Nationwide ground stop: Pilot offers perspective

What do we do now? And it's going to be, it sounds like a lot of waiting around. A lot of patience is going to be needed all through the night here. I see some people, passengers on plane with their feet up, just kind of waiting to see what happens. And then some, I think, are deplaning. Our friend Jennifer McDermott, she's out in Monterey, California. They had them get off the plane. So whether they stay on or get off the plane, it just seems to be up in the air. And the woman who we got that video from, she said the agent was, we couldn't actually hear But you could see it. She said the agent was saying that the earliest could possibly be 6 o'clock. Again, we've been hearing different numbers. At first we heard around 5 o'clock, then we heard 10, then we heard potentially 10 o'clock tonight. So we'll see what exactly happens. But she said that they don't really know as far as the agents and that people are asking the same questions. As you can imagine, they are. They just want to know what they're supposed to do at this point. Will they have to maybe get a hotel? What that looks like for them, especially if they're not from right here. And so you have to make the adjustments in your plans in that way, too. So we'll continue to watch what happens inside of MSP. We have a reporter, Maury Glover. He is on his way. So hopefully he can talk to some folks inside. We're trying to get different kinds of perspectives on the impact of this right now. We're going to speak with a pilot, Jason Middleton, who can give us his perspective as a current pilot. Just the impact something like a national ground stop has. On travel right now, thanks for being with us. It has to be just huge. I mean, this is going to go on for some time, it sounds like. Yeah, from a pilot's perspective, you know, we're sitting around wondering what's going on as well. I mean, the last time this happened at this scale was, I think, '23. And it was only for a couple of hours. And, you know, these communication systems, when they go down, there's no way for ATC to talk to the cockpit. So they clearly don't want us out there flying when this happens. You know, the aircraft that are in route that are in the air right now, they may be flying without communications with air traffic control. So it's not an ideal scenario. And Jason, you have 30 years of experience as a pilot. You also are a director of operations and another for your own company to just talk about the severity of what we are seeing today and what's happening right now. Well, first of all, I commend the FAA for making the hard call of shutting the system down. If it's a matter of safety, I do work in the safety world a lot. And it is very inconvenient, but you know what? Everyone will live to see another day. So that's the most important thing. It might be very inconvenient for people. But again, safety is the number one thing. Thank you. You know, and the impact on this is gonna be days and weeks. We just had a few, this year we've had small scale communications problems in certain I'm starting to think centers, the air traffic control centers. They're They control a large area of airspace over the US. And if one of the centers goes down, they may ground stop that one area, but not the whole country. Sounds like this is a much more broader scale problem. When you say days and weeks, what takes days and what takes weeks, what happens within that process? Well, I mean, just think about the airlines. And we work in a different side of aviation on the private side of it, but the The airlines... The impact, these passengers, they use these airplanes every day for different flights. And these passengers are getting stacked up, and it's going to take them a long time to get these passengers back through their system and get the operations back to normal. I mean, just a severe weather delay will cause days of delays, and that's just in certain areas. Think about the entire country. I mean, thousands and thousands of airplanes and millions of people are Being, you know, having to factor all that stuff. It's going to take a long time. Even with this, you know, if they open back up tonight, it's still going to be a long time before things are back to normal. And I think we're used to, we're immediately thinking of Delta Airlines, American Airlines, Sun Country, but you fly for a private company. How many airplanes, planes do you think are impacted in the private sector, the charter sector? Is that also, you know, is that hundreds? It's in the thousands. There's thousands of airplanes. There's probably... Seven or 8,000 airplanes being, flights being affected right now on our side of the industry. I know I have, I think we have four just at our company. We have flights where, and then the other problem about it, once a flight is delayed long enough, the crew has, they have to duty off. They can't stay on indefinitely. They're not, we have limits on when we, how many hours we can fly and how many hours we can be on duty. So if it's a five-hour delay, And then we get the system back online. We still might not be able to do the trip because we ran out of duty time for the pilots. Wow. Who do you, as a pilot, who do you get your information from in a situation like this? Is that the FAA, air traffic control? Where do you get your directions? I mean, yes, it's kind of, there's a lot of places we get it. The last time this happened, what we rely on, what's called the pilot notification system. So it's things like delays or ILS, you know, ILS is not, or approach systems not working or airport lighting systems not working. The last time this happened in '23, it was because the NOTAM system went out. So we get a lot of our information as pilots through this, you know, it's, you know, notice to airmen. And it's just little things that come out on airports, approaches, airspace, anything that would affect our flight, anything normal in our flight. So we get that. And then, of course, we have all of our flight plan software now that gives us a lot of information. And everything's pretty much digital and computer these days. So I actually found out about this watching the news. So what was your reaction while watching the news once you found this out? I called you, I'm actually in a car driving right now to go hunting, and I had to pull over and call my office and get everybody on the phone and where are we impacted and what's going on, what's our plan and all that. With that being said, sorry Karen, I don't want to step on you, but while you're talking about this, I'm just thinking as far as what pilots are doing at this moment during this nationwide ground stop. What are the private pilots like yourself, obviously you're not working at this point, but what are they doing? But also think of commercial flights. We're talking Delta American and all the things. What what are people doing right now as far as pilots and agents? Well, I mean, if whoever's on duty right now is just sitting around waiting to see if they'll actually be able to fly. They're with their airplane. In a lot of cases, passengers are loaded on aircraft. And our side of the business, we would just take the passengers off and they would leave the airport and we'll call you when we know more information. And then they'll come back and get on and we'll fly. But the crews are on. Once you go on duty, you can't go off duty and then, you know, and then do another flight later. You have to stay on duty. Until you time out or you do the flight, so they're just sitting a lot of pilots sitting around, you know, airports right now doing nothing, doing nothing. Let me ask you this, Jason, when you have something as big as this happening and then it's you get the all clear and it's going to be okay and you can take off again. Are pilots like, okay, we're good to go, you know, or is there some, do you feel a little unsettled as a pilot or hesitant at all? Yes and no. I mean, I think whenever something like this happens as a pilot, we're kind of trained to kind of like have a big picture view of things, right? You know, not only in the cockpit, but what's going on inside the airplane, but also what's going on outside the airplane. The airport, you know, the airport operating environment is one of the most dangerous times for an aircraft. It's the most critical times. So I would, you know, if I were flying today, I'd be on much higher alert. I'd slow down a little bit, make sure I verified air traffic controls, clearances. I briefed passengers on, hey, any special things today, we just had this shutdown. We may have more, we may have communication problems, they may get it back up and think everything's great. All of a sudden, boom, it goes down again. You know, those are the kind of things that I would be thinking of, you know, moving back into to getting operations going again. You know, we've seen situations where pilots will say, you know, I'm just not feeling it today and they actually have not taken off the ground. Is that a hard thing to do? And is that something that could happen in this situation if somebody's a pilot is just not feeling and not feeling good about taking off? And then how does that affect the other pilots too? Yeah, I'll tell you, man, I have the most respect for pilots that would do that. And unfortunately, there's not more in the world that would do that. I mean, it's a hard call to make, but it's the right call. And as a pilot, our job isn't to fly you from point A to point B. Our job is to operate the safest operation we can possibly operate. And the crews are sort of the last line in the safety defense, right? We have all of our systems in place, the safety management systems. Our manuals and procedures and SOPs and all these things, the training programs and all the things that we have to go through as an aviator. But at the end of the day, we've got to accept this trip, get in the airplane, fire up those engines and fly. And we're the final say and whether or not things are going to be done safely that day. So when a pilot refuses a flight because of whatever reason, they weren't feeling it, there was something mechanical that they didn't like about the airplane, they don't like the weather at their destination. Whatever it is, if they make that call to not fly, then because of one of those reasons, ton of respect. Oh, absolutely. If my pilot says, no, we're not going, I trust my pilot. I'm good with that. I give pilots so much respect. You guys have such a big job. You have lives, lives literally in your hands. And so when I'm listening to you talk about this, it just I think it's out of sight, out of mind for travelers. But for you guys, you live it. You're in the seat, you're flying the plane, and you have a big responsibility, and we respect you guys for that, and we really appreciate it. I'm thinking about, were you gonna say something? Go ahead. Well, one thing that people should understand, most pilots have families at home. They've got responsibilities. They wanna get there safely, just as bad as you wanna get there safely. So in my own interests, my own self-interest, I wanna get home safe. Absolutely. I'm sure people are Maybe watching this from inside of the airport, just like you learned, you know, from the news and people might have fired up Fox nine and are watching right now or people who just maybe fly in general. Is there anything that you would want people to know for travelers to know just about maybe about pilots or just about what's going on right now? You know, this is an inconvenient. This isn't an emergency. This isn't the worst thing that's ever going to happen in your life. It's an inconvenience. And I would just say, look, be patient. Go home. Don't fly today. Choose to travel on another day. I think people get in this mindset that I have to get there, I have to get there, I have to get there. And you really don't. There's really nothing that's that urgent. Maybe there's some things that are, but. Your safety is number one, getting there safely, by far number one. And then getting delayed is annoying, but you're safe. You're sitting on the ground in a safe place. And the other good thing is people know about this. This isn't like something you're making up. It's obviously the word is out, everybody knows. So yes, absolutely. Safety is number one on this. Jason Middleton, we appreciate you taking the time. I know you were on your way to your trip. So thanks for pulling over and joining us. I got a lot of calls today. Oh, I bet, I bet. But we really appreciate your insight. Thank you so much. And if we have any more questions, we know who to call now. Please do, anytime. Thanks guys.