EP3 - A Busy Week for the Nomads, Airport Lounges, and an On-Aircraft Interview with Pat Lewis

13:32Bob:All depends on how long all this stuff lasts in the Middle East, I guess, before it's resolved in some way.

13:39Pat Lewis:Let's hope it's going to be resolved. So over this last, let's call it, week and a half, it's been crazy. I've been running around like a madman. You've had a much easier go at it, haven't you?

13:52Bob:Yeah, I've had a much more sane week than you have, I think. It started on Monday of last week, right? Yeah, although I'm just getting my voice back. um i i've done a lot of talking this week and not on the pod no exactly let's let's go back

14:15Pat Lewis:it's currently thursday march 12th uh at the time of recording so we're talking monday

14:20Bob:march whatever that was yeah yeah so gosh yeah yeah i guess so since then i mean i've done a uh, seven, seven 57 demo flight. Um, yeah. I don't know what day that was or date. I can't keep track of them anymore. I never could actually.

14:41Pat Lewis:Yeah. It was Monday the second you demoed a seven five in Phoenix. Yeah.

14:45Bob:So, so I did that. Um, then I played chauffeur for you. I was your car driver, um, all last week, basically. Um, uh, I'll let you talk about your own projects, but, uh, I was your chauffeur and then I did a short hop in a 737.

15:06Pat Lewis:We'll cover that too with my mess.

15:09Bob:Yeah, exactly.

15:11Pat Lewis:You had to save the day.

15:12Bob:Yeah. So then I was supposed to fly all last weekend. I was supposed to take, you know, fly a ferry flight and that got delayed. That's possibly coming up this weekend. But is what it did, it opened up my time to go to ISTAT, which is a big aviation finance conference. We try to go there every year.

15:39Pat Lewis:Yeah, International Society of Transport Aircraft Traders, I believe is what it stands for.

15:45Bob:Yeah, or Appraisers and Traders or something. I don't know. Maybe I've never known what it actually stands for.

15:55Pat Lewis:We've been members of ISTAT forever. It's all the, it's mostly lessors and airlines. It's the people that transact the aircraft. It's not necessarily finance. It's not technical. It's like the deal, the deal guys. Yeah.

16:08Bob:I mean, I don't know how many people there are. A thousand, 1 ,500, you know, it's a lot of people to me. But I mean, if you look at the entire industry, it's a, it's a very small industry, really.

16:21Pat Lewis:Yeah. Well, they've broken it out by region. Yeah. Yeah. So this was iStat Americas. There's one in the U.S. every year that's called iStat Americas. I think they do a South America one, which is a smaller event now also. Then there's iStat Europe and there's iStat Asia. Those are the big ones.

16:38Bob:Yeah, so they go kind of all year, and then there's other events that are going on, but it's all people that we do business with on a regular basis. So, you know, it's great. I love going to them because I see all the— Where was it this year? It was in San Diego. So last year it was in Scottsdale, so it was like right in my backyard. So, you know, quick hop over to San Diego, stayed a few days, was able to, you know, shake hands and talk to a lot of our clients and get introduced to new ones. You know, it's a networking event. At the same time, it is a good place to, you know, have some face time with, you know, our long-term clients.

17:21You know, there's a lot of people that I still haven't met.

17:24Bob:I've talked to them on the phone for 20 years and sent emails back and forth. And to this day, I've still never met them.

17:32Pat Lewis:Yeah, it's always a good opportunity to put a name and a face together.

17:35Bob:Yeah, absolutely. It's just kind of getting to know each other. So, you know, it's a way to go, you know, sit down, have some drinks and dinner with old friends and tell war stories and kind of, you know, get a feel what's coming up in the industry.

17:50Pat Lewis:Anybody recognize Captain Bob or were there any comments about the podcast?

17:56Bob:Everybody has seen the cockpit casual and loves the podcast. I mean, I got nothing but great feedback and everybody just said they want more. Keep it up. And yeah, it was great talking to all of you at ISTAT that did come up and say hi. The ones that did come say hi that I didn't know before, I really appreciate that you did. So it was nice to meet everybody and talk about the industry, talk about Nomadic, and talk about Cockpit Casual.

18:30Pat Lewis:I feel like I always have to work whenever there's one of these conferences. I was going to go to MRO this year. I didn't get to that. So, I mean, fortunately, we have Wes out there representing us and, you know, keeping things alive. And I'm glad you got to go this year. Um, my week was crazy. So I went to Greenwood, Mississippi the day after we recorded the last pod. That was Monday, the second, the plan was get out there, get that seven 37 domestic flown to Phoenix, uh, Goodyear, um, and then get home. And my whole plan was 24 hours. I left in the morning on Monday, DAR medicine in Memphis.

19:11Pat Lewis:Um, we're going to drive down to, to Greenwood, fly the airplane out you know within an hour get to phoenix hop the red eye home i was like all right 24 hours no shower i could do this grab pat lewis drove out to the airport flew down to memphis and while i'm sitting there actually ready to board the dar text me and he was flying on spirit and his flight got canceled to memphis and so he's like i'm not even going to arrive memphis until 5 p.m. And we were scheduled out at 1.

19:43Bob:Man, why did you think it was going to be any different, actually? I don't know.

19:48Pat Lewis:I'm always optimistic, man. But I know how it goes. So, you know, I packed a backpack with an extra change of underwear and socks, another pair of pants and another t-shirt and another polo and all the things just in a backpack, right? Just a one-bag trip just in case toothbrush some toothpaste um we get down there and um and pat and i needed to kill some time until um ryan the dar met us and so what do you do in memphis we went to we went to graceland you went to elvis's house i did and excuse me oh my god that's awesome so i'm a big of music. I'm not like a huge Elvis guy. I like some Elvis songs.

20:34Pat Lewis:I mean, I respect, I respect his work. I mean, you know, kind of the, the grandfather of, of the modern rock. So, you know, but I'm also watching, I'm watching Paradise right now. And, uh, I don't know if you've seen the TV. It's a great show. I know.

20:52Bob:I haven't seen it. I've been watching Landman, but it's like, you know, I'm, I'm waiting for season three now. So that's my extent of shows that I've watched.

21:01Pat Lewis:Well, early on, Paradise, I'm not going to give you the whole thing, but basically, you know, there was a massive disaster, like end of the world type event, catastrophic. A bunch of people went into a bunker. A bunch of people didn't. Someone, one of the characters ended up was a tour guide at Graceland. And so like a whole episode takes place in a mock-up of Graceland, identical. And we were there. I'm like, let's go see. And Pat was also watching Paradise. So we drove, we had a rental car that we were supposed to drive down to Greenwood. So we went to Graceland. 85 bucks a person. We were like the only ones there.

21:35Pat Lewis:Cost 85 bucks to get in there? Yeah. But you know what? It was so well worth it. It was cool. I mean, we walked around the mansion. There's his airplanes. There's a Convair, that Convair jet that he has. Yeah.

21:46Bob:Is it an 880 or something?

21:49Pat Lewis:Yeah. It's a big, it looks like a DC-8, but shorter.

21:52Bob:Somebody here will know what it is.

21:54Pat Lewis:Yeah. Yeah.

21:55Bob:It's supposed to be one of the fastest commercial jets ever made. I always wanted to fly one.

21:59Pat Lewis:It's called the Lisa Marie, so you can walk through that. And then his Jetstar is there as well. We actually shockingly didn't go through the airplanes because we ran out of time. Yeah, we didn't. We just looked at them on the outside. I know. I know.

22:13Bob:But you can actually, like, go in the airplanes?

22:16Pat Lewis:You can go in the Convair for sure. Yeah.

22:20Bob:Oh, wow. God. That's exactly, that would have been the first thing that I would have done.

22:25Pat Lewis:I know. I wanted to go and we just spent too much time in the mansion itself, in Graceland itself. It's cool. You know, it's so like 60s and 70s. It's like a time capsule. I mean, shag carpeting. It's unique. If you ever get to Memphis, I'm not even an Elvis guy. I have no regrets. I'm glad I did it. I might even do it again. It was really, really cool.

22:48Bob:I'm going to have to do that now. I'll put it on the bucket list.

22:52Pat Lewis:So we went to Graceland and then we looked at our watches. We're like, oh, man, we don't know time to the airplane. We're going to go back to the airport. We're going to pick up the DAR. And we picked them up, and we drove down to Mississippi. And while we're driving down, we get a call from a client who said, the oxygen bottle's empty. We can't fly today. The oxygen bottle has to be serviced, refilled. We need a new oxygen bottle. And there's no one around. They've got to drive up to Memphis to get it done.

23:20Bob:There's no oxygen in Greenwood, Mississippi. You can't go to the gas station and hook it up.

23:26Pat Lewis:No, no. So there was delay number one. And he said there was a couple of other ADs that had to get signed off on each of the engines. And the maintenance crew that was there working on it, they weren't real familiar with 737s. They came in from another MRO up in the Memphis area. They didn't have, I mean, they had the tools, but they didn't have everything they needed. They also needed to do the pitot static check. So anyway, they sent us down there with the airplane not ready. is a long story short. And then Pat tells me they didn't bring a change of clothes. Boom.

23:58Bob:There it is. It was his fault. Now I know what happened. Exactly. It is totally his fault. If you don't bring clothes for an overnight, even if you think you're not going to be overnight, you're definitely going to be stuck overnight.

24:12Pat Lewis:So regardless, it wasn't the oxygen bottle. It wasn't the other. It wasn't the pedostatic check. It was Pat not bringing a change of underwear and toiletries, which did it and and i actually came up with a new rule of course it was a little too late like i didn't come up with it until day two but the new rule bob and keep this keep this in mind is if you delay a trip because you don't bring a change of clothes then we get to pick your outfit

24:39Bob:the next day absolutely i love it um i can't wait for the next guy to not bring his clothes and we get a delay because of it.

24:50Pat Lewis:Yeah, I hope it's you. Oh my God. Yeah.

24:55Bob:Yeah. My famous last words here.

24:57Pat Lewis:I didn't think of the new policy until we were on the airplane about to depart, but I was man because I would have had him in sequins, maybe a dress. That's good.

25:06Bob:I don't know. In Mississippi. In Mississippi. Yeah.

25:11Pat Lewis:So anyway, we didn't do that. He caused a delay, got a hotel room, went for some tacos next morning, showed up at the airplane, and we ended up there all day. Because you know what the rule is. I was waiting for you. What's the rule? The rule is planes don't move until? Until the sun sets. Until the sun sets. Every time.

25:35Bob:Every time. You get there at 6 a.m., you will be there all day until that sun sets.

25:39Pat Lewis:So finally, the sun sets. We get ready to go. Pat and I are booked on a 10 p.m. flight out of Phoenix or 11 or something, and we're cutting it close. We go to start engines. I go to start the APU, actually, and the APU won't start because the battery's dead. I mean, you got to be kidding me. And it wasn't, I mean, the battery was dead. The battery charger wasn't properly indicating. like so and i long story short an hour and a half i was kind of out there driving the bus man i was out there pushing mechanics let's swap batteries i mean anything that we could do because if we didn't get it i mean they needed the airplane yeah it had to leave i mean yeah they're waiting

26:24Bob:for the airplane the mro is you know i don't know what time it was closing you know you would have been stuck another day or so if it if you didn't push to get it out and by the way this is like a

26:35Pat Lewis:normal scenario for us yeah this is just another tuesday this is yeah this is not unusual so hour and a half troubleshooting like we you know i'm kind of dictating what we should try we tried swapping the two batteries which actually worked somehow by swapping the batteries it like activated a relay. The battery charger went back online and everything was fine. Like, just like there was no problem to begin with. We fired up the engines. We departed at 10 PM local time. And unfortunately, there was another problem. Goodyear, our destination airport, was NOTAM closed. So they still wanted us to get the airplane out.

27:17Pat Lewis:We ended up flying all the way to Phoenix. we get into Sky Harbor and you meet us there and, uh, and drove us around and, and, and, you know, Pat and I managed to get home. I got home by, by Wednesday morning, but then that left us in a little bit of a predicament.

27:34Bob:Yeah. Cause you guys were catching the red eye that night. You caught it. So then I was just going to take over and just hop the airplane over, you know, like six o 'clock the next morning. So it was just, I mean, it was literally going to be there six or seven hours. Um, normally I would just grab my son, you know, throw him in the right seat. He's actually qualified 737, uh, pilot. Um, but he, he was off on a trip. So it's 10, 10, 11 o 'clock at night. And we're like, okay, who, who, who do we know in Phoenix that can fly with me and who's going to answer their phone at this time of night? That's the other part of it.

28:15It was 11.

28:16Pat Lewis:It was 11. We had already rebooked to the 12.35 a.m. and I back to Philly.

28:23Bob:That's right. So we start going down. Our contact's in the phone. I'm going through my Kitty Hawk app. I'm literally going through searching for pilots, CFIs, anybody with a multi-instrument commercial that's in the Phoenix area. I'm ready to cold call somebody out of the blue. So we actually called a pilot that used to fly with us quite a bit who lives in the Phoenix area. So you actually got a hold of him. Yeah. He was in Mexico.

29:00Pat Lewis:On his boat. Yeah, I can't do it. But he goes, but my daughter is a CFI, and she just got hired at a regional. Uh, she's leaving. And by the way, we don't need a type rated pilot for a U S domestic op in the right seat. As long as one of us is current qualified, you have to have a commercial and a multi. You can sit in the seat. You can run the radios. There's no SIC requirement whatsoever for domestic part 91 flight. So that's all we only needed. Somebody with a commercial multi to sit in the right seat. Cause he says to me, he goes, you want to take my daughter? I said, man, if she's willing.

29:35Pat Lewis:And so she was super excited about it. uh she's leaving in a month for the regionals i think she got her notice in already at the flight school and uh and she had a blast huh oh and she did and she did great you know she'd been

29:47Bob:flying you know some glass cockpits and things like that she's very familiar with you know um jumping in that airplane uh it was like i mean it was literally like nothing to her she was great on the radios um you know i mean it was a whole lot it was the fire you know the fire hose coming at her. I mean, airplane that she'd never been in this larger, you know, much larger aircraft than she's used to. And it's a Phoenix to Goodyear. I mean, you take off, you know, clean up. Yeah. Clean up. And it's almost, you know, it's ready to put the gear down again. I mean, so I gave her a quick and dirty course of, you know, how to operate the flaps, the gear, go through some emergency procedures.

30:28Bob:If this happens, you know, here's this, here's the QRH. We went, we went through all of that stuff, you know, for, for about an hour and, you know, but she adapted to it like, like it was nothing. So it was, it was great. But I mean, that being said, this is what I tell everybody all the time, network, network, network, you know, just get to know lots of people. If somebody would have been on Kitty Hawk in my database, I would have been calling you at 11 p.m.

31:04Pat Lewis:on. If you're a Phoenix CFI with a multi and and some skills, get on our radar because you never know. Exactly.

31:11Bob:We move a lot of airplanes in this area, you know, in Arizona. So you just you never know. It's important.

31:19Pat Lewis:So I got home on Wednesday and then on Saturday, I came back to Phoenix with Pat again and you picked us up at the airport and drove us down to Marana. That was Phoenix landing number two, picked up a wide body. It's one of those trips that I can't really go into detail about due to confidentiality, but it was a wide body aircraft, but we had to fly it from Marana to Shanghai. So we get down to Marana and the fuel is super expensive there. It's I think seven bucks a gallon or something. So, you know, it's a wide body. I mean, we're going to need 12, 10, 12 ,000 gallons worth of fuel. That adds up.

31:58Pat Lewis:We have a really good deal with Phoenix for handling. And then, you know, one of our contract suppliers gives a commercial rate out of Phoenix. So we use Phoenix to tanker. So first leg was 15 minutes, take off the touchdown, back up to Sky Harbor, my third landing at Sky Harbor in four days. And then you met us up there again.

32:20Bob:Yeah. So yeah, I dropped you off. And then as soon as you took off, then I drove up I-10 back to Sky Harbor Airport to meet with you guys again.

32:31Pat Lewis:Yep. And that was a planned three-hour sit because we had a slot to make in Shanghai. In China, they're real specific about what time you have to arrive. And in order to make that slot, we had to depart at a certain time, especially because the airplane wasn't going to be able to make it with the winds nonstop from Phoenix to Shanghai. So we had to go Phoenix to Anchorage to Shanghai, fuel stop in Anchorage. It was basically a two-leg ferry to get over there. And we accounted for an hour and a half on the ground in Anchorage, which meant a three-hour sit in Phoenix. And we took advantage of it.

33:03Pat Lewis:So what we're going to show you after this is we have a guest. It was impromptu. We didn't do any preparation. But we did our first guest interview on camera in the cabin of the airplane with Pat Lewis. And you'll get to hear Pat's story here in just a couple of minutes. And, um, I think it's a good one.

33:26Bob:Yeah. Well, I hope it is. I haven't seen any of it. I was just sitting there, um, you know, asking him questions and that, you know, which, uh, he's interesting guy. He's, you know, he's, he's actually done quite a bit. He's doing quite a bit. He's got, he's doing, does a lot of interesting, cool stuff as you'll see here in a minute.

33:44Pat Lewis:Yeah. Pat's one of our full timers. He has an administrative role within the company. He's also one of our pilots. He's PIC rated on the 7.3, the A320, and now the A330. And he has become a huge part of our operation. He's a young guy in his mid-30s. And he's got a very different story, a very different path to becoming a ferry pilot. He's living the dream. And Pat was also a CFI for both of my sons. So we get into how Pat met us and what his experience is like. It's a good interview in just another couple of minutes. We'll do side shtick, and then we'll go right into the interview with Pat. By the way, Pat's also a musician, and we're going to close out the episode today with some of his music.

34:29Bob:Yeah. Yeah, some cool stuff.

34:32Pat Lewis:Yep. So without further ado, we're going to get into this week's side shtick, and I'm going to set an alarm. We're going to – everyone wants us to extend it to be longer, but, I mean, we'll talk forever, man. God, I know.

34:45Bob:We've already, you know, we try to time ourselves and limit these segments, and it never works.

34:53Pat Lewis:Well, here we go. It's going to be 10 minutes. The timer's started. Today's side shtick is going to talk about airport lounges, okay? Nice. You know, most people think of an airport lounge as a luxury thing. Ah, fancy pants. Oh, you're in the lounge. You're not going to sit with Gen Pop. Some people who aren't used to like maybe long haul traveling and they don't really, they've maybe never been to a lounge. They don't even know what it is. Like maybe you have this vision in your head of, you know, this awesome, amazing experience.

35:25Bob:Don't start going to them or you'll hate the airport experience when you can't get into the lounge. Yeah.

35:32Pat Lewis:Well, the reality is they can be a blessing. They can also be a curse. Some of them are great. We're going to talk about lounges in the U.S., lounges outside of the U.S. We're going to give our top three. First of all, you have airport lounges that are affiliated with the airlines. So each airline has its own brand of lounge. And then you have the credit card lounges. That's another tier of lounge. And then you have your independent lounges, and those you can usually access with the— What's the name of that card?

36:03Bob:We have it. it's yeah i it's i don't know i never use it i know i should i should have prepared for this yeah i i can't yeah i don't know there's some card that gets you in yeah there's a card that

36:15Pat Lewis:gets you into like all the different lounges and stuff and it's like you pay an annual fee and then it opens up those lounges kind of suck okay that's the reality is like those lounges are not great they're like they will they will segregate you from gen pop but they won't provide you with a really good lounge experience yeah it's usually terrible food and yeah what constitutes a good lounge experience for you bob

36:41Bob:uh well number one a relaxing atmosphere where you have enough room there's lots of seating you can sit down it's quiet not like a hard seat either like soft seating like a yeah some of them even have like lounge chairs i mean so you can lounge there um they've got like great Wi-Fi. They've got like pods that you can go into and make phone calls. So you're not, you know, nobody else is hearing you talk about something. You're not interrupting others. And so you can just, you can go in there. It's quiet. It's stress-free and, and you can get things done. You know, I can get on my computer and I can, you know, actually get some work done between flights or, or just relax.

37:28Bob:If, you know, if it's three or four hours, I could just take it easy. there's usually food in those lounges. The good ones have a good selection of food. They always have like tons of alcohol. Some of them have bars. Some of them have good champagne that you can go up and, you know, pour all you want or wine. I never, I don't drink when I travel. So that part of it does, does me no good. But a lot of people do, you know, certainly take

37:55Pat Lewis:advantage of that yeah that's i mean the the only thing that matters to me with lounges is space and a seat i need i need space and i need a place to sit my ass down where i can like i'm always like carrying shit i'm sweating i'm never in a good place when i'm at the airport like about to travel i'm rushing around yeah it's stressful right so i want to like sit down i want to put my AirPods in. I want to scroll social media. And so in my opinion, the more restrictive lounges are, the better. Because what's happened is like these, a lot of these lounges, especially in the United States, when you get into a lounge and you can't even find a place to sit and there's like, it's loud and there's like, you know what?

38:39Pat Lewis:I'm just going to start with the worst of the worst. Delta lounges in Atlanta, forget about it. I would rather go into one of those smoking cubicles in Atlanta. I'm not even a smoker, okay? I'd rather breathe secondhand smoke for 45 minutes, you know, than sit in a lounge or stand, you know, A to B with somebody in a lounge

39:05Bob:and eat dried out cold cuts. So before I'm going in the smoking lounge, Steve, I'm going to go into one of those breastfeeding cubicles that they have. have you been in a breastfeeding cubicle i have i have not been in it but like i've seriously thought about it from time to time like late at night you know you're you're there you're waiting you know your flight's delayed or you know and no point in going to a hotel room i'm like going i wonder if i just go in that breastfeeding cubicle if i could just like lock the door and lay down i mean who's you know nobody gonna be breastfeeding in the middle of the night right But then I'm like, can you get arrested for that?

39:46Bob:Probably. I'm off on a whole other tangent.

39:48Pat Lewis:Well, that's what happens with side stick. There's too many people. It's hot. It's stuffy. The food's not good. And Delta's lounge in Detroit's good. I've never had a problem there. But let's talk about the reason why.

40:01Bob:And this is going to piss off a lot of frequent flyers. But they get lounge access because of the credit card, not because they fly a lot. But we're the guys that are out flying all the time. All of our points come from actual sitting in the seats, flying, buying tickets. And we have to compete with space with the people that, you know, don't fly that often, but, you know, put tens of thousands of dollars on their credit card a year.

40:31Pat Lewis:Yeah. Restrictive is good. Best lounge system in America, hands down, United Polaris.

40:39Bob:Yeah. United Polaris is great. Yeah, the Polaris Lounge, so they're like the higher, I mean, there's Airlines, there's United Airlines Lounge, there's the American Admirals Club. Those are the normal lounges where if you're flying a domestic flight, you can go in there and hang out.

40:56Pat Lewis:Marginally better than Gen Pop. Yeah, but the flagship lounge and the Polaris lounge, respectively, are like a much higher level than those regular ones.

41:11Bob:I mean, they got good food. It's quiet. There's much fewer people in those. Yeah. So you can always find a place to sit. You're not fighting, you know, you're rolling around the place with your luggage trying to find a place to sit.

41:25Pat Lewis:I would argue United with the Polaris Lounge is almost too restrictive. Like global services, United Global Services is the equivalent of Concierge Key for United, whereas Concierge Key is American. It's the invite-only status. If you fly a ton, spend a lot of money, you'll get UGS. Global services can't even get into Polaris unless you're on a long-haul international ticket. And that doesn't even mean if you're going to Columbia or, you know, somewhere that's not Europe, Asia, Australia, you know.

41:59Bob:I can't believe they don't let global services in the Polaris anytime.

42:04Pat Lewis:You're just allowed into the United Club. United Polaris lounges and all the United hubs, that is what's up in the U.S. Shout out to them. I mean, it's a great product. It's a great place to kill time. I honestly, I got to say, United's my go-to carrier these days in the States.

42:21Bob:Yeah.

42:22Pat Lewis:Now. Yeah, me too. None of the lounges in the United States are anywhere close to what's out there and what are the best lounges in the world. The best lounges in the world are the Middle East airlines. And I would say my top two, Emirates First Class Lounge, best in the world, man. Just like their product. Best in the world. They have sushi. They have massage. They have like 10 different kinds of food. There's limitless places to sit. There's not that many people there. It's, it's the bright part is bright. The dark part is dark. It's awesome. And then my number two, Turkish, the new Turkish lounge.

43:04So I don't know.

43:05Bob:Have you, have you experienced the Al Safwa first class lounge in Qatar? Yeah. Oh, that's, that's my favorite. I think that is better than the Emirates first class lounge. Oh, yeah. That first class lounge is unreal. I mean, they have a spa. It's like going into a museum that has a spa inside. I mean, they have a spa, like a gourmet restaurant. They have sleeping rooms. But it's, I mean, there's artwork and sculptures. And it's so quiet. It's amazing how quiet it is because it's like crazy chaos beyond the doors. It's so loud out there with everything going on. Oh, my God.

43:48Pat Lewis:Actually, I forgot the most important thing in a lounge, Bob. The showers.

43:52Bob:Yes, exactly. That is key right there. You have to have showers. We use them extensively with all the travel, and that makes all the difference in the world when you're traveling, to be able to just like get off of a, you know, 20 hours of traveling. And you got more traveling to do to go in, take a shower, change your clothes. You feel like a million bucks afterwards.

44:18Pat Lewis:Give me your top three lounges worldwide. El Safwa, first class Qatar.

44:28Bob:Yeah, Emirates first class in Dubai. I love that Turkish lounge. That Turkish lounge might be second on my list just because it's got unbelievable amounts of different, different Turkish food available.

44:43Pat Lewis:And Turkish food is like, I love Turkish food, man. Yeah.

44:48Bob:Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. That's, it might even be my favorite just because of the food. Yeah. There's a golf simulator there too,

44:55Pat Lewis:by the way.

44:56Bob:Yeah. And a flying simulator. You can like, uh, they got some weird thing. It feels like you got like wings on your back and you go flying around. It's,

45:05Pat Lewis:I haven't done that.

45:06Bob:Yeah, it's a different kind of experience. It's kind of cool. I got to say.

45:09Pat Lewis:Yeah. Top three, same Emirates, Turkish, and then I'll go Polaris, man. I'm happy with Polaris. Give him props. I'm going to give him top three status in the U.S.

45:20Bob:Yeah. Yep, I agree. We're pretty much aligned on that one. So that's it.

45:25Pat Lewis:All right, guys. So we're going to say goodbye now. We're going to go to our interview with Pat Lewis. Enjoy the interview, and then we're going to close out the pod with Mass Fear, Pat's band. Cool. Can't wait to hear it.

45:57All right.

45:58Pat Lewis:We're coming at you live. Not live.

46:01Bob:41 ,000 feet.

46:02Pat Lewis:In the back of an airplane. Nobody's flying. We rented this airplane just for this podcast. Yeah. Pat and I are actually going to fly this thing across the Pacific Ocean tonight. Bob's meeting us here in Phoenix, and we have a few hours to kill before we leave. And so welcome to the pod. Thanks, Gus. It's funny to find myself here. You ever think you'd be doing a podcast while sitting in the back of an airplane in the middle of the night? No, I can't say that was on my list.

46:34Bob:Did you have time to prepare for this interview? No. Good.

46:40Pat Lewis:So I'll start. I mean, I've known Pat now for what, three years? Yeah, I'd say about that. Almost three years. So Pat was my son Tyler's flight instructor. When his senior year in high school, he got his private pilot's license. Pat happened to be the CFI that was assigned to Tyler. Pat was coming toward the end of his CFI career at that point, right? What was your job outlook at that point when we met? It was actually pretty lucky that Tyler even wound up on my schedule because my schedule was insanely packed. Yeah. And I wasn't even taking new students. And you and Tyler went in and talked to the woman that ran the flight school.

47:21Barb, yeah. Yeah, and she thought that it would be a good fit based on what you guys were looking for. So he just popped up on my schedule one day and I was like, I don't even know who's this. Like, I have no idea who this is.

47:32Bob:One thing I've always wondered, actually, is how did you how did you get into flying? You know, I'm sure there's a lot of people that want to know kind of how you started and and how you how you ended up where you're at now. Well, at least at least to that point, you know, where you got started being hired by the regionals. Yeah. So, I mean, if we're going way back. um you weren't like a 22 year old cfi like how old are you now so i just turned 34 looks like he's 25 but he's 34 with gray hair slowly turning into you yeah it happened my dad was in the air force but so when i was a little kid um he got me into aviation related stuff and like we would build models together and go to air shows and stuff like that so i always really had an interest didn't um he was in the air force he didn't fly though but he was just always really into it as well yeah and um so i just always had that interest um and then when i was in high school like around the time most people start you know like toward the end of high school or right after high school um i was in a band that was kind of serious and like we went on some tours and stuff and so that was just my main focus like music tour yeah yeah we're in a music band yeah like We did the East Coast a couple times out to the Mississippi.

48:51Oh, wow. Yeah, like a handful of, like, two to three-week tours. And spoiler alert, Pat is still in the band. Old habits, not hard.

48:58Pat Lewis:Yeah, of course. So he really does fit in around here in every way.

49:04Bob:We all want to be rock stars. Yeah.

49:07Pat Lewis:Pat's a real one. So you graduate from high school, and aviation is not, like, really in your sights at that point. I mean, it was still, like, in my free time at home and stuff. if I'd be on a flight sim, but I wasn't thinking of it as a profession at that point. Although when I was younger, like that, it was 100 % on my radar. It's just, you know, things happen, you know, and you start chasing other things. But yeah. So by the time I kind of stepped away from music for a while, I was like, man, I really wish I started flying. But due to just my own lack of research, I was kind of like, oh, that ship sailed.

49:46Pat Lewis:Is this before college? because you went to alabama yeah so now honestly that this would probably be after i dropped out came back home because then i was kind of like all right i need to figure out what i want to do like i said my own lack of research so i thought oh well if you want a career in flying you either have to join the military or you have to go to like an embryo riddle or something like that and uh i kind of had a sour taste in my mouth from college so i was like i'm not going to go back to a four-year university at this point. And I knew you could get your private pilot at your local airfield, but I didn't realize that you could go all the way through.

50:23Pat Lewis:You didn't really know what the path was. You were interested in aviation. It seemed insurmountable. You didn't really give it a whole lot of thought. You were just like, yeah, I don't know. I missed the bus.

50:33Bob:Yeah, there wasn't anybody in your family that was telling you what the pathway steps were. Yeah, so I basically just kind of wrote it off, even though I still... like had always loved it. My girlfriend, now wife, one year for Christmas bought me a Discovery flight and kind of drug my feet with it. And like, I think I finally followed through on it around like July. So this would have been 2017. So it would have been Christmas, 2016, July, 2017. I did the Discovery flight and it went really well. And, you know, CFI said, Oh yeah, you have a pretty good foundation like you should consider actually pursuing it if you really want to i just remember on that discovery flight just while i was doing you know i was all tense everything because i'd never flown a plane before but um i just remember in my head just thinking this feels right like nothing feels like oh i don't maybe i need to like do another one to

51:31Pat Lewis:see how i feel about it was just like no this is it i want to do this yeah so then uh after that i just immediately started looking at a flight training and so like the huge obstacle for most people that want to do it is obviously finances right how did you cross that bridge so it it was kind of scary and stressful because uh so i remember i specifically talking with my mom because uh i still lived at home at the time and uh she said well how are you gonna pay for it i said i don't know but i'll figure it out so basically what i did was i made enough money not to pay for it outright i i could have but it would have taken me so long to get through training if i was paying for it out of pocket so i went uh over to my local bank and managed to take out a loan for i think the first loan i took out was for 25 000 yeah and um you went up you came up through like a part 61 program yeah so i did all part 61 uh well so initially the it's a long story but the program i went to was supposed to be 141 and then they had all kinds of issues So I wound up being like 61 when it was all said and done.

52:38Yeah.

52:39Bob:Was it at the same place that you took the Discovery flight? No. Flight training? No. So I actually, I did my private pilot training out of Northeast Philly. Okay. And then after that, I moved over to Flying W, which is then where I instructed. Okay. So private pilot was Northeast Philly. And then all the rest of my training and ratings were obtained at Flying W. So what year did you start flying? My first actual, like, legitimate lesson was October 21st, 2017. My commercial, so it's 2026. I got my commercial, I think, in May or June of 21.

53:20Pat Lewis:You're Tyler's CFI. Tyler makes it through. You know, you fly with him quite a bit. I mean, he was in high school at the time. So when did Tyler start? What year? He was. So that was in 23, I guess. Yeah. He was a senior in high school. We all knew that this was going to be the path to Tyler. And, and, you know, he didn't love going to, he didn't love regular school, like college, regular traditional college wasn't going to be a great fit for him. He's always been interested kind of in aviation and asking a lot of questions. Like three people sitting here. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's literally been his life, right?

53:54Pat Lewis:I mean, as Mike, you know, you're on airplanes. You're always around airplanes. Yeah.

53:59Bob:Same with my son. Did the same thing.

54:02Pat Lewis:So he was a senior in high school. Got his private. He trained, like, throughout the school year. I met you, like, pretty much right away, right? I think it was, like, the second flight lesson. Because, so I probably told you this before, but if not. So I remember I was running a few minutes late that day. So I came, like, rushing in, and Tyler was waiting in the area. and you were sitting next to him. And I didn't know who you were. And it's not uncommon for people just hang out at the airport and talk to whoever's hanging around. So I had no idea you were his dad. So I just came up and I like, didn't even acknowledge you.

54:37I just remembered Tyler. And then you were just like standing there and you're like, hey, I'm Steve. And I was like, hey. And you're like, I'm Tyler's dad. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm so sorry. Like, nice to meet you. And then, yeah, I knew nothing about cockpit casual or anything. And like Tyler even brought it up. He was like, you know, like cockpit casual.

54:52Pat Lewis:So right off the bat, I knew I didn't want to be like one of those guys. First of all, I didn't want to micromanage Tyler's training. So I was a CFI for a long time as well, like a long time, like many, many years. I have, I don't know, probably close to 2 ,000 hours of dual given. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, a lot, man. I mean, because the industry was a disaster when I was growing up, right? So I was not going to micromanage. I was not going to dance mom, baseball dad. I wasn't going to do any of that. You weren't riding the long on their flights? No, but I did want Pat to have an idea that I kind of knew what I was talking about a little bit.

55:30Pat Lewis:I'd done this before, and I feel like I made it pretty clear from the get-go that what you say, you're the boss. Why hasn't my son soloed yet? I'm not going to be that guy. You told me all about yourself and what you do and everything, so I was like, all right, this guy clearly knows what the process is and everything. But you also said, like, I'm not trying to step on toes or anything. But so I just figured I think it's best for everyone. Like, I'll just keep you in the loop with everything, game plan and everything. So I just tried my best to just really keep you up to date on everything. And I actually signed Tyler off for his written.

56:08It's funny, which I don't know when you'll address this later for Ryan's Vine. But I'm 99 % sure, because I remember I was doing a cross country with a student and we got to Cape May and I checked my phone. And you were like, is it cool if I just signed Tyler off tonight? And I said, yeah, I'm almost positive I was with Dan. Oh, really?

56:27Pat Lewis:Dan is now Tyler's or Ryan's instructor, my youngest son's instructor, as he's working on his private. It's full circle, man. It's kind of incredible. Dan was a former student of mine. And he went through quick. He went right through everything. I took note pretty quickly that Pat had a lot of experience for a CFI. I said, hey, do you want to intern with us? Like, do you want to intern for Nomadic, you know, while you're waiting for your class date at Frontier? And of course, that was like, yes. You know, I was like, we'll get you on an A320. I said, come do a ferry flight with us. The very first one, we flew to Tampa and the Phillies were in the playoffs.

57:05Right. So we went to a bar that night and watched the Phillies game. And then in the morning, the flight was scrubbed. Right. And I flew home and you and Wes like went off to Asia to get us out.

57:14Pat Lewis:We went to Singapore to pick up a LATAM 7. My first trip, basically, you and I flew to Tampa to drink a couple beers and watch the Phillies playoff game.

57:23Bob:It was fun. It sounds like a normal trip to me.

57:27Pat Lewis:Yeah, it was China. It was in China. Oh, you didn't have a visa. Yeah, yeah. You didn't have a China visa. Because I think you actually looked into it and, yeah, there was some. Yeah, it was like the visa was the issue. There was some reason you couldn't go on. Some authority said no. Yeah, so Wes and I went and flew the 7-6, and then we came back, and then that trip was ready, and then you came. So what was that first trip? We took an A320 out of Tampa all the way to Jakarta. Yes. Going east. Going east because there was no HS. Right. So we went Tampa to Bangor, Maine. Bangor to Keflavik. Keflavik to Cairo.

58:01Had a 18-hour layover in Cairo where we went to the pyramids. We went to the pyramids. Got scammed out of some money. Yeah. Is that when Jim was with us? Yeah, when you went with you. And Steve climbed down in a tomb and felt like we were going to die down there.

58:14Pat Lewis:I mean, that's a hell of a first trip. After Cairo, we stopped somewhere else too. Mumbai. Yeah. Did you get any stick time along the way? Yes. Yeah. First leg. He had the first leg. It was the only domestic leg. And I remember I actually hit my ATP minimums like a week before we did that trip. Yeah. It doesn't make a difference because I didn't have it. Right. That was your first time ever flying anything that wasn't a Cessna or Piper or Seneca or something like that. Right. And it worked out pretty well. If I remember correctly, you flew a visual approach into, was it Portsmouth or Bangor? Bangor.

58:51Pat Lewis:Greased it on. Did you, like, catch the bug? Oh, yeah. Before I got into aviation, like, even when I was back doing music, I just always wanted to travel, see as much as I could and everything. Yeah. And so like after that first trip, it was like, wow, this is something I love with something I wanted to do. And just like I can't even comprehend. It was hard to comprehend that I was even getting an opportunity to do it even as an intern.

59:21Bob:Did you feel like coming from that very structured CFI world and then coming into this very unstructured world? I mean, was it just also overwhelming that you didn't even think about that at the time? or was it something that you did notice? Yeah, honestly, I think because it felt like I was trying to drink from a fire hose the whole time, even though before the trip you had given me the F-coms for the 320 and everything. It was one of those things where when I sat in the cockpit for the first time, actually seeing it in person from what you read about or watch videos on, It did make a lot more sense, but at the same time, it was still just like kind of felt like I was hanging on, you know, the edge of the seat.

1:00:09Yeah. But I do remember when I was actually like hands on flying the plane. It's a plane. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's there was like a voice in the back of my head like it's fine. Just just fine.

1:00:19Pat Lewis:It's all the same, man. It doesn't matter what's behind you. Like behind that door is irrelevant. Like it's still a plane.

1:00:25Bob:And the reality of it is it seems unstructured, but we're actually very structured when it comes to the cockpit and our procedures. I mean, it is it seems very disorganized in terms of, you know, the actual getting to the airplane and the trips get delayed and all of that stuff. And it kind of is. It all does kind of happen haphazardly. And then it all comes together. So we kind of live in that world. but when we kind of cross into the cockpit it becomes a very disciplined world yeah and uh so we're kind of like you know always living between these these two different worlds so you know i you've adapted very well to that you know and that's what i always wonder about you know somebody that comes into this with low time it's not like a very structured environment like an airline job where you're trained to do this this and this and then there's scheduled times to push back scheduled times to be places um this you know i think people have a view of what we do is kind of like a cowboy operation like oh this is just like jump in and go and all of this stuff and it's really not it is really very structured in a lot of ways and takes a lot of discipline to come from this kind of unstructured part of it and jump into the cockpit and put on a different different face sound like flip a switch.

1:01:50Bob:Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I always thought that that would be a difficult thing for, you know, somebody like you that comes into this environment. But I mean, you've adapted to it very well. I mean, this is also all he knows. Well, yeah, I mean, that's true. And, you know, I don't know if you I don't know if you learned that from us.

1:02:10Pat Lewis:At the end of the day, what what's most important in this? Obviously, flying skills is quite important. It's also very much about personality. Like how do you perform under pressure, under stress? Like how do you perform when the days are really long and, you know, and Bob and I are grumpy? Have I yelled at you yet? No, I think I've been spared. That's shocking. I've already prepared my son to be yelled at by Bob.

1:02:37Bob:Yeah. When I get in the cockpit, I do like things to go a certain way. And he's never yelled at me. No, I'm afraid of you. I think you beat me up in Nigeria one time.

1:02:49Pat Lewis:That's another story. That's another story. Well, we were there for two weeks. We were wrestling. That's another story. Yeah, with our shirts off. Possibly. Other trends. So ultimately, Pat was just a good fit. And I was like, what if we send you down to get an A320 type on your ATP? Like on our dime. And would you commit six months or a year or something like that? And you were like, yeah, hell yeah. No brainer. So shortly after you got your 320 type, we did a trip together and we brought my son Tyler along in the jump seat. That was a standard airworthiness certificate, Airbus factory delivery.

1:03:32Pat Lewis:And it was an opportunity that we could actually bring somebody along. That was cool because I remember. That's the struts. That's the fuel settling. Yeah, so we just put, what, almost 40 ,000 kilos of fuel on this thing. And so the struts just, every now and then it just drops down. It feels like someone drove a truck into the airplane. It's a earthquake. It'll get your attention. Has every time. So we went out to Toulouse, went to the Aerospace Museum there at Toulouse. That was a memorable thing, man. But I remember walking in the airplane and Pat, he's got Tyler in the left seat, Pat's in the right seat and Pat's teaching them how to program the MCU.

1:04:14Bob:Oh my gosh. Yeah, man. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, that is something that you've seen that like very few people see. I mean, you get in these airplanes, we don't have databases in them sometimes. Sometimes they're not current databases and we actually have to build waypoints, build airports. And yeah, that's, uh, that's something that you've done many, many times. You could probably do it in your sleep now. My fingers hurt. Yeah, exactly.

1:04:40Pat Lewis:So this is one thing that I definitely want to touch on before we wrap it up. And that is everyone's always talking about how, you know, how do you guys switch between types so often and 23, 24 ,000 hours ish. You're over 30 ,000 now, you know, and we've been doing this for a long time. And it's like my I don't know how we do it. We just do it. You get used to it. And, you know, it's second nature to us. So at Pat's first A320 anniversary, when it was time for him to do his recurrent, instead of doing recurrent on the 320, we sent him to 737 school. That was last year. You have a PIC type rating on the 320 to 737, and you just did the 330 CCQ last month.

1:05:23Pat Lewis:And, you know, I'll ask, you can talk about it. The 320 and the 330 are very similar. What did you think going into flying multiple types? Like how how did you mentally prepare for that when you went to 737 training? And how has it been your first full year flying two different manufacturers? Right. So I'd say in the build up up to it, I definitely felt a little nervous and stressed because, you know, it's a whole different aircraft, different manufacturers, so different systems and everything. Different callouts, different methodologies. So, yeah, lots of stuff in terms of memory items, stuff like that.

1:06:03Yeah, like logic or theory. But after going through it, honestly, the aircraft are way more complex, but I feel like you can almost compare it to being a CFI and hopping in and out of a bunch of different aircraft. Because by the time I was done CFI-ing, I was at a point where I was hopping in and out of 172s, 182s, Pipers, Bonanzas, like all different kinds of aircraft and i felt totally comfortable with any of them at that point but i remember if you go back far enough i only flew pipers and the first time i hopped in the cessna i was like oh yeah this is different you know and now it's it's just so yeah exactly and you know the systems maybe they're oriented a little differently it might look a little different on the panel but at the end of the day they all operate the same way of the 320 and the 330

1:06:53Pat Lewis:pretty easy transition, wouldn't you say? Very easy, honestly. It's actually surprising. I mean, there are differences, but you think just in the sheer size difference, you think there'd be a way bigger difference than there really is. But it just feels like a wider 320 cockpit. From an operator perspective, the 320 and the 330 and the 340, they're the same thing. I mean, like the job up front is the same and systems knowledge is a little different. I actually find the wide body is a little easier You're the next step is going to be putting in the left seat and having you actually operate as PIC.

1:07:28Pat Lewis:I've been putting you in the left seat the last few trips on the 7.3 and on the 320. It's the management of the trip that takes you time.

1:07:36Bob:Yeah. The trip management and the decisions that you make, you know, you came in here with a lot of skills. And like, you know, in your admin role and, you know, it's kind of seeing the business side of what we do. You know, you've been involved with a family business. Right. And so, you know, I can see that, you know, you've got some business sense to you, too. So, you know, there's a lot of factors that brought you in, you know, and you were capable of doing what you do.

1:08:03Pat Lewis:So, Pat is also a musician, plays the guitar, records as a band. And we're going to close out the episode with a track that Pat chooses. Maybe we'll do the video. You have a video, right? A couple of videos, yeah. Should we do a video? We'll let you pick. Okay. We'll close out the episode with a musical celebrity. Pat's like a metal band. It's pretty metal-like. What, the genre? Yeah. So there's so many sub-genres, but it would be like metalcore, post-hardcore. Probably more post-hardcore. You do the songwriting? Yeah, I write all the instrumentals.

1:08:39Bob:Oh, cool. And then they have the singer writes the vocals. Yeah, and I help here and there, but it's many.

1:08:45Pat Lewis:Yeah. They've got tons of downloads on Spotify. too like yeah it's down like tens of tens of thousands what's the name so the band is mass fear um we're on all socials and everything if you like a little heavier music check it out mass fear band yeah well and i don't know what song i'll pick yet but they'll find out all right

1:09:06Bob:you'll hear right yeah it's great having you here pat i always enjoy flying with you thanks guys and you're the first interview yes so we're cutting our interviewing teeth going in the hall

1:09:16Pat Lewis:fan with a familiar face. On an unfamiliar airplane. Yes.

1:09:46It's only for eternity You will never leave

1:09:54Pat Lewis:They say you belong to me A magic to you Who will love us like a Demons too

1:10:18Who will save us women? Demons lose They always looked familiar When they run without their skin I know just what they look for Cause they're always creeping in Searching for a victim They sink their teeth right here It's just another symptom Who will love us like all Demons do

1:11:09Who will save us women? Feelings loose I can't escape I can't escape this place Lost in time like tears in the rain I can't escape It's time to create a The tears I feel it I'm squeezing my heart It's time to create a It's time to create a

1:12:07I'm hoping you hear it Who will save us women? Amen.