EP2 - Iran & Aviation Impact, Routing Around Geopolitics, Instagram Avgeeks, and Listener Q&A

21:23Bob:Yeah, now you got this big bottleneck there of ships. Well, the ships are not able to even get insurance right now. The ships are just like, well, we're just going to sit here. Of course, then they're sitting ducks. The risk is high. And so now you have all this oil that's not moving out of that region to refineries. And of course, what happens? The price of oil is probably going to go up. I think it's, as we speak right now, it's already up 5 % at the open. Yeah. There's oil being produced all over the place, but the bulk of the oil that we're consuming is coming out of this region. So obviously that's not going to bode well either for the aviation industry.

22:07So let's talk routings for a minute here. You may notice, and I noticed there's a couple of questions regarding why do we root through Cairo? One of the major reasons we choose any stops in this business and repeatedly go to them, we've been going to Muscat lately. The reason that we stick to the same places is predictability, ease, costs, and just knowing that we're going to be able to get in and out of there on short notice without a tremendous amount of planning and permitting. Whenever you fly Part 91 the way that we do, we have to get overflight permits, landing permits, departure permits, slots, different overflight permissions.

22:48We have to send aircraft documents and so on and so forth. The places that we go for the most part are the places that minimize the time and cost of all those items. And that's why we generally go to Cairo.

23:01Bob:And, yeah, not to mention just the business side of it where we have credit established in most of those places. So it's not like we got to go carry a bunch of cash or deal with, you know, paying. They're essentially billing us. Stop in, do our thing, and then they send us a bill. And we've been going to Cairo for years. It's a decent overnight. They take good care of us there. It's just an easy place to go. And fuel seems to be cheap. Somebody mentioned Amman. We go into Amman. We've delivered plenty of aircraft to Amman. There's a large MRO there that we've used plenty of times. It's just paperwork-wise, they want a lot more.

23:39They need a lot more time to process the inbound and outbound permit paperwork. Same thing with Cyprus. Same thing with Israel. I mean, Israel's one of the more difficult places to get in and out of just from a security perspective. You can't fly in there from anywhere. There's only certain designated cities.

23:56Bob:Yeah, we would not even consider stopping in Israel for a fuel stop. They probably wouldn't let us anyway, actually. Yeah. We're in and out of Tel Aviv. I wouldn't say often, but it happens. And it's a huge process. There's pre-clearances required. I mean, they take security very, very, very seriously there. So that's why we go to Cairo. And then after landing in Cairo, let's say we're going toward Asia from Europe. Our routing is essentially through the middle of Saudi Arabia. We go over the Sinai Peninsula, and then we transit the center of Saudi Arabia, but then work our way toward the northern part.

24:39So we usually are just south of Qatar. Sometimes we're right over Qatar, Bahrain. We talk to Bahrain radar, Doha radar. We talk to Dubai. So as of right now, this airspace is closed. And our dispatch and planning team says that if we need to transit out of this region, we will just take a more southerly route in Saudi Arabia over central and southern Oman. Of course, we're not going to overfly Yemen, but we would overfly essentially Riyadh and then like central Oman. And then from there, you know, we could either either make somewhere in India. We can make the Maldives. We can make Sri Lanka, Karachi.

25:20I mean, there's a lot of options once we get through here. So as of right now, our plan is to route south. However, if we're going to China, our dispatch has a contingency plan that has us going north. So that's through Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Baku, across the Caspian Sea, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and then into western China from there.

25:43Bob:And that's not due to this conflict. that's mostly that's the rooting that's been for the last couple of years because of the Ukrainian conflict and Russia situation. You know, these reroutes, there's a lot of things that we that we need to consider when we're determining these reroutes, not necessarily just airspace restrictions. But, you know, there are variables that go into all of our route selection. And it basically it's an example of the puzzle being knocked off the table and having to get put back together. You quote a trip, sometimes two to three months in advance, and there are some variables.

26:22Fuel prices change every week. Airfares change regularly. There are plenty of things that can change over the normal course of business, but the things that we don't plan on changing are handling costs and fuel prices that are more significant than market fluctuations. If you're If you're buying fuel in Cairo at$2.85 a gallon, if all of a sudden you have to, for some reason, due to a reroute, buy gas in Sofia, you know, you could be looking at$5.50 a gallon. So that significantly impacts the cost of a trip. Yeah.

27:01Bob:So, you know, one other thing to add to that that comes into this whole equation is the permit time, the time it takes for us to get approval to overfly a country. Sometimes we change routing or select a certain routing based on we're not going to get a ferry permit from whatever controlling agency is issuing it. maybe the day before the flight, maybe two days, maybe three days. Well, some of these places require seven days notice before we can overfly. And, you know, we're under pressure from the companies that we're flying for to get that airplane out as soon as possible. A lot of times they have a, what's called a maintenance slot or a paint slot.

27:44Bob:They have a certain date that they have to get that airplane into, into the maintenance hangar, wherever we're taking it. And they'll be penalized or possibly lose that maintenance slot or severely delayed in getting that maintenance if we don't get it there on that day. So we're always under a lot of pressure to move as quickly as possible. So much of our routing is based on that. Yeah. And also, there's not like a standard process for applying for permits. There's not a standard set of documents that each country asks for. I mean, there are the key items that are standard. You always have to provide a certificate of registration, a certificate of airworthiness, or a special airworthiness certificate, whether that be a PTF or an SFP.

28:28You always have to provide a certificate of insurance and a radio license. But some countries require we submit the aircraft return to service or deregistration record or the dirty fingerprints, the DFPs, like what has been touched on the aircraft during maintenance. They want to evaluate, especially if the aircraft is operating on a special ferry permit, like an SFP or a PTF, as they call it from some jurisdictions.

28:58Bob:It's a permit to fly. Yeah, exactly. A permit to fly. They want to know what is not airworthy in the traditional sense on the aircraft that are overflying their airspace. Certain countries require that and certain countries don't. And certain countries have just one person that reviews all these things. Others have a process where it has to go from desk to desk and get a stamp from the military and a stamp from the Civil Aviation Authority and a stamp from the handler. And like each one of these things might take a full day. Like my, you know, I visually imagine like some guy at a desk, you know, like a stack of papers and he pulls one, looks at it, stamps it.

29:39It's got a big rubber stamp. I don't know what it looks like in real life, but I know that it's not a transparent process. It's also not infrequent for us to submit a permit, have it get rejected two days later and have them ask for like six other documents. And now we're scrambling to go to the client and, hey, we need, you know, we need some sort of.

30:03Bob:It's as simple as like they want different language on the insurance document. I mean, it's like, what? Like we have insurance. Well, we want it in our format. We want it to say this. Sometimes they say, we want that insurance document converted to our language, not in English. We want it in whatever. Turkey. Turkey has their own format that every certificate of insurance has to be converted to by, not by us, by the actual insurance underwriter. So they have to send the COI back to their insurance agent and have it redrafted in a specific format in both English and in Turkish. Yeah. And we have to use stamps on a lot of the signatures.

30:49Bob:A lot of signatures on documents around the world have to have a stamp, a signature and like a stamp across the signature. Yeah. If there's no stamp, it's rejected. Yeah. Then it's not legit in their eyes. So, I mean, the whole purpose of this, you know, this is this all comes back to complex permitting processes. If we can go to places where we know what they want and we know what they're going to accept and we know what they're sensitive to, we're going to go to that same place every time. We're going to overfly that same country every time because we know we can get it done quickly. And, you know, from a customer's perspective, it looks like, hey, you guys said you're going to, you know, you need three days notice.

31:26And now here we are. Why can't we go? Well, sir, because it's Sunday and they're not open.

31:30Bob:He was like, do you guys know what you're doing? Have you ever done this before? You guys are amateurs. So I wanted to just kind of pose one scenario, which might be disastrous for us. If this conflict ends up causing a closure in Saudi Arabia, as I said before, our path generally goes through the Persian Gulf, which is now off limits. Now the alternative is to go through Saudi Arabia, going to Europe or going from Asia to basically anywhere on this side of the globe. The alternative is going to have to be to go south to Mombasa, Kenya. That's kind of our workaround. It would mean instead of going through the Middle East, we'd have to go most likely to Colombo, Sri Lanka for fuel and stop in.

32:19Potentially, we can make it from Colombo to Mombasa. If not, we'd have to stop in the Maldives in Malay and then Mombasa. And then we'd have to work our way north through Ethiopia and across the Red Sea south of Saudi Arabia if we can get into that corridor there. So that would mean coming way, way south to get around Saudi Arabia. That would be massively problematic. And God forbid we actually have to, if this area around Egypt and the Red Sea is closed, now we're going to have to start looking at coming across Africa. And I mentioned another conflict that's been a problem. We had a few aircraft going from Dubai down to Johannesburg, South Africa last year.

33:03And that all happened right when the Sudan and South Sudan conflict kicked off. So that closed off the airspace to Sudan and South Sudan. And as you know, as of the last year, we can no longer overfly Chad, Nihar, Mali, Burkina Faso, Libya. Yeah. So there's there's there's effectively a wall now in Africa. You have this whole northern central part of Africa that we can't overfly. So if we can't make it up through, you know, the Red Sea coming from Kenya, Ethiopia, which is our only option. I don't know what we're going to do. I think we're going to have to. I mean, I honestly don't know the answer to that question.

33:48Bob:I don't think the airlines do either because they're in the same boat. Yeah. We can overfly the DRC. We can go over to Cameroon, Nigeria, maybe Sierra Leone and up West Africa. I don't know. It's kind of a nightmare scenario, to be honest. So if things progress to the point where we can't overfly Saudi Arabia, that's going to be very, very tricky on that east-west corridor. yeah well let's hope that that that scenario does not happen let's let's for sure hope that okay so we're gonna take a break for a second and then when we come back side stick oh boy lighting things up we are back what do you have for for side stick tonight man i don't know after all that conversation um can we get can we get light here can we get uh Can we get back to being us?

34:41Bob:I think we need to. Yeah, for sure. Let's take away all the world's problems, put them out of your head, and think about this. So, Steve, here's a question that I'm going to throw at you. And I'm curious to see what you say. Okay. So, what type of Instagram pilot, let's say, do you love out of these three categories? Okay. Understand? I want to know which one is the one that you like the best. What Instagram content do I like the best? Yeah. Or the Instagram type of influencer, let's say. Okay. Do you like the Instagram motivational pilot type account? or do you like the career advice, training advice type influencer that's also like, you know, they usually you're selling like a course or something or do you like the kind of like old school pilot that talks about how things used to be and how much better aviation was?

36:05Okay, I, first of all, I don't follow aviation content on Instagram. Okay. Okay. Well, so my Instagram feed is dogs mostly.

36:17Bob:It's mostly puppies and dogs. Okay. But I'm going to say, I know that you've seen some of these influencer types. Yes. Yes. I've seen them. I've seen them. In fact, I send them to you via DM and laugh at them sometimes. I'm going to choose option C. I like the old school. So I will say I do follow a few aviation accounts on Instagram. And my absolute favorite to follow is SergeyIL76. I don't know if that's exactly his name. Do you follow that one? I don't think so. I'm not familiar with that. Oh, my God. This is the best aviation account on Instagram, according to me. So what is it about? What's the call?

37:04All right. So, oh, Sergio IL-76. I made him Russian and he's not even Russian. Sergio underscore IL underscore 76 is an IL-76 pilot that shoots like cockpit casual quality video in an IL -76.

37:29Bob:Oh, man, that is way cool. I've got to check that out. I haven't seen that. I don't know how you haven't looked at that. I mean, like, look, can I show you his content here? Yeah. It's backwards, huh? No. You got to look at this guy's stuff. Oh, man. This is, first of all, that airplane is one of the coolest, dirtiest, biggest, ugliest airplanes, which is just, I mean, it blows black smoke out the back. This dude, his feed is well worth watching. He should have a gazillion followers. I don't know anything about Sergio personally. I'd love to have him on the show. So that's the answer. The other guys, man, there's some guy that's always got his shirt off.

38:12Who's that?

38:14Bob:Okay, so that's Pilot Shapiro. And I knew you were going to go there. He's a fellow Jew, so, I mean, I'd probably like him. Well, yeah, I think you would, honestly. So I find him interesting. You like shirtless guys. Maybe that's what it is. I don't know. But I've actually I've actually DM'd back and forth with him. Not not about.

38:44Bob:No. So, you know, he's interesting because, OK, you know, everybody makes fun of him. Everybody's like, oh, he's so cringy, blah, blah, blah. And he's like always putting these like motivational type, you know, type of content out there. Very positive stuff. And he just gets, you know, just beaten to death for doing it. He does it with his shirt off, Bob. I mean, that's why. I mean, he's muscular. Most pilots look like me, like, you know, out of shape. OK, but so so, you know, we're jealous. We don't want to be reminded how fat and disgusting we are. I agree. So, so he did, he did continue on with introducing his, his boyfriend.

39:29Bob:So, like, he came out, introduced his boyfriend. He's very happy in the situation that he is. And I'm like, hey, that, you know, I mean, for, for a pilot to, you know, number one, go out there and be positive and not, you know, and not stop doing it from just getting beat to death by all the, you know, by all the cynic pilots out there. Bob, it makes it significant. I didn't realize that he was gay. And it makes it a lot more acceptable, in my opinion, to be honest. So I agree. And actually, that's why I wanted to bring that up, too, because I don't think you watched his content long enough to actually see that.

40:12Bob:Because, I mean, I respect that somebody would have something like that in this aviation world would be brave enough to put that out there to the world. I'm like, that takes a lot of balls. It does. All right, Shapiro, I like you, buddy. You know, it's okay that your body is much more attractive than mine. I'll still follow you. It's all good, I guess. There you go, Pilot Shapiro. I've sold you on another one. Not only, Pilot Shapiro, are you one of Bob's favorite Instagram followers. You are now his favorite genre of Instagram follow. Okay. Steve, you're taking a little bit too far here and putting words in my mouth.

40:57But that's the premise of side shtick. You asked me what genre of Instagram follow I like best. I like dirty Russian airplanes, and you like shirtless, attractive gay men.

41:10Bob:Okay. Let's go on to that next. Okay. That's two of them. But now there's also the pilot influencer, the training, you know, influencer, the influencer that's, you know, a regional pilot talking about, you know, their career and how they got there and what the daily life is. Yeah. A lot of them get a lot of flack for supposedly being cringe or whatever. What is that? Oh, seven minutes. Oh, no. Okay. That's seven minutes, man. Oh, my gosh. We can't talk about it. Are we going to extend it? Should we extend it? We still can't find our groove with side stick, man. I know. Jesus. I know. I know. So anyway, I just want to say, here's my take on it.

41:55Bob:I like those first two categories. I really like these people that are putting a positive message out there. I like people who are helping other people. There's Pilot Ava Bell. She actually has a course on passing check rides and stuff. She puts a lot of time into it, but it puts an enormous amount of stuff online. mind. Jen Big Energy, Big Genergy is her Instagram. She also puts a lot of stuff out there for, you know, trying to help people with training, trying to help people with, you know, you know, check rides and getting through all of that stuff. I think it's really cool. I mean, if I was a, you know, an up and coming pilot, I would, I would love all that stuff.

42:34Bob:So I like that they're trying to help the aviation community in good ways. And it's all positive stuff. However, who's the other guy? Boomer. Boomer pilot. Man, you are invested. You are invested. You know all these guys. I do. Because people forward me. It's good that you're in charge of booking the guests. People forward me this stuff all the time. Angry boomer. Angry boomer pilot. He's an expat flying for, I don't know. I don't know if it's an Asian airline or a Middle Eastern or an Indian airline. But it's stuff and it's it's all all stuff that that I can relate to from, you know, expat flying and and being an old guy flying with, you know, young co-pilots and stuff.

43:21Bob:Yeah, it's hilarious stuff. Oh, my God. Well, look, man, I to put a cap on side stick here. The bottom line is you like very positive, uplifting content because you're a positive and uplifting guy. I am a cynical curmudgeon, and it's just who I am. And that's why I look at dogs on Instagram and puppies, because it makes me happy. That makes me happy. Like, people make me sick. Except Pilot Shapiro. I like him now, now that I know more about his bravery and exposing his nipples. It makes you want to go work out now, don't it? oh man i don't know okay we're gonna do a cockpit uh casual podcast with our shirts off one of these days oh god maybe when maybe if we'll get pilot shapiro on here we'll all be shirtless okay deal i'm kind of a sorry i said that now all right i'm we're gonna we're gonna we're double the amount of time allotted.

44:32Oh my God. We're 10 minutes now.

44:34Bob:Okay. Okay. All right. We're going to go into listener questions. Okay, guys. So first of all, the response was awesome. Keep it coming. The questions are great. There's a bunch of audio questions. There's a bunch of video questions. Let's go through some. I don't, you know, I, if I didn't get to you this week, I've seen them all and I will get to you and I'm not just shelving these and you don't have to resubmit. Like if I didn't read yours, I'll get to it eventually. I'm going to get to all of them eventually. But the ones that we're going to get to today, we're going to get to today. So this one's from a guy named Jamie and I'm going to, he sent us a video and I'm going to play it.

45:18I think Jamie is from the UK based on his accent. What does Jamie have to say?

45:26Bob:Hello. captain bob and steve uh i'm jamie i'm an aviation enthusiast and my favorite aircraft is the boeing 757 uh this right here is the throttle quadrant off of condor 757s when they got stripped for parts and one of my biggest questions with the 757 is what does the crs selector mode on the mcp do and the one by the IOS. So when you tune your IOS, you've got a section next to it with CRS. Is that just the course that's displayed in the FMC? And is it like the runway heading or is it something else? I do also have a 757 yoke just down there. Oh my God, this is wild. He's got some serious stuff, man.

46:19Bob:How do you get that stuff? Oh, there I am. Casual. I just love seeing you and Captain Bob together doing all these ferry flights and just seeing the world from your perspective. All right, Jamie, first of all, respect. You have a 757 throttle quadrant, and that is awesome. Let's cover your questions real quick. These are easy ones. Okay, so CRS course. Yes, sir. It means course. There are two different selectors. So on the MCP, and this is a pet peeve of mine, by the way. Why does every aircraft manufacturer have different names for the same components? Exactly. So on a Boeing, it's called the MCP.

47:03The MCP would be the mode control panel. It's on the glare shield. So it's above the main panel in the front and it's below the windows. It's the panel that has the controls for all the autopilot, auto throttles, heading bug, nav, all that. That's the MCP. On the 75 and 76, there is a little nav radio kind of section on either side. The captain has one, the FO has one. And there's frequency and course. CRS is course. The main PFD, primary flight display, right, has a horizon and a flight director on it. And then down below, there's another display, which is your nav display. and most of the time we have it in map and in map mode you can see each waypoint you can see turns in the course and changes you can overlay the weather however there are two different reversionary modes on that map one of them is called rose and one of them is called arc and in rose you get a full hsi horizontal situation indicator which is a compass card with you know, an HS, I don't know, what's the other word?

48:15It's a needle with like a center point that moves in and out, just like a traditional way that we navigate with VORs. So what you do when you're turning the course knob on the MCP, you're just rotating the bezel of the, not the bezel, the actual HSI needle, like it was a traditional six pack HSI instrument. You can track a VOR using an HSI by adjusting the course on that. Bob, why don't you talk about ILSs because ILSs are different on the 7576.

48:46Bob:Yeah, so the ILS frequency actually has to be dialed in, the frequency, on the center control panel. On the center console. On the center console. It's a separate radio head for ILS frequencies. It's not the same radio head as your VOR, as Steve explained, which is up on the MCP. So you put your ILS frequency in, in that radio head that's on the center control panel. Here, here it is over here. I have it ready. So you have, so this is the center control panel, the 757. Right here is another radio control head. So this side is frequency, FRQ. this side is F course that stands for front course. So you dial in the front course of the localizer.

49:39If you're shooting a back course, you dial in for the front course that you want to travel. So you're not going to put in the opposite. You're going to put in the front course all the time. That's why it differentiates here. And then when you're not shooting an ILS, this is what we call, we park it. You take it to the point where you can take it One click beyond the lowest frequency and the whole thing just disappears.

50:02Bob:Or it shows dashes or disappears. Right. So the one on the MCP is only for VORs and the one on the center pedestal is for localizers and ILSs. So that answers the question. Good questions. And congrats on having a, you're a heck of an enthusiast, man. Yeah, where did you get that? Curious. He can't answer, but I'm sure he'll tell us. Okay, let's hear from Scott. I will share. Sorry, this whole process takes a long time.

50:46All right.

50:46Bob:Wait, what's going on here? Yes. My name is Scott Mazelich. I enjoy watching your show. and my son just got his first type rating in a G4. I was so excited for him to be flying. I've been an av geek my entire life. But my question for you is when you pick up a plane from somebody that you may not have a lot of experience with flying for, how do you vet the maintenance? It's, you know, logs, books, can they be fraudulent? How do you know what you're flying is safe? As I ask this question on watching Cockpit Casual, I'm on Couch Casual. So enjoying your show. Just a matter of fact tonight. Hope you answer my question.

51:37All right.

51:38Bob:Very cool. So I'm going to let Bob answer this question. But first, I would like to say that now we know what it's like to be in bed with Scott. On a furry pillow. Yes. We're very intimate with Scott. It looks very comfortable, actually. Very intimate with our listeners. Yeah. Yeah. Scott, thanks for the question. That's a good one. It is. We get asked this all the time. All the time. Which is why I chose it. So go ahead, Bob. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. So the simplest answer is the aircraft go through what they call a return to service check. So there's a process to where an aircraft, before we move it, there's a technical team that checks the airplane.

52:22Bob:They check the records to make sure that things, you know, are up to date, things that are not up to date. We determine if we can fly the airplane with them out of date, a check or whatever. whatever, then there's a process of taking the airplane like out of storage or whatever the situation is. There's what they call a return to service check. That check is completed before we get the FAA involved, who is then going to be presented with all of this documentation that shows that the airplane is safe for flight. Not airworthy, but is safe for the intended flight. And that is words that we actually use in our line of work.

53:10Bob:So once that happens, then the FAA issues essentially a ferry permit, and then we can take it off. And, you know, at that point, I feel relatively, well, I do feel safe flying the airplane. Yeah. The simplest way, the simplest answer to this is always there is never a situation where we show up to an aircraft to a whole lot of unknowns and then the dispatch of that aircraft becomes dependent upon decisions that we make. We are pretty good pilots and we're even pretty good, I wouldn't say engineers or mechanics, but pretty good at assessing. assessing assessing but not good enough to where we would trust ourselves in doing that there's just too much there's too many systems there's too much to look at right so every time an airplane flies with us behind the the yoke um there's an inspection process there is a regulatory uh process where where like the civil aviation authority that is responsible for that aircraft has to sign off on it being airworthy.

54:22Bob:Yeah. And one step further is that most of the time, the people that we're involved with with that airplane are people that we've been friends with for decades. So it's a very small niche industry. We all work together. We usually know who's been inspecting that airplane or who's been responsible as like a project manager over it. And most of those guys, they they will tell me they look like i am not going to put you in a bad airplane that you know we're we're friends they're not going to put me in danger and i i have a lot of trust in in the things that they tell me 100 100 lots of respect for those guys too um okay uh got another video question here from lewis lewis is in a 737 and what's up bob and steve just finished listening into the first episode of the podcast.

55:14Bob:Thought it was really good. Cockpit Casual is one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube. It's great to have some content from you guys in between. Steve, whereabouts are you from in South Jersey? This place is pretty special to me. I've got some family over there. I love it. I am from, well, I currently live in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, about 15 minutes from downtown Philadelphia. I grew up actually in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on the west side of Cherry Hill, from fourth grade on. Prior to that, I lived in northeast Philly, northeast Philadelphia. you. So anyway, that's not your main question.

55:45Go birds.

55:48Bob:My question for you guys. So when you're taking these aircraft across the world, how do you keep the dailies valid? How do you keep the maintenance going on these things? Do you take an A &P with you or a mechanic of some kind, or do you guys do it yourselves? All right. Thanks for all the good content, guys. Keep it up. See All right. That was a fantastic question. And the GoBirds really made me proud, especially over the pond there. So the answer to that question is really it depends. With U.S. registered aircraft operating under Part 91, there is not a requirement for a daily check unless it exists in the limitations of the SFP.

56:29The SFP is the special ferry permit. That is the document that is issued by a designated airworthiness representative or the FAA themselves that dictates the conditions that we can operate this aircraft on a specific route within a specific window. And they could put in a provision for daily checks if they want to. They typically do not. The pre-flight checks that we do typically suffice. And so in those cases, nothing needs to happen more than a regular pilot pre-flight. That's on FAA-registered aircraft. foreign registered aircraft, foreign other than FAA registered aircraft, whether that be Guernsey, Cayman, Chile, Isle of Man, Bermuda, one of the transients or something that we're operating with validations on from somewhere else or EASA, they operate under a CAMO, a continuing airworthiness maintenance organization.

57:27And a CAMO assures that the aircraft is airworthy, continuing airworthiness throughout the validity period of the permit to fly, the PTF. And almost always those aircraft have some sort of checks built in because the PTFs are generally valid for more than just a specific flight. They're valid for like a window, maybe a week, maybe two weeks or something like that. So whenever that aircraft is within that window of validity for the PTF, the permit to fly, it will require checks. Sometimes it's dailies, sometimes it's weeklies. It really depends on what the camo has put in there. And if there is a provision for checks, one of two things can happen.

58:10Our crews can be signed off as able to conduct the daily checks, which just means that we have to read and understand a task card, understand what each of the... It's basically a little bit more intense pre-flight check was what a daily looks like, oil and so on and so forth. Or we'll use one of our pilots that has an AMP because sometimes an AMP is required. And if that is requested in advance, we can make that happen. Or we bring a mechanic along, a flying spanner along to conduct those. And we do hire those from time to time. I always prefer to have a mechanic aboard. I don't know. You too, I assume, Bob.

58:50Bob:No, definitely. It makes things a lot easier, especially if you, obviously, if you have a problem. Yeah. Yeah. And it's someone else to talk to, fresh blood, you know. Yeah. They usually help out with getting the airplane fueled. It just makes everything more time-wise more efficient. Yep. And there have been times, it's very infrequent, but there have been times where there have been dailies required. And we've just hired an organization that's already been pre-certified by Guernsey or whoever the registration is to conduct a daily check. and we'll just retain them. They'll be waiting for us in Belfast or in Shannon or in Malta or wherever we land and they'll do the check and then we'll go.

59:30So that's how we address it. But more commonly, we don't have any type of daily checks beyond a pre-flight. I would say 70 % to 80 % of the time we can conduct a trip without having any actual specific check. Yep. So, all right, let's see. Next. Next.

59:58I'm going to go all night here, man. I got so many of these things.

1:00:01Bob:Oh, my gosh. Hopefully they're not all technical. I know. Hi, Bob. Hi, Steve. How are you doing? Just a question. If you've ever had the chance to ferry any aircraft from anywhere in the world to any destination, what would the aircraft be and where would you go and why?

1:00:26I mean, for me, it's really about where we can make the most money. Maybe. I mean, the trip was my favorite to fly, I think.

1:00:40Bob:Yeah, I mean, yeah. When I think about that question, I think about the finance side. I'm like going, whatever airplane burns the most fuel and is on the longest route. Yeah. I personally am a big fan of Australia. I love Australia. I would probably, if I had to really answer this question specifically, I would say Sydney to Philadelphia, because we're writing this and that way I don't have to take a flight home. Sydney to Philadelphia on a 777. Favorite airplane. Okay. favorite city to go to. I get home without getting on another airplane. Boom. Dream trip right there. Yeah. What about you, Bob?

1:01:23Bob:Man, it's hard to say. When I think about the trips, I like island hopping across the Pacific. I love going into Guam and Majuro. With his shirt off. Yeah. I love to think about doing that, but when I'm in the middle of that trip, I'm like going, oh my God, this is the longest trip I've ever been on. I want to get to the hotel and go to sleep. And eat M &Ms. Oh my God. But when I look back and see the pictures and things, you know, of those trips, they are my favorite. I love island hopping across the Pacific. I do too. I love the Pacific. I love the Pacific. And the Pacific's easy because you don't talk to anybody exactly hf position reports or maybe cpdlc which is the data link controller pilot data link i mean it's it's simple you can do whatever you want and you're not going to hit anybody you can kind of deviate however you want it's it's just yeah i might i might have to say airplane and route i would go back to like doing that 737 200 that we took out of i don't know what tucson or something to the philippines and we had to island hop and and each leg we were like barely making it we barely had enough fuel for each leg and it was an old 200 i mean it literally had like a a little handheld garmin i don't even know if it was color screen or i can't remember it might have just been a little black black and white screen and we're just following like dots across the pacific i don't know man you know i got a picture of that trip i got a couple pictures man so we're learning a lot about bob and steve here today bob is positive and upbeat and he likes very difficult like labor intensive trips i'm a miserable bastard that just wants to sit back and not talk to anybody and not push any buttons yeah yeah that's the dynamic when we're flying together too sometimes or sometimes it's opposite of that i gotta say yeah it does it does it does switch up all right what does rick have to say hello gentlemen big fan love your videos i'm very excited about your podcast quick question why do you make your pit stops in cairo versus say amman or cyprus or tel aviv yeah and would you ever consider taking a civilian on thank you all right so we have big fan whoops love your video we answered we answered uh that one earlier why why we pick certain places so i don't think that anything else we beat that to death beat it to death yeah as far as can we take civilians on trips no most of the time we're operating onto these special ferry permits these ptfs sfps they are very very specific that these trips are required crew only so we can't even i mean we can't take anybody unless they're required for the safety of of the flight there are some exceptions the exceptions are uh when we're flying an aircraft that's on a standard airworthiness certificate.

1:04:31It's very few and far between. It's usually aircraft that are in service with an airline already. And when we have those, yes, we can technically take passengers, but not without the permission of the clients, which they never give unless it's their own person.

1:04:47Bob:Yeah. There's liability issues with insurance, liability, all of that. Not to mention that once we get somewhere, how are you getting back home? Maybe he doesn't want to go home. Maybe not. I mean, it's very expensive to, like, you know, fly back home from most of these places. Yeah. All right. Well, I got another one coming here. I wish we could throw people on. I didn't write down this gentleman's name, or maybe he did not provide it, but we're going to listen to his question.

1:05:20Bob:Hey there, Bob and Steve. Thought that I should be early with some questions here. Recently, there was a taxiway incident with an SAS AJ-20 flight from Brussels that ended up accelerating on the taxiway instead of the runway. Since you guys visit a lot of airports, should there be a better way for ground navigation? Second question. Regarding headsets, it seems like you guys stick to the headsets on board instead of using something like the noise-canceling Bose 830s. Is there a particular reason behind that? Best regards from all of them, Sweden. All right. Two-parter. First one, I'm not real sure how to answer.

1:05:50I mean, is there a better way to do things? I don't, I don't, I'm not familiar with that specific incident. Are you?

1:05:56Bob:No. And I kind of wonder if it's one of those things where it was like a taxiway that leads into a displaced threshold before you like get to the runway to where, you know, I've been mixed up a few times in those situations where it's like, I think I'm going towards the end of the runway. Yeah. I would venture to guess that kind of the, probably the most dangerous part of a trip maybe not safety wise, but like damaging an airplane wise is definitely taxiing. I mean, you're, you're moving around unfamiliar, especially us. Like we're in places that we don't go to very often or sometimes ever at all.

1:06:32And it's easy to get mixed up. Like when in doubt, stop. I mean, we get yelled at all the time, not because we do something wrong because we stop before we do something wrong. And that's, that's always the way you want to err on taxiing. Like If I'm confused by an accent or by an instruction or something doesn't feel right or something doesn't seem right, I stop, I set the brake, and I wait for them to yell at me before I ask them what's going on because it's better than bending metal. It's better than breaking a law.

1:07:02Bob:Yeah, the better safe than sorry scenario. I will say that, you know, Korea, Incheon Airport, when you go in there, they have that light system to where it's putting the green. And in Abu Dhabi, too. Oh, yeah, Abu Dhabi. I mean, they got that green light that you follow. And, you know, if there's a red light, you stop. I mean, it's real simple. Yeah. But very effective and easy to taxi in that way. Very good. Yeah. What was the other question he had? I forget. Hold on. I'll read. He's going to swing Bose 830. Oh, headsets. Oh, headsets. Yeah. Okay. Bob wears the onboard headphones because there's something wrong with him.

1:07:38Bob:Most of the time. So it was what's fun. So I have the Telex camera. The Telex that does have noise canceling. It's all, it's in my bag. But if I see a headset already sitting in the, in the airplane, I'm just lazy and I'll just go, well, it's already plugged in. I'll just use that headset. Yeah. I don't want lice. I don't want lice. I don't want like the sweaty, dirty, disgusting. God knows what's on that. Like, have you seen what people's ears look like, Bob? Jesus, man. you're gross dude i i don't care i it doesn't bother me i mean i'll just i'll just put them on whatever i have dirty old airplanes anyway i guess i'm i have a telex airman eight or something i gave that to pat lewis i don't use that anymore i normally use a david clark the small david clarks that are made for like airplanes i just like them they're comfy i also have the bose ones that plug into your ears but i don't use those anymore and i do have uh airmen you know we don't use those like big ga headsets like this like they're yeah i mean we only wear headphones for like you know 10 minutes like yeah through 10 000 feet or something if that well yeah through 10 000 feet yes we take them off the only other time i wear headphones is on a long haul if i'm like i have like the reason i wear the david clarks is they have bluetooth i'll watch a movie and like when the radio talks it it like pauses the movie like i mean i'm not going to do that flying over europe because there's too many interruptions but like over the ocean where there's like no interruptions you know i'll hear a radio you know calm but like it'll interrupt what i'm listening to so anyway that's that's the headset answer what does chris have to say hi bob and steve my name's can you hear him bob from houston I'm from Texas, and I am a private pilot and also a member of Civil Air Patrol.

1:09:39Bob:My question for you is, what is your unicorn aircraft, either to fly or to ferry? It's 777. Boom Supersonic. No, I guess we can use stuff that doesn't exist yet. Oh, yeah, you win. We said unicorn. Yeah. Yeah. Boom. I should have been wearing my Boom Supersonic hat. Yeah. I'm going to wear it. I'm going to wear it on this next trip. Um, yeah, I would say something like that. Concord. No, I'd probably kill myself in that thing. Yeah. The boom supersonic looks easy. Yeah. Well, I guess, uh, I don't know. I'm probably too, well, I'm never going to find out. I don't. I'm never going to be ferrying one.

1:10:21Bob:Come on. Blake's getting it done, man. It's going to happen soon. All right. Who knows, right? Let's see. Yeah. James. James, what do you got for us? Hi, Bob and Steve. My name is James Sutard. I'm a Canadian citizen who lives in Hong Kong and I'm a PPL few hundred hours on Cessna 172. Been watching your videos for a long time. Really kind of intrigued about the whole ferry pilot stuff. And my question for you was, when I listened to all your type ratings, I'm not sure I heard if either of you are type rated on one of the four-engine aircraft like A340, A380, 747. Is there a reason for that? is there not much demand for four engine ferry or is it just much more complicated yeah just curious about four holer versus the two engine aircraft um thanks a lot and look forward to listening to more of your podcast ciao yeah um both bob and i are type rated on the a340 so we are rated on one four holer a piece the same one and we used to fly them all the time I love that airplane, actually.

1:11:27Yeah, me too. Yeah, we've moved a bunch. We moved one to, we moved them to Kabul, to Amman, to, we took some out of Sri Lanka.

1:11:36Bob:Yeah, yeah, we've, yeah, we've done quite a bit of flying, the A340 flying, when they were kind of, you know, in their heyday of end of lease period and in that, you know, kind of ferry time. They've kind of grown out of that. Yeah. There's not too many of them anymore. um with the 747 the reason we never went and got 747 ratings i've i've flown 747s for 20 years as an fo but i never went and got the pic rating because there's just not enough of them that that move in the fairy world it's just plenty of plenty of our guys plenty of our pilots are rated on them so it's just like there's no real need i mean there's always been that little like nostalgic like i've always said if we like got a if we got a project where we had say you know three or four in quick succession to do i'd go down there and get the type and yeah do it yeah it would be worth it i don't know i'm kind of i'm kind of tired of like learning new airplanes yeah i don't know yeah i mean i'd love to fly the thing but it would but it's just not enough Yeah.

1:12:43Bob:I mean, if I get type rated on something, I want to go out and get good at it. I want to go out there and fly it enough to where I feel comfortable, you know, as a pilot in command on it. Yeah. The A380 is an impossibility for us. It doesn't exist in the U.S. register. Like, there's no FAA, like, registered A380s. There never have been. No U.S. airlines have ever operated it. I think they put one on an NREG for a part out, but I'm not sure. I mean, there's no U.S. pilots that have it on their FAA, I don't think. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how you would even get it. I don't know.

1:13:21Bob:And I missed the 707 era, sadly. I actually wish I would have flown the 707. Yeah, barely. I kind of wish I would have at least gone out and got a type rating on one of those things a long time ago. We moved some DC-8s when you were Avia. Yeah, I've moved some DC-8s. Just at that time, you didn't need an SIC to be a co-pilot in it. But, yeah, I've jumped in the right seat of DC-8s and flown those. And Bob is a three-holer guy, so he used to fly the MD-11 and the 7.2. Yeah, the 7.2, the MD-11. And we used to move quite a few DC-10s as well. The DC-10 was, five years ago now, was a big one that would go into cargo conversion.

1:14:08Yeah.

1:14:09Bob:7.2 and the DC-10. All right. Here's Jeffrey. I remember listening to this one. Jeff. Jeffrey's a tech rep. Hey, Bob and Steve, this is a great podcast. Nice surprise. Hey, you deal with a lot of maintenance reps, I'm sure. Maybe your interview was one of them sometime down the road just to kind of compare. Definitely. That's what I do for a major airline. Thanks. Appreciate it. Well, there wasn't really a question there other than we should have a tech rep on. And I fully agree. We will have lots of tech reps on. Most of our friends are tech reps. Yeah. Yeah. Just for people that don't know, the tech reps are, you know, kind of project managers of sorts that that do, you know, get these return to services done.

1:14:51Bob:Check, you know, check records. We work hand in hand with the tech reps on all these projects. Should we do some more, Bob? I got I got four more. Yeah, why not? I mean, some of these might work. Some of them might not. So just we might as well get a library of them. Yeah. All right. Hey, Bob and Steve. My name is Robert Cowan. I've been a big fan of Cockpit Casuals since it came out, and it's really inspired a love for planes and aviation in me in these past five years. I'm in my mid-20s, have a perfectly fine job, but I've always had this itch to go out and get a pilot's license, and I was wondering if it's worth the time and effort, if I just make a full career change and try and become a commercial pilot, what are the best steps to do that?

1:15:44I see accelerated programs. I see programs sponsored by airlines. I see local flight schools and I can't seem to find the best way to go about that. So any tips, tricks, advice would be great. Thank you.

1:16:00Bob:Yeah. Did he say where he's located? Was he in the US, you think? sounds like it's from the u.s yeah so this is a this could be a very long answer and and i we want to help get this on my kitty hawk app all the time constantly there's a lot of people talking about this on my app over there either direct messaging me and asking me the questions or or getting in some of the community groups and talking about it but so just real quick you know my advice always is if you know if you're in this situation is to don't, don't quit your day job yet. Go out and, you know, number, you know, get a medical, make sure you can pass the medical.

1:16:40Bob:There's not going to be any issues there. Go out and start flying. Go, go do your private pilot license. Yeah. Get your private pilot license first. Just go through the process. Make sure that, you know, that you like doing it. Yeah. You like doing it and you're not going to have a problem with your medical, you know, don't quit your day job yet. kind of do think both in parallel initially until you're you know know that you're ready set and not going to have any issues and as far as being in your mid as far as being in your mid-20s i mean you're like way young i know people that that have career changed to aviation in their 40s um even even maybe early 50s oh yeah when did fred fred started i think when he was in his like early 50s.

1:17:27He was a cop. He had a full career as a police officer. And then he went and flew for JetBlue. Then he went and flew A320s for an airline in the Philippines. Then he flew A330s for that airline. And now he flies for us. He's been retired for a number of years, still flies for us. I mean, he switched over at an age that is older than I am now. So it's absolutely doable from the 20s. I mean, you can still wait another 10 years and do it if you want.

1:17:52Bob:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you could do anything in your 20s and recover from it. I I mean, you could quit everything. You could go to prison if you want. This is true. You're going to recover from everything in your 30s that you do in your 20s. Take big risks in your 20s is what I tell everybody. Yeah. As far as a path, there's so many different paths, and each has merits and each has downsides. And we're going to do an episode in the near future talking about flight training, and I'm going to bring my boys in who are currently in the process. I'm also going to bring in Pat Lewis, who was a CFI quite recently and who has friends that have gone through some of the airline-specific programs.

1:18:34I mean, there's upside and there's downside to everything, from cost to time to is it really an advantage? I mean, some are, some aren't. Yeah, quality of training, everything. Yeah, and we both have a lot to say on this matter, So stay tuned, reach out directly if you want. I can give you some advice. You know, if I'm feeling bored, I'll talk on the phone with you. You know, we'll figure something out. But yeah, it's something I want to address on the podcast soon. And we will. We're going to go into a lot of detail. And if you do want to make a career out of flying airplanes, I'm all for anyone getting into this business.

1:19:12If you love it, you got to do what you love. If you hate it, go do something else. I mean, it's just that simple. It's like people that are born to do it are born to do it. And some people don't know they are until they try it. So good luck and more on that later. Yeah. Let's run a couple more of these questions here.

1:19:34Hey, Steve. Hey, Bob. Raj from Florida. I was wondering how you quote and price a certain trip. Obviously, you don't have to talk about a real-life contract, but perhaps a made-up one. Let's say I'm an airline and I want my A320, two of them, to be moved from Florida to China and is responsible for it or what financial side of how things are planned and quoted and what kind of contractual items are in place. Also, big fan of your work. Keep it coming. Thank you.

1:20:15Bob:Oh, my God. We'd be on here for the rest of our lives. That's a detailed question. That sounds like somebody that's trying to learn how to start a business like this. Maybe. Look, we have very proprietary processes that we've developed over the years for doing this, but we could touch on some of it briefly. I think there will be times when we bring in members of our team, Chris Fochuck, who's our planning manager, who kind of plans out all the trips for us. We have some software that we've developed and some spreadsheets that we've kind of built up over the years to really help with that process.

1:20:49But the first step is knowing what type of aircraft it is, where it's registered, what the mission is, the city pairs, where it's coming from, where it's going. We immediately send it into, we put it into a, into a queue on our system. And we have a bunch of internal processes. So when we place an aircraft in queue, it moves down a system kind of automatically after each person in our team does what they do, right? The travel person, the planning, the route planning, the dispatcher, the person who sources the ground handling, like we have all this. So we put it into the system. We put the key points on a line in a piece of software.

1:21:31Most planes go from one region to another. You have your China to Europe and your US to Europe and your US to Asia and Australia to Asia. We have preferred routing, so that part's pretty easy. There's only so many different types of aircraft, so we know where the stops are going to be. The whole routing process, unless it's like a dash eight going like 8 ,000 nautical miles, I can pretty much nail the route off the top of my head and say we're going to go here, here, and here. And then we have price lists from vendors. We get updated fuel prices for each station. We calculate what the burn is going to be using average seasonal winds.

1:22:11We have software that determines the cost of the permits, the cost of the overflight fees. We know what the daily rate is for our cruise. So we just take all these little components, probably 25, 30 components per trip, and we price it with actual costs and estimated costs. Some of the items are variable, some of the items are fixed, and then we quote it. And then there are provisions for what is variable and what isn't. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much it. I mean, as far as the contingency stuff, like what ifs, you can't really plan for them. You protect that stuff with contractual language, like de-icing contingencies on certain routes, maintenance contingencies on certain aircraft.

1:22:57I mean, just our contracts have to be deep and rock solid so that when things come up, they're covered in the contract. Most of our clients are under a general terms agreement. So we have like this big master agreement that dictates how we do business with each other. And then each trip has like a specific, we call it an aircraft transport agreement, which breaks things down into specific scope for a trip, if that makes sense. So that's my answer. All right, we got two more.

1:23:31Bob:how often do you encounter safety issues on the ground or in flight i can imagine that ferrying planes at the end of their service life may carry some high risk of something going wrong or maybe not and do you have any crazy stories related to things going awry on the ground for example being stuck in majuro or in the air thanks oh man so not very often like nothing Safety, like, all right, let's break it down. Safety versus nuisance mechanical items. Nuisance mechanical items happen 30 % of the time. Yeah. You know, some we can fix, some we can defer, some we can ignore depending on where we are in the trip.

1:24:13Bob:Yeah. You know, if something happens on the last leg, it doesn't matter. If something happens on the first leg, we can either troubleshoot it or hire someone to fix it or we can defer it. Major safety related issues are very, very rare, even in this side of the business, just because of the level of standard that the signers off, you know, take in their work. Right. Like it's it's these airplanes are ready to fly when they say it. And if they're not, somebody screwed up and people don't screw up very much. So we've had them. I had a engine fire indication in a seven five over the Pacific two years ago.

1:24:50shut one down, landed in Guam, was stuck there for a few days. We had an airplane have a bad APU in Majuro once, stayed there for a week.

1:24:59Bob:And, you know, sometimes the route makes the difference. I mean, you may have an inoperative pack. You might start up the engines, go to take off, and you've got a pack you can't get on or, you know, a bleed valve stuck. And you can't get a pack to come on, which, you know, You've got two of them in most of the airplanes that we fly, so you want to have two. If you've only got one and it quits, you're going to depressurize. So you have to start making decisions. What kind of route am I flying? How far am I flying? Am I going to be way out over the water to where if I depressurize? Am I going to have anywhere to divert to?

1:25:36Bob:Do I want to risk diverting to somewhere? Those are the kind of safety issues that go through my head with equipment failures. I just, I have to think about what's the route that I'm flying, what's the weather, those kind of things. So it's always, you know, just, you know, variable decision, really. I mean, obviously, you know, I mean, you know, if you have an engine issue, you're not going to take off. You know, I've had a few of those. Take off, you have a pressurization issue. We've had that a few times. Is there a gear? The gear won't come up or you get some kind of gear problem that they didn't find.

1:26:18Gear comes up and the light stays red. Like a gear door doesn't close all the way. Proximity sensors. Like there's always little stuff. Not always. I mean, there's little stuff, like I said, you know, 30-ish percent of the time. But the major stuff like is really few, you know, knock on wood. I mean, it's – Exactly. We've been quite lucky with that. But it's not so much luck as it is that the processes are strong that our team and the teams of our clients follow. Yeah.

1:26:53Bob:And it's gotten a lot better, like, over the last, what, 10 years or so? It's a lot better because the airplanes all seem to be newer. Yeah. Or at least maybe more. Yeah, probably. We've evolved as a company. Like, our clients are more reputable. Yeah. Like in the early 2000s, man, we could tell you some stories about, you know, repossessing MD-80s out of Africa. I mean, you know, I've almost killed myself a few times by doing stupid stuff that I wouldn't do anymore. But we're also not flying those kind of like junky airplanes either. All right, we're going to call it. But look, I love these callers.

1:27:40Keep the questions coming, guys. You know, I love dealing with all this stuff. I mean, it gives us stuff to talk about. It inspires stories to pop out. So keep them coming. That was a good round of questions. Yeah. Well, okay, guys. So we're going to end the pod here. I just want to tease a couple of guests that we are going to have soon. Scotty Bateman, who just wrote another book, Jumbo, about the 747 and his experience with the 747. Scott's awesome. Oh, he's just a great guy. Yeah. Just so, so knowledgeable. He was also a RAF military pilot, C-130s. He wrote a book called Herc, which was great.

1:28:19So we're going to talk to him about both of his books. I think he really wants to promote Jumbo, but I've talked to him about his life and maybe try to get some more stories out of him. He's got plenty. And then Airplane Facts with Max. Oh my gosh.

1:28:33Bob:Wants to come on. That's going to be so good. I can't wait. I can't wait. I've followed him for so long. I would have never believed that we would have him on this podcast. So cool. I'm going to touch base with him this week, and Max is going to join the pod. That one might end up, he might just have to co-host for the day when he comes on. Yeah. Interesting guy. I mean, he's great, man. I mean, if you've never heard of him, you've got to go find his social media channels. He's on a lot of them, and he's got some good stuff. All right. We'll bring him on soon. It's been fun. Bob, maybe I'll see you in Phoenix tomorrow.

1:29:11I don't know. I'm not going to be there until later in the day.

1:29:14Bob:Yeah, I don't know. I'll probably be on the ground. I might be on the ground about the time you guys are arriving, actually. You can drive me to the airport. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. Sounds good. Have a good trip out here. I will hopefully see you in person tomorrow. Yeah, man. Later. All right. See y 'all. Thank you.