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EP16 – Airbus Cuts Jobs; 737 MAX Testing and the Pakistan Pilot License Scandal

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Struck Podcast Allen Hall ep16

Allen and Dan discuss further cuts in the airline industry, with Airbus announcing 15,000 job cuts. The 737 MAX completing flight testing this week and future prospects are perhaps improving. Lastly, Pakistan has a huge scandal on their hands–is it really possible that up to 40% of pilots there have fake licenses?

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Full Transcript: EP16 – Airbus Cuts Jobs; 737 MAX Testing and the Pakistan Pilot License Scandal

Alan, how you doing

Allen Hall: right boy, busy week aviation. Huh? A lot. A lot of things are changing. Yeah, yeah,

Dan: yeah. A lot of stuff’s going on. So, um, let’s jump right into that. So Airbus. It’s cutting 15,000 jobs. How, and that’s a big deal.

Allen Hall: It’s a big deal because in America I was thinking about European companies never laying off anybody or, or just letting people retire out of, out of, out of the industry.

But at Airbus needs to make cut backs pretty quickly. Uh, they got to maintain their financial stability here and with the, uh, the market in the airline industry where a lot of airlines in the United States are only flying at about half, half, or maybe three quarters is what they’re thinking going forward.

Like Delta is thinking about getting to basically a three quarters aircraft level. There’s just not going to be huge demand for new aircraft. Immediately. So whatever they’ve been building in the last couple of months is probably going to be it until the airline industry catches up. So they’re talking about by the sometime next year, 5,000 employees in France, 5,100 in Germany, 1700 in Britain, 900 in Spain and 13 others.

Elsewhere. There is a, obviously a factory and Airbus factory down in Alabama and out of state. There’s also a Airbus, um, engineering office in Wichita, Kansas, and maybe a couple others, but, um, this is a far reaching kind of lay off and it’s, it’s going to be hard for Airbus once he let those people go to sort of get them back.

So if the industry does pick up pretty quickly, It’s going to be hard to find those people. It seems like the American economy is going to pick up relatively quickly compared to some others. So in the engineering world, once you lose those engineers, they’re going to find some other place to go. It’s more stable and it’s going to be really difficult, really difficult to get those people back.

Dan: Uh, so yeah, air, air buses, shedding, a lot of workers. Um, I mean, do you see this being. I mean, Boeing is doing similar things. Like we just heard that Dave, they have a lot of their orders are getting canceled. They are also cutting production of the 747. So right before we get back to Airbus, uh, how do you, what’s the story of the 747?

Why, why do they need to get rid of that airplane? Just laying it did not do what it was supposed to do.

Allen Hall: The aircraft is built in the seventies and it’s been around about 50 years. And at this point with the reduction of international travel, Which is what it’s going to be. Uh, so Europe’s going to open up to Europe.

United States is pretty much open to United States where you can fly internally in the United States anywhere you want to go. For the most part, uh, you don’t need large aircraft like that going international because it’s not all international flights. Uh, and it’s also a combination to that. The seven 47 is a four engine.

Aircraft and the fuel burns not great. So the triple seven and the triple seven X, whatever they’re calling that, that version is going to be the replacement and Airbus has done the same thing with a three 80, because they have the a three 50, which is a 20 hour airplane, which will take over for whatever.

A three 80 had left. Um, so smaller airplanes is going to be a little more profitable. You’re going to see people be really conscious about fuel. Also as fuel prices will eventually rise. So we’re going to see a reduction in the four engine airplanes and see more of the dual engine airplanes. And Hey, it’s about time, right?

Um, engines are getting more efficient. There was no reason to you need four engines right now. Uh, I see for the next couple of years, probably it’s going to be a two engine kind of marketplace with a triple setup, seven seven eight seven seven six seven, which is mostly freight or now, and then a three 50 being the dominant one in Europe.

Uh, it’s, it’s going to be a two engine aircraft marketplace for a while.

Dan: So where do the economics, I mean, how many passengers they have to have on a, on a plane to make a four engine make, make equal financial sense? I mean, is those numbers just not going to catch up in the future?

Allen Hall: Uh, not until international travel picks up because otherwise there’s really no reason to fly, like the seven 47 and at least in the United States for a while there, it was going to Europe, but for the most part, it was going to Asia or to Australia.

And that that’s stopped. That’s totally stopped now. So there’s really no need for the aircraft at this moment. And there’s really no need for like afraid of version of the thanks. There’s plenty of those seven 47 is kicking around still. So you don’t need a new one.

Dan: Gotcha. So back to Airbus, I mean, they just let go of the

They delivered their last ones. Um, I mean, are they just kind of going step by step with, uh, with Boeing? I mean, what do you see, do you see either of these companies taking any risks in the future or is a really just going to be consistent and downsizing? For the next couple of years,

Allen Hall: both, both companies are at risk at the moment, Boeing, just because of seven 30, seven it’s been going on before the COVID-19 crisis.

And they were in a financial pants before that. And they got a couple of development programs. Um, Casey 46, which is the tanker program. And they also have the triple seven program. And I got a couple of other things cooking. It sounds like. And then Airbus always has something in the pipeline too. So you’re, you’re burning money on the R and D side at the same time, you’re trying to fulfill market share they’re there.

And now with the new airplane market really drying up, I think the number of sales in like may was essentially zero. Uh, both of those companies need that cashflow to keep. Workers employed. It’s sort of, you know, Rob from Peter to pay Paul sort of situation in the aircraft industry, you need those orders, you need that cash flow to pay employees.

And when, when the sales dry up, then you have to make cuts, really drastic cuts to the employment, which is what they’re doing have to,

Dan: yeah. What about the, uh, the, the smaller aircraft market, like the business jet market? So we saw here the. The 2021 NBA business aviation convention and exhibition, um, is going to be, is it canceled?

Allen Hall: It’s canceled for this year? It was supposed to be down in Orlando. Yeah, they, well, they have to have that happen before they had that happen in 2001. Uh, with nine 11, where they push the convention. I think it was in new Orleans that year. They pushed that convention back later in the year in this particular case, look, I says flat out canceled.

Now it was supposed to be take place down on Orlando and. Florida at this particular moment is becoming more of a hotspot for the COVID-19

Dan: and yeah, it’s not good down there.

Allen Hall: Right. So I think until we got a handle on that, it just made sense. And an MB table LA sorry. MBWA has actually had layoffs internally.

So this is a little bit of a trouble spot for anybody AA, which is a big proponent of business aviation. They’ve had to have some layoffs and now the, all their conventions are big money raisers for them. Uh, that keeps everybody employed. So if they don’t have a convention, they don’t have that sort of income and revenue and advertising and sales that they’re normally have.

And so now, It really hurts them sort of going forward. But I think there’s sort of an upside on the business aircraft. At least the United States, some of the stigma has been lifted on the business aircraft for a while. There, uh, there was a 2008 and nine. It was a sort of forbidden thought to actually go out and buy an aircraft.

And corporations were unloading a lot of their business jets as, um, As market pressures would have to demanded, but now with the COVID-19, I think it makes a lot more sense. You don’t have high value employees, like a CEO, COO CTO. Uh, maybe flying commercially while they may be exposed to, uh, COVID-19. It can really take down a company if you lose somewhat late, especially if they’ve died from it, they can really hurt your company.

So it makes sense then to go ahead and get a business aircraft, just because of the isolation part of it, it may make financial sense, longer term financial sense to have one of those aircraft will be become part of a leasing program to pick up an aircraft and go with it at least for the next year or two, until you kind of.

Things settle out. So the business market and the business aircraft market may be picking up a little bit. We’ll see how it plays.

Dan: Yeah. Well, interesting enough. He just talked about, you know, the spread of it. So Italy is banning use of overhead bins and flights, which is such a weird thing to think about.

I mean, it’s such an integral part of flying is to being able to carry on, but now. You can no longer use the overhead baggage. They call them lockers lockers. But do you think, do you think that’s going to be a trend in the U S and people would tolerate that in the U S they probably go, they probably throw a huge fit, like the biggest fit,

Allen Hall: throw a big fit in the United States.

And most of Europe too, you get charged to put. Uh, luggage in the cargo area or the aircraft and the, the one that sticks to my head is I think it’s United airline charges, 50 bucks for two bags. I think that’s what it is, but Southwest charges, nothing. And which makes to me, it always makes a lot more sense.

I understand the revenue part of that. Equation where they are there. It will generate more revenue. If you check some luggage and you’ve got an employee has got a low to get employees, go take it off. There’s sort of downside risk for moving luggage. Things break, things, get lost. So there’s a cost to transporting luggage in the cargo versus having the passengers take their luggage on and off.

But, uh, Uh, having traveled recently, uh, across the United States on a couple of flights it’s there is that sort of natural tendency when there’s items in the overhead bin that people sort of get yeah. They’re around them to grab their gear as they’re getting off the airplane and getting on the airplane for that matter.

So when. So when Southwest loads up an airplane, I think they were actually calling out that they’re asking people to load their gear underneath the seats as much as they could and try to stay out of the overheads. But I don’t think that’s possible in a sense if they’re trying to do for a separation issue, I get this.

Why Italy and not everywhere else. I don’t know. I don’t, I still don’t understand why, why would you be just Italy? Because that phenomena. Happens everywhere. Uh, particularly I’ve already sort of noticed on international travel pictures. Everybody’s so tired of being on the airplane. They just want to get off, but, uh, the, the, the crowding round, the overhead bins is really got to stop.

And at least for the time being, can everybody just slow down a little bit?

Dan: Yeah. Well, I mean, for business travel, I mean, if you’re a person that, that. Is able to pack light and you’re in a hurry. You don’t want to go through the, like, that would make a lot of people upset. Like I don’t want to wait an extra 40 minutes in my bags if I don’t have to,

Allen Hall: you know, but

Dan: we get it, you know,

Allen Hall: Delta doctor, when we were flying.

Uh, last week Delta had a baggage guarantee. I think it was bags within 15 minutes was a guarantee which would make a big difference. One of the airports that always gets me is flying in and out of Philadelphia, Philadelphia for whatever reason, takes forever to get your luggage in and out of there. And, but other airports.

Fine. I mean, there’s been, there’s been cases, uh, traveling relatively recently where I’ve come off the airplane. By the time I got down to baggage, uh, bags, were there ready to go? So obviously you not having as many flights helps that, but yeah, it’s, you know, the whole, all systems gotta be thinking a little bit larger, especially with the COVID-19 risks.

Dan: Yeah. And of course, uh, American airlines just announced. I think there’s one other airlines.

Allen Hall: Yeah. United,

Dan: yeah. Flights are going to be back to full capacity soon. Starting well, starting July one. So, I mean, this, this was an inevitable thing, right? I mean, planes can’t fly it. Two thirds capacity can, they can make economic sense.

Allen Hall: They can, if you raise prices where they can, if you’ve got your, your, you know, your fuel costs down and your employment, you know, the employee costs down. Yeah. You can totally do it. Uh, Southwest is going to do it until September 1st, where they’re going to keep the middle seats open. At least that’s what they’re saying today.

As things, you know, as things progress, obviously they can change their mind, but United American has said, forget it let’s go. We can load up the airplane. We need to get the revenue. And they have a larger kind of a different model than Southwest does. And maybe that model is putting a little more stress on them.

Economically. I think the cash burn per day is some astronomical number where you have to be flying. I have to be creating revenue and I’m sure every passenger on the airplane reduces that loss. And they’re not looking at making profit right now. They’re looking at loss reduction, which is a weird way to think about it.

But I think some airlines are really, yeah.

Dan: Alright. So let’s, uh, we’ll shift gears a little bit. So. This week. What I want to talk about for engineering is really the 737 MAX test flight. So those are complete now, Alan, what did they find and what were they looking for? Because this has been a big deal for a long time. For, for Boeing

Allen Hall: flight tests are tend to be the last part of any certification effort.

And when Boeing flew, they flew a couple of flights this year. This past week, it looks like, um, all those flight tests turned out to be positive. We haven’t seen zero negative press about it. And you gotta imagine that Boeing knew what the results were before they put FAA pilots and observers in the room.

They always want to fly the airplane. So, you know, the answer is going to be, uh, but it seems like. Now with the flight test being complete, that Boeing is headed towards, uh, getting the restriction limitations off the airplane. Now that happens via an airworthiness directive. So though the FAO and everybody else would issue an air war, this directive telling, um, Owners are those aircraft, what they have to go do to get those aircraft airworthy.

Now I’m sure Boeing has already communicated that list too. Most of the aircraft operators. So they have an idea what’s coming. Uh, but some of those airplanes, um, I don’t know how they’re gonna manage upgrading and retrofitting all those aircraft unless they’ve got depots. They’re going to. Send them to, or are they going to fly him all the way back to Seattle, which is what they may do to Mount up those airplanes?

Cause it sounds like there’s some, obviously some wiring changes and mr. Mutation changes, definitely some software changes and it seems like we’re going to get to some additional pilot training in the simulator and that will be. A fun time. Uh, just because of the number of pilots you’ve got to get through those simulators.

And there’s not a lot of simulators on the planet. And so trying to get everybody through some simulator time, uh, which is what Boeing is trying to avoid in the first place with the ingest.

Dan: That seems like a big deal because. Wasn’t it, um, it was one prominent airliner. They said that, Hey, we’re only ordering 737 MAXs.

If you can promise us, there’s no simulation time. So, so you wonder like if they, if they’re reneging on that deal or

Allen Hall: yeah,

Dan: sure. I don’t know how they handle that. Cause they’re like, no we’re buying all AirBus unless you can guarantee it. You guarantee us that

Allen Hall: I think Airbus, Airbus does that. They’re not thinking straight up.

One of the things that came out of the 737 MAX investigations and all the refuse and engineering time and looking at, uh, the safety analysis system, Stacey analysis and functional hazard assessments. And I’m going to talk tactical for a minute. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of probability and a lot of analysis done on system performance to determine if the system is adequate to meet the regulations or not.

And the, uh, with, with. With part of that equation, being the pilot performance, you expect that palace behave in a certain way. When some things happen on the airplane and that was built into the system safety assessments, that the pilots, when X happened pile to do Y well, it turned out pilots didn’t do Y and then the system responded in a way that.

I’m not sure everybody grasped at the time, but the system, you know, repeatedly kept pushing nose down, kept pushing nose down to the point where the pilots couldn’t recover it. Um, that’s seeing consequences cause I don’t think Boeing definitely Boeing didn’t think that was going to happen. So you got this mismatch of engineering.

Interpretation of pilot responses. And then you have a whole bunch of pilots. Most of which would have responded in the, in that manner. It was that they had assumed on this system safety assessment and then a couple that didn’t. So now if you get those pilots running through similar training, you can lay eyes on everybody.

And I think Airbus’s thinking straight too. Similar time as simulator time, that’s a small cost. It’s not negligible, but it’s small relative to the PR disaster and the grounding of airplane disaster that Boeing has been through. And the cost of the stock and everything else, loss of jobs, you name it. It was caused by, um, sort of not thought through engineering, combined with some pilot reactions.

So if you can get the pilots. Eyeballs on pilots from a Boeing, from a, from an OEM aircraft OEM perspective. I think he has a better sense of how you should be designing the airplane one and two. It may give you a little bit of veto power on who’s going to fly your airplane. And that would be good. That would be good.

Dan: So when you say veto power, what exactly do you mean?

Allen Hall: I think, yeah, some of the airlines, like, uh, it’s, it’s sort of a well known factor, right? It’s not like we all sit around drinking coffee talking about this, but there are some airlines that have better training than others, and there’s some groups of pilot to have, um, more flight experience than others.

And in that difference is where, uh, details and problems can occur. Because when you don’t, when you’re doing a system safety assessment. So you’re all, all the engineers sit around and make sure that the system that they just designed won’t kill anybody. And when you’re sitting down around the table, all the automated systems, when you know how they will perform, you’ve tested them.

You’ve done analysis on them, hundreds of hours of analysis on these things. You, you understand how that system would work and then you put the Schumann in the middle of it. And it’s that human part. That is the wildcard in some of these, in some of these crashes. And if you can look at overall and the history of aircraft, the number of crashes have been associated with pilot air.

It’s an very, very significant portion of crashes is pilot error, especially for smaller airplanes on larger airplanes. It can be that way too. It’s very unusual that. It’s a quote unquote system. A lot of times it’s maintenance and his pilot error. Very few, not a lot of instances where it’s just basic design flaw with the aircraft that leads to crashes.

So removing some of that pilot error or par pilot variance is going to make the aircraft safer, but who’s, who’s valid evidently and some parts of the world. There’s not a lot of validation that’s going on. And as if I’m an aircraft, Oh, if I’m an aircraft company, I’m making airplanes and I’m relying on thousands of pilots that I never seen before.

And I have no idea what their capabilities are. I’m not sure what I got and if it’s going to cost me my company, which it almost did in Boeing’s case, I probably want to have some say, and I know has been times another airplane companies where, um, They’ll take, I’ve been around it a little bit. So, you know, they’ll take perspective pilots out or owners in particular who are pilots to fly these, to fly some airplanes.

And it’s not unusual for, um, to get, uh, you know, uh, uh, someone who’s respectively buying an aircraft to get an airplane. And you can just see it’s just so it’s just too much for them. It’s usually when they make a transition from a, a piston airplane to a jet, that’s usually where the transition occurs, where everything just is sped up, everything is just sped up.

And that’s where pilot starts to make errors. So in that transition from a propeller driven airplane or a slower airplane to a larger airplane, because the speeds go up and everything just happens. And there’s a lot more things to do a lot more buttons and buzzers and beeps in the cockpit. That’s where that transition happens and, and problems occur.

So, um, I would like to see. OEMs have some say at the table about pilot training and I think it’s time and I’m not, not that we can just say, Hey, we don’t really care. What pilot training is. We’re trying to minimize pallet training because we can sell more airplanes. You better. At this point balance out off about the potential cost impact of what that’s gonna mean.

Some airplanes fall at Scott because the pilots aren’t ready for what you just delivered. Somebody’s got to do.

Dan: All right. So we’re going to shift gears into our third segment here. So this is our learn from failure, which this is sometimes going to be an engineering thing, but this week we’re going to talk about Pakistan. So big. I mean, these are crazy headlines that. Up to potentially 40% of pilots in Pakistan, which right now they’re saying that’s 262 out of the total 860 active pilots in the country.

We’re not given proper exams and essentially a fake flying licenses. And that means either they had someone else sit for the exam on their behalf. Or perhaps there are some other ways around the system. So, Alan, what do you have on this? This is terrifying and crazy. All at once. And we were just talking about, you know, pilots, safety and training and, and the standards.

What do you got on this situation?

Allen Hall: This is nuts. Flat out nuts. It’s

Dan: crazy. Yeah. You can have someone flying your plane. That’s an imposter, essentially. Like that’s yeah. It’s mind blowing. There’s

Allen Hall: more oversight and taking the sat. If you get to get into college than there is to getting an aircraft pilots license.

That’s what I just said, that there was more oversight, but when you go get, take the sat, which in the United States is the standardized achievement test, uh, to determine, you know, where you may fit in the different variety of colleges that are around in the United States in particular, there’s just, there’s an ID check, right?

She had to bring like a license with you, a photo, a valid. Piece of photo ID with you to get inside that inside that place. Great. And we just had a big scandal in the United States where there were spent some people who had falsified, right. They falsified the rest, sat T scores are getting some of these schools, right.

And that’s, what’s a huge scandal. Well, who the hell cares if some 18 year old gets into USC? Right. I care about that. The person who is faking an aircraft pilots licenses, who’s flying around thousands of people that is nuts right now. And it gets back to that same thing where I was talking about the OEMs, having some.

Having some oversight about who’s flying their airplanes for goodness sakes. You could tell within 30 seconds. Cause I bet for most of these simulator, um, uh, training people that if you’ve got a pilot, it doesn’t know what they’re doing. I bet they have that conversation once a month, that here comes a pilot.

This, this person does not have the rigors of the necessarily skill set to fly this aircraft. Why are they flying this aircraft? You saw it in some of the Boeing emails back and forth to right. And. It’s just frustrating as all get out that, uh, from the engineering side as an as, and I’m going to dispatch for the engineers here for a minute, like we’ve put a lot of time and effort into making sure those aircraft are safe.

And then we put somebody in the seat who’s not ready for it. And then when it all hits the fan and in the aircraft crash, who are they coming in after, while those stupid engineers, because they were idiots or, or they just didn’t care or they were negligent or they weren’t doing their job. That is not the case.

I, you can rarely find where that has been the case versus pilot air. Rarely find the case where the engineers were maliciously out there trying to break the airplane or the mechanics or anybody else. What you find is that the larger propensity of aircraft accidents have to do with pilot air. That’s where the effort should lie.

And when you have know, we have a group, a couple of hundred people, and that’s not the only place it’s occurring, but it can’t be right. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a lot of parts and I’m sure it happens in the end state. So this isn’t like we’re immune from this either, but it gets to the point where there’s two people in that cockpit.

One of those two people have better be trained. Where are you looking at the other seat over there to make sure the person next to them is trained. And if they’re not trained, would it be flagging? It it’d be like very similar. When pilots get on the airplane drunk, what you see, you know, a couple of times a year, right?

Somebody on that airplane, another member of that flight crew speaks up and says, you’re not flying today. You’re coming off this airplane and those pilots get arrested and you see it regularly. I want to say regularly a couple times a year. It isn’t like it’s once every 10 years you can read about it once or twice a year where a pilot has, has, has been drinking within eight hours of flight.

Yeah. They’re going to pick that up. So if the, if the pilot is drunk or has, this is hung over there, flag it. But if the pilot only has, as you know, uh, moderate to low level skills to fly that airplane, we say nothing. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. You wouldn’t do it as if someone’s driving a car. You’re sitting in the passenger seat.

You wouldn’t let somebody, who’s a poor driver, sit there and get you killed. Why are we letting that happen on an airplane? It’s beyond me.

Dan: Yeah. It’s also a strange idea that you would want to do something that dangerous, fake. Like I personally wouldn’t want to fake be a pilot. Like I would try it. Isn’t the expected outcome that you’re going to crash at some point, or you’re just going to find yourself in an Oh crap moment where.

You’re way over your head and then you get exp I mean, that seems like one of the things that you just don’t really want to fake. I don’t know. It’s, it’s baffling in little, so many ways.

Allen Hall: Well, I think it’s a way it’s a way being a pilot is a very prestigious thing. Well, we made a movie about it, right?

What, what’s the name of that movie? Um, Well, the guy’s a teenager and he fakes being a pilot and he’s falling out of the world writing bad checks.

Dan: Oh yeah. That’s me. If you

Allen Hall: catch me, if you can write. So there’s a, so, I mean, there you go. Right. They thought that guy was a pilot for the longest time. He was flying all over the place.

He’d put on the uniform and he’s sitting in the cockpit for God sakes. What, what, this is like, this is a new phenomenon. Yeah. How,

Dan: how easy was that?

Allen Hall: Well, it was a wild West. Yeah, totally was. But I mean, what was, w why did he do that? Well, he did it won because he could travel, but two, because there’s a lot of prestige to it.

Maybe being a pilot is insane, even in today’s world where, you know, We have a skewed sense of reality, but being a pilot is hard. It’s a very difficult thing to do. It’s like being a race car driver. There’s not a lot of really good race car drivers. And yet there’s thousands of pilots flying airplanes today.

That’s a skillset that is not easy to acquire. And once you have it, uh, you want to hold onto it because it does have prestige. When you come onto an airplane, you always give a little bit of respect to the pilot who just brought you to Orlando or wherever you’re flying to. Because they literally holds you, they hold your life in their hands.

And so it is, it does, it does. And some, I might, I’m just thinking out loud here, but I think at some places having that level of prestige feels good regardless of what you’re saying. Yeah, for sure.

Dan: Yeah. And I guess if you’re a con artist, you’re not really looking at foreign to the future, you’re just trying to.

See the, the high you get again from yeah. That prestige and all that, I guess

Allen Hall: the captain. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: That’s crazy. So what do you think is going to happen? Are they going to overhaul well, and the other thing that we talked about off air was that beyond these obviously appalling instances of fake licenses, there’s also just the issue of flight time standards, right?

So in the U S it’s 15, 1500 air, 1500 hours of flight time. To be a pilot or a copilot, but overseas it’s it’s way lower than that in some countries. Right.

Allen Hall: That loss. Yeah. So there you go. Right. That’s just a recipe. Does it governs

Dan: that? I mean, why, why does, why does like a big, like JASA doesn’t. Girlfriend that, I mean, no,

Allen Hall: I think it’s, I think it’s, I see it, which is the international aviation, uh, organization that sort of set standards, worldwide standards.

There is a worldwide standard board there, but why they hours is so low probably because the member countries want it to be low because it will hot pilots without much experience and they need to fly airplanes. So they made the argument that, Hey, if you have a couple hundred hours of flight experience, you can fly seven 37.

That, that, that seems crazy to me because even on the military side, we don’t put pilots in a advanced aircraft without having a good bit of flight instruction and hours in the seat, because it does matter. I think even get our driver’s license in this in my state may take more out. It seems like it takes more hours to get your driver’s license.

As a teenager, there’s a flight damn airplane, like what is going on. Uh, but. Until, and have you seen any push to change those hours? I haven’t. I haven’t seen one. I haven’t seen anybody say, Hey, maybe that’s a problem because Boeing and Airbus are afraid. They’re not going to have any sales. So if Airbus is willing to sell an airplane to a pilot that has 400 hours of flight experience and Boeing doesn’t and Boeing loses a sale, we can’t have that.

Right. And. Goodness knows we got, I don’t know how many world bodies that are making decisions, but why we’re not making it that one. I don’t know. Uh, because we got to get over this crazy crash. That’s number of crashes are going on in certain parts of the world because of lack of pilot training. That’s that’s got to happen.

Dan: Yeah. And that’s the, that’s the, I think the interesting takeaway is, like you said, you put so much engineering time into these aircraft and then you put a human in the seat. Who’s not equipped to fly and just like, it’s all for nothing. If the pilot’s not competent,

Allen Hall: frustrating. Frustrating.

Dan: All right. Well, that’ll do it for today’s episode of struck.

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