EP4 - Ramblings from the Road, War Stories, & Scottie Bateman talks Jumbo Jets

32:43Oh, good. Those will be interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing those. So anyway, what we did, we don't have a full, like, regular episode prepared. We have an interview we did with Scotty Bateman, and it was great. Scotty was talking about his new book, Jumbo, talked about his military career in the RAF, a little bit about his time flying 747s for British Airways. Now he's on the A350 over there. Scotty um is is just an awesome guy yeah we gotta we gotta have him back just uh just just to sit here and just talk with us I mean he can just tell stories just like this I mean he's a great person I love just sitting and around talking to Scotty I know me too man and he's got that he's got that accent it's not even I mean he's not he's he's Scottish right yeah yeah it's not like a heavy like London British Cockney it's like a Scottish accent I like the Scottish accent but yeah, yeah, he's a good guy.

33:40Definitely. So after, right at, right after this, we're going to roll right into our interview with Scotty Bateman. I think it was about 40 minutes long. It was great interview. Uh, so enjoy, and we'll see you next week with a more complete episode, uh, kind of under the format that we normally do other than us just BSing and then rolling into an interview, which is good too. I don't mind sitting here BSing. Hopefully everybody, uh, enjoys it as well. Yeah. And I still have like 25 questions that I just organized that we're going to get to next week because we talk too much on this episode once again.

34:14But anyway, we'll figure it out. And I've got some cockpit shtick. Some side shtick? Questions. Yeah, cockpit shtick. Yeah, side shtick for questions for you. You do? You want to save that for next? You want to give us a little teaser? Well, we can do it next week if we're – yeah. Let's save it for next week. save it for next week okay sounds good everybody uh enjoy the interview with scotty bateman and then we'll see you next week see y 'all bye

34:50scotty bateman you skinny guy you hell yeah i do look a bit skinny now oh god yeah he's getting younger by the day no older older i don't think so it's steve and i are the ones getting older You keep getting younger every time I see you. I know, man. You look great. Oh, thanks, mate. Yeah, six stones. So in real money, that's probably about, it's 35 kilos. So about 70 pounds I've lost. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. You lost 70 pounds? Yeah. Man, I got to take some notes on how you did. I got to lose like 20. You don't want what I had. Trust me. You do not want what I had. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, it's good to see you, Scotty.

35:38I mean, we go back pretty far. You know, it's funny. So here's how I found out about Scott Bateman. OK, in 2016, I joined Twitter for the first time. I had no social media. I'd been off of Facebook for years and years and years. And I ended up, you know, it was the presidential election, the Trump election. And and everyone was always talking about Twitter. yeah everybody was talking about twitter so i'm like all right i'll log on to twitter and i'll set up an account so i set up an account and you know it used to ask you like what what you're into and and then it recommends followers so i put like i mean the only thing i'm into is like aviation and philly sports and scotty bateman was like the recommend so i followed scott and you were like i think you were like at least my first 10 follows on on twitter yeah so like Because I was into the Phillies, obviously.

36:35Yes, probably that. Nothing to do with aviation. So anyway, that was back in 16. And I think it really took about – I mean, it was weird. When I started with Twitter, I mean, I was really just – I was a watcher. I was like a Twitter voyeur. and um and i was getting a lot of aviation stuff on my feed but um i i just started posting aviation stuff and then like the account blew up because people were like you do what you know and and that's kind of how it all started for me and so like you were kind of in on that from the beginning and then we ended up talking at some point i don't remember exactly when but we've maintained contact over the years i mean you're in all kinds of media stuff in aviation and as am i like at this point you do more than i do now i don't know you've been in some very legitimate things uh yeah well not that not that steve's been in illegitimate things but is this his niche videos again bob yeah i'm not gonna i mean i'm in quite a bit of illegitimate stuff i mean but there's been a couple of legitimate things uh you know nathan the tmz The TMZ one comes to mind.

37:48Your YouTube stuff is amazing. That's legitimate. It's really good. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, yeah, it's good. Illegitimate doesn't mean bad. It just means, you know, not recognized. Mostly. Yeah. Not as mainstream as what you've been in. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So anyway, we go back pretty far. We've never actually met in person yet. That's going to change soon. Bob and I have. We have. Yeah. Really? How did that happen? Oh, yeah. On one of his Phoenix layovers. Yeah. We went for beer. What was it last year? We went for a beer and some wings and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Downtown Phoenix. Steven, you didn't know that, Steve.

38:30I didn't know that. I don't know everything Bob does. Most of the stuff I know. Every now and then I'm surprised. But we almost met. We almost got all of our wives and all of us together. Oh, we were in London. And I crashed my car. And you crashed your car. I don't remember that. I had to get a new car as a whole result. I loved that car. We hit a tire, a wheel on the motorway driving to come to you, and the car was wrecked. Was it a Volvo? A Volvo, yeah. I remember it was a Volvo, yeah. Luckily, it was a Volvo. It was high enough off the ground that the tire went underneath and just wrecked the car and didn't wreck us.

39:09Oh, God. We were so lucky. I mean, now I've forgotten all about that. Yeah, I had my wife Avery there, Bob's wife Laura, and you and your wife were going to meet us for dinner. We had reservations at this nice place in London. I was stoked, finally going to meet Scotty Bateman. And my phone rings and he says that he was in a car wreck. And I'm like, no way. Yeah, sure. What kind of excuse is this? He sent pictures. I said, no, I did actually send you pictures from the side of the motorway, didn't I? Yeah. Yeah, you did. It's like not in bits. Yeah. We wanted proof. Yeah. So anyway, Scott is the king of all aviation media, really, truly.

39:46And he just published his second book called Jumbo. And I haven't gotten my copy yet. And I noticed, I shit you not, I got an email from Scotty's publisher saying that both myself, Bob, and Richard Branson did not get their copies. Wow. I don't know if that was for real or what was that really that actually was for real you are in good company he didn't get his either um yeah I think I'm gonna call Richard and see if he got his yet yeah so you are in good company yeah but um here it is if you haven't seen one this is what it looks like jumbo I have not seen one I you you were you did send me the manuscript which I've been reading um it's not you know it's not quite as handheld um but I've been scrolling it on my iPad on some trips that I've been doing over the last couple of weeks.

40:43So I can get at least up to speed enough to ask you about it. And I want to talk about that, but I want to kind of talk first. So your first book was Herc. So you came from the RAF. You were a Royal Air Force loadmaster and then pilot. Yeah. So I started out as a loadmaster back in the 1990s. Oh my God, do you remember that? Oh, wow. I mean, I was in high school then. Bob was already an old man.

41:10I started in the Air Force in 1990 and then as a loadmaster five, six years later became a pilot in the Air Force went back to fly the Hercules as a co-pilot and then as a Hercules captain and then finished there and went off to fly the subject of the next book which was Jumbo so that's kind of my sort of career in a nutshell there hold on i want to i want to i want to touch on a couple other things from that period so first of all in the u.s um loadmaster's an enlisted position i assume is it the same is it the same in the raf yeah okay so you enlisted in the raf um in the 90s and so how did you transition to like did you go to like officer basic school yeah so so started off as a what we call sergeant air crew so a senior nco sergeant um as a loadmaster and then went from when i was commissioned as a pilot i went and did eight months at uh at the rf college came out of that as an officer um with it gives gives you some credit for being a an enlisted guy before so you come out as the equivalent of what you would have as a captain okay um uh and then you go then oh three yeah i know three then into pilot school um okay then and then is that an unusual career military career trajectory or is that um there are a lot it's not common um but there are a lot people who go from uh am and air crew whether that be flight engineer or uh loadmaster not so many flight engineers around now but the world back when we had herx and stuff but they used to because they have great airmanship all those things that make piloting easy because if you've got all that stored away all you've got to do is really focus on the stick and rudder skills yeah so a lot of people went from those roles commissioned and went into piloting particularly when we had a pilot shortage in the sort of the mid 90s um the air force deliberately targeted uh those guys particularly those who'd applied for pilot before and i'd applied and been turned down previously um so they invited me back i had another go and lo and behold got the job so you weren't a private pilot or anything you were you were just a load master no stick time zero you had an interest in aviation you were pursuing the path but like your first hour was in an raf trainer correct yeah i hadn't done anything prior to this i did a little go at the hair every now and again you know when you're in the cruise and you have a little go um but i i'd never really i'd never really done any formal training um prior to starting and i started on the slingsby firefly the t67 firefly little single engine piston airplane uh and then i moved from that to the uh because i was going to go back to multis i always knew that um i went from that to the jet stream uh flew the jet stream for a bit and then jumped from that to a hack bob is a jet stream guy by the way bob flew the j32 Two?

44:36The 3100. Oh, yeah, nice. The bigger than the ones I flew. The ones I flew were like the T2, which had like seven seats in the back or something. Oh, okay. It was really small. Really, really small. It's an airplane that has multiple cocks.

44:54Couple sitting at the front, perhaps. No, seriously. I'm told that's an English term. so the valves the valves on the jet stream in the manuals are called cocks they always found that funny because i'm very immature yeah well you can't you can't be mature on a pilot at the same time this is true not possible so so you started off uh flying the cock plane and then uh you worked your way over to uh the c-130 which is an american-built aircraft therefore no cocks and and you were deployed in afghanistan oh yeah i've done a lot iraq afghanistan sierra leone um i did a long time on that airplane through probably one of the most kinetic times i think in our lifetime in terms of wars um my entire operational career was one war after another you know whether it be the balkans or through into you know the gulf first gulf war second gulf war afghanistan um towards the end of my career um so you know there was a lot of operational flying how many how many years were you in so i did 18 years in the raf oh okay total yeah didn't leave till 2008 um and then went straight into airline flying and flying the jumbo which was a bit of a jump because i went from a turboprop never having flown a jet in my training or anything like that to flying a almost 500 ton four engines you know yeah what was that transition like tough um uh it's bizarre but you've both flown turboprops you've both flown jets so i went i I went dash eight to MD 80.

46:45So, I mean, it didn't have the mass, but yeah. So difficult, you know, pitch, control, speed instead of power. And, you know, and it's all the wrong way around, isn't it? Yeah. Energy management. Yeah. And it was tough to begin with, but you quickly get the hang of it because you do a lot of it. And it was great fun. And I went from, you know, one military icon to literally the civilian aviation icon that blew all of us out the water. I was so lucky. From what I understand from reading your book, you sustained an injury in Kabul, Afghanistan at the Bagram Air Base, a place that I've been, by the way.

47:28I dropped the Dash 8 there a couple of them years back. So war zone, combat injury by falling in the shower. slipping in the shower on on it was we can laugh i can laugh about it now i did not laugh about it at the time i can tell you um yeah yeah i just i cannot describe if you've ever been deployed with the military and and you know probably college football bathrooms after a game are probably the same kind of state you know it's it's absolutely a quagmire it's covered in detritus and bits of people and all sorts so i went in into the shower with my flip-flops on because nobody wants to step in other people's stuff um so i go in the shower have a wash i get out the shower fine put my towel on start to dry myself think ah i've left my shower gel in the shower and i turn back to get my shower gel and slip on my ass and that was a landed yeah and i landed on the um lip of the shower tree um right in the middle of my back and it did smart at the time and i got by for a couple of days i went and did a couple of operational sorties um and then it just got so wrong and so wrong so wrong one day i was flying with a doctor and he said oh come and have a look well you know come come across the hospital and have a look we'll have a little prod around and uh yeah i'd done it in properly yeah you know what man i it's probably the thing that is most likely to kill us on a trip is a slip in the shower i mean seriously you hear about it all the time you know able-bodied people falling out of the coming out of the shower And, you know, some of these hotels that we're at, like, you don't know.

49:25It's not your own home bathroom, right? I know. And you're not used to it. And I take a lot of care now in the show. I can tell you. You know how bad it can go. Yeah, you do not want that to happen again. And I was super lucky. I had some amazing care. I got some amazing aftercare through the military. It just brought an end to my military career, sadly. but it didn't restrict me moving forward into a civilian one, which was fantastic. And that was largely due to the rehab and stuff that was provided. Is that something that, I mean, obviously your life probably flashed before your eyes when you realized how severe of an injury it was, thinking that this could be the end of your medical as well.

50:09I mean, in the ASA, medical is no joke, especially compared to the FAA. I was really lucky in that, you know, at one point during all of this, I couldn't actually walk. You know, I'd lost a feeling in my left leg and stuff. And I was super lucky that the surgeons were able to sort all that out. And I've been left with some lasting effects, but nothing that impact me day to day, really, which is fantastic. Yeah, I mean, it looks like you're exercising a hell of a lot more than me. I'm just not eating. I'm not exercising. The easiest, it's a simple maths game. Calories in versus calories out. You just don't eat Steve.

50:48And the weight drops off. That's hard for me, but maybe it's time for me to restrict the eating a little bit. Yeah, I can't keep track of it. I don't know what day it is. So you get hired by British Airways after the medical debacle. You're processed out. You haven't flown in some time at this point, I'm assuming. No, probably about a year I haven't flown. At all? At all, yeah. I'm assuming British Airways hires quite a few military folks coming out of the RIA. Yeah. So at that time, they had a pathway, which basically allows people to go straight from the military in with an interview and a few other things.

51:29But you can do that well ahead of your exit date so that you know you've got a job and stuff. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. Very cool. So you go through, you go into training, you're assigned to 747. seven at what point do you find out do you are you go to indoc first and and then no so they it's it's bizarre i don't know what they do now but but then they used to phone you up and they used to make you a verbal offer over the phone and they used to say all right we we'd like to start on this day and blah blah blah and everybody's like what plane on what plane and i kind of knew it was going to be a lot i kind of knew it was going to be a long haul airplane plane because of my experience um because i'm qualified for zero flight time because of the hurt time um and that i was kind of hoping for the jumbo but never knew and she says and uh yeah will the jumbo be okay and i was like yeah so i accepted the offer straight away and we were in um yeah it was great i was what year was that 2008 oh wait you go into british airways you're right on the jumbo.

52:36What is your first takeaway in training? Now, I mean, so full disclosure here, Bob and I are typed on a lot of different airplanes. The 747 is not one of them. So I'm not going to be able to, I mean, we have plenty of Boeing experience. I don't necessarily know, just keep it in your mind that I don't know a whole lot about that airplane. It's fine. So all you need to know is it's a Boeing and all Boeings are relatively the same, whether it be the triple the seven six seven five is a bit of a rocket ship isn't it but yeah all of them are generally the same uh and the systems are generally the same and the jumbo is no different the jumbo's just got four of everything it's got four hydraulic systems four engines four main gear you know it it is built to last um the only thing that surprises you and still surprises me today when I go and sit in, you know, ones that are in museums is how high you are off the ground.

53:36Yeah. Yeah. And nobody, I think, ever gets used to that. Even taxiing around, you know, you're on the third floor of a building taxiing around. When you touch down, when the main wheels touch, your eye height is 117 feet. so you're still 117 feet in the air when the main gear touches down um most airplanes are about the 55 feet off the ground type thing even even the big triples are about that um yeah but yeah 117 feet is your eye height when you touch down so that's definitely one of the tougher things like with our job is that we move around between types so often that that means you know i mean and we don't get into i don't get into dash eights as much as i used to the dash eight is a low rider i mean you're like on the deck and then of course we have the west wind the west wind so we have the west wind which is like the lowest of all airplanes it's lower than i mean it sits the cockpit than a cessna 150 in our hangar the west wind sits next to our cherokee 140 and the cherokee 140's cockpit is a higher is higher off the deck than the west wind so yeah so i'd be i'd be flaring so high that we could probably you know it i'll tell you a story about this bob can't even land i did i did some stuff with beach craft and we went to the factory in um wichita in kansas and i flew out to denver they picked us up in a a 350 king air 350 took us across the factory we We did a couple of days at the factory doing some stuff.

55:17And on the way back, the guy said, oh, you're a qualified pilot. He said, do you want to fly the King Air on the way back? I was like, yeah, of course. So I fly this King Air, come around, come to Denver. He says, what do you want to do, a visual or an ILS? I said, I think I'm going to do an ILS just to get the hang of it. It's been a long time. So I'm on a turbo coming down. and at 100 and i started to flare in the king area at 100 because that's kind of what you would what you would do in the jumbo uh and the guys i tell you what you have never seen the guy's hands move in in the other seats so quick in your life what are you doing it's like i and one of my buddies was i've got this video and i will share the video with you the guy from the back basically looking at the front you see the the thing go like this yeah as he's trying to stabilize it out after i've tried to flare it at 100 feet it was not good and i learned about yeah let other people do the land it yeah yeah all right yeah no for sure i mean and and like you know for for landing it's one thing i mean what we learned to do is really really trust in the radar altimeter call outs um and yeah i mean but still even even at a hundred you get a 100 in a jumbo that's when you start pulling the power back i mean no airplanes that i fly do you start pulling the power back at 100 even in the triple i mean you know maybe like between 150 somewhere but not really i mean you're still kind of coming down slow so with four engines spooling down and everything else like it takes a while i guess for the thrust to come out low of energy there as well and the 7.4 is tons of lift not only from the wing but from the fuselage itself right yeah i and you know you look at the wing that you know that was one of sutter's great inventions was that wing you know it's got a 37 degree sweep i don't think there's any airliner now that has that kind of sweep 37 and a half degree sweep it was optimized to fly at 0.855 with that sweep that's why so they wanted a high speed wing but to make it land at some of the smallest airports you know they wanted to have this triple slotted flap so you've got triple slotted fowler flap plus leading edge flaps not slats flaps that come out the front krugers that come out the front um so when you look at the wing with the flap down the flap 30 it is enormous this this wing and and all that air is getting re-energized by those those slots and the flaps so it just produces a phenomenal And literally, you could sit in, almost sit in ground effect.

57:58Yeah. With no power on it, it'll just keep going. What's a normal ref speed for landing? Well, first of all, what's a normal weight landing? Let's call it a full load of passengers, but very little fuel. 250 tons. 250 tons. Yeah, that's about right. So, yeah. So you're at half a million pounds landing, like after burning fuel. what's your ref speed in that thing with with all those flaps i seem to recall be about 135 something like that so like any other same they're all the same any uh not the west wind the west wind's like 140 oh really yeah well it's interesting i mean the 350 is about the same that i fly now but the 380 is even slower because of the size of the 380 wing it's quite slow i mean it really really is slow yeah i mean the seven five is that way it always shocks me whenever i'm in the seven five you you can get refs below 110 empty like you know we're empty well we're empty right yeah yeah yeah so i mean you're you're talking about you might have 10 000 pounds 8 000 pounds of fuel left in the airplane landing somewhere you're at ref like 112 or maybe like 109 yeah yeah i had a 107 going into phoenix the other day wow that's that's like sessence speed I still flew it at 125 though yeah I know but you look at the jumbo and you think about those speeds and it's why the airplane looks so enormous and it looks like it's just sitting there people go oh it's going to fall out of the sky it's because it's so big and it's going so slow people just go my goodness you know and really that's we talk about it in the book but it's one of the few airplanes now that people still stop and stare at because they go, wow, that's enormous.

59:54Whereas I don't think the 380 has that kind of a look. No. It doesn't. It's a pretty airplane. It's a timeless look. It is, you know, like any other avgeek, I've been kind of emotional about the last of them. And I still try to get on them whenever I can. I was actually on Air China 7.4-8 recently. I mean, you know I wanted to fly on a 7.4 if I went to Air China. Yeah. You must have been really desperate. Desperate. And brave. It was a good price. Yeah. But like, yeah, I've flown the Lufthansa one a few times, Air China, Korean. I've been on three jumbos in the last year, all three of those carriers.

1:00:34The only eight I've been on is the new Air Force One, the VC-25B. So that's the only eight that I've been on. And I have been privileged, and we talk about it in the book, to be one of the few people who've actually been on that aeroplane. I was there the day that the Air Force took it over, signed it over from Boeing. I was the first person to step across the threshold of it when it was a VC-25B. Then the Air Force signed it back to Boeing Defense, another company. And a couple of Boeing defense pilots with a couple of Air Force pilots standing behind them flew it from out of the desert, actually, down to Big Texas, which is just south of Austin.

1:01:24So this is part of the documentary that you did. Is that correct? That was Air Force One, The Flying Fortress, which is on Nat Geo. Yeah. And we did a documentary. So to back up from that, something I've always been curious about is how you started the airline career. You're on the jumbo. How did you become this world-renowned expert on the jumbo and then end up making these documentaries about Air Force One? It's always fascinating. A bit of luck, Bob, actually. So I wrote a book for the 50th anniversary of the Jumbo. I wrote a book and the book was appalling, right? So it was a book written by a pilot for pilots.

1:02:14It was such a technical book that it had been a snooze fest for anyone reading it apart from a pilot. This is like, this is the evolution of cockpit casual. You look at the first few episodes and I'm talking about like, I'm using acronyms and I'm saying, and I feel like I'm teaching a ground school. And I'm like, man, people aren't going to want to see this. I totally get what you're saying there. So I try to pitch this book, try to get it sold. Guess what? Nobody wanted that. A friend of ours, we had dinner with a friend of ours. And she says, oh, I know a guy. You know, go and have lunch with this guy.

1:02:47I went and had lunch with this guy called Alan Haling. In fact, I had lunch with him yesterday again. So, you know, we've been good friends for a long time now. And basically, Alan says, oh, I don't think this is a good book, really. and I'm like, tell me what I don't know. He said, but, he says, I love the bit about Air Force One in the book because I wrote a big piece about Air Force One. He says, we could turn that into a documentary. And I went, I know nothing about documentaries and I can't even sell my book. How am I going to do TV? And he says, well, I might have a bit of insight into that.

1:03:20And what Alan didn't tell me prior to the meeting was that actually him and his wife owned a Warner Brothers production company. and we went and we sold this documentary within two weeks to Nat Geo on the caveat that we got access to the president and to Air Force One, the old one and the new one. And I used my network and a number of friends and stuff and eventually we got access to the old Air Force One or the existing aircraft through my Air Force contacts. We managed to arrange that. And then I ended up getting the opportunity to speak to some of the president's staff in Washington on a layover.

1:04:07And literally over a text, he agreed to do it. And so we ended up getting access not only to the existing Air Force One, to the new ones, which literally they bought but hadn't taken delivery of at that point. They were still out in the desert. And then we had the opportunity to interview 45 stroke 47 on the airplane. So we're a political podcast, so I'm not going to go too far down this rabbit hole. But you met Donald Trump. Briefly. Yeah, I didn't get to interview him, sadly, because they changed the days and I had to do some real work. so actually we sent someone else to interview him on the day but oh man uh yeah i tell you what the he's i i don't care what anyone says and i'm you know perhaps not as great as fan either but he was very generous with his time uh for the interview he didn't have to give us the time for his interview and you know we did probably an hour and a half with him of which there's probably six or seven minutes i think in the documentary um he was generous with his time and very generous us to allow us to be on both aircraft he could have just said no uh and for that you know i'll be grateful and i think that because of what we did there in that documentary and how well that came out i think perhaps there was some influence for the next documentary that we did which was actually with nasa um which was fantastic as well um but you know perhaps not maybe i'm reading too much into it, but it was a, it was a, it was a great time.

1:05:53Yeah, it sounds like it. I would have imagined that, like, I mean, of all the things, and again, I'm not going to get into any of the, the, the political stuff, but I mean, he seems a lot more interested in, in non-presidential stuff than presidential. I feel like it would probably be a good conversation. No, no, we're getting political. No, it's not political. I mean, I feel like, I feel like. Steve had to get it in there. No, no, no, no, no. I feel like, no, I'm, I'm legit here. I feel like it would be interesting to play around the golf with donald trump and i would do it i think i would i think i think and this is i'm perhaps worth the mark here but he is a bit of an aviation geek is he um yeah yeah so you know his brother was a pilot yeah and he's taken a lot of interest in his own aircraft and you know his 727 his his 75 and 74 and if you ask him which one he prefers He actually says the 727 because where he sat, it was one of the quietest airplanes he's ever flown on.

1:06:51Everyone loves the 7-2. The 7-2 VIP, we dealt with one for the Tan Sri over in Malaysia, right? Yeah. And he would not part with the 7-2. All of his advisors were like, maintenance escalation is high. Let's just get a BBJ. Nope. Nope. One of the 7.2. And when that 7.2 aged out, they bought another 7.2. I think it was an ex-Donald Trump airplane. Oh, was it? Oh, did he buy that one? Oh, right. Wow. So we were just talking, actually, Steve, prior to coming on this podcast, I was talking with Bob about somebody who we know who actually has about three of these 7.2s. none of them fly but he taxis them around all the time with to use fuel up yeah yeah and yeah great great guy seven twos yeah yeah very interesting character mark mark gregory oh oh the guy that we gotta take the cameras out there oh yeah i've got a scotty he's got a it's only just up the road from where i live and he has a jumbo there one of the ones that i flew actually Oh, really?

1:08:04Yeah, we've got to go out there. He's such an interesting, nice guy. I love talking. I sat there and talked to him for hours. So getting him on and recording him and some of his stories and just see, you know, I'm getting off on a tangent here. You could film it whilst you're driving the 727 around the airfield. Now that would be a podcast to go watch. Absolutely. So back to the 7-4 before we wrap it up here. So you were there for the last 7-4-7 to come off the line. Is that correct? There was a ceremony there? Yeah. So I was very fortunate. So the book was written in partnership with Boeing. The former Boeing commercial airplane CEO did the foreword and the Boeing historian did the afterword.

1:08:55And they supported us through all of that, including the images and stuff like that. So we're really grateful to Boeing for all the support they give us for the book. And one of the things that we wanted to do was to be there for the key moments of the last airplane. So I was there for the laying down of the keel, the first wing spa, which was done on the 9th of February, which was a key date because that was the date of the first flight as well. So they laid down the last spa for the first airplane on that date. and then we followed it for a TV program which is actually on Paramount Plus in the US called the Last 747 and we followed the build of the last airplane from the laying down of that spar all the way to rolling out the factory and it was amazing to be there for both and for the handover of the airplane to Atlas at the end It was an amazing ceremony.

1:09:57I've never been to anything like that in my life. Boeing really did it proud should they all go off, as it were. And, you know, John Travolta turned up. So you saw the last 747 delivered. We narrowly missed you for that because we, well, it wasn't us personally. We moved the last Air India 747 out. And it wasn't us personally because we're not 747 rated. but we hired some of our contract guys to go do it. And, um, it was like unbelievably high profile. Oh yeah. We didn't know. We didn't know it ahead of time. Right. Yeah. Everything, everything to do with the last jumbos, whether they were, you know, from Europe, whether the United's last jumbo, you know, all of them.

1:10:48I mean, I just don't think there is an airplane that people feel that way. way about now you know it's one of the aviation icons i mean it really did i you know i wax lyrical about it in the book but it changed the world you know whether it really did you know democratized travel um you know we talk about we've already talked about air force one you know we had firefighting aircraft that were 747s um you know it's even fueling the missions to the moon now. SOFIA, which was NASA's jumbo, found the ice on the moon, which means if you've got ice, you've got water and hydrogen. They said, you know, we can go now to the moon and stay because we can have oxygen and we can have fuel for hydrogen to allow us to go to Mars in the future.

1:11:42So the whole of the Artemis program was facilitated by a jumbo jet. So again, it's not just changing our planet, it's changing the other planet. That's really interesting. That is, I mean, you know, it's incredible. And it's just because it's the end of the 747 era. I mean, there will be other aircraft eras, but I don't know that an era will be as defined by a single aircraft rather than a class of aircraft. It's never been about a single type except for the 747. I mean, I think there was hype that the A380 would be that way, but it wasn't. No, I just, the thing is that the genesis of the 747 was the failure of something else.

1:12:29You know, the genesis of the 747 was the failure effectively of supersonic travel in the US, the Boeing 2707. The 747 was always going to be an also run, they thought back then, because we'd all be flying around supersonic at the moment, you know, in Concords and 2707s and whatever. That just didn't happen in the way people thought. And then, lo and behold, they had to find an also-ran, which was the Jumbo. And, you know, you went from the 707, which carried 100 people, you know, ish, and didn't go very far or very fast. Then you've got the first wide-bodied airplane, high-bypass engines. It can land on the same airports and do three times the distance in, you know, two-thirds of the time.

1:13:17One would say that it's economically driven, right? I mean, the reason that the supersonic did not make it and the jumbo became like this legacy aircraft has got to come down to economics. I mean, you know, you can fill a lot of seats. You can make a lot of money. You can cover a lot of distance. Less frequency, single flights. I mean, is that the key to the success of the jumbo? It was the key to it. It democratized it because, you know, you're putting three times as many people on a jet that's burning the same amount. if not a little bit less fuel. Looking at it now, this next statement will seem utterly ridiculous, but back then the 747 was the most ecological option because it had high bypass engines.

1:14:01It was low fuel burden, low carbon footprint, much lower than the coaxial jet engines that went before it. The 747 was an ecological option, as well as an economical option. And it always made sense for big airlines to buy this because you could move lots of people for the same cost as a 707. So why wouldn't you do it? Yeah. Plus freight. Plus freight. Tons and tons of freight that you could carry. There's really no comparison. I mean, I guess the 777-300 is going to be the closest thing. I mean, other than the Antonovs, the 747 freighter, it will live on for quite a while as a freighter. Well, Atlas reckon the last one that they've had delivered is probably going to do another 35 to 40 years in service.

1:15:00Unless something changes markedly, you know, they're looking at 35 to 40 years. So the airplanes are going to be around for a while. bearing in mind i think the last 100 um only retired less than a year ago so you know sps are still around there's a couple of sps still flying around um you know the last 300s are probably gone now but there's a lot of 400 passenger ones that have been converted to freighters um which we'll see and you know the last passenger 400s and eight eyes are still around so you know we're going to see it for a long time the new air force one you know and the new replacements for the um the doomsday airplane for the night watch aircraft are going to be seven four seven eight eyes brought from lufthansa and korean air so you know they're going to be repurposed.

1:16:00So effectively they're going to outlive me. Well, I mean, maybe not outlive. I mean, I'm 48. Maybe they will outlive me. I don't know. They will certainly outlive my career. The way that the way things are going, it's going to outlive all of us because we're living the good life. Yeah, true. True. Yeah. So go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say what, What are those ex-Lufthansa 8s that have just came over to the U.S.? Do you know anything about those? Yeah, so a couple of them are going to be training airplanes. In fact, I think one was flying the other day, so they're going to be used as training, so they don't put hours on the actual VC-25Bs so that they can eke them out longer.

1:16:46So at the moment, if you want to go training in Air Force One, and the only way to go training in Air Force One because it's a 200, and there aren't many of those around still, is to actually go flying in the plane. So, you know, I've flown it a couple of times. I've been really fortunate to be in the airplane a couple of times. And they go and do their NDBs and their VOR training and fly their ILSs in the jet. So that puts hours on that airframe that actually are quite precious, particularly now. So I think with the new aircraft, they've decided what they'll do is they'll buy some stock aircraft from Lufthansa and they'll just fly them around white-tailed as training airplanes, or at least one of them as a training airplane.

1:17:38It was doing circuits at Andrews a couple of weeks ago. So that will put hours on these airplanes and save the VC-25s for presidential work. So actually the longevity of the actual platform will be much longer. They're probably looking at a 35-year life on those platforms of VC-25Bs. I mean, the existing ones must be pretty close to 35 now. I think it was 1990 they were delivered. So yeah, it's interesting because they took delivery of that airplane in 1990 when Boeing was actually making the 400 at that point. And they delivered, because it took so long to build these aircraft because they were bespoke, so it's a 200 airframe that has 300 wing and it has the 400 freighter gear and 400 engines.

1:18:37So it's a bit of a hybrid. Does it have a flight engineer station? It does have a flight engineer, yeah, because it's a 200 airframe. So it also has a navigator station as well, which sits kind of behind a flight engineer. Now, the reason it has that is because obviously there's a lot of military stuff on board, which they can't integrate into the front because the front is very old. So they integrate this stuff into the navigator station and the navigator, what's it all back from there? GPS, for example, there was no GPS in it when it was delivered. Oh, yeah. So to make it RNAV compatible, they have to have a GPS fitted to the back and it's relayed to the front on two very small screens at the front.

1:19:27So, yeah, it's had a lot of upgrades in its life, but it is coming to the end of its life. It costs about a quarter of a million bucks an hour to operate the airplane. Wow. And that's their own figures. So if that's what they're quoting as their own figures, you can guarantee that it's more than that. It's more. It's definitely more. I mean, and that takes into consideration all the hours of cleaning and maintenance. I mean, it's 24-7 that the airplane is being maintained. It is. And hand-polished. Every time it comes back, it's hand-polished, the entire airplane. But also, you've got to remember, this is a 200.

1:20:06So if you need parts for this now, they've either got to be manufactured, which is costly, or you have to go out to the desert, find the part, and then come back and have that part reconditioned to put into Air Force One. That's not a great way to have an airplane. Definitely not. It's an amazing plane. it's done some amazing stuff and uh the book hopefully gives it a a bit of a seeing off it's the last a project 747 project that boeing will support is this book so um because it's a legacy project now they've sunsetted it um yeah so this was the last project that we're ever going to support on this so well the next one will have to be the next one will have to be dreamliner i just don't i i got an idea what the next one's gonna be and it's not gonna be any of those okay well listen scott it's been awesome um we're gonna have you on more i'm we gotta have you on for like the regular episode where we just hang and like get your input on the wacky stuff um we just have to make the time zones work yeah yeah we do we have we have some great conversations just about nothing which is exactly that's exactly what a podcast is isn't it it is it is and people tend to like it.

1:21:29I didn't believe it until I saw it. But where can people get your books, Scott? So you can buy my book on Amazon. If you're in the U.S., you have to select the U.K. store. Otherwise, the U.S., you can only get the e-book and the audiobook. The hard copy isn't available in the U.S. at the moment. It's not subject to 37 % tariffs, is it? It is not. It's a licensing issue because I'm signed with Penguin UK, It has to go to the UK for a certain period before it goes somewhere else. So if you want to buy it, you can buy it on the UK store on Amazon just by selecting the UK store. Click on the link and they'll send it to you.

1:22:12And it might actually be cheaper than buying it in the US. But all right. Well, I might have to buy it soon. As you know, I'm going to be coming around your neck of the woods very soon. So actually, I will bring one. And actually, Bob, I'm coming to your neck of the woods at the end of next month as well. So I'll bring one to you as well. Oh, fantastic. Well, yeah, I can't wait to see you. And yeah, if Richard Branson would stop hoarding our books, you know, maybe we would get one. He hasn't got one either. He hasn't gotten it either. Anything else you want to plug, Scott? Well, at the moment, if you like Jumbo, Hercules is always available.

1:22:55and that is available in the US on the Amazon store. A great story about some amazing stories and I know that recently Israel hasn't been top of everyone's list but there is an amazing story in Hercules about the most audacious raid I think that's ever been carried out by a transport airplane, the raid on Entebbe to rescue the Israeli hostages from Entebbe. I had the opportunity to sit down with Brigadier Shani and just talk through it with him. And he flew that airplane at zero feet in formation in the dark for about 5 ,000 miles. Four airplanes. And the story is just fantastic. It's one of those stories when you hear it out of his mouth.

1:23:48if I didn't hear it out of his mouth, I'd have thought, he's making this up. But he wasn't. He really did it. And the book tells that story and a number of others, which are all equally bonkers in their own way, but nothing quite as audacious as that rate. And obviously, we're going to be doing more of this and more podcasting. I'm thinking about doing my own podcast and obviously doing more video stuff. And if people want to follow me, they can follow me on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it, at Scotty Bateman there, and on Instagram at Scotty Bateman underscore. Yeah, absolutely. You always have some great, interesting stuff.

1:24:32I follow you on X, of course, and I'm always reading your posts. Thanks, man. Well, you're – Let's do it. Maybe we'll see you in Denver next month. I'm not announcing anything yet, but there may be some Denver in our future. Stay tuned on that. Oh, no, definitely. Let's do that. I'm really surprised. And maybe there might be a clue why we're going to Denver over here. There might be a clue on my head as well. Oh, yeah. If you're watching the YouTube version. Where did you get that model, by the way? Oh, you didn't get a model. No, I got the hat and the T-shirt and some keychains. That might be the difference between really good friends of Boom and just friends of Boom.

1:25:14i must be not any friend of boom because i got nothing no hat i didn't get a keychain nothing blake blake is a great guy and when i when i went to the factory uh to the headquarters and we had a wander around and we talked about lots and lots of things and it was a great afternoon actually and i said as i'm walking out there was this amazing big model and at that point he didn't have any models to give to anyone i said i want one of those and he says oh no we've only got one blah blah blah and then christmas came along and probably the same boxes you got steve they sent out these amazing huge boxes at christmas um to everyone who supported them on social media and stuff like that and uh there was a hat a t-shirt a load of stickers and some you know amazing key rings actually some really cool key rings and in my one there was a model um man maybe maybe maybe if we go to denver and we do uh you know we impress blake blake is a great guy i mean he's always open like we've had some interesting conversations offline and online i mean i follow his socials it's just an awesome program i can't wait for this thing to progress it's it's amazing how far they've gotten and like not a lot of support yeah yeah making their own engines they are building concord with nothing if you imagine the money that was plowed into the concord program and and the 2707 you know the the the boeing sst and to an extent the tupolev as well the 144 all of those programs had in you know in these in you know in modern terms billions billions and billions spent on them um and he's doing it himself i mean not literally himself but yeah there's no there's no government funding you know he isn't a boy he isn't a martin this is all private money the first private supersonic aircraft ever was the x1 you know so tick he's there you know and i've seen the the cockpit mock-up and flown it you know it is stunning.

1:27:27I, you know, the cabin mock-up, you know, this is going to be an amazing, amazing airplane. And, you know, they're probably going to flip a coin. Blake will probably tell me off for telling people, but they're probably three years away from having a flying airplane. Wow. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. I, that, you know what? I mean, look, Blake, was generous enough with his time to offer us to come out there and, uh, we're trying to make the schedule work uh sometime in the next month month and a half um it may work out where scotty is going to be able to come join us as well so um maybe bring uh some some camera crews um so so i can actually enjoy myself instead of just sitting behind the camera following me around with a camera following captain bob the way i do um anyway things to look forward to on the cockpit casual pod scott thank you so much for joining us guys you know that Yes, sir.

1:28:26Yeah, we appreciate it. Always great talking to you, Scotty. I love it. Absolutely. All right, take care. Cheers, guys. Good night. Cheers.

1:28:38Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

1:28:50Cheers.