AvTalk Episode 188: Harassed by a Drone

AVT 188 Transcript
EPISODE 188
[EPISODE]
[0:00:07] IP: Hello and welcome to episode 188 of AvTalk. I am in fact, Ian Petchenik, even
though I don't sound like it, and I am here, as always with –
[0:00:18] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. I'm me. I sound like me, but are you sure you're Ian?
[0:00:23] IP: It's touch and go right now. I apologize for any editing that we need to do to this
particular episode as I make my way through it. I'm enjoying what I hope is the tail end of the
cold that all of the kids had last week, that they then graciously, graciously gave me. That's been
fun.
[0:00:42] JR: That’s so nice of them.
[0:00:43] IP: The best part about all of this is that the cold coincided with getting my Bivalent
COVID booster and flu shot. I have felt just peachy the past couple days, which has just been a
whole lot of fun.
[0:00:57] JR: You're going to power through it.
[0:00:58] IP: I'm going to power through it. Everybody gets the Don LaFontaine version of me
today. If you don't know who that is, I've just dated myself and go look him up. We've got a great
show for you this week. There's a lot going on. A lot more than I thought happened. When we
started putting the show notes together, I was like, “Oh, it's a quiet week last week.” It was not
quiet last week.
[0:01:18] JR: We kept going.
[0:01:20] IP: It just snuck right up on us. The best part of the show is going to be, we're going to
have Mark Vanhoenacker back on the show in a little bit. He has a new book coming out that
jumps off of Skyfaring that we talked about in a previous episode. We're going to talk with Mark
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AVT 188 Transcript
about the pilot’s perspective on cities. Pilots often get a perspective that most of us don't on
cities. We're going to talk about that and he's going to read an excerpt from the new book, so
I'm really looking forward to that.
[0:01:53] JR: Let's get to the second-best part. You have a story.
[0:01:56] IP: Yeah. This was a weird, weird thing. On Sunday, I went to the grocery store. That's
not the weird part. On Sunday, I went to the grocery store, and I was leaving the grocery store,
and the particular grocery store I was at is on the north side of Chicago, and is one of those
kinds of things where the parking deck is on the roof of the building. The shopping area is on the
first floor, and then there's a parking deck on the roof of the building. I come out into the parking
deck and I'm walking to my car, and I get all the groceries into the car. I'm going to put the cart
back, walking from the car to the curvature. A drone, like a DJI Maverick zooms up to me. Not
close enough to hit me, but eye level, moving very fast and slams on the brakes, maybe 10 feet
from me. I'm not close enough to touch it, but it's close and freaky. I was like, “That's weird.” I
just stop and look at it, and then it goes up, but doesn't go away. It's just there hovering over
me.
[0:03:09] JR: Maybe it’s whatever grocery store you're going to has a really advanced anti-
shoplifting team. They were just really making sure you didn’t sneak out a can of beans, or
something.
[0:03:19] IP: Must be. I go and put the cart back. The drone is there the whole time. It's now
maybe 20, 30 feet above the parking deck. I go and put the cart back and I'm walking back to
my car and it comes closer. It's got the little camera thing pointed at me and it's following me. I'm
like, “This is really weird.” I stop and I wave at it, thinking like, “Okay, maybe there's kids or
whatever playing, doing something they shouldn't, but they're having good fun.” I wave at it and
think then, okay, that maybe it'll go away. I go and get in my car, and I'm backing the car out to
leave, and then it's there. It comes back. Hovers at windshield level in front of the car. I'm like,
“Well, at this point, do I just drive into it?”
[0:04:08] JR: Turn your windshield wipers on, or the spray and try to get it wet. I don’t know.
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[0:04:14] IP: I mean, it was just so weird. I drove a little bit and the drone flies off, but I'm still in
the parking deck. At this point, I'm like, “Okay, I need to figure out where this is coming from.”
Because is it some kids? If it's some kids, dadgummit, they need a talking to. If it's not some
kids, well then, I guess I have to figure out what I want to do about it.
[0:04:32] JR: They also need a talking to.
[0:04:34] IP: Right. But then, I guess, I have to figure out what I'm going to do about it. I follow
it. I see which way it's going. It goes over by a school. I'm like, okay, maybe they're standing in
the in the school thing. I drive out of the parking lot and I drive over there, and I don't see
anybody. Then it goes the opposite way, the drone that I still see it, it flies the opposite way.
Then just disappears. Now I'm like, “Well, I suppose I could drive around the neighborhood,” but
that doesn't seem like it's going to do any good. Long story short, it was a bizarre experience.
[0:05:08] JR: Have you ever seen the movie Good Fellows?
[0:05:09] IP: I got harassed by a drone. Yes.
[0:05:12] JR: Basically, like that, instead of a police helicopter, it is a drone. Could you go home
and tell your wife like, “I swear, this helicopter. I mean, drone has been hovering over me all
day.” Everyone's saying like, “Oh, no. You're just paranoid. You're crazy. There's no drone.”
Basically, that’s the [inaudible 0:05:27].
[0:05:27] IP: I’m ripping all my money on it. Yes, I'm ripping all my money out of my coffee cans.
Everything. It was just such a bizarre thing. A part of me wants to experience it again, just so
that I can track these guys down, or bring a fishing net maybe. I don't know. What do you do? I
mean, because, technically, so they're wrong, because they definitely weren't line of sight with
the drone. Because it was nobody on the parking deck. I looked around to make sure that it was
nobody on the parking deck.
[0:05:56] JR: Also, I'm pretty sure you're not even allowed to swat them out of the air.
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[0:06:00] IP: Right. That's the other thing. They're definitely breaking the rules. Also, you're not
legally allowed to basically – I guess, if it hits you, then – I don't know what happens. What
happens if they would hit me?
[0:06:13] JR: Arm yourself with the can of beans I mentioned earlier. I don't know.
[0:06:17] IP: I mean, but what happens?
[0:06:18] JR: There have been cases in the past where this has been litigated, where
somebody was flying a drone over someone's private property and someone took a shotgun
and blasted it out of the air. I think they were arrested, I think, or something along those lines.
[0:06:31] IP: Yes. The person with the gun was – if not arrested, then at least cited.
[0:06:35] JR: Something along those lines, because you're not allowed to do that. For one
thing, that's reckless, just firing a gun off into the air, but you're not allowed to shoot the thing out
of the air. It's a complicated topic. I feel like your experiences is something that's going to
become less and less rare moving forward.
[0:06:51] IP: Right. That was the point of the story. I feel like, this is not going to be uncommon
too far into the future. What we do about these things, I think is going to be very interesting area
for the law. I don't want to be the guinea pig.
[0:07:06] JR: No. We're going to have to, I guess, outfit your local grocery store with one of
those airport military style anti-drone RF systems to make sure this doesn't happen again.
[0:07:15] IP: I'm going to get Gatwick on the phone.
[0:07:17] JR: Ooh, they never found that guy.
[0:07:20] IP: Yeah, okay.
[0:07:21] JR: Because he may not have existed.
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[0:07:22] IP: Because he may not have existed. Okay, enough about me. Let's talk about
Boeing. Boeing held its first investor day in three years.
[0:07:33] JR: A long time.
[0:07:34] IP: Yeah, three years, three years since 2019. Boeing held its first investor day today
since 2019. A few tidbits came out of it that we'll discuss today. One, Boeing has officially
confirmed that MAX certification both for the MAX 7 and MAX 10 will not happen this year.
Those get pushed back to next year for the MAX 7 at best, and 2024 for the MAX 10, most
likely. That's an interesting bit of information that isn't entirely unexpected, but it's nice to hear
them finally say it out loud.
I don't know if it was entirely unexpected bit of information, but the depressing information that
came out is that Boeing CEO, David Calhoun said that there will be no new airplane. Call it
whatever you want. We've styled it the 797 for a while, just because that's eventually what we
hope it'll be called. Because if they don't call it that, that would just be weird. That will not even
hit the drawing board until the next decade.
[0:08:37] JR: Yeah, not great. The MAX, I guess, or the 73 as we know it today, will be in
production for a long time to come.
[0:08:46] IP: Two other bits of information that I want to talk about today, and then we're going
to leave it, because we're going to have a good friend of the show and a very wise man who
knows much more about these things than we do, Jon Ostrower from The Air Current will be on
the program next week to talk about everything that we learned today and provide some much
needed context beyond what Jason I can offer.
However, I will mention two things. Calhoun mentioned that for each 737 MAX that was already
built during the pandemic and not delivered, or not necessarily built during the pandemic, but
built and then not delivered, both because of the pandemic and the grounding, it takes as many
hours to get that aircraft into service as it did to build the original aircraft. The same for the
reworked 787s.
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[0:09:35] JR: I mean, I guess that makes sense, if there's some degree of disassembly before
you can fix the thing to reassemble it. That's a lot of work.
[0:09:42] IP: Especially with the 737 MAX that were built at the beginning of the grounding,
those require, the older the aircraft is, even though these aren't old, the older the aircraft is, the
more effort they take. Very interesting things coming out of Boeing yesterday. I'm glad they had
it, and we'll see talk a lot more in depth about it next week when we have Jon Ostrower on the
show. We will stick with Boeing just a little bit, because there was a little bit of fun in China.
[0:10:09] JR: A bit of a false start.
[0:10:11] IP: Late last week. It was, I think, Thursday. Thursday, Friday. China Southern Airlines,
which has a fleet of 737 MAX, scheduled its first 737 MAX flight for the end of October. They
said, “We're going to operate a triangle route. The first flight will be on the last day of October,
October 30th. Sunday.” Everyone said, “Oh, this could be a turning point. This could really mean
something. It would be the first time a Chinese airline has carried passengers on the 737 MAX
since March of 2019.” Then they canceled the flight.
[0:10:50] JR: Yeah. Well, when they said they were going to operate it, but they didn't actually
affirmatively say it, did they? Or did they just put it into the schedule and people noticed it? I
think –
[0:10:57] IP: It was in the schedule. You could purchase the fligt.
[0:10:59] JR: That's actually happened. Yeah, it was in the schedule. I don't think they put out a
press release or anything saying, “We're going to do this.” It was in the schedule. It didn't
actually operate. I think, Jon Ostrower again, pointed out that that China Southern said this, that
the cancellation reason was airlines, which is the most airline reason of all to ever cancel a
flight. Yeah, yeah. Schedule anomalies like this happen all the time. Things come, things go.
Some human inputs the wrong thing and it gets sent out and then withdrawn a couple of days
later. It's not unusual to see junk in the schedule. But this junk in this schedule seemed
particularly hopeful.
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[0:11:35] IP: Hopeful junk.
[0:11:36] JR: Yeah, hopeful junk. After that false start, it seems like we're back right where we
were before that, where there is no indication that the MAX is coming back to China anytime
soon. Nothing has changed since our last podcast, even though all of this happened.
[0:11:51] IP: Yeah. The interesting thing was, is that they scheduled it for a full week from 30
October to 5 November.
[0:11:57] JR: They were just seeing if anyone was paying attention.
[0:11:59] IP: Someone was paying attention. I think it was Danny Lee over at Bloomberg.
[0:12:02] JR: I believe so. Then it did end up in the schedule and everyone said, “Hey, look at
that.”
[0:12:06] IP: I'm sorry, it was Jamie Freed at Reuters. I want to get that right. Yeah. I mean,
somebody was paying attention. Great job. They said, “No, we're just kidding.”
[0:12:17] JR: Oh, well.
[0:12:18] IP: Oh, well. This is an interesting one. We talked about this before we recorded the
other day when the news first broke, but now there's an added dimension. Cathay Pacific has
been hampered by the fact that they've been avoiding Russian airspace. That creates issues for
them on the New York to Hong Kong route. They announced that beginning November 1st, they
were going to go back to using Russian airspace. The flight time from New York to Hong Kong
takes a between 17 and 17 and a half hours, going up over Canada, and then basically coming
down the eastern coast of Russia.
Then on the 1st of November, they went back to the polar routing, which takes them through
Russia proper. That shaves two hours, two and a half hours off the flight time. The average flight
time over the past 30 days has been 17 hours and 10 minutes. Yesterday's flight, took 14 hours
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and 45 minutes. Saves them a lot of time, a lot of fuel, and they no longer have to wait restrict
the aircraft. But –
[0:13:34] JR: There's a twist.
[0:13:35] IP: There's a twist. Because they are flying over Russia now, American Airlines has
dropped its code share with Cathay on this particular flight, because the sanctions on Russia by
the United States say that US flights can't use Russian airspace, not that it matters because
Russia borrows US aircraft anyway. But the US regulations also state that a flight number
operation cannot take place, which is what a code share is. American can't have their flight
number tagged on the code share, so they had to drop the code share. Which is, I mean, all
kinds of – code shares still boggle my mind, why airlines, you can't just have – you pick a flight
number, that's the flight number. If you want to work out yourselves between them, that's fine.
Do whatever you need to do, but why does the flight number need to change? That's just me.
Because that's the way things work, American had to drop its code share.
[0:14:33] JR: Yeah. I have thoughts about this.
[0:14:36] IP: Thought me. Thought me, Jason.
[0:14:37] JR: Well, Cathay appears to be the first large international airline to resume
operations through Russian airspace. I get this has –
[0:14:47] IP: Airlines that had stopped.
[0:14:48] JR: Right. Airlines that has stopped. Cathay is the first resume after withdrawing itself
from Russian airspace. I don't think that's going to be a trend from many other airlines at all. I
get that this is a major cost and time saving for these flights, but they've been operating for
months without issues. They worked around the problem. It just symbolically, this is icky to me. I
don't like that Cathay has gone back on this voluntary removal of itself from Russian airspace.
They claim that, of course, there’s an ETOPS flight and it is going to Russian airspace, but it will
never need to divert to a Russian airfield in case of some issue requiring a diversion. Take that
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with a grain of salt. I don't know how emergencies happen, and you can't always gauge just how
badly you'll need to land somewhere.
That's aside from the fact that I just PR-wise, I do not like this move. This is a gross move, and I
just don't like it. I understand it. I just feel like, they're going to be alone in this. I don't think this
is going to open the floodgates. You're not going to see other airlines that voluntarily removed
themselves from Russian airspace also do this. I don't know. I have no plans to go to Hong
Kong, or fly Cathay anytime soon. It doesn't sit well with me.
[0:16:08] IP: Here's the interesting thing, so the initial announcement was that they were going
to reconfigure the route to use just the eastern part of Russian airspace. You know what? Spot
decision, I'm going to do a blog post about this, because this is actually pretty fascinating to me
now. Here's the thing. I'm looking at this as we're talking about it. What Cathay was doing pre, or
post-invasion, pre-adjustment, they were flying from New York, basically making the great circle
to the north of Anchorage. Then they were flying down on the US side of the Bering Sea, routing
around Russian airspace, around the Kamchatka Peninsula, and then coming down through
Japanese airspace.
Then they said, “Okay, we're going to change that. We're going to route through just the eastern
portion of Russian airspace. We're going to come down, do the same thing that we were doing
through Alaska, but then instead of turning further south and coming through the US portion of
the Bering Sea, we're going to go into the Russian portion of the Bering Sea, and then we'll
come down to Japan.” Yesterday, they completely abandoned that.
[0:17:18] JR: They did not do that at all. They used all of Russia.
[0:17:22] IP: Yeah. That whole thing about like, “We will never divert to Russian –”
[0:17:25] JR: We were early on the first day of this new plan, they tossed that out.
[0:17:30] IP: No. They did it for two days.
[0:17:31] JR: No. This was November 1st, right? This kicked in November 1st?
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[0:17:34] IP: They changed on the 30th of October. Or, the 27th of October.
[0:17:40] JR: Okay. It was a few days. Okay. Then almost immediately, they reneged on their
word. This flight, what was it? Cathay –
[0:17:47] IP: 841.
[0:17:48] JR: 841.
[0:17:48] IP: CX841.
[0:17:49] JR: An A350-900. Just went back to the old days and went all the way over Russia for
hours and hours and hours. If they needed to divert, they would have ended up somewhere
definitely in the thick of Russia, probably with US citizens on board, who would have not been
too happy to end up there.
[0:18:09] IP: Yeah. This is a really interesting one. You'll see a link to a blog post by the time
this show comes out on Friday.
[0:18:15] JR: Happy to inspire.
[0:18:17] IP: Explaining what this is going on. Because this is fascinating. Not a great look for
Cathay at the moment.
[0:18:22] JR: No. I should make a tweety box about that, because this is interesting. I like this
even less than when we started off this conversation.
[0:18:31] IP: It somehow got worse. Let's go with good news.
[0:18:34] JR: Hey, okay.
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[0:18:36] IP: Switch the thing up a little bit. Today, when we're recording, which is not today in
Australia, because time zones are hard. The 2nd of November is 100 years to the day from the
first Qantas flight.
[0:18:50] JR: Hey, happy birthday Qantas.
[0:18:53] IP: Qantas began operations two years after the airline was founded. It took them two
years to get planes, pilots, mechanics, etc.
[0:19:03] JR: All those things. Yeah.
[0:19:05] IP: The important stuff, I guess. Then on the 2nd of November 1922, they loaded up a
106 letters in a mailbag and flew a pair of flights over two days, a 106 kilometers over two days,
to tell you how far we've come in the intervening 100 years. They recreated the flight today with
a Dash 8, of all aircraft.
[0:19:30] JR: Which isn't even a Qantas aircraft, I think, which is also funny.
[0:19:32] IP: Qantasling.
[0:19:34] JR: Yeah, kind of funny. It's not actually a Qantas aircraft.
[0:19:37] IP: I think, it had more to do with the airfields involved. That that was the right aircraft
and –
[0:19:41] JR: They didn’t want spinny bits on the outside of the wing to make it really feel
authentic.
[0:19:45] IP: There's that. They're recreating the flight over two days, and they've got a bunch of
history onboard and on display. We'll put a link in the show notes to some really good photos of
the original flights from a 100 years ago. Worth checking out there. Let's see, we went Hong
Kong, Russia, Australia. Let's go to Mexico.
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[0:20:05] JR: We’re going all over the place. Okay.
[0:20:07] IP: Hopping all over.
[0:20:08] JR: Yeah, this piece comes to us from PaxEx.Aero, our friend Seth Miller, who put an
interesting article together about how Mexico is considering letting foreign airlines operate
cabotage flights within Mexico, which is basically, they want to induce, I guess, more
competition for domestic flights within Mexico using non-Mexican airlines, which I thought was
really interesting. He goes into a whole analysis about routes that used to have competition that
now don't, but there's actually more service on a lot of routes that didn't pre-pandemic, but there
are also fewer airlines, like Interjet went bankrupt, then just vanished overnight in Mexico. They
were such a small percentage.
Really struggling to think of any airline that would want to spin up a domestic airline, or a
domestic operation within Mexico. Certainly, none of the US airlines, because they legally
cannot right now, since Mexico still has its decreased safety rating from the FAA. The South
American Airlines aren't all that many of them at this point. They're all just these huge
conglomerates, and they don't have much spare capacity to begin with. Interesting thing to keep
our eyes on, to see if, I don't know, Welling or something, or one of the IAG, or Lufthansa Group
airlines wants to start up a local operation in Mexico. That could be mildly interesting.
[0:21:26] IP: Fly Dubai Mexico.
[0:21:28] JR: I mean, Norwegian tried. I think, there was Norwegian Air Argentina for 47
minutes, or something like that?
[0:21:34] IP: I think, they operated no more than a handful of flights.
[0:21:39] JR: It was extremely really short in duration. Given the opportunity, I feel like
Norwegian would’ve jumped all over this back in the day.
[0:21:46] IP: Yeah. I mean, maybe. It's a big market. If you have the capacity, if you have the
pilots, and they allow it, I feel like, somebody could be successful here, if they if they understand
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the market. That's what I think is going to be the real crux of things. Because to operate
domestically in Mexico, they're going to need to be able to have either latch onto somebody
else's brand recognition, or have a big enough brand already, but then be able to come in and
understand the market to make sure that those flights are going to be full, or at least full enough
to make it work. Definitely something to keep an eye on. Whether if this works, does this
become a model elsewhere? I don't foresee that, but might be cool to find out.
[0:22:26] JR: Could be fun.
[0:22:27] IP: Jason, are you supposed to smoke on an aircraft?
[0:22:30] JR: You're not. That's a pretty cut and dry question. No.
[0:22:34] IP: That is not what happened on a recent El Al flight.
[0:22:37] JR: El Al, of all airlines, really?
[0:22:40] IP: Of all airlines.
[0:22:41] JR: Of all airlines. I picked this article out in particular, because I didn't quite like the
ending. Every now and then, you get a really stupid passenger who decides, “I'm going to be an
idiot and smoke in the lavatory.” Then they throw away the cigarette. Of course, it's not fully
extinguished and it starts a fire in the lav. These things happen. Pro tip, this is why airplane
lavaratories have a tiny, tiny, tiny ashtray in the door, or somewhere, because airlines
manufacturers know some idiot is going to try to smoke and they want to give them somewhere
to safely put out that cigarette without starting a fire in the trash can, which is exactly what
happened here.
It happens. But in this case, it started an actual fire. The smoke detector went off. The crew
dealt with it. I was just shocked that the article that we get from the Jerusalem Post claims that
El Al only really gave the passenger a talking to. Basically, a slap on the wrist, not even saying,
“Yeah, don't do it again.” It just strikes me as odd that for El Al, an airline renowned for its
overbearing safety procedures, to the point where I know people who refuse to fly El Al and deal
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with any of that, had a passenger start a fire onboard and just said, “Yeah, what are you going
to do? Don't do it again.” It's just weird. Even in the US, there would be fines and all sorts of
things would happen. If I were an airline and someone started a fire on my aircraft, I would
probably ban that passenger from ever flying with me again. I just found it very odd.
[0:24:05] IP: I don't want to deal with you anymore.
[0:24:06] JR: I don't want to deal with you. You're an idiot. You don't deserve to fly on my airline.
For El Al to only say, “Yeah, don't do it again.” That's really surprising to me. That's all I got.
[0:24:16] IP: Fair enough. Let's take a break there. Now that Jason's worn himself out, let's take
a break. When we come back, we will be joined by Mark Vanhoenacker, who has been on the
program for, but in case you don't know, he is a pilot for a UK-based airline and he flies the 787.
We are going to come back and talk with him about his new book and seeing cities from a pilot's
perspective. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
[CONVERSATION WITH MARK]
[0:24:50] IP: Welcome back. We are now joined by Mark Vanhoenacker, who is a 787 pilot for a
major European airline. He is a former 747 pilot. We've talked with Mark in the past about the
differences between the 747 and the 787 and his previous book, Skyfaring. He's written, Mark,
is it safe to say this is a follow-up? That's how I read it, a continuation on the theme.
[0:25:17] MV: First of all, it's great to be with you guys again.
[0:25:19] JR: Welcome back.
[0:25:20] MV: Thank you. I'm always happy to listen to the podcast. You wouldn't believe how
many cities I listened to it in, probably more than almost anyone I imagine.
[0:25:26] IP: Ooh, that's a contest we should have.
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[0:25:28] MV: You should. I'll take on your listeners in terms of more cities. I think pilots could
probably going to win. Maybe not.
[0:25:33] IP: Maybe not.
[0:25:34] MV: This new book is in some ways a sequel to Skyfaring. If Skyfaring was focused
more on the experience of flight, then Imagine a City is more focused on the destination, on
what happens after we land. There's definitely a healthy dose of av geek Korean as well. I hope
it will appeal on both of those fronts.
[0:25:50] IP: I really enjoyed reading both of them. Both Skyfaring and Imagine a City. While I
was reading Imagine a City, the new book, Skyfaring was much more about being in the air.
There's that one passage in Skyfaring, where you talk about never going outside, but you've
traveled 10,000 miles. Where you go from hotel, to bus, to the front door of the terminal, to the
jet bridge to the aircraft.
[0:26:19] JR: Never quite getting fresh air.
[0:26:21] IP: This takes that and just blows the whole thing up. Because you give us a really
good look about what happens in between those moments, while you're in those other cities. I
really appreciated that about the new book.
[0:26:33] MV: Once we do get to that hotel, especially as long-haul pilots, we tend to go to
sleep for a few hours. Then we wake up and we – most of us will try to go out and see
something of that city that we've flown so far to see. We go to them again and again, and in a
way that I think is really unique. That's really something I wanted to capture in this book is the
pilot’s experience of cities.
[0:26:53] IP: Let's pause for a moment. I know you've got an excerpt queued up for us. I asked
you to read that. Then we'll go from there and chat a little bit more about the book and all things
flight.
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[0:27:05] MV: Sure, sure. In this section of the book, this is from the introduction. I've just gone
to Abu Dhabi, which is a city that the 747 didn't fly to, but the 787 did at the time. I've gone out
with my colleagues to have some food and do some karaoke as air crews tend to do. Then I've
gone back to my hotel room and I'm on a high floor, it's late, I’m still on London time, and I'm not
quite ready to sleep and I'm thinking about writing this book, about writing Imagine a City.
At this desk, I remember that for many years, I've wanted to write about what cities have meant
to me. I want to record my journey from one city, my small hometown, to so many real cities that
are each a 1,000 times more fascinating than anything I imagined as a child. I want to be open
about myself as I write this, even if it's not always easy. I know that's the only way to try it
understand my deep love for the hometown I was one so keen to leave. I have other more
matter of facts, reasons to write this book. Most pilots love their job and tend not to want to retire
when the rules say we must.
When my days and nights of flying are finished, I want to be able to remember all I can about
the cities I saw. In addition, while yours may remain before my retirement, I'd like to share now
what I love best about many of these cities, not only with my family and friends, with readers
who might not travel as often as far, or in as extraordinary a manner as a pilot does.
Extraordinary is the right word.
Long-haul airline pilots today are given an experience of cities that no one else in history has
ever had. Two decades into my career, in an age in which it often seems that the urbanized
future of our civilization is taking form directly before my eyes, my experience of cities as a pilot
remains a source of deep fascination to me, one that's distinct from my love for flight itself.
During a single flight, we may crossing of dozens of cities, most memorably after dark. On some
journeys, the lights of a sleeping and apparently, silent settlement beneath us. One that if it
doesn't have a major airport, we may not be able to name without consulting our navigation
charts. Suggest Coleridge is Ancient Mariner, passing like night from land to land. The fragility
and even the loneliness of what an observer arriving in our orbit might regard as only one more
of the universal strands of bioluminescence.
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Other flights when I see a gathering of dim lights stitched into the far below floor of a Siberian,
or a Nigerian, or Iranian night, I'm struck instead by a sense of warmth, even intimacy, and by
the possibility that I'm looking down on an evening much like the most peaceful ones in my
Pittsfield childhood.
Then we descend. If we just saw a daybreak, the returning light allows us to see how
wilderness, farmland, indisputably steep terrain, or thousands of miles of open ocean give way
to our destination. One of the largest cities in history, perhaps, which is grown through its own
long centuries and which now on this latest of its mornings, and in the last 20 minutes of our
journey expands to fill the jet’s windscreen with a map-like view of its awakening streets.
After we land, we had the opportunity to repeat, or deepen the set of urban experiences that are
again, like those of no one else. Our stays in cities in so many cities are typically short, but
frequent, carefully arranged around our legal responsibility to rest, but also, freedom-giving and
time-bending. As shallow a traveler’s experiences we might sometimes be grateful for, or as
fine-grained as our interests in the length of our downward stay would allow.
The most remarkable effect of visiting cities in this manner, time and time again, year after year
is that each begins to take on a curious sense of familiarity. Indeed, in some cities, this
familiarity is so powerful and deceptive that I struggle to remind myself, “I am not from here.
This city is not mine.” Los Angeles, for example, is a place whose name first captured my
imagination as a child and that I longed to someday see.
After I trained to fly the 747, I began to fly there regularly. Then for a few years, I did not. When I
returned for the first time after the SCAP, I asked myself how many times I'd flown there in total.
15 perhaps? I checked my logbook. It was 39. Now, it's more than 50, which means I've spent
more than three months in the city long enough, that when I'm in LA waiting for a coffee, or
stuck in traffic, it's easy momentarily to imagine that I've always lived there.
Then I fly away. When I meet someone from Los Angeles elsewhere in the world, I maybe
excited to talk to them, in part because I feel that we have their well-named metropolis in
common until I catch myself. That feeling can't be right. I have it about too many cities for it to
be true of any of them.
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Sau Paulo is another city I visited more times than I can count, without consulting my logbook.
I've walked and run many miles in Ibirapuera Park. I spent hours, people watching from the
window seats of cafes and buffet restaurants near Avenida Paulista. I've saved up errands from
home, merely for the adventure of getting the watch strap replaced in a South American
megalopolis. I visited the cathedral, the observation deck of the tower that resembles the
Empire State Building for food market full of fruits and fish that are foreign to me in this
stunningly named railway terminal, SS on the Luz, station of light.
In Sau Paulo indeed, I’ll often find myself overtaking tourists on staircases and crowded
sidewalks, sure footedly and half exasperatedly as I might at home. Then on that same
afternoon, perhaps I leave. And a few days later, I'll catch myself walking like that someplace
else.
[0:31:59] IP: I think that the most interesting thing to me about the book and about being a pilot
is that your journey begins and ends in the exact replica of the place that you've either left, or
going to, by design. I mean, all airports are the ICAO standards. They are exactly the same by
design, so that it becomes this uniform level of safety. People know what to expect. A pilot
operating for the European airline, or an Asian airline, or a South American airline, they can all
agree on the terminology, the visual references, everything.
Yet, once you leave the airport, you get a much different experience compared to what really
anyone and the book really gives us a good look at how you especially have, I think, taken
advantage of that.
[0:32:58] MV: I think, airports are a really interesting example of globalization and global
standards. As you say, everything has to work with everything else. We all speak English, all air
crews speak English, to air traffic controllers are able to speak English. It's a very particular kind
of English, obviously, that's technical and controlled. The baggage trolleys, the baggage carts,
they all have to be able to handle things from – that have come in from all over the world. You
go to the Duty Free shops, and they're all selling – some local stuff. Usually, there's the thing of
M&Ms, whichever one you're in.
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Then eventually, the doors of the terminal open and you walk out into the cities. Of course, they
are as unique as people. They are each their own little world, or a very big world in some cases.
We have the chance to go to them in this way, which is really different from – I used to work in
the business world. You'd fly somewhere and sometimes you'd land and go straight to meetings,
and then you'd have to socialize in the evening with clients, or colleagues, then you might fly
somewhere else.
Of course, I like to travel places as a regular tourist as well. Many tourists when you go to a city,
especially one that's on a long-haul flight, you might think that's the only time you'll ever be in
that place. That's a pretty reasonable assumption if you go to Sydney, or Rio, or somewhere,
that might be the trip of a lifetime and you want to do everything you can. You want to see as
much of it as you can. You want to see those postcard sites that you've seen. You want to see
all the famous things that you dreamed of, that drew you there. For us as pilots and as cabin
crew, when we go to a city, we know we're going to go there again and again. It makes us able
to really have a very relaxed and ongoing relationship with the city.
I remember the first time I went to Beijing, some of my colleagues were going up to the Great
Wall, the segment that's nearest to the city. I've never been to China before. I've never been to
Beijing. I've never been to the Great Wall. I already knew that a few weeks later, I'd be coming
back to Beijing. I thought, I'll do the Great Wall that time, the next time and this time, my first day
in the city, I'm just going to walk. I'll walk till I get tired, then I'll get on the metro and go
somewhere just randomly, and then I'll get a coffee and find my way back.
That ease in a city is really very special thing about working for an airline. I think, it's really
underappreciated. It's something I really wanted to capture in Imagine a City, this sense that we
get to know the entire urban planet, both as a whole, but also in these incredibly individualistic
places.
[0:35:29] IP: What are some of your favorite cities to go to, from visiting the actual city
perspective, outside of being a pilot?
[0:35:37] MV: Tokyo has a really important role in this book. That's for a couple reasons. I went
to Japan in high school for a summer homestay. We didn't stay in Tokyo very long. We had just
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a few days there before we went to the city that we stayed in. We did have these days in Tokyo.
It was the first time I'd been to any city outside of Western Europe, or the US. I just couldn't
believe the size of it and the complexity of its transport map. I didn't appreciate that it was not
only the largest city in the world, but the largest city to have ever existed. It's 37 million people
or something. It's basically Spain in one city.
Then I went back to Tokyo when I worked in the business world. Then I didn't go for a few years,
until I became a pilot and then switched to long-haul, flying. Then the next time I went there was
a in the cockpit of a 747, landing in Narita. That was obviously a very special experience. The
city, which has many attractions and has endless opportunities for exploration, also has that
personal resonance.
One of the ways that it fits into the book, and I know, Jason, I know your transport geekery
doesn't stop at airplanes. You'll know all about the Yamanote line, which is that circle line that
goes around the center of Tokyo. It's a transport line, like no other –
[0:36:51] JR: Busiest in the world.
[0:36:53] MV: Yeah, it is. Yeah, for a while when it was last measured, six of the 10 busiest train
stations in the world are on this line, which is just extraordinary. A train comes at rush hour. I
think, every rush hour, there's 50 trains on operation. They basically leave a station in one
direction, or another every minute. More people ride that line than ride the entire London
Underground system in a day. It's a great way to explore the city. It's a great way to geek out if
you're interested in transport and trains. It’s a marvel efficiency. Then of course, wherever you
stop along it, you can get out and see a totally different section of the city.
Tokyo is famous for having – not having one center, but for having many, many centers as a city
that big must, I think. The endlessness of Tokyo is symbolized by this line that also simplifies it,
because you can look at the map, where whichever transport map you look at, you can see the
Yamanote line, that green circle in the middle. It really helps you orient yourself and appreciate
what a marvelous metropolis that is.
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[0:37:49] JR: Yeah, Tokyo definitely is one of those cities where you can go anywhere and be
anywhere and find something to do. It's also overwhelmingly complex. I mean, just literally, just
yesterday, by chance, I was looking at Apple Maps and Google Maps, the transport network in
Tokyo. It is wildly confusing, but also just somehow works, doesn't it?
[0:38:10] MV: It does. The way that maps are designed there, they're really designed to have
quite a different aesthetic. If you compare that iconic London Underground map, which is just so
focused on simplicity, and very rigid design formats. Maybe the Tokyo system is too complicated
for that kind of a map, or maybe it's just a different preference for it. It is an unbelievable city.
Now, of course, we fly to Haneda, which was a new thing for me on the 787. It was a different
airport. In all my times there previously, we'd stayed in Narita, and then getting into Tokyo itself
from Narita is –
[0:38:43] JR: It takes a minute.
[0:38:44] MV: It takes a minute. It takes a minute. Yeah, I'm happy to have a chance to see
different parts of the city, those that are closest to Haneda and to Yokohama, which is where we
were staying as crew.
[0:38:53] JR: When you're traveling in all these cities, you must find yourself with some
downtime after you've been there one, two, three, four, 10, 15, 20 times. Are there things you
like to do frequently in cities you visit? Like, I know our friend, Steve Giordano of Nomadic
Aviation picked up golf in countries that he visits and he actually brings his golf bags. You
probably can't do that on your aircraft. But is there anything you like to try to do in a lot of your
different cities?
[0:39:19] MV: One of the things that Imagine a City shows about my own career, but also
suggests about my colleagues is that whatever it is you love as a pilot, or as a cabin crew
member, you'll have the whole world of it. We all love flying. But even if you didn't, it'd be a
pretty good job to encounter whatever it is you do love. If you're into golf, you'll play all around
the world. If you're into opera, or art, you will experience more of those things than anyone else
really, unless you're a professional travel writer, or something.
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For me, I always had this tension which maybe you guys will know yourselves from the city
that's – from the cities that you know the best, between doing something I already know I love
and then doing something new. That is a tough thing. Generally, I try to combine the two. I’ll go
to just start my day in a city, at a cafe that I know and love. I've got, for the writing side of my life,
I usually have some emails to attend to, or something to edit. Then I really like to walk and I try
to just explore as best I can on foot, until I get tired, and then I hop on a train, or a bus.
I find local buses, actually, are a great way to experience cities. I know it’s best in London. When
we have people visiting, we often will take them on a local bus, rather than on the tube, because
it's much longer, but it's a great way to see the city and to see how it's grown together. I mean,
in London, for example, is like a collection of villages that were in some ways that grew together
into a metropolis. The same with that LA did in a different age and with faster transport in terms
of cars, rather than horses.
That tension between something you already know you love and something new is something
that comes and goes. Of course, there's some days when I don't leave the hotel, and it's raining,
and I'm not in the mood, or I've got an article to finish, or something. Most of the time, I try to get
up and go.
[0:41:00] IP: Before we let you go, I want to ask you about things that you don't like. Are there
any cities that you don't like flying to, either you don't like the airport, or you don't like the city,
where you're like – I mean, I'm from Chicago, so I love Chicago, but I hate flying into O'Hare, or
vice versa, something like that?
[0:41:18] MV: That's a good question. Pilots and aircrew in general will have different tastes in
terms of what we want out of a city. If you're in the middle of an English winter, then the idea of
going to, not just Cape Town, but the summer in Cape Town. If I fly in to a different atmosphere,
that's something that a lot of people love. I actually really like winter. Snow forms a part of a
chapter in the book, who I'm talking about my hometown, which is quite a snowy town, and also,
some cities like Sapporo and Montreal that are famous for their snowiness.
I end up betting for Montreal, or Calgary in the middle of winter. Some of my colleagues
probably think I'm out of my mind, as they're packing their golf bags to go to Johannesburg. I
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mean, I guess, in terms of airports themselves, there is a lot of paperwork and walking and time
between when we are in the cockpit, we parked and we've shut down the engines and done all
our cockpit paperwork, and when we actually get on a bus, which is taking us to the hotel. That
just depends – that time really depends on the size of the airport and how busy it is.
Sometimes we fly to an airport, where we're the only international flight that's landed at that
time, where we're one of the only international flights at all. We can be from the door of the jet to
the door of the bus in 15 minutes. Other airports, they're just much bigger. They're much busier.
That can end up being an hour, or an hour and a half sometimes. Trying to think of some of the
quickest ones. When we go to the Seychelles, for example. I mean we're the only plane in the
sky sometimes and we land and everyone you see in the baggage hall, or in the immigration
hall, literally everything you see is it was one of your passengers. We all go through together,
and then we all make our way out onto the islands.
Yeah. Other bigger airports are always more complicated. I really like LA's new international
terminal, or renovated international terminal. I think, as you go down the stairs of the main
escalators, they've got that cool, gigantic screen you walk under. Whenever I see that, I'm like,
“Hey, I'm in LA. Here we are.”
[0:43:19] IP: Yeah, it's a very, I don't want to call it iconic, because it's not quite there yet, but it's
getting to the point where you're like, “Yes, I have a fundamental understanding that this is
where I am.” It's very noticeable and marker of place. A lot of airports don't have that, where you
land and you're like, “I'm in an airport.”
[0:43:38] MV: Yeah. Especially if you've had a window seat, or even better, a cockpit seat for
the flight into LA, which is just such an iconic arrival. I mean, you guys will know this as well as
me, but it's just an amazing place to fly into, especially at night. There's a short section in Metro
City where I quote Eleanor Roosevelt, who was flying there in the 1940s, maybe 1946 or
something. I think she had a relative in Pasadena. She's remarking on how amazing the lights
of LA are. That was 80 years ago. Imagine what she'd say now.
[0:44:07] IP: Yeah.
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[0:44:07] JR: A little bit more sprawl.
[0:44:08] MV: A little bit more sprawl and a lot more light.
[0:44:11] IP: Yeah. Mark, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us and
share a little bit of your book with us. The book is called Imagine a City. It is on bookshelves,
Internet places, and all sorts of other areas, stores, etc., where you can get books in the US and
in the UK. We're still waiting on the South Korean version of this particular book, yes?
[0:44:33] MV: Yeah, fingers crossed. There is going to be a Japanese one, which means a
great deal to me, because as I was saying, Japan is such a big part of the book and of my own
life, so I'm really looking forward to seeing that as well.
[0:44:43] IP: You can also find Mark’s writing in a variety of publications, especially the
Financial Times. If you are lucky enough to be flying on a major European airline aboard a 787,
he might even be your pilot. Mark Vanhoenacker, thank you so much for joining us.
[0:44:58] MV: Thanks so much, guys. Look forward to seeing you onboard.
[END OF CONVERSATION WITH MARK]
[0:45:07] IP: Welcome back.
[0:45:08] JR: I want to go to Japan. Oh.
[0:45:10] IP: Yeah, I just want to go, well, really anywhere. I was thinking about when Mark was
talking about knowing that he's going back to a place, I've started thinking about Stockholm in
that way. Because I mean, we've been going for – I've been going for, I think this will be my
ninth year back and 8th year back. You've been going almost as long and often, we've been
going together for the December trip. Coming up with new things to do, it's like, well, what do
you want to do? Because we've done the touristy, all the touristy stuff. It's like, what's next?
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[0:45:45] JR: Yeah. What do you do? I legitimately had that thought process last year, because
I arrived the day before you, or eight hours before you, at some stupid hour, like 5 a.m. and
have to wait for Stockholm to wake up before I could do anything. I legitimately thought to
myself, “Well, I have nothing to do. I've done the thing. I've done this. I've done that. I should
just get on a train and go somewhere and kill eight hours just by riding on a train.” I didn't do it,
because I did find some other things to do. Next time, I don't know. Might just do that.
[0:46:15] IP: There you go. Tell me about the night drone.
[0:46:20] JR: The night drone. I got in an unsolicited PR pitch from a company called Pyka, I
guess. I very nearly deleted it without opening it as I typically do. I did open it. I'm glad I did.
Because they are the maker of a fully autonomous electric agricultural aerial application aircraft,
which is a lot of fancy words to say crop duster. They say, they have secured the first regulatory
approval to fly an uncrude aerial spray mission with a fixed wing aircraft at night. At least in
Costa Rica, at least.
They say that they are operating over banana plantations in Costa Rica and flying at night is
better, for better spray distribution as there are lower winds at night. It also gives them an
increased viable spray window. Doubles it actually from five to 10 hours. That's nice. Also,
there's a video of obviously, when they're crop dusting, they do that at a very, very low altitude.
That's something humans probably shouldn't be doing at night, because you need to see things
and not crash into them. An autonomous drone probably has the area all mapped out with
LIDAR and all that, so it doesn't have that problem.
I just found this was a really neat application of autonomous aviation to actually benefit
something, rather than a single seat eVTOL autonomous aircraft to get you to LAX, or whatever
nonsense. This actually serves a real helpful, useful purpose. Some people might not like that.
It's crop dusting, and it sprays chemicals all over plants and all that stuff. At least this,
theoretically, is a societal positive, rather than just, I don't know nonsense peddled by PR
companies about getting to an airport from the Grand Canyon, or something like that. I just
found this interesting.
[0:48:12] IP: What are the chances of us talking about crop dusters two weeks in a row?
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[0:48:17] JR: Wait. We did?
[0:48:19] IP: The Cuban pilot.
[0:48:20] JR: Oh, that's right. That was a crop duster. This one is autonomous. You probably
can't flee the country on it, because it doesn't have a seat, or a cabin.
[0:48:28] IP: Fair enough.
[0:48:29] JR: Or you can cling to the outside. I don't know. I don't know. I thought this was cool.
[0:48:32] IP: All right. Let's close the show with good old-fashioned talk about unions, and then
a couple of incidents that have happened over the past week. United pilots have voted down the
tentative contract that union leadership had agreed to. The Airline Pilots Association now is
saying, the tentative agreement fell short of the – I'm quoting them now. “Fell short of the
industry leading contract United pilots have earned and deserve after leading the airline through
the pandemic and back to profitability.” As it turns out, Delta's pilots feel exactly the same way,
because they have also voted to authorize a strike as part of their negotiations with the airline.
[0:49:11] JR: That does not mean a strike is imminent, or anything.
[0:49:13] IP: Correct. It does not mean a strike is imminent, nor does it mean for Delta's
purposes in this respect, that Thanksgiving travel will be interrupted. It just means that the union
has voted to authorize the ability to go on strike. Delta's pilots voted on Monday to authorize a
strike in order to, they say, put forth the seriousness of their position. Quoting the, I love union
titles. It's one of my favorite things in the world.
Captain Jason Ambrosi, the Chair of the Delta Master Executive Council, which is one of the
heads of the pilots union says, “Today, Delta's nearly 15,000 pilots sent a clear message to
management that we are willing to go the distance to secure a contract that reflects the value
we bring to Delta Airlines as frontline leaders and long-term stakeholders.” Delta and United
pilots are basically both saying, “Hey, we stuck it out. We got through the pandemic. Now, we
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need a contract that reflects all of the work we put in to make sure that the airline didn't stop
being an airline.”
[0:50:19] JR: Yeah. They've got good luck to stand on now that both of these airlines, I believe,
are raking in record-breaking revenue post-pandemic, or whatever it is we're in now. That's a
real nice bargaining chip.
[0:50:31] IP: Yeah. No strikes are imminent. It is a strike authorization vote intended to send the
message, “Hey, let's buckle down and get on with this and get a contract.” The flipside of all of
that, Lufthansa has reached an agreement with its cabin crew. That squares them away, at least
to the end of next year. There will be no Lufthansa flight cancellations, because of cabin crew
strikes at least through 2023.
[0:50:57] JR: Yeah. Don't forget about the flight crew, or the baggage handlers, or the fuelers at
Frankfurt. Still, lots can go wrong, but at least that's one check mark.
[0:51:07] IP: Taken one piece of the puzzle away is fine by me.
[0:51:10] JR: That’s nice.
[0:51:11] IP: All right, so here's an interesting one. By interesting, I mean, frankly terrified. A
Viva A320neo was flying from Cali to Riohacha. The weather was bad. They tried to divert to
Medellin. The weather was bad, and so they went to Monteria. They landed fine, they taxi to the
gate, they parked the aircraft. At the beginning of flight, the aircraft had a 180 minutes of fuel for
the 80-minute flight. Plenty of fuel, and they were ready to go. By the time they landed and
parked the aircraft, they had about 200 kilograms of fuel left.
[0:52:00] JR: That is not a lot. That's about the combined weight of two and a half people.
[0:52:09] IP: A little bit more than that, I think.
[0:52:10] JR: Is it? I don't think it is. 200kg to pounds is like, 440 pounds. If we’re talking about
Americans, it's two and a half people.
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[0:52:24] IP: Fair enough. All right. not a lot of fuel left. They landed safely. The Colombian
authorities released a preliminary report. We'll link to that in the show notes. They are
investigating this –
[0:52:34] JR: Good thing it was a neo.
[0:52:35] IP: - as a serious incident.
[0:52:37] JR: That's something, right?
[0:52:38] IP: That's a good thing there. Then this happened today. A Ural Airlines flight landed,
apparently, with locked brakes on the main gear.
[0:52:49] JR: The information that came across his Twitter said, the brakes were locked up,
which is interesting, because how would – I don't know. That's a very odd thing. Peter Lemi on
Twitter stated there's no procedure, I guess in the QRC, or the manual about what you do if the
brakes are locked up, or what the landing procedures are, because it's not something that I
guess, really happens often. We did some research. We found, this has actually happened
before. We don't know why this particular incident occurred, but there's a bulletin from the AAIB
way back in September of 2007 in Leeds, well, that's the second mention of Leeds today. That’s
interesting.
Basically, an A319 operated by – you know what? I don't think it actually says. An A319
operated by an airline, the pilots meant to deploy the flaps to the full position, but the pilot
accidentally somehow engaged the parking brakes of the aircraft, which is mind blowing, and
that they're very, very different switches. Very, very different mechanisms. One's a pole, and
pushed down and the other is a twisting mechanism. That’s very odd. The pilots didn't realize
that this happened, and neither of them noticed this, the parking brake display on the e-cam. A
lot of mistakes were made there. I would imagine, the same thing happened here. I guess, we
will wait to see if and when a report is ever published, because these days in that region, who
knows if the levers –
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[0:54:17] IP: Two things. Two things. One, it was BMI. The A319 was BMI.
[0:54:23] JR: Ah, rest in peace.
[0:54:26] IP: There you go. Then the second thing is there's already preliminary reporting from
the Ural flight.
[0:54:32] JR: Really? That was quick.
[0:54:33] IP: Yeah. The pilots of the Ural Airlines and I'm quoting Accident Investigation
Authorities on aviation safety network’s database, they're quoting the aviation authorities in
Russia. The pilots of the Ural Airlines Airbus A320 reported the experience a critical brake failure
in an altitude of 500 meters, when the parking brake spontaneously applied on the aircraft. The
alarm was triggered, the wheels remained locked for landing. It sounds like the same thing
happened, but it's spontaneously or not, will be the interesting thing there.
[0:55:04] JR: Interesting, indeed. I can't say, parking brakes spontaneously activating is
something anyone is really heard of happening much in the past, but we'll let the investigation
do its thing.
[0:55:14] IP: There you go. That's all we've got for episode 188. I want to thank everyone for
making it through the sound of my voice today. I hope you've enjoyed my dulcet tones. I hope
you enjoyed our conversation with Mark Vanhoenacker. I hope that you'll look forward to a
conversation with Jon Ostrowwe next week, where we're really going to dive into Boeing's
investor day. For the first time in a few years, get an idea of what that company is all about.
What they're planning on doing over the next few years, and how they're going to get to the
point where they're going to build a new airplane. I'm looking forward to that conversation with
Jon.
If you have questions about that, please, please email us, podcast@fr24.com. Put Boeing
questions, or something in the subject line, so we can look out for that. Send us your questions,
anything you may have about Boeing and its future, and we'll be sure to ask Jon about that next
week. In the meantime, why not leave a rating, or review the podcast? Say, “Ian should talk like
© 2022 AvTalk 29
AVT 188 Transcript
this all the time. Or, Jason should learn to talk like this.” Or, I don't know. Just let us know what
you think of the podcast. Importantly, let your friends know, because the more people that share
that this podcast exists, the more we can keep doing this podcast, and we really like doing it.
For episode 188 of AvTalk, I am Ian Petchenik, here, as always with –
[0:56:37] JR: Jason Rabinowitz. Thanks for listening.
[END]
© 2022 AvTalk 30