Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 195: Alaska Airlines Flight 261

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

those pesky screwjacks are at it again maya's gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-two-trans-women-get-a-fresh-start?attribution_id=sl:24e8b4ab-495b-4d1d-88a0-560dc51fa4dd&lang=en_US&ts=1773434182 and maya's internet webzone: https://mayawalkwith.me/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

a week or whatever. It's crazy. Well, this weekend I get to go to the Snoqualmie Railroad Museum because they, I posted so good they invited me. Oh, the thing to happen. I was, yeah, because I was on the show and I was like, oh yeah, I love them. They're awesome. Somebody reached out and was like, hey, you want to come check out the wrecked Algo dining car? And I was like, holy shit. That's cool. Hey, I don't know the guy who wrecked that. And then, uh, and then the next weekend is a friend's wedding.

And then the weekend after that, I get on an airplane and fly to Glasgow. Yes. Yes. I'm so excited. It's gonna be so good to see you. How do I... Oh, right. I gotta pause my torrent, sorry.

And we gotta-dammar. And we gotta sync up the audio as well, as the other thing we gotta do with like five of us. I'm so sorry, Devin. Ah, okay. We will keep adding transsexuals to the podcast until morale improves. Yeah, we're gonna become... Liam and I are going to become a minority. I mean, we are on minority.

I'm going to say, right now. Hold the fort. We're being oppressed. Yeah, that's us, dude. I'm the most depressed person. Making, anyway, making all the money and not having a real job. You have a real job, just in addition to this.

That's true. Yeah. Oh, does Vicki want to clap her hand? I also, I, I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in solemn prayer right now that we'll learn how to count backwards from three. All right. I'm ready. I'm going to do three, two, one mark.

Everyone clap. That's three, two, one mark. Okay, good enough. I guess we're going to go to a podcast now. Okay. Yeah. Today. You don't introduce it.

What are you doing? Shit. Seizing the control. Back in your hovel. I've been doing my own podcast. And I keep forgetting that this is, I'm just, yeah, go ahead. My favorite bit of, well, there's your problem. Yeah, so this is when we have one that's like used to show running.

And they just like, like they try to field command and you can watch, you can hear the annoyance of Roz's voice grow and bro and bro and bro. I wanted to mention this because this is one of my favorite parts of the podcast is when, I mentioned this in the chat, but I'm going to mention it on the recording too. is when November suggests something extremely outlandish, which turns out to be real. Yeah, yeah, I love when that happens, and it keeps happening, and it's never on purpose. People think that I'm like scripting this bit, I'm not. I just think the things and then the lathe of heaven, you know?

Yeah. And Liam and I went to go visit the NS Savannah over the weekend, the nuclear ship. It's amazing. It looks like it just came off of sea trials. Everything is there. It fucks. It was so cool. Yeah. Yeah. If you're in Baltimore or around Baltimore, anywhere on the East Coast, and Savannah's website is up to date for dates that they're open.

Highly, highly, highly suggest you check it out. Yeah. Go get irradiated. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you have to go to the radiation measuring machine. Oh, hell. You have to stick your hand in the box like in Dune.

Yeah. And so anyway, one of the things November mentioned in our episode on Anna Savannah was, oh, you know, I assume the egg fryer is hooked up to the secondary steam loop from the reactor. No. Guess what? Oh, my fucking gods. A whole damn kitchen runs on the secondary steam loop. They don't even do that on submarines. That's diabolical!

They have a Raytheon-made microwave. That was really cool. The radar range. Oh my God, just thinking about eating grits or something that make you feel like you've got a filling in, like, everything comes out, tasting kind of like metal. Yeah, no, this is, that's real cuisine. I took all those pictures and I'm like, I should have put like a little grain over all of them, you know? Just freak people out.

Yeah, it's like I went to see the NS Savannah and it killed three digital cameras. Yes. All right, anyway, yeah, go see NS Savannah while you still can. They're about to finally decommission the reactor properly and then no one knows what's going to happen to it. World's most expensive way of making a microwave not work anymore. We were talking to the guy, we were talking to the guy and he's like, yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing it after this. The radiation safety officer.

Yeah, the radiation safety officer was just like, I don't know what I do that after this. Hopefully I retired to sunny South Florida and like don't die of radiation exposure. I don't. A radiation safety officer beginning really any sentence with, I don't know what I'm doing. He's, no, he's the only guy who made a lot of money off the government shutdown and is really mad about it because he was planning to retire. and then the government shut down, then they had to delay decommissioning the reactor,

which meant he had to sit there for an extra couple months to make sure no one brought anything radioactive into the reactor because that's the stage they're at right now is there's no radiation in there, but there is a chance that someone brings radioactive material in there, in which case there's a lot of paperwork that has to happen. I call this one, the reverse Dirty Bob. Listen, sometimes you get hungry, you know?

Was I not supposed to eat acesium? Sorry, I forgot my pockets were full of Brazil nuts. So, anyway, welcome to, well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

I'm November Kelly. I'm the person who's talking now. My pronouns are she and her. Yay, Liam. Hey, Liam. Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson. My pronouns are he and him. Victoria, go. Hi, my name is Victoria Scott. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are she and her. We have a guest. We have a guest. Hello. My name is Maya Ventura. My pronouns are it and she. You probably know me from being on here previously. That's the only thing I have to introduce myself. Yes. And what we see on the screen in front of us is Denzel Washington. You give it a bugger. In the movie Flight, which is a great movie, which unironically makes the suggestion that drinking makes you a better pilot. Yeah, it narrows the world and you can focus better or whatever. Yeah.

He's more chill. Like the whole plot of it is like, actually the plane crash would have gone worse if he wasn't so limber. Mm-hmm. This actually does tie into one of my most deeply seated beliefs, which is that if you let me have like two drinks, I would turn a significant. significantly faster lap time in a race car. I think you should be allowed to test this under like controlled conditions.

Yeah, if MythBusters can do, surely we have the pull of MythBusters. So when I was, when I was still working as an auto journalist, I went to the Honda warehouse facility outside of the Indianapolis 500 where they have the enormous $2 million sim rig. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. You're telling you that Honda has a parallel version of the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yes. Yes. They have God Civic in there? Yeah, I've driven the number, the first CBCC they made in America, or they sold in America rather. That is so awkward.

The Nazis like do a bunch of incantations, open the door of the Camry and their faces start melting off. Camry is Toyota. I was gonna say. Camry got rid of all of, Toyota got rid of all their heritage cars because they're in Plano, Texas, and they're where good things go to die. And they make the Texas. Exist edition of the Tacoma, Yehaw, whip crack noise. They can't see this, but I can see this. I like to get car things wrong because you get a little twitch.

Me? I don't know what you're talking about. In any case, yeah. The M&BW stands for Mercedes. I fucking got you. Bavarian Mercedes Works, of course. Oh, an oxymoron, Mercedes Works. At a certain point, this becomes workplace bullying.

Yeah, well, you already went on the car show to talk about cars. Yeah, yeah, I did. We're doing the flight show. No, but in any case, they've got the warehouse with the big indie car sim in it. And I want them to let me have two beers and then drive it. Yeah. I think that's a reasonable thing that anybody... Yeah, well, the ideal thing is you ABC test this and you do like two beers, four beers,

six beers, eight beers, ten beers, you know, until they're like decanting you out of it. What's the Balmer peak of turning a... qualifying lap at the Indy 500. I recently saw the film Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans. Oh shit, yeah. And it taught me a lesson,

which is do a lot of drugs. That's generally good advice. I found. It will improve your life. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody. You play disco Elysium. I have not. No. I feel like you really should. Like, I think you'd enjoy it.

That would take away precious workers and resources of Soviet Republic time. That's a good point. That's, I deeply respect anyone who's like, I have one video game that I play. I'm back on fucking Snow Runner lately, which is news you should greet sort of roughly analogously to me saying, I've started doing heroin again. Just really bad idea. Like, I like to play it for a few hours and get like suicidally frustrated. just, you know, I love to like roll a truck down into a quarry and just think about different ways I could end things.

And that's relaxing to me. That's good. And I invest a lot of time in that. So, yeah, you know, I think this is... Have you tried having a beer first? Does it make you more effective at driving the trucks? I have. And it makes me have a better time, but a worse driver. Hmm. Yeah. Well, you're not like Denzel Washington in the 2012 film flight then. No, that's true. This is very true. I don't have a relationship with a cool John Goodman drug dealer for one. That's true. So obviously in the movie flight, which has a really good opening scene, the rest of the movie is kind of like a Denzel Washington movie your dad watches. It's pretty good. It's a good movie to watch standing up with your hands clas behind your back. Say you're not going to watch all of it, but you are. Basic cable film.

Yeah, it should be on TNT at 3 in the 3. afternoon. You should be watching it with commercial breaks. But the initial crash scene is Denzel has a sudden issue with the control yoke of his, I forget what they call it in the movie. It's total, oh, it's like an MD 88 or something or like an LD 88. It's like, you know, the gun licenses, you know. And like Donald muggless. We can certainly put that on a t-shirt. They can't sue us over that.

And the plane sinks towards the earth and he ends up having to fly it inverted and then he like clips at church and crashes and a couple of people die, but it's okay because he was drunk so he was pretty good at landing the plane. This scene is very loosely and I mean really loosely

based on the real world crash of Alaska Airlines flight 261, where everyone died and the pilots were sober. So defamatorily based on it. Yes. Did not hit any churches though, so that's... Well, in Alaska, you've got a lot of ground to cover, and if you do, decent chance, it's like a Russian stave church built in like the sort of early 19th century. Yeah, yeah, something devastatingly historic.

Part of why I wanted to do this episode was because obviously, like, Maya knows about airplanes, and I thought it'd be fun to do an episode of her. episode of her. But also, Alaska Airlines is more or less the state carrier for like the nascent Cascadian Republic because they're based out of CETAC and everybody here is more ride or die for this airline than you've ever encountered in your life. I book to travel on it literally yesterday while finishing this slide show actually. I mean, it's really great. There's there's like a cool like guy on the tail. The guy on the plane. Yeah. I don't know I don't care for that guy. I don't care for that guy. I don't like the guy.

They should. I don't like the color scheme either. That's horrifying. No, they, the thing is, is they also just acquired. What are you talking about? Listen, I've long accepted that like, I'm gonna be guillotined by the entirely transgender Cascadian People's Republic for like one or another of my many microaggressions, but I'd like to get a head of the line, you know?

Well, if you don't like the guy, they bought Hawaiian Airlines, so they got planes with girls. Okay. There you go. They also play's with nothing, which is... No, I like nothing. I like nothing a lot better, I think. Nothing's my preference. The new...

Me when I roll the truck into Aquarians and Smyra. The new livery is kind of juiceless, I think. But I think they should have made the Hawaiian girl and the Alaskan guy kiss, but that's just me. Yeah, hell yeah. That's the new... That's a straight cis thing, I thought. Yeah.

Kiss it? Yeah. Yeah. It's true. In any case, that's, yeah, that's what we're going to talk about today. So it's, it's a me and my episode. She did a lot. She did a lot of the work.

Let's be real here. You like to give me credit, but you also did a lot of the work. Oh, my God. We had a very good working process. All I did was put the safety third in. Well, done. I didn't need to. Hey, but you get to introduce the news.

The first thing we do, which is the goddamn news. Oh, yeah. 15, 16 seconds in it. Oh, yeah. I had to talk about the truck game I don't like. That's a great. That's a great. Kairon.

Yeah, so I'm making a liar out of Justin, because you know, in the ad you say that the only ad that they're gonna hear on the podcast is the ad. Yes. Well, that's not true anymore. There's also this ad, which is... There's a new ad. There's a new ad. It's just this one time.

I have started a fifth podcast because I have lost control of my life. It is called Be Gay Solve Crimes. It's me, former guest Mia Molder, and Lucy from Scotland. We talk about a different piece of detective fiction every week. We talk about why it's transgender. Why detective is kind of a transgender thing to be. It's really fun. We are gonna have the first bonus episode out probably end of this week, but the first

free episode, which is a 1945 Sherlock Holmes movie, which is just really inexplicably weird, is already out. You can find it wherever podcasts are sold or be gay, solve crimes. com. Thank you for your attention to this. Wow, look at you registering a domain for your podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Like, not like four years after the fact, yeah. Buddy, buddy. Can I just draw your attention to like how good that art is that we have though? That's my wife. My wife did that and it's very good. It's a little polarite. So yeah, check out the podcast. I have a lot of fun making it. I hope you're going to have a lot of

fun listening to it. I'm very excited. You have a Patreon as well, which is great because like, you know, everyone needs money because the economy is bad. So, you know, please consider this. Or any one of the other infinite podcasts that I do, like No Gods, No Mairs, or Trash Future, or Kill James Bond, or I'm probably missing one at this point. You're not. Okay, good. Well, I got you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. That's the item. Right. I have an ad as well. Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Noose.com next.

Oh, I do that is. You should listen to Victoria's podcast, TranGurlismo, because I was on it. It was a great time. I ruined it by talking for an hour about which cars were in the Epstein files. What in the fuck? No, that was not ruined. This past week's episode, we did like literally an hour of me explaining what shadow banking was.

Sick. Somebody called it, somebody called it gay John Oliver. I thought it was just John Oliver, but like, you know. What was the, horrifying? What was the, what was the, the luxury car Epstein wanted to import but couldn't? Toyota Century. Toyota Century. The Toyota Century.

That was, that was a damn good looking car, yeah. Yeah, he kind of had taste in cars. Like, we should, we should clarify immediately. Well, yeah, he couldn't, he couldn't import it on a lot. It's the most understressed engine they've ever built, anyone's ever built ever. Yeah. He couldn't have imported it as an antique. It would have been too old for him.

Jesus Christ. God's damn. Oh, God. Secretly, Jeffrey Epstein, car guy. Depressing. It's not really surprising, if you know, like, most car guys, I think. Yeah. You know other news.

Yeah, so, um... You like that one, huh? Yeah. So, yeah, shit is popping off in... Okay, okay, settle down. It's your own time you're wasting. So the most wanted drug lord in Mexico has been killed again. This is Nemesio Osegora Seantes, El Mensho, who is head of the Halisco New Generation,

a cartel. The Mexican army arrested him and then almost certainly murdered him in custody. Nobody cares that much because it was a piece of shit. He was... Transport to Mexico City, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and though, you know, I think the Americans like tried to take credit for it, which meant

that Shinebaum had to be like, no, this was us. We just had like... Intelligent sharing. Yeah. Yeah. But obviously... No, I did the extrajudicial killing. Fuck you!

Yeah. I can do it too, dad! Yeah. So the kind of institutional response from... from the cartels when you like killer arrest the big cartel guys to try and just do as much domestic terrorism as possible as a kind of like protest. Um, which meant like a lot of like stuff being set on fire, right? I saw, uh, something incredibly funny on Twitter or this guy or whichever.

That was a guy in the Marriott Bobboy subreddit getting really bad because in Puerto Vailata, I think I'm saying correctly. Quote Vayata, see. Yeah. They wouldn't give him late checkout. He's like, no, no. No one else is checking in. The city's under lockdown.

I can't leave. Give me late checkout. It is kind of fucked up that Marriott did just like kick a bunch of people out into a war zone. Even if admittedly like it fucks up a bunch of Americans vacations is not the sort of most salient consequence of this. I saw a Reddit post from somebody who was at an Airbnb in Pritho Vallarta. And the landlord Airbnb owner was referred to.

to let them extend that stay because it had been booked for the next day. So they were expected to go out. Yeah, go out in the sort of cartel war. Yes. Airbnb basically told him to go fuck himself, which was the, which was the most in-character part of the whole thing, I think. Yeah, yeah. So like, they set up for a bunch of stuff. I think they, like, injured a few, like, soldiers and stuff. And like, this has been across like eight states. And the weird thing is that it's sort of like extending into the tourist areas like Bratavaya and Guadalajara, most notably, which is where they're going to be holding part of the World Cup.

Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. So yeah. It's the city as large as we are. Austin and Philadelphia. Yeah. Mexico or Guadalajara, yeah.

Oh yeah. I want a cheese steak burrito and I assume tummy hurt and I'll just, I fucking love Mexico. Is I'm going to be in Mexico? Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. No, it's fine. I mean, the one thing I will say is never fucking trust an OSCE account, especially about Mexico ever, right?

Because you are going to see a bunch of cartel hype videos where it's guys in, like, airsoft vests with admittedly very expensive American traffic guns being like, we are the fucking, you know, Holisco cartel special forces and we have, like, anti-tank missiles. It's like, no, you don't. There's no evidence of this. But you see the same like five or six videos get posted again and again and again and again, again, right? And it's all bullshit, it's actively gonna like disinformed. Yeah, I, though I did read an article, I cannot remember where, that a lot of Mexican

cartel ammunition came from the United, like a United, a United 50 cow came from a government munitions plant. Yeah, Lake City, home of the quiet pills. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, this is absolutely, this is absolutely, absolutely true, right? I think there's sort of like a lot of interest here in like how much this is sort of Shinebaum's hand being forced to do the heavy handed thing. And, you know, it sort of remains an open question. And God only knows what this means in the sort of longer term or who's going to replace this guy, what this means for the other cartels. I think the guy replacing him was like fucking code name zero three because they were started giving themselves army style

codemames after Los Zetas. Basically, it's all bad. And I think the thing is, you're allowed to laugh at the guy who can't get late check out at the Marriott. Yes. What was the cartel called? Cartel Halisco Nueva Generation. Okay, yeah, I was about to say, because it does seem like the violence has been sort of a little more stayed, a little more tamped down, as evidenced by the next generation, as opposed to Alisco, the original series. God damn it. Yeah.

I'm icing for Halisco Voyager. Deep Space Helisco. Deep Space Helisco is, you know, that's on like an offshore platform. I am interested to see and, you know, where, because basically when the cartels, like if they splinter or if there's going to be sort of like a five families type of organization where like leadership is fully defined and we don't have a power struggle. Oh, they tried. I mean, they have absolutely tried. That's what Megalangell Felix guy. was doing.

And yeah, with sort of like a lot of higher level corruption. I mean, basically, like, who's to say? That's my official conclusion from this is who knows what the fuck. Yeah, I assume, I don't really know enough about, like, Mexico's politics, even though I probably should know more. The main thing is I assume anything that bad happens is just because of America, just as like a round about, you know, kind of like. That's not a bad kind of, yeah.

I saw a lot of people who I trust being like, I bet America was pushing for this. so I'll trust them. I could be wrong though. It sounds about right. But it does it does kind of like agree with my priors that like oh something has caused instability in a country south of America. I bet we had something to do with that. Oh yeah.

I mean they're definitely pushing for it. I mean one thing I will say is I kind of respect being a cop or a troop more in Mexico than the US on the basis that not that you're not a fascist or that you're not corrupt but at least you're playing with the difficulty turned up. You know? Right. these people are choosing back sometime. But yeah, that's, that's my conclusion from this.

Yeah, I mean, they have more things to worry about than snowballs. Jesus Christ. M.M.M. Dania, are you going to ban snowball fights? Oh, we, we didn't make it to, it didn't make it to the goddamn news, but I did want to talk about that speedboat getting hosed in Cuba. And that happened like an hour before we started recording. Yeah. I don't know. Marco Rubio is going to personally parachute in and do just calls two on Cuba.

after this, I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, cool. We got a... Speaking of boats in other news. Yes. Oh boy.

Okay. There's a poop problem on the Gerald R. Ford. There is. There is. This is all part of a sort of broader, like, edging campaign that Donald Trump is doing to the various neocons. various neocons, over the prospect of war in Iran, like war with Iran, right? Or like to will they, won't they situation. Yeah, some kind of sustained bombing campaign, which would be so disastrous an idea.

Like John McCain is looking up from hell as like well pleased with this, right? But like in general. Home bloodlust or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very funny to be the guy who like got John Bolton arrested and is also giving him the birthday present he's always wanted. But like, the deal is here that they're going to try and like force regime change maybe like with air policing essentially an idea that, you know, never really died in the 20s

like people thought it did. And I, this is so transparently a bad idea that different parts of the White House and the Pentagon are all leaking reasons why it's a terrible idea. Not least the fact that if they actually do it, it's gonna deplete all the munitions they want to use against China if they ever wanna do that. Also, they could probably just wait and regime change will happen. Yeah, decent chance. This is like, you know, sometimes the best option is to do nothing, but this is not

how America works. And because what they want to do is so flagrantly illegal that like the US's European allies have refused to allow them to like base it in, for instance, the UK, you have a lot of like really strange, hesitant and like, um, sort of, uh, Byzantine military movements, right? Where you have like sort of every tanker that you could possibly have in theater, park bumper to bumper in Portugal, um, on the basis that you only have so many of them that are actually going to be like airworthy.

Um, this is exposing some real strain in like US power projection for no reason, um, of which the funniest example, is the Ford having a massive problem with its toilets. It's got like 60 of them and all of them are fucked now. Yeah, that's a pretty bad situation to be in. You know, if, I mean, talk about like Byzantine military problems. Dissentary is definitely something of that era. I assume the next thing they're going to do is going there and put up some theodesian walls.

Well, the reason why this is happening is also quite Byzantine, which is like Trump sent them to the Caribbean to support the Maduro thing and then sent them to the Mediterranean and then the Gulf, right, to do this, which means everybody on board has having their tour extended by months. They're all miserable. The toilets have busted. I said in the notes that this photo we've got here is taken from the closest possible distance you could approach the board without being overwhelmed by sewage stench. Yes. This is not going well for the actual people who have to do any of the stuff. And I'm sort of, I don't think that will stop them from getting it done, whatever it is,

but like, this is showing some like serious dying empire strains that it really, no one needed to know about. I have a question for everybody aboard this ship. Have you ever seen the battleship Potemkin? Just drive it right up the Potomac, you know? I am kind of like, I like the one quote from the guy in engineering on the boat who's like, yeah, these fucking enlisted sailors keep fucking up my plumbing. They're like flushing t-shirts and garbage.

It's like Navy recruitment's either gotten sort of way worse or that to kind of like actual protests that you're like, I'm gonna make my living conditions way worse by fucking up all of the toilets. You know, like, kicking out all the queer people from the Navy, and I assume that that leaves you with like the bottom of the barrel. The hygiene standards go way down. We kicked out the only people in the Navy who knew how to use a flush toilet because they were all gay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want a straight Navy, you're gonna have to install a traditional ship's head. This is all downstream of Pete Hegsseth's relentless yet futile quest for heterosexuality. Oh my God. This is, this is, we need better hygiene standards, and we can't accomplish that with straight people.

It's unfortunate, but it's something that- We need a competent Navy, yeah. Something we will say, right, is that having a few beers may make you, may get you a better lap time, makes you a way worse secretary of defense. Yeah, that doesn't seem to be the case I mean the problem is he's bad enough at baseline That like how do you tell which direction the beers are influencing him I also do not think that Pete Hegseth has had two beers ever

Well okay Sure Is that a two beers thought kind of guy Two beers It's just two Madellas that's like mouth right Two two beers is with breakfast Yeah Yeah

Yeah Just absolutely, listen, I will reach across the aisle for the New Orleans diet, right? But we gotta, sorry, Dad, we gotta- The last time you had a Secretary of Defense who had a New Orleans diet, he was working for the Confederacy, right? Yeah, that's bad. I mean, that's partially why it didn't work out. Yeah.

I mean. I will say among the Trump guys, Pete Heggseth is probably one of the ones I would most want to see decapitated in a public street. square. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. I don't know what it is about him that makes him so much less palatable than the rest of them. Because they're all equally bad.

Maybe he's just louder about it. It's the American flag pocket square for me. Yeah, it's that, it's the weird tattoo, it's the, it's the, there's a lot of annoying things about that guy. Dave's fault tattoo or something to say something. Yeah. Yeah. That's also Byzantine.

True, yeah. I think he seems like the most gleefully, almost like the most gleefully white supremacist person with a large platform in the admin. Because obviously there are people who are more like gleefully white supremacist, but they are not like cabinet level officials who are constantly doing media pressers. I think that's part of what makes me hate his fucking guts. Him and Christy Gnome, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, but like, they already are chanting like actionable threats against Christy Gnome. So, you know.

What's like I am, to be clear. Yeah, no, I don't know where this is all leading with Iran either. It sort of remains to be seen, I think, because basically it's all ready to go, like American sort of like power projection has this like long fucking telegraph lead up to it. And it's waiting on Donald Trump, of all people, just deciding like go or no go, which is I guess gonna do at some point this week, end of this week, maybe. So, great. I saw a lot of people.

I saw a lot of people and again, take this with a great assault because of the people on the internet and I, again, this is not my, I do am not an OSN type, I don't know. But they did say that a lot of it kind of is reminiscent of like, right before Russia invaded Ukraine where they're like, they won't do this,

they're just moving a lot of stuff. And then they did. It's very much like, just go fuck up this country for like sort of sinility reasons as much as anything. And yeah. I think it kind of sucks. that every major power is more or less either currently or turning into an oligarchic

death cult of like people over the age of 70, but what do I know? It's the old man apocalypse jerk off session. It's going great. I remember hearing, we gotta go get out of oil that the petroleum companies don't really want. Yeah. Just as a kind of multi-polarity exercise, I remember hearing that it was from Trump of all people, that when he was talking to Xi about Taiwan, she's done like heavy breathing. So it's all libidinal for these guys and it's gonna maybe like doom all of us.

It's real bad, real, real bad. Also, like, just like my dick doesn't work anymore, I can only get hard from death. From bombing a rat, yeah, which on, we pulled out, now we're like, oh, we're a week away from them having fucking weapons which no they're not and then also we had like the path to build a bomb was halted with the JCPOA which we then pulled out of because we are a country run by goddamn moron yeah we just I just I make me so mad it just makes me so mad the the the mention of the weapons with mass destruction was interesting because like they haven't tried to manufacture the same consent as 25 years ago no they don't give a fuck which is yeah which is why why bringing up

The pretense was actually slightly interesting because like they haven't needed it so far. American industry is so washed. We don't even manufacture consent here anymore. God damn right. Imported from China, yeah. Well, another. And perhaps the most important news. Something's happening at M-Track and we don't know what it is.

God. Every Trump cabinet secretary is going to fuck up something, you know? Yes. I haven't seen what. what this is yet, so I'm actually mortified for the next sentence. Why is there a Genesis hauling two Talgo train sets? Oh, these are going to our friend Scooter to be scrapped. God damn it.

I don't know who put this image in here, but- I did, I did. This was the like first result for Amtrak restructuring, and I guess they're gonna restructure those Talgos into scrap. Yes. But yeah, I've often thought about Amtrak, like what if it was like British? Yeah. There is something coming down in a pipeline right now where Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation,

wants to restructure M-Track so that it's a holding company. And then below that holding company is going to be a company that does train operations, a company that owns and maintains the trains, you know, a rolling stock operator, whatever Roscoe stands for. and then a separate company that owns and maintains the infrastructure. We have invented Great British Railways, Brackets America. Yes. They're doing British Rail privatization to M-Track.

Yeah. Which is insane because they barely even own anything. Yeah. God. They did basically this to Greyhound like three years ago in terms of structuring. And all it led to was selling off everything that had any value to it. Don't you mean? Oh, they do that?

I do, I do mean... Flixbos. Yeah, I was gonna say, I can't much the German accent right now. It's with the bus. Flix boss. The Flix boss. Yeah, this is, this is a little bit confusing because they're doing like a privatization scheme, but keeping the whole thing owned by the government.

So it's just like, I don't know, there's gonna be like internal rents being paid from M-Track to M-Track. You know, it's... Amtrak's always been very weird about that, but again, this feels so spiritually British. You're doing like PFI. yourself. There's some theories out there that like, okay, this is a way to do backdoor privatization. We're going to be able to auction off certain services to, you know, different, different bidders. There's theories that, you know, this is America. We can just do front door privatization. Yeah, these guys are smart enough to plot something like that. Just get it done.

My personal theory is they're literally get it done, but like, come on, you idiots. They're doing this as an accounting gimmick so Trump can say, look, I made M-Track profitable. No, you didn't. That one I could believe. Yeah, I'll buy that. If you told me that, that's the only motivation that makes sense. I hadn't thought about it like that. It's very confusing. I don't know what's going on because it seems very obvious from the information that's come out. They don't know what's going on either. They don't know what they're doing. They're just doing it. That's everything these days. Real world Boston doesn't know how to run a railroad. Are you sure? I'm setting a record and I'm going to be right back before the actual episode has begun. I apologize. Oh my God.

That's fine. No, that's fine. This is sort of what you would call it. Bringing M-Tracks organization sort of into line with how European state railways operate with open access and all that sort of stuff. But also like the situation is so different. I don't understand how you get a. private operator onto M-Track because all the tracks are owned by the freight railroads, you know, and they're gonna, you know, what happens when Deutsche Bonn or, you know, Trenitalia

or something comes in is like, well, we'd like to run a service that goes over CSX or Union Pacific. They're just gonna say, fuck you, fucking gay Europeans. Yeah, rolling my sort of bright green, homosexual, European flicks train up to like to like the CSX offices and being like, hello, you know, we would, we would like to sort of run some passengers. Yeah, and they just immediately smash it with hammers. Yeah. You can go full hedge bottle on it.

You know, I don't, this is so baffling, dude, just because like, I don't understand the, like, what Maya would say, like, just front door private or Victoria, just front door privatize it. They don't actually literally do it, but like, why are we doing the scheme? Like, you Nazis can't do fucking anything right. Yeah, I don't understand the scheme at all. I mean, the only thing that makes sense is like either it's an accounting gimmick that involves a really stupid restructuring, which also adds a bunch of adversarial relationships where,

I mean, okay, let's get real. The track department, the operating department, and the rolling stock department all hate each other. But now we're formalizing those relationships. Here's the thing. Like Donald Trump is our most culturally, culturally European president. So like I can see some of the motivations on his part, but I don't know about the secretary. Sean Duffy, that's his name. Yeah, Sean Duffy.

The log rolling guy. I only ever see his name whenever he gets mad of a gateway tunnel, which is like every week now, to be fair. This is true. But yeah, I don't know what's going on. They don't know what's going on. Probably by the time this episode comes out. We'll know what's going on. Probably not.

Yeah, maybe not, though. Yeah. Who knows? Delightful. Yeah. So that was goddamn news. That was a lean news cycle, you know? Oh yeah.

All right, well, I'm gonna walk us through the history of... Jet the gay 90s way? I'm sorry? I felt like I was having a stroke for a second there. I couldn't make sense of that. You know, the gay 1890s. The 1890s, yeah. Okay, sure.

When I associate a decade with powered flight, it's the 1890s. Yes. Yeah, and balloons that are going one way, buddy. Well, you know, the gold rush, et cetera, even though it took place in the Yukon and not in Alaska, they're next door, so they're, it's the same thing. We have a little museum for it in downtown Seattle. Bowes as fast as a gold dredge, which is one of the stupidest machines I can think of. Golden Nugget Jets.

Okay, all right. And do, indulge me, what is a gold, is a gold dredge, like, panning for gold on a big mechanized scale? No, no, it's weirder than that. So the way a gold dredge works is you have all these sort of like permafrost sort of swampy areas of Alaska. They're very, very flat. They're very, very damn.

Musk egg. Right? Yeah, yeah, that horrible stuff. And the gold dredge, essentially, it's a boat. It's a dredge that digs a lake in front of it and then fills it in behind it. And then there's on board equipment to, you know, pan the gold out. Oh, my God. That rules.

That's so stupid. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of this immediately. Yeah, it's cool. So this is here because to understand the 2012 Denzel Washington movie flight, first we must ask, what is Alaska Airlines? It's America's weirdest main carrier. Would you agree with that characterization, Maya?

Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, it was a regional carrier up until like recently-ish. Yeah. In 1932, a man named Linius Mack McGee, a guy who moved to Alaska in the late 20s as a stowaway, founded his own aviation company, McGee Airways, which is a, you know, insane name. They should still be called that. I think it should be like very legal to change your name for a person, illegal for a business. They call me Airways McGee. It was based out of Anchorage, and they had a fleet.

that consisted of initially a single three-seat stinson airplane. This is a lot like the Mark Goldberg move. It's flight risk. The service originally was just paid pilots on a commission basis to work as more or less a charter company. It flew hunters and fishermen and like gold miners and such out to the middle of nowhere. And they also were commissioned to do air ambulance services for Native Alaskans who lived in reservations, who didn't have access to hospitals. They're in the summers,

they would put pontoons on the airplane so they could land on lakes and rivers. And in the winter, they just switched out the pontoons for skis. So they didn't have any runways or any, like, formal infrastructure whatsoever. Nice. Bush pilots are insane. I dated somebody who used to do exactly this, do it flying Mavac flights like that.

Yeah, I was going to say, you put on the notes, Bush pilots are insane, I should know. And I'm like, that's a considerably darker bit than I think most people realize. Yeah, no, I mean, when I lived in rural Idaho, it was for a pilot who flew the, you know, single pilot of air ambulance services and did a lot of bush flying. And it was cool, but also you have to have a specific kind of death lust to do that job.

When I, when I go, when I have a male stripper, I'm going to botch this joke. They call me the Bush pilot. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah, okay. I'm gonna be right back because I'm gonna get on a plane, I'm gonna come to your house, and then I'm gonna like unplug cables from your computer at random.

I will be right back. If it doesn't, and as hard drives are probably secure. There are, there is no spitting rust in here, Maya, it's all SSDs. I'm just, I'm just, glad you made those purchases before this year. Yeah, I was talking to a coworker Vine who has recently got into hosting a media server.

Oh, yeah, no. Gave him a Torrent Leach invite. And he was like, hey, thanks again. Like any tips on how to set it up? And he's just like, do you like coming to me? Because he's the social worker. So we have no money between us. And he's just like, do you know like how much I paid for a hard drive that's now like $800?

I was like, yeah, you caught the last job out of knob, dude. Yeah. It's never going back to normal. I see my media server is all SSDs, but it's entirely thanks to, I have a very nice girlfriend who has a stack of SSDs that she doesn't know what to do with. So I just kind of steal them as I need them. Are we talking how many terabytes you have on the two of two terabytes each. I have two SSDs in the flex server. Oh, okay. We're on different orders of magnitude. Oh, I don't do. I don't run them. I do not run a mass thing. I don't have the internet bandwidth. Okay. So, okay. So we're on two different two different levels. If I need it's 16 terabytes. drives right now, I would . Yeah, yeah, Maya, Maya, I thought I had caught the last chopper out of NOM.

And then my, and then I just downloaded 46 seasons of Saturday Night Live, which was a two and a half terabyte tour. Because I'm gonna get that ratio if it kills me. And I love you 100 terabyte media server. All right, the beer has hit my hand like me on here. How are we doing? Do you have a plug server? Hey, you got any hard drives? Yeah, you got any hard drives?

Ross needs them more than Nova does. Actually, Ross, again. I have a lot of loose hard drives. No, I don't have a Plex server. Do not kick that computer. Do not kick it. Ah. Ah.

No, I hate you too, buddy. No, I don't personally have a Plex server, but I'm in a polyquee which means I have access to like at this point 20. Okay. Yeah. All right, so it would be redundant. Roz, remind me to A, bring you a hard drive and B, which is where you don't- No, fuck. You give me access to your Plex server as well.

I thought you had it. Yeah, I'll do that tonight. But you probably gave it to me and then I forgot because I have ADHD. I'll just drop an invite, like a general invite like in the Discord. That's fine. Sick. All right. Good idea.

Yeah. Because, Roz, I need you to set it up too because I got Freakzoid back on there for you. Ooh. Oh, fuck. All right. Back to your regularly scheduled non-Plex server program. No, I will not use Jellyfin. No, I will not use Jellyfin.

I paid for Plex Pass forever. Leave me alone. I don't, yes, uh-huh. I have no idea. I don't touch computers. I don't like them. You have a CS degree. I know.

That's why I know well enough to stay the fuck away from it. I have a political science degree and know not to touch anything in real world American politics. I have a criminology degree. I've never done any crimes. Ross. I touch bridges frequently. I was just going to say, it's really funny that the FAA makes you have a clean bill of mental health to fly an airplane,

and everybody who's ever flown Bush backcountry piloting is suicidal to like the closest you can get without just opening up. I mean, like your pilots, you have to be, right? Yeah. Yes. Pilots attitude to mental health, I assume mirrors their attitude to physical health, which I assume mirrors for all mankind, Ed Baldwin, season one through like five. of just like, I'm not gonna tell a flight surgeon shit. I will tell a flight surgeon less than a police detective. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Commercial aviation had to pretend to care about pilots' mental health after the two times in the 2010s that pilots killed a bunch of other people as well as themselves. But you're flying single pilot. Oh, yeah. Nobody ever gave a shit about that. Yeah.

But nobody gives a shit about it for commercial pilots either. So, you know, it's kind of a, it's only really regulated because of the FAA pretends it is. Yeah. Don't worry. Sean Duffy's on it. Anyway, next slide, please. In 1932 in Anchorage, Alaska,

rival airline Star Air Service is founded. There are now three airlines in Anchorage, Alaska. You might say that doesn't sound so bad. It's, you know, pre-war. There's like, it's all like tiny little planes. Yeah. And like Alaska's like, you know, you don't have good like ship traffic most of the year, you know, like you gotta fly shit in.

You got to fly shit in. The highway is, I assume, not even a twinkle in Roz's eye yet. Yeah, you know, but as a reminder, during the 1930 census of Anchorage, they found 2,277 people there. So we have an airline for every 800 people, you know, settlers living in Anchorage. The key words there are, they found. The guy was a stowaway. Who knows who else is stowing away in Alaska at this point? Yeah, and then the Depression happened, so they could not sustain the demand for three airlines,

for a town of fewer than... That's smaller than the town in Idaho I used to live in. They'd only had one charter service, and even then, just barely. Smaller than where I live currently. So our hero McGee sells McGee Airways two-star air service in 1934 on the condition that if they don't pay him back in time,

he could come back to manage the airline himself. Because I guess he just loved doing that shit. They failed to pay him back basically immediately. And so by 1936, he is running the airline again. Two, 36 a.m. back for more airline. I tried to figure out how he did this, but apparently by like 1937 or 8,

he was making a profit of $190,000 a year, which is like $4.5 million today. There weren't 3,000 people in Anchorage by the end of the 30s. How was he doing this? If I've learned anything about Alaska and my time on earth, it's that nothing there makes sense, right?

there is a decent chance that he convinced every person in Anchorage to like nominally buy a million bottles of whiskey a year by grabbing one of them as an example, freezing their hand to the side of a moose and calling that Alaska law. Yeah, that's honestly, that seems reasonable. I don't know. It just was crazy to me. Next slide, please. Yes. In 1937, McGee sells his company again to an old pilot friend of his, who then merges it with even more Alaskan air carriers. And at this point, they finally start scheduling service. It's like slowly evolving to become a crab, you know?

Yeah. Yes. This is the thing. Like, Alaskans need, like, planes to not just fly, you know, they're sort of like obligatory million bottles of whiskey and also to like fly out to the middle of nowhere to hunt things, to fly out to the middle of nowhere to do serial killings, to fly out to the middle of nowhere to do the plus of the Mark Wahlberg vehicle flight risk. To fly out to the middle of nowhere and get eaten by a bear.

Yeah, absolutely. That happened to the congressman once, quite famously. Well, in any case, they start scheduling actual flights. I'm sorry, respectful pause for the bear devoured congressman. It can happen to any of us at any time. Yeah. By 1943, they have acquired their first twin-engine airplane. They go through three rounds of name changes over the course of the Second World War,

making them potentially honorary transgender. God, Tim. The problem with this being a majority transgender podcast is that every joke I have queued up is going to be going to be stolen from me by the other two transgender. This is the thing with also all of us being fans of Nova's podcasts for a very long time, is that we've all converged crab-like on the same sense of humor as well. There was a bit on the recording of B. Gay, Solve Crimes, we did today, where all three of us reached for the same self-deprecating joke.

So, yeah, no, I've just, I've created my own prison here. I mean, the thing is, the Second World War, really the making of Alaska, because the federal government went, went, wait, we've got a one. Yeah. And where? Sorry? What? I mean, I guess it's kind of next to Japan, relatively speaking, and Russia.

Why don't we just like throw some money at it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, they needed supplies and such. So, you know, the World War II was actually great for Alaska Airlines. In 1944, they changed name to Alaska Airlines, which they stay as for a while. They are Alaska Airlines now. And they use all of their money from the war to expand very aggressively. They buy more airplanes, including this DC3, pictured here.

That is a gorgeous. I think is beautiful. I reached a call it a Dakota. But yeah, it is gorgeous. I have seen a couple of these in person, and it makes you realize why people get so romantic about early air travel. Because, like, I know that the safety record was absolutely terrible. And, you know, a seat on a plane cost $20,000 or whatever. But that's a gorgeous coffin right there.

I am. Yeah. My least respectful joke, World War II paratroopers gay as hell for jumping out of a plane this beautiful. I mean, like, I think I, you know, my most, my most, my most problematic belief is that I could have been a really good, like, golden jet age flight attendant. Oh, yeah. Because they would have been like, wow, look at that tall Greek woman. No more thoughts. I could have rocked the miniskirt really well.

Anyway. In the age of like really heavily like national based carriers, we need a like trans 1960s airline. Okay, that there's your next photo book concept. Oh, that would fuck. I mean, you just bring back TWA. Oh, yeah. That's that's also a joke I wrote for later in this podcast, unfortunately. Oh, damn.

So after World War II, actually, they flew. humanitarian aid missions for the Berlin airlift and Operation Magic Carpet. Just, you are about to receive a sort of like sharp blow to the head from the rest of the century as you starving German child are like struck and killed by a crate of pineapples, kicked out the back of an Alaskan Dakota. It's to teach Germans about Alaska. Oh, they're going to learn. No.

They should know what that is. They learned about Texas and got really into it. So I assume they'd like Alaska. Yeah. And then we got, you know, Hitler who was really into his cowboy novel. So God only knows what this is going to ring. Rort. I was going to go, what this will present, like future tense of wrought, I guess.

And I couldn't think of it. So what's going to ring? Yeah, what's the AFD's opinion about Alaska? Weirdly expansionist. Yeah, anyway, so they, by 1949, Alaska is the largest charter airline in the world. And then the feds shut them down because they've had too many safety violations. Oh yeah. As you do. They opened back up after, like, we promise we'll stop violating laws.

And by 1951, the Civil Aeronics Board, which at this, you know, in the post-war era, it was kind of like the federal agency that was combination FAA and competition regulation, because airlines... Yeah, we talked about their role in sort of regulating airline sandwiches at one point on this podcast. Yeah, yeah. Fuckers. Yeah, they basically dictated, you know, where you could fly and, you know, what kind of schedules you could operate on.

They would even, they regulated mergers, all that kind of thing. But the CAB approved scheduled flights to Seattle and Portland. And that was a major turning point for them because there are actually people in Seattle and Portland. Next slide, please. This is just one of the prettiest airplanes I've ever seen in their life. Oh, yeah. This whole, this whole intro section was more or less like.

Like, yeah, this is an excuse to put pretty pictures of planes in the slideshow. In the 1950s, Alaska buys their first pressurized plane at DC6, so they can actually fly over weather instead of through it. Because again, we're in the early jet age, and this is a novelty. They also aboard the DC6 offer the Golden Nugget service that Liam had seen earlier, where the planes feature a honky tonk saloon with a piano aboard. That is so fucking cool. Do you have any photos of that? We'll get there, yeah. Don't worry. Don't worry.

Was there gambling? Yes, there should have been. I just love the idea of like, you're in nervous flyer. You're sweating. You're having PTSD to like the Battle of the Coral Sea or some shit and the fucking honky-tonk piano stuff. Yeah, there's some guy absolutely ripping a nice, yeah. You're having flashbacks to your time. time back seating in like a corset? Does the corset even have a backseat? Whatever. Either way.

No one has anxiety because they're all smoking. It's goddamn right. Yeah. Yeah, you're so right. This problem had been solved. That was why the planes could fly through the weather because no one cared about turbulence. Does smoking make you a better pilot? Oh yeah. Yeah. Smoking makes you. Smoking unfortunately does make you better at everything. Smoking makes you such a better pilot, but China did not ban smoking on flight decks until 2019. That was another thing about the NS Savannah was all of the ashtrays. And you would think it was, it sounded like a bit we would do.

The places there were ashtrays. Reactor control room, full of them. Engine room, full of them. Like, I didn't see any in the reactor itself, but I wasn't looking hard. enough at that point. You know, but it must have been half a dozen on the bridge. Yeah, no, it was, you, we used to have freedom. And we can date this, China used to have freedom until 2019.

Yeah, this is where it's gonna go downhill. It's like there are a few things that make me not a kind of campest, you know, that like, obviously I believe in kind of like self-determination for anyone and that therefore includes to Taiwan. Obviously, I'm not thrilled about some of the LGBT repression. You know, the forced labor and Xinjiang and Tibet is obviously terrible. And most of all, stopping pilots from smoking, as is their sort of God-given birthright, you know? Can I introduce you to the concept of buy snooose.com? I know that's right.

Chinese pilot snooze? Okay. Oh, I really, right? What we do is we do is we take West Coast turnarounds, right? Truck repels. We grind that up, right? And then we put that it's some preventing tobacco, right? We put it in your mouth and then you're having a bad time. After China, after China wins the war and occupies America, because America fired all of its missiles at Iran for no reason.

We will make good money under the Occupational Authorities selling their pilot snooose. Yeah. Over there, they got, they got Zins now, but it's with an X instead of a Z. I will say, I did look into this. And it was banned in January 2019, but they actually had built in a grace period, but pilots got extremely mad about it and started flying planes rather dangerously because they were suffering from nicotine withdrawal. Have you seen the packaging on Chinese cigarettes?

Smoking one of those in the fucking sky? They're flavored ones there too. The neon blue cigarette pack with the like, you know, gigantic golden horse on it and you're just like in the sky lighting one of those. Oh my god. My favorite thing is that where I work, we have a sizable Albanian population that comes in my center and they'll run my, my coworkers, what I assumed to be bootleg Albanian cigarettes.

And that is, those smell. Oh. Me too much. Most respect to the nation of Albania. All the stuff on Twitter going viral. about Chinese technology, you know, maglevs and stuff like that. It's like, no, let's talk about their cigarette technology.

Yeah. Oh, for real. 10 years ahead of us. Yeah. Back in the day, you used to be able to buy for non-U.S. cigarettes from eBay, as long as they were classified as like collectibles. Yeah, you used to do that with booze too.

I got a lot of the smoke in my fucking lungs. You could do that with Chinese cigarettes and you could do it with North Korean market cigarettes through the imported through the Chinese gray market. And I'm only... I'm only mad that they stopped before I started smoking. China is going to invent the cigarette that's good for you. Yeah, I hope so.

Chairman Shee, please, please liberate my people. Yeah, and then Cuba will invent the cigar that's good for you. Yeah, they're called cigars. I was going to say it. Based on Castro's survival rate, that's just the cigar. Actually, true, yeah. Anyway, the airplane. This is their first jet.

this is Alaska Airlines first jet at Convair 880 presumably they were blasted and SIGs while they were flying this thing because it looks cool as hell The smoke trail implies that the plane is also blasting Sigs importantly At this point in Alaska's history

They start to get weird Stewardesses start dressing in themed outfits Usually paired with like the gold rush Or something like that That billboard from earlier in the episode Was genuinely a flight attendant outfit That was their gay 90s fly the golden nugget themed.

Served, more ways than one. Like American cigarettes, brackets, not Chinese yet from a woman and a pioneer skirt and a fringe

leather jacket. I have feelings about this lady. Yeah, see, I'm telling you, I could have killed in this era.

Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to hang up and examine that. I will see y'all later. Skill issue. I would be totally into that.

I'll fully admit that. That sounds awesome. Also, they began to deliver their safety presentations in rhymes. I did actually find one. This is too fucking hokey. I'm sorry. I'm trying to like shoot the piano player out of the pressurized door, you know? A life vest neat is beneath each seat.

They're stored so we won't lose them. Now fix your eyes on the stewardies. They'll show you how to use them. Love you out on the fucking plane. Oh, then take a country gibberish. Open that fucking door. That's right. Pop-box, punch brothers, punch with care, punch in the presence of the passenger.

Next slide, please. Do you remember that like couple of years where like every airline safety briefing was done in the style of like Nanette or whatever? Like, they still do that in the US because they try to get people to pay attention to them. And nobody does now that you can use your phone from gate to gate. Yeah, the United Airlines like international safety briefing has so much hokey shit in there. You can't fucking tell what the safety stuff is. The American- The Delta one right now was just an ad. They should scare the shit out of you every time.

They should make you watch the first scene of flight. You guys want to go to lose your spinal collar? Because we'll fucking show ya. We're gonna make you watch a mentor pilot episode about the exact aircraft you're in. 1080p mega mix of the one shot in flight with a stewardess like bonks her entire spine off the ceiling of the plane and shatters it. it? Like, yeah. Just run that a bunch of times and then be like, did we get you? Did we get you? Are you paying attention? Where's your, where's your fucking life jacket? Where is it? Where

is it? How do you inflates it? Are you gonna bring your belongings with you in the event of an emergency evacuation? Are you? Are you? Are you? Are you a piece of shit? You piece of shit? You want these people around you to die line your eyes? What do you mean? Also, although I will say with American. The thing that, because I live in Philadelphia, so I'm sorry. Yeah, me too. Is the fucking like, oh no smoke was tobacco? going to the left. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.

You're just in there seething with your Zinn and being like, this would never have happened to me if I was a Chinese pilot. Oh! What arm is it doing? What arm is it doing? What am I doing? I can't pack my lips like a little chipmunk full of dipping tobacco and spinning it on the floor next to me.

I thought we were in the saloon time. Mentor pilot episode about an accident where one person died and it was the guy with a lip in. It just like shot back into his esophagus the second they like hit turgill. It's just me like making the like dip gone sexy. It's like the dip like shoots back in your throat, chokes you. They're like, is there a doctor on board and nobody wants to do it? Because they don't want to like fish out your dip. So all of the doctors are like, no, no, my bad, sorry, I'm not.

You can gut, it's not that big a deal. Oh, God. In a pressurized environment as well. as well. A man's got a gut where a man's got a gut. It's the official motto of the US Marine Corps. Anyone who tells you it's Semper Fidelis is lying. This is gonna get more interesting.

Actually, if I learned anything from Generation Killed, the motto of the Marine Corps is a man's got a gut where a man's got a gut, but it's in Dominican Spanish. Yeah. Next slide, please. Oh. Wow. Wow. Salty snail.

In the 1970s, Alaska Airlines becomes the sole charter company that can fly direct to the Soviet Union. They offer flights to Siberia. With the Samovar. Yeah, yeah. In honor of this, they offer what they were calling the Golden Samovar Service. This is a picture with one of the weird, I think was D.C. I don't remember which is. 7707

All of this airline shit, right, like the CAB actually was an example of big government stifling private innovation because the second they got out of the airline regulating business, every airline did some shit that was suggested by Don Draper in one of his more like psychological episodes. This is still pre-deregulation.

This is like 1970. They showed this to the like board of Mormons in charge of all air travel, every one of whom believed that like a plane is a kind of cursed animal. And when we want to do like a big T earn and those guys went, yeah, sure. Well, that's the thing, right? So they mostly do like this kind of like weird cutesy stuff because it's like they fly to Seattle. And they've lost the Portland flight at this point.

And so they're like, okay, we'll do something to like advertise the fact that we can fly you to Siberia, which I think they flew like seven total flights ever to the Soviet Union. Did you know how heavier samovar is? I like the wallpaper. Yeah, they would serve you. Check out the wallpaper. Oh, yeah. They would serve you cocktails, order of king crab, fresh salad, veal, and pecan pie, followed up

with fresh fruit and cordials and all of the flight attendants were plastic outfits. Just being, being a man of this generation, realizing you have to theme your sexual harassment of the flight attendant to the fucking hokey. outfit. Being like, oh, fuck, I didn't have a line for if she was wearing a big Cossack hat. Once, uh. Hey, how would you like to lick my Cossack? Easy Peezy. Oh my God. He's good. Once they cross the international date line, though, the service is just straight vodka.

That's cigarettes. That shouldn't be on any flight ever. They unbolt all of the seats. You've just got to squat on your heels. It's the barbock comment, but involuntarily. Yeah, they, they, they, they, uh, notably this isn't really required to understand like the plane crash that the episode is nominally about. I just really wanted to work this in because it's funny as hell. Yeah, well, well done. The main thing that you do have to know is that like the airline is financially struggling because they can fly, they have a bunch of flights in Alaska, which don't make very much money and then they fly to Seattle. Yeah. And the, the, the, the, the civil aeronics board won't let them enter new markets. Uh, until, uh, until, uh, Next slide, please. Again, just continuing the theme of showing off really gorgeous. It's the guy on the tail. The guy is here, yes. Thumbs down. No, it's a guy plus Helvetica. What else do you want?

Yeah, that's very nice. There's one airline that gets to use Helvetica. It's Swiss Air. Swiss Air doesn't even exist anymore. What about Lufthansa? So what's the Harvard Alaska doing it? Lufthansa still uses Helvetica, don't they? They fucked up their livery too, so they don't get to use anything. Oh, God, damn it.

I need that to get on a Lufthansa flight. before they stop flying the 747. They've never been on one. If they retire them before I get to fly on one, I'm going to be really sad. I know I didn't just hear you, Justin Robsniak, talk about how I need to get on a flight

to fly the 747. I know I, man who would not stop complaining about domestic air travel. I know I'm flying. I just want to go on a 747. Yeah, ultimately.

See, the thing is, right, the good news is that they're only replacing them once they get the triple seven X's so they will have them until the end of time. I've, I've flown on a 747 because I'm old and I remember it as...

You're also European. And yeah, it was an Air India flight between London and Newark, I want to say. And I... Yeah, I mostly remember it as like a kind of football stadiums, like, size of seats that just went on forever. It was very, very confusing. It was like the back rooms. Well, so in the 70s, they start floating the idea of the airline deregulation act and the abolishment of the Civil Aeronautics Board.

And Alaska is one of three airlines out of like the dozens and dozens and dozens operating the American market to actually support this because they did correctly surmise that, hey, we could probably make more money if we were allowed to fly to places other than a bunch of small Alaskan cities and Seattle. So when they finally abolished the CAB in 1978, Alaska begins aggressively expanding. They reopened flights to Portland, then San Francisco, then Burbank, Palm Springs, Nome, which I can't believe they didn't have to begin with, because that's in Alaska. Yeah, that is weird, actually.

Yeah, they still kept the dog sled, you know, for tradition. Dostalgia purposes, sure. Do they ticket that as the same connection or like? I don't know. Yeah, I'm landing in Fairbanks and then I've got to layover and then I pick up the dog sled. Yeah, there's a little icon on the on the planet. thing and it just says self-transfer, but there's a dog there. Yeah, and then they add airports in Idaho. I think Boise. I couldn't figure out exactly which one. It's Idaho. There's only one major airport.

Flying to Nome and they're making all of the stewardesses wear puppy girlhoods. We're saving that for the trans air carrier. That's true. Yeah, that's a T. Well, they don't have to wait for Nome to do that. What? They don't have to wait to Nome to switch into the puppy girlhoods. I suppose. I'm sorry, I'm doing my best to keep up with the humor here, but I am, we are, I'm still trying. I'm trying. Sorry.

We're on slide 11 of 27. Most of them are mine. Anyway, they also buy regional carrier horizon air. They offer short hop service around the Pacific Northwest. Crucially, through this time, as they are expanding aggressively, they went through a machinist strike, which they beat back with scab labor. a very unfair two-tier pay structure to undercut the people they had to hire back when the strike ended. They are basically just like at how much can we cut costs to make more money mode. This is relevant later, as you might expect.

And yeah, they start offering service to Canada and Mexico. They do really well for the most part. Like Alaska profits incredibly well from the Airline to Regulation Act. One of the very few airlines to do so. Next slide, please. Okay, I like this one A Pond from the guy There's nothing

The font is like They have the font yeah But the guy is like 90% of it Yeah, yeah I'm always happy When I was a kid I was always happy To see the guy at the airport You know

Yeah, I think this is great Like they I think they should go back To this font actually This is a much better font When I was a kid Alaska was one of the airlines That did a deal with Matchbox for the little diecast plane

So I'm very familiar With like every livery they had in like 2005. In 1990, Alaska starts structuring their new airplane lease deals so they can use preferred stock to finance the planes that they're buying, which are all 737s. Alaska very famously had an all-boing fleet until they acquired Hawaiian and now they've got airbuses.

Well, they had an all-ish. Yeah, I was going to say they acquired Virgin America and got air buses, realized they hated them and sold them within a year. and then bought another airline with air buses. But they're probably keeping them this time because Boeing can't build airplanes anymore. Correct. Anyway, so they give the conversion rights to common stock for this financing deal to management employees. So they have a direct motivation to do stock prices.

And they also begin stock buybacks in 1990. Shockingly, they post a loss of $121 million in 1992. They blame their expansion for this, but I think I know what I'm going to blame. I'm laying this lack of profitability and the subsequent fatalities from it solely at the feet of stock buybacks. Yeah, well, I mean, shouldn't have re-legalize those? What if we financialized the airline? And then as the thing continues nose diving, you're like, what if, what if, like, I don't know, I don't understand. We cut everything, like, that we're not spending any money on anything.

Why are we losing money? Well, this is kind of like, I mean, I maintain that like the good timeline that we could have like had in America that somehow sort of wasn't as hellishly evil. That died with the Patco strike failing. When Reagan broke the air traffic controller strike, that was kind of the end of any chance that America could ever become anything better than what it is. And like a lot of this is a very similar kind of story because like Reagan was a who allowed stock buybacks. and a lot of the story of the 80s and 90s for Alaska is they broke strikes very aggressively, both with their machinists and with their flight attendants. They do another one in the 90s as part of their campaign to cut costs as much as possible.

They also, crucially, cancel building two planned maintenance facilities because if you are maintaining an airplane, you can't be flying it. So that costs money. Well, never maintain. Just keep the planes in the air. That's how you make more money. Just keep the engines turning. Nothing bad will happen.

Like me, never shuffing down my computer. Yes. It's fine. It isn't, though. Well, I see, this is a thing. It's fucked up. Is it like in the same way that November's computer is still working, Alaska begins to make a ton of money again through the 90s

after doing a bunch of strike breaking and not building facilities to fix the fucking airplanes. Short term, this is awesome. Um, and at this point, hasn't been shut off in 500 days. At this point, I will be, I will be, uh, announcing to mine, just have frowny faces on them. At this point I'll be announcing to my co-pilot Maya that I am hands off the controls and confirming that she is ready to take the yolk. Uh, yeah, that's fine. I could be first officer for this at least since I, I don't know. I don't know. Uh, so in order. The rest of us are just in the jump seats. That's a lot of jump seats. No, it's like one of those old school, uh, plans. They got like five different, they got like the flight engineers also up front.

We got like nine engines. Yeah, we got radio operator. You can be in the jump seat. I'm in the like rest cabin for crew just like snuggling under like 50 blankets. This is great. Where are Ross and I in this scenario? I don't know. I mean sort of battering feverishly on the like door.

Trying to cram a lipid, trying to cram, try to try to figure out how I could dip with a with a one of those oxygen Stewardess, stewardess, I saw a podcast with a lip-in on the wing. Alaska, they made a bunch of money by breaking up. The real crucial part of this, I didn't need to tell you that Linus McGee founded it. I just thought that was funny. I'm sorry. The real crucial bit that you need to know here is that they made a lot of money by not doing maintenance. thing that has never come back to haunt anyone ever, actually.

That usually works. This was the style of the time, actually, of 80s and 90s aviation. This is just one of the many examples of it. It's just one of the ones we know a little bit more about ultimately. Well, yeah, because it's a lot of flying plane. It's because everyone had to switch from cigarettes to cocaine. Yeah, and like, consequently everything was being run by the like Whalen-Utani guy from aliens or like any of the executives from Robocop or

Robocop 2. Okay, so next slide, I think is where I pick up. Yep. Drop the landing gear. You have five seconds to comply. The first question we must ask before we get to this specific accident is what are elevators and vertical stabilizers? Hey, I've seen this diagram before.

Yeah, the wiggly bits that make the plane stay in the thing. Yeah, that's basically about it, actually. I'm writing this. The horizontal stabilizer, not a vertical stabilizer? So the horizontal stabilizer is, unless I got them backwards, let me make sure I didn't real quick. The horizontal stabilizer, please don't tell me I got this backwards. I did get it backwards, son of a bitch.

The horizontal stabilizer, the vertical stabilizer is the tail. Just hearing this on an open mic from the cockpit as the plane slowly starts to pitch into a dive. You'll also notice that the diagram says horizontal stabilizer on it. I'm like smashing a chair against the door at this point. All of the notes say horizontal stabilizers. I just fucked it up the one time and threw myself off. The long and short of it is that they decide what makes the plane go up and down.

You trim the horizontal stabilizer, which is the very large part of it at the front, and then there's the elevators at the back of it, which is what you're actually controlling in order to, from the cockpit in order to determine pitch, you know, pull up and the elevator makes the plane go. I was always confused as a kid playing like flight simulator. that flaps were something different from this because these are all flaps, right? Yes. Like mechanically you are changing some flaps here, but these aren't the flaps that are called flaps. Yeah, these these trans world airlines DC-9's visible here. You can see how this one, the one in the front has been trimmed because the paint on the

the red paint stripe on the back doesn't line up slightly because it's been pitched downwards. Trimmed downwards, I should say. This is basically just the way you keep the plane stable in flight whenever you're not putting control inputs on a stable and level and pointing in the direction. You want it to, at the angle you want it to rather. I've included a very friendly diagram. It's basically you have one end of it attached to a pivot point and the other end is attached to a jack screw, which is controlled by a motor that makes it go up or down. You can control that either by buttons on the yoke.

They call it a pickle switch because it's underneath where your thumb sits naturally, which made I had to Google what that meant and which made me even more confused because of course that means the thing that you drop bomb with. Okay, sure. Back when all pilots were like ex-bomber pilots. Yes. Yeah, and actually are- Or like now.

I was gonna say our two crew, the two crew we are dealing with today are in fact ex-bomber pilots. Wait, why do they call it, it doesn't help me understand why they call it a Pickle Switch. So I actually don't know why it's called, why they called it the Pickle Switch originally. They just called it that in commercial aviation because it sits under your thumb. on the yoke. And that's whenever you were holding the trigger to drop the bomb, you held it under your thumb. Oh, okay. They got it from there.

I don't know what the relevance of the pickle part is. I just included it because I was also very confused. Is the bomb the pickle? That might actually, that might be the answer, actually. When I want to engage in sexual intercourse with my wife, I say drop the bomb and I mean my pickle. Oh, my. Apparently it derives from a like sort of claim of the accuracy of the accuracy of the the Norden bomb site that it could drop a bomb from 20,000 feet into a pickle barrel.

Fascinating. Okay. The Norden bomb site is gonna be an episode in its own right. I have a feeling that didn't work as well as advertised. No, no, it did not. Well, I have this, that's the problem. I have here in front of me a picture of a bomb going into a pickle barrel trophy awarded to a general for like commanding the strategic bombing campaigns.

was it full of pickles at least whenever he got it God I hope so yeah what would be the point otherwise um so dill or kosher that's also good bread and butter pickles yeah

you control it via either the pickle switch which is under the thumb under your thumb on the yoke on Boeing and McDonald Douglas aircraft obviously not Airbus aircraft or you control it with big chunky manual handles down to the center console where the throttle not center console

that's a car part down down where the throttles are I guess it's kind of where a center console would be on a plane, but big... Yeah, check the owner's manual real quick, would you? I'm not sure to pitch this plane. I have the owner's manual for this aircraft and did look at it for this slideshow. Yeah, so on the DC-9 and its many children, which includes the MD80 relevant for today,

this was a design that was built, it was built and, sorry, created in the 1960s. Because, and then McDonnell Douglas just sort of built derivatives of it until well, until they got bought by Boeing, and then Boeing built derivatives of it until 2006. The horizontal stabilizer is attached to the jack screw by virtue of three nuts, the two retaining nuts that are at the end of the jack screw, and the actual load-bearing Acme Nut

that actually moves the thing that's responsible for making you go up and down. I'm so proud of us for making it through load-bearing nut with narrow a smile. I was to say, no, I was rotating in my mind a callback to three-ball Anderson, but I couldn't figure it out fast enough. No walks, baby.

No walks, baby. The thing here about the jack screw, of course, is that, you know, this is a sort of very high precision adjustment method. You know, because you get so little motion from the horizontal stabilizer per rotation of the jack screw, it makes it very good for these, you know, set and forget tiny adjustments like trim, you know, which ultimately have like very large effects. A very small motion of the horizontal stabilizer is going to have a large effect on the aerodynamics of the air. And you have to motorize this

because it's under like a ton of force because you're moving like a heavy mechanical part that's like under stress from like, you know, and moving over it very quickly. Yeah, I mean, it just all depends on the conditions of the air you're flying in and the conditions you are flying the plane at it. It just all depends.

There's no constant to it. So it gets adjusted constantly. Just little tiny bits, but it gets adjusted. And that tends to put stress on things, which we will get to later. For now, next slide. I like the guy less in black and white because he looks like Che Guevara. Thanks. Inuit Che Guevara.

Here's the exact planing question. This is N953AS, a McDonnell, Douglas, MD-83, first delivered. brand new to Alaska Airlines on May 27th, 1992, which was seven years to the day before I was born. At some point in the mid-90s... You were born in 1999, I'm gonna... I was about to say, you know, I'm so mad. Sorry. You should be.

Get these kids off my podcast. I'm just chilling here. Born in 1990, motherfucking one. Yeah, you and I both, sister. You're not special. Yeah. You ever, you ever, you ever, you ever been to a pre-9-11 airport where you just walk around and look at all the planes? Yeah, I wouldn't know what that's like because she was funeral.

And you could see the guy on the tail and you're like, I know that guy. Well, for a while, for a while, Pittsburgh had it so you could go through and look at the planes whenever you didn't have a ticket, but and walk around. But you did have to go through TSA, which was. Philly has that, I believe. I think a lot of air, no C-TAC does, which is interesting because that's a really bad airport. Dulles they let you they used to let you go all the way into like the outfield terminals

and then now they don't let you do that anymore British Airports they used to let you just walk into the cockpit and like press stuff you know Tateac is bad but they do have woke bathrooms which I really appreciate that much that much as nice they're like the one airport in America that's like yeah it turns out that actually

men and women's rooms don't really need to exist we'll just make the doors go to the floor and then you can just do your business it's great it is great Unfortunately, whenever I'm in the airport, half the time I'm flying, I've just flown into there. And the airplane also has bulk bathroom, so I don't need it as much. But alas. At some point in the mid-90s, Alaska added the sticker to make the guy say thanks.

I don't know why they did that. I couldn't find any reasoning for it. I just thought it was funny, so I put a picture of it here. Funny is to imagine that plane crashing, like with the thanks on there. It might have. I don't actually know for sure. Just like augers in and the last thing to hit dirt is the thanks guy. That's a one piece of the wreckage they recover intact.

It's just like, God-going. That's all, folks. What an insulting way to die. My dad had a shirt with the atom bomb on it. That just said, that's all folks. Which is apparently an anti-nuclear shirt that he just got a drone nuclear. He sounds like a facadeist now. He was like, that's all folks.

all folks. I was like, doesn't that kind of endorse the atom bomb? And he was like, no, no, because it's about total destruction. That's bad. I was like, are you starting? He goes, I don't know. I love the idea of going to one store that's like all atom bomb theme. And they mix up the racks between the pro and anti-adam bomb merch. So you walk out like a committed anti-nuke activist wearing you're like, hell yeah, I thought Hiroshima was great. This is the world building of the Fallout TV series. All right, Jeff Bezos, you space pervert. Give us $10 billion.

They gave the Kelsey Brothers $100 million for what? Give us $100 million. I can find ways to jerk off with $100 million. Fuck off. This plane was delivered with Alaska's then new livery picture here, but also the new interior, which also looks insane, although in a much different way. way. I couldn't fit it on the slide, but I put a link in the notes if you click that. Oh yeah, let me see this shit. Oh, sick. This rules. Yeah. It's like woven like blankets

and stuff. It's like very like sort of like an as an inspired like embroidery. Yeah. Apparently this is it, you could still find these on some of the very old 737-7-700. Oh, this is slaps. This looks sick. Oh, this is very good. Yeah, I like this. So I couldn't find a higher resolution picture. This is from a magazine scan promoting the new interiors. Good to know they're still out there, I guess. I'd be so psyched if I got that. The modern Alaska, Alaska, Alaska are so dripless. Yes, I've never flown Alaska. I will in a week from tomorrow, but you know.

You've never flown Alaska? I've lived on the East Coast as of this moment in time. You're dating like six women here. Yeah, and I've always flown Delta because it's cheaper. Once you move here, you become an Alaska Airlines like supremacist. I'd look forward to that, but I really, I swore, I only flew Delta, before I moved to Seattle and I was like I'll never fly anybody else and then I flew Alaska a bunch and now I'm like actually pretty great and I think it's something in the water like it really is kind of concerning because I genuinely was pretty militantly pro-Delta and now I'm like well

to be fair they do also run a hub in a state I'm not allowed to piss in so that does make me like them less but you know well and also they're based out of Atlanta which is an inherent negative factor for any company but to be fair it's better than Dallas which is where Americans based out of. I fly united because I want security that if someone misbehaves, they will break that guy's arm. Listen,

I, so I had never flown out of Dallas. I was in Austin last weekend. Last weekend? In Austin? No, two weekends ago. With Jay, Megan, and Wren. And we flew out of Dallas. And the rental car situation there is fucking insane.

And they're just like, all right, so what we're going to do, right, is put you in like a brownfield. and 900 miles away from the fucking airport and put you on a shuttle bus and just hope you make your flight and I was just like, you're a fucking international hub, dip shits. Like, fucking get a trip. Get a tram. Get a fucking tram and put me on it.

I want to see, I want to fucking sit out. I want to stand on a bus. I want to fucking sit down on a train. This is not an unreasonable demand. You're going to haste it when you come here. Yeah. I've been to the Glasgow airport and it is nowhere near as hateful as DFW.

Dallas is a pit from which no joy has ever escaped. Consider, consider Glasgow airport, but if it was like 50 degrees hostile. I wanted to go to the Cowboys Lounge so bad and just be like, oh, have you guys been relevant to the mid-90s? Everyone in this bar should commit like mass ritual suicide right now. I liked the Edinburgh. The Jerry Jones Town Massacre.

Yeah. I like the Edinburgh Airport because it looked like the Top Gear Technology Center. Everything in this country is a metal shed now, yeah. Yes. Oh my God. We're talking about Alaska Airlines, right? Yes. See, I flew Delta because they're basic, they're like cheap, basic tickets were good,

but now they watered them down and made them useless, so you're probably right about the Alaska thing. In any case, by the day of the accident, this aircraft had accumulated 26,584 flight hours. This will be a relevant number later. You don't need to remember the exact number. A ballpark is fine. Yes, you do.

No, this will be on the test. No, I barely remember where my life jacket is. I barely remember that. Yeah, were you paying attention to the- R-in-oldings with me? Don't do that. That's not. I'm gonna do that.

I'm sitting in an exit row and I'm not paying attention to how I've found. I will not. If you're going, just staring at the flight attendant, like, you can fucking make me. I paid for this ticket. I'm doing civil disobedience in the exit row. If you're going back for your possessions, can you get me my tint of dip? I'm in the exit row. I've got my arms folded and I'm saying to the flight attendant that Marcus Aurelia said that things in themselves have no power to demand an opinion from me.

I always assist if I'm in the exit row unless I'm on a Southwest flight and then I assume I'm taking out a large chunk of a Republican donor base if I impede the emergency evacuation. Just like hands up got like face guarding. Last time. In the exit row. Like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Hand down, man down, Vicki. We can do this. Last time I was in the exit row when the flight attendant asked if I was willing to assist in an emergency, I was like surprisingly emphatically, I would love to.

You're just like flying domestic, you hate it, you're just like praying God you get an emergency so that you can get off the plane faster. Yeah, exactly. I want to throw that door out of, you know, existence. At what point while assisting passengers can you put in, could you put in some, a lip? And the thing is, when you're doing that, you also get to start calling yourself a plane crash survivor, like I always say you should do when your plane's delayed. Oh, yes.

This is fantastic. No, I mean, that's, I think, I told you this week, Nova, I was like, you know, obviously, you know, there are lots of, you know, horrible ways to die young, but I feel like a top pick for me would be as the subject of a, well, there's your problem episode. Horrible tragedy. It would be cost by cost cutting it merriably, but like... Any time I use any method of transport or anything happens is I go, they're gonna have to make an episode about how I die when it happens.

Yeah, if you're, if your fellow podcaster falls, pick up their mic and keep charging. Yeah, and like the most recent time I almost died, I almost got hit by a speeding car and it's just like, you would have to do like a like multiple hour episode about like, I don't know, like car-centric cities or something. Yeah. Oh, I'm so ready. Like me getting wiped the fuck out by like somebody's SUV. Okay, well, please don't die.

Yeah, try not to. I'll do my best. I will say that if you die, I am releasing the poison pill episode. No picture I'm on for anyone. That's fine. That's a lot. Yeah. You're releasing the what episode?

The poison pill episode. We released a kind of mutual, we didn't release it. We have a series of kind of like mutual blackmail episodes with all of our most like cancelable opinions. Yeah, yeah. They just like to go at any time. The lost cause, Israel is good actually. Devin, please bleep all of these,

but that also means that you are now in on the blackmail material. So, you know, all the best. I like it noted that I'm a perfect sweetie who only has perfect opinions. Nobody can get mad at me. No, that is true. That's 100% true. Yeah, absolutely accurate. Nobody even got mad at me for the fact that I hate NATO.

So, like, I feel kind of unkillable after that. I'm not going to lie. Oh, Seoul was very critical of you, Well, there's your problem Twitter account today. Well, they're still on fucking Twitter, so I don't... Yeah, they said you regurgitated U.S. Department of State propaganda. That may have been for me. I don't know.

About what? I don't know. I think it was probably for me. What the hell am I regurgitated from the U.S. Department of State? You regurgitated the State Department propaganda that if you're sitting in an exit row, you have to assist with the evacuation. Like, wake up, sheeple. Free thinkers with the first people.

Marco Rubio thinking, my child will assist with an evacuation when they're seated in an emergency exit room. This is our ultimate, our ultimate cancelable situation is when we do our pivot to open source intelligence. Oh, God, yeah. Everyone dead, frowny faiths. I won't assist with the emergency evacuation until I finish this land acknowledgement. Wouldn't it be a, well, I guess no, you'd be landed. It wouldn't be, I was thinking a sky acknowledgement. We're about to hit the unseeded lands of such and such a people, you know?

Sorry guys. Our bad. The problem if there were like a bunch of tribes in like close proximity. Just trying to just try to run it out. That should be, listen, woke too. I want that as a tab on the like seat back thing is like you got your fucking in-flight entertainment, you've got the map, and then you've also got the map with the land acknowledgement.

It can say in the top bar that's always there with like the time and the flight time on it, which... Yeah. Absolutely. Rotate, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, I'm done with that slide.

Next slide, please. Okay. Good. Good. So... Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. people are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point.

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I have to keep track of where I am, and I'm doing it with a piece of paper in front of me because of how often we could side check. You are a brave soul, buyer. I try to come prepared to these things, which is weird, because it's more prepared than I was for... Like an exit row. More prepared than I was for four and a half years of college, but never mind. Well, because this has consequences. I feel like...

I feel like I, when I first started doing episodes on here, I was like very prepared, and I feel like I've been less prepared every single time. This is what we do. We drag you down to our level, and that's why the people love us. I'm trying to just like, I try to maximize this. number of weird guys I can talk about per episode. That's kind of my old here. It's a good bit.

She doesn't want me to stoop to their level, but what she doesn't know is I've been stupid my whole life. So on January 31st, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, scheduled to fly from Licenciado Gustavo Diaz-Ordas International Airport in Puerto Vallarta, Al-Holisco, Mexico. Is that the next generation or original series? I note here that Gustavo Diasodas Bolognaz, Bolanos, considered one of the most unpopular and controversial modern Mexican presidents. So, flying out of Donald Trump International Airport in Palm Beach, Florida.

Well, I mean, that's what national is going to be called in a few months. Yeah, I thought he wanted to rename Dulles. Yeah, I always get the two confused because I hate them both. Yeah. I don't know that a airport named after Alan Dulles is much better. No. From Preeto Vallata in Mexico to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. With a stopover in San Francisco, carrying 83 passengers and five crew under the command of Captain Ted Thompson and First Officer William Tanski.

Departed, departed Puerto Vallarta at 1.37 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Sorry, I'm trying to do Spanish pronunciation in the same sentence as English pronunciation. It's not coming out to. Oh yeah. It's a brain cooker. I'd like to apologize to my dear girlfriend Emma, who was probably in pain right now, but never mind. Never mind.

The scheduled flight time for Pryta v. Archa to San Francisco was a little under four hours. Sometime before 3.49 p.m. We don't know when because cockpit voice recorders at this point in time only recorded up to about a half an hour. That's insane. Yeah, sorry, we have an iPod. Mano sitting in the cabin. That's all we can store to. What?

Really? When did this? that changed? Was that a result of this or? So it probably was so I don't know for sure. I'm guessing I probably should have phrased this better. It only you most times the aircraft is only subject to the standards when it was built. So this would only be stand to be subject to the standards from 1992, which admittedly not that far before this and still pretty damn low ultimately.

Actually, what is it right now? Never mind. I don't have time to Google that. No, that's fine. I'll Google out of my own top. Okay. That's nuts. Thank you for you.

Yeah, I mean, whenever they're recording to magnetic tape in a big box that tends to insulate pretty well, I can kind of understand it from a practicality standpoint. T-Gi-Gives are cheap, man. Well, they weren't the time, but, you know. Go ahead. I'm sorry for interrupting, no, that's okay. I realized I should have written that better whenever you asked that because. Maya, you do so much prep for these.

Are you kidding me? You have the best written slides I've ever seen on this show. Thank you. Ross is sitting right there crying himself. Okay, but like, Roz knows everything. So it's like, there's like, there's like two thirds of a Raz episode is like in his head. This, this, this, the notes are kind of prompt him. Yeah, it's cutiform.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah. Mayas are like actually like written in a way that they extended it from half an hour to two hours in 1995. Okay, okay. That makes sense. Thank you. Oh, in celebration of my birthday. Yeah.

Stop it. You're so young, Jesus. It's right now in the U.S., it's going to become 25 hours in a couple, in sometime later this year, so that's an idea of how that technology has progressed. It's been 25 hours in Europe. They were going to do it until the hard drives can't get them anymore.

They're going back to an hour. Going to double the price of the airplane. At some point before 3.49, the cockpit crew noticed that the horizontal state, stabilizer was jammed or was jammed in the nose downward position. I know, so to why I'm gesturing as if people can see, never mind. So they proceeded to open a radio link with Alaska Airlines Dispatch and Maintenance Facilities in Seattle and Alaska operations of Maintenance in Los Angeles where they were

considering diverting to because they were relatively close to it at this point and we're just sort of crossing into American airspace from Mexican airspace. After spending a fair amount of time messing about with the switches, both the one, the suitcase handles and the pickle switches. Running through their checklist and generally figuring out that there's not much that they could do to fix it, they start trying to plan out a diversion to Los Angeles, given that the aircraft is still controllable, albeit requiring full manual control, and they also have to put a significant amount of body weight into actually pulling the control column backwards.

Ooh, yeah, no, this is like heavy work, you know, just wrestling this thing. This is the whole point of trim is that you don't have to put continuous force on the control yoke, but now of course they're working against it, so they do have to do that. Thank you, Ron, for proving my point. And you somehow inexplicably know everything. It's like you think you're just doing a regular like four-hour run from Puerto Vallata to Seattle, and now you have been enlisted in like Pete Hagseth's TikTok pull-up challenge. Yes.

These are probably doing it like pressed slacks, you know? This is two podcasts this week that have referred to RFK Junior's jeans that I've been on. I'm sorry. Me too. They should have like a wedge for this situation. This kind of situation, you can just, you know, shove it in there. Just rigging it up with a bunch of like bungee cords, like an elastic band on an Xbox controller when you're trying to get a difficult achievement. Yeah, you can probably McGiver this, you know.

Is there a McGiver on the plane? Sorry, hold on, let me, I can actually do this with my, with my, with my gimmick, Mike. Is there a McGiver on the plane? If anyone on board is a McGiver, please like make yourself known to the flight ascendants. Passengers, this is the purser. I would just like to ask if there's anyone well versed in McGiver tactics on board plane. Oh my God.

Excuse me, Stewardess, I'm a member of the A team. You got very distant there. Is the plane going down? No. I was like, excuse me, Stewardess, I'm a member of the A team, and it's like, yeah, sure, and I've got a PhD. It's like, it doesn't really count when we said doctor, you know? Oh, that's a really good sign if you're a member of the A team.

That means whatever happens, no one dies. Everyone rolls clear of the accident. Yeah. just like dusting themselves off. It's like, oh, damn. I love it when a plane comes apart. Okay, next slide, please. This one's a bunch of text on a screen, so I apologize.

But Alaska Airlines dispatch in Seattle were very opinionated about how this would disrupt their flight operations, telling them, oh, there was a flow, there was a flow control programming affected San Francisco, and it would be an hour or more before they could depart again. after landing, generally sort of pushing them in the direction of continuing to fly to San Francisco. Yeah, this is an interesting example of sort of like, I don't know what you would call this kind of interference, right? But like, on the transcript, dispatch tells them, like, if you want to land in LA, of course, for safety reasons, we will do that.

We'll tell you though that if you land in LA, we'll be looking at like an hour to an hour and a half. To which they respond. Uh, well, um, you are, uh, boy, you put me in a spot here. Yeah, and, um, the, the, the crew were not particularly happy about this. As you can see, 10 minutes later, they're still talking about it. Um, the thing that's funny here is that the response, I really didn't want to hear about the flow being the reason you're calling us, because I'm concerned about overflying suitable

airports. That's the maddest that guy was ever in his whole life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. In the Chuck Yeaker voice, just like full pilot, just like, what the fuck to? Did you just say to me about the white zone being for loading and unloading? That's like somebody from Minnesota telling you like, hey, I think that you're being a little rude here.

They want to kill you with their- I really didn't want to hear about this. The more reference here, a flow control program is basically air traffic control, you know, saying, okay, there's too many fucking planes trying to take off and land. We gotta do something about this. Yeah, the separation. Yeah, you gotta mess with. You gotta mess with, you gotta mess with, you know, the airport capacity, you gotta mess with landing slots.

Yeah, if- If you get stuck at your departure airport for an extended period of time on the ground, but not moving, and there's no adverse weather conditions or anything, it's usually because of this. Yeah, it's a great example of like, hey, technically, man, your pilot and command of the aircraft, and you get to do whatever you want for safety reasons. We're just saying that it's gonna be really fucking annoying. Yeah. just want to make sure you have all of the all the info. Yes, I just want you to know, put the plane down please. I just want you to know that like if you exercise your kind of like absolute sort of

responsibility and discretion and control of the aircraft, then you are going to kind of like piss in my cornflakes it. Also notable is that San Francisco had much more significant wind conditions at this specific point in time, whilst Los Angeles had basically none. And whenever you have to control the aircraft by putting your full body weight on the column, you tend to want the least adverse set of conditions as possible. Yeah, like, I'm gonna be sort of like landing this aircraft with me and my co-pilot hanging off the yokes like pull-up bars is, that's an interesting, that's an interesting

condition. That's bad, right? Yeah, that's not great. It's not great. Yeah, as he says here at the end, it was a 90 degree crosswind at 10 knots. Fuck that. No, thank you. That's the kind of shit that brings out guys with like long lenses now to like,

take video and kind of hopes that you eat shit. They don't say it. They're always like, oh, we just wanna like celebrate how good the pilots are and we do like a nice little round of balls when every time they make it. But it's like, no, you want to be there in case one of them eat shit. I wanna see a little sloppy landing, you know? Yeah. I'm gonna see a tire blowout.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanna see pieces. By 357, they've made the decision to divert to Los Angeles and start pairing pairing for that, although while still trying to get in touch with a flight instructor as a last resort for shit that they can do to actually get the stabilizer to move. Climb out on the wing, you know, put a lip in, climb out on the back and like hit it with a hammer, you know. The whole time, they're basically, they're trying to get it unstuck by, well, I want to say whatever they can, but whatever they can is just the two switches that they've already tried. But they keep, they do keep at it for quite a while. Notably in excess of what the checklux. lists told them to do. And this will come up later as something that we have learned as a

result of this accident, which is to not do more than the checklist says. But of course, that could easily be blamed on the fact that Seattle was like, hey, would you like to not land this aircraft and continue flying it, actually? Can I invite you to please not do the thing? Yes. Go away. I don't want to see you. They just suck. I have an avoidant attachment style.

Again, as we learned earlier in this episode, if you have to be learned earlier in this episode, If you have to do maintenance on the plane, you're losing money. Keep the plane in the fucking air. That's where the money is. Plane only makes money when it's moving. 4-07, which is 10 minutes after they start preparing to diverting to Los Angeles. They start running through the situation with Alaska's other maintenance department in Los Angeles, including being asked if they had tried the switches to adjust the trim,

you know, the thing they have been doing for, we don't literally, we don't know how long. Okay, but in defense of any kind of remote tech support, you gotta do it programmatically because how many times does it happen that you're like, the person swears up and down, that they've done the thing, they've been doing the thing for hours, and then you tell them to do the thing and they do the thing and it works, you know? Yeah. Have you tried turning it off and back on again? I was on a plane where they did that.

Not in the air, but on a tarmac. I've also put it on a plane where they've done that on the tarmac, actually. And then it didn't work. So we had to get off the plane that we had just boarded. That was really annoying. In my case, it worked. Yeah, didn't for me. They love rebooting the Seattle Linkline trains, the tram thing.

Because when they, after a sporting event and people take public transit, they get so full, they get too heavy and they can't go. They have to reboot the trains because we're a serious city that has a real transit agency. I'm sorry, I shouldn't shit talk them again. I'm so excited for the cross-lake connection. We're going to have a train on a floating bridge. But hell yeah. It is pretty funny to be on the train.

And the operator comes on. It's like, yeah, sorry, I got to reboot the train. So it's going to be really dark and quiet in here for a few minutes. I will say. They do that on SEPTA now whenever you go on the trolley tunnel while they're checking the trolley pole. My understanding of SEPTA was that they do anything to make the trains not move. No, they, they, they, well, it depends. Okay, at 409 and 14 seconds, they decided to try both the suitcase handle and the pickle switch at the same time.

Oh, the plane takes a screenshot. Also, I'm not thrilled that seconds are making an appearance now. Once you start measuring shit in seconds on a cockpit voice recorder, it's bad. So at 40916, the cockpit voice recorder records, quote, brackets, sound of a clock, clunk, close brackets. Oh no. You wanna hear that. Oh, no.

I don't wanna hear clunk ever. At 409 and 17 seconds, the CVR records quote brackets. Sounds similar to horizontal stabilizer in motion, audible tone, close brackets. Oh, so it's working. They fixed it? Yes. Do you get screenshot worked? Yes.

However, it immediately moves into the extreme down position. I look the wrong way. Oh, 737 maxing. 7 maxing. Okay, sure. Yes, actually. We will get to that, probably get to that eventually, I imagine, but it is indeed doing the thing where it's forcing the, where it's forcing the plane down. You don't really know why. Yeah, just like, what if I went into the ground right now? What if I died? Yes. You want to meet up and die? Let's die. Yeah. Next slide, please. So over the span of about a minute and 20 seconds, the aircraft is in an uncontrolled dive.

I love this screenshot here. 16 hours, 10, 33 seconds. Left seat, yeah, we got it back under control here. 16, 10, 34 seconds, right seat. No, we don't, okay. This sucks. I hope when I die there's a record, I guess that's what this is as well, but like, I guess I hope when I die there's a like pertinent record of my comedic timing.

I included this in the slideshow whenever I was writing it and then Victoria messaged me later the same evening to be like, hey, you included that quote, right? I was like, yeah, it's on this slide at this number. Again, I can't emphasize how much more thorough she is than I am. The fact that it's all on lowercase, it looks like it's from bash.org. Oh, that's going back a bit, but yeah. Oh, good Lord.

It's telling me that the plane's password is Hunter 12. Oh my God. The aircraft is in an uncontrolled dive for about a minute and 20 seconds. Try not to think about what it was like in the camera at that point, moving on. Yeah, I'm, there's Samovars going past me. I'm like... My dip is falling out of my lip and I'm just like, desperately like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm sort of becoming more and more aware that it may be required for me to assist in an evacuation if I'm in the exit, bro. So I've got some good news to you. You're not gonna have to do that. Like, oh, thank God. The cockpit crew physically fight this by applying about 135 pounds of force to the control column. Fucking excuse me?

That's what the NTSB reports said. Is there a really heavy doctor report? And of course the plane is falling, so they're not using like their body weight either. Because it's an uncontrolled dive. Oh, that's actually. That means that this pilot was fucking jacked. That's all arm strength. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, at least you've got the like adrenaline spike of like the plane going.

We're going to die now. You're going to die. Yeah. I will say I usually make less fun of the people who are dying, but I would like it noted for the record that so far all, well, we've decided is these pilots had great comedic timing and they were strong as hell. So I feel like it's fair. To be clear with the adrenaline comment, this isn't in the slideshow, but at 16. 11. The pilot says, co-pilot asked him

how hard it was to pull the control column back and the pilot just responds, I don't know, my adrenaline's going. Oh, yeah. So, they apply all that force to the control column. They do other things to mitigate it. They deploy speed breaks. Everything that they could

conceivably think of in the span of a minute and 20 seconds. They made us to mostly get the aircraft stabilized at about 24,000 feet where it dropped from 31,000. You can see the graph of how that went there on the left. For the entire remainder of the flight, to the best of my understanding, both crew members will be putting their full bodily force onto the control column in order to keep the plane level, mostly level, I should say. They have to let up a little bit in order

to let it go down a little more. So whenever they're trying to actually get it closer to the ground or whatever they want to do that, but otherwise, they have to put their entire body weight into making sure the aircraft doesn't go nose down again. Your controlled descent of very slightly lowering from a pull-up. Mm-hmm. Is this, this is one of those situations where you understand why, you know, the Airbus has the joystick. Yeah.

Yeah. This is live by wire. Yeah. Well, we'll get to that. We will. When we do the air fronds, what was it, 447? That's been, that's a nightmare that's been on my mind for a long, long time. Me too, actually, because I remember when that happened.

Mm-hmm. Same, yeah. At this point, the captain, now that the plane is like level and, you know, that's a little, and not pitching down towards the ether. The captain requests to be given a block altitude in order to do whatever he could possibly need to land at Los Angeles. He hopes to descend of about 10,000 or so

and figure out if the aircraft is actually controllable. He specifies that he wants to do it over the bay instead of a populated land area for reasons that are unstated but reasonably evident. Mm-hmm. Los Angeles, to be clear, he's already out over in, over water at this specific moment in time.

He just wanted to do all of the preparation work in the area that he was in. They briefly speak to Alaska Airlines Maintenance in Los Angeles again, whose response, which is at the lower right here, includes sentences like, okay, ellipses, G's, full stop. That's rough, buddy. Anyway, see you. Good luck.

Yeah, it ends with, they end with, if you want to try it, that's okay with me. If not, that's fine. We'll see you at the gate. Full stop. Helpful, helpful. That's like a trans woman trying to like make dinner plans. Excellent.

Sure, that sounds good, but if you don't want to do that, that's totally fine. Don't worry about it. Like, whatever works. Don't, don't, God. I love targeting three, three-fifths of the podcast hosts at the same time, also injuring myself. At 16, 12, and 42 seconds, does left. left seat tell them, and now we're in a fucking pinch, so we're holding a wheel worse than we were. The star is an expletive.

It's not, obviously, it's not specified which, but that's just how it's released. Yeah. There's actually a fair number of the asterisks throughout this cockpit's reporter log. You don't say. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I like these guys. It's a shame what's happening. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I will get to this at the end, but these guys didn't do anything wrong. I'll go into more details of the why that is later, but... This is a kind of existential nightmare into which you can be plunged. I'm really at any type, but like especially flying. Yes. At 419 and 36 seconds, the cockpit voice recorder records, quote, open brackets, sound of extremely loud noise, closed brackets. Open brackets, sound similar to loose articles moving around in cockpit, closed brackets.

Yeah, I fell out of the bed in the relief cabin, sorry. The vertical stabilizer, which was actually... was still suck at full nose down and was only being countered by the crew pulling back on the control column. It was only really being held in that position by the retaining nut at the end of the jacks group. That is not a load bearing nut. No. You tried to make a non-load bearing nut bear loads. Yes. Yes. And it won't do it because it's not load bearing. And it has refused this particular load. Yeah. And has completely broken free. There is a more efficient way of destroying the screw, which is, as we've talked about, rolling an MRAP into it, but like, instead of that,

they've just sort of done it piece by piece. So with the retaining done and that gone, the jack screw is completely out of the assembly, so there's nothing holding it in place, and the aircraft is now not particularly aerodynamic, not particularly compatible with continuing to fly. It wants to go down. Yes. Really, like maximally. Yeah, you'd imagine that the stabilizer, you know, I'd like, you know, I'd imagine that the stabilizer,

You know, it should be at a position like this. When it was at max down, it was like this. Now it's probably like way down here. Next slide, please. Here you'll see the other half of the graph from the last page. Oh boy. Okay. New anxiety, new fear just drops. New, new, new terror.

So the aircraft rolls hard left immediately and completely inverse within a few seconds of that. Both crew immediately start doing whatever they possibly could in order to recover the aircraft, they're running through the upright recovery maneuver, which is to say doing the process to get the aircraft out of a stall condition by reducing thrust and pushing forwards, because whenever an aircraft is, you can't stall an aircraft at zero gravity. Basically, the end goal is to keep the aircraft, is to get the aircraft in line with the horizon by any means necessary.

Yeah. Left seat says to the right seat, have you seen the Denzel Washington movie Flight? And the right seat says, yeah, I was standing up for most of it, but it was pretty good. I like John Bittman. So they want to get the aircraft level with the horizon, right? And it doesn't necessarily depend on whether they do it right side up or upside down, which is great, which is theoretically good in this instance, because they are very much upside down.

At four minutes, 20 seconds, sorry, 420 and 38 seconds, which is basically a full minute after they had started rolling over, the crew had actually largely succeeded at leveling the aircraft upside down, but commercial aircraft aren't designed to do that. So if they needed to, if they wanted, if they would have wanted to get out of this particular scenario, there wasn't necessarily much that they could do apart from pitching the aircraft, not down,

because it's already pitched down, pushing the control column forward to get the aircraft down and then out of the dive. So, you know, a lot of times people will say that they maybe could have done it that they had a lot more altitude. Ultimately, they did manage to slow the dive pretty significantly.

So, you know, it's not like they were without justification in what they tried. It's just that it didn't really matter, especially because once the vertical stabilizer had failed and the aircraft started doing stuff it wasn't designed to, the elevators had torn off to the best of, to the best of our understanding. So, you know, they didn't really have any input. It's just kind of like a doomed heroic attempt to do something. It's also a little bit confusing as to how you, you know, it's impressive when, the pilots do those crosswind landings when they, you know, crab the aircraft at the last second and go straight.

You know, if you're, I don't know if you can do a barrel roll at the last second under the runway. Probably not. No. I like, I don't know. It's nice to have a kind of like mechanically heroic epitaph to be like, hey, we know what you're like control inputs were till the last second, you know? My main question is, what the hell is it with Alaskan airplanes and doing barrel rolls? God. It's from the Bush pilot spirit. Of course, when it's upside down, you can't read the guy saying thanks anymore. So basically, as soon as the aircraft had hit this particular dive, it was going to be, it was already doomed from that point. Cemented largely because, you know, there's not, there wasn't enough altitude physically in order to get the plane controllable again, but also then shortly afterwards, the elevators rip off.

So given that the two things responsible for pitch are completely uncontrollable, you're not really doing too much with that, I fear. At 420 and 49 seconds, the cockpit voice recorder captures the sound of both engine compressors stalling and spooling down, which means that they now have no thrust on top of everything else. Oh, the one other thing you could use to control pitch. Cool. Imagine that has something to do with, what's it, the fuel being gravity-fed to some extent? I think so, yeah.

It certainly is how it works in the Denzel Washington movie Flight 2012. 420 and 57 seconds, so eight seconds after the last thing, after the engines stalled out. Alaska Airlines 261 hits the Pacific Ocean at high speed, immediately killing all 88 occupants and disintegrating completely. The crash is witnessed and reported by multiple other airliners in the vicinity. So the recovery process starts pretty much immediately on that. So like, even if you're counting from like the thing pitching over inverted, that's still like a minute and change of like conscious action where you got to be like around for that. Yes. That's not great.

I'm not like the challenger disaster of commercial aviation crashes. I'm trying to think about like the worst minute I've had in my life, right? And I'm trying to like sort of measure that up and like it would have to be pretty fucking bad for this to be, you know, sort of even anywhere in the same ballpark, you know? Generally speak, and especially because it had been followed up by, you know, the same thing happening a few minutes. Well, you didn't go upside down a few minutes earlier, but it wasn't particularly pleasant whenever it had. You went nose down the first time. Yeah, you've presumably, like, you know, seen the sort of flight attendant from the film flight, like, each shit in the vertebrae and, like, seen an entire Samavar dent itself inside out on the, like, roof bulkhead, right? Yeah.

I didn't include this on the slides, but actually it wasn't. between the two out-of-control incidents at one point, the cabin, sorry, the pilot does go over the cabin public address system and says, we've had a flight control problem up here. We're working at, what does he say? That's Los Angeles up to the right. That's where we're intending to go. I don't anticipate any big problems once we get a couple subsystems online. Don't really know what he meant by that. So don't worry about it. Yeah. It is comforting to know that captains are fully aware of their ability to lie to passengers. That's not comforting.

That's the opposite of compassing. That's disconfacing. I want to be blissfully unaware the whole time. Exactly. They're going to kill me. I mean, like, if I'm going to be a, well, there's your problem episode, a subject. I would like to not know until it is like the last six seconds of my life. Yes.

I kind of, I'm kind of like you Chuck Yeager, motherfucker. Give me the like minute, you know? be like, you know, it's like, why would you want to know? Ladies and gentlemen, it's now time for you to confront the inevitability of death. Yeah. So we're gonna process these emotions real quick, you know, we're on the clock for this, but we'll aim to get you to your destination within the next like a minute and 10 seconds or so.

Final destination. Yeah. I like the British Airways pilot who flew through the volcanic clouds. Oh, the Jakarta one, yeah. Yeah, I'm having a spot of bother up here. We lost all four engines. We're working hard to get them back online. Pretty good.

I'm ordering another drink. That's the best part of it. You get these strange kind of like fluctuations of patriotism as a British person, you know? I think the thing is just like this is part of the pilot, like this is part of the pilot sort of mindset, right? It's like you have to be kind of insane to do like Bush piloting, but I think you also kind of need to have like a little. bit of a hero complex thing going on. Because there is a moment in your life where you might actually get to save a plane full of people. Yeah, you're sully.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, you got to be ready to be like, okay, time for me to either, like, it's, it's in that moment, I guess kind of like, you know, either I pull this off and I'm cool as hell, or I don't have to worry about it anymore. So I imagine that kind of focuses things really nicely for you. I did look it up because I wanted to remember the exact quote from the British crew was we have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get him going again. I trust you are in not too much distress.

Thanks dude. You trust wrong, dude. I'm in distress here. After the plane lands, the flight engineer gets off and kisses the bot, like he gets on his knees and kisses the air stare. And he, the pilot asks why, and the flight engineer says the Pope does it. And the captain says he flies out of Talia. Okay, sorry, that one may be the sort of biggest dick to move I've heard. So that's the end of this aircraft and the people on board and the flight. So of course, you now have to come to the next questions, which are the how and the why. Then you can go to the next slide.

This is the jack screw. It was recovered seven days after the crash in the course of the recovery process. Are the things spiraling off of it what used to be the nuts? Further investigation, as well as the observation that whatever it was, was made out of steel, under the conclusion that it was the threads from the inside of the Acme Nut. God, this looks like when I clean the drain of my shower. Um, so, so like, the jet steel? Yeah.

Thread of the nuts are like mated to, still mated to the thread of the jack screw, but it sheared it so hard, the outer surface of the nuts has just ripped. off? Mm-hmm. Fuck me. Yeah. There was a very convenient diagram.

I found that I didn't include in the slides for some reason. But yeah, the thread of the nut cheers off. It gets worn down over time

and then what's left of it just sort of comes off inside of the jacks crew. Fuck that. The term that I used here was stripped clean, which was pretty much accurate.

This was quite obviously the primary primary engineering point of failure on the aircraft. The nut have been stripped out and the stabilizer was subjected to forces that couldn't withstand, and then it did what we saw here today,

eventually with the retaining nut breaking off. So that answers, well, the first part of the how, the second part is how did this happen? So the National Transportation Safety Board in the process of this investigation. So am I. They consider five potential causes. The first one is the use of aeroshell 33 oil

to lubricate the jack screw, the finish on the threading of the nut for an object damage, the nut having been installed correctly that led to a sort of load imbalance in a way that it wasn't designed to, or insufficient lubrication and maintenance of the jack screw is going to. We're doing so good to keep a straight face through this. Also, I'm guessing MRAP is filed under C for foreign object damage. So we're going to go through these in order. The first one, the question of aeroshell 33 lubricating oil, requires us to ask an important question. You go to the next slide.

What is oil? God. Fucking damn it. No. This is important. It's an important one. Listen, listen. Sometimes we have to reinforce people's knowledge of oil

so that they respect it. You shouldn't respect it. What? This is the worst thing that regularly happens to me. This is my sleep paralysis. Alice says oil well. Just sitting on you. But I told you this was the first idea for the slideshow that I had, I presume you would

believe me. Yeah, yeah, I do. Just sort of building out of this kind of sadistic urge to like psychologically torture me. One of the things we got to actually go out there and see it. You have created. I know. You made a bunch of trans women who listened to you think that you had a good sense of humor.

And then we all came back and we were like, hey, check out the sense of humor we learned from This podcast, I hate this community. You've created the Podopticon. Congratulations. So we actually don't need to go over what is oil, but the long and short of it. No, you just needed to do this to me. No, this is what... Don't look at it anymore.

Don't look at it. This is punishment for my hubris in telling Victoria that BMW stands for Bavarian Mercedes works. Like... Not knowing what a Camry is. Like, oh good, the delirium has said it. It's like when Ruthina Gidsberg died. Triggering a Mercedes guy by telling him that BMW stands for better Mercedes would be.

So Alaska had in December 1997, they had switched to the mobile, from the Mobile Grease 28 lubricating oil that McDonald Douglas slash Boeing prescribed to lubricate. the assembly to the cheaper Aeroshell 33, which is a substitution of McDonald-Doug was signed off on. It's like water-based or silicone or what. That's got to be oil. So that was... I used to know what the numbers meant, but I don't anymore. I believe it is related to viscosity.

Well, to be fair, keeping the nut in place with a more viscous oil probably would have helped. But ultimately, the NTSB tested it, figured out that this was not actually the root cause. So we move on to the next one. We can go to the next slide. It's a lithium-based thing. And I find on Reddit's aviation maintenance that it's a pain in the dick to wash off of your skin. That I can believe.

I get the couch treatment for at least two nights if I come home stinking of it. Yeah, but it does help stabilize your mood. So, you know, it's... This is why the FAA doesn't have to check and see if they've got any mental issues because they're already like getting their daily required dose of lithium. Unpopular opinion, but I love the smell of 33. Every one of my work thinks I'm crazy. Yeah, no, I love the smell of like solvents. It's great. I love all of them.

Yeah. You should probably get that checked out, bud. Now I'm going to have to go check out are slash aviation maintenance after we're done here. They're trying to fuck the plane. My guys, that's what the pilots want to fuck the plane. Everybody wants to fuck the plane. That's true. That's the reason I'm here, certainly. I just want to huff the chemicals, okay?

This is not a sex thing. My right pilot shirt says it doesn't ever come off fully. It doesn't matter what you use. It permanently stains white. I have seen a guy wash sealant off his hands and then reach for a sandwich out of his lunch bag and eat it. What kind of sandwich? Yeah. Does not specify.

That guy has an immune system stronger than God. Or he's where COVID came from, one of the two. The second factor that the NTSB considers is the surface finish on the Acme Nut. McDonald-Douglas had investigated reports from airlines previously that the Acme Nuts on their brand-new shiny MD-11s, famous from the last time I was on this show, were wearing out far quicker than they were supposed to. And in 1998, this had led to a trim system failure that didn't have adverse consequences like this time, but still wasn't very good. They did a metallurgic analysis, I think I've pronounced that, right, of the recovered assembly, and the net on this one was fine. Well, it wasn't fine, but it was made up of the right materials, at least.

So the next one that they considered was a foreign debris had caused the excessive wear in the course of looking at other aircraft for the purpose of this investigation. They found two DC-9s from Hawaiian Airlines that had they discovered that they had slightly higher amounts of wear than usual and were accompanied by a quote,

pink sand-like material inside of the assembly. Tasty. They found out this was... Yeah, I saw a guy wash that off of his hands and then reached into his lunchtime. for a son. It's like the stuff you get out of the dispenser at truck stops. It's really gritty.

Further investigation revealed that this was the sandblasting material that Hawaiian had used to remove corrosion and wasn't present on the aircraft itself, although the fact that it was accompanied by extra wear meant that it probably was good that they had discovered it when they did. The next possibility was that the nut had been installed in such a way that applied abnormal loads on the jack screw. This partially came out of a report of a different Alaska MD83 from later in 2000. that crew had discovered a, quote, wobble in the jack screw system.

And I don't know what that means, but to be fair, if I was an Alaska pilot after this and felt the stabilizer do literally anything, I didn't think, I'd expect it to. I would call everybody and probably point a gun at it. Yeah. Yep. I was going to say you break out the sort of like flight deck gun and shoot yourself in the cockpit. Immediately landing this aircraft at whatever airfield is nearby. Or not an airfield.

Who knows? That was like every max pilot, apart from like one flight crew. They investigated that and found out that it was actually within the spec and that that was fine. I'm not really sure what to think about that. But in any case, that one happened on Election Day 2000. I wrote that down as a note for some reason. But at least somebody had a worse day than the pilot who noticed that and that somebody

was all of the United States. Yes. If you go to the next slide. The guy driving the rider truck full of weird ballots. The last thing... Why, you can't laugh at that. You were like one. I've watched a lot of documentaries about it.

Oh my God. I learned about it in history class. We're so old. We're so fucking old. That one is completely false, but I thought it would be... I thought it would get all. Oh, God damn it, you say this. The last thing that they examined was,

was insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly. The opening sentence of this section of the NTSB report is included here. Seems like something of a tone setter. Yeah, paragraph two, subsection three, sub subsection six, insufficient lubrication of the jack screw assembly brackets, low, close brackets. It is generally understood that a lack of lubrication of moving parts significantly increases wear and I'm going in with my Wikipedia edit to be like citation needed. That's right, folks, you know, the thing is that when parts are adequately lubricated, not only does it, you know, move more easily, it increases the surface area upon which a load is applied. As such, you are not having like stress concentrations as you would with a unlubricated

part. Also, I think the computer just did something weird. Let me check. Yeah. Less of is lubricate everything at all times. I have completely run out of hard drive space. I'm gonna fucking kill you. I'm gonna fucking kill you. I'm gonna fucking kill you. No, I checked. I checked. I checked before this. I am going to I had 42 gigabytes. I'm gonna sh-you with a gun and I'm gonna have to bury my best friend and I'll feel real bad about it. But I am going to fucking I checked before this because I was having problems earlier. I had 42 gigabytes.

Oh my God. Give me one second. I, all right. Just close audacity, dude. Just close audacity and we'll just run it. Oh my God.

I'm applying 135 pounds of force to the podcasting column. It's really a bull bike up. All I can see in front of me is the earth. Pull up. Pull up. Ross. I just freed up 21 gigabytes.

We got to wrap this shit up then. Yeah, it should be good for another like half hour. Oh, so we're doing recording a half hour bursts now. And we're back. I think. So the NTSB tests this and confirms that an unlubricated jackscrews suddenly deteriorated about 10 times faster than a properly lubricated one. and the damage looked pretty much the same as what we were seeing from parts they recovered from the aircraft.

The dryjack screw? Yeah, don't do that. No. It's bad idea. It counts as a plain dryjacking. So more concerning was that when the NTSB recovered it, they found no evidence there was any lubrication on it at the time of the accident, actually. They did acknowledge that it was possible that such lubrication had been washed off by seawater. and Alaska Airlines

representatives that were there whenever they recovered the jackstrew claimed that they saw and felt lubrication on the jackstrew whenever it was recovered. Oh yeah, sure, buddy. Yeah, of course. Uh-huh.

Of course you did. The NTSB then goes into a relatively lengthy explanation of how they were relatively certain that seawater did do this. They clarified that they never washed it with anything more than, quote, a hose similar to a garden hose. I love fed language.

Yeah, and I mean a jack screw. is a relatively high friction assembly. You know, this is not something that, you know, you are causing physical trauma to this nut constantly if you're not lubricating it. And they want to be, they obviously want to be very certain of this, so they commissioned the Aerospace Materials Laboratory of the United States Navy to immerse an object.

We got the Navy's biggest nerds to replicate these conditions because we're pretty sure you're just lying. I love the idea of calling at the United States David and be like, no, no, not, no, dude. They immersed an object of similar metallic composition in water, in water, similar to what the jacks rew was recovered from for the same amount of time the jacksree was in the Pacific, which was seven and a half days.

When the test showed that seawater didn't remove grease from an object like this, it seemed fairly evident that there wasn't any. Later on, they would recover other parts of the plane that were still lubricated and had been underwater for even longer, And in 2002, another MD80, China Northern Airlines, Flight 6136, which crashed for reasons not related to this at all, in-flight arson specifically. They look at- In-flight arson? This is why they banned smoking, I guess.

Yeah, well, this guy had a lot of, had a lot of insurance policies and like five cans of petrol, my understanding. They don't let you bring full stuff on planes to be quite honest. Listen, it's like the thing about like, you know, if you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem. You know, if I have six cans of petrol and I'm on a plane, the insurance company has a problem. Yes. In any case, they were able to recover Ajax crew from the water, because it also crashed on approach to, I believe, Dylon, I'm not sure. It had been suburgency water for an extended period of time, not as much time, only five days, but basically, that still had lubrication on it. According to simply, there wasn't any lubrication on the jackscrew.

I do love the idea of being like, oh, so you have a girlfriend in Canada, you say. Well, I've commissioned the aerospace material laboratory from the US Navy to investigate that plane. According to security camera recordings of the guy who set the China Northern Airlines plane on fire had spent several hours smoking cigarettes in the waiting hall of Beijing airport. Dude's rock. I'm sorry. My favorite thing is that I, obviously I used to smoke. I don't anymore. Trying to live past the age of 35. But when I still smoked, it was when they still had the smoking rooms at the Atlanta airport,

which did make it a top tier airport to connect through. And I got stuck there overnight once. And so I just slept on the floor and I'd wake up with my back killing me. I'd walk down the hall. And I'd just blasts Sigs in like the air conditioning. ventilation room in the middle of the airport. It kept, it was great, honestly. If you, yeah.

It used to be if you walked past it while connecting to another flight, but automatic doors would open and would blast you with secondhand smoke. Yeah, as you should. You should always be contracting a little bit more cancer every time you're staying. I'm always saying this. This happened, I'm saying this because this happened to me when I was, I believe, eight years old. So that's so.

Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus. Oh. I feel so old now. I got blasted in the face with cigarette smoke by, you know, at the age of eight, by my grandparents, as God intended. Yeah, to be clear, this was also happening to me. It was just weird to have it happen at a public airport. I was running through because my flight from fucking Akron had been stuck on the tarmac for two hours.

Oh, God. But so Alaska Airlines did not have a girlfriend in Canada. Yes. And on top of that, they also found that the passageway for the jack screw to be fitted for it to, be lubricated was full of a dry, congealed, quote, clay-like substance, consistent with degraded lubrication. So, like, nobody lubed it in like 20 years or whatever, and it just dried out in there? Well, it had supposedly been lubricated in September 1999, which, you know, that was only

a few months before this, also a few months after I was born to continue that pattern. Should have contained completely normal semi-liquid lubricating oil, and they looked at other parts of the tail assembly that should have been lubricated at the same time as part of the same procedure and found that they also had functionally no lubrication going on. The NTSB goes and obviously immediately interviews the technician who had done the lubrication job. This was at San Francisco specifically. They realized within very short order that he has no idea how to lubricate this aircraft.

He was the job that he was doing. This is a kind of anxiety nightmare as the Fed show up to see if you know what you're doing at work? No. No. Don't. Well, the Fed show, to figure out if you know how to podcast. That's a big problem, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the thing is I do like four plus hours of work for what should be a one-hour job. Yeah, actually that would be a FCC, I assume would show up. Yeah, so this was supposed to be a one-out. For over four-hour job, Alaska was signing off on work that he had done that took about an hour. So, yeah, that wasn't really good. The NTSB discovered that there were two other...

Tops will really be like, oh yeah, no, it's lubed. Trust me. The NTSB discovers the two other Alaska MD83s had more aware than expected on that assembly. The same maintenance technician had been responsible for one of those. But only the one and not the other, which does bring us to the systemic questions. Why are you not lubing your shaft? Yeah, and the answer is because that's not how we do things here, right? Like there's a cultural issue of play here.

It takes a long time, I don't want to deal with it. Yeah. Start, if the guy in front of you drops his loom. You pick up the lobe and go home. Yeah. So the next, so the next thing the NTSB observed was that the amount of where that was experienced between the last scheduled lubrication, and I have close around that, which was September 99, and the accident, which was January 2000,

was not nearly enough time to have caused that much wear, indicating that it had been done wrong before that as well. So we have a pretty big hint as to why straight off, and we can go to the next slide. So the first people we have to look at are Alaska Airlines themselves. The NTSB found that Alaska had, number one, designed custom tools for checking jack screw and nutwear that tended to indicate there was less wear than in actuality. Just a big thumbs up on a stick. Yeah. Smiley face. Looks good. This was apparently, this was seemingly a genuine fault on Alaska's part.

They were trying to tamper with maintenance procedures by doing this, and I mentioned this for a specific reason. But they were just trying to cut costs by fabricating their own tools instead of getting the normal ones. I remember the time I did that on my Toyota Supra, and I almost became, well, there's your problem episode. Yeah, I mean... Don't ever use washers as...

spacers for anything that might vibrate. Yes. We noted. I'm sure Roz would have known that, but I didn't. I was like 23 years old and really suicidal, and I wanted big Mercedes-Benz breaks on my Toyota. So the Mercedes works. The second thing that they had done to contribute to this, and this was the main one, was that they had extended maintenance intervals quite a bit.

So when Alaska had started their MD-80 maintenance program in 1980. they had initially designated that the process that included lubricate in the jacksbury was to take place every 5,000 flight hours. By 1988, they had switched this to a calendar time-based process rather than flight hours. So the process was now supposed to happen every 26 months. Now, based on the typical aircraft usage, this would have been about 6,400 flight hours, up from 5,000. The extension of that was- Yeah, I was going to say, we switched to a sort of a calendar time-based process. So you could do it more regularly, right? Yes.

Right? Yes. But also around the time Alaska started drastically increasing frequency and using and aircraft utilization. Now, this extension was significant enough that it should have required FAA approval, which Alaska Airlines did not seek. In 1996, they extended this to 30 months, meaning that the procedure would now be carried out every 9,550 flight hours

based on typical aircraft utilization. So the 30-month time period was technically within spec from McDonald-Douglas. was at the very top end of it, but it was within their specifications for calendar-based maintenance schedules. However, the 9,550 flight hours was not. And, of course, if they were using a calendar-based schedule, they also should have done a whichever comes first. Yeah, right.

Like, that's the reason why you would do that is to do it more often rather than less, ideally. Yeah, the maximum number of flight hours that McDonald-Douglas recommended was either 7,200 or 7,000, depending on which set of guidelines were used. To be clear, MacDonald Douglas is a corporation that and you can buy this shirt from us, will kill you. They love to do it, right? And yet, even they were like, okay, but you're pushing it. I have to remember to buy one of those.

I remember like eight months overdue on that. Link in the description. Saw somebody with it in public once and I was like, oh, that's from my episode. That's horrifying to see in real life. So yeah, the typical practice was to have the whichever comes. First, Alaska just kind of didn't and was technically, very technically considered compliant

with McDonald-Douglas guidelines because they did not specify that you had to do whichever comes first. It was not written in ink. So it's these assholes why every time I fucking update my phone, I've got to scroll through 350 pages of... This is what words mean. Yes. Whereas...

But it did ultimately... You'll kill you, stone dead, frowdy face. And then it's like a crayon drawing of McDonnell Douglas, like an F4 bombing the shit out of you? And the F4 has a smiley face on it? But it did ultimately mean that both man hours and maintenance costs themselves had been significantly cut in a process that was generally seen by the public, a successful up until this, by the public at least. By shareholders.

Yes. The last time... Mind you, they were still making a loss. Yes. No, they were making profit by this point. Oh, okay. Well, never mind. They made a huge loss in 92, and then they turned it around real quick when they canceled all the maintenance facilities. And they struck, broke the stewardesses, and they like did a bunch of other...

Increasing aircraft utilization. It's nice to know that... If the airplane is flying, you save money. It's nice to know that, like, all of the money they saved went directly into some rich guy's pocket so that he could buy, like, more time on Jeffrey Epstein's island. Yeah, and then they could kill 90 people. Yeah. So the last time the aircraft has undergone the full-fledged maintenance procedure that included the jackscrew was September of 1997. It would have received another one in March of 2000.

In the time between September of 97 and January of 2000, it had accumulated about 9,000 flight hours. So it was indeed, loop up the plane. It was still under the recommended flight hours window for Alaska. So that's something to consider. The NTSB actually recommended that the 7,000 slash 7,700. flight hours that McDonald Douglas gave was actually also too long given the likelihood that the lubrication

process was going to be done wrong they felt it more reasonable to check that at shorter frequencies obviously this meant that Alaska's 9550 hours was ridiculous and was the biggest contributing factor overall to this entire accident

yeah that's basically it for Alaska Airlines they extended their maintenance programs and killed a bunch of people in the process in order to cut costs it's so fucked up because it really is like the most direct line for any recent aviation disaster I can think of between, oh yeah, we wanted to save money and we killed a bunch of people. Like it's usually you have to like actually like a sift through the systemic factors here. But really this one is just like, oh my God, they cut cost and nine years later like to the day they killed a ton of people.

Headline is like sort of several minutes of terror kill almost 100 people because capitalism. Yeah. I mean like this could have been a five minute episode. Yeah, sorry, I tend to write a lot. Then we wouldn't have figured out, like, which airline liveries we like the best or talks about, like, sort of refusing loads. Why are you apologizing? I'm the one who was like, hey, check out, yeah, check out the golden samovar service. I think it had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on this disaster.

Check out the university beloved guy on the tape. Yeah. Apparently not universally beloved. No, not by me. And I will go to my grave, you know, ideally not inverted in a sort of like pitch life, but I will It was in my grave, not liking the guy. And hopefully we survived this episode with our spinal collins intact. I think is cropped.

I mean, mine feels a little bit like, ow. Yeah, I still can't raise my eye on that high. It sounds like my dad. Jesus, wept. I, listen, I, I, I don't know. I got a new chair like two days ago from the thrift store, and it's much better than my old one, so I'm actually quite happy. Cool.

So, sorry. Congratulations, it's Maya. No problem. But also, like, so much younger than all of us that you can I will say this to all of you, children, you infant, 35 hits like the nut shearing off the jack screw. Yeah. You don't know what pain is. And I know in the comments that there are people laughing at me in their 40s, right? So I know it's gonna have- You know it's gonna have- until the injury. The injury. Yeah. You put that go on that, Nova. Oh, sorry, the, yeah. Yeah.

We can do that, sure. So the second person we need to point out is a podcast fan favorite McDonald Douglas slash Boeing at this point. Booh! Our works available! Classic shirt, you are McDonald Douglas gonna like slide into the ocean at like 500 miles and out. McDonald Douglas will kill you.

Mm-hmm. Boeing engineers during the hearings over the course of this investigation said that they had not considered Acby Nutware as a likely single source of failure and that it required multiple things going wrong in order to cause catastrophic loss. So they didn't need to put more fail saves into the aircraft design. Worth remembering, of course, this is a design from the 1960s on top of that. Yeah. But to be clear, they're going, well, we didn't expect anyone to just not bother lubricating it for like five years. And indeed, the FAA agreed and approved that the aircraft design when it was built in the 1980s.

And of course, they did so again in the 1990s whenever they were building the MD-95. So McDonald-Douglas not implementing fail-safe procedures to account for airlines not maintaining their planes good enough was cited as a potential, as a cause, as one of the factors that cause this accident. But of course, ultimately, at the end of the day, we're still pointing at Alaska airlines for not lubricating planes hard enough. So, you know, kind of a catch-22 here that should have been designed better, but they should have maintained it better.

Ultimately, once the report was issued, Alaska and Boeing sort of immediately were like, okay, let's take care of this now and settled out of court with all the victims' families en masse. Alaska took steps to improve their maintenance program. I don't have any concrete numbers on that, which scares me, but they haven't killed anybody since then. They had the thing pop out of the aircraft a couple years ago,

but that was Boeing. That one was Boeing's fault. door plug, that's the word I was looking for. Yes. You're telling me that Boeing planes have unexpected issues in the plane. Yeah, sometimes the emergency exit row decides to assist with its own evacuation, you know? No, this was not an emergency exit row that was a door plug because certain versions of the 737 max had a door that was not required for certain seating configurations. So it was simply plugged up.

Yes. Yeah, the door plug went because it was not plugged up correctly. Yes. I'm flying on an Alaska, 737 Max 9 a week from tomorrow. So I'm looking forward to that. Where are your seatbelt? Yes. So Boeing didn't really implement any changes to the DC-9 or derivative designs.

They simply just kind of mandated the carriers actually do the proper maintenance on it. The MD80 didn't have any more fatal accidents caused by this before being retired from mainstream airlines in like the late 2010s. You can still find them in some places, mainly the places where plane parts are expensive. I think Venezuela has the most of them. Although the Boeing 717, which used to be the McDonald-D-Naddlew, MD-95, does have the same design and is still an active service. It's a planet quite like flying on because it's a little dumb. I presume the Chinese clone of the MD-90 also has the same design. the same problem? I don't know. I didn't look into that.

So that like this is a kind of lower priority issue once we can start getting like economy class to stop self-immolating? That would God, the the Chinese MD 90 clone is such a fascinating thing, but that's not not for right now. So presumably their maintenance guys, you know, we'll spend the full four hours doing the lubrication. Hopefully. Because otherwise they won't get their smoke break. So I have one quick addendum, which is on the next slide. So the one last twist came shortly after this crash happened. When it became public that Alaska Airlines' maintenance program had been under federal scrutiny since 1998,

when a mechanic by a mechanic lead, sorry, by the name of John Leotene, found a whistleblower complaint with the FAA, that Alaska had been approving maintenance records that they did not have legal authority to approve, as well as records that indicated maintenance that happened when it actually hadn't. The FAA had been conducting a federal investigation at the time and had gone as far as to raid Alaska's maintenance records in December 1998, but that investigation was still ongoing. Oh, so the guy on the radio with them who's like,

I don't know, seems rough, might have already seen the feds raid their offices like the year before. Alaska put this guy on paid leave in 1999, because they presumably figured him out. He sued them for libel in 2000 after this happened. And after the crash had happened, he went back into his personal maintenance records that he had taken copies of for the sake of the feds. I think it actually didn't indicate which. He had discovered that in 1997, he had recommended a full jack screw replacement for N963 AS due to an excessive amount of wear on it.

He had done this shortly before the end of a shift day. He had gone home and the person that came into work after him had overridden that suggestion and put the aircraft back into service. Incredible. Just like, most vindicated man of all time. wrote down on a file like, hey, can you not do Alaska Flight 261? And they'd like cross that out and they're like, do Alaska flight. No, no, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna crash this plane. It's gonna be good for business. Do not spiral into the ocean and it's like, I don't know, that sounds expensive. So that was all that I had. The next slide was one

of Victoria's, so I'll hand that back to her. Oh yeah, nobody, nobody went to jail. Yep, that was something that nobody ever had charged. Nobody went to jail. And which is, I think fewer consequences than there even were in Denzel Washington's flight, 2012, because they get mad at him for being drunk while he was flying. I don't remember, that's the dad part of the movie. I only watched the plane crash part. I'm gonna mount a defense of the back half of flight. I think it's good. It's like kind of soul searching. It's not like... I mean, here's the thing, right? It's like, there are two Denzel Washington well, there's your problem episodes. And of the two, Unstoppable is a better movie.

I agree. It's a missile the size of the Chrysler building. I like the back half of flight because the airline is 100% like, let's fucking go, let's get John Goodwin drug dealer in here. We are going to like liquor you up before the hearing and you're not going to tell them shit, you know? Like, they're ready to go. Sorry, hang on.

I want to clarify one more thing real quick, but I forgot to. If you look into this online, you will see some people that, like, that blame the crew for not immediately diverting and instead doing all the extra tests. some things before deciding to put the aircraft down. Yeah, I can't believe this. Don't do that. Pilots did it by the book, the thing that they're supposed to do. Do not do this.

These two guys did the best that they possibly could, and there's absolutely no reason to find fault in anything that they did. Yeah, like, even if they were like, okay, let's put it on the ground now, right? We find the nearest, like, I don't know, flat strip of land or whatever. There's nothing to say that like, trying to do that wouldn't have sheared off the thing just the same. like it did that when they were trying to maneuver, right? Like the soon as they tried to like put the thing into,

into like a turn. Yep. Yeah. No, didn't they win a medal too? I don't know off the top of my head, but they probably should. I'm pretty sure the pilots got like an.

Yes. International recognition from like the some international. Yes. They were postumously awarded the airline pilots association gold medal for heroism, which is completely reasonable. They bought the plane the whole way down. Yeah. Pink shit.

Yep. No, I just wanted to take a moment and say that because I keep seeing people on comment sections online trying to blame it on them and it pisses me up. The airline pilot's organization. The corporation's fault. It's the most straightforward. Titanium medal for upper body strength. It's the most straightforward, well, there's your problem episode of all time. Everybody aboard who was actually doing things was like, oh yeah, we did a great job.

But they were still fucked over by the indifference of capitalism and shareholder buybacks. This is all, like literally, it's all Ronald Reagan's fault, the episode. Yes. Okay. Anyway, I just wanted, the one, the thing that really did actually kind of drive me crazy about the flight crash scene is that they have him dump fuel. And you can't dump fuel in an MD 83 or 88 or any of them. They didn't have the fuel dump capacity. So like, for them to be like, oh, yeah, let's just, let's walk through this disaster exactly as it happened.

which was a pretty action-packed disaster. And then to be like, we're gonna add in a fuel dump. It sounds cool. I also like that he's dumping fuel inverted at like 50 feet over a city. Just like, why does everything taste of cancer? They do clip a church right after this scene, which I think is kind of funny. The inverted 9-11? Is the fuel dumping valve?

Well, I guess if it doesn't have a fuel dumping valve, it's irrelevant. But you know, isn't it gravity fed? you know, it wouldn't work the planes upside down. I think they dump the fuel before they invert it. I think they actually, from what I remember, because I watched a few weeks ago, and then I forgot to like write it down more. Again, Maya and I have very different podcasting philosophies. Sorry.

But I'm pretty sure the plane jerks down. No, I don't apologize. The plane jerks down. And then he's like, whoa, it's just like Alaska 261. And then they're like level it out. And then it jerks down again. And then I'm pretty sure they dump fuel as the plane is accelerating towards the air. Which again, he can't do on this kind of plane.

He's listening to, well, there's your problem as he does it. As with all of our listeners, drunk at work. Yeah. Yeah. How long have I been muted? I don't remember that. This happened the last time I was on this spot. I do this a lot for a while.

Well, I threatened to kill you because you ran out of hard drive space. That's the last thing I remember. I don't know. Well, I very much remember that as well. That was that. That went in, yeah. The only note that I had is like, Alaska is the only American carrier to have not declared bankruptcy in the post-deregulation era.

because, you know, post-deregulation aviation is obviously not a problem at all. It's not an issue whatsoever to, like, force competition in a field that, like, has massive upfront capital expenditures and a ton of maintenance that you have every incentive in the world to cut. Anyway, Alaska's probably going to go bankrupt anyway because they bought Hawaii and now the US economy is collapsing. Yeah, the good news is that we are slowly marching towards a one airline economy in this country. And I don't know what airline it will be. I hope it's not American. State carrier. Pan Am.

Yeah, TWA. Fuck it back from the dead, baby. TWA. I hope so. Eastern Airlines. TWA give us all jobs as surf. That's true. Yeah, absolutely.

Transwoman airlines? We can't have trans women airlines because we would select the planes based on what we individually thought was most beautiful. We would be the only airline in the world simultaneously flying embryos, bombardiers, and two plebs. Way too many Lockheed elephants. many Lockheed L-1011. Goddh. Great point. You got my ass.

Yeah. It's a good plane. Sorry, sorry. You're here for the Charser flight. Yeah, get in the back of the MIG-15. But I can see daylight through the floor. It's fine. Don't worry about it.

Soviet Russian machine never break. I want to throw out a quote from the former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall. In June 2008, in the middle of of the financial collapse from Don't Do the Financial Collapse. He said, The consequences of deregulation have been very adverse. Our airlines, once world leaders, are no laggards in every category,

including fleet age, surface quality, and international reputation. Fewer and fewer flights are on time. Airport congestion has become a staple of late-night comedy shows. And even higher percentage of bags are lost or misplaced. Last-minute seats are harder and harder to find. Passenger complaints of skyrocketed. Airline service, by any standard, has become unacceptable. He also blamed this for why you can't get a halfway decent flight out of a small city,

which as somebody was blown out of two small city airports, both Missoula and Idaho Falls, yeah. Yep. Hub and spoke is great if you live in a fucking hub. I sure do. Your life sucks. Well, that's the thing, right?

That's why I fly Alaska all the time is because I have one carrier option because I live in Seattle. I live where it was a hub until it wasn't a hub anymore. And that's a particularly interesting experience. Yeah. The lesson here is that like this is the, well, there's your problem episode that will beat you to death with its unsubtility. Capitalism directly killed a bunch of people. Yes. Yes. It's fine. We paid off the families. Also, if you're probably like a little crazy, but sometimes you do really cool stuff. So, you know.

Don't date another pilot. Don't do that to yourself. I'm not dating any more pilots. Trust me, I'm done with that part of my. I put in my time. Well, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third. Shake hands for danger. Attention train perverts. Yep. Hey. What's up?

Greetings from an airplane pervert. Oh, God. One of my countrymen, thank God. I told you to stop fucking the plates. Our vehicular interest may from the outside appear totally different, but at our aviation and railroad transportation have many things in common. There are long metal boxes with people and stuff inside. There's autism and health.

terror of collisions. Yeah, they're two subcultures divided by a common language and united by the desire to fuck the machine. Yes. Yes. No, I just want to sniff the solvents. No, he doesn't. This incident involves my time as a regional airline FO.

What's an F1? First officer. First officer. Okay. At one of our common stops, Philadelphia International Airport. It's here on the screen. I like that you can see the proximity to the nearest Wawa. That's important.

Oh, yeah, there's a Wawa here. There is a Wawa here. I've also been to this Wawa. Yeah, there's the oil refinery used to be up here. Fort Mifflin is here. It's cool. Fort Mifflin's really cool, yeah. Yeah, it's really cool.

What else is? You can see the Fainting Goat Bar and Restaurant up here. I haven't been there. I don't know what's there. Anyway, KPMHL earned a reputation among flight. crews is a real headache to fly through. The airspace is crowded. The ground controllers seem to think everyone is familiar with the unwritten procedures that their overworked brains cooked up themselves and the airport signage sucks. Many a time I've been told to taxi from

intersection spot six, which is a big dot on the taxiway intersection that says six on it along the taxiway and report when I reach intersection spot 11, only to be laughed at for calling up too early because the spots are numbered 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10A, and then 11. Excellent. I love Philadelphia, greatest city in the world. I can only assume it's like this to specifically set up good and noble first officers to be laughed at by the ground control hyenas. Yes, yes, I imagine so.

These are mere annoyances to what K-PHL's real problem is. It is a 10-gallon airport in a five-gallon bag. It has three runways when it really needs six, but there's no room because the river is blocking off the expansion it really needs to accommodate the busy hub it operates as. This gorilla in a phone booth setup leads us to the incident, which I write to you about today. We were flying our CRJ 200 into KPHL, and after half an hour of fencing around, holding and vectoring, we were number two to land on runway 27R. There's 27.

I assume it's one of these two. Anyway, behind an American airline 737, runway 27R is perpendicularly intersected by runway 35, which is this one. Okay, so yeah, yeah, we're talking about this guy here. That, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah. When they land on this one, I can hear them coming over my house really loud. They only do that in like crosswinds.

That's a tiny little runway. Oh, yeah, and that's not a big one. I've been on a flight that, you know, we did a go-around on one of the big runways. Really easy for Alleyer to like satellite, to like vector a satellite over your house again. Hi, Leia. It was like a bad, bad thunderstorm. And we had to do a go-around on one of the big runways and circle around and go-around and go-to-the-smobile. runway and I was like, you know, you could just drop me off here. My house is right here.

Just, yeah, I'll just get off the plane. D.B. Coopering at five. Yeah. Hunch out the dual plug and parachute out. Yeah, exactly. Right in my backyard. Yeah. Anyway, runway 27R is perpendicularly intersected by runway 35, which was also accepting arrivals at the time because KPHL is always busy. That sounds bad. Yeah. Finally, we were cleared to switch the tower frequency. but instead of being cleared to land like we were expected, Tower told us to execute a series S turns along the approach path to give crossing landing traffic time to land. What?

My captain and I looked at each other in surprise because neither of us had done this as a time-making maneuver before and certainly not at this out of the radio in the broadest like Philadelphia accent you can. Yeah, just like fuck around up there for a minute. So this John can get off the runway. Yeah. You can use make some S turns?

My captain and I looked at each other in surprise because neither of us had done this as a time making maneuver before. Certainly not at this altitude, but the tower said to, and avoiding traffic is always a good idea. We wiggled our 26-ton aluminum booty for a minute as we screamed over the mable yard. When the tower asked if we saw the traffic we were to avoid,

we answered, nah, do you want more S-turns? The tower said they were sure we were fine. They couldn't see the traffic anymore either. Okay. And we were cleared to land on 27R. Less than 10 seconds later as we are on short final to land, a King Air light turbojet appears to the left of our flight path.

Motors left to right across the runway we were about to land on and planted itself on runway 35. Okay, now you're clear of traffic. Tower said, five seconds before we land. You can't say they don't have a sense of comedy that. Kids, the moral here is that even air traffic control gets overwhelmed and you never need an excuse to hit the takeoff go-around buttons and punch it out of there. If the vibes suck, hit the bricks.

Maybe you won't wake up in the middle of the middle of the middle. night with the memory of making eye contact with a passenger in another airport. Fuck me! Oh, just another beautiful day in commercial aviation. I love the show. It has kept my spirits up when the times have been dark and yay Liam. Yay, Liam. Thank you.

Signed a potential future episode subject. Brackets, please, for the love of God, do not post anything that might identify me. Close brackets. Listen, I just, if you feel like it's going that way, you're gonna just get on your phone, start blasting the episode for the benefit of the cockpit voice recorder. Wow. Amazing. That was Safety 3rd.

Our next episode is on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go? Begay, solve crimes.com, transgolismo. Third thing. Talk your shit. Friend girlismo, that's it. I have a Patreon. If they want more Maya, where can they find more Maya?

I'm going to plug two things. I'm going to plug my website, which is a good place to always find me. It's literally just Maya walkwith.me. That's dot me is the TLD. It's a good web domain. I've gotten compliments on it before. Assuming this is okay, I'm also going to plug. I have a GoFundMe running so I could get moved to Seattle, Washington.

Yeah, of course. Because conditions in rural America have gotten quite bad, and it is time to become an internally displaced refugee. Woo! Yeah, you should go donate. We love being internally displaced refugees. Transmen are always doing this. You should go donate to that GoFundMe.

There will be a link of the description. A lot of people already have, and I'm very thankful. Yeah. I donated to it. When I accidentally said it as anonymous, I don't want to be anonymous. I donated to it. I, like it says the Bible, let you let your,

Right hand, know what your right hand is doing. Yes. At all time. All right. End this. All right, that was the episode. Bye everybody. Wonderful.

Thank you so much. Bye everyone. Goodbye.