Captain Sherry Walker Reveals the Real Reason for All These Plane Crashes

So you've been flying for a living since 1991.

So that's almost 35 years, which is amazing.

For the rest of us, we're about the same age. It seems like commercial air travel in the United States has declined in like at a shocking rate.
It's just much worse. A lot of things have gotten better.
We have the internet and iPhones. why is commercial air travel in this country and not around the world but in this country

specifically like much worse than it was?

What is that? Well, I think legitimately there's been a corporate change in this country.

ESG started to take over.

You've got the Larry Finks of the world that are driving corporations or CEOs toward issues that not necessarily are customer oriented.

OESG doesn't help the customer? Well, not the internal customer anyway. So as we go through this process, this slow creep, those need to set an investment score, people with differing ideas of customer service and what's important are able to drive forward their message.
So we get away from customer service. Airlines run on three things, right? They run on fuel, planes, and people.
When we start taking the people out of the mix, right? Because it's all about buy more airplanes. It's about driving that score so we can drive the share prices so that we can then get the lower financing rate to get airplanes.
We go away from that time when a Gordon Bethune or a Herb Kelleher said, you take care of your internal people. They'll take care of your customer.
So everything's bottom line now, Tucker. And yet ESG is not really, like, strictly speaking, bottom line.
It pleases Larry Fink, who's probably done more than any person to really hurt this country, but sidebar. But, you know, for your average customer, you're like, well, you get the feeling that incompetent people are in air traffic control,

incompetent people are in the cockpit.

I don't know if that's true or not, but it shakes people's faith, scares the crap out of people,

and then planes start crashing, and you're like, that's why.

That seems like against the core interests of the business.

I would agree, but because people at the corporate level want to drive the interest rates down to be able to grow because it's all about expanding, who is the biggest, right? And so they have to follow some of those mandates. Yes.
And so then we start looking at a particular CEO who said in 21, 50% of my incoming pilots will be women or people of color. First of all, that number is impossible.
They don't exist. But when you take merit out of it and you start hiring people based on an attribute that has nothing to do with flying airplanes or controlling them, you start moving down a path of incompetence and it breeds itself all the way down throughout every department in the airline.
Nicely put. I should note the obvious, which is that you are a woman and you started flying you said commercially in 1991 the year I left college so there can't have been too many female pilots flying commercially in 1991.
The original 21 female airline pilots broke the glass ceiling. I didn't break it, but it kind of crawled through because of them.
And, you know, on we go. But in all of my career, I've always been one of the guys.
I'm an airman. I'm proud to be an airman.
You can't call me an airperson. I've earned it because I've done exactly what everyone else has done.
And so when a passenger comes on and they look in the cockpit now today, they look a little sideways that there's a woman up here. And especially if I might be sitting next to a Hispanic or an African-American, they're wondering how we got our jobs.
Yes, that is absolutely right. So DEI hurts those that weren't a product of it as well.
And that's unfair to me and to my coworkers. So have you noticed this internally? You said a CEO of an airline announced four years ago that we're going to hire 50% female or non-white pilots.
But do you feel that as a pilot? Do you notice the standards changing? I don't know that I noticed the standard changing, but I know what's expected of me has changed.

Quarterly, we have a computer-based training, and it was kind of insidious the way they crept it in here. First, it's a little, don't discriminate against people.
The next thing is a little more. At my airline last year, I was asked in the DEI training to certify that Tom says, who is now Kathy, that he's a woman.
Therefore, he's always been a woman. Now, wait a minute.
I'm a faithful person. He's a dude in a dress.
And I am not going to agree that I will believe that he's always been a woman. So I said no.

Several people said no.

We had to apply for religious accommodations.

And then we were asked to do what we always do, which is just treat people with dignity and respect.

I've done that forever.

You know, I don't care who you love, right?

But I do.

I will always treat you with dignity and respect.

But only because of the pushback.

Now, this year's training, they've dialed it back.

But they're trying to creep things in that don't matter, Tucker.

What matters is how to fly an approach.

Do you know the regulations?

Are you safe?

Right?

This other stuff is distracting.

And it's distracting at the FAA as well.

So how, has anyone explained why it's relevant, the of a pilot no i have no idea so it started with like we have you know you're probably racist we have to make you non-racist and then it goes from there to it's really important the skin color of a pilot is really important somehow but no one ever says why no or or you know whether they wear a dress or pants, in my case. So in the US, 96.4% of all pilots are male.
So there's like less than 4% female airline transport pilots. We can do everything, and I'm an advocate for doing everything we can to get people interested in the job.
But Tucker, there are some people who just don't need to be doing the job either. And you can't fit a square peg in a round hole.
I can teach anyone to fly, sure. But there's some that I would not want to fly in my family.
Have you seen those people? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Give me an example. One of my first students, female, I tried to teach her how to fly.
She could fly, but she just couldn't put it back together. You know, when you go around, it's pushed the power up, and it was dainty.
It was just some skill sets that they just don't have, an aggression and, you know, a willingness to get out there and learn it. To manhandle the machine, right? Yeah, you have to be in control, especially at a Cessna, right? You know, it's not like my autothrottle Big 767 autopilot et cetera.
But the bigger problem we're having today is because it's a lucrative career, a lot of people want, they've been talked into getting involved. And so they see the money.
They might not be quite fit for it. I'm also a college professor.
I teach human factors for Indiana Wesleyan. So I deal with a lot of the undergraduates and the people coming up.
People quit their jobs midlife. I'm going to chase the money.
I don't realize what they're doing. And it's a different generation.
And my son is of that generation. So I don't want to speak badly of them, but the priorities are different.
And so to get them to understand the commitment that it takes to succeed in this career and to get all the way through it.

And then to have them, you know, it's kind of entitlement, if I can say that, you know,

and they grow up.

And I don't want people to think I'm saying, you know, I walked a mile in the snow to school,

therefore you're not qualified, right?

But airplane technology has changed.

We learned to manhandle those Cessna 172s.

And from that, we learned how to manhandle the next biggest airplane. These kids are growing up in glass cockpits with computers.
They're learning to fly with their fingers. When they get to the airlines, it's not an aviator that's coming there, it's an operator.
And so when they take off, put the autopilot on, fly the autopilot with auto throttles to landing. Ask Al Haynes in Sioux City, Iowa, how to fly an airplane without an autopilot.
He saved a lot of lives. That skill is not there.
And it takes time to build that skill. We could even take those young 1500 hours and we're doing it, but it takes a long time to mentor.
So we've got pilots now that are coming in at minimum skills, having learned on glass cockpits, and in a year upgrading to captain. I had 12 years of watching the good and the bad of the airline world, and I took the good from them, and I left the bad behind.
And I think I'm a pretty decent captain now. But those kids are jumping so fast.
And then they're running the unions because they're young and they're eager. And so us old people are saying, hey, you know what? We're at a critical moment where we don't have qualified pilots.
We'd like to keep them a little longer. We'd be willing to work an extra couple of years, but they vote and they say, no, get out of my seat, old man or old woman.
Excuse me. They don't want to raise the pilot age.
So the Airline Pilots Association is complicit in the problem. It feels like everything is fine until there's a problem.
So you read about, even now, you read about planes stalling. You know, something happens and the plane just falls out of the sky.
And I've read a number of times of trained pilots who, you know, apply the throttle and point upwards as it's stalling, which I don't think is the right. I think it's the opposite of what you're supposed to do.
But they panic under pressure. So that seems like a huge problem if you're not screening carefully for temperament, ability to think clearly under duress.
and you're not allowing people to accumulate relevant experience before turning over the cockpit to them, no? I would agree. Like, describe, if you don't mind, since you've flown for so long, a scenario where something goes wrong unexpectedly and you have to think independently from the autopilot.
Well, the most dangerous part of your flight, most people don't know it, is takeoff in a jet. Yeah.
Right? Why? Why is it most dangerous? As we get to the end of the runway at critical speed, V1, we call it, V1, liftoff, the airplane is at full power and you have an engine failure. Now you have asymmetrical thrust.
And so it's very critical to lower the nose, do the proper steps. And a lot of times there's critical terrain.
So we have a path we have to fly. And a lot of things are happening very quickly.
And so doing it by the book, it's what we train for over and over and over again. Losing an engine on takeoff.
It is the most critical point of your entire flight. And so that's what we train for.
That's what they pay me for. Yeah.
They don't pay me for the simple stuff, the landings and cruise at altitude and all that. They pay me for that V1 cut.
Really? V1 cut? Yes. Right at the speed, we call it V1, velocity one.
So at that critical speed is when we V1, rotate the airplane off the runway, engine failure, asymmetrical thrust, kicks in a whole bunch of rudder in a 7.6.

It takes a lot.

You know, you stand on it, get it straight and fly it up to roughly 800 feet, lower the nose, work the checklist.

And it's a two-man job.

That's a critical reason we can't go to single pilot.

How is it a two-man job?

Because somebody's got to read the checklist and somebody's got to fly the airplane. I can't fly that airplane looking down at that checklist.
I mean, that does happen, right? Mm-hmm. And everyone we've had that I can remember has been extremely successful.
Really? Mm-hmm. So people survived them all? People survived.
The last actual death in the U.S. transport category outside of the commuters, 2005, Southwest, and it actually wasn't on board the plane.
It was at the gas station across the street at Midway. So we have an incredible safety record.
But we have that safety record because of the people up front, right? The system's kind of working against us, though. I don't know if you've seen the preliminary results of the DCA midair.
No. We have a serious problem.
So, describe what you think happened there. It's not what I think happened.
So, DCA, the plane that hit the helicopter over the Potomac. Right, the helicopter that hit the airplane over the Potomac.
DCA being the in-town airport in Washington. Sorry, I shouldn't speak in language.
Washington, Reagan, National. Thank you.
I know what I know from watching the NTSB press conference. Yes.
The chairwoman was speaking. She explained several things.
It's only preliminary. No blame was assigned at this point.
I have my personal belief on blame. But the design of the system failed those passengers, okay?

The way that route through there was designed, they looked back for 11 years, 945 plus thousand potential incursions in 11 years.

My teeth hit the floor.

I mean, I thought we had air traffic control to prevent that. We do, but the problem she detailed is

the design of the system.

That approach, if

the helicopter is in the right place,

the perfect ideal place,

the clearance between the approaching

aircraft and the helicopter

at one point is as low as 75

feet.

Come on! Watch her debrief. I was astounded.
The rotor blades on that helicopter are like 30 feet radius. Holy cow.
And now we know the helicopter was outside of the ideal place. And obviously, 75 feet, Tucker, when I pre-flight an airplane, between my first officer and myself, the regulation says they have to be within 75 feet.
So right there, we've taken out the protection. What in the world was the FAA doing? And this is in the nation's capital.
And these are military helicopters and commercial aircraft. All eyes are on that airport.
That airport has all kinds of restrictions on it after 9-11. You know better than anybody, you know, no private aviation, all this stuff.
They really pay a lot of attention. It's like 10 seconds from the White House.
So if they're that sloppy at DCA of all airports, what the hell are they doing in Santa Monica or wherever? You know, Wichita or, you know, BOMA. Yeah.
Who knows? Who knows? Where does the data go? The problem is the FAA's two-fold master, right? A regulatory body and a promotion of the industry. So...
I'm sorry, I don't know what that means, promotion of the industry. The charge to the FAA is to promote air travel in the United States and to regulate it.
That's been their mandate from the beginning. Really? Yes.
So they're the policeman and the PR agent? I guess, because how did Boeing get the right to self-certify the MAX? What does it mean, self-certify the MAX? So an inspector didn't have to go look at the 737 Max. Boeing had the right to certify itself.
That's been pulled back. Everything that happens in aviation, every regulation happens as the result of blood.
Right? And so nobody's being proactive in this agency. Now I love I love Secretary Duffy and I love his attitude and it looks like the new nominee for the FAA administrator is great.
But the question is the next level bureaucrats. These are people who have, for their entire careers, be it at, and a lot came from the military, they like sitting behind green government desks and drinking green government, or excuse me, drinking government coffee.
And so, you know, to like have to get up and go over there and look at those reports or do something with them, that's got to change. So last year I get home, there are all these boxes in the kitchen.
I wonder what these are. I open up one and they are tortilla chips made by a company I'd never heard of called Masa.
Masa chips are not like other tortilla chips in that they are all natural. There are only three ingredients in the chips and there are no seed oils whatsoever my wife had ordered these because she's a healthy person and so i immediately hit them hard and they're delicious and not only they're delicious they don't make you feel bad you hit any kind of chip on the market in the united states eat a whole bag of them for example and man you do not feel good i'm not gonna get more specific but you just it's like the United States, eat a whole bag of them, for example, and man, you do

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There's nothing weird in there. There are no weird chemicals.
Once again, there are no seed oils, just three simple ingredients. And so I thought, well, this is a pretty amazing company making a snack food that's not gonna kill you and you don't feel bad about it.
It's like basically what your grandparents ate. So we reached out to Masa and said, hey, if you ever do advertising, we'd love to advertise them because we love the chips.
And they said, sure. And so that's what we're doing right now.
We're telling the truth about something that we eat and love and we think is great and recommend it strongly on the basis of more personal experience than I want to admit in public. But they're really, really good.
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We do too. So here's what we know.
Just to go back to the DCA crash for a minute because it's... And all I know is what she said in her press conference.
It is, it was astounding. Why don't we know who was flying the helicopter? I'm sure they do based on, I mean, the voices.
One was a female, one was a male, right? So the flying pilot is never the talking pilot. So just listening to the tapes, you could tell if it's a female voice, then the male was flying.
If it was a male voice, the female's flying. So I don't know.
Why the hesitance to assign blame? All these people died? Oh, no, no. It's not hesitance to assign blame.
This is the initial, right? This is just the fact piece. It takes up to a year.
They go through all the flight data. We don't know if she was off her location because of a mechanical failure, right? You know, we all want the answers to why, but

we, in the industry, want the fix.

Of course. So, were

the altimeters off? Was

it a training issue? Was somebody in the wrong

place? Was it air traffic control,

etc.? So, we've got to go through

all of that, and they'll recreate

it, superimpose it, and fly it in a

simulator, and check all these different

pieces and parameters, and then they'll start looking at blame planes but your point is the structure itself was reckless and crazy the system was broken and it should have never happened there was a plane in i know you saw this in canada i think in toronto at pearson um that came in really really hard on landing and flipped over remarkably everyone survivedably, everyone survived. Great job by the flight attendants.
I guess that's my point. Wherever you get to the stage where you're relying on the flight attendants.
To save you. Yeah.
But that's what they're trained to do. So that was actually perfect.
And God bless them. Of course.
But like, how did we get to the point where, like, how did it flip over? How do you flip over a plane on a runway? I don't understand that. They haven't given out the preliminary.
I have my personal opinion. It's only opinion.
Of course. And you're obviously.
We know the female was flying, right? Because of the radio calls. I'm a human factors expert.
Part of that involves vision. So I'm thinking that they were coming down.
And you've seen the snow kind of swirl across the road a little bit. Yes, for sure.
I think she was looking at the point and she was ready to transition her eyes and land and she got a swirl. I think she lost a little bit of SA, situational awareness with the runway.
That's what I think. Because she flew it right into the runway.
Hard. So that was the core problem.
She hit too hard. She hit too hard.
And it collapsed. It broke the gear.
And one wing went up. High wing is flying.
Low wing is not. And it flipped right over.
Damn. Remarkable.
Some people think it is involving, you know, a gust, a last minute shear. But I don't see the ailerons moving on the wings to counteract that.
So I still think it has something to do with just a little bit of situational awareness. At the end, we'll know.
We'll know in 30 days. So if you're moving people through the process at accelerated speed, both for ideological reasons and for practical reasons.
Right, you've got to fill the seats. Yeah.
And you're hiring on the basis of irrelevant criteria, then inevitably you're going to get a reduced skill level. Like, how could you not? Especially when the pilots are more worried about their rock videos and they're part of a clique if you've seen it.
The girls at Endeavor embarrassed me. I missed this.
You didn't see the video. No, but I could tell I'll be a part of it.
Yeah, there was some promo video done by a bunch of young ladies and they were talking about all-f know all female crew and i think it was a recruiting video but it was embarrassing to those of us who worked hard what airline was this that was the airline endeavor i think it was the one that flipped in toronto oh seriously seriously it was all over and they put out a tiktok but it was before that girl power tiktok girl power t came out. And of course, it broke the internet after the accident.
And so I want to fly with professional adults, not children. And that was kind of embarrassing.
Have you personally ever flown with someone who you thought wasn't quite up to the job? Yeah. Oh, wow.
Oh, yeah. How can you tell? You can tell if their head's in the game.
I had one young man who had a broken heart. We solved that problem.
I had him replaced on the next trip. He was a little distracted.
Some guys kind of all over the place with a stick. It's interesting to watch your military single seat guys transition to transport category.
Because they want to do this, you know. But they settled down.
Most recently, and the most scary one I've had, I was flying. And I was flying a visual approach into Houston, and we're at 1,500 feet, runways in sight, we're all set.
And he'd watched me fly for a little bit, and he says, can I ask a question? Of course, it's a sterile cockpit, you're not supposed to, but I go, yeah. He goes, what are you looking at when you fly a visual approach i was astounded the ground i said when we get on the ground we'll talk about this no you're cross-checking your instruments you're double checking the ils there's some outside light indicators there's all the inside outside that to aviate an airplane right and you're checking your speed.
And he really didn't understand. And I said, why do you not understand? He said, because in the simulator, they told me, fly the autopilot to 50 feet, click it off, look up and land.
I almost fell over. And I've talked to a lot of people about this and I don't really think that that's what they were training training.
I think what they were trying to train was how to do a visual approach in a simulator that doesn't allow it.

They just need to check the block.

So you'll learn this out on the line.

This is how we're going to teach you to fly the simulator only.

But he understood that to be how you would operate in an airplane.

So the disconnect is there because the experience level wasn't there.

So if I have a pilot approaching me saying, what are you looking at when you land an airplane? That's a problem. So I think for, you know, non-pilot civilians like me, the expectation is that all your pilots either come for the military or Embry-Riddle or a school like.
A school like, sure. Or a school like Embry-Riddle being the most famous my alma mater but that they're all kind of like aviation nuts and they like bug their dad for lessons at the local airport exactly and that they have a lot of experience in Cessnas and that that's really relevant because the basics of aviation are just so obvious in a little plane, right? Do you ever get pilots who don't have that experience? No, most have that experience or at least come up through the civilian world.
Military is getting harder to find, right? We're not, the military is shorthanded as it is. People aren't leaving.
You know, we haven't had a war recently. So they're not leaving the military.

They've all left the military, right? Because of the policies. And they're here already.
There's no one in the pipeline. And so that's the problem.
It's who's out there. And so people that weren't necessarily the creme de la creme, now we're stuck with what's left.
and we're trying to fill seats. I will say well

the economic demise of something like a

spirit is a bad thing for those people

who are now starting to get them

coming to the big airlines

and so that's good for the passengers, it's good for them

they do have experience but

that rapid desire to grow

post-pandemic

we

my airline went from 10,000 pilots to, as of last week, 18,000 in two and a half, three years. Damn.
That changes. Where'd those new pilots come from? Everywhere.
The internet? Mostly, Microsoft Flight Simulator? No. Mostly, you know, the regionals.

We'd already drained the military, so they're coming up as fast as they can.

And they, out of college, restricted ATP at 1,250 hours, fly to 1,500, interview and right in the door.

Right in the right seat of a 757, and two years later, you're a captain.

And you're talking about 26 25 so that that that slow down judgment isn't there either the hardest thing i have to do at work tucker is explain to my new first officers that when you see on your your your papers that the van leaves at eight o'clock,

that's go, not show.

Don't show up and pay your credit card bill

and all these things.

They're young.

I don't want to generalize this

and say that whole entire,

because my son's of that generation

and he's responsible.

They're just irresponsible

and want to do it their own way.

They're just green at life.

Not just at piloting. They're green at life.
They haven't dealt with responsibilities and things. And, you know, they don't want to fly.
They're called fatigued a half hour before the flight. And it's like, dude, you had better be where you need to be.
That's what they pay us for. Right? You've had people crap out a half an hour before? Saturday night in newark and i was a passenger yeah no way like just too hungover to fly no he'd flown he'd flown from one airport into newark he started at nine o'clock at night flew a 30 minute flight they were going to reassign him to cover the late flight and he just said no i'm fatigued oh So that becomes a problem too.
So all of these reasons that we need to maybe hold on to our senior pilots to mentor our junior pilots a little longer, they add up. Just to finish it off, what happened to the kid who asked you what you're looking at while you're landing? We talked about it.
He's good. He'll be just fine.
And I've talked to the training department and explained to them that we have some questions out there. So I'll see him again shortly on another trip and we'll talk about it again, but I'm sure he's...
In all these decades of flying, have you ever been afraid in a plane? Never. Not one time? Never.
Don't have time to, Tucker. Instinct takes over.
Gentleman takes over.

If your pilot's afraid, they probably shouldn't be there.

No, that's right.

In fact, everything just slows down.

As fast as I go, and I am, you know, most people say,

sir, you talk too fast.

Though I say, you listen too slow.

But, you know, when it comes down to the emergency,

everything just stops.

And that's what you want.

Have you had emergencies?

I've been blessed.

No.

My husband, however, has a black cloud over his head.

Really?

What happened to him?

I'm looking at him under the corner of my eye right now.

He looks very calm, I must say.

1998 on St. Paddy's Day.

Yesterday was the anniversary of his almost near death.

It was near midair at Newark.

Let's see.

He's at a rapid decompression, an decompression a full hydraulic system failure and he took one of my flights because we were on the same airplane at the time and he flew to Santiago, Chile and he had a complete standby power system failure which is something that should have never happened in a Boeing 767 so what does that mean? it means they armed the autopilot for the approach. An explosion came out of the dash.
Everything goes crazy. The first officer flies.
They have no auto brakes. They have no speed brakes.
They have no number one radio. Everything is gone.
And he landed the airplane and stuck his big cowboy boots on those brakes and slid the airplane a little sideways. Blew six trucks, I think.
Melted the wheels to the runway or to the taxiway. And they shot him with water for two hours.
And he called me up and he goes, you owe me. And I went, don't wake me up for another hour.
Bye. Had no idea what had happened happened he was on the news it was crazy but what what was the cause of it didn't anyone figure it out some sort of an electrical short out in the system so but do you ever worry about fire while you're flying that's my biggest fear me too fire is the one thing you don't want to deal with but does that ever happen i haven't seen it in a while you know what, what was it, Air Transat? Or was it Swiss Air? Up in the North Atlantic going in.
They diverted into Gander, one of them, and they didn't quite make it. Because of fire.
Fire. We take lithium batteries very seriously, right? Because we have containment bags if your laptop lithium starts to go.
because, you know, that's kind of an uncontrollable fire.

We want to get that out.

So, you know, again, everything that happens happens in blood and we change the rules.

What are the rules now on lithium batteries?

Boy, you, I'm not familiar.

It comes with dangerous goods report, but, you know, you can have whatever you have on the plane.

But if you check something with a lithium battery and you don't disclose it, it's a big deal.

And then we'll see you next time. familiar.
It comes with dangerous goods report, but you can have whatever you have on the plane, but if you check something with a lithium battery and you don't disclose it, it's a big deal. Because all of that, as long as we know about it, they package them properly, like a wheelchair or something like that, but they just want you to disclose it.
Is there any way for them to know if you don't disclose it? I don't know. Damn.
I don't know. I don't think there's a sensor.
So that's your number one fear. Yeah, fire is it.
But, you know, I also worry about the mental health of the person flying next to me. There have been a lot of pilot suicides.
Well. I mean, relatively speaking, Turkish air.
Yes. Maybe Malaysian air.
Yeah. You know, you had German wings.
That was a big one. And that was in 2016.
And the pilot, you know, captain left the flight deck and the first officer punched a hole in the Alps and took everybody with him. And that's a bad thing.
But the worst thing now, or the fear of mine, is as we're moving through this whole, Kathy says she's a woman, but she's really not, it's the FAA certification process. And I'm concerned.
Aren't you by definition unstable if you castrate yourself? Well, we can go back and see what the FAA says about it. No, I mean, I'm not being mean.
I feel deep sympathy. I feel sad to that level of hurting yourself is like, is a tragedy.
It's a tragedy, right? And you're the victim of that evil. However, that seems like prima facie.
I don't want to use the word crazy because I don't want to be mean, but that you're not a stable person if you're cutting your genitals off, right? Or taking gender-affirming hormones. Yeah, it all seems like the clearest possible sign of mental instability.
What could be clearer than that? But you have to look at the FAA certification process and how we got here. I still question how those people with the new executive orders that says, you know, birth gender has to be on your medical certificate.
It has to be on your pilot's license. I don't know if that's been done yet, but I question how these people got certified to begin with.
So we go back and we do a little history. 2012, some lobbying.
They lighten the requirements for psychological testing if you're transgender from massive amounts of reports down to one or two. Seriously? Yeah, down to two.
Do you know who lobbied for that? There is a particular female pilot, or excuse me, transgender pilot,

who was able to get some folks in Congress.

But it gets worse.

In 16, when the federal air surgeon,

Dr. Michael Berry,

was distracted about pilot mental health dealing with the outcome of the German wings,

the several transgender organizations

and another pilot really pushed.

And they got Barney Frank and

Congressman

on the

Council

of

Congress

of

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of

Congress

of

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of

Congress

of

Congress

of

Congress

of

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of Congress of Congress of Congress Several transgender organizations and another pilot really pushed. And they got Barney Frank and Congressman out of California to take up their charge.

And the way they did it was pretty brilliant. The Diagnostics and Statistics Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, the DSM, had changed from revision four to five, the definition from gender dysphoric disorder to gender dysphoria.
Now they did it for a reason. They wanted to take the stigma off for the poor transgender people, right? But they couldn't fully pull it out because then there wouldn't be a diagnosis code and they could not then use their insurance to cover their surgeries or their home room replacements.
There's articles all over the internet about it, right? That's fascinating. They were playing the game because the American Psychiatric Association, of course, supports all that.
They're absurd. I mean, and I mean this with the full pejorative connotations.
They're crazy, actually. The psychiatrists are nuts.
Yeah, exactly. The inmates are running the asylum.
So they did this move on, and Barry was kind of looking one way, or maybe he was on it, but this was under the Obama administration. So we're just starting to see this push, right? And so the FAA changed the rules.
And they said, well, you've got to have a little bit of testing, but if you're five years transitioned or five years on hormones, you can just go back to your regular aviation medical examiner and just get your six-month check. No special issuance required.
Wait a second. At the time that was going on, there were studies out there that showed exactly what you indicated.
In fact, the statistics from the National Transgender or something, their own statistics, they had surveyed over 27,000 of their members. And I believe it was 39% said they had suffered serious mental health issues in the month prior to the survey.
40% said they had attempted suicide in their lifetime and 7% in the month prior to the survey. That data was available.
7%? 7%? I shouldn't laugh. It's tragic.
But 7% tried to kill themselves in the last month? In the last month? Of 27,000 people, do the math. I mean, somewhere in there, there's got to be an airline pilot applicant, right? So why did the federal air surgeon not, look at some of the data that was available? You don't want suicidal people flying commercial airplanes.
I don't want suicidal people flying airplanes. But even more importantly, studies have been done since then that are even worse.
Now we look at the medical side of it, hormone replacement therapy yes right do you know what it the number

one thing the faaero medical department is pilot incapacitation right that's heart attacks that's deep vein thrombosis it's strokes everything that we go through as pilots aside from our ability to hear and see is to ensure that we will not become incapacitated in our seat right i'm not gonna fall over because I have diabetes or something like that.

So, I think it was 2020 and it was updated in 23. They conducted a study of males transitioning to females on hormone replacement theory.
Now, they're not just pilots, just in general. 80 to 90% increase for DVT, heart attack, and stroke.
FAA is a risk-averse agency. Seriously? Seriously.
There were physical threats, not just like a person becomes suicidal. That's one.
That's a big one. That scares me the most.
I agree. If the FAA is a risk-averse...
But cardiovascular effects. Yeah.
I didn't know that. If you're a risk adverse agency and you won't even consider a drug I might be taking because it might possibly indicate that I might have a heart attack.
Yes. Why are you allowing these people who have an 80 to 90% increased chance for that to be in an airplane? Because they're taking hormone replacement therapy.
Well, it's so wrong to do that to the public. But there's no research arm that I fund at FAA because they're enjoying their coffee and their green desk.
Nobody's reading peer-reviewed studies. Nobody's looking at this going, you know, we might want to walk that back.
I didn't. And that's scary.
So what drugs are you not allowed to take as a commercial airline pilot?

There's a bunch of them, right?

Yeah, but you know what?

They don't publish the list.

So you don't even know.

Only your aviation medical examiner knows.

But you could, but I know from knowing pilots.

There's many that you can take.

Many.

So, like, you probably think about it.

You think about your health.

You think about the drugs that you take.

I don't take anything. I don't.
I use holistic stuff for colds and things. Good for you.
I'm with you 100%. But you could take, like, radical doses of male hormones, and that would be cool.
Well, you have to disclose it on your medical. But it appears after five years of taking radical doses, they don't make you, I mean, you disclose it, but they don't really care.
If you can go five, that was the key of the 2016 change. If you can go five years, welcome to the club.
So you have to report it, you know, and you have to have exams for that. But even then, all of that was just about their mental health.
Nobody is considering what these hormones do long term. But it's even more criminal.
That's just a transgender issue. If it's a medical, when it comes to the COVID vax, the FDA approved commutatory at, what, six o'clock at night on December 18th.
The next morning, same federal air surgeon approves of worldwide use in airline pilots. Who is the federal air surgeon? At that time, it was Dr.
Michael Berry. He retired a week later and went to work for a pilot insurance company.
But the criminal action's happening. That sounds like a crime.
I mean, isn't he supposed to assess its effects on the millions of Americans who fly? Well, at least take a look at, maybe do a longitudinal study on the transgender issue, but when it comes to the COVID situation, the effects of altitude, pressurization, and we work in a very dry humidity, we don't, this is an EUA product. It's never had an EUA product ever, ever certified for use in pilots.
And he'd written many articles on the drug certification process. Can I just ask, because I'm interested, what are the effects on your health as a pilot of spending 35 years in a cockpit? Because it is a weird...
A lot of wrinkles. It's dry, right? Yes.
It's dry. So hydration, cosmic radiation, I've had skin cancer.

Coming through the...

Well, it's cosmic radiation is when you

fly above the tropopause or up

in that area, right? So there's

radiation all the time. It's not just when the

sun's shining, right?

It's exactly what the astronauts

suffer up on the space station.

You know, it's radiation that's

up there. So a lot of your pilots, high levels of prostate cancer among male pilots, breast cancer among female pilots, through the roof.
Really? We're not in a shielded environment. The higher you fly, the stronger it is.
So when we look at those sorts of things, yeah, take care of yourself, folks. But we don't know what those drugs were doing to people.
And we don't know pressurization, humidity, and altitude effects on them. Only three things are absolutely certain in this life.
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Because it's a totally different environment from the one the rest of us live in day to day.

So explain what happened with COVID. So just if you don't mind telling that story, because I think it's interesting.
From the mandate perspective? Yeah, from a mandate perspective. Okay.
Not from the Wuhan lab. Yeah, no.
Fauci funded. No.
Well, I mean, it's interesting, Tucker, because I really never thought I'd ever get into any of this fight. I'm just a mom.
I'm cruising along through life. New Year's Eve of 2018, I looked in the rear view mirror and the lights were going off and I pulled over.
I got busted for DUI. Yeah.
Greatest thing that ever happened to me. God, I questioned him and my darling husband said, he never gives you more than you can handle, Sherry.
I didn't know at the time, but he was preparing me for the fight of my life.

I had to fight to get my job back.

The FAA was straightforward.

Because of my former union work, I believe, you know, maybe it was a little more difficult than normal at my airline.

But I succeeded and I got all my back pay and everything I needed.

But it taught me how to navigate against a corporate conglomerate. So I'm back to work.
And on August 6th, the CEO of my airline announces that there will be a vaccine mandate or you'll be fired in a month. And I'm sorry.
2021. 2021, August, August 6th.
Craziest day of my life. Called my best friend.
She's also a captain. And she's known around the airline as kind of the mom type.
And she's had a vaccine injured family member. So Laura Cox and myself, along with the wife of one of the pilots, who's an attorney, Danielle, the three of us got our heads together and we said, how are we going to get through this? Because I'm not going to violate my faith and take a product that derived from aborted fetal tissue cells, et cetera, et cetera.
And that was my- I think that's just a conspiracy theory. That's not true.
Shall I throw the glass of water now? No, no, no. It's just so funny.
It's like for that whole period, I try not to think about COVID and that whole chapter in our country's history and in my life, but you would hear people say, well, I'm getting a religious exemption and then no one ever asked why. No.
And if you ask why, they'd be like, well, there's some connection between the vaccines, the COVID vaccines and abortion. And then you'd hear someone in the background say, that's a lie! And then just sort of move on and no one ever talked about it.
But those vaccines were derived from aborted babies. Fortifusable tissue cells were used in either the development or the manufacture of all three of the U.S.-approved drugs.
So I think, I haven't checked because I'm trying to read Wikipedia because it's just CIA-controlled lies, which it is. But I bet you to this day they deny that.
But that's just a fact. It's a fact.
I mean, it's a fact. Ask the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
He'll tell you the facts. Yeah.
So. So that was a no-go for you right there.
That was a no-go for me. It was a no-go for my husband.
It was also a no-go for Laura. Well, at the beginning, there was probably 20,000 people at United.
It was a no-go for my husband it was also a no-go for laura and about eight thousand well at the beginning there's probably 20 000 people at united it was no-go and so as it progressed uh 8 000 the pressure got put on us they sent postcards to our house so that our in our case we're married didn't matter but they would send a postcard to your house and they would say you, you only have 22 days left to get the vaccine or be terminated.

Well, the wife won't open your mail, but she'll read your postcard.

Right?

So she reads it.

She goes, honey, we're going to lose everything.

People would acquiesce.

They told people that you would lose your 401k if you didn't leave the company or get the shot.

I mean, the mid-level managers, you know, that are.

They said you lose your 401k? Yeah. I have a recording of a pilot being told that.
You can't have your retirement. You can't have your own money, right? It gets better.
But this pressure was just intense, right? And so people would fall off. And the whole reasonable accommodation process was onerous and corrupt in itself and there's thousands of pages of discovery documents on our organization's website so if anybody wants to read about but they wanted to put like scarlet letters on our ID badges for the unvaccinated and so the other people would point and pick on us it was crazy but.
But the three of us got together, put our heads together.

We hired the best law firm we could find, Sher Jaffe out of DC.

And we filed for an injunction.

And we still didn't quite get there in November of 21.

Every one of us were put on unpaid indefinite leave.

Basically fired.

What did they say to you?

They didn't.

They just said, you're done.

And how long had you worked at the airline at that point?

I got hired in 1998.

It was 2021.

That's crazy town.

So you spent most of your adult life there.

Never had a problem.

Well, I was a union rep.

I've had my share.

But yeah, in general, no. I've never had an accident.
Oh, gosh, no. Never failed a check rep.
I've had my share, but fights with fights. But yeah, in general,

no, I've never had an accident. But you never crashed a plane.

Oh, gosh, no. Never failed a checker.
I'd never

have done anything like that. And they

just can you without...

Sayonara. See ya.

But we kept moving.

I want to attack your CEO.

I used to work there, so I don't want to make your life even harder.

We all know there were three airlines

that mandated the vaccine.

Hawaiian, Coletta Air Cargo, and United.

That's it?

That was it.

The rest were mandated eventually

because nobody would follow along, right?

They knew better.

United was the only domestic.

Well, Hawaiian's domestic, technically.

Not France.

Let's be honest.

Contiguous United States. Continental United States.
You know, the big carriers. Right.
Delta, American. No.
Only United. Nobody followed.
Then the president, Joe Biden, instituted the OSHA mandate, right, for contract. If you have more than 100 employees, you have to mandate this.
or the government contractor mandate. If you do work and everybody flies the mail, right? Four point six billion dollar business every year to the airlines and flying the U.S.
mail. So as a contractor, you had to mandate it.
But the guys at SW Freedom Flyers in North, me up in Dallas, they, you know, they did a little pushback, the American boys, the Delta folks. And so the exemption process for them was just kind of a paper mill.
Their bosses were cool about it. They were just like, whatever.
And eventually both those mandates were overturned in court. But...
That was the way to play it, by the way. Yeah, be kind to your employees.
A hundred percent. Firing longtime employees because they don't want a vaccine i mean it's like so cruel yeah but it played into a marketing campaign who who did that who made that decision well it was made by the ceo i mean it's it's in the court testimony and the judge ruled that it was a pretextual uh situation whereby there was a marketing campaign at the bottom line.
So there was a desire for that CEO to be able to come out publicly and say, in my opinion at least, that they were the first fully vaccinated airline. If they could do it by the holidays of December, maybe people would come back.
Who wouldn't fly on the first fully vaccinated airline? I don't want to fly on an airline with vaccinated pilots because it's dangerous. So that's my view, but I guess a lot of people disagree.
So this was a- To his credit, his argument has always been it's been about safety. Safety for my employees.
Look, I'm an adult. I can make my own medical decisions, so I don't need my CEO deciding my safety situation.
But that was his argument. I want to just get that on the record.
Because if you get the experimental COVID vaccine, you can't get or transmit COVID. Like we know that, right? Did that turn out to be true? I've never had COVID.
Does this CEO, you don't have to name him if you don't want, but is he still running the airline? Yep. It doesn't have a board, I guess the company.
I'm sorry? There's no board. Oh, yes, a board of directors.
But you know know. It's all so crazy.
But everybody after the pandemic, remember, after this went away and then we got, we went in court and we get called back. Oh, we're on to the next big thing, which is, you know, pilots, male pilots, excuse me, male flight attendants with beards wearing lipstick or whatever the issue of the day is.
So, you know, that's over. That's over.
Don't worry about that. So what, I keep stepping on your story.
Tell me, okay, so this comes down, you go to court, try to get an injunction. We don't get the injunction.
You don't get it. And then you're laid off.
We're out. Bam.
Your husband too? Everybody. No, but in your case, you're married.
In my house too. Yes, two of us.
And my son, God bless him, you know, he was going to school and dealing with two pilots being home, which is unusual for him. But, you know, we made it through.
So your whole family's unemployed in one day because of this? Instantly overnight. Well, that's kind of heavy, actually.
How did you, I mean. It was very heavy.
You know what happened? 2,000 people came together. Rampers, mechanics, flight attendants, pilots.
We became a family overnight. I mean, over the last three years, I consider them my dearest, most wonderful friends.
And I want to say thank you to every one of them for the support. Because, I mean, to me, servant leadership, it's the real deal.
I agree. I led them.
They blessed me to the ability to lead them, right, with my friend Laura and Danielle.

You know, these people are incredible.

But we've been to birth together.

We've been through marriages.

We've been through deaths.

And I will tell you, those 2,000 people are more important to me than anything in this world.

I love them.

And they're there for each other.

We had battle buddies.

Somebody was feeling bad, you'd call a friend.

We kept chat groups. And those of the time, they're pretty prayerful.
We've debated books of the Bible. I mean, we are just like this.
It's amazing. So how many, so it was 2,000 people in the end got fired? Yep.
And that was down from the initial number of people who said, I'm not taking it. And 20,000 down to 8,000 down to this, you know.
But in the end, it was 2,000 people who stood strong. Plus or minus, yeah, 2,000.
Did anyone fake getting a vaccine? I have no knowledge of that. I know a lot of people who have in my community, not at my company.
My husband's PA says, you know, her mom and dad walked in and somebody said it on the counter and there's the trash when you're done. I mean, we have doctor friends that are saying this.
Oh, and everyone had a fake. I had a fake vax card proudly.
And I would do it again the next time there's tyranny. I'm not obeying.
Except for there's only one way to get fired from my airline. It's to lie.
Other than that, you can do it. So I'm not going to do it.
Well, but you also make it, but it's also wrong to lie. And I lied in using a fake va card.
That's okay. So you were able to live your life and good for you.
Yeah, but no, you're right. That's a moral compromise.
And I, and I probably should have done that. I don't know.
I'm trying to think about it too much, but, um, no, but you're, you're, I think you're taking a really principled position and saying, I'm going to say clearly what I believe. I don't think I should be punished for it.
When I am punished for it, I'm going to take my lumps and fight back. So I admire what you did.
Yeah, we went through the EEOC process and then on through the courts and right now we sit in the Fifth Circuit on appeals. And I couldn't be rooting for you more fervently.
Thank you. Okay, so what happened then? 2,000 are fired with no support.
No. In fact, you should have been able to tap your 401k in an emergency situation, right? They locked us out.
What? Like you're a criminal? I could not access my 401k. They said, well, you could apply for another job in the company.
I'm 57 years old. I'm going to go throw bags.
Well, okay, if you want to pay me my salary. Oh, no, no, you're going to do it for a baggage rate.
I'm going to have to drive to the airport every day and go throw bags. The CEO sounds like a pig, actually.
Sorry, that's my view. You're not saying that.
You're welcome to... Right, that's my opinion.
I just want to be clear, but he sounds like a pig. If you know Michael Berry in Houston, he has some...
He's a radio man, and he's... Which just sounds like an awful man.
And I hope he's punished. He will be.
But anyway, so... But we get called back because we won in the Fifth Circuit.
And how long was that? It was, I think it was around February 17th. So we were out November, December, January, four months.
Did you get into money trouble? No. You got no income coming yet? Yeah, but, you know, we're old enough to have had some savings.
You're savings, right. But you're burning reserves.
Yeah, we are burning reserves. I mean, but, you know, we don't live a grandiose lifestyle.
So, you know, cars were paid for and things like that. And, you know, we were able to be.
But there had to be people. Oh, there were people that were selling everything.
Laura, her husband sold his dream, which is a small fishing boat.

I mean, it was not like anything big, but that was his dream because they needed to pay their bills.

You know, people were selling everything and some were taking other jobs.

Oh, you're making me emotional.

The mental health side of it was scary.

You don't understand the number of people Brett or myself talked about suicide.

And it was tough, but we made it.

So of those 2,000, can you just roughly break it down what they did? How many pilots? 360 plus or minus pilots. Okay.
There's about seven, let's see, so that's 350. There was about 50 to 100 what we call agents, you know, ticket agents.
And the balance would have been flight attendants. The mechanics, the stores people, the majority of the agents that worked in larger cities, avionics technicians, management, they were able to work with a masking and testing regime.
But it was punitive. It wasn't masking.
It was N95 respirators from the moment you pulled on property to the moment you left. You ate outside, didn't matter if it was snowing, raining, cold.
You put it back between every bite and sip. Wearing a yellow star the whole time.
That mask was the yellow star. And then, you had to be tested on a rolling every seven days, and it didn't matter if you were out on family medical leave, if you got hurt at work or were on vacation, you missed one test, you were terminated.

And this is the one where they stick the stuff up your nose?

That's a whole other issue.

I never did that. I would never do it.

So it was all punitive, and it was all punishment,

but they justified it in that those people didn't work on board

the airplane, so for safety reasons.

They were away from the test. Of those 2,000,

of course, you can't really know, but what's your sense

of the percentage of Christians among... Well, in our organization, I know I have seven Jewish members.
Yes. I have a handful.
Religious? Very much so. The seven Jewish people are religious people? Yeah, very much religious.
Very faithful. Good for them.
One is actually fighting a battle to get an accommodation for wearing a very tight beard. So we have those seven or so.
We have at least one or two Muslims that I know of. Yes.
One of our lead plaintiffs was a Buddhist. The majority of Christians.
But I mean observant. Every one of these people are observant.
So all 2,000 were religious people. Well, I take that back.
We had a handful of people who were very observant, but that had a medical issue and their doctor told them, don't get it. And so they applied for a medical accommodation, backed up with a religious because of their faith.
But I would say 99.9% are heavily. So what you're saying is that when you bring down a vaccine mandate like this, like, hey, let me inject you with some imported baby cells, you really are getting rid of the religious people.
Yeah. Because, I mean, this was done at a national scale.
So I think it's fair to, you know, if the outcome is the point of the exercise, it seems like they drove religious people out of government service. That's what it looks like to me.
The military, the airlines kind of crypto since you fly the mail, but it's not really government. But yes, you know, anywhere where there's a large group, you know, of employees, places.
Yes, I would agree. But it's also, religious people also happen to believe in the Constitution.
They also happen to be free thinkers. Oh, I've noticed.
And, you know, I think there's even more insidious things. They were after the religious people, sure, but they were also after anybody who would not stand, would comply.
Right? I think to them it was a test to see how they could trample people's rights. That's my personal belief.
Absolutely no question about it. But I do think we've spent too little time celebrating the people who are willing to really have their lives reordered, willing to be punished and suffer for what they believed.
Like, those people are heroes, I think. I know 2,000 heroes, yeah.
Well, that's totally, they're not, yeah. So then what happens? You go back to work.
And we're invited back to work eventually because of the court ruling. But then we're told, but you can't fly anywhere.
You have to be careful. You can't fly anywhere? They wouldn't let us.
We had restricted cities, right? Because countries might require a vaccine. Well, of those restricted cities, there weren't any countries that wouldn't let pilots in.
But it was a big battle. We had to fight through this until Canada dropped the mandate for passengers.
And so there were just things that were done, the constant retaliation pieces, getting called in the office because of a Facebook avatar or just dumb things.

Called in the office because of a Facebook avatar?

Mm-hmm.

What does that mean?

So Laura and I had changed our Facebook symbol to the Star of David.

It said Unvaxxed on it, right?

Because we felt like we were being abused.

I didn't want to make any light of previous situations but you know it was out there

and some pilot who disagreed with us anonymously reported us to the corporation and uh we had to go

to the office and do the carpet dance and explain why that wasn't discrimination but why would it

be discrimination because we offended the jewish people because we we co-opted their their their

I'm sorry. that wasn't discrimination.
Why would it be discrimination? Because we offended the Jewish people because we co-opted their star. So the first thing I did is call my seven Jewish members and say, does this offend you? They're like, no, we stand with you.
Okay, fine. But it wouldn't, I mean, it's not mocking Jews, isn't it, standing in solidarity with anyone who's been singled out and oppressed? Exactly.
Exactly. So it was like about as positive an identification as you could have.
But it was one more reason. Four times, five times in one year, I had to go sit in there and explain myself.
It just goes on. I got one coming up.
What is that? What'd you do wrong this time? This time, two years ago, I was trying to be kind to a very famous elderly person. We were going to do an engine run and I couldn't leave them on the jetway with the engines running and doors open.
And so we got the person up to the top. And unfortunately, then she wrote a nasty letter.
So I have to go do the carpet dance and explain why you can't sit unattended on a jetway with a door open and the engine running and a mechanic with an arm in an engine. So we'll get through it.
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Raisin.com, where your money grows. How did the other pilots who, like Obedian Sheep, took the needle, how did they treat you? I've never had anyone come up and say, you guys are causing a problem.
Now there's keyboard warriors on certain, you know, social media sites. But at work, nine out of ten have said, I wish I could have stood with you.
I'm sick. My friend is sick or something.
I will never do it again. Ever, ever, ever.
And I'm sorry I didn't stand with you. Those poor people.
I know a million vaccinated people. I've never heard anybody say, I'm glad I got the vaccine.
Not a single one. No.
And I feel so sad for a lot of them I love. So I feel so sad for them.
I'm sorry to make fun of them. I shouldn't.
They were the victims too. They were victims too.
Some are just stronger than others. But the COVID vaccine turned out to be so dangerous.
It killed so many people. It's a fact.
I mean, it's in the VAERS program. These are not conspiracy theories.
It's like, that's a fact. That it does make you wonder, like, would you want...
I don't want to fly in a plane with vaccinated pilots because I think it's too dangerous. But are there numbers on this? Oh, yeah.
So tell me what they are. So I had a lot of free time there while I was off of work and I'd been working on my doctoral dissertation.
And when this started to go down, I shifted gears. So my organization, Airline Employees for Health Freedom, we started getting phone calls.
I know somebody that's sick or I know this or I know that. So we just put a data collection link up and it got so intense that I said, you know what? I'm going to stop everything.
I'm going to write my dissertation and I'm going to study the vaccine injury amongst commercial airline pilots. And so I was about seven months of data collection, 1600 plus respondents across the industry.
And understand the population is about 80-20 vaxxed, right? My study actually came out about 50-50 because a whole bunch of my unvaccinated friends wanted to help, which watered down my numbers, but it actually makes them that much more powerful because at 50-50, if I found this, what would I have found at 80-20? And what I found is commercial airline pilots in the United States are suffering

pericarditis and myocarditis at rates

exceeding the CDC's national average.

And I proved it to a 98%

plus or minus 4 in that

regards.

What are the implications for myocarditis in an

airline pilot?

Back to that incapacitation thing, right?

Pilots got to have a healthy heart. But what it really means for the short term, we're losing pilots.
It's anecdotal. It's in my dissertation, but I have the charts from American Southwest and from the union at United, the disability rates post December of 21 shoot through the ceiling.

They're off the charts and they're getting worse by the day. So pilots are going on long-term disability.
It's one more way to get rid of those high-dollar workers, I guess. I don't know.
And that way we have to have more young people come in. And so where it goes, I don't know.
But I found things from kidney stones to serious, you know, mental, excuse me, neurological problems, cardiac.

It's really scary.

And nobody wants to know about it.

And the problem is I went to the union and I said to the national president in an email, and I have it in my dissertation.

It's published online.

I found this. We need to address this.
And he says, oh, no, no. You know what? That's in the past.
We don't, that might be disruptive to unity. Wait, what is the point of unions again? I totally forgot.
Is it to take care of their members? I'm a former rep. I've seen the sausage making from the inside.
We were, quote, a professional organization that focuses on safety. That's their number one point.
Secondly, it's collective bargaining. I pay a lot of money for them to abuse me.
But if your job is to take care of your people, that's what a union is, right? It's we collectively bargain. We're in this together and we're looking out for people who have not enough power, which is the workers against management.
And they're not interested in people dying or being disabled. They weren't interested in them putting us on the street.
They stepped back and said, company can do what they want. What? No, it's not in the collective bargaining agreement.
That is a terming condition. That is an EEOC problem between you and the airline.
That's disgusting. What's the name of this union? The Airline Pilots Association, ALPA.
And ALPA is working against helping the pilot shortage by upping the age. ALPA worked against all of us in any of the airlines.
I can't say that because actually, you know, the ALPA people at Delta, they worked with Ed Bastion and they actually came up with a pretty good system during this mandate piece. But ours washed our hands of us.

Are you required to be a member of this union? Unfortunately, yes. So they take your money and they do nothing for you.
And they collaborate with your creepy CEO to oppress the workers there and the union's like all on board with them. Oh, and it even gets better.
They take my money and they have a DEI committee. It's staffed by a transgender pilot Who then sends me emails

Explaining what my language should be. I'm trying not to use the F word.
This is my Lenten challenge. But it's almost sneaking out.
Oh, yeah. So we don't.
The union sends you that? So your union exists to lecture and torment you and steal your money? Let's just say we have people in the union in the legal department who are not the best and brightest. You'd obviously work at somewhere other than a union.
But the rumor is I've been told that I'm the fifth rail. They don't even know the saying.
It's the third rail, right? So trust me, the union and I don't get along really well, Tucker. And you were a union rep.
I was. I was.
So it's not like you have some ideological problem with unions as a theory. No, I had a desire to go in there and help people and clean up the mess that was.
Yeah, I mean, speak for myself. I'm totally in favor of unions.
I have a friend who's a labor leader, and I like the idea of unions. I do.
I like solidarity. Someone needs to push back against power.
I'm all for that. It's just that in practice, in this specific case, but also in others, it seems like they're collaborating against their members.
Unions are, in this case, at least I use the phrase, unions are like the tick on the dog, right? They suck from the dog, but they can't kill it because that's the way they live. So in the case of the Airline Pilots Association, they collaborate a lot with management.
They get what they need. They get the dues from it.
And they'll do a little bit, but they can't do too much, right? Because they need the company to stay profitable or they'll be gone. Okay.
Well, that's, I mean, I don't think that's unreasonable. But they shouldn't be the disciplinary arm of the airline.
In a lot of cases, they are. Everyone hates the teachers unions.
And I, of course I do too. I think they've helped wreck education.
However, at least in New York City, they stick up for their members. Sure.
In a very unreasonable way. Even when their members are like child molesters, they'll defend them.
Yeah. Which is bad.
Yeah. But the idea that you stand up for the people in your charge, that leadership means laying down your life for the people beneath you.
I believe in that. And there's nothing worse than a collaborator.

Wow, that's really disgusting.

Yeah.

Wash their hands with all of us.

And it didn't happen just at the Airline Pilots Association.

It happened at the AFA, Association of Flight Assets, right?

It happened.

The Teamsters, no, it wasn't the Teamsters.

The dispatch union leader was the only one that fought back against the mandates, right?

All the rest of them just rolled over. So what, I mean, are airline people political? And how does it break down politically? Airline people, okay, so we have a few of the hardcore union people, of course, that are going to lean left, right? Airline people are of the ilk of where they live, okay? Houston base is very conservative, very Texas, very red.

I see in the San Francisco base a much more liberal opinion.

So I think they're just people.

I don't think it's, we're not in the days of fighting Lorenzo, right?

So I don't think it's really a political thing with the airline people.

I think they're just part of their community.

But there's something about aviation because it's, I mean, science-based, it's engineering, that every airline pilot, I've known a million airline pilots, and they're all, they have the same kind of logical, coolly analytical temperament, and they believe in the facts because they have to or the plane crashes. Bernoulli is a fact, right? We can't change that.
Exactly. And like a thunderstorm will pull your wings off, so don't fly into it.
These are just facts. We're not in control.
We acknowledge them and we adapt. And we're risk averse, right? So we're going to be conservative and take the most conservative way.
So I don't... There still are some liberal ones out there.
Are there really? Oh yeah yeah. They're usually the big union dogs, the high power ones.

But I can't get my head around someone whose job it is to obey the laws of physics, like unflinchingly.

It's like, that's a fact we have to obey that law because we can't change it.

That person believing that you can change your sex, which is the most irrational thing you could say. Most of them are not faithful at all, too.
To what? As well. I mean, they're not faithful as well.
They're not religious people. Of course not.
Right. Of course, the whole idea is to give a finger to God and proclaim yourself master of the universe.
I can change my sex. Okay.
Can you control the weather now,, like John Kerry? But no, it's not even that, which I do have a problem with, to be clear. That's irrational.
That's what freaks me out. That's irrational.
So if you believe in something that irrational, I don't want you flying my airplane. No? I don't want you flying next to me in that airplane because I have to get up on a 10-hour flight and go take a break or go on to the bathroom.

How are you going to behave when I'm not here?

We got pilots that are asking those questions right now.

They're saying, you know, I'm not comfortable leaving the flight deck.

Oh, come on.

When we're flying with somebody of that nature.

Can you go to the company and say, I'm on a 10-hour flight? So you're a veteran, obviously, a veteran pilot. You've got to be one of the, have some of the most hours of...
I'm in the top 10%. Yeah, right.
Okay. So that means traditionally you're flying the longer, better, more fun routes to the prettier capitals.
Like that's what I have noticed. So, but you you're flying on long flights so you have to get up at some point well i'm required legally to go take a break i mean i have to go to bed for over eight hours you have to take a nap we rotate we have three pilots and we rotate through yeah so but can't you call the company and say hey i'm not comfortable leaving my co-pilot unattended like that seems like a big thing for me for me it's you know it's anecdotal because i haven't flown with one yet back except for when i was on the 737 years ago and there was a captain um who by the way was a terrible pilot um a transgender captain no it's pilot.
It's more focused on other things.

What kind of things? I want to be funny, but making sure his voice sounded right. Or, you know, there was a lot of distraction.
He was just known as not a very great pilot. And so, you know, I did a lot of the flying.
But that was years ago when I was really young, former airline, before the merger. So I haven't, in my world, there hasn't really been any in the 767, but a lot of dear friends in the more junior airplanes, 737 and Airbus, are just like, I'm not comfortable.
They don't fly the long haul, so they can usually get to where they're going. They can hold it.
Yeah, thank you.

But yeah, they just don't want to leave.

We're not sure.

It's like, what could happen?

They've read the same studies as I have.

Damn. And it's not just here.

It's across the industry.

Right?

Meaning in Europe as well?

No, I'm meaning in domestic airlines.

It's not just my carrier.

It's pilots from a lot of different carriers.

Concern.

That's like, and what would happen if you called up airline HQ and said, this is just too nuts.

I think it's a threat to safety.

What would they say to you?

Come into the office.

Let's have another carpet dance.

For real?

Yeah.

Now, so the thing is you have to observe a safety concern. You must report it as a whistleblower.
Then it might get changed. But I haven't actually officially observed it.
But I can understand where we're going. I mean, it might not be as dramatic as somebody not wanting to fly with somebody.
but one very real piece is you can be called in the office and get in trouble for, say, misgendering somebody. Using the wrong pronoun.
Actually? Yes. Unfortunately, I work in a safety sensitive world.
I have a common safety language, right? If we're in the middle of a massive emergency at altitude and I pick up that and I call the back and I say, hey guys, prepare the cabin. Oh, wait a minute.
Was I supposed to remember? Was it a guy or a girl or what? It's just a word I use. In the heat of battle, I don't want to have an Abbott and Costello who's on first discussion with the person at the other of the phone.
No, I'm a he. No, she's at door one.
No, he's at door three. We have something to do and deal with.
And I don't want to have to stop and think in my job before I react the way I've been trained. Oh, did I say the wrong thing? Am I going to, if we survive this, have to go answer for it? And that's a very real piece.
That one is one that pilots worry about probably more than actually flying with a transporter.

So, I think big picture, it's

very obvious that safety standards have

fallen dramatically, maybe not

literally, they're not rewriting the safety manual,

but safety is not... Or distracted,

that's what I would say. It's not the top concern.

Clearly, it's not the top concern. Clearly.

So, I mean,

how long before

hundreds of people die?

I hope never again in my lifetime.

Because the people at the front of the

I'm not sure. So, I mean, how long before hundreds of people die? I hope never again in my lifetime.
Because the people at the front of the airplane, me, my partner, we're going to do what we know how to do. And it doesn't matter to me if I get called in because I misgendered somebody.
There are still good people out there. But we're getting to that critical mass point where we need a little time.
We need a pause. We need this new incoming FAA administrator whom I've read a lot about.
I really like him. He looks like a very faithful person and he's going to fit in the administration and be confirmed rather quickly.
We need to get the pilot age up. The standards do not need to be lowered for the incoming.
And then we're going to need to take some time and mentor. And I think we can get there.
But the clock is ticking. So the Trump administration, I think, is on the right track to fix four years of complete dismantling of the U.S.
aviation industry. I hope, I pray they can get there.
But I think they've got the right people in place. You said you've never been nervous flying.
Have you ever been nervous as a passenger? I'm sure I have. I'm more nervous when I stand on like the edge of a tall building or I'm scared of heights, Tucker.
Absolutely. I'm scared.
Are you actually? Absolutely. Refuse to go to the Grand Canyon.
I won't do it. What's your cruising altitude in 767 long-haul flight? Depends.
28 to 38, somewhere in there. You know, we climb as we burn fuel.
We get lighter, so we climb. But, you know, 36, 37, 38.
What is that? Almost seven miles high in the air. And passengers, think about it.
You're sitting in a chair doing eight to nine tenths the speed of sound. That's a pretty awesome thought.
That's incredible. Isn't it? Where we are? Yeah.
I think the whole thing is absolutely wonderful. What do you think of the new planes? Well, I fly the old planes.
I'm a Boeing girl. My husband flies the 787 and he likes it.
I mean, you know, technology is wonderful. It just goes further, faster, and higher.
So, we'll see. I'm more worried about coming technology with regards to single pilot or autonomous flight.
I don't know about you. I'm not getting in an airplane without a pilot.

Autonomous flight?

It's coming.

You're making me feel uninformed.

So there are,

this will solve the union problem.

Just get rid of the people.

Get rid of the people.

So there are planes planned with no pilot?

Well, we have them now.

I mean.

I guess they're called drones.

Right.

They're called drones. I mean, in Houston, we have pilots that are in the Garden Reserve.
They get in their car in the morning, they drive down to Ellington, they walk into a trailer, they're flying a drone over in Afghanistan, bombing the bad guys, and they drive home. I mean, it happens all the time.
It's not coming this generation. We have cars, autonomous taxi cabs in Austin, Texas, right? They drive around and you just jump in one and it charges your credit card.
First time I saw it, it was crazy, but they have it. So what's coming is, first of all, is the move to reduce one pilot in a cockpit.
On a commercial airliner. It's the way it'll work, most likely.
They said, Aviation and Space Magazine had this about four or five years ago

they'll have a control room

drone operators

me

when I retire

all these people

will be sitting in a control room

and you'll take off

remember that old

V1 rotate engine failure

we talked about

you'll just push

the Boeing button

and I'll come on

I'll say

hey captain

I've got the airplane

you get the checklist

so a room of eight people can work the whole thing wouldn't it be easier to just put someone in the cockpit? Wouldn't it be? You know the old joke, we have a dog in the cockpit, right? You know why the dog is there? To keep the pilot from touching anything. Bite him if it comes.
So yeah, that's the first step. They're going to start, it'll start in cargo carriers and trying to push to eliminate one body.
For cost- For cost reasons. For cost reasons.
Because you can only control the price of the airplanes, the price of the people, or the price of fuel. Right? Fuel's pretty set.
Airplanes, you can get the better financing if you play the game. But we cost money.
That's just absolutely crazy. I will pay a premium to fly in an airline with two pilots.
Well, but it gets better. The next generation or two might go there.
But at the same time, the drone world, and I think they call it VTOL, vertical takeoff and landing, whereby you, Tucker Carlson, can have your own VTOL and you can fly yourself to the airport and you can get on the big airplane. This stuff is all in the crazy works behind the scenes at the FAA.
You can read about it. It's there.
They're establishing corridors and plans. It'll start with pilots operating, but eventually they're looking for an autonomous situation where you just, the Jetsons, you walk out, get in your little hovercraft, go to the airport, get in the big hovercraft.

It's coming.

Yeah.

I hope I'm gone when this all happens.

I surely will be. Sherry, that was really, it was wonderful to get the benefit of your decades of experience and your honesty.
So thank you. Thank you enough for the opportunity.
And I really pray for the president, Secretary Duffy, the incoming FAA administrator, that we can get ahead of this before it gets out of control. Yeah, before people die.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
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