OB436: A Three-Hour Taxi

If you're in lineup and wait, anticipated separation is no longer authorized. So what that means is your takeoff role has to begin after that aircraft goes through the intersection. Ready. Welcome to Opposing Bases Air Traffic Talk, an aviation podcast by two air traffic controllers and rated pilots who love to talk about flying, controlling and everything in between. The show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for your instructor, your supervisor, the FAA, the NTSB or your CAT. The show will give you a better understanding of how things work in the national airspace system and maybe even make you laugh along the way. Please welcome retired Army pilot Alpha Golf and course officer at Penguin Airlines, Romeo Hotel. It's Wednesday, May 6th, 2026, Episode 436. On today's show, we'll talk about the amazing New York City controllers, share a story of a resurrected Chinook and share a ton of aviation milestones. What's up, Beijing? Hello, hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday, how are you? I am good. I got a little extra sleep this morning, which is nice. Yes. I have the mid to night and the following night and the night after that. Three in a row. Yay. It's like the COVID days, but not COVID. If they went back to five and five tomorrow, would you be happy or sad? Five on, five off? Yes. What shift would I be working? Not the mid. Oh, done. You get four, six to twos. Oh. Five, six to twos. Done. Done. Sold. Yeah. Okay. That would be amazing. This has been a busy week. I've been home. My wife had her surgery. I played nurse last week. That's sort of tapered off this week, although she's still in a little bit of pain. She goes back to the doctor today. Speaking of pain, tell us about your soft polyetry. Yes. Right. So. Right. I've been in kind of a hitting slump, just a bunch of pop ups and stupid groundouts. Okay. It's not making good contact. So I finally got into one and I hit a double. Got past the outfielders. So I'm running hard to second base, which is a long run for my legs that are like, why are we sprinting? Is there a fire? Is someone dying? Are we trying to save our lives or someone else's? What are you doing? So anyway, I get the second, the next play, a base hit. I'm running home. They're waving me past third. My legs are thinking this can't be reality. This isn't really happening. Make it stop. I see the ball in from my left being thrown home and I'm thinking in my brain, this is going to be close. I'm going to have to slide. So I slid and I broke my body. That video where the guy is doing the home project and jumps off like the second rung of his ladder and it cuts to Johnny Cash singing. I hurt myself today. That was the text waiting for me when I woke up this morning. It made me laugh. Coming off of a food coma from the tacos you made last night. Thank you for those. They were wonderful. Good. Yes. Welcome. All the things. I kept listing all the things that you made and my wife says, wow. Is there anything you didn't eat? He says many ingredients and actually I didn't include, we like to have red cabbage in them sometimes for that crunchy and we didn't have that. Or lettuce. Or lettuce. I was willing to let that go. It was fine. There was a lot of other things to put in there. It was very good. I have to go back to work and I'm hoping I remember how to fly. Yeah. That happens later this week. Anyway, shall we begin? All right. All right. Oops. Since OB 435, we have some new members on the iceberg. Delta whiskey, Juliet, Delta Zulu Bravo, Juliet, Delta, Kilo, Delta, Alpha, Delta and Bravo whiskey are new. We got PayPal drops from Golf Mike and Juliet Sierra and a new Patreon member Kilo November. If you've been enjoying the show, you can take it to the next level by joining our premium feed on Supercasts. We'll get every episode on time with no delays. Our entire back catalog, 435 episodes, access to our live stream, recording each week, bonus audio and direct line to us through our supporter only email. You'll keep the show ad free and community supported. You can learn more, sign up at opposingbases.supercast.com. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Bye, music. Radio's out announcements. One review. Review announcements. I think just the one. Let's see the time where we did multiple reviews. No. I got to take that S off the master document here. I just read what's on the screen. Okay. Stop judging me. All right. This review titled perhaps the best podcast on the market. I'm sure that it means in this very small market of pilot and controller hosted aviation podcasts. Yeah, we're of all the aviation podcasts with a controller and a pilot who used to be a controller and the controllers also pilot. Yeah, we're definitely on top of that. Five stars. Naturally, Romeo hotel and Alpha golf put together aviation knowledge you can't find anywhere else in comedy all into one podcast. I have enjoyed every minute of listening since I was introduced to OB in December. It has solidified my opinion on asking for flight following on every cross country. And dare I say it couldn't, it could have prevented me from failing my instrument check ride that I started listening to OB earlier on in my training. Thanks for all you do for the aviation community. I look forward to more episodes, bonus audio and maybe even buying an OB t-shirt before my next check ride. Keep up the awesome content from the wood shipper Delta with a Tersa. Alpha hotel. Cool. Thank you for that. Thank you for taking the time to do that. All right. We have some announcements. It's your time. Go shine. You got to go over to the widget page. Oh, I do the thing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We have some new yetis in the store. Check it out for the live stream viewers. You could see a fancy QR code on the screen. Do whatever you do to scan it. It's the other way. I see it as this way. So you're pointing away from it. You were pointing away from it. All right. Announcement number one supercaster alpha charlie foxtrot. Send a note. Hey guys, after nearly 10 hours in a Cetabria, such a cool plane. I have about an hour and a half in that. High wing, small single engine aerobatic plane. I got signed off for both tail wheel airplanes and spin training. Congrats. Cool. My buttons are all mixed up here. Why can't I find anything? Hmm. There it is. It was my first time doing any spins and we managed half a dozen without anybody losing their breakfast. Excellent. Well, not part of the official requirements. I suspect that my final exam for the tail wheel endorsement was whether I could safely land a three pointer after all those trips through the washing machine on on tie performance. And then towing gliders in the Pawnee chairs penguin explorer alpha charlie foxtrot. I am not familiar with the Pawnee PA 20 something maybe. Do you know that airplane? Uh, no. Uh, we'll look it up and congratulations on that. Number two from Tango Romeo is a commercial pilot. Congrats. Nice. Send a note after 30 years and a 20 year break, I took my commercial and passed the check right with the use of track up. That's why that's why you passed. It has to be track up. You want number three. I'm exhausted. We've looked exhausted. Number three from supercaster tango November is going to the airlines. Congrats. After much delay to other cancellations and delaying to prepare for an interview, I finally completed my CF double eye check ride. I'm also excited to announce that I have accepted an offer at ACME RJ airlines. You guys have been in my ear for my entire aviation journey. Having all of the amazing penguins this podcast has given me over the years helped make the CF double eye check ride the easiest one I've ever done. Every time the examiner asked a question, all I had to do was ask myself, what would OB say? Results my very. Use caution with that logic. Yeah. We don't even know what we would say. Yeah. And as we proved last night, when you played a clip from a previous show, I don't know how long ago that was. It was in the hundreds. It was so years and years ago. Or maybe early 200s. I had barely any recollection of having ever uttered these words. So, yeah, use caution. All right. You want number four? And I'll do the QR code. I'm going to shine now. So proud. All right. From supercaster Mike Kiehlo, I guess I should make an announcement. This is the guest on the Sporty's Pilots discretion podcast. Cool. Congrats. Episode 127 of that show. A link is in the deep dive for supporters. That was last week. And you're showing the QR code for. A link to that episode. Come listen. It's amazing. Wow. Live streamers are getting new stuff here. This is like state of the art. We just stepped into the 21st century here. You've never seen anything like this. I'll get the second number four because why would you do two number fours? Emperor captain whiskey Mike is a CFI. Congrats. Congrats. I'm going to put up that picture here. Okay. And show you wearing your cold gear. Let's see. There it is. At the stage. Cool. It always helps when you show up and I'll be here. It's going to help. Yeah. All right. Moving on. We know we have no time with feedback. So we're just going right into a show topic. Oh wow. Look what happened to our faces on the screen. What happened? We're smaller. There you go. I don't know. It's defaulting to a different feel. I don't know why. Did you adjust your head to be higher than mine? I adjusted it to be on the same place. Look, I've done it twice during this show already. Stop moving. You're going lower and I can't. It's tilted as much as it'll go. All right. Sorry. All right. This week's show topic is from Emperor captain Juliet Sierra about LaGuardia airport, the controllers and the pilots that go in and out of there all day. And we want to read a note from him. We're going to talk about that airport and all the amazing things that happen up there. How about that? I like it. All right. Greetings from under the statue of Liberty Bravo. I was midway through writing on another topic when I decided a hard pivot was in order. I flew in last night to LaGuardia on penguin airlines. I'm one of those geeks who flight plans, the commercial flights I'm on to keep my weather for flight and go on and no go skills as sharp as possible. I like this. You're using your own personal flight planning device for the commercial flights that you're on in the back. I will say from, I've seen this happen maybe to me. If you aim your phone by the window and your flight tracking, you're going to get some strange looks when they see that plane moving on the, on your floor flight in seat 22F. Anyway, on this flight, I noticed on multiple occasions that we were taking 90 degree turns off of our planned route, flying for 15 minutes and then flying back to our route, which I assumed was a help to help create space into the New York area. Sure enough, when we landed, I was dismayed to see that when we taxied off the runway, we were on the side opposite the terminal and also saw an unusually large number of planes just sitting around. Excellent. Thank you for putting that up. Oops. That's good. We can keep that up. All right. Yep. Okay. We sat around for 30 minutes on the tax way before the captain announced that due to weather conditions, arrivals were still piling in, but departures were significantly reduced, getting a huge log jam with no estimated time to be able to taxi to the gate. When we pause right there and go back to the whole pseudo holding vectors, 90 degree turns, walk us through that. Why, why would a center controller do that? Do you suppose? Just box you around versus issuing holding? Yes. Sometimes, I don't know at the center why there might be specific reasons for that. I know for me, sometimes where there is holding depicted or is already published, I don't really want you there. I don't want to have to make up holding at some random place. Honestly, the amount of brain power that it takes just to box you around on familiar headings, I just use headings that we use all the time in the airspace is very little. If I have 10 planes that are doing that, that's getting to be a little much. All I'm going to be doing is giving headings all the time. That's probably not going to work, but for a couple planes just boxing you around is, I find it sometimes easier. If it's not going to be long term, if we're talking 30 minutes, I'm probably going to hold you somewhere. This is what it feels like on the center side as a pilot. It feels like center A feeding to B that maybe houses the airport you're going to, for example. So you're pretty close. You're one center away from the center that is above your airspace that you're landing at. They will all of a sudden get mail in their inbox that says, we need X amount more miles in spacing, which doesn't look clean when you do holds. So hey, if I turn this guy 90 degrees for a minute, it's going to buy me the time that I need. I'm going to come back to that fix and I'm going to solve that's what it feels like because we're only on those headings for a few minutes at a time. And then we'll go back on. They usually find somebody that's going to be number one, make them go fast, rip the wings off your number one. And then number two through 15 gets these crazy, what seems like crazy from the back turns, but it's just buying that controller extra space. And he's using the confines of his airspace. You're right. It's unfamiliar to just, you know, I'll just put everybody in a whole present position. Please don't ever do that controllers. Present position holds are almost impossible in the airplane. Please stop, make it stop. As soon as you hit that button, you've already passed where it's just, yeah, the computers don't like that. Anyway, it's buying that controller a little bit of extra time, which translates to distance between targets. And it could be for weather in this example where they said, all right, we've got, we have no, no more for these airplanes to go spread them out. Where was I? We sat around for 30 minutes on the tax way before the captain announced due to weather arrivals were still piling in, but departures were significantly reduced. We're going to talk about that, creating a huge log jam with no estimated time to be able to taxi to the gate. I was originally upset about the delay and admittedly very grumpy. Then I decided to dial up LaGuardia ground on live ATC from the plane you're on, Pro move, but I heard for the next, what I heard for almost the next three hours. I missed this detail. Wow. Completely changed my perspective. A single ground controller with humor, patience, and a whole lot of creativity managed to handle a huge number of airplanes in a very limited space. On the flip side, every single pilot, regardless of circumstances, handled themselves with tremendous professionalism going out of their way to accommodate traffic that the controllers were actually able to clear regardless of how long they'd been waiting. Planes moved out of line and taxed in circles so that a plane in the middle could get to the runway. Planes moved to allow the large number of pilots that declared DOT three, which is a three hour roll tarmac roll, to get back to a gate as quickly as possible. The controller thanked the pilots and the pilots thanked the controller. It was incredibly impressive. So just a reminder that when you're sitting on a commercial flight cursing the fates for whatever might be impacting your travel plans, there are a whole lot of people working to make sure you get where you are going as quickly and safely as possible. I didn't use code names because the facility deserves the praise, we agree. I also attached a four flight screen with showing the conditions on the ground 30 minutes after they started getting planes cleared and we finally got across the runway. All right, before we get into some notes that I put down here underneath that picture, let's talk about what we're looking at here. Paint us a picture of what you see, first reaction of what we're seeing here. Yeah, log jam is not the wrong word, especially down here at the approach end of what is this 1-3. I can't see our cursor for some reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, upper left. Yep, I see it now. Is my cursor on there now? I don't think it is. I'm just presenting a file. I see what you're doing. Yeah, the three inline lines over at 1-3. I'll talk about that too. Yeah. And then the circle that goes around the terminal is all jammed up. Right. There's not a lot of places left to put planes where they could sit and not completely block the route to somewhere. I think it looks to me like they're trying to do. Keep these main avenues open while finding places to put planes. We have a really hard time doing that because we run out of places really quick that cut off the route to the runway. So what we don't see on this picture because their transponders are not on yet because they're still at the gate is all the gate traffic that's creating the no parking situation that's happening. So big picture of this airport has limited real estate. There are a couple of new amazing terminals. If you haven't been to LaGuardia in the last 20 years and the last time you were there, it felt like you were in the worst spot ever. It's totally different now. It's amazing. As a passenger, it's a great airport in my opinion. It's very updated, lots of places to be while you're waiting for your flights. Terminals are all new. Lots of gate space. They can go underneath bridges that take the passengers from the street level to the terminal. The planes can taxi underneath that. So there is a circular terminal environment for planes which creates a lot of flexibility, if you will. But taxiways, it's on a very, you know, the northern tip of Manhattan and Queens. It's very hard to get any extra space. In fact, I think the approach into Tutu is borrowed land that's dirt that just got piled up to make a place for a metal underground of a runway. Not a lot of places to be if you're not at a gate. That's the theme of this feedback and the creativity of the controllers important here. So I think this picture is a good starting point for a general overview of the airport, the configuration we're looking at. It looks like they landed on Tutu, which is what I remember doing. It seemed like nine out of 10 arrivals there. We were there in and out of there every day at least once. When I was at Comair, I felt like we should have had a base there. We were there so much. And they depart on the crossing runway, which is one three. And you see all those airplanes over there in a line, which let me talk about real quick. You leave the terminal, you have to cross, and I may, we may have this in the notes later on, but you have to cross the active arrival runway to get the departure runway. Generally speaking, that's not common in the NAS. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair. It's, it is not desirable. Tell us why. Because for every operation, for every single departure, when they're on, when they're going to one three, right? You have, you're crossing the arrival runway twice. Yep. Once when you taxi, once when you depart. It's just introducing a, those extra crossings that as we have seen in recent times can be problematic. They're going in front of the flight path of a plane moving very, very quickly. So it is, it just, it introduces potential error. All right. You're right. The error part is the important. So the controllers are, the ground controllers coordinating a lot with, with local to get across those runways. And local controller is hitting a gap with his own departure when they get over to the other side. So the configuration we're looking at, departing one three, a normal everyday situation there is the one three traffic is constant line up runway one three line up and wait as soon as the arrival crosses the runway, which is pretty close to the approach into that runway, they're clearing the one three for takeoff. Next airplane gets immediately put in position. So it's like a choreographed dance on a normal day. That's how it would work all day. Line up and wait, clear for takeoff as soon as the two, two crosses the intersection. Two, two gets off, turns left and now they're facing all the traffic that typically I'm just saying in general crosses that echo. They cross it. They cross it echo so they can make a right into four different lanes on the other side and they, they stack up their departures in whatever order they need to for departure gates, in-trail spacing to certain fixes over New Jersey. Cause everybody, everybody starts their flight by flying, flying west somewhere. And that's how they stack up the departures over there. They're in a line and on the picture we're looking at, we can see three of the lines being used, three of the parallel tax aways over there and about three or four on each taxiway. So it's, it's definitely tight over there. The customer base is a lot of RJ's 737. So wingspan is a concern, but it's minimized by the fact that there's so many airplanes that are the same size over there. Yeah. But yeah, that's over here. When you get your taxi instructions there, be ready. You're getting put in line and they'll usually tell you the sequence to follow. Someone you're following is once they pass in front of you on golf there, that's when you go into line and you'll be on tower by then. So I always thought ground control sounded like a hazing incident. Yeah. Here's why. This is my soapbox for metering. Let's talk about that first. What is metering? Have you ever been anywhere that's using metering? I'm not sure. So for departures? Yes. Oh. No. I mean, as a passenger? Probably and not realized it. The only place I've been as a pilot that's used it is Chicago and it's used like perfectly. So imagine you're on clearance, you issue a clearance, you mark the strip, whatever it is. Instead of going right to ground and putting the strip over there, it goes to a metering controller. The metering is who you're told to monitor after you push. Okay. Or call metering depends. That person's only job is to hear from people who are ready to move. They're in between clearance and ground. Okay. Okay. So they are controlling who comes off the gate? They're already off the gate by the time they talk to metering because gates in Chicago are told different frequency, a whole different ramp control. But they call metering and they let them know we're ready to taxi. Metering says okay. And metering puts that strip in a place in order that they want ground to call them. And pilots monitor ground and wait to be called when it's your turn to move. At LaGuardia, there's an advertised frequency for metering. It has never been used. At least when I was there. And I wish it was because when you're ready to taxi, you have to get a hold of this ground controller who's working. How many airplanes are on this screen right now? 30? At least. There's a ton of traffic. Just to get your voice out there, November 1, 2, 3, ready for taxi over a terminal D, we have the weather. One time took me almost an hour, almost a full hour just to get a gap in time where I could push the button and call them to talk. Wow. If they had metering, I could call metering because metering isn't worried about moving traffic. All they're doing is arranging ground departures so that they can call you when they're ready. Please bring it back. That would make life so easy. But anyway. So, okay, so how does ground, well, I guess now with ASD. Yeah, they could see you over there. Ground knows where you are. Your gate number is probably on the ticket or something. But I feel like they don't, until you get a hold of them by voice, they're not going to reach out to you just because your transponder's on and you're blinking on their screen. They're not going to do that. They're waiting for you to call. And yeah, no, I get that here. But if they had metering, ground would have a ticket and he's taking them in order. So the one at the top are the one closest to him. However, they're ordering them. And it comes up and he's going to taxi this plane. He's going to reach out, let's say at Chicago. Ground reaches out to you and taxis you. I'm just wondering how do they know where to look because... Oh yeah, I'm sure metering puts it somewhere on there like a marking of where you're at. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the airlines are divided up by terminal there. So it's pretty obvious it's one or two different places. It's going to be a general area. Yep. But the metering person could put you, maybe you're not at the top of that stack. It's working its way down. Maybe he puts you in between because he needs, hey, I need a triad example. I need a gala and I need a bottom. I need those gala bottom, gala bottom, gala bottom the whole way. Bottom's not a thing anymore. What is it? Trisha. Neither is gala. No. What's the south one now? Carowen. I knew that. I said it a thousand times. I'm stupid. Bold. My point was that the ground controller doesn't have to do all that math with you calling. They're just going to call based on the order that they were fed by metering. So the ground control, like I said, is like hazing because now they have to do all of that. They have to get them in order that the local controller, the tower controller can spit them out into the world in the correct order, which starts when you're ready to taxi. So we already talked about how all departures cross the arrival runway and the arrivals have to work their way back. They're going to be opposite directions. Some of those departures that are crossing that echo depending on what terminal they're parking at. So everything's a log jam. When you leave, you have to cross an active runway twice, once to get over there and once to leave. And when you arrive, you're going to have to go opposite direction and get over to a parallel taxiway that's the other way on the airport for you to get to your gate. So all that to say for the ground controllers that I would be willing to bet there's some sort of money involved. I would pay never to work ground up there. Hey, guess what? Grounds do for a break. No, I don't. Here's 50 bucks. I'm not doing it. Give me local. I don't want it. I don't want to do it. I'll do something else. I want to say this nicely, but I smile when I say it. The controllers are from New York. They have a great sense of humor. They're low on the patients. Okay. They're very good. And I think they deserve the praise. That's why we're talking about them. Just keep that in mind when you're up there. You got to have thick skin. We're going to talk about gate space and places of taxi are scarce. If the departures can't leave, which is what's happening in this example, now you have nowhere for all these arrivals to go. All the departures that are trying to get out are taking up taxiway space. The gates are occupied. So it sounds like you landed and turned right off of Tutu. There is a terminal over there and general aviation and where they park high level security stuff when POTUS is in town. Over here. Yes. Now you are on the wrong side of the world. Yeah. What are you doing over there? That sounds like they sat there for three hours. Man. So anyway, you could see and hopefully understand from our conversation here that when things are going perfect, this airport's challenging. When you add in a backup due to weather and the departures can't get out, it makes it infinitely harder for the controllers. What do you got? What do you got for questions on this place? So here's what somebody's going to say. Why? Did they make this airport like this then? Why did they do this? What is the answer to that? What do you mean? Why are there so many planes here? No. Why is it configured like this? Wouldn't it have been better to make it so that this didn't have to happen? I don't know what year this airport came around. I'm sure it was a less populated area then in New York City. Right. But this is right next to where people live. This is right next to neighborhoods. It's very close to places that are high-rise apartments and the life of New York City. I don't know that they intentionally did it this way to make it the most difficult airport in the world. Hey, when you go to work there, you chose this. Right. You chose this to yourself. Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at is when they built this airport, they were like, there weren't this many planes. It wasn't like this. Can you imagine working ground before ASD at this place and trying to keep track of all of these planes without a screen telling you what each one was? I'm trying to think what I would do, what would be the method because at Triad, the most you're going to taxi out maybe at a time that are actively moving on ground, you might have five or six, maybe seven before they get to local and you've passed the strip. I get pretty much keep track of seven planes and have the strips in order and know which one is which. 30 planes, especially on these areas over here short of one three. This second plane in the middle of this pile of planes. I have no idea who that is. How do you arrange the strips in a certain way? Well at local, they're in a long line. This is what happens. When you cross the echo, they say turn right at one of these parallel doubles. They're doubles over there. They're all blocking over there. It's like Delta Delta, Charlie Charlie, something like that. They tell you which line to turn. The person that you're following might not be the person you follow. When ground turns you, they'll say, hey, you're following and it could be somebody from one of the other two lines or three lines out there. Everybody just moves up on their own. You're kind of in a seat to have four over there. You're just, when it's time to move, you move. When you see the airplane, they told you to follow. They are very, very good. This is another point to make and something that one of my first supervisors who worked at this airport, remember Mike Alpha, was it? Yeah, I know who you're talking about. He was. The bazooka. Yep. The bazooka. The bazooka. He was very good at ground at teaching you to use conditional instructions for the pilots. Hold short of tax way X, follow the aircraft right to left. That's your sequence, contact tower. Like I'm done with you. I'm going to say what I need you to do instead of having to go back to you and they do that all the time there. That's a big thing that trainees do now is they want to paper stop everybody and then they have to go back later. And what that does is it, it sets you up to forget about that plane versus. Okay. Why did you stop them there? What was the purpose of stopping them there? Well, it was for this traffic. Okay. Tell them about it and then just tell them after that traffic continue. Yeah. So that does happen up there a lot. You're kind of, you're not really talking to anybody. You might be monitoring tower on those lines very early on because ground isn't going to change anything. Nothing really can change. They already gave you your sequence. That's the order I gave the ticket to local in and that's the way you're going to go. So what else about this map makes you have questions about all the decisions you've made in aviation life? Yeah. I'm sure that eventually the timing and everything for the crossings for the arrivals and departures becomes second nature. It's just, you have a sense for it. How, when is it going to work? What are your cutoffs? And, but I'm sure it does take some getting used to a lot of this stuff. When you look at it, when I look at it, even as a controller for the first time, I'm thinking, gosh, this is so complicated. There's just so much going on here. But after, I'm not saying that it's easy. Don't get me wrong, but you get that there is a routine that starts to come out of this. I'm sure, you know, some sort of pattern. Yes. You start to pick it up. The controllers that are good really have figured that out. They have figured out this, you know, the pattern to this, what seems feels like chaos, but and the pilots know the routine too. They can hear it. They just watched, you know, five departures in front of them get put into position as soon as the aircraft on two, two, they actually start talking. They start clearing you before that airplane is because you're on the runway. It's left to right. You see them crossing the runway there before that airplane is through the intersection. They're starting to talk. They may read the wind. They have some time buyers. Yep. Wind, two, two, zero, one, zero runway one, three, clear for takeoff. Right. Right as they're crossing through. Right as they're crossing through because then it's very close there. It's less than a thousand feet. Now the pilots can see that airplane and if they're a little bit off on their timing, maybe don't rush the response. Yeah, don't get out ahead of the controller. Yeah. If they're like trying to just add words into the takeoff clearance, yeah, pauses and that's intentional. This is a good reminder for the pilots out there. If you're in position, yes, the next thing you're going to get is to takeoff clearance, but the controller is timing the words to exit their mouth at the right legal time. Don't jump the gun and let go of the brakes and start moving. Going, I know I'm going to get cleared. Okay, great. But we need you to stop right now. I'm talking. Right. So yeah, the big thing with being in position, if you're in line up and wait, anticipated separation is no longer authorized. So what that means is if you were short of the runway, in this case, you're on taxiway Papa short of runway one three, the controller could, could anticipate the amount of time it's going to take this two to arrival. Okay. And they could clear you. Excuse me. They could clear you before that aircraft has gone through the intersection, knowing that it's going to take you time to taxi out, turn on to the runway and start rolling. So your takeoff roll has to begin after that aircraft goes through the intersection. Yes. If you're in position, sitting there ready to go, that you can't do that anymore. And that includes if there was an arrival and you get put in position behind, after that arrival crosses in front of you, they tell you line up and wait, they can't clear you until that aircraft is clear of the runway versus if you're short of the runway, they can anticipate. So on a runway, you're sharing same surface. Like two, same surface. So anticipated separation goes away once you use line up and wait. In other words, as soon as the next thing that the pilots in position are going to do is release the brake and begin their takeoff roll, you can't use anticipated separation anymore. Right. That is the next thing. So the condition that must exist has to exist when you say clear for takeoff. Right. They're off the runway. They've gone through the intersection. They're 6,000 and airborne. Whatever has to be, whatever has to take place. Yeah. I would be willing to bet for aviation, people who know what they're doing a little bit, just some random pilots, GA people, you've listened enough, you've been in the system long enough to know a little bit. If you walked up and watched these controllers do this, I think it would amaze most people. Oh yeah. It's perfectly timed. They do a really good job. And it's not an accident. It's not just randomly happening. It's all timed by the controller. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like people, when they come into our R tower, they get cheated out of, you know, seeing something like that because it's not happening. This sort of thing isn't happening. You might catch our push a couple times a day, but it isn't anything like this. Unless you're talking about ground vehicles. And if that was the case, if you included those in how much we got paid. We'd be a level 15. Yeah. They would have to make new levels above 12. This isn't enough. These guys are working so many vehicles. All right. So big picture of this airport, this configuration that we're talking about, arriving two-tos, departing one-three, crossing both times. I feel like that was the most common scenario. There are other scenarios they use there. They land on three-one a lot, which is the other direction on the one-three surface. They depart on four a lot. I only landed on four a handful of times. In fact, I don't even remember more than one landing in that direction. So I'm trying to paint a broad picture before we ask you maybe an uncomfortable question next. When you get used to a configuration and a rhythm and a flow and timing, the beat, all the things to shift gears can present a challenge for a controller. Absolutely. I turn the airport around. Yeah. Okay. The timing changes. The reason I'm assuming outside of just generally the winds favoring this operation, the reason is because this intersection of these two runways is closer to the approach end. That's super important and super critical in the timing of everything. When, if the intersection is way down at the other end, like if you turn this operation around, you're having to wait forever. Forever. It's too long. And the controllers, I guarantee, don't like it. It's way more advantageous to them to have it the way it is here. And we get that a little bit on the fives if we're doing three, two, you know, that five arrivals going through that intersection almost instantly. They're still airborne when they go through. So yeah, then switching it around, it throws off your timing. It throws off your routine. If you're doing something 95% of the time and then, okay, now we're going to go do this, do it the other way, you're like, eh, it's not my favorite. Let me talk about the other direction. When you land one, three and departing fours, which is another common scenario there, departing fours so everybody's kind of moving in this, get to the southwest side of the airport to depart. And when you arrive, you're close to the terminal, you turn left off the runway. In order for them to legally clear you, that has changed over the years on what method they use to comply with the rules changes in the 7110. When Aegean I started back in air traffic world, Luau probably would have been an option here, runway 31, clear to land, hold short of runway four. So you mean lasso? I'm sorry, yes. I said Luau, I meant lasso, land and hold short. Some operators couldn't do that. So what they, what they did to, this is what it felt like on the pilot side. As soon as your wheels touched down on 31, they would say turn left at a taxiway and if you read that back, they construed that as you're going to do it and I could, I could start using my other runway again. Right. Where that slipped a little bit is, is the timing of when they did that. We wouldn't even, with a nose wheel, barely touched the ground once and the tower control reached out and said turn left and we didn't respond. We're still flying the plane. Right. And they want, they just want you to say something so they can launch the four. I get that. But pilot sometimes and I think this is perfectly okay. Don't respond, fly the plane, get it slowed down, do what they said if you can do it and read it back. But their work, their hurry to use four is not your immediate problem. Your concern is flying the airplane. Right. Yeah, I think, I think there's a tendency, you know, having a, an understanding of how this operation works and what's happening in the controller's constraints, having that understanding as a pilot could lead you to do things to, to, to feel like you're helping the controller. And I would say, don't do that. Don't get me wrong. There are times, there are times to do that. But I don't think like RHS saying that this is one of them. Do what you have to do in a very critical phase of flight to get the plane safely stopped and you're not worried about reading back. Okay, turn left at Tango. You know, today, is that legal? No. It's not. Tell us why. Yeah, they took that away. So now that arrival, instead of just acknowledging the turn, which one, acknowledging the turn is not the turn. They could go blowing through that taxiway. Yeah, now what? Yeah, so, yeah, exactly. So now what? The rule now is they have to be off. They have to be off the runway. Before that four could go. Yeah, so for us, we have runways whose flight pads intersect, but they don't touch. 3-2 and 2-3 right, they don't touch. I want to go on a rant. Go ahead. This rule still applies for that. So a 2-3 right arrival, you can't depart the 3-2 guy until technically, he's turned off of 2-3 right, which is silly. Pass the statute of limitations on this so I can admit to doing this. Totally silly. If the aircraft touched down on 2-3 right, and that scenario, it isn't going around. They're not going around. They're no longer flying. Their flight paths no longer cross because they're not flying. I launched my 3-2. Right. I'm not waiting until he turns left, 4500 feet down the runway. Nope, he's on the ground. There's no shame there. He's a taxiing airplane now. He's not going around. Just saying. Right. It's not legal. That was a long time ago. Okay. Maybe it was then. All right, so we would be remiss if we didn't mention there was some attention on this airport, and we're not going to go into the details on that or point fingers. I just want your opinion on what people who look at that tragedy, and it was a tragedy. There's no other way to say it. What are they not understanding about this operation that you wish they would before they cast a judgment on whose fault it was, or what could have gone better, what happened? What's the big picture element that you're seeing all the press coverage, and all the things that you wish everybody understood? Hmm. I guess that you're up there with either by yourself, or maybe there's two people on the mid, and this goes for facilities across the NAS. It's not just here. I know there was a lot of talk about what was the personnel configuration, and why was it happening like that? It's because it's normal. That is what happens. It happens all over the country every night. Every night. Every mid that I work, there is a time period where there are still planes, and for one person, it's busy. For one person, it's busy. And when you add in something weird on top of that that isn't normal, this is not a normal occurrence. It's a lot. It is a lot for that controller to manage. And so here's what people are going to say, oh well, if it's a lot for that one person to manage, have another person. Just have it fully stabbed 24 hours a day. All right. Okay. What you're saying is basically you need to double the amount of staffing at a place because of the overnight shift. Right. That is not going to happen. It's not. It's just not going to happen. Do you think there will be a change? We'll call it positive. Do you think there will be a positive change as a result of this? Whether it not be a technology change, a personnel change, a configuration change, all the things that are mentioned under the different elements, the trucks, the controllers, their fuel points, all the things, all the equipment on the ground with, as the, will there be something, a lot of our rules in our book come down after tragedies? I'm sure there will be rules that come out as a result of this. Sometimes those rules are beneficial and good, and maybe they needed to happen, like at the DCA incident. I think some of those rules were positive, but there will be rules just like this whole helicopter thing where this is not helpful. This isn't helpful. They've created a hazard in some places with the helicopters that didn't exist before, but this rule changed. Right. Now you're forcing them to go somewhere else. So the tendency to have this reaction, we have to do something. We have to, there has to be a rule to minimize this mistake that someone made in an incident. Well, guess what? There probably already was. There probably already was a rule. You know, so it's like we're sitting there saying, gosh, if only there was a rule, well, this person got murdered. Man, if only there was a rule for not doing that. Right. Okay. People make mistakes. I'm not saying murder is a mistake. Don't get me wrong. I mean, it is, but I'm not saying, oh, just someone just made a mistake and accidentally. I understand. Okay. Perhaps a longer pause between those sentences would have been helpful. You're right. Timing was bad. But the idea that just because someone made an error, that there was a mistake in the system, be that from the controller, be that from somebody on the ground, a pilot, that we have to make a rule now to get rid of this mistake, I think is an incorrect response. I think as a society, maybe we could just say, hmm, we made a mistake. How could we look at this and say, well, what may have prevented this mistake? What could we have done differently leading up to that that could be different? That isn't a rule. It doesn't have to be another thing to stack into this already three-inch thick binder of rules. Someone just made a mistake. It happens. People make mistakes. Unfortunately, in this job, sometimes those mistakes can be very, very costly. And that is part of what this job is. And it really sucks. Man, my heart really goes out to the controllers that have made mistakes. It's not negligence. It's just an honest mistake that resulted in tragedy. And they have to live with that. It's not that they tried to do that, obviously. And I just, I couldn't imagine going back to work. No, I don't know how you do. That would be super, super hard. I want everybody to understand. The big thing I wish everybody understood about this is if you think that the NAS, and this isn't just this airport, every airport, every controller, every center, every tracon, every tower, if you think that they run their day flawlessly without a mistake, you're wrong. They happen all the time. Right. And most of the time, the controller or the pilot or the vehicle operator or some piece of equipment has time to fix that mistake. And you never hear about it. Right. And the ones that you do hear about are the time there wasn't enough time to fix it or something else occurred during that process to prevent that second, third, fourth layer of safety from kicking in. Right. Let's end on a positive note. Okay. None of that should take away from the fact, in my opinion. And I've been there. I've been operated there for years. It's been a long time since I've been there. Those controllers do a really, really great job. There's no but at the end of that. This doesn't change any of that. Right. You guys do an awesome job. You got a little bit of New York attitude. Totally fine. You've earned it and have it. The pilots going in and out of there that are responding to these very quick punchy instructions, keep doing what you're doing. That airport is awesome. It works really, really well. It is a huge... It takes a lot of traffic for its size. It punches above its weight. Oh, yeah. And it's a lot of that has to do with the controllers that are up there. So I want that to be the positive that we leave on. None of those things you've heard take away from how awesome the controllers do every single day at that airport. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Any final takeaway? The feedback was positive. Talking about the controller, doing all the great things and all the controllers and pilots working together during that time. When all they wanted to do was just make this stop. I want to go home. I want to be done with this problem. Yeah. And everybody said, hey, we're stuck. Let's figure this out. Hopefully this show has helped you understand through situations like this, through other stuff we've talked about, helps you understand why those delays are happening, why it's not just you know, somebody going, OK, well, we're just going to put some delays on these guys today, you know, just because. Let's see how long they can take it. Right. There's a reason behind it. It's all, it's not happening in a vacuum. And nobody that, nobody at any level of this whole process is saying, is happy about creating delays. Man, I've been on planes where the pilots are like, you know, air traffic is delaying us again, you know, like, like it's something we're excited about doing. Oh, yep. I got to delay another one. Let me, let me chalk that up. Let me put a tally mark. So I get my quota for the day. Yeah. We have bonus ad pay for ad delay pay. Yeah. Thank you, Juliet, Sierra for sending this in, for sharing a positive story. And you keep going and doing your nerd thing in the back with FlightAware and all the planes and all the flight plane. Keep doing it. I like that. Yeah, I love it. And, you know, might get you into a conversation with somebody next to you who has, wants to ask questions. You can talk about it. You're an expert compared to their knowledge. And you can talk all the things about flight planning and going into this awesome airport. And to be able to watch this traffic live, and he knew he was going to be sitting there for a while. We're on, look, we're still over here. Yeah. We're, our terminals over there and all these little arrows, they look cute, don't they? They're in our way. Right. Including the ones that are in a line in the sky, landing on this piece of pavement. The pilots that are watching this should know, hey, passengers have this information available to them. The pilots, especially, they can see what's happening. So tell the truth. Shall we move on? All right. All right. All right. Fade back time. Fade back. It's a helicopter story. I'm going to get a video up on the screen and a picture, so you got to read. Okay. I love this story. Excellent. I already know it. Okay. But I haven't read it as it is presented here. Mm-hmm. This is such a good story. All right. From Emperor Captain Charlie Bravo, on May 2nd, 1984, a BV-234 helicopter, a BV-234 looks very, very close to a Chinook. I'm going to get that on the screen here. Painted the same color. Mm-hmm. You would have a hard time probably telling the difference. Although I'm sure CB is listening to this, losing his mind. Saying yes, there are so many obvious ways of distinguishing these two. Your video has frozen. Are you still hearing me? Yes. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yep. Okay. You're back. Yeah. I tried to get the computer to do two things at once and one of them was a movie. I'm not going to push any more buttons. I want to get a picture on the screen. Go ahead. All right. So a BV-234 departed with 44 passengers, two pilots, and a flight attendant from an oil rig platform near the East Shetland Basin of the North Sea. Okay. So off the coast of... Where are we talking about? England. All right. It was bound for Aberdeen, but during cruise flight started to experience an uncommanded in-flight disturbance. BV-234s were relatively new at the time. And what we know now as an AFCS failure, that's an automatic flight control system failure with an overriding dash system. Oh man, don't make me remember what dash stands for, but it is... Mm-hmm. It's an electrically driven component that sits within the longitudinal, I think, the longitudinal axis of the cyclic. Okay. That can sort of behind... It's happening behind the pilot's input, but it's... Oh man. Anyway, I can't remember what it means. We talked about... We used it all. I mean, it's working in the background all the time. It's automated. And it just helps take inputs. I have it on the screen finally. Lovely enough thing. Okay. Yep. There you go. Yeah. See, it looks a lot like a Chinook. Charlie Bravo. Anyway, so it's having an overriding dash system was taking place due to the abnormal flying characteristics of the failure, the number two hydraulic pump, cavitated. The crew elected to land in the water out of an abundance of caution. All right, so in this helicopter, because of how huge the rotor blades are, and how many of them there are, just a massive amount of surface area, of lifting area, it would be nearly impossible for you to control this aircraft just with human power. So when you're making an input, it is not directly connected to the rotor blades. You're making an input into a hydraulic unit that is making the input, hydraulically into the rotor system. So if you lose hydraulic power, your rotor system will remain in the configuration in which it failed. So you have a bunch of power applied, you have no power applied, whatever is happening when it fails is what you're going to take all the way to the crash site. I like how you worded that. Okay, you are going, there's no, now you can manipulate engine power, you know, hopefully somewhat and maybe be able to get it on the ground. But if you're flying at 100 knots, you have a serious problem. Okay, hydraulic failures are a huge deal. You lose a system, you're getting on the ground because if that other one goes bad, it's bad, bad, bad, all right. So that's why they elected to land in the water. That's how serious it is. Okay, the helicopter remained afloat. The helicopter remained afloat until all 47 lives, 47 lives were evacuated and then rolled over in the water, but remained afloat. The aircraft was recovered from the ocean floating. Okay, so that is not exactly how I heard that story told initially. Me neither. Penguin helicopters purchased the aircraft in the fall of 1985 with hopes to repair the saltwater damage. The company would ebb and flow as companies do, not getting the overhaul done until some 35 years later. So this thing sat in storage somewhere for 35 years. During multiple discussions, one of the renditions had the aircraft with high tech state of the art glass cockpit, a previous to the glorious F model in the early 2000s. I remember seeing the airframe intact and in multiple pieces throughout different shops of the overhaul facilities over the decades. I remember hearing the smirks of the senior maintenance tech saying it will never fly again. Most shared that opinion after the increase of contractor presence and uncle Sam's gathering in the Middle East. It was finally time for the salty dog to fly again. It would undergo a grueling two year process of buildup. This is actually impressively fast for aviation. Yeah, for something that was upside down in the ocean 35 years ago. Yes. And come out of overhaul looking like the day it rolled out of Boeing's assembly line. A few modifications for its role supporting the war fighters. Okay, so it was destined to go overseas to do contract work. Hmm. On May 23rd, 2018, almost exactly 34 years later, it was my pleasure. It was Charlie Bravo's pleasure to be the first to fly her after the long hiatus. It was truly their efforts that made it possible for this eager chief pilot to make it fly. At the time, I had no idea, but there was a lineup of over 100 shop workers, mechanics, ops personnel, my boss, and other pilot co-workers. My co-pilot informed me the entire shop was outside to watch the maiden flight. And don't screw this up. So no pressure. I'm going to play that video real quick. Okay. All right. So for those of you not watching, just so gingerly lifted from the earth hovering at about 15 feet. A BV-234 or a red and white painted Chinook. Hmm. That's super cool. I could not hear you while that was happening because that volume is extremely loud in my ears. So if I was ignoring you, it was because I couldn't hear you. Sarcastically, under no pressure to perform at all, I brought the Dragon to life. First, the APU, flight control checks, ensuring every bit was in operational order. We eventually had six turning and two burning. That's the rotor blades and the engines. After what seemed like an hour after our request to lift, our clearance came from the hard pronounce on the radio Delta Tower controller south of the then hipster Charlie. Very deliberately, I raised the thrust lever and peeled the wheels off the ground, like separating brand new Velcro, stabilizing in a 15 foot hover. We did it. I said, what a moment for a small company and team of dedicated individuals, the aircraft flew smoothly, yet solid, like it had been waiting for this very moment. After multiple verification flights preparing for work, she was loaded onto an Ant-Nove, a really huge Russian cargo jet, and flown down range. The Salty Dog served in its government support role for three years, until changed uniforms to firefighting in Turkey and more recently Italy. The video attached, which those of you in the chat room just saw, is of the first flight. You can hear the cheers kind of over the battle cry of the Chinook. The still pick is a long line mission in Afghanistan. Excuse me, 250 feet long line in case you were curious with a howitzer. That is crazy. That is on your notes. If you want to put that on the screen real quick, you can see them hanging in the sunset there. Yeah. Scroll, you want to put that on the screen? Oh, sure. It's 250 feet long for a, is that a long way? That's a super long line. So when we carried howitzers, we did it on like 40 foot lines. All right. Because we had somebody in the back of the helicopter that could look out and see this thing. We didn't need to see it from the cockpit. That's part of the reason they do this is so that the pilot out of that bubble window can look down and see the load from the cockpit. I never thought about that. Okay. Because at 40 feet, I don't think you, you know, it's up here somewhere. I don't think you would be able to see it. I had never flew anything on a line this long. The longest I ever did was 100 foot lines. So half of that on a, with a water bucket. Could you see it? No. Okay. We didn't have a bubble window. You didn't? Mm-mm. No. What's near your feet? Is that the, I want you to call the bubble? That's the chin bubble. Okay. This is the bubble window. No, yeah. This, the bubble window is head level to the left or to the right. But typically the pilot flying on the left side, and they can actually lean outside of the frame, of the airframe, and see backwards and see down. And in the military, you had to have crew members in the back to perform that function. I don't know what the bubble window does to the jettisonable door, because that for us was a, an emergency exit. Mm. I'm not sure how the bubble window affects that, but yeah, these guys in the civilian world that fly these do almost everything long, long line like this. I'm not sure if it flies more stable. This is on single point. We did how it's, there's a lot of the time dual point, which was always more favorable to have two hooks, two sling points. It's way more stable that way. It almost feels more like part of the aircraft versus something that's swinging around. And this on a long line can really get to swinging. You know, this moment is pretty big. So yeah, I don't know. That's pretty, pretty interesting. Cool pic. Yeah. Awesome video. Yes. Thank you, Charlie Bravo for sending that. Another piece of evidence on how awesome this Chinook is. I mean, BB-34? BB-34. Yeah. Dragged out of the ocean and 35 years later, made to fly now. Granted, they basically rebuilt the whole thing, but. Still, it's amazing. Great story. Very cool. Anything on that one before the last one? Nope. All right. Number two from Emperor Captain Sierra Hotel with salutations and felicitations to R.H.N.A.G. on my fellow and my fellow Pengwanads. In this feedback, I want to give a shout out to the importance of monitoring and sometimes misused, but important guard frequency on 21.5 megahertz. While I usually load and monitor guard in my Com2 active frequency, when I'm on a long cross-country flight, it's not a hard and fast roll. Recently in a cross-country flight from the Australian Open Airport, on the southeast coast of the Sunshine State to my home airport at the Speedway under the Metroplex Bravo, I got a good lesson on the importance of monitoring guard. The east coast of the Sunshine State is incredibly busy with aviation traffic. We're talking Orlando, Daytona Beach area, and when on an instrument flight plan or flight following, there's the constant chatter of controllers alerting pilots about traffic and weather, providing routine instructions, and notifying pilots of necessary frequency changes. I believe it would be unwise to fly along that coast without being in regular contact with ATC, even when not on a flight plan. Preach. Yeah, right. I had a roll of thumb in my head. In the airline world, if you haven't heard from somebody in five minutes, it's probably a long time. In the center world, maybe not as much, but low, below 12,000. If you haven't heard somebody talking in five minutes, you're probably not on the right place. Pilots ask all the time, especially in the evening, during a lull, and they're the only person flying through the airspace, and they'll keep you guys still there. Did I get lost? You're in the right place. While flying north on my instrument flight plan, I was on with Mickey Mouse approach for what seemed like a long time. I noticed a couple of flights indicated on my ADS-B and my multifunction display to have passed relatively close to me without any alert from ATC. This felt odd, but I'm very attentive to frequency change commands, and was sure that I hadn't received any recently. After a few more minutes, it bothered me enough that I studied my position on my moving four-flight map on my iPad and discovered that I appeared to be in stock car racetrack approach airspace, even though I had not been handed off to that Treycon. I keyed up my last frequency, identified myself, and asked the controller if I needed to be handed off to racetrack approach. The controller's answer was interesting. Well, that depends. Where are you? AG can tell us what's happening right now. I thought that was a bit odd since I hadn't given him my call sign, and I wasn't on an instrument flight plan, but I imagine he had lots of targets to monitor and maybe didn't see me right away, or perhaps I was already off his screen. What do you think's happening right now? Uh, well, you know, without totally throwing somebody under the bus. Hypothetically, of course. Of course. That just sounds like he got forgotten. Flew off the scope, Land. Yes, without a handoff. I would be lying if I said that that had never happened to me. It happens. It happens. It's not a good feeling. When somebody you know, I remember you, why do I remember you? And then you zoom out just maybe 10 more miles and you're like, Yes, it's not a great feeling. But, you know, it does happen. They continue, I remembered that at the bottom row of the four flight page that displayed the moving map on my iPad shows my distance and relative position from the nearest airport. I glanced down at and gave him my location. His response was, Yes, you do need to be handed off. He apologized and gave me the new frequency. I checked in with a new controller, innocently asking, Have you been looking for me? The new controller said in a rather irritated voice. Yes, I've been trying to reach you for at least 15 minutes. Oh, geez. This is not a slow airplane, by the way. We're talking lots of miles have been covered here. You've covered some distance. I explained the handoff issue and fortunately didn't receive a phone number to copy. Right, because you didn't do anything wrong. Right. They forgot to hand you off. Now the receiving controllers partially involved in this discussion later on like, hey, when you notice this, because they see that airplane, it's on a Mickey Mouse tag. Yeah, it's not. And it's not invisible. Just because a handoff hasn't been accomplished. The tag is still there. They also could have keyed up and said, Hey, he's radar that prevents what we would call a loss of separation. Right. And a deal. Right. And the controller at Mickey Mouse would say, Oh, thanks. Here he comes. Right. They didn't do that. So you didn't do, as a pilot, you did nothing wrong. Your awareness is great in this, but you haven't done nothing wrong in this scenario. Right. However, it then occurred to me that I had been, had I been monitoring guard, this issue would have been resolved much earlier and easier, less and learned. I don't know. It doesn't sound like that would have been the case. They weren't trying to get you on guard. We always endorse having that on there in case they did lose you, but this controller forgot about you. And that's different from not being able to contact you, because when you called them, they were like, huh, oh yeah. So they could hear you. We do need to hand you off. And the new controller heard you. It's unlikely that they were looking on guard on the receiving controller, because you were still on the other tag. So it's possible here that the handoff was accomplished and the frequency change wasn't accomplished. That happens too. And you're actually lucky that it was resolved before you went out of comms. Yeah. With that first sector. And then the guard would have been. Then guard, then you need guard. Or you have to go looking for the frequency on your own. And we have lots of places in the airspace where it doesn't take long after you exit our airspace you're going to be out of comms. We're not going to get you. Yeah. And then you're on your own. And guard would be very handy. So. Guard would be super helpful. Another unrelated but nice aspect of my flight that they was two different controllers complimented and thanked me for the note in the comments section of my flight plan. I followed your suggestion. And in the comments line, I always list my cell phone number followed by I love ATC. Excellent. Thanks for all you guys do to keep us informed and safe. Keep the blue side up. Emperor captain, Sierra hotel. Well, thank you for the awesome feedback. Your awareness. You're following some OB unwritten rules. Not honoring guard is one of them. And your situational awareness is obviously amazing because you listened to us. I like you did bring up a good point. The handoff could have occurred. There wasn't a loss. There was no deal between controllers. And in there's a lot of traffic up there. You might not remember if this airplane checked in or not. Especially if you're an overflight. We've said this before checking in on an overflight situation. It's usually not urgent that you get in touch with somebody because they're just going to give you the altimeter setting and eventually hand you off to somebody else. They've already cleared a path for you and in their scan of what could be a conflict for you. And they may not need to reach you. So they might not have any reason for them to call you. Except for the fact that it was looking for you for a few minutes because he knew they haven't checked in. Right. The controllers listening key up to the other controller. Hey, try him again. He didn't take the handoff. Oh, that's because I didn't give it to him. Yeah. Right. So anyway, good lesson, good awareness, awesome job. And thank you for supporting the show. Yeah. That is an important, the politeness that you conveyed in that request. Try him again. Implies that you already tried to switch this aircraft to me one time at least. And I'm requesting that you do that again knowing full well. You just forgot to switch. Good point. It's very polite. Yeah, be nice to each other. All right, we do our best to respond to support feedback and let you know when you'll be on an upcoming show. AJ, anything before the chat? I do not. Closing out episode 436 of opposing basis air traffic talk. Romeo hotel. And Alpha Golf. Goodbye, everyone. Drop. Yeah. Drop.