865 Brand New Air Traffic Control System

Interactive Transcript

Speaker A This is the Airplane Geeks Podcast. We aim to educate and inform you, explore and expand your passion for aviation and entertain you a little along the way. In the news this episode, two companies bid to be the prime integrator for the FAA's brand new Air Traffic Control System initiative. The FAA issued a safety alert for operators, a safo concerning passengers taking carry on items when evacuating an airplane. The FAA also signaled steps to ease 737 max production limits. Pratt and Whitney and GE are developing adaptive cycle engines for the F47. Sikorsky announced the award of a large contract to build CH53K King Stallion helicopters for the US Marine Corps. And Sergei Sikorsky passed away at age 100. It's all coming up right now. Welcome to the Airplane Geeks Podcast. This is episode 865 of the show where we talk aviation. I'm Max Flight. With me is our main man, Micah.

Speaker B Hey, it's great to be here. And I really missed you guys last week. Well, let me take that back. I really missed you, Rob. Max, I didn't miss you at all. But I'll explain more about that later.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a story there. Also. Also with us is Rob. Rob Mark. He's a biz jet pilot. He's a journalist, he's a CFI, and of course he's publisher of Jetwine.com.

Speaker C Good evening to everybody. And my guard is already up because I know my buddy Mike is going to pull something on me, but I'm ready.

Speaker A You should be ready after 865 episodes. Well, you, you guys haven't been on all 865. But Rob, you've been on most of them.

Speaker C Well, no, we, we took, we took a break. We missed a couple. But hey, that's okay. I hope listeners don't hold that against us.

Speaker B Well, it used to be that you wouldn't let us on the same show together. You had to keep us separated.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah, that didn't last. All right, hey, we're going to jump right into some aviation news from the past week. And our first story comes from Reuters. This is two bidders vie to be project manager of massive FAA US Air traffic overhaul. So two bids have come in for the prime integrator or to become the prime integrator in NASA's project to overhaul the ATC system. And this, of course is the brand new air traffic control system bnatcs, which I don't think that's a lousy acronym. I mean, the government is usually really good at making acronyms or at least pronounceable ones, but I don't know if either of you, I don't know. But anyway, as we've talked previously, Congress has already approved $12.5 billion for this project and the FAA has indicated that perhaps an additional 19 billion doll requested. But the two bids, they came in from two D.C. beltway companies. They're both Northern Virginia companies. One is Perrotin, a national security company. They're owned by Veritas Capital, they're in Reston, Virginia. And the other one is Parsons Corporation, which is a technology provider in national security and also global infrastructure markets. And they're headquarters is in Chantilly, Virginia. So guys, we know that area well, having been to the Uvar Hazy center many times. And if you look across the landscape, boy, it's just big, big, big expensive looking buildings with all these companies that well, have a lot of government contracts. And that's, that's who two of these are.

Speaker C But Raytheon and IBM weren't, weren't part of the deal. And that's kind of what the President was alluding to three or four months ago when this whole thing kind of came to be. So we don't know why, but it sounds like Raytheon and IBM kind of.

Speaker A Said, I don't think so, at least not as primes. Now at Parsons they've confirmed that it has their bid includes IBM anyway. So yeah, Rob, like you say there, the IBMs and Raytheons of the world did not bid as primes, but may end up having a supporting role in this. You know, we don't know at this point.

Speaker C Can you imagine how complicated this is going to be? I remember years ago when we used to have that, that running joke about oh God, not another Air Force tanker story. Oh please. Because it had gotten so old with the changes and the overruns and, and it went on for years. And I mean I, I personally do not care for much of anything that this particular White House does, but you got to give them credit. We've been talking about updating the air traffic system for 25 years, maybe 30, and this is the closest. This is the most effervescent kind of program I have ever seen in all those years about somebody actually doing something rather than talking about what they want. Now whether this all comes to be, I don't know. But it's one thing I can tell you. This is certainly not going to get done in what, two or three years, I think they said or something like that, but, or maybe it was four. But Even four, I think is kind of. Kind of wild, but we'll see. Maybe they'll pull a rabbit out of their head.

Speaker A Well, the FAA says that they're going to make a selection of the prime contractor here by the end of October, which is. That feels like a really accelerated selection process. But it's in line with what you said, Rob. I mean, the administration is moving very quickly in this area. I took a look at these two companies and who is the head of each of these companies because sometimes that gives you a clue about what they're about. As for Periton, the chairman, president and CEO is Steve Shorer. How he was previously chairman and CEO of Alliance Science and Technology, Dyna Corp. International, Allied Signal Aerospace. He was at Lockheed Missiles in space, Raytheon and Hughes Aircraft. On the part of Parsons also, again, this is interesting. Also chair, president and CEO in the case of Parsons is Carrie Smith and her background is with Honeywell and Lockheed Martin. Kind of interesting that they're, you know, the leaders of these two companies are chairman of the board, president of the company and chief executive officer. I usually like it better when those roles are distributed amongst several individuals. You sort of get more of a check and balance kind of a thing. But it sounds like strongly led companies that include people that have aviation and aerospace experience as well as integration of complex systems systems. But boy.

Speaker B Well, based on your research, Max, are you. Are you offering any stock tips?

Speaker A No, absolutely not. No, no, I don't think. Let's see. I think one of them is privately held. I don't recall which one. Then maybe the other one is as well. Or maybe is a public corporation. I'm not sure. But as I recall, one of them.

Speaker C Micah, really? Would you listen to stock tips from a guy that lives in his truck? I mean, come on.

Speaker B I don't know. You know, he just could be saving up a lot for other things, you know.

Speaker C Yeah, maybe. Well, that's a good point.

Speaker A So the FAA administrator, Brian Bedford has had some comments on this. He said, I quote, I think we've got two very good candidates for integrator. He also said that many of the large, larger prime contractors that the FAA works with ultimately decided not to partner end qu figured they were going to go with whoever the winner was, so we'll see about that. But Bedford also said, we have a process that we're going to run and ultimately we're going to bring that up to Secretary Duffy and to President Trump. We'll give them all the facts and they'll pick the one they feel Most comfortable with. Interesting. There is an acquisition process or a contracting process with, with the government and I think it's a little bit more rigorous than picking the one you feel most comfortable with. But yeah, you know, the game is new here and we'll see. Okay, moving on. Micah, you saw this in flight. Global FAA urges airlines to discourage passengers from taking bags during evacuations.

Speaker B Yeah. On September 19th the FAA issued a safety alert. Now apparen it's not advisable to take your carry on bags during with you on an emergency evacuation that you should probably leave them behind. That must be new information to the FAA because they, they, they've issued an advisory to discourage passengers from taking carry ons with them. Now we've been talking about this for years and it's really crazy that, that it still happens and that passengers don't think about it and, and that they're still doing it. So the FAA has finally gotten involved and they have said and I'm quot now this puts lives at risk. Okay. It seems to be too little and too late from my perspective but they did put out a safety alert that stated September 16th and, and actually we pulled up that safety alert. Max, you were able to find it and I'm going to read it because it, I'm quite disappointed in it to be quite honest. The recommended action states and we're quoting now, I'm reading directly from the alert. Operators should evaluate their emergency evacuation procedures, training and emergency announcement and commands to address passenger non compliance particularly in relation to carry on item retrieval. A coordinated approach rooted in regulatory compliance, operational best practice and clear public communication may contribute significantly to reducing evacuation times and preserving life in time critical emergencies. And then it goes on to say exactly what they should consider. And when I read that I think more of our listeners will laugh out loud even more than they may be already.

Speaker A This is a, as you mentioned, a safety alert for operators, a sappho and it's. Well, I don't know Rob. It's a suggestion, right? It's a recommendation to operators. It doesn't carry any regulatory requirements or anything. And these things are issued occasionally. This is the third one for this year. This particular SAFO immediately preceding one was managing the risks of lithium batteries carried by passengers and crew members. And so this dealt with the again recommendations for operators to follow, safe practices review, lithium battery firefighting processes and training, passenger safety messaging and so forth. It's very similar to the one on don't leave your carry on stuff behind but that was dealing with lithium batteries carried by passengers in and crew. The first Sappho from the year was risks associated with visual Approaches. And that was a reminder that air carrier operators and pilots understand the risks associated with visual approaches. So the topics of these things can span a lot of, a lot of different areas. But we have this one suggesting that airlines take some steps to ensure that they're doing everything they can to affect the behavior of passengers when an evacuation is required. And yeah, I mean, I wonder how they're. Go ahead.

Speaker C I was going to say I wondered how exactly do you think the airlines are going to do this?

Speaker B Oh, wait a minute. Why don't we tell you? Because there's a list. And first, operators should leverage their safety management systems to evaluate evacuation procedures and identify potential hazards, implementing mitigation strategies as appropriate. Two or B Safety briefings Ensure safety briefings. Instruct passengers to leave all belongings behind in the event of an evacuation. Use standardize concise messaging stating that all bags or personal belongings must be left behind with no exceptions. Evaluate exit row passenger briefings to ensure effectiveness. And then the last group is the passenger. Outreach and education campaigns. Consider communication methods to highlight consequences of non compliance with crew member commands regarding retrieval of personal items during an evacuation. Display visual content in airport terminals and boarding areas demonstrating appropriate evacuation behavior and consequences of non compliance with crew member commands. Use universally recognizable symbols or pictograms to convey messages across language barriers. Incorporate messaging that appeals to collective responsibility. For example, help everyone get out safely, leave your bags and then finally establish and normalize expected behavior by promoting the idea that everyone leaves bags behind. This is what you call an faacya.

Speaker A It's useless. Well, it's common sense, right? It's what should be happening anyway. I guess the regulator felt, in light of some recent events felt compelled to at least make the statement so they can say they made the statement.

Speaker C Well, this follows the one that I saw a couple of years ago that said professional pilots are should be required to ensure that the wheels, the main and the nose gear are down and locked prior to landing and that anything great idea short of that may cause a serious scraping noise that will frighten passengers upon touchdown. I, you know, so that's another example.

Speaker A I mean it might be interesting to go look at the complete list of Sapphos which we'll have a link in the show notes actually to the page where you can see these and go back historically because I didn't do this and sort of characterize the types of messaging that the FAA makes with these Sapphos and if they represent meaningful avenues for Change or if it's just, you know, stuff to say that should be obvious. I don't know. I guess we're a little pessimistic, huh?

Speaker C Oh, no, no, no, no. I think pessimistic doesn't quite cover it. I think cynical would be a much better. A much better response.

Speaker A Okay, all right, well, let's, let's move on. And oh, I found an engine story because I like, you know, jet engine stories. This is in AutoEvolution.com. i'm not sure why it's an auto evolution, but anyway, this is engines for America's F47, 6th gen combat fighter aircraft coming together faster than anticipated. So the F47, that's the new aircraft being developed under the NGAD family of systems, the next generation air dominance family of systems. It includes other things. The collaborative combat aircraft cca. There actually is some engine news on that too, but we won't cover that here. It includes command, control and communications, C3 and other technologies that really haven't been made public yet. So that's what NGAD is all about. But the F47 is part of that. It's stealthy. It's an air superiority aircraft, or will be, that can engage directly adversaries on the ground, adversaries in the air. It can fly. The intent is that they can fly autonomously as well as collaborate with and control wingman drones. So that's all very exciting. But with that comes some new engine technology. And the engine technology is under the N gap program. That's next generation adaptive propulsion. And this is where it gets kind of interesting to me. It's a concept that offers really, I guess you could say two modes of operation that can be dynamically adjusted in flight. You can look at high thrust, high speed, or another mode, lower thrust, but reduced fuel burn. So this kind of addresses an issue when you look at commercial aircraft engines. High bypass turbofan, you know, the kinds of engines you see typically on airliners with the big fan, those are optimized more around efficiency. But then look at a fighter engine and those are very different in appearance and are optimized more around as much thrust as possible, you know, and some other things. So in, in this new concept, in these adaptive propulsion, you get a little bit of both. And you do that by making a third air path airflow through the engine. And you can adjust those things dynamically in flight, at least the software can in conjunction with whatever's controlling the aircraft. So if you need to, or if you want to loiter, let's say in an area and you don't need a lot of thrust to do that. So you can go into this other mode that would, would be more fuel efficient and not generate the, the thrust. But if you need to go into dog fight mode or, you know, something of that sort, you switch over to the, to the high thrust mode. So you get the benefit of both kinds of, kinds of approaches. Very interesting. And both Pratt and Whitney and GE are developing these NGAP engines for the GE. If you are keeping score. It's the XA100 is the designation for Pratt and Whitney. It's the XA103.103. So a lot of development going on. And sort of the thrust of this article is that Pratt and Whitney is looking to. Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that. Wow. I said that, didn't I? The thrust of this article too, you guys are, you guys are sharp too. You saw it before I did. And we don't live in a truck. I think I'm going to be the new butt of the jokes. So Pratt is looking at sort of accelerating the milestones in this program. So anyway, interesting. There's not a lot of details besides what I've described here. This is a lot of security secrecy around these programs at this point. So at this point anyway, at least we know that these different adaptive engines are being developed by the, the two US Engine makers. I was hoping, I was hoping David would be here because then we could talk about the F47 a little bit more in the role that it, that it plays, but we'll have to defer that for another time. Okay, so let's reach back in history. Maybe like 16 years ago. I remember Air France AF447 that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009. Well, we have an item from Reuters with an update with what's going on with Airbus and Air France and litigation concerning that. Micah, what do we learn here?

Speaker B Well, it turns out there's a new trial and they're holding Airbus and Air France accountable for, for the crash based on the history with the pitot tubes. And I read this and I said, well, I guess it's not just Boeing that has issues with certain parts. And before I go on, Rob, you did a lot of research on this particular crash. Do you have anything to say about it in general in regards to the whole pitot tube issue with Airbus?

Speaker C Considering how litigious the world is, and especially more so in Europe than in the United States, I was actually pretty surprised. Well, that would have been what, 2018 2019, somewhere in there, when they announced that they had let Airbus and Air France off the hook because the pitos had been known as a weak point on, on the bus, on the A330s. And they were, they were products of talus and they were being replaced, but apparently not as quickly as they, as some felt they should have been. And so I always thought, wow, I, I can't believe they, they let them off that, you know, off the hook. And, and so here we are, you know, what, eight years later or something, seven years later, saying, okay, now we want to sue again. And they're not asking for money, at least from the, the story doesn't announce that they're asking for money, but they want some sort of closure in the sense that the manufacturers will admit that the products were, were weak. I thought, okay, that's going to be an interesting one in itself. But again, it's, it's, it's kind of a shame that all the, all these years later, the, the victims do not have any, any closure after this accident. Of course, it's like the Malaysian airplane that went missing, what, 10 years ago in the Indian Ocean. And there's never really been any closure on that either. And it just, the, the investigation and the, and the legal action following the kind of accident just, it all just stops. And everybody, they say, well, it's the best we can do. Bye. Yeah, you know, people don't work that way. They don't think like the, the, you know, the attorneys and big corporations do. And so it's interesting, again, I'll be, I'll be curious to see how this proceeds. But so, Micah, there you have, It's a, it's a long answer to a short question.

Speaker A Well, in the, in the initial trial, the judge did find acts of negligence by Airbus and Air France, but determined that under French criminal law, this was a criminal case, that those acts were insufficient to establish a definitive link to the loss of the A330. So both Airbus and Air France were cleared of corporate manslaughter, which was the criminal charge. So now we have this appeals hearing because, as you say, the families of the victims are looking for some, some kind of closure, some kind of result here. This hearing, at this hearing, or maybe in advance of this hearing, the chief executives of both Air France and Airbus had some comments and they recognized the suffering of the families, but they denied that there was any criminal responsibility for the crash. So these appeal hearings are ongoing, expected to run until late November. So we have a, you know, a couple of months of of hearings and I, you know, there are others that have more legal experience than I do, but, and I don't know exactly what the basis for the appeal is. You know the legal basis for the appeal is maybe the, it will determine that the, the judge in the initial case, well, mischaracterized the acts of negligence or erroneously determined that they didn't satisfy the legal definition under French criminal law. I don't know, it seems a little bit like a long shot, but we'll know in a couple months time.

Speaker B And it goes right along with our next story because not only was Airbus having a few problems, now you know, there's, there's a U S plane aircraft manufacturer that has also been having a few difficulties. Not that we've ever mentioned it here on this show, but Boeing has just had their system. The FAA is allowing Boeing to once again inspect themselves and that services from Bar Chart.com and federal regulators are going to ease restrictions on Boeing and giving them the authority to resume performing final safety checks on the 737 Max aircraft. And that would be. And also lift. Allow that, that allows them to lift their monthly production numbers, which is kind of a surprise that this is happening, but I guess in some ways it's not a surprise either.

Speaker A Yeah, Boeing really, really as any company would, has been looking to get out from under the restrictions that have been imposed on them, including this cap of maximum of 38 planes per month for the 737 Max. And here the FAA is looking at increasing that to 42 planes per month, which isn't a gigantic increase, I think not as much as Boeing would like to see, but at least it's something. But yeah, having the ability, Boeing having the ability to conduct the safety sign offs on new 737 Max aircraft is big. They do note that the final airworthiness certificates will continue to be issued by, by the faa. Boeing doesn't get that back yet anyway.

Speaker B And apparently it's expected that this will also soon be happening for, for the, they'll get their inspection authority to do work on their 780, the 787s as well, which will be able to increase production there too.

Speaker A Yes, yeah, very important for Boeing because. Well, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the impact on cash flow. Ship planes that helps cash flow. All right, an item helicopter item. This is from the aviationist on Sikorsky and they've been awarded a contract. This is I think a part of a larger or an ongoing kind of a contract to build some helicopters. Let's see Micah work for the Marines, I guess.

Speaker B Yeah, the CH53K, which is replacing the 53E, which had some trouble with their transmission system. But Sikorsky announced, I guess just a couple of days ago that They've been awarded $10.8 billion from the Navy to build 99 CH53Ks king stallions for the Marine Corps. And it's going to take place. They're going to build those 100 or 99 units over the next five years. And that's a lot of helicopters, let me say. And that's the biggest single rotor heavy lift helicopter that we have in the military inventory. Now the Ch47, which is twin rotor, can lift more than that. But the, I've seen videos of the CH53 lifting and carrying an F35, which is pretty amazing.

Speaker A Yeah, those videos, whether it's, you know, that, that helicopter or some of the Russian heavy lift helicopters, when, when they're lifting heavy loads and you see those blades flexing, you know, the tips flexing up, I guess that more like the center down. But yeah, those are mighty, mighty impressive. I wonder why 99, why not 100? You know, I mean, I wonder what the logic Is to order 99 more.

Speaker B Probably couldn't bring it up to 11 billion, it had to be 10.9. That's, that's my, that's my, that's my guess and I'm sticking with it.

Speaker A Maybe that's it. And those 99 are to be delivered. Excuse me, in the, over the next five years. I think in total, the Marines are looking to procure 200 of the king Stallions in total. Sikorsky says they've delivered 20 of them so far. And an additional 63 are in various stages of production, which. That's a lot of aircraft to be in production. That's a, that's a lot. I wonder what the production lead time is on these things. It must be pretty, pretty long to have 63 of them in, in, in process.

Speaker B And it's a pretty big upgrade from the, from the E. It's a full glass cockpit. It's all fly by wire. It's running three. Each one carries three General Electric T408 turbofans, which gives it 50% more power on this all new transition and rotor assembly, redesigned gearboxes and it's just, it's a pretty amazing machine. And also it said that the, their, their blades of the, of the, the rotor are going to be like 60. Well, it's improved blades and, but it's also going to have 63% fewer parts than on the old CH53E. So. So this is just unreal.

Speaker A Yeah, that ought to impact maintenance costs for sure. Yeah. Fewer parts are always better. All right, boy. We'll have to ask David how we did on a helicopter story without him. He may. He made tears to shreds when he hears this. Hopefully we covered it pretty well.

Speaker B I hope so. And speaking of helicopter stories, there's really a big one.

Speaker A So the news is unfortunately, sort of sad news. The son of the founder of Sikorsky Aircraft, Igor Sikorsky, his son, Sergei Sikorsky, just recently passed away at age 100. This man lived to be 100 years old. And, you know, when you talk about Sikorsky the company and Sikorsky the man talking about Igor Sikorsky, many people don't know that. Sergei, his son, was also a significant figure in, you know, in the. In the industry. He's a. He was a military vet. He served in the helicopter development unit of the Coast Guard during World War II, and he worked at Sikorsky Aircraft for 41 years, at least a good part of that in international marketing and sales. He became the division vice president in the 70s. He retired in the early 1990s. But he didn't walk away from the business completely. He would appear as a goodwill ambassador at Trade Joe's and other events, things like that, and talk about the. His family's legacy. You know, we've talked about this in the past, but the Sikorsky family, and we've had Igor Sikorsky the third on the show, I think, twice. The family is, well, very much proud of what they accomplished, but they're also, you know, very focused on maintaining the legacy. The documentation, you know, the stuff that David is a historian from the American Helicopter Museum, just loves to have available. And so the family has kept that up. So 100 years old, don't know anything about cause of death or what his health was like. But, you know, another. A great man in the industry has died at age 100.

Speaker B There was a History Channel show many years ago that featured him talking about the whole Sikorsky legacy and talking about his father, and it was brilliant. It was really a great show. I'm sure it's probably still available someplace online, but I would. I would look for it. It was just wonderful to hear him talk about his dad and what respect he had for him as a. As an engineer and a father.

Speaker A Yeah, very good. All right. What's up with the geeks? Let's see. Let's start with you, Rob. Anything, Anything going on?

Speaker C Sure. Max Trescott and I had a really interesting conversation this afternoon with an NTSB board member, Mike Graham, who I knew from years ago when he was a safety geek at Textron Aviation, basically in charge of safety and SMS for everything that Textron did. Of course, he's been on the NTSB board now for five years. He was just renominated by the president and it was a very eye opening discussion and I think people should look forward to hearing from him. And he gave us quite a few insights into how the NTSB operated. So that's all I'm going to say for now.

Speaker A Wow.

Speaker C Oh, and that'll be, that'll be happening on the, on the NTSB News talk podcast that Max and I hang out at.

Speaker A I was going to ask you and you said that was all you were going to say. I mean, did you record it? Did you, are you going to use it on, on the podcast? You two guys do hoarded.

Speaker C See now that would have been interesting because then we could have played it back, couldn't we? Oh man, we didn't. You know, it's like that FAA memo. We didn't get the memo. No, no, I'm kidding. No, it, it was, it was really well, I think it was really well done. It lasted about 40 minutes or so and I think people will, will find it interesting when it's up.

Speaker A Good. Can't wait.

Speaker B Well, you know, I gotta tell you that I've had that experience both when I was on the air, on radio and working with Brian where we did, I did a great interview, I mean really, really good. And forgot to record.

Speaker C Yes.

Speaker B One of them was with a folk singer, very famous folk singer, Dave Van Rock, who is incredibly well known a year, huge guy in the Village back in, in the 60s and an old surly guy and a great musician. And I was, it was such a coup to get him on the show. And this was back on a reel to reel tape machine where you had to press the play and record button together. And I didn't, it was just.

Speaker A Anyway, it happens. Anybody that does, you know, this sort of thing, it, it happens. It happened to me, to us. Oh, many, many years ago recording this podcast back in the days when we were using Skype and we each, you know, had a recorder going on our machine to record each of us individually and then we put them together in the end and I got about, I don't know, maybe a quarter or a third of the way through the podcast and realized that I had forgotten to press record so you other guys, you had your recordings, but there was like nothing. There was no backup, there was nothing from me. And what saved the day is. And I, I won't say who, but one of the co hosts, their connection had a little bit of an echo in it. And if I listened really carefully to Rob's recording, I could barely hear the echo of my voice in his recording. And so I actually spent hours listening to my echo and then recording what I said as if I was saying it for the first time, and then put the whole thing together. And I don't know if anybody noticed. Maybe it was obvious, maybe it wasn't, but what a disaster. But hey, you find a way. And thanks, Rob. You saved the day on that episode.

Speaker B Well, do either of you guys remember an old comedy album back when there were comedy albums by Albert Brooks, who is hysterical to begin with, and it was called Comedy Minus one, where you'd play one side of the album and the script was inside the album cover. And he was a straight man and you were the comic. And so you would. He, you would play the album and you'd listen to it and then you'd say the gag line when he would give you the straight line. And DJs would do this all the time. I mean, it's available. I think I have it on CD now. And it was just a great bit. It was really funny.

Speaker A I love it.

Speaker C Oh, that's a cool idea.

Speaker A It is a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Micah, anything? Any news from you?

Speaker B Well, yeah, I had an incredible meetup this week.

Speaker A You did?

Speaker B I got to get. Yeah, I had a meet up with a really fabulous aviation enthusiast. I mean, he is just, just incredible, incredibly in touch with, with aviation news and all that. But we didn't even talk about aviation. It was. It was pretty wild. But it was a really nice time.

Speaker A And I heard his main squeeze came too.

Speaker B Oh, well, she's just great. She's absolutely super. In fact, I was happier to see her than him. But. But don't tell him that. Next. It was great to see you.

Speaker A It was good to see you. So, Rob, Linda and I were camping in the. Where were we? We were in New Hampshire, I guess. Maybe Vermont. I don't know. Both. We were camping in Vermont and New Hampshire actually, and just got the idea. It's like. Well, actually, Linda got the idea. This is actually true. Linda said, let's go see Micah. He's not that far away. So we drove across to Maine and we had a nice lunch together. We got some great pizzas. Together, had a little chat for a while. And like you say, Michael, we didn't talk much aviation, but it was great. Enjoyed it.

Speaker B We talked about the podcast, like, for a little bit, and that was it. But it was just a lot of fun, and it was great pizza and some great beers, and it was really, really nice to see both of you. Even though I joke about seeing Linda. No, it was really fun. Sorry you weren't there, Rob. And that's when we talked about the fact that we. You know, for years they had to keep us separated, Rob. They wouldn't let us on the same podcast at the same time.

Speaker A Well, that.

Speaker C That's true. And there was a reason for that, because we were simply too hilarious to be that close together. And. But, I mean, we would talk about really impressive factoids. Fact, I don't think I remember when was it CNN that used to do factoids? Yeah, and then somebody said a factoid was actually an error, and then CNN stopped doing it because somebody thought it was a. Anyway, all right, so, I mean, like a factoid this week. This is Fat Bear week up in Alaska. Now, people may not remember that, but it's happening through the end of the day tomorrow. And people can go online and. And watch the. The video links and vote for their bet, you know, their favorite fat bear. And personally, I go for number 32, which is chunk, and I think he's about 12 or 1300 pounds. So, I mean, I guess the good news is if. If you ever ran into in a Chunk, it would. It would be over very quickly and you'd never know what happened to you.

Speaker B You know, I think that's a great diet technique, though. I wish that I could adopt it. You know, you just go to sleep for three or four months and you wake up a lot lighter.

Speaker A Yeah. Low effort. Yeah, that works well. All right, let's wrap it up. This is a really short episode, as you can tell. Got some projects going on that really limit my ability to spend a lot of time doing this for a short period here. So we're going to make this one really quick and get it out to you. And we want to thank you for listening to the Airplane Geeks podcast. The website is airplanegeeks.com of course, show notes are there if you want to get to some of the links for the things that we talked about. I don't know if the bear voting. Fat bear voting link will be there or not. Maybe it will if you send it along, Rob. But if you want to go right to the show notes for this episode, then because it's episode 860, just visit airplanegeeks.com 865. Our email address remains thegeekserplanegeeks.com all right, Micah, Micah, if folks want to get a hold of you or follow you, follow you. How do they do that?

Speaker B Well, you can catch me with Pasadena Brian Coleman, our former associate producer, when he's not in South Africa. He's there right now. Won't be be coming back for another week. I think he's been there for two weeks already. But anyway, you can catch me with him on the Journey is Reward podcast. We should have a new episode coming out next week. And then if you want to get a hold of me, I'm on X, Twitter and Blue sky as main fly.

Speaker A Great. And Rob, Mark, how do people find you?

Speaker C Well, after. What episode are we on now? Eight six, eight, six.

Speaker A Yes. All right.

Speaker C After 865 episodes, if people want to talk to me and they don't know where to find me, they haven't been listening.

Speaker A All right, very good. And of course, I'm Max Flight. Look for me on Blue Sky. Look for Airplane Geeks on Blue Sky. There's also Max Flight on Blue sky, which might be me. I'm really not sure, but I don't have the password for that anymore. So find me at Airplane Geeks. Also look for me at the at the website 30,000ftcom. All right. Please join us again next time as we talk aviation on the Airplane Geeks podcast. Bye, everybody.

Speaker C Nighty night.

Speaker B See you real soon. And for David, thanks for listening. It.

865 Brand New Air Traffic Control System

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