company owned.

But even at the airlines, you know, you could, you guys would say, hey, I want to take my family in and let them see what it is I do. and that was an easy way to do it. Now it's like for the students we have now that come through for training, the headquarters, the head of the company, the schedules and all that, they have to provide paperwork to the FAA. The FAA has to approve that paperwork and also there's, yeah, there's a very stringent. So yeah, I can't. I got friends that say, hey, I want to get a ride in the SIM.

It's like, well, I can't get you in the SIM because the FAA controls who goes in and out, that SIM building now, basically. Oh, wow. Yeah, if you're not approved, you know, the company does it. But, you know, and if you're from a foreign country or something, sometimes, you know, they used to, I think they still do require a headshot. You know, they want to make sure that the person on their records is the same as the person you're letting into the building. So you can't give them somebody's credentials and then somebody else walk in and try to do it. So, yeah, it's very, very strict now.

Wow. So, yeah, again, it's, like I said, in a related story, my son-in-law, when I talked to him and he found out, he told me about when he was in high school, he was working for his dad's company, and he used to stop and, actually he was out of high school, but anyway, he had a house up in La Mesa, and down at the bottom of the hill he lived on, he used to stop and fill up the company trucks with gas every night when he got home, before he got home, and he'd buy his soda. or something, and he talked to a kid in the store there that was there most of the nights

studying, who was a San Diego State University student, I think, taking some classes or whatever, and so he was always in there studying and stuff, and he'd shoot the breeze with him a little bit, too, same thing. It turns out that kid that he talked to was on in the back of the airplane of the kid I had trained. Oh, really? Yeah. He was one of the muscle in the back of the airplane. And the other thing that was kind of ironic is,

With the tie back to my Air Force days is, Honey was on the airplane that hit the Pentagon. Wow. So that was the airplane I actually heard about first is the Pentagon, and that turned out it was him. Wow. Now, when you say the muscle in the back of the plane, what they,

well, if you recall, there were 20, well, there were 19 hijackers. One of them had either backed out or, or couldn't get, you know, make it, got, you know, way laid somewhere along the way. But they had, they had one or two pilots up front, but then they had, because there were four airplanes, They had three guys in the back, like for crowd control, the muscle to keep anybody from, you know, to quiet the passengers down in the back. These are the guys with like box cutters that were kind of like holding people hostage.

Yeah, well, or yeah, or just, you know, keeping people from trying to keep the, the, what happened in flight 193, keeping people from rushing the cockpit. And one of those guys? My son-in-law had talked to this kid. like he said it was like a 7-11 AMPM store gas station that he stopped in every night after work the kid was in there he was you know taking classes and stuff and so he my son-in-law just had talked to him for a number of times beforehand

same thing didn't know who he was until the names came out and he goes shit that's a kid that was in the in the thing and he happened to be on the same airplane as the kid I trained and was this in Phoenix no he was in San Diego oh wow he was in San Diego La Mesa Calaisa So this guy, another hijacker. Yeah, was living in San Diego and going to school, but he may have been getting training. Well, he wasn't, well, if he was, he was the muscle, so I don't think he was doing any flight training.

But, you know, and, you know, they talk about the, you know, the Middle Eastern culture and all that. There were stories that these guys had been going to strip clubs and all that. So, you know, they were not living up to the, the Muslim law. Muslim law and the Quray. They were not being a halal life. They were not, yeah. They were not living a pure life or anything. Wow.

At least as the stories go. So, you know, but... Did your son-in-law describe his interaction with the other guy? Just the same thing. It was just, you know, he thought it was just some kid, you know, student studying and he shot the breeze with him and, you know, had small talk with him. Nothing. What a bizarre coincidence. Yeah.

That's what I say. It was just a very, very strange coincidence. Wow. And then I just found out two things. One, my wife said that one of the kids on his baseball team had, had... a parent who was a flight attendant, and they had gotten out of their trip. They had traded it to someone else.

Just by happenstance. By happenstance. Same as I did. They tried to trade it. And in their case, the trade went through. So they were either at home or on a different trip. And whoever they traded the trip with was, you know, in 9-11 for the... Wow.

On the flight. And I think I'd have to ask her specifically, if she was talking about it, if maybe it was somebody on America, maybe it was an American or a United pilot that was, or flight attendant that was actually one of the airplanes that crashed. Wow. And Sam said he'd met a girl whose father was in the World Trade Centers when it happened. But he got out. He was on like the 11th floor or something.

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Now, you were a commercial airline pilot throughout that whole period. Yeah. Did the hijackings and the events on 9-11, did they scare you? Did they concern you? Were you afraid of a copycat attack? No. Like you said, the procedures they put in place, it seemed like, and there's the awareness of it now.

I mean, you know, they had written about, I think Clancy wrote in one of his old books about the potential for using an airliner as a weapon and a terrorist attack or something. And so the ID had been out there for a number of years. And so that's why it was like, but it wasn't, you know, I hadn't read that book at the time and other people had, I guess, you know, but it just didn't, it just didn't seem maybe realistic at the time or whatever.

And again, because we weren't getting the information that the FAA had or that the FBI had that there's this potential of people, you know, coming out to, you know, or coming up with ways to, or a terrorist attack, you know, I didn't think about it. I mean, when I was in Saudi, you know, there were terrorist attacks, you know, there was a little bombing in downtown Riyadh. And so, you know, I was aware of it in the military and, yeah, I knew overseas, but you just didn't think about it in the U.S.

You know, it just never really crossed my mind. Now, I understand back in the day, like cockpit doors might be unlocked or open for the whole flight. Yeah, I don't know that they were closed. I don't know that. And there was, I think back in the day there was a key. one of which I found out I was at a small commuter airline before this too

and one of the instructors came out and they issued his keys to the airplane he said here watch this he had an old 57 Chevy key and it worked in the door so it was just a generic lock it wasn't back then but that was like I said that was you know

pre 9-11 it's just it was such a different you know everybody you know in history you know my parents had pre Pearl Harbor and post Pearl Harbor. You know, I was kid, and I think he said you were too, that it was pre-Kennedy assassination, after Kennedy assassination. And so everybody has that. And, you know, I've got one of Sam's friends I met last night was born after 9-11.

It's like, and so there are kids that don't even know it, didn't even happen in their lifetime. You know, for my kids, it's pre-9-11, post-9-11. And yeah, life changed. dramatically. It was a seismic event in world history, you know, in the course of man.

And it was that singular event that then changed everything. You know, every time you go to the airport now, you think of 9-11 because we're having to stand in longer lines and more security and this, that, and the other. So all of that changed. Sam reminded me of a time that, you know, back in the day

when I was as an airline pilot, you couldn't take your family into the cockpit, but I remember he reminded me that he had gotten close one at time, and I guess it was, you know, I told him to, or I don't know if I told him or whatever, or he just happened to be there, but he had come up and I came out of the cockpit, maybe they called me out of the cockpit and said,

hey, your son's here. So I opened the door, and he was able to at least look in and see the stars, you know, out in front of us and all that and see the view. He didn't walk into the cockpit, but he was able to, you know, back then you could have the door open. Now it's like you can't have passengers in front of the first class bulkhead when you're opening and closing that door.

You know, there's all sorts of procedures for that to make sure that if there's any threat outside the cockpit at all and that door is open, you slam that door shut. Now we have ways to lock the door to prevent it from opening. If they try to force the flight attendants to open it with the entry pad at the back of the airplane, then we can lock. lock them out, you know, so there has to be coordination. Oh, wow. So there's a ton of new safety measures. Yeah, there's a ton of new procedures to prevent it from ever happening again. Wow.

At least in the way it happened. Now, like I said, that's the thing is there are other ways that could, you know, that they're dreaming up out there now, you know. They had to have been planning this for a long time. You know, they had these guys in training for, you know, for a year or two trying to get this whole thing set up and organized and all that. So in that respect, yeah, that's the scary part is that with all these people coming in, that, you know, who knows what evil plans they have in their minds now, too, you know. Do you feel like this was additionally sort of like hurtful or traumatic to you because you had military experience?

You know, you love America. You've worked for the U.S. government. Yeah. Like I said, it did, I mean, especially because he hit the Pentagon. And that was just, you know, like I said, it just kind of, it tied my military and my airline experience together. other in that, you know, and the training all into one thing. It's like, you know, yeah, it was, but yeah, it's definitely, I mean, of course, I love this country and I, and I, and I hated to see all that happen and I, I don't like the, you know, what's come of it.

You know, I understand it. It doesn't mean I, I enjoy it or appreciate it, but I mean, I appreciate that it's, they're, they're making an effort to prevent something like that from happening again, but all that means is they're going to find another way to do something. Yeah, unfortunately. Now, there's all these wild conspiracy theories that obviously surround 9-11. People look at, you know, the footage from the Pentagon airplane. And they, some people say, oh, it was a missile, oh, it was a drone. I mean, in your experience as an airline pilot, how confident are you that that was an aircraft? Oh, no, it was an aircraft. Yeah. And I've had, I had a friend of mine that, you know, was trying to say, oh, 9-11 was a, you know, a setup and all that. And it's like, oh, yeah, see, there's an extraordinary. explosions here and all. It's like, no. You know, if you really study and look at it, you know, well, how did the building collapse like that?

Well, because, you know, they've got people in there that show that the heat of the jet fuel was enough to melt the girders. And once it melted the girders in one floor and it pancakes, then it starts a chain reaction. You know, it's just like that the bridge that got hit. Yeah, Baltimore. You hit one pier and that's the hinge pin and that whole bridge just collapses, you know, in a matter of seconds. Well, that's the same thing happening. You know, one floor collapses on top of the other one. That weight is enough then to collapse the one below it.

And then it just pancakes all the way down. So, yeah, I mean, it was, it was, I had a buddy that did the aftermath. He was a firefighter in San Diego and got called out to 9-11 to do the 9-11, you know, rescue and recovery. And he's paying for it now with some health issues. But, you know, so, yeah, it was, it was what it was. I mean, there were people that think the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy or whatever. And, you know, I have researched that enough to know. And I've seen some good things that show how, you know, the misinterpretation of some of that data.

It was just like, yeah, you're not reading it correctly. Right. Yeah. And I guess, you know, people that say, oh, it wasn't an aircraft that hit the Pentagon. It was a missile or something. Where did the missile come from? Yeah. Yeah. And then on top of that, there was a guy that you trained that was suspicious that you never saw again.

Yeah. That was linked to the event. Right. And I guess they would have had to have planted that person also. Exactly. Yeah. I have no doubt that it was it was not any sort of conspiracy or anything except on their part. I mean, it was not. Yeah, it was a conspiracy to attack America. It was a conspiracy to attack America.

They laid out a plan and unfortunately executed it. well enough to succeed. Wow. Have you ever heard of anything happening afterwards, any of the people in the flight community that you know of where, you know, there was an attempt to try to hijack another plane or other terrorists trying to do a copycat attack

that then were reported, that then were reprimanded? No, I've not heard of anything else. You know, like I said, the training issue was cut off with all the requirements now for validating who is going through training and that kind of stuff. The security of the flight deck has, has, you know, pretty much made bulletproof.

So there's not really, I mean, I don't see any way that something anywhere similar to that could happen now. Like I said, it's going to have to be a totally different, you know, idea of some sort. Sure. And then after your interview and interaction with the FBI agent that reached out to you, and your inclusion into the 9-11 commission, was there any other follow-up

or any other, you know, experience that you had with this specific event since that date, I imagine was probably like 2002. No, no, nothing I've heard from since. And then how many years went by? I know you told your kids, maybe after like 10 years, but how long until you were comfortable

kind of telling people? Like I said, there were probably two or three pilots or close friends that I had told at some point. up until about 2017. And then we had a big family reunion in 2017. And that's when I told my extended family, my brothers and my sisters and,

and, and, you know, cousins and that kind of stuff, relatives. Wow. Before that, like said,

I just, I hadn't, I hadn't bothered to, you know, it was just, it was just too close. And like I said, that was,

by that time, I'd been to the 9-11 Memorial and, you know, kind of made my peace about it and, and stuff. They had, I told you they had the Federal Flight Deck Officer program that they initiated after 9-11. And I wanted to do that.

And yet by the same token, I delayed doing it just because of, like I said, the way I felt at the time. And I waited a couple years and said, well, I'll give it a couple years before I'm ready to do that. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to do it, they had stopped the program. I applied once when they said they were getting ready to restart it, and they ended up not, they had enough volunteers or whatever that I didn't get called, and so I never had the opportunity to get into it again and do it. But yeah, I was just, you know, like I said, I didn't just, it was just that weird feeling that I was like, I don't know if I was ready to do that or not.

I was just, you know, I wanted to and my military background said, yeah, I should do it. But by the same token, I just didn't, you know, I didn't know if I was ready to jump that thing yet. I didn't know if I was right, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's such a visceral moment in U.S. history. Yeah. Do you ever get mixed reactions when you tell people like, yeah, you know, I trained one of the hijackers? Just kind of the surprise. Like, no, not really.

And it's like, yeah, I did. You know, they just kind of, at first I think you're just joking. and it's like, no, I did, and that's, you know. But no one's ever gotten angry or try to confront you about it? No. Hmm. Yeah, it's just, it's such an unfortunate event that you just happened to be the person running the simulator at the time, running the ground school at the time. Yeah, it was just, I happen to have those days off.

And so I said, hey, I'll teach. And they, you know, yeah, it was just a coincidence. Do you think you have any residual, you know, trauma? of from that experience today? No, no, I've, like I said, I've made my peace with it now and understand that, you know, it just, it is, it is what it is. It happened. I was part of it, but it was not, again, we didn't do anything wrong.

We did everything we could to elevate it to the proper authorities and it didn't happen, but, you know, we were such a small part of it that, you know, even if they had said, hey, this guy's out to do something nefarious, they take him off the street and arrest him or whatever. There's still 18 other guys out there that could have done it and pulled it off. You know, there may have been three airplanes instead of four or something. Yeah. Or they would have gotten another pilot to do that airplane. Yeah. Yeah. There's no shortage of terrorists in the world, unfortunately.

And so I'm sure if, you know, that person or 10 of those people got clipped, you know, could they have replaced them within, you know, two years and delayed? Yeah, yeah. It just had it in their mind. They were going to do that and they had the patience enough to do it. So again, there's there are things going on now that they're planning, I'm sure. And as, as people have said, you know, they only have to be right once. We have to be right 100% of the time to prevent it. So that's, that's the unfortunate reality. Wow. And how many years in total have you been a commercial pilot? I started in 99. So, and then, well, like I said, they retired me, fired me because I hit age 65 in 21. So, uh, I started. So, uh, I started. So, uh,

I guess I did it for 23 years. I've been able to, since I'm 65, I can't fly passengers commercially, but I can still fly empty airplanes. So I've ferried some airplanes around the world and stuff, do that, which is fun, be able to still get to fly. Interesting. While I have you, I'd love to ask you a couple commercial airline questions. Sure.

So 23 years of commercial flight experience. What's the scariest thing that ever happened to while you were flying an aircraft? You know, nothing is really scary because you, you know, you know, nothing is really scary because you, you train for it. The, you know, if I lost an engine, it would, I would do it just like I do in training. You know, that's why you trained for. You lost an engine before? No, I haven't.

I'm saying, but in the simulator, we do. And so I'm saying. So for me to lose an engine, it would be a non-event, you know. It just, it's like the, I, we had a, I guess the worst thing I ever had was we lost a couple of our, um, IRs, which is the inertial reference systems. You have three on the airplane. And we lost two of them. of them. And so it took away some of our screens. And so it was my takeoff. So we're taking off

out of Newark. And when I rotated, you know, you're looking outside as you're going down the runway. And as soon as you rotate, you look inside to kind of make sure you're going to the right pitch attitude. And I look inside and my screens are dead because we've lost these two IRAs. So I had to look over and fly cross cockpit, which you're trained. to do, I've trained to do that in the military, you know. The first thing you do, if you recognize your instruments are bad, you've got another set of instruments just right over there. So you're looking at the other instruments.

If both of them fail, you've got a standby instrument. So there are things you, you know, like said, you just know what to do and do them. So anyway, and of course, shortly after we lift off, as soon as you get the gear up, all of a sudden these bells and whistles start going off to tell you that, hey, you've lost these systems. Well, I knew it because I'm looking at it, but I'm flying the airplane. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And so the captain's over there going, oh, now, and we have a computerized thing.

It's called the e-cam, the engine condition of monitoring system. And it says, hey, you know, this failed, this failed, whatever. And it runs you through some steps to try to recover it and turn off computers and turn them back on trying to get it. So he's over there, you know, with his hands full, going through the checklist and trying to figure out what's wrong and all that. And I'm flying the airplane. And we're talking about it when, you know, I'm talking to ATC or he's.

He's talking to ATC and trying to do everything. And we get up to 10,000 feet. And he's finally at a point where he's kind of gone through all these checklists and all. And he looks over at me and he sees me looking across cockpit at his flight instrument. He says, why are you looking over here? And I said, because I got nothing in front of me. And that's the first time he realized that I've lost my screens. Oh, wow.

So I'm doing this all across cockpit. And he's, you know. And so we talked about what are we going to do. And we determined that the weather was good enough to go all the way across country because it was like severe, clear over the entire, you know, we took off out of New Jersey. And in the airlines, if you have a problem, there's a couple decisions you have to make.

What are we going to do? Where are we going to go? Well, we had just taken off max weight, basically, out of Newark. So to go back there, we're either going to have to orbit for a long time and burn down fuel to get below our max landing weight unless it was a fire or something. If it was a fire, you know, we'd land overweight and... Ah, that's interesting. Yeah, there's... So it's to be below a certain weight to land.

Yeah. So you have to burn enough fuel. Yeah, there's a max landing weight. Now, if you land above that, you have an overweight landing checklist that you would run... Again, everything's done with checklist. Sure. So you'd run through this checklist. That's an emergency situation.

Yeah, it's an emergency situation. and you use your emergency authority to say, it's safer for me to land this airplane overweight than it is to orbit. If the airplane's on fire, you get on the ground as soon as possible. But in our case, we're looking at it going, the airplane's perfectly flyable. We've lost some computers. We've lost some navigation, you know, capability.

But at that point, we're basically a big Cessna 172. We could fly from VOR to VOR across country if we had to, as long as it's severe clearer. Now, if there were thunderstorms and all that, we might have made a different decision and all that. But it's severe, clear going across the country. So we proceeded and we said, well, and at the time Columbus was one of our mini hubs. It wasn't a full hub, but it was a mini hub.

And so we said, well, we might as well keep going there. So we're talking to maintenance control and dispatch and everything and saying, hey, here's what we got. We couldn't do anything to fix it in the air. It was an unrecoverable thing, but we said, we're okay to keep going. So we went home and landed. and then there were some questions after we landed that, you know, the captain told me later. He said, you know, well, you flew that airplane across, you know, all the way across the country. You shouldn't have been.

You should have landed. And it's like, no, no. So to make a long story short, they called up Airbus, you know, the powers that be at our airline and said, hey, well, these guys, you know, how can they do that? And Airbus goes, why? There's nothing wrong with it. The airplane was fine, you know. So they validated our decision that we were okay to. to come across the country.

So landing without screens was fun? Well, yeah. The captain still had his. So he did the landing, but landings are visual anyway. I mean, you don't, again, it's a Cessna 117 to do. There are airplanes out there that you can fly with basic instruments only. You don't even need, you know, you don't even need anything but an ADI and stuff. Well, like said, and had push come to shove, I could land it across cockpit, too, because

you're using that to get down, but once you get close to the ground, you took out land visually. Interesting. If you fly an ILS approach, you got to, you know, the minimums for an ILS approach is 200-foot ceiling. So at 200 feet, you should be able to see the runway. At that point, it's a visual maneuver. You don't, you're not even have to look inside. Yeah, you're looking outside and doing everything.

So now, the airplane can also land with zero visibility, or basically zero. I've had two auto lands in my career. And what happens there? The airplane lands itself. You do, you program the computers. you have to have certain parameters met and all the equipment has to be operating correctly.

And you have all sorts of situations where if anything fails, you get an auto land light that flashes red that says, hey, you can't land. But otherwise, you set it up, you can program everything in. And the only thing you do is at

50 feet, that's your last chance to say everything's operating perfectly and the airplane will do it itself. Or if you get the auto land light, or anything, you'd go around. But at 50 feet, it's just the alert that says, hey, the airplane's getting ready to do its thing. And at 40 feet, it starts raising the nose a little bit.

And at 30 feet, the power comes back. And it tells you to pull the thrust levers back. Even if you don't pull them back, the power comes back. But then you pull it back so that it stays there. And then it lands and it stays on centerline. You can have the auto brakes on. It would auto break itself. And how are the landings?

They're firm, but, but acceptable. And why don't, why don't, why don't, why don't you all just always auto land? Because you need to know how to do it if the system doesn't work. Sure, you know how to do it. But if I'm you, I'm just be like, yo, let this thing auto land the whole time. I look at it and go, I'd rather do the landing myself. I know the airplane can do it.

I like to do it. I like, you know, I'd like to make it a nice, smooth landing. And, and just, it's, you know, it's a big video game. I get my quarters worth, you know, I put it in. I want to hand fly the airplane if I can, because I know the airplane can do it. And they, you know. Wow. You ever, you ever had an unruly passenger in how to turn around? Not, not turn around or anything, but we've had, I've had to, well, seeing, that's the thing, too. You know, back in the day, you'd go back and, and you'd, you know, discuss it with somebody or something necessarily.

And the captain would go out of the cockpit. Now it's like, no, we don't leave the cockpit because it could be a ruse to get you out of the cockpit. But has that happened back in the day? You went back there and you were like, hey. Yeah, you know, and most of the time it was, it was pre-flight or whatever. you know, that settle the situation. You had to go talk to someone? Yeah. And what happened? Yeah, just, you know, you straighten it out and kind of console them and...

Was like a drunk guy? Reason them. Yeah. Well, and I did have one flight from JFK to Vegas where we had some unruly passengers that were creating. And I think on that flight we may have made the threat that folks, if we can't get people to quiet down, we're going to have to divert to somewhere and land. Do you know why they were unruly? They were going out for bachelor parties and stuff, and they were drinking.

They were imbibing in alcohol that they had brought on board because we don't sell fifths of wild turkey on the airplane. And afterwards, we're cleaning up the cabin and the flight attendants. We were back there helping them. And they found a couple of fists of wild turkey empty. They found cans of beer that we didn't sell on the airplane and stuff. Wow. And that was the one, Reggie Jackson was on that flight. Reggie Jackson?

He was sitting up in first class. And that's the same flight. And because some of these people, you know, I'm sure a lot of them have been drinking before they even got on the airplane. And he didn't do what a typical, you know, most celebrities or whatever when they get on the airplane, they'll either board laid or they'll get on the airplane and, you know, put their hat down or put their newspaper up so they couldn't be seen or whatever. Well, he's just sitting there playing his day and everybody's coming, oh, Reggie, you know, and he's getting tired of it. And he got mouthy and he was not a great passenger. He got pissed off and he was like, oh, this is the worst flight I ever been on when he got off the airplane.

And it's like, well, it's your own damn fall. You know, because people were coming up, you know, trying to get autographs from and all that. It's like, well, if you don't want the autographs, then hide yourself. Yeah, put your hood up. Yeah, put your hood up. Put your newspaper up and stuff. So he didn't help himself. And like I said, and then he got pissed at us.

Well, because they're back there drinking and carrying on and carousing and stuff. And he made his presence known. So they, that just made, you know, threw fire on the, or gas on the fly. What's up, people? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you about an amazing sponsor. The sponsor needs no introduction. You've seen the ads. You've heard us talk about it a million times. And I bet there's a big part of you, pun intended, that wants to try it. What am I talking about? I'm talking about Blu-chew. That's right. This is not your grandpa's blue pill. This is the one, the OG chewable tablet for better lovemaking. That's right. Bluechew is a unique online service that delivers the same active ingredients you'd find in like Viagra, Seattleis, all this stuff.

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I don't know. I've met Sugar Ray Leonard. I met John Cleese, Axel Rose. Did you ever get an autograph? Did you want to go back as the captain? You're not supposed to go get autographs or whatever. But you were probably excited. As the captain, you were like, hey, nice to meet you.

Yeah, it's nice. Oh, I went back one time. Jeffrey Epstein. No, in Vegas. Prennial name in Vegas. Magician? Who is he? No, an actor, an old actor.

He's got a place in Vegas? Maybe I'll think of it in a minute. Anyway, he had just gotten a new, this was back when they had like the new video players or whatever and I saw it and I happened to have the his was I had the jukebox version of it he had the video version of it

so I was back there talking to him and all that and oh I the other guy I met was the guy that played Hercules Oh I know who you're talking about Anyway he was up in first class I saw his kids and whatever and I was back there just chatting with him a little bit

and and went back like said We helped the flight tents clean up and stuff. And I found his kids a little car and all. It was the last flight of our day. I was ready to go home. It was landing fees. Jason or Sorbo, Kevin Sorbo. Yeah.

And so I took the chance. I grabbed the car and instead of going straight to my car, I ran downstairs to a baggage claim. And I saw them there, you know, they were collecting their bag and they said, hey, your son left this, whatever. Oh, that's cool. You appreciated that.

You ever have a medical emergency? Someone died? Oh, yeah. I've had a number of medical emergency. And it's typically, they don't do it anymore. Now you do everything. They have a way for the medical people to answer the phone or talk to the ground, what we call MedLink.

They don't let them in the cockpit anymore. In the old days, and even after 9-11 for a while, they were doing it, I think. But now they don't do it anymore. The nurse or whatever, if you had a nurse on board or doctor on board, You have them come into the cockpit and they could relay the information to. Now they do it via form and they fill out in the back. They slide it under the door and we relay it back and forth. And what happened?

Do you remember any of the specific instances? No, like I said, some of them are just somebody having shallow breathing or whatever. And so they're, you know, it's like, is it a heart attack or not? And so they have a contract with MedLink that those people make the decision. They have doctors on the ground that you provide them all this information, and they make the decision, should you divert or not, should you, you know, or can you continue? And a lot of times it was just, turns out, you know, it was the person hadn't eaten a meal or whatever and they'd consume too much alcohol or they'd miss some of their medication. Too many weed gummies. Yeah.

or they'd missed a medication or something and we're having a reaction. But no, I've never had anything. Well, I did have one where after we landed, everybody's off the airplane. There's a guy still sitting in a seat and the flight attention was trying to wake him up, couldn't get him to wake up. And he was severely drunk and passed out or I don't know if he was high on something other than just alcohol or whatever. But he was out of it, you know, and ended up basically, I think, having to get somebody to come, you know, know, shake him enough to wake him up and carry him off the airplane.

You ever heard of someone dying on a plane? Well, technically nobody ever dies on the airplane because they, there's nobody on board to pronounce them dead. Oh, wow. So I've heard some cases where, you know, somebody died and they basically just ignore them. And then after everybody gets off, then they call, you know, medical authorities to come remove the airplane.

I mean, that's what I would do. Yeah. If I'm sitting there and someone dies next to me. I'm like, hey, I'm making this flight. We're getting to where we're going. All right, I'm not saying a word. Are you crazy? But, I mean, it's one of those that there's nothing you can do for them.

If they're already dead, there's nothing you can do for them. I would maybe trade seats with them. You know, I mean, if they have a windows seat. Yeah. Well, I don't want to move their body. But you don't get to keep the window seats if you're dead. You know what I mean? You don't even get to enjoy it, right?

I would immediately switch. Like, let me get the view. Yeah, yeah. But I'm trying to think there have been a couple cases where we've had somebody, you know, had to go off the airplane. So in those situations, you'd tell everybody to remain seated, you know, and let the medical personnel come on first. They'd come on with an auctioned bottle or something, and then they'd get them off the airplane. Wow. So, yeah, different. Interesting. Sometimes if we're running late on a flight, okay? And like we're late to, you know, take off.

The captain will come on and be like, ladies gentlemen, we're taking off 30 minutes late, but we're going to make up that time in the air. The hell does that mean? Well, the winds are better than projected. There's a few shortcuts you can take sometimes. You can get direct. That usually won't save that much time. But a lot of it is just the way the airline schedule things, you know, is like a five-hour flight is five hours in the air.

Well, I take it back. The airline will say, you know, it's six hours from Phoenix to New York. But 30 minutes of that is sitting on the ground. to from pushback, because they start the clock at pushback, to get out to the runway because you get out there and you're number 20 in line. And so you've got time on the ground. Well, if you're 30 minutes late, they have this bank of airplanes that go out at the same time. If you're 30 minutes late, you go out and there's nobody there.

You're number one in line. So you only take five to seven minutes to taxi. So you've already saved, you know, 20, 25 minutes there. And same thing on the other end. If you're getting there, I mean, if you have some good wins, or you can speed up a little bit. You can add an extra, you know, instead of flying at 0.7 or 7.8, or 7.8, you can fly at like 0.8 or 8-1 mock, which is, it may save you five or 10 minutes, you know, depending on how long the flight is.

And so there's a few things you can do, but it's basically that, I mean, there are times when we would land 30 minutes early and then have to wait for a gate and still block in late, you know. So the airlines have those schedules padded enough. that you're going to make up time on the front end and the back end. They have a 20-minute taxi on the inbound leg, and you go, yeah, usually it only takes five or ten. I just want to tell the pilot, like, hey, let's just make up the time every time. Yeah. You know what I mean? You can't.

Yeah. Bang. All right, which airport sucks the most? Depends on what you're talking about. I think Phoenix is a lousy one for traffic getting to and from the airport. The roads laid out there are just abysmal there and after-earth. thought. Fair. What about flying into? But flying into, Boston's kind of a strange one because they have, it's a triangular pattern of runways, you know, three. And so if they're using two

sets of runways, you're crossing, you know, have crossing traffic. And so it's just more of a challenge for ATC to get airplanes in. And you're, you know, you've got a little more risk of, you know, if somebody's taken off on that runway, it intersects with your runway. And so there's just more, you know, variables. Variables and hot spots, if you will, we call them. Do you get to pick your co-pilot? No, no. So what if you get paired up with someone that sucks?

Well, there's a couple of things you can do with that. Number one, you can ask to be removed from the trip or whatever, and it depends on the airline and what rules they have. In some case, you just, you know, I've heard a captain saying, okay, you're off the trip. You know, the guy does something and the captain says, okay, you're done. I'll call scheduling. and get a replacement for you when we get to the next. What if they're just annoying? They just keep talking about their wife nonstop.

It's like, we get it. You just, yeah. I mean, if you're the captain, you have a little more authority to say, okay, I don't want to hear any more of that, you know. Oh, really? Have you shut someone down one time? No, I'm, like I said, I'm a very personal. I can get along with anybody for four days. There was one guy we had that, that everybody, nobody really liked to fly with him.

He was just, he was always gruff and snarly and stuff and all that. but he just had kind of a dark sense of humor or whatever a little bit. And I got along with him fine. I didn't let him push my buttons, you know. And I actually got to go, he called me up the night before. I'd flown with him once or twice before, and he calls me up one night and says, hey, I just got called by the chief pilot. We're going to be doing the, we were going to be in L.A.,

I mean in New York for a long layover, said, and it was the day we were getting, can't remember if we were, we were doing the close. closing bell on Wall Street, the CEO was or whatever, for something. I can't remember what specifically it was now. Because the CEO's done it a couple times for different reasons. But it was one of the mergers or something, I think, or the when we bought, maybe when we bought U.S. Airways. And he called me up and said, hey, I was going to get out of this trip.

I was going to call in sick for it. But they said we're supposed to do this stock exchange thing. They wanted the crew up there standing with the CEO and the VP and all that. And he said, but then I was talking to my neighbor, and he's a stockbroker. And he said, oh, that's a really big deal to do the closing bell thing also. And so, like I said, I had a good time with him the whole time. And I just never let him push me around. But other guys, you know, just.

And like I said, I think he just, he had a hard attitude. But I can get along with just about anybody. You ever said something on the intercom that you shouldn't have said? Or ever you heard someone say something? you're like, hey, man, you're on a hot mic, granted. You shouldn't have said that. No, there are a few cases you hear where somebody, the buttons, if you push them in the wrong way, there are people that on the ATC frequency have said, ladies and gentlemen, on your left is the, you know,

the Statue of Liberty or whatever, because they're pushing the wrong button. But no, I don't think I've ever said anything. I regret it or whatever. Like I said, I didn't talk a lot. I mean, there's some of these guys, hell, the other day coming out here, we had a guy that was talked for, it seemed like 10 minutes, he was yacking on and on and on. Some of these guys are yappers, huh? And people, yeah, and I got to the point where I think most people don't pay attention to it.

I mean, most people fly enough that's like, just leave me alone, you know. I told them the basics, you know, we're playing on an on-time arrival or whatever, and I don't get, you know, and even the weather. It's like nowadays, people know how to check the weather on their phone. You don't need to give them, you know, all the detailed, you know, well, it's going to be raining in JFK when we get there. Well, they know that, you know, because they planned ahead and they looked at the weather on Google. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I know you're a good man.

Yeah. But I'm sure a lot of these pilots are out here, you know. They're philanderers. Tell me, are a lot of these pilots cheating? Be honest. Oh, there are a fair amount. I don't know if it's a lot. I mean, I had a buddy that used to tell me about something.

He flew the African. a lot. They do some of the countries in Africa and stuff. And they'd be over there for like 36, you know, 48-hour layovers for the long trips because you, it was such a long flight and you had to get your body acclimated and then be ready to come back and all. So they'd have a really long layers. And he would tell me stories about how they'd get there and they'd designate one of the, one of the rooms as the party room that everybody go to. And, and then, you know, and then somebody else, you know, some, a couple people would double up so that that room could be used it's a party room and so and yeah they and uh meet a flight attendant yeah well yeah well he and and

he um was dating a flight attendant although he was married and uh no way yeah and he had the audacity to his wife apparently planned a 60th i think was 50th or 60th i can't remember birthday party for him. And his flight attendant girlfriend showed up. Now, not as his girlfriend. As a co-worker. But just, yeah, just as a coworker. Oh, this guy's a dog.

Yeah, he was, yeah. This guy's a dog. But it was, she was in the kitchen helping or whatever. And apparently she made enough remarks about having done this or having been there, whatever, that the wife put two and two together. She caught him? And, yeah. No way.

I mean, that's what you get, dude. What an idiot. Oh, I know, yeah. Well, you know, I grew up with some of the movies. You probably saying them, too, where the pilot has a family on the East Coast and the family on the West Coast. I'm going, how the hell is that possible? You know, well, when I became the airline pilot, I was like, well, yeah, I can kind of see it happening. I mean, I can't imagine having to juggle that and do it.

Yeah, I just, I can't imagine something like that. Yikes. I mean, have you ever met a pilot that, like, drank before a flight? Well, we had a famous couple of pilots that did that back in fact. In fact, I was up at my brother's cabin one time, we had a little family reunion, and I come downstairs and it's like, ah, see your, a couple of your pilots got busted for drinking, the ones down in Florida. Oh, really?

Remember that? No. Oh, yeah. Hey, what's up, guys? Sorry to interrupt this amazing program, but I need a little bit of help. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can probably see our subscriber number right down here. And if you're able to, it would mean the world if you could subscribe. That is the best way to support this show, because when you subscribe, I'm able to show it to potential

guests or to different brands and stuff like that. And it really, really helps grow the show, get us cooler guests, have cooler conversations, and it helps everything so, so much. So if you don't mind, thank you so much. Let's get back to it. Back in like 2004 or something, I think. And it was, it was, it was a thing that they got, they got hammered hard because they said they were, they, they claimed, they called it DUI. And the pilots tried to argue that, well, they, they weren't actually driving because the tug was pushing them back and they got stopped before they started taxing. That's hilarious.

That guy was driving. Yeah, that guy was driving. Yeah, we were just in the passenger seat. We were just hammered on the plane. We didn't know what was going on. But, yeah, I mean, there are cases of guys that, you know, push it too far. You know, I never pushed it that hard at all. I had to have, you know, the minimum was 12 hours drinking prior.

And if I didn't have 18 hours, I wasn't going to have a drink. Wow. And then it just won or whatever. Now, I'm one of these guys, I'll be honest. There's some people, when they see a female pilot, a woman pilot, they'll be like, oh, man, I feel less safe. I'm one of these people. I feel more safe. Oh, yeah.

Because I think if a woman became a pilot, she had to go through so much shit. She has to deal with all these scumbag guys. She's probably the best pilot on the whole fleet. Well, I wouldn't say the best, but I mean, yeah. I mean, but no, but they're very good pilots. I mean, I've flown with a lot of female pilots and female first officers. I mean, captains and first officers are what? whatever. And I, yeah, there were none. There were, um, there weren't anybody, there was nobody

that I thought that was unsafe or anything like that. There were, like I said, there were, there were some people that was like, yeah, if I don't have to fly another trip with this guy, it was, that's okay, you know, and you could avoid it. And depend on what system your airline has, you can, um, you know, you can just try to avoid that person on your trip. You could put on there, uh, we had what was called a no fly list. So you could say, I don't want to fly with captain, XYZ. Oh, they would honor it. And they would honor it to a degree.

And I can't remember, like said, it's too long ago. They, who, like if the captain said, he didn't want to fly with a first officer, then the first officer would keep the trip and then they would assign the captain a different trip. But if a first officer said he didn't want to fly with a captain, then they just wouldn't pair him with him. I think they ran the captains first and then the first officer or whatever. So they would, so, you know, if the captain said it, well, they already ran his schedule. So if the first officer, if the first officer had a no-fly, they just wouldn't fly in

with him. But it was the captain had a, I don't remember. I'm talking to myself in a circle, but they had ways to deal with it. They had a hierarchy. Hierarchy of who got priority and all that. Wow. You ever heard of this guy, the Sky King? This became a meme a few years ago.

There was this guy up in like Washington, I think, that hide, that he, He didn't hijack the plane, or I guess he kind of did. I think he was working as like a ground. Oh, was that the ground guy that took the airplane out in Portland or Seattle? Yeah, yeah, and he crashed into an island. Yeah. You heard about this? Oh, yeah.

This is a crazy story. Yeah. This guy basically tugged it out himself, jumped in it while it was rolling. Yeah. Somehow figured out how to flick everything on. Well, ground personnel, if he's a mechanic, they know how to do engine runs. Wow. They're trained to do engine runs.

And taken off an airplane's not hard. It's the landing that's the hard part. Yeah, he didn't do that part that way. No, he didn't do that. But apparently he did some crazy maneuvers. Oh, yeah. Did you hear his comms? Like, have you heard the clips?

I think I've heard parts of it. Where he's like, yeah, you know, just going through a lot right now. Just wanted to take this thing out for a spin. Yeah. He apparently did like a loop-de-loop. Oh, yeah. In a barrel roll, I think. A giant aircraft.

Oh, yeah. And like, I think like the air traffic guys were like, we've never seen. Yeah. We didn't know this airplane could do that. Yeah. Well, there's a couple interesting sides. stories I can tell you on that. Number one, the Boeing 707, when it was first developed, the airplane that it was developed on was called the dash 80. That was Boeing's test model.

And they were trying to sell it to the Air Force. And the test pilot on the proving run, the day that the Air Force was out there to observe it, came out in the dash one, I mean in the dash 80 and did a barrel roll over Puget Sound. Wow. They have a picture. I've seen, I think there's a video of it too, but there's a famous picture of it upside down. That's what convinced the Air Force to buy the airplane. They said, if it'll do that, we'll take it.

And that's a big aircraft. Yeah. Wow. Wow. And the little fact that people don't know is that dash 80 birth the 707 and the military version, which was the Boeing 717. Everybody says the new, they've got a two-engine airplane they now call the 7-17. It's really just a McDonnell-Douglas airplane. It's a twin engine that they said when they merged with McDonnell-Douglas.

They said, well, we'll call that the 7-17. It's not the 7-17. The KC-135 aircraft airplane is the true Boeing model 7-17. Wow. Yeah. If you don't believe me, when you climb up the ladder into the airplane, it says Boeing model 717 right on the airplane. Stanton, there's a riveted plate there shows it. You heard about this Boeing whistleblower that killed himself?

Well, yeah, I don't know what to think about that. It seems very suspicious for sure, but I don't know enough of the story to know. It just, it seems, you know, I mean, from what I heard, he said, yeah, I'm not going to kill myself. And then he does the day before the last day of testimony. It just, something sounds weird, fishy with it. But, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to say anything because I don't have a knowledge or experience about it. I'm not going to say anything because I don't want to kill myself.

All right? Yeah, exactly. I agree with Boeing. I think Bowen's doing nothing wrong. Okay? Whatever, whatever they say, I don't know if they're not doing anything wrong. I think they've got some management problems and some, some, like I said, you know, the people building the airplanes and the people working on the airplanes should be doing the same thing pilots are.

There's checklists for doing everything. There's tech orders that say, here's how you do this procedure. And if you don't follow it, you know, you're supposed to, you're supposed to follow it to the letter. and you get it signed off. You sign it off and then your supervisor comes and checks, you know, double checks and signs it off. You're supposed to be doing things by the book, you know. So if you're cutting corners, you know, and there's stories that maybe they're doing that,

I don't know. You know, the, how do you miss putting bolts into an airplane door that should have them in there, you know, so somebody somewhere screwed up. And that's just like, you know, I mean, doctors have now gotten to the point where they're, they've adopted some of the pilot, you know, checklist or whatever to make sure they don't screw up in operations and stuff. You know, I mean, back in the day, you know, they use, they leave, you know, lap pads and equipment inside people.

And it's like, oh, shit. Oh, we have to cut him open again and get this out. We forgot, you know. Yeah. But, you know, so they've got procedures in place. Now, again, it's, it's all in doing things by the book and trying to get it right. But I was going to bring up, if there's an interesting story on, have you ever read about the disgruntled FedEx pilot?

Oh, this is back in the seven. And he had gotten fired from FedEx, but he somehow had managed to hang on to his ID or whatever. And so he hats this plan to, he got a jump seat ride and was going to crash the airplane into the FedEx building. This is a cargo plane. A cargo plane, yeah. And it's a fascinating story. There's a Reader's Digest version of it. I cannot remember the name of it or whatever.

but they don't know how the captain or I can't remember if as a captain of the first officer. One of them got their head bashed in pretty severely was, and both of them did really, because whichever one of them landed the airplane, they couldn't even figure out how he had enough strength in his arm to land the airplane. It was, he mangled him that bad. He had like a hammer or a pipe ranch or something that he was beating the crap out of these people with. And they subdued him somehow? And, well, yeah, and it ended up, one of them ended up getting out of the seat and, and, and, and subduing him.

And, and then the other guy, like said, or ended up landing it with, and it's just, it's a crazy story. You have to read it. Wow. Yeah. I mean, shout out to FedEx. Dude, always getting your package on time. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that is just wild. But, yeah, if, you know, when you talk about hijackings, that was an internal, you know, and that's one of those, too. Well, and I don't know if you ever heard the story. there was a over in Europe, there was a German first officer in,

I don't know if it was Luthons or some other carrier. I don't remember which carrier it was, but he, the captain excused himself to go to the lav and he flew the airplane

into the ground. What? Yeah. Oh yeah, you didn't hear about that one? How? That was eight to ten years ago. What do you mean how?

He pushed the nose forward and that was it. Committed suicide with 150 people behind him or whatever. Oh, it was, it was a suicide. They think it was a suicide thing, yeah. What the fuck?

Yeah, there's some, I mean, and so now, I mean, again, procedures in place. When we go to use the lab, one of the flighties things comes into the cockpit to, but yeah, the old captain's banging on the door and trying to get back in, and the guy's talking nonsense. Again, I think nonsense on the radio and stuff. And, yeah, there's, I mean, yeah, that's why I say. Most of the mishaps nowadays are pilot error, not, or,

Or, you know, the mechanical error, yeah, bad actors. Mechanical error, you know, is with the exception of the things like Boeing or whatever, where it's, you know, they screw something up. But the mechanical errors are way down from what, you know, World War I, World War II. Yeah. More than half of your losses, air crew losses were training accidents. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, they were killing people left and right, you know, in training because they just didn't have the technology back then. They didn't have Sims and stuff to put people in through. So your first flights are in your airplane. And yeah, you screw it up. Yeah, you screw it up. What about this, the Malaysian Airlines flight? Do you know anything about that? I looked at it quite a bit or whatever.

I have no idea what happened. I mean, it's a mystery to me, too. I mean, you know, I heard everything from they were looking in, you know, when it went down, they were even looking in the wrong place. And so, I mean, there's some weird stuff going on. There was a, there was a famous thing. with that with an A-10 pilot years ago, too. Guy took off in an A-10, and they lost radar contact with him, and he was down in the

weeds or whatever, and he finally popped up a couple of places, and he ended up hitting the side of a mountain somewhere in Colorado. And again, they think it was suicide, but, you know, it just... Weird. You never seen anything weird up there? You never seen, like a military aircraft, and you're like, hey, what is that? Or ever... No, not really.

Something flying real fast by you? No. A little UFO situation? No UFOs type situations. No. Last question. Can't go down that rabbit hole. Is the earth flat?

Is there what? Is the earth flat? No, it's not flat. All right. Well, I guess we settled that one. Mac, thank you so much for coming on, brother. I really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing your story.

This was fascinating, brother. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Let's talk soon. Okay.