[Music] welcome back to the pro pilot playbook podcast today is may 20th 2021 and it's a little bit of a an update industry update to what's going on in the world i know we've been gone a while i'm sean and i'm here with mike martin i'm here also we do that every time yeah but uh you know i think it was you know the last time we did one of these and it's been a while uh i don't think any of us are any under any illusions it's been a while since we posted anything that a lot of stuff going on here and i think last time we did one we said something we're going to be we're going to be better about getting these things up weekly and yeah it's because we said that that the right the wheels fell off here but um yeah all kinds of stuff been going on actually yes a couple uh big life change for me actually um but uh yeah yeah we had uh i guess we can get into that here in a minute but um this episode if you read the title uh we uh yeah bye bye covet hello hiring and flow through so we have really interesting stuff going on right now in the industry right and this is nice after what 12 or 15 months of doom and gloom podcasts about the coronavirus and how it's affected the industry and and where things are going and who's getting furloughed and who's getting laid off and what segments of the industry are going to come back first and how is travel going going to be perfect going to be affected well now we're on the back side the vaccine's out people are restrictions are being lifted all over and we have an incredible pent-up demand from the public for travel and that's translating to really good for the aviation industry oh yeah i mean i think i mentioned this already in in one of the podcasts you know when i was traveling around during the spring break time you know you couldn't even the airlines were selling out the airports it was a mad house right went from covid you know and you know everything was stocked with employees for the coveted time to the airports being overrun with people people were sick with all the restrictions and you know every other day there's a story of somebody getting kicked off an airliner for not wearing their mask or something which is still happening but yes uh no you couldn't get seats that and you know all the seat blocking the airlines were doing of you know if you weren't in buying booking with the in your party you know you had to have a seat in between you and another passenger that stuff had gone away because the airlines realized they were losing money we're gonna pack this thing full of people and uh yeah so it's it's coming back it is coming back yeah yeah it's coming back and it's coming back hard i i think like you mentioned spring break any any of the the leisure market is i would say a hundred percent back maybe more than a hundred percent so um if you're in the in the leisure travel business like a lot of these discount airlines are i mean you are just jamming now the businesses travel is is much slower to come back you know we still have zoom which we're using now and people are hesitant to meet in public and there's not a lot of conventions but um so travel numbers are way up uh business travel numbers however are not uh a huge segment of that and of course the international travel is still there's still a lot of restrictions to travel internationally but that's a good point though on the international stuff one thing i noticed well besides the airlines you know all the hotels have been overrun it you know the uh it's it's the staffing on the hotels are down you know so they've been they were reluctant to fill up and in spring break they were filling up and there was always problems of you know when we were doing our business travel of getting a hotel room or the rental car oh my god man the cars you know i've been and i know you were too mike i've been getting less and less cars anyway i've been doing a lot of uber and lyft but right there are some situations where you need a car because you're traveling a good distance and you plan on leaving the car there whatever but i mean these car companies gave all the rental cars back you know a lot of people don't understand that these rental car company hertz and enterprise they don't own all those vehicles they may own 15 20 of them but they lease the rest of them just like an airline leases you know delta doesn't own all those jets they lease them from boeing and uh you know the same thing with the rental car company so when covent hit they just gave all those cars back to the manufacturers so they're on minimal number of vehicles anyway and they were booked solid and it was incredibly difficult to get a rental car but what i was going to say on the international stuff is you know people got all this you know all the bonus money the government's been given away people have been getting their tax return money back and they're spending that in the united states people aren't doing the let's go to the bahamas let's go to europe you know all this money is being spent on trips inside the us which is which is good for us yeah it's great florida's on fire uh it is the most people i've seen in the state of florida in my career i mean i'm talking air airports restaurants uh beaches wherever you go there is so many people there it's it's insane you know uh yeah yeah i actually have been to the bahamas um recently and uh it was starting to to pick up there there their vaccine rollout is not as fast as the us and you know you're required to be tested before you go in now that uh now you have to get what's called a health visa to enter the bahamas but now that the vaccine's available uh you as long as you're two weeks from after your last shot you can get get the health visa without taking a test so you still have to take a test to come back into the united states hopefully that gets listed even if lifted even if you have um even if you have had uh the coronav you're fully vaccinated you still have to be tested before you leave so that's a little bit of was that for the crew also or just passengers uh you can get exempt for the crew if you're doing just one overnight but if you're gonna stay for more than one night then then you have to have it so okay yeah yeah so yeah i've gone to costa rica twice during the you know when everything was full force yeah and yeah i never i didn't spend the night there but yeah the crew was always exempt the passengers had to have their their health visa whatever their little barcode thing and then yep yeah exactly yeah so i mean i think we're going to see a wild summer and uh and even even bigger fall because it seems like all the events now they're putting their safe money on the fall all the big shows concerts i think you can see conventions uh marathons you name it they're all targeting the fall to make that happen so i think everything's kind of shifted a little bit and uh yeah it's it you know uh it's we're definitely on the upswing here i mean the only place to go is up and i i've got some tsa screening numbers here from yesterday so that'd be the 19th uh may uh looks like this day yesterday uh in 2020 the tsa screened 230 000 people on that day and yes on that day yesterday they screened 1. 5 million so it is down about 900 000 from 2019 levels but i think when you you back out the international travelers and some of the business travelers you're probably you know i mean those are still healthy numbers a million a million and a half a day you know right but you know on that note of the business travel yeah we're not seeing the business travelers on the 121 airlines but we are seeing a huge uptick you know in our sliver of the industry yeah on the corporate jets yes you know charter is way up you know we've we've mentioned this before there's people dabbling in charter that have have never thought of individual companies yeah never even considered doing charter stuff yeah a lot of companies and individuals they have had the money to charter but you know sometimes the mindset they have is it's just not worth the money it's it's a waste of money even though they have it well with the math mask restrictions and the uh really the big everybody thinks it's the masks and the extra hassle in the airport and attention shade i think it's the overall availability of flights too so you know there's there's there was cutbacks on all these flights and they're all full and you got to do more and more connections and stuff so if you're wealthy and you're trying to get somewhere you don't want to mess with connecting in airports and leaving at the wrong times and so you might be able to get to where you want to go even non-stop but it might not be at the time you want um a one a day trip is going to take two days or you know two day trip might take three days because all the travel so that makes private aviation so much more appealing right and you got you got companies like wheels up now that are been out there you know buying up smaller oh man and even some larger uh 135 charter operators and you know they're doing stuff putting it right in the general public space you know they're selling you know their jet cards where you can buy you know whatever it is 10 20 hours on one of their private aircraft charter aircraft you know they're selling those at costco you know that's you know so you potentially you have people on these charter aircraft that are well you know what i'm not gonna but anyway the folks that would never ever consider such a thing right yeah they're ready to go gangbuster i talked to some guys that work their wheels up and they're buying everybody and uh you know they got that ken dictor i think that has tons of experience in the industry running that show and uh man he is ready to go big i think they're going to go public here soon and um yeah all kinds of stuff so yeah that's definitely a company to watch that's for sure right it's not you know once people dip their toe in there and they start talking to you know wheels up you know the next logical thing is well maybe we have something right here in our local hometown that does this yeah all over to the local airport maybe they do charters yeah so maybe i just buy one right exactly well that was the next thing i was going to say so uh you know the corporate flying is definitely up it's so much so that there are aircraft for sale used aircraft that have come out of this covet thing and have appreciated they went into the coven you know being worth two million dollars and now post covet they're worth 2. 3 million i mean it's crazy yeah crazy you have manufactured you got you have bombardier which makes challenger and uh the globals and you know they make a lot of the regional jets yeah yeah they own learjet now which uh unfortunately they've decided to discontinue manufacturing of learjets breaks my heart and i know yours you've got a lot of learjet experience you're wearing the learjet shirt got this shirt on but uh yeah you know you got bombardier and uh textron texture on now owns they own cessna beachcraft and walker and uh after you know those three companies whatever entered into bankruptcy textron walked in and bought them all on the on the cheap but anyway these these manufacturers have run out of aircraft new aircraft to sell to customers uh bombardier is now out of aircraft and taking orders textron had run out of aircraft and i may be mixing these two stories up right uh one of them had run out of aircraft and taken orders the other one had run out of aircraft a while ago and had been taking orders but now they are so back ordered that they have ceased to take orders until october because they're concerned about you know customer relations they don't know how they're going to be able to meet the demands of all the people buying these business aircraft this is huge dude yeah man man yeah um you know i know we've got some charter guys here locally they're saying they're you know screaming busy um i've i've talked to a couple brokers that i'm friends with in the industry brokers mean they they actually sell airplanes right and they're saying car dealers for aircraft yeah it's just like cars i mean the cars are selling like crazy man i mean uh there's it's it's uh it's an interesting time you know and it's really completely different than it was a year ago when we were doing these shows right it is you know that is the purpose that was the one point before we hit the record button here i was i was saying so mike what's right what's what's the point what's the premise and it's it's it's to get people excited about getting in this industry becoming a pilot and we said it over and over again but all these little clues these little bread crumbs along this trail are pointing to one fact that there is no better time in the history of aviation i think mike said it once before since the wright brothers first flew over in kitty hawk to get your butt over to the local airport and start learning to fly as a matter of fact you may not even have to do that we got a podcast plan coming up that we're putting together here uh based on a bunch of questions we've got on these cadet programs you probably you know united airlines was in the news about their cadet program it was uh i mean the news report was a bunch of stuff about how they were wanting to hire you know diverse yeah diverse different they got a lot of cops thank you thank you yeah yeah diversify their pilot group and you know they plan to whatever they're planning on doing this through their cadet program and yeah that programs are basically airline uh sponsored training some of them even are you know subsidized to pay for your training or will pay for certain certificates so we're gonna do a whole podcast on that with detailed details about which one's doing what and where you go and stuff yeah yeah that'll be a definite point is it is a great time to get in this industry yeah and we've been telling our viewers you know all along since the coronavirus hit that this is actually going to compound the pilot shortage that that that already was occurring so going into the coronavirus not to reiterate but it's important if you're thinking about getting into this industry going into the coronavirus we had unprecedented travel and airline hiring then all of that stopped and as a matter of fact they ended up going the other direction and laying pilots off and then the government propped it up and all that kind of stuff but what happened is you have all these major airlines every single one of them hiring pilots every month to meet their demands then all of a sudden they don't hire any of them for almost a year or more more than that now all of a sudden the vaccine's out people are pent up they're traveling like crazy we're boosting the flight schedule and now the hiring problem has been is worse now because they missed a year and a half of of hiring people right it wasn't it wasn't a slow economic build decline like right we've seen in the industry before this was somebody shut the faucet off and now turn it right back on again and right when it doesn't work like that because these guys are not currency you got to go back through training you got in and i mentioned this before another podcast uh just in case first you know there's other things other these little doodads and tidbits of information you know the mom and pop flight schools like at the little 3 000 foot strip town i live in you know that went out of business because there was no students to fly right you know all that little stuff contributes to it and it's it's going to be we were already moving into a huge shortage of more people going to be retiring than people training uh you mix that with the growth of the industry there was a huge deficit of pilots coming well naturally we have this now we have this bubble this disaster bubble moving through you know the entire uh schedule of events that it's gonna be a mess right and bottom line is if you're watching this and you've had a dream of becoming a pilot this is un unbelievable news you should be elated i mean really because there's not been anything like that so i got an article here msnbc uh regarding airline hiring uh uh let's see uh oh it's just crazy numbers i mean united is saying they're going to need 10 000 pilots they're going to have to hire within 10 years that's a thousand a year that's why they're launching this cadet program you know they're going to try to internally train at least up to 5 000 of those 10 000.
uh you know they're recalling all the pilots that they had hired this is jetblue uh they recalled everyone plus they had people in the pool they've got all them out of there spirit airlines which i know they're jamming i know a bunch of people that just got hired from spirit they're like non-stop i i i don't even know if they stopped hiring um they they're hiring 24 a month it looks like allegiant they're they just open a base in austin they're hiring for that uh the sean has some comments about allegiant we we know a lot about them because they're they have a pub here in cincinnati but yeah talk to them about how all that well that's you know you say hub here in cincinnati one of the cool things about egypt well i guess you still call it a hub right right they do have some cities where they have more aircraft than others like punta gorda florida um but in here in cincinnati but elysian's got a unique thing built uh where you know as an airline pilot you know usually you would you would go off on a two three four five day trip and you won't return to your home base uh but uh here uh it with allegiant you know in in in those bases there may only be a couple of them you know not that people right if you fly for united and you're based in chicago which most united guys are it's not like you can't live in you know new york but you're going to be you know you're going to be you're going to be traveling to work every time you work but with allegiant it's uh your your home every night they're most out and back they're all day trips and you end up back at your home base wherever you're based every night let me interject who would have thought 20 years ago when we were getting in this business that you could somebody would tell you you could be an airline pilot and not do any overnights i mean that's crazy it is crazy not even it's almost like an office job man you leave in the morning and come back at night it's crazy well you know it would work way less we've been saying this this just popped in my head just right now instantly you know we've been saying you know what a great time it is become a pilot get off your butt get to the airport start learning right and you know somebody may be watching this like well yeah guys i get it great time but what specifically is different from what you guys had to go through well i just thought of four specific things number one your training is gonna be more streamlined and cheaper number two number two that first job is going to be able to be obtained quicker and most likely with less time because of the need uh number three you're going to be able to upgrade faster you're going to be able to get to well in general your career progression will be faster easier more streamlined and done in a shorter amount of time and uh in number four overall the benefits and the pay are going to be way greater because of the need you're going to be a commodity yeah supply and demand and not only is it going to be greater but it's going to be greater at an earlier time in your career so these are unprecedented times anybody wanting to be a pilot right now yeah yeah no no it is it is really good i i yeah i can't and you know we had to fly props for years i mean you and i for i mean tons of props or bugsmasters i like to call them and and these guys now i mean they're going to jump right into a high-tech jet within a year or two you know okay for two yeah all kinds of fancy computer screen touch screen equipment yeah you know yeah you were bombing around flying night freight oh yes the wind five nights at five nights a week single pilot in the middle of the night no matter what the weather but there's a tornado on the field we don't care if those boxes got to get there what kills us uh what doesn't kill us makes it stronger right yep oh yeah i got stories about this i got stories about those freight days that i mean if i got into them most most people would think i'm making them up you know today's today's world but unfortunately they're all true [Laughter] but uh yeah um what else what else we got here in this in the uh this kind of uh it's a kind of an industry update um oh yeah another part of the title of this thing flow through oh yeah yeah yeah yeah go through programs right this is another thing i was just talking about you know right what makes this world different from the world mike and i came up with this whole flow three floof can't talk flow through program we got going right now um so it used to be you know as you were coming up your career progression the career ladder and jumping around from shiny object to shiny object uh you know maybe it was a better airplane maybe it was better play pay maybe it was a a schedule that didn't mean a beeper on your belt that meant you drove to the airport with the suitcase you had in your trunk all week um but you're gonna pay me a hundred dollars when do i start exactly but uh you know you get that first commuter airline job which was usually a turbo prop like a beach 1900 or a saab uh something like that and then and then these regional jets came along uh you get in the regional world for a while uh or maybe you went from the commuter airplane or right to the majors but you know this was a big deal and you spent a lot of time building hours and to be able to get that interview with the majors right and this was a highly competitive and still is pretty competitive but uh you know all that stuff's going away uh you know the need for college the need for you know the hour requirements and the time because of because of the need for pilots that stuff's disappearing but now they got something even better they have this flow-through program uh there's more airlines getting onto this there was a news article just came out this week but well actually we should probably talk about exactly what flow through is and it's been going on now american has had this for a while at uh envoy and psa i've got got some buddies over at psa um right regional airline they fly those 50 and 70 and 90 seat rjs around the regional jets right and just to dumb that down a little bit further so a lot of people think they'll book a ticket on delta and then they'll say it's from you know pittsburgh to detroit and they show up and it's it's built through delta. com then you show up at the airport and there's a regional jet there and it has delta its name on it and then you jump in that and you fly there that that really is not delta airlines that you're flying on that's a code share they call but it's a it's a regional airline it's a total different operation that flies under the naming rights basically of delta and that's why it's confusing but if what sean's about to say is previously you worked for that airline and they're they're they had all different names you know saba shitakwa what right what uh sky west right these are airlines that operate regional jets all completely separate from the mainline airlines they're contracted yeah yeah completely separate pay work rules they're all different and then you had to interview if you want with all the big boys to get that job but he's about to explain how that's changed right yeah and just because you flew for that re you could have flown for that regional airline it had it says delta on the side of the airplane but if you and you can see this when you sit down with these rj's if you pull out the little seat back pamphlet with the safety card you know how to work the exits in your seat belts and the life jackets you can see right on the back of it it'll say it'll say uh endeavor air operated by operated by endeavor air uh you know whatever sorry bone was ringing that's right but those guys you know you you could work you could work there for 20 years yeah and you know never get in a 757 delta main line just because it says delta on the outside of your 70 passenger regional jet completely different company just like mike said right so american airlines a few years ago started this thing called the flow through and they got with some of their regional carriers and they kind of standardized everything the company manuals how how the seniority stuff works and and that kind of thing and and psa and envoy which are two of these regional companies that do work for american uh as you work through the progression and the seniority list at those regionals you will upgrade or not really upgrade that term is usually meant for co-pi becoming a co-pilot to becoming a captain first officer but you will move up into mainline american airlines and right before the pandemic it was about five years so you would get on at psa airlines you'd be there for a year or two as a first officer then you would upgrade to captain which is the boss of the airplane sitting in the left seat and uh you would spend another two three years there as a captain and then one day it would be your number your time to go and you would move right up into the first officer or co-pilot's position of a 737 over american airlines no interview no i mean there might be some paperwork involved because you're technically changing companies but it was a flow-through you know and there was stuff in the past like you would have a guaranteed interview you know that stuff's existed for a while but this is a straight no questions asked you're moving it's based on seniority there isn't any politics involved there isn't any well you know bob's the favorite of the chief pilot you know he's gonna get it before i do no no it's seniority number the date you were hired i mean yeah you're moving you're going to the main line and this was a huge this is a huge thing because you got to understand like you're sitting there flying this little 50-seat 70-seat regional jet around you know maybe not excited about your job anymore because you've been there for five years well you're gonna be a lot happier going to work every day knowing that you only got a couple months left and you're set baby you're at american airlines you don't have to worry about the big dog exactly you're at the majors you know you know you're gonna be retiring uh you know just under uh you know you know deep into the six figures you're gonna have great benefits and uh oh you're gonna be working three days a month making 400 grand a year by the time you retire yeah you're set yeah you're going to be like a movie star a camper right right so that that's the big dream you know the majors so uh americans been doing this for a while and there's more and more people jumping on this this uh this great bandwagon and this week delta and endeavor is one of the companies that do their regional stuff endeavor uh just started flow through with delta airlines the big dog the big d the biggest airline on the planet now has a flow-through program and starting uh endeavour is starting with see it's uh 20 pilots per month are flowing through the delta this number is going to keep getting bigger and bigger yeah everybody wants to go to prom with delta [Laughter] right especially if you live in atlanta right yeah yeah that's great news that's great well just to summarize i mean so here's what we have we've rounded the corner on the coronavirus the vaccine is readily available most people have it um the the industry although it's been lagging the the hotels and the uh infrastructure is starting to get spooled up the flights are happening the airlines are hiring i think everybody's in agreement that this thing is almost over and you guys that are watching that are thinking about reshuffling your deck maybe your uh position was eliminated uh uh or your spouse's position uh whatever uh because of the covid or maybe it's changed maybe it didn't get eliminated but your job isn't what you thought it was um or maybe uh i hate to say i not hate to say it but there is some segments of people that are doing better than ever because you're in the cove of business and maybe you have extra cash you know because you saved money from from not eating out not going on vacations and then you got uh government stimulus and and maybe whatever you're doing that particular segment of the industry is doing really well and you're like i finally this is a chance where i could break into a career that i really care about i did the career to make the money now i've got some of the money and i'm ready to to to make the next step it's a great time to to jump in so this is a positive podcast to you know tell our viewers thank you for staying with us and um yeah you know we hope to hope to keep spreading the information here that this is a great career and hopefully we can get some people in and we love the emails i mean that's my favorite thing about doing this so keep that coming we've been getting uh some people send us pictures of their first solos very very good yeah absolutely if you have a question for us you want us to answer on the podcast here this is the thing we've been doing over the last you know month years whatever uh you can email us at podcast at propilotplaybook. com and we've they've been piling up got to be honest with you we've got a little behind here the last couple months but yeah we are getting to them some of them some of you guys are guys and girls are asking the uh same questions over and over again so we're going to uh uh or several people asking the same question i should say uh so we're gonna we're gonna be getting to those but yeah to mike's point if you have an interest in this career field this is the place you want to be go ahead and hit the subscribe button bookmark us save us in itunes or 17 18 other platforms you're listening to this on um oh yeah and you were you're going to share we hit some milestones right so yeah uh we did hit some milestones and of course you asked and i completely forgot what i mean we were we were voted to maybe we'll talk about this we we hit uh top five of aviation podcasts and it is buried uh i'm gonna sit here for thirty we'll talk about later but yeah we'll talk about later but we're really gaining traction with what we're doing and uh and we really appreciate all the views that's the big thing anyway some of the podcasts we have planned coming up just real quick before i hit the end record button is we're going to be talking about the cadet programs um we're going to be uh we're going to be talking about some of the differences in your flight schools out there 141 schools versus part 61 schools i think this is a big question people been asking besides the cadet programs which has been a very popular question here lately uh but people you know as they go out to local airports they're wondering about 141 versus 61.
