#110: Fernando Contreras

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together and we're live bro Welcome. Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate this. Thanks so much for taking the time. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me man. Dude, so I so our Buddy Guy Levy, I saw you on his Instagram story, you know that he was, that he had just either trained with you or adjusted you. And I went to your Instagram page and I was like, this guy looks so fucking cool. I got, I want to do a podcast with him. So I hit up, so I hit up guy and I'm like, yo, who's who's that dude?

0:43 You know? And then he was like, yeah, he's he's awesome. You'd love him. Let me set, let me set up the introduction. And you just you, dude, you your, your, your life seems awesome, man. It seems like it seems like you're pursuing all your passions and you're kind of making them happen. You want to tell us a little bit about who you are? Yeah, man. Well, thank you for that. It it's truly a blessing to be able to, you know, accomplish and fulfill my dreams and live, you know, the the life that I've been dreaming as a child. But yeah, no, I'm everybody. My family are aviators, so it was kind of my blood to be a pilot. It was just second nature to me to do everything that has to do with flying and you know, going through flight school and everything, it was just so like, you know, when you have a smart person in class and you're like, how do you understand everything so easily? That's kind of like how I felt in flight school. Of course I had my challenges and everything, but it was just that one natural thing that I'm like, wow, this is like so cool to be experiencing.

1:40 And, you know, I never really thought a bit about it in terms of, you know, like this is the best job in the world. It was just something I was so passionate about until I finally got in the airplane and, and like I at this stage in my career now, I'm like, damn, this is the best job in the world. Like for me at least, you know, and you know, that's, that's basically how, why I can say like at least career wise, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm living my dream on that. So, but it, you know, I started off when I was very little and just seeing my dad leave like for flights and things like that. He back in the day in the early 90s, he was able to take me in the flight, take in an international airline that he flew for. So that's when the real passion like sunk in.

2:21 I was like, what all these, what all these buttons do? Like why is there so many lights? And just like, you know, aviation back then was just way different, way, way different than what it is now. And yeah, how's that kind of like, well, in terms of like technology, like my dad was flying an airplane at the time where you needed 3 pilots in in the in the cockpit. So you needed a captain and a first officer and a flight engineer. Nowadays, there's no more flight engineer. So a lot of that stuff on that panel that the flight engineer used to do, like switch electrical components to pneumatic air and where is it going? Where's it coming from? All that stuff now can be handled with two pilots based on the design of the flight deck. So it's, it's a little bit different nowadays and the technology is just absolutely insane with how airplanes operate now and the redundant systems that they have. It's it's really fascinating.

3:14 I'm excited to hear all about this stuff. When did so your SO your dad? Your dad is a commercial pilot international. Yeah, he's Yep, Yep. He's still airline pilot. Nice. OK, gotcha. And what what did he say when you decided to go into it? Well, my dad first originally was like, hey, Are you sure you want to do this? Because this job you're a way a lot from your family. You're going to miss birthdays, you're going to miss Christmases, you're going to miss a lot of these important things. And you, I just want you to have all the details before you make this decision. He was like, Are you sure you don't want to be like an engineer or something? And I did, I tried, I tried to do engineering, but I always wanted to be a pilot.

3:56 I tried engineering as a backup just in case. I didn't really like the lifestyle of being a pilot, which I, yeah, there was no way I was going to be like, it's very interesting, but being a pilot I think is way better. Totally, totally, totally. What's the, what's the, what's the schooling like? I have a friend of mine that got AI, have a couple of friends actually that got their pilot's license, but I know there's different degrees of licenses and I know it's a fortune, right? Like, I mean, it's like, at least it was my friend after Kyle, after undergrad and his master's, then he went back to Chicago. He's from Skokie and it took him like 2 1/2, three years because you know, he's paying out of pocket and, and paying pay and getting those flight hours apparently like to rent those little planes.

4:40 It was very expensive. And he said he loves him more than anything in the world. But he was like, it's like, you have to be committed to wanting to do that because it takes time and it takes a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, you're 100% correct. There's a couple ways you can go about flight school. You can go to a mom in pop school. You can go through a university. In reality, the licenses don't take you that long. If you go through a university, you're going to, you're going to do your full four years and come out with the bachelor's of like aviation science. But it takes no, no, no, I went to a mom and pop school at I did it in about like 10-10 months. To your point where you're saying is like you have to go consistently because if you don't then you start losing like what you learned.

5:26 So if you only go once a week, you can have to repeat that over and over and over again. What might have taken you a week to learn, now it's going to take you two months to learn because you're not going so frequently. And you know back then there weren't as many aids financially for flight school as there is now. And that is due to a lot of like the demand, especially you that, you know, the industry needs right now of pilots. So certain airlines have created like their own flight school path program to their airline. So they offer the financial loan in the aspect of it out of, at a, at a lower interest rate than would be a, a regular personal loan. And that's made it a little bit easier for people to be able to start fly school.

6:11 But you know, before, like before that, that started maybe like 5-6 years ago. Before that when I went to fly school, there wasn't any of that. So your loan was at a personal loan rate in that super high. But but yeah, you know, like I had a when I was growing up, I did a lot of savings and, and I was, you know, working since I was like 1415 and I saved a lot of money because I knew that that's something that I wanted to do. My 2 main goals with saving money was to go to fly school and buy a house. So every time I would save, I dump it all in flight school and continue. And I was still working part time. I went to FIU for business administration and I was doing my flight school at the same time and I was working valet parking. So I was trying to pay everything as I go. All my savings went into flight school. I went from zero, started into an airline, started saving again, and then was finally able to buy a house. So I I was able to fulfill those two objectives of of of my savings so.

7:07 Yeah, it's amazing. Where'd you buy your house? Where do you live? Where's your house? It's how it's here in South Florida. South Florida Cool. Man, and I love it down here. I grew up here and I just love it. It's all my friends, family primarily. Everybody's here. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I've been, I've been in South Florida for about 3 years now. I've always wanted growing up. I, I, my, my, my dad is originally from Miami Beach and I always wanted, I always said going and we used to visit a bunch. My grandparents still live there. And I used to always say I got to try it out and my wife and I got married. I was working remote and she wasn't, she wasn't sure what she's going to do with herself yet. She's a ultrasound tech now. But we're like, you know, we can go anywhere in the world.

7:48 And we're both from New York and we're like, let's just, let's head to Florida. You know, you just, you know, like right after a week after a wedding, we just loaded up our car with whatever clothes we had and we just drove down and I figured it out. Damn spontaneous, I love that. Nice. Yeah. You know, it's not it's, I mean, you know, I, we, it was, it was, it was cool. And I've already moved, you know, so like probably 5 or 6 different times in my life to completely unknown places that, you know, I knew that South Florida was something that, you know, is pretty, pretty manageable as far as as far as lifestyle, you know, it's I love being down here. So, so you were working that you were working in school and what you're saving is saving the money that you were making at this point.

8:37 And you started working at 14, you said? Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy. Did your did your, did your family encourage it? Do you think you you said, you know, you just knew that you had to and like how are you so driven at that age? Man, that's a really good question. I, it was all like initiated by me. I was telling my parents like, Hey, I want to work. I want to make my own. Like, I wanted to be as independent as I could from as young as I could. And nothing that, you know, that doesn't influence the, the, the relationship with my parents or anything. They're always very supportive of, of what I would, you know, try to do. But I always wanted to be like, Hey, I don't really want to be using your money. I want to make my own money, you know, and, and then my first job was working at the YMCA taking care of like kids, other parents want to go work out.

9:26 And you know, I made some really good friendships there. I actually met one of the first initial personal trainers or the person who helped me train introduce me to fitness through that and it and it all just like went from there. I went to work at a different gym after that and then it all and I ended up working for who is now Tony Robbins personal trainer. Like things like that. It's, it's just, you know, that whole wanting to work, I've always had to like really great work ethic. My parents were always like, no, you need to focus on school And and I of course I definitely needed to, but I just always thought I can handle both and you know, I did. But yeah, a lot of that, a lot of that self was self driven.

10:09 To. That's awesome. Start making money, yeah. That's awesome. Can I ask how many siblings you have? 1. Younger one sibling, younger sister. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Did you? So you, you feel like you're like the protective one or like, you know, like you kind of had to like be your own man and make your own way? Because that's how I kind of like I'm the oldest too. I mean, I'm the oldest at like 6, but I've always felt like as an older, as an older sibling also, I kind of felt that similar guilt, although I probably started feeling it a little like probably closer to 17 or 18, you know, like, hey, like maybe everything I do shouldn't be in my parents time, you know, And you know, maybe I maybe it's time to start kind of building my own skill set and kind of doing my own thing and like, you know, really making my own way.

10:50 But but I always felt that kind of, you know, leadership or, you know, sense of responsibility just from being an older sibling, you know? Yeah, no, that's a, that's a really great observation. I never really felt it from a siblings perspective, just because I knew that like, you know, my, my parents would be able to support my sister and I in whatever education we wanted to pursue or, or something like that. And, you know, having the possibilities to live in the United States and the amount of possibilities that there is here is, is something that I wasn't really too much, I guess felt pressured by to initiate my own building of skill sets. But yeah, you know, my sister, my sister was the same. She was like, hey, I I want to start building my own skill set, But she focused a lot more on the education part. She's in the in, in the health industry. So she she spent a lot of her time studying and studying real hard.

11:46 You know how that industry is everybody that's just studying night and day. So, so yeah, man, I think, I think it's a really good observation, but it maybe I got to give it some more thought and see if that influenced. The yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never know what you discover, you know, so you got so you're super so so you're into you're into flying, you're into fitness. You started working out, you know, you started, you started, you know, I guess getting introduced this at 1415, which is probably one of the best things you could do at that point in your life. I see that you fight. I saw, I saw that you're when when you're away from your black belt. Yes. In which martial art? It's actually in Krav Maga. Nice. The school is a mixed martial arts school, but the main self-defense that we learn is Krav Maga.

12:30 Gotcha. Yeah, I just started rolling jujitsu a couple months ago. Guy also, I did a podcast. I did my podcast with Guy. I told him that I wanted to start because I heard that he did MMA and he's like, dude, you got to come to where I work. They have an awesome gym and the coaches there are awesome. And I was, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm almost 30, you know, to start, to start this for the first time and you're almost 30 was, was, was pretty terrifying, but it was the best thing in the entire world, man. Like just just getting that adrenaline and kind of like facing that, you know, a, that fear of confrontation, but also kind of learning in real time how to slow everything down and to just, you know, think about your individual body parts and components and, and let's, and after doing that, I've kind of felt that I've had a much easier time in the last couple of months, even with sales and work and business and even my own personal life, like my relationship with my wife and like my kids. You kind of look for your own ways to solve issues because you're spending so much time with no one there to help you except for yourself, you know, and, and, and this person that's sitting on top of you that knows way more than you do about anything.

13:46 And you know, and it encourage you, encourages you to, you know, figure out how to, how to ask questions and how to learn and how to figure out, you know, when you're in a tough spot, tough spot and you're thinking of quitting, you know, what else can you do? And it's kind of a mindset. I feel like it translates over to everything that you do, you know? I agree. That was beautifully said man. And it's just like you can transition what you learn from martial arts into real life. Just like how you said, it improves a lot of your ability to think of being resourceful, right? Just like how you said, if you're in a situation where you're stuck, like I started jiu jitsu as well and in, in, in a separate gym. And there's times where I'm like, man, I don't know how to get out of this.

14:31 If I just give up, what what's going to come out of that? But if you start thinking, you slow down your breathing, you slow down everything and you're like, OK, I have a little bit of time even though I'm super tired, I'm exhausted. Do I have about a second or two to think, how can I get out of this? Even if it's just not probably not the right way to do it, you still do it. And that is teaching you, hey, still try attempt to do something because you never know what else it can lead you to. Maybe you, maybe that movement gets that person out of the perfect situation to get you in some sort of choke or everything. Now you have space, right? And that little amount of space is enough for you to throw the other person off or get out. And, and, and it's just like that, like mentally every day we go through things that we're constantly thinking about. We're overloaded with information daily. And then we just get to a point where we're like, oh shit, I can't even think straight right now for something that it really matters.

15:29 And that's when you really have to focus and be like, right, this does matter. And that's the same situation when you're like pinned down, how do I get out mentally? It's the same thing, you know what I'm saying? So it teaches you that. And I think it's, I think it's fantastic. That's what I love about martial arts. Yeah, yeah. And I think that, I think that one of the points you just said, I think that is really, really valuable is when you're stuck to give yourself a second to breathe and to not like like that second of like, that's like one thing that someone was teaching me the other day. I went back, I went back and I, I, I had like you were talking even about like the flight school have muscle memory. And the more time you spend practicing, the more that you know it, it really becomes ingrained in you. I've done this, I've done jujitsu for like a month and change.

16:12 And I went on a two week break, which is the worst thing to do. I come back and I just felt like my entire body was just out of sorts, right? And I was totally disconnected. And I'm talking, you know, I'm asking a guy that's obviously, you know, phenomenal, you know, way better than I am. And, you know, we're rolling and he goes, So what are you going to, you know, what can I do? He's like, dude, you're rushing everything. He's like one step at a time. There's no rush if you're in a fight, like think just like, you know, like be aware, like, you know, like I your instinct is like to like flood your brain, you know, just to like rush at something or to like, you know, move as fast as you can. And I've actually noticed that that's with a lot of things I noticed also, I'm a huge music fan, right?

16:55 And some of the best singers and some of the best covers, some of the best songs that I've heard performed are just done slowly. And then, and then when someone's nervous, I don't know if you're, you know, when someone's nervous, they speed up what they're saying, they talk faster, They, they, they, they sing faster, they play faster. There's something to be said about the art of just slowing everything down. And that's a breathing helps, I guess. But you know, but I, but if you can, you know, when you start implementing that into one part of your life, like with training or rolling, and then you and you know, and then you move on and you go back to, you know, your house and you got to, again, this happened to me all the time. I got work calls from upset customers. I sell medical equipment, right? And if they're upset, you know, my initial reaction is to panic like, and I like, dude, what are you panicking for? They're probably just as nervous to be confronting you as you are, as you are dealing with them. Just take a breath, have a conversation with them, show them you understand what they're thinking, show them understand where they're coming from and see how you go work it out. And like, and, and every single time I've done that since then, and this is, you know, just something that I've learned from rolling, you know, every single time I've done that since then, it's really, really changed the dynamic of my, you know, you know, in terms of my ability to be a salesman and like, you know, a businessman.

18:12 Yeah. And don't, don't, don't you find that in that moment where you are in that situation, it actually instead of becoming more stressful, it becomes more enjoyable because you have a different outlook on it, right? I think, I think if you can enjoy those certain times in your job, it makes the quality of time in your job a whole lot better. Would you, would you agree with that or? Yeah, for sure, man. I mean, imagine, I mean, if your entire job is, you know, afraid to answer the phone because you don't want that, you don't know the other person on the other end of the phone is going to be saying to you, you know, that's a pretty miserable way to live. If you take, if you answer that, if you answer the phone like you're collaborating with someone, it's a totally different experience, you know, and, and as I go with everything in life, you know, like even most conflicts I've realized are just an exam are just people trying to emphasize their points and feel like they're not heard. Like that's like 95% of the conflicts that out that out, you know, personal business, whatever. It's like if you, I've noticed that if I just tell people like, if I'm able to repeat to them what their concern is and say, I totally understand where you're coming from. And I'm, you know, and, and this, this and this, and here's where I'm coming from.

19:22 That's why, that's why, you know, that's why I said what I said or I did what I did. And I'm sorry about the miscommunication. There's something there. There's nothing there to argue with, you know, like, and then it just turns into, and then it just turns into collaboration. I think it's awesome. So tell me dude, a little bit about so so you so you finished flight school and you've been flying for how how long you been flying for now? Let's see, eight years now, 2014. And do you and do you have a commercial license? Do you have a what kind of? What kind of planes do you fly? Yeah. So I have what's called an airline transport pilot license, and that's basically after your commercial and you have built enough hours to qualify for this license, you can fly for airlines pretty much.

20:08 So I fly, yeah, I fly for American Airlines and I am on the Boeing 737. No way, really. Yeah, 737 is international. That's the one that they take internationally. We so we do some international. So our route, my routes primarily are Caribbean, South America and Central America. South America we don't go so deep. The lowest or the most S that we go is probably like Keto or Guayaquil in Ecuador, but we do a lot of Colombia, we do a lot of Central America like Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador. On the Caribbean side, we go to almost every island that there is in the Caribbean. And then we do a lot of domestic stuff. That plane carries about 172 passengers depending on the configuration that we have.

20:59 We have the Ng and also the Max, the 737 Max, so either 1, the Max has a little bit more range and it's also a lot more fuel efficient. So most of the time that we go South towards Ecuador, we normally take the Max and the next step up after that, the one that goes like really Far East or West is you're looking at the Boeing 777 or the 787 that's on the Boeing side. We, our airline only has those in terms of like what we call wide body aircraft, but Airbus also has what's called wide body aircraft and you'll see a lot of them being used by like Delta and United as well and they're the Airbus A-350, the Airbus A330.

21:43 Those are wide body aircraft too that you know do that long range kind of flying as well. Right, right, right. But so what's the, what's the new Dreamliner like? I just flew to Israel and to Amsterdam and, and I mean obvious, listen, I, I, I, I get a little nervous flying. I've obviously noticed that the bigger plane you fly, the less, the, the, the less turbulence that you experience. But I've also heard the turbulence is, is not necessarily a bad thing. I, I, my friend that was the pilot was telling me that a lot of times pilots fly into turbulence, into turbulence on purpose. Is that true? I don't know if that's true that we fly to turbulence and purpose.

22:28 I mean, honestly, I'd rather I'd rather not. I'm trying, I'm trying to have smooth air for the comfort of everyone, right. But there are times where it's pretty much like you are unable because the air is so disrupted that we're we're flying in. You got to remember like up at altitude, there are there's a lot of things that affect air in the transition of a flight. So when you take off, you're going. Through what does? What effects? It a lot of things, so wind effects it pressure effects it fronts, you know, we see there a low pressure area or high pressure area, cold fronts, warm fronts. Then you have winds where the winds coming from, if they're in the winter, you have jet streams like all of these things that push air in different directions as you're moving cause turbulence.

23:15 So turbulence is literally just the like, not smooth air flow over the wings. The air becomes turbulent, it breaks up, it's in different directions. So what happens is over the wings, the air is not smooth, it just starts to kind of break apart a little bit earlier than than expected on, on a certain part of the wing. And what happens with that? That's where you start feeling like a little bit of like shaking. And you know, some sometimes you'll feel like a like a kind of like a big drop. Those are like pockets of turbulence that you might get. But in reality, turbulence is not, there's different categories of turbulence. You have light, moderate, severe, severe and you know, you obviously don't want to go through severe, but if you're going through a light turbulence, that's not, you know, that's nothing that bad. Airplanes are designed to sustain loads of extreme turbulence and some, you know, So what the scary feeling is the acceleration your body's going through from being in one certain area, moving through space to changing the direction to dropping lower drop or, or raising up or moving left to right.

24:28 That doesn't feel good in the body for some people. And that's what's kind of scary, right? That sends a message to your brain saying like, oh, shoot, what's going on? Like that's not what we were feeling right now. It's the same thing. Like, I don't know if you've ever gotten in like go karting or you gonna like in a really fast car around a track, the acceleration and the braking doesn't, I mean, it doesn't make you feel good initially. There's so much difference of acceleration. It's almost kind of like the same thing. But my question to you is, why do you think that it's better to fly in bigger planes than in smaller planes? Is I've because to me that's just a mental thing that people create in their head, that the bigger that the airplane is, that the less turbulence they're going to feel. Is that?

25:14 Is that what you think? Well, yeah, the so I I'm kind of basing that on it. So I have yeah, based on that experience that. So it's actually funny. So there's there's two, I guess there's a couple of things that I'm immediately thinking of, right. Number one is I've flown on a private plane once before from New York to Vegas and the, and I've and we had a lot more turbulence on that little plane than, you know, than I've had, for example, again, taking that Dreamliner to, you know, across the country, across, across the ocean to Israel or whatever, right. On the other hand, I also know I also have, I didn't know this for a fact, but I kind of just kind of put it together. That temperature had a big has a big impact because I know that every time I fly back and forth from South Florida, especially in the summertime, the 10, you know, as I guess the humidity and the heat.

26:15 And also I feel like because the heat in Florida is always almost feels like it's always about to like break. It's always like building and building and building. And it doesn't completely break until like winter again, I guess, you know, until like October, November. But like when you're every single day, the heat, the humidity and the heat kind of build up and build up and build up. And I think, and I guess that causes an impact in the environment, right? Like or I guess in the air, but I just assumed that the bigger the plane, the more sturdy and that even, you know, even though the and I and I guess the more weight there is, the less thrown around it's going to get. That's kind of what I figured.

26:55 Does the First of all, you're 100% correct about the temperature it does affect. So whenever you're getting into warmer temperatures and there's lower pressures, there is instability of air, right? Instability of air, meaning like the air is just not staying, the air starting to move up in altitude. Why? Because there's less pressure. And whenever there's less pressure, particles start to move up. And then when particles move up, they start to lose the temperature, The temperature starts to drop. And what happens is those particles become a little bit more dense again. And then they go through the cycle that they're going, moving up and down in between altitudes. And that's how you start getting like unstable air and the build up of storms.

27:39 So imagine if you're if this you're flying straight horizontally, right? You're flying straight and you're about to pass this area where there's low pressure and this air is moving up and down and you're moving horizontally. So that air that you're moving horizontally with is now disrupted because you're now, because you're now going through an area of air moving up and down. It's unstable. So that's one, that's just one of the many reasons there could be turbulence. Let's say you're flying and that flight that you were going from, I don't know if it was New York or Miami to Vegas. As you're getting closer to those mountains, air is disrupted by those mountains, right? There's a lot of air flow that comes from the northwest and comes down and drops towards the southeast.

28:25 If you have opposing winds for that day for some reason that are going against it, let's say like a low, low, sorry, a warm front is coming up and it's hitting that high, high pressure cold front that's coming in. You have two pieces of massive air colliding against each other. That air is not going to be smooth. It's just like opposing each other. It's just hitting each other like that. So now you're here coming along, it's nice and smooth and then bam, you get this like huge shake on the airplane. It's because the airflow was disrupted. So if you take it, you can't really compare size of an airplane in terms of like, I took an airplane once through this route and it was small and I got a lot of turbulence.

29:09 And then I went the other route and it was big. I got no turbulence because there's so many outside factors that affect what makes an airplane go through turbulence. Because if you took that same Dreamliner that you took to Israel and you go to Vegas on that same day, that's exact same flight, you're going to feel the same exact turbulence. Maybe, maybe it'll be the different. The feeling might be different. Because yes, size and stability does affect how much is felt by the airplane. But every airplane is built on three different types of stability. You have longitudinal stability, lateral stability, and vertical stability. That means that if the airplane is flying along nice and smooth and it gets disrupted, its ability to return back to that neutral position, that's what airplanes are built on.

29:57 There has to be a certain degree for airplanes to come back to neutral. Without touching it. It'll take some time, but without touching, it'll come back. Obviously if you do manipulate the controls and bring it back to neutral earlier, it's obviously better, but the autopilot does that as well. I never thought of air as like a thing, you know, like, as like an object, you know, and it's, it's so cool to think about, you know, because, because it's true. And, you know, and I, I mean, and even just the difference, by the way, and I'm sure you, I'm sure you've experienced this as you, as you travel, the difference between the air in different locations is just, yeah, out of this world, dude. I mean, I, I'm in my parents' house right now in, you know, about an hour north of Manhattan and you know, and even though it's hot, you know, like the air in the mountains is just completely, excuse me, different air than, than in South Florida, you know, and it's just a different world.

30:50 And, you know, and I guess I never really thought of it, but it's a legitimate like medium. Like it's a real, it's a real, it's really, really cool. Are you, are you nervous about AI taking over all pilot jobs? Because I feel like I I keep you're not nervous. No, I don't think so. They actually just came out. They were trying to do this whole thing in Europe where they're trying to size it down to 1 pilot. And to me, I think that's completely stupid because there's still a lot of things that with AI and with technology right now, you still cannot, you still cannot do what 2 pilots can do in the airplane. Did you? Break that down.

31:31 Well, it kind of really depends. I'm not quite sure exactly. Well, first, in terms of you got to think about this like you got to think about the human aspect and the instinct and perspective on a situation versus a robot just doing things based on what it's programmed to do, right? The robot, if something wrong happens, the AI will, you know, go through like, OK, if this is wrong, then that's going to happen if this is going to happen, right? But there's the element of human interaction and perspective, right? An airplane can be like, oh, I lost both engines, right? The AI, the AI computer will be like, OK, we need to shut down.

32:13 We need to do a complete shutdown and we're going to glide it and land into the ocean. OK. If you have the, there was an air can or I think it was Transat, it was a Canadian airline that went from Canada all the way to I believe it was going to Portugal and it made a landing and the Azores. Why? Because let me see if I can remember this correctly. They started having fuel issues in one engine in the checklist. They didn't do something according exactly to the checklist. The way that the outcome came came down to intuition of the pilots and just flying experience that they were able to land an airplane without engines safely in an island on the runway. OK, like it's a miracle, but artificial intelligence could have been different and it could have been like, hey, we need to shut down both engines because this is what your checklist does.

33:10 And we're going to have to ditch in the middle of the ocean. And you know who who knows how long it's going to take for rescue to get there Could have been there could have been casualties, right? That element. I you AI could not, at least to this day, cannot do that. There's no right. Right, right, right. I guess So you're saying that you, but I mean, but you could really wind down a lot of the repetitive stuff, right? Like like what you said, like you know, flying has changed a lot, especially since your dad has been flying, you know, and I'm sure there's a lot less that pilots need to do nowadays than they needed to do 20 years ago or 30 years ago. And I'm sure in five 1015 years it's going to be different too, no? For sure. I I completely agree the the technology is to help the pilots stay focused on not dealing with tasks that take you away from flying the airplane because unfortunately that's how a lot of aerial accidents have happened in the past.

34:05 Pilots got distracted on things that had not that they didn't have anything to do with flying, but they were aside from being focused on flying. Right. So what, what, what is there to focus on if you're a pilot, right? And you're and you're and you're and you're there. What are your like? What's the order of priorities in terms of your responsibilities as a pilot, you know, in terms of net, in terms of flying, navigating, engineering, whatever it is like, what are you expected to do? What's computerized what's Not sure how does? That work the, the, the primary is the saying that goes aviate, navigate, communicate. So you fly the airplane first. Something goes wrong, right? Let's say you're like a cruise or something like that. You guys are chilling.

34:47 You and the other pilot are talking, something goes wrong. The first thing that you have to do is fly the airplane, because if you don't fly the airplane, well, we don't want to know what happens after that. Then you communicate so you can communicate. Can it be anything in between, like checklist usage, communication between the two pilots, communication with air traffic control, and then navigate? Finally, after that, you want to be able to navigate and OK, what is the course of action that we're going to do now? Are we going to divert? Are we going to go to this or are we going to go to that, that level? So it sounds very easy when I talk about it because we're just that cruise at 37,000 feet. But let's say something happens when you're lower and you're flying. Like for example, for us when we go to keto, those mountaintops are about 14 to 15,000 feet.

35:31 Now you're in a situation, now you're in a situation where aviate, navigate and communicate have to happen like this, right? Has to happen quick because if you take a long time to navigate, to get to the navigation part, you might go into a mountain, right? But it's not that. It's like, oh, we're just getting, we're just flying blind and we're just like, something happens and we're just flying and we're going towards the mountain peak. No, like there are routes that are predetermined already in our flight plan, which we will already be on. It just there's so many different scenarios. But what I'm trying to get at is that the pilot training is, let's say something happens when you're around 13,014 thousand feet around mountainous terrain and then all of a sudden you have to aviate, navigate, communicate.

36:16 That technology has helped us to focus on aviate, navigate and then just being able to, OK, we assess the situation we're going to where we need to go. Now let's talk to everyone. I think I said it wrong, man. I think I said aviate, communicate and navigate. It's the other way. It's aviate, navigate, communicate. So you want to make sure you're flying the airplane, knowing where you're going and then talk about it. So pilot training, especially in the airlines is all about that. They put us in scenarios in an in a simulator where it's constantly like this happens, how are you going to handle it? What are you going to do? And there's every airline has standard operating procedures. That is what helps both pilots stay exactly in line to complete that mission when something goes wrong, so that there's no miscommunication between the pilots that there's no like, we both know exactly what to do.

37:13 And if technology didn't exist to help us with that, then one pilot will be busy trying to flip a bunch of switches while the other one's trying to fly the airplane. It gets overwhelming. But pilots used to do it like that, and I think that's totally fucking badass. You know, the fact that you can divert your attention to so many things and do it, but unfortunately there have been a lot of accidents because of that. So that technology, that stuff has helped. I even think with like what you mentioned, 10 to 15 years from now. Yeah, I think AI and I think technology is going to be even even better.

37:53 But I just don't think we will lose 2 pilots in the flight deck. I just think that we will be, we will be doing, for example, a flight that would take from New York to London. Six hours might take you now like four or three. That's why I. Think right How does? How does that work? I mean, it's just acknowledging. The speed of the plane, that's just how big the plane is. And no, in terms of like fuel efficiency for an, for, for like engines of an airplane, how, how much powerful they can get, you know, what can engines do at higher altitudes to be able to, you know, produce more thrust or get us going to, to, to this stuff a lot faster?

38:37 There's a trade off, right? There's a trade off because as you go up in altitude, you lose density of air. So it's, it's a lot harder for jets or turbine engines to produce thrust with thinner air, right? You really have to compress that air to get thrust out of it. So yeah, technology has helped a lot with that and the fuel efficiency of it. But when you're up in the air and the air is less dense, you're actually moving through the air a lot faster. You have less drag, you have less particles of air that are slowing you down up at higher altitudes, right? So that's a great trade off. But the other thing is too is now there's something called cosmic radiation and it's when you're flying at higher latitudes, I think, I believe it might be like 60 N or something like that. So basically a beam like, oh, I don't know, somewhere in North Canada, little bit right around there. If you're flying closer to the North Pole than that, you're exposed to radiation.

39:39 That's cosmic radiation. It's not like the same as UV radiation, but it's just radiation that's there because you're not being protected so much by the the atmosphere of the Earth. You have less protection at those altitudes, right? So that's another like one of the reasons why, I mean, they could possibly create an airplane that can go so much higher and so much faster so we can get to a destination a lot quicker. But now everybody's exposed to a lot of radiation and to the pressure. You got to think about like whenever the higher we go, the airplane has to maintain a pressure like if we were lower. Right. So typically you're flying up 30 something 1000 feet 40,000 and your cabin inside the airplane feels at Max 8000 feet in the air. Right.

40:30 There's a big pressure difference. I mean, that's like a lot of thousands of feet pressure difference. You have to build an airplane strong enough that it won't collapse because of the pressure difference, you see what I'm saying? Or explode either 1. So material of an airplane technology wise is one thing, engines of an airplane and how it performs is another thing that with technology and AII think could get better so that we could start doing longer flights faster. But we have to be careful about the radiation. Correct. You have to be careful about the radiation, but that's that's why like we won't like the, the, the airplanes don't have to go so high in altitude to an in order to achieve faster speeds, you know what I'm saying? So, so I think, you know, there's, there's a difference, there's regulations based on how much radiation can you fly through in a given amount of time. And then if the airline could not program you to fly in those altitudes and those latitudes for more than XYZ numbers because it'll violate the the totally, yeah. Totally, by the way, what do you think? I mean my understanding is also that or my understanding is that underwater has experiences or you know, in the ocean experiences similar levels of pressure in that kind of way. Do like submarines are like, you know, I guess a marine type of technology is that is do they collaborate with, with, with aviation at all?

42:00 Because they face similar challenges in terms of, you know, having to design, you know, a, a thing, you know, a boat or a plane that can withstand all this pressure and create an environment of a different pressure within it. Is there collaboration between the two or are they 2 totally different sciences? That's a great question. There might be to a certain extent, but it's the complete opposite because every time whenever you start going below water, the pressure is actually increasing, increasing, increasing so that submarines go down the water pressure and the pressure outside the submarine is so much greater. Like the submarine itself inside has to be able to not collapse like a like a coke can, right? But the people inside need to feel like if they were higher, like.

42:47 If they were. Almost at the surface, right? So it's inverted. It's just inverted. Exactly. So that's why I think there's not much of A collaboration, but, but there could be. I've never really even thought about that nor investigated it. But I'm sure there's talks. I'm sure there's talks and and you know, just because they're completely inverted doesn't mean that there's some overlapping information that each one can use. That submarine that that that went down a couple years ago. I remember that story. They're like trying to you know, go down to a Titanic or whatever and like those guys must have died immediately, right? Because I the anything that goes wrong, the pressure, just like you said, you know, crack, you know, cracks it or cocaine. Yeah, there's actually, I was just looking at through Netflix yesterday and I added that documentary to the past.

43:31 Yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna see. I remember reading an article that it like fucking disintegrated or some shit. I can't remember exactly the words when it was but but people. Are looking for them, right? What's the point of looking for them? Right. It's it's so much pressure, man, like deep that deep inside. Like just think about this when you go scuba diving and I think it's like you do a a depth of more than like 20 to 30 feet or something like that. Yeah. And obviously you have to go up controlled. Whatever you cannot, you should not fly 24 to 48 hours after you go scuba diving after reaching a certain depth.

44:12 Really. Yes, because what that does to you in terms of like your body still acclimating to pressure and you think about it like biologically to the smallest extent, there's still pieces and parts of your body that have not acclimated to the new pressure that it starts to build up like bubbles in your bloodstream, bubbles in your, in your like areas where you're going to get a lot of pain in your joints. Call them the bends, right. So if you change that, if you change that pressure drastically in less than like 24 to 48 hours, you're going to start feeling a lot of pain. That's why they always tell us, they always tell us if you're going to go scuba diving, don't like on overnights.

44:54 We don't, we don't do any of that. We don't do any of because it's, it's, it's dangerous. And when we're flying, actually when I was going through my private pilot and commercial license, you know, you're, you're flying in airplanes that are unpressurized. So you're really feeling like whatever altitude that it is that it is outside. And part of like, you know, the, the passenger checklist was to, you know, ask them if anybody has been scuba diving or anything in the past, because now you can cause now you, you know, they're not going to go and tell you the passenger's not going to be like, hey man, yeah, I went scuba diving. It was awesome. Cool. Like maybe they'll say it, but there's no way you're going to know unless they tell you.

45:34 So now you're flying in the air and these people start feeling super uncomfortable because they didn't know about that. And yeah, it was, it was, it was something that we have to ask the passengers. But I'm assuming I've never done any scuba diving lessons or anything like that before. In the course that they take, they probably tell them don't go flying for 24 to 48 hours, you know, I mean, but I mean, you just never know. It's always, it's always better to ask and be safe than somebody start feeling bad and now you have to go somewhere else because something somebody's having a bad time. Yeah, definitely. What's the is it is the is the party culture of airline like of the airline industry overrated, overdramaticized or is it accurate or like what you what? You see from shows and movies and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

46:26 Is. It is it over because I feel like listen, at the end of the day, especially if you're like just if you are, if you're a single person, you know, and you're and you're spending all this time travelling different places. I mean, I would probably be partying all the time. Sure, yeah, I mean and look there's, there's there's nothing wrong with doing what you want to do as long as you are responsible and you're within the limits of the regulations, right. Nowadays the airline scheduling is so much tighter. And what I mean by that is before back in the day, you used to be able to do 1 flight, go somewhere, be there for like, I don't know, 244836 hours and then come back.

47:09 That was plenty of time for, you know, to go and explore, do all the partying and everything that you wanted to do. I mean, it's, it's part of the lifestyle, man. You go somewhere new to experience another state, another city, another country. It's something nowadays they, the technology for, you know, optimizing pilot schedules is well if there's these regulations of pilot rest, I want to be able to use maximize the, the time that this pilot can fly per day before we hit any sort of like fatigue risk. OK, So what happens is now you have long days of flying where you're flying maybe two to three flights a day.

47:53 You get to an overnight and it's only anywhere between 12:16 or 24 hours. That's it man, after after flying all day. Right, you don't want to you're. Kind of you're a little bit wiped out. You get, by the time you get to your hotel, by the time everyone meets up, you're only, you're only looking at a couple hours to do something. You know, the next day you, you may have an early show or the next day, you know, you, you got in super late. So now you're going to bed at like 2-3 in the morning. You're not going to wake up at 7:00 or something to go and go to the beach and things like that. You're going to try to get rest because you fly again the next day. Two to three flights they're trying to get.

48:35 That sucks man. It does, it does. But to me it's still the best job in the world. And you know, it's a job. We're getting paid, we're getting paid well. And while our overnights, not all of them are 24 hours, you still have enough to be able to, I don't know, maybe get dinner with the crew somewhere, or maybe you'd do a breakfast with the crew before you go. It just really all depends. The funnest layover for me, at least I've been in the Caribbean where there is a lot of like, you know, it's, you're all on the beach, you're all doing like, it's all this Beachy vibes and things. And, and, and I love that because you go out with the crew, get breakfast in the morning, some of us will go get a workout in before we go fly and boom, there goes our morning and afternoon, You know, so it, it is different.

49:25 Don't get me wrong, people still do party, but you know, it's also there's also a lot. Of sounds like it's hard to sounds like you have to put like a lot of work into it. You have to like, put work into finding time to party. I mean for real yeah, you, you, you do and but everybody like knows hey, this is the regulation. This is where you have to be back by. This is, you know, if you kind of cross that line, you're not only are you putting your your job at risk, but you're putting people at risk. And everyone knows, everyone knows that if you even come close to that, it's not worth any of the repercussions that have to come with that.

50:11 So, you know, that being said, there's a good balance between how much you want to go explore and party and everything versus, hey, the professional professionalism of your job in what you do. And it's definitely changed a lot throughout the years. I bet, I bet. But I mean, I can't imagine that everyone looks at it as professionally as you do. You know what I mean? It sounds, I think you sound like you're thoughtful about it and you're, you know, mature about it, you know, but I'm sure that listen, there are plenty, there are plenty of adults that are adult children, you know that. And I guess, I guess obviously, you know, I guess the crew would be different than a pilot in terms of responsibilities, you know, But how strictly enforced are are all the regulations, especially when it comes to like, you know, travelling or getting somewhere in time or, you know, drinking or not or, you know, whatever it are there random tests are yes.

51:07 Well, what's? Yeah, there are. Yep, Yep. There's random tests, you know, at random people or pilots and flight attendants can be tested for alcohol or drugs at any point, anytime, anywhere. There's also like everything. Do they do it often? Yeah, yeah, it. But I mean, there's so many people in the airline, though, that it's often without how many people there are. But each individual person, you just never know when you're going to get it. There could be a time where you get it like, oh, wow, I only got it like a couple months ago. And sometimes it could be a year or two before you get one again. It's so random.

51:48 It's so random. I honestly don't know how the algorithm works for that. If it's a computer, if it's like chosen by certain people, But it's, you know, the, the, the, the policy and the regulation is a little bit different. The regulation is one thing. The policy that we do can amend that regulation. So for us, it's actually a little bit more restrictive. It's 12 hours before you can have any alcohol and you touch an airplane or I think it's like .004 or something like that. It's something that like if if you have one beer within 12 hours it'll show up. Really. Yeah, so, wow, So something like that it, I mean, I don't even do that because I don't even come close to that limit. Why why would I want to come close to that 12 hour limit? You know, if if the if the layover is long enough, 36 hours, cool, that gives me plenty of time to not have any of that, right.

52:50 But yeah, there are random, there are random tests. There are regulations in terms of alcohol percentage in your blood. There's in terms of time and also when it comes to an investigation or something like that, there is cameras everywhere, man. And airlines have access to cameras in hotels and everything. So you you're kind of almost like being watched. Oh yeah, Big Brother. Yeah, exactly so. Big brother's there. Yeah, yeah. But to some extent, I mean, it doesn't mean you can't have fun. There's plenty of ways to be able to have fun and and if the layover like again, if the layover's long enough, more than happy to to enjoy a few drinks here and there. How do you, I had, I have this, I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure a ton of people have this.

53:35 I guess you get used to it, but how do you maintain your health regimen, workout regimen, productivity when you're constantly in new places? Because one thing that I struggle with for sure is that when I, I kind of have to be in like my space, that I, that I associate like psychologically and mentally with productivity. And like when I travel to a hotel, even like again, like here at my parents house, you know, like my associations, being at my parents house is not the same association as being at my house. You know, I feel like I'm a kid here as opposed to a dad and, and, and you know, and a homeowner, you know, I feel like, as opposed to being the man of the house.

54:16 How do you, how do you, how do you maintain that? Or do you, you know or do you just like listen, if you're flying 3 or 4 times a week and it's just you know it's off then or what do you do? It's a very good question. I since I was a little kid, I've always been very curious and very like resourceful for getting something done that I want to do. The first thing that I do is I how I value my health and fitness is very high. Then from there, I work down on how am I going to obtain for me to fulfill that value, right? That means if I'm in a hotel room and there's no gym at that hotel, can I move some furniture around? Can I do some plyometric work in that hotel room? Can I do something that's going to get me to that value of me fulfilling that?

55:05 So I've always had that since I was a little kid. I'm guessing the way I built discipline to that is by holding that so highly to me. It's very, very important to me. But you know, the way that I do it is it? I used to work out so hard almost every day, even when I was flying, even when I was at home. And that kind of caught up to me. And I can't be doing so much hard, heavy training when I'm also operating an airplane, right? You get tired. There's nights where maybe you don't get good enough sleep because you have kids running around the hotel hallway just waking you up every couple minutes. Certain things are outside of your control. So you know as you go and and you learn that from experience as you go.

55:52 As I went through my airline career, I started amending and adjusting what I do on my layovers and what I do at home. So everything that is progressive overload, heavier lifting, or more like strenuous hard work is done at home. Because. Here I have more equipment and here I have more control of what my rest looks like. How, how, how? How many days a week are you home as opposed to traveling? It depends. Sometimes you can be gone four nights, or sorry, three nights, four days. Sometimes you can be gone two nights, three days. Sometimes you're back the same day. It just, it's, it changes, man.

56:32 It changes so much that you have to have a plan. Ready. So you have to take a look like how you look at your week Sunday through Sunday and you're like, OK, this week I'm going to fly this, this, this. So I'm going to work out these body parts on these off days and I'm going to do mobility and flexibility on these days because I'm flying 8 hours this day. You can't just be like, oh, I'm flying 8 hours this day and I'm going to go lift like a ton of weight. There's no way, man. First of all, mentally you won't get there. You will be discouraged because of dude, sitting in an airplane or just sitting in general all day is just only contributing to you continuing to sit and being lazy. Not in terms of like that you're lazy, you don't want to do anything.

57:20 But the act of not moving doesn't make you productive. The act of sitting makes you want to stay sitting. The act of lounging makes you only want to lounge. So now you go from 8 hours in a day sitting in an airplane and between two to three different flights. You get to your hotel room and you're like oh fuck man. My hips are tight, my lower back is tight. Now I got to go lift. Your mind is like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that. Like, and then sometimes you end up not doing anything at all. But if you take that. So that's a very big gap to jump. And this is how I like to always do a metaphor. If instead of trying to jump that gap to get from like being really tired to doing a really hard workout, build the bridge that you can easily walk. Across so smart, dude.

58:10 So smart. And that bridge is let's focus on undoing the sitting that we did today. Let's do hit mobility. Let's do something and do it before you know it. Like I start off with hit mobility and then all of a sudden I run like a 5K like. What? Yeah. Where did that go from? You know, things like that, you're just, you're building that bridge. Do you have to get to the other side and do an intense workout? No. But at least you're walking the bridge. You're getting there. Because if that intense workout is not today, it could be tomorrow. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You don't. Do you have an opportunity to get up and move around while you're flying or almost never? Yeah, yeah, we have. We could do like breaks where we use the bathroom and things like that, but it's not that much. You're supposed to go into the bathroom, come back and go right back into the flight deck.

58:55 It's not, you know, it's not much time that we can lounge around at least in, in narrow body airplanes like the seven three that I fly or, but if you're in, in a 777 or in a, in a Dreamliner where you're doing all these much longer flights, there are crew rest breaks. That means you get a rest break for about two to three hours. There you're free to do what you want. You can go watch a movie, you can sleep. There's bunks in the airplane, you can stretch, you can do whatever you want. That's only. What do you usually do? I don't have those kind of breaks. I fly narrow body. No, no. I. Just would you, do you want to fly vigor? Would you go to that? No, I would love to. I think it'll be a cool experience, yeah. How does that, how does that work? Does that?

59:40 Is that based on seniority? Is that just based on like it is, it's just like, hey, man, like you've been doing this for two years. You're not getting on a Dreamliner, man. You know, you do this for 10 years, you get, you get on. Exactly. Oh yeah, dude, man, it's going to take so long for me to get there. But I mean, it's fine. It's it's all part of the process sometimes. How long does it take, How long does it usually take to get to get to make your way up there? Like where do you consider in your career as far as like a pilot? Well, I think it, I think it's going to take me about like another three years to get to fly in those airplanes, but. It it. I'm enjoying so much being a captain on this airplane that I'm on right now.

1:00:20 And to me, I, I don't, I haven't really looked at my career of like, OK, what's next? OK, what's next? Like I got to get to this, I guess enjoying this dude, I'm just enjoying every single time. And I'm I'm in either, you know, when I was a first officer, when I was a captain, when I was the first officer again, Now I'm a captain again. I mean, you truly enjoying the moment. It just really, truly makes me feel like this is just still a dream, man. There was a time where you do have to hustle. You do have to hustle to get OK. You got to get your flight hours to become captain, OK. You got to get your flight hours to get to the next airline that you want to go to. Those are the times that you hustle. But yeah, I'm not always thinking like, oh man, I can't wait to fly like to all the Europe and all that stuff. Man, that time will come when it'll come. Right now I'm having so much fun flying South America, you know, so, so that's, I think that's another thing that makes me enjoy my job so much.

1:01:22 Yeah, yeah. You know what? That's such a great attitude. There's something about I, I was actually, I was talking about this because there was such a fundamental difference between I didn't know what I wanted to do with my entire life ever, right? For a long time, there were always things I knew that I kind of spoke to me, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And one thing I, I started doing a couple years ago, I started teaching. I always, I, I love teaching. And this podcast is something else I love, right? And you know, people ask me like, oh, how's it coming? How's it going along? And like, man, there's when you find something that you enjoy, you don't mind taking your time to get wherever you got to get because you're enjoying everything you do. And when you don't rush it, like what we talked about earlier, you know, like full circle, you know, when you're not rushing and when you're just letting the moment be the moment and when you're just experiencing what you're experiencing and also building and also growing and also learning and also getting experience, but you're loving what you do along the way.

1:02:20 That's like, that's ideal set. That's happiness in my opinion, right? Happiness. Happiness to me is a feeling of having a big picture and knowing that you're doing what you can to get to that big picture and feeling like you're taking steps towards it. Cuz like I don't, cuz happiness is almost like if you ask me if I'm having a hard day, are you happy? I'm like, yeah, I am, it's a hard day, but I'm a happy, but I'm I'm happy. I love my life, I feel good. I'm a happy person. I feel meaningful and and content and but but, you know, and then there are people that have comforts and I have, you know, you know, that have what everyone else wants, but they don't feel like they're working towards achieving any kind of goal or any kind of dream or any kind of vision and they're not happy, you know, and like, so, so it's such a hell. It's such a great attitude to be like, yeah, man, you know, I'll try.

1:03:10 I'll fly a Dreamliner one day. But you know, like, you know, I got there, man. And like, I like what I'm doing, you know, like that's just what I'm that's awesome. With minutes. Some of your favorite places to to visit so far. Wow man, that's every time I get asked that. It's it's pretty. Tough it changes, right? Well. Yeah, let's. Talk about the people or the OR the OR let's talk about people like your favorite, like types of people that you've seen and the favorite like, you know, I guess cities or topography, because I feel like those are two different questions. For real and also to, to add on to that either for work or for pleasure, right. So like that's, that's different too. I'll, I'll, I'll start off with work wise where I like going.

1:03:52 I really love going to the Dr. Dominican Republic. I love going there. The people there I vibe with so much. They're fun. It's a great mixture between being professional and having fun at the same time. I think they're really great and Puerto Rico as well. I get that same feeling and the where I really truly enjoy going to as well is Central America because it's challenging. It's challenging to go there in terms of the runway layout, the airport layouts, mountains around, dude. Sometimes there's like these runways that are not completely straight, they're like downhill or they come down and then come back up.

1:04:33 It's it's just challenging and I love that. That makes the job so much more interesting. So I think one of my favorite ones is also Guatemala. I like flying. Into Guatemala. Yeah, it's a really interesting airport. Let's. See what about this interesting when you say these things, when you say that these are like I'm just cuz I don't I don't even know how to even think about what you're thinking about you. Know like, so let me try to let me try to visualize it for you. OK, so you're coming in from the Gulf, right? And you're starting to descend now you're starting to descend into like where mountains, terrains are. The airport is located on a hill, maybe a hill that's like about like I can't remember the elevation, let's call it like about maybe like the 1000 or 2000 feet right from sea level. You have to come the way you're coming into it from the, from the Gulf is in your landing looking towards the Gulf. So you have to somehow make 180�� turn somewhere, but you can't just make 180�� anywhere because there's mountains and volcanoes all around.

1:05:38 Obviously there's, there's called arrival charts and approach charts. So as long as you're following those that chart and those Airways, you're going to be fine. The thing is, is configuring and maneuvering the airplane to be at those specific spots at the specific speed, at the fixed specific configuration, you know, and there's a, you start like met like you start preparing for this while you're still cruising. So way before you start descending, you figure out like, OK, my landing capability is going to be this because we weigh this much. Is a runway wet? Is there a slope on the runway? What kind of density altitude do I have? Am I going to be landing with a tailwind? With a headwind?

1:06:21 All these things you're taking into consideration and you're prepared mentally before you even start descending. Awesome. And then your goal descending is to be like, OK, I set up for this. This is how it's going to be done. And that's the goal reaching those things. So dude, as you're coming through, there may be clouds, there may not be clouds. You may pop out of clouds and they all sort of like the volcanoes right in front of you. And you're hitting the point you where you got to make 180�� turn. You're lining yourself with the runway. It could be raining, it could be not right before the runway, there's like a freaking waterfall, which looks so cool. Not all of, not a lot of people see it because it's kind of small, but you could definitely see it if you look good enough. And then you're coming in, you may have like all this wind from around the mountains that are just like pushing you left, right with you against you. Then the, the, the runway is not grooved. So they, the, the, the water puddles in the runway in Guatemala, which is a huge threat. You know, you don't want to land where there's puddles of water. You can 'cause they could be hydroplaning. So now you're thinking about like, OK, what's my braking effectivity going to be?

1:07:25 How am I going to do this? What kind of flap setting, all those things. It's nice when you think of all that and you, you know, you execute it and you park the airplane and you're like, fuck yeah, you know, that was cool. So it's satisfying. It's like a challenge and it's satisfying. Versus like when you come back to Miami, I love Miami, I love landing here. I think it's the best freaking airport to land here. The controllers are super cool, the scenery super awesome and but it's something that you already know. You already know which runway you're getting. You already know that it's long enough for you to land there. You know it's grooved. You know this this, this, so you know all of it. You still plan for it, but it's different because there's no mountains.

1:08:06 There's no like winds that are could be unexpected there. Obviously there's thunderstorms that can pop here and there, but there's less of like threats than there is for example, in like Guatemala or Medellin in Colombia landing at night over there. Oh man, it's just fantastic. I love doing that. But let me get back to your original question where I love the most going to and I think my favorite countries have been we've my wife and I have been to I think like 40 together 3637 or 40. Can you take her on a flight on a flight with you? Like if you're like, have to go for. She's a pilot. She's a pilot too, so she. On the way. Yeah, yeah. We both have the same. Bed so cool.

1:08:47 Yeah, so she so so. But she and herself has been to 70 countries. I've been to 56. Japan is my favorite. I think it's because like, the culture, the education, the scenery, everything. Switzerland is amazing. Norway is amazing. When you go to these places, you're going, you're going, you're not going for work, you're going. No, you're. Going, these are for fun. These are for fun, yeah. Right. And do you get to travel? You get discounts on travelling? Do you travel for free? How does that work? We have benefits, we have travel benefits. So we can fly anywhere we want as long as there's space. And if it's international, you pay the taxes. And then if you go on another airline, you pay like a heavily discounted rate that they give each other's, you know, every airline supports each other's employees in terms of like, can you travel on us? If there's space, you pay this minimal fee and that's that's mainly why we can fly and go everywhere. So much for fun.

1:09:44 Right. And did. And the 15 hours, how long did it take to get to Japan? Shit, Japan. Where did we do Japan from? We do Japan from Dallas. So it was like, you know, like 1415. Yeah, Does that does that. Is that is that hard for you or that doesn't bother you? Man, that would drive me crazy, man. Good. Question. Sometimes it has but I just sometimes like dude just drink 3 glasses of wine and pass out. That's all you got to do. I just pass out dude. I just go to sleep and sometimes like the longest flight I did was Doha to Miami and that was like 16 and change dude I slept like 9 hours out of that thing then I watched it. Two to three more movies and there you go. And then boom we're home and I'm like wow shit that's not that bad but man if I had not slept for 9 hours I'd be going nuts. Yeah, So Japan.

1:10:45 You thought Japan was awesome? Loved it. I loved it. You loved it? I loved it. Yeah. I even got a tattoo to my legs, part of my sleeve. Really. Yeah. Cuz we had my. Fuji, We hiked at the top of Mount Fuji. That was probably one of the hardest hikes we've done. We've done hiking all over the world, probably have hundreds and hundreds, hundreds of trails that we've done around the world, and Mount Fuji was probably one of the hardest ones. Wow. What? What was more challenging? What was more challenging about it? Dude, I think, I think it was because the preparation of me, I wasn't very well hydrated before we started and we went a day after landing.

1:11:26 So we weren't hourly acclimated yet, you know, So I think a mixture of like a little bit of fatigue, you know, not enough eating, not enough hydration and then. But the but the mountain itself was it was, it was like if you did that. No, it was super, super inclined, man. Like it got to a point where I'm like, I started cramping. I had to stop. My wife kept going. I don't know. She's like, she's like once she gets going, she doesn't stop, dude. She's like, I'll wait for you at the top. I'm like, dude, what is the deal with why? I, I lived in I lived in Seattle for a little for a for a year. I've I drove, I drove cross country to to get there. Rainier is awesome, man.

1:12:14 Have you been, have you been out West? Do you spend time out West? A little bit. I've done some California stuff, but I have not explored Washington or Oregon or anything I've flown. Into there, but I haven't explored. Dude. Dude, if you like hiking and you like nature, you got to be crazy not to spend time there. Yeah. It's incredible. There's something about the West Coast mountains that are so much more grandiose and so much more. Like, literally awesome, awe inspiring. Yeah. And I feel like the East Coast mountains, I don't know. I don't know what and what it is. Someone mentioned to me that they may have been that the East Coast is older and that the West Coast mountains are newer. So like as as time went on, the mountains kind of like flattened out, which is why they appear a little bit a little longer.

1:13:01 But what about the Yeah, what about culturally? Your favorite place is to like be with people because like, I love, for example, like Dublin, I love the Irish, dude, the Irish are awesome and and, and you know, but obviously that's not the most beautiful place I've ever been to in my entire life, you know, but I love spending time there, like especially with people. What is, I mean like when you go to these places, what do you, what's culturally like these places that stand out to you, man? That's a good question because I can vibe with a lot of different cultures because I'm so genuinely interested in learning about them. Yeah.

1:13:43 That, that, you know, like in Japan, I love how reserved they are to certain extent and how they have so much education and respect for people versus going to a country where not necessarily that there's no respect, but they're a little bit more open, right? And a little bit more like going East Europe. That was, that was kind of interesting to me because it took some time for me to get through people and start talking to them. But once I did, oh man, it was like, oh, OK, OK. There's like, no, almost like I, I didn't, there was like no wall or anything. Kind of like, you know, to be able to, for, for us to communicate.

1:14:28 But it was very interesting because in the Dr. like I mentioned before, it's instant. I mean, you get off the airplane and you're already joking around. Being professional is like a great mixture of all that. So it's really hard for me to pick one place where I culturally prefer. You know, right, yeah, totally, totally, totally. And I guess, I guess, yeah, it's a good point. I about about especially about the Eastern Europeans because they're they're like a rock, you know, on the surface, you know, but then it's usually it's usually like after like once you get past that rock, it's usually good humor and loyalty and like, yeah, you know, and it's cool how it how it manifests. My grandfather is from, was from, was from Poland and you know, and he was a tough dude and he had like no problem, you know, being an asshole if he wanted to be, but he, you know, but he had such a great sense of humor and like, you know, and you never and, and, and I guess it's also I guess because these are like legitimately hard places to live, you know, like whether it's the weather, whether it's the society, whatever it is that you have to be able to like kind of flip that serious switch on immediately, you know, but like, I feel like you can't survive without that humor either, you know, like you kind of need like a little bit of both of them in order to really be.

1:15:44 Successful, completely agree, man. I think that like if everybody just stays that way, it's just it actually is super miserable to live like that. So that you kind of need to start making some sort of at least good sense of humor despite, you know, to be able to like at least, you know, enjoy some things. But it was really interesting because in East Europe, I learned so much of the history, you know, not only from the wars, but a lot of the communism stuff and a lot of like the straight thinking and the and the manipulation that they had over the people. It's hard to break away from that. You know, you still feel like whenever I would go to visit museums and things like that, damn, man, you go in there and you're like, oh fuck.

1:16:28 Like you feel how tough that stuff was during the war and, and communism after that and communism in some Eastern Europe places were until like the 60s or 50s. That's like, that's not that long ago, you know, And the one of the most interesting things about being able to travel the world is learning, obviously the culture, but the history behind and all that. And you start to put some things together as to personality and history. And it's just, it's just very interesting to know and understand because you can, let's say you're out in Miami now and you're somewhere in the beach.

1:17:08 I don't know. You meet someone from, I don't know, Montenegro. Ukraine. Or Ukraine or something like that. Now it's like you, you have a deeper knowledge and a deeper, deeper level of understanding that your conversation with that person is more. Sure. I guess like in depth. Maybe not in depth, but more like culturally aware. Yeah, well, I think it isn't because you guys are really speaking more of the, you know, you guys really are speaking the same language at a certain point. I mean, you know, I mean, when I'm talking, when you're talking another pilot, you're speaking pilot language, you know, like, yeah. And even though we're using the same words, and even though you're both, you're both speaking English, you guys are speaking another language essentially.

1:17:49 And when you can, when you have that kind of cultural awareness or that historical awareness, then you can. And I think that's really what it is with a lot of, with a lot of people, when you have a hard time, like quote, UN quote, making conversation or you're a good conversationalist, I think it just means that you're really good at being able to put your, you know, be able to put yourself in someone else's perspective or understand where they're coming from and then be able to relate to them based on that, you know, right. Yeah. Completely, but dude, what's it so so your wife is also a pilot and when your dad warned you back in the day that you're going to, you know that it's going to be hard, you're going to be traveling missing things. Has that, has that, has that, has that happened? How do you guys, how do you guys, how do you guys work?

1:18:30 How do you guys maintain your relationship when you're traveling so much? Yeah. So, you know, relationship in the industry is obviously a little bit easier in terms of like understanding each other's lifestyles and also like what you can do to manipulate scheduling to be able to work things out, right. So my wife, before she was a pilot, she was actually a flight attendant for like 5-6 years before she made the transition to wanting to be a pilot. And the scheduling was almost the same. So when we met 5 plus years ago, it was always a certain manipulation, mostly on her part to change her scheduling to be able to match mine.

1:19:11 And that's because with her, she had more a little bit like more of like a flexibility with her schedule rather than mine. Mine was a little bit more like locked in terms of the flying that they needed me to do. With her, she was able to trade trips and do things easier. So it kind of accustomed to be her trading and changing her schedule around mine. And still to this day, like now as a captain, it's a junior captain. I'm on, I'm on, I'm on call. So I can't really change my days, but she can. She's on call as well. But her company is smaller. So they're able to work with each person individually and be able to do these trades and things like that. So what we'll do is we will either try to match working days and match off days together. If we can't match certain days off or working together, then if I get like a cool layover, I'll I'll try to bring her and she can come on my layover and spend some time with her. If she gets a certain layover.

1:20:12 Sometimes they're not like long enough. So it's sometimes it's not worth for me to like be able to go and spend more time flying than like in the actual layover. So. You know, we just, we just make it work on our on our office, but we generally see each other like 15 days out of the month, 16 days out of the month more. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. More 15, yeah, like 15 to like 15 to 20 days out of the month. How often do you guys fly have the same like route that you're flying to the same place or almost? Never. No, not at all. Never. Never. Where did she go? If you, if you think about, if you think about this, let's say if somebody who works from 9:00 to 5:00, yeah.

1:20:54 Besides all the other stuff that they have to do, you only see your spouse or the person that you're with for a couple hours a day where my wife and I can be with each other the whole entire day because we're both off or. Yeah. Not being called 15 to 20 days a month, right. Yeah. So it's awesome that in that sense, it's worked out really well. It's not always like that though, and I'm sure it's going to change when we have kids. Yeah, that's going to be a whole different, you know, ball game once we cross that line. But yeah, the, the, the amount of quality of time, even if it's less than somebody who's always at home is, is still a little bit different. Yeah, I imagine for sure, for sure. I mean, I listen, I think that's part of the, the beauty of a relation of relationships in general, is that as long as you guys are speaking each other's languages, then it's OK. You know, then, then, then, then, then it's all great. Like my wife and I spend an enormous amount of time together, or at least within the same vicinity of one another. You know, like, you know, I'm work from home and, you know, she, you know, she, she's working part time at the moment, but she just had, we just had a kid two months ago. So she's.

1:22:03 Congrats. She's been around. Thank you very much. Yeah. Dude, this is my there's #2 it's fucking wild, dude. Wow. I can't even begin to tell you, man. And there's, there's really no words, but yeah, except for chaos. But it's amazing. It's a love and it's chaos. That's the two words that I would put there. But yeah. But yeah, we spend a lot of time together and then but a lot of times we'll be like, even though we've been in the same house together for 10 hours, you know, I haven't, I barely spoke to her. You know, I've been working, I've been doing a podcast. I work for a jog. I go, you know, I, I, you know, she, she, you know, she has to run, you know, she runs out. She, she goes to cut, you know, she goes to see a patient or she goes to, you know, practice, you know, doing a couple of ultrasounds and like, and then we look at each other like we've been together all day, but I feel like I haven't seen you or spoken to you all day. So like, it's all about, you know, I think it's all just about like the ability to communicate. That's what I've noticed is just like, and yeah, and, and communicating the hard stuff is, is also important because and, and figure out how to phrase it like, yeah, you know, she's had to like, you know, I've been travelling a bunch recently back and forth to Florida and I was again like I was in Israel and Amsterdam and I had like 10 hours in Barcelona, which I thought was really cool.

1:23:16 But you know, and, and then she said to me, he's like, I just feel like she's like, I don't want to say this, like, I don't want you. I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm not trying to get you upset. Just like, I just feel like we haven't like had much of a relationship recently. And like, just like, and just the preface with A, I'm not starting, I'm not trying to fight and B, this is how I feel. What, you know, what do you think about that? You know, it, it, it was, it was almost open-ended and it was an invitation to, to collaborate again, as opposed to, you know, some kind of some kind of conflict. And I feel like that took time for us to figure out, but since we have, it's been crucial. That's good.

1:23:57 And I mean, at least the line of communication is there, which is the hardest part, right? Sometimes what is it that I'm trying to communicate is hard, right? Cuz you sometimes you can't even put into words what you're actually. Trying to. What you're feeling, right? And, and, and, and it takes a certain level of, I guess, experience and time in a relationship to be able to communicate that with your partner effectively, right? Because then we misinterpret what the other person's trying to say and then it goes out from there, right? But it happens like stuff like that happens all the time. But that's nice though. It's nice that you know, you guys at least you can able get that line of communication out and then work on it from there, which is which is huge man, that's amazing.

1:24:41 Yeah, definitely. Are you a UFC fan with all your with all your training and all your working out? Yeah, no, I I definitely love it. I got more into UFC within the past two years, so I don't really know. Like. All, all of them. But you know me from martial arts I I love more of like the discipline, self-defense aspect of it. I'm not in it to go in and fight people. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Me, I'm just, I just do it because I really love it. And if something were to ever happen, I at least have tools that I can help. Sure. Self-defense. You know my family and I. Yeah, yeah, I cuz I've been what do you I think that I think Taporia is going to murder Olivera this weekend.

1:25:28 I'm a little and I'm a little sad about it, man, but I, I this guy. I know I love Olivera. He's he's such a great team player like in terms of like respect to the other team and his own team and his opponent. I think it's it's wonderful. He's like one of the most loved people in the UFC. But Ilya, it's also a man. I I love that. I love the way that guy fights. He's. Dude I love the way he fights. I think he's much younger though than Olivera I think. He is and he's going to knock his head off dude. I think, I really think so. I think he cuz I heard him, I heard him on Rogan and he said he usually walks around I think at like 185 and he, he was fighting at 1:45.

1:26:08 He's like to not have to lose that extra 10 lbs. He goes, I'm going to, he goes and maybe he's lying. Maybe, you know, maybe he's making it up. I don't know how this kind of stuff works, dude, but I would love to see him when I would love to see him be a family. What was it? Flyweight, featherweight, lightweight and middle weight champ, dude. I want him to beat everyone, man. I'm I'm rooting for him. I know, me too. I, I, it's gonna be a real it's, it's in June, right? June 28th or July? No, it's this weekend. It's. This weekend. OK, Yeah, this. Weekend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you gonna be? Are you gonna be? Are you gonna be? Are you gonna be flying this? Weekend. Yeah, I'm on call. So I don't, I don't know, usually like they'll let me know 3-2 to three hours before I gotta go fly. They're like, I don't, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what time I'm going. I just know that my schedule starts at 7:00 in the morning on certain days and at 7:00 in the morning, they can call me all the way up to 7:00 PM at night.

1:26:59 And I. Know where I'm going? Yeah, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know how many flights I'm doing. I don't know any of that but. Wow, does that change as you, as you, as you go through your career? Yeah, as you get more senior, you're start to be able to pick. Oh, OK, No longer am I in reserve. I can, you know, fly four day trips if I want, then three days. So the most lucrative is like 2/2 day trips. And it takes, it's probably gonna take me years, like probably like 10 years to get there. Yeah, well, we'll get there. But dude, I, I love being alcohol, right. One, the, the element of surprise, like where you're going. And a lot of the times it's easier trips than actual trips that you can bid for in the beginning of the month. And sometimes you end up doing trips that are awesome and your seniority cannot hold it if you were to request it in the beginning of the month, right?

1:27:50 Because let's say, I don't know, a captain called out sick and it's all of a sudden it's like a 24 hour Punta Cana lay over you. Like my God, I could have, I wouldn't seen this in years. But guess what? I'm all called a new. Let's go. Dude, such a freaking great attitude about it. Seriously, because I I, it's because I could, you could, I could, I could imagine a million different conversations with a million different people where they would be like, yeah, you know, I wasn't sure, you know, you know, I wasn't sure where I was going to go. And I was like, I have to go back to there again. I have to go back to Colombia and I like right, right. I love enthusiasm, dude. I really, I think that I think that that's what makes the difference between a successful ultimately career or, you know, satisfying, you know, life than than not is to have that kind of attitude.

1:28:34 I will say this though, the hard part about this scheduling and the attitude is knowing that man, you're doing something at home and you're busy and you don't think you're gonna get called. And then all of a sudden they call you and you're in the middle of a project, you're in the middle of something and you're like, fuck, like I was not expecting to get called. Like damn it, right for like for like a minute it you're just like, come on, like why do they have to call out sick? Or why did this? Why did that? Like are you kidding? And then, like you, you process. It and you got to do you got. To do you got to do what you got to do.

1:29:14 And like this trip is not too bad. And honestly my wife is like dude, you need to stop complaining when you get a trip. But The thing is, is like, if I wasn't busy with something else, I wouldn't because like, I'm a task person, man. I I don't, I don't want to leave shit undone, right? Yeah. So like if I'm in the middle of something and they call me, I'm like, what bothers me is that I can't finish what I started. Not that they called me. I'm just bothered that I'm interrupted. Yeah. Well, do you ever get called in the middle of like a fight? Like if you ever like big ring with your wife or anything like that, do you get called and you're like, no shit, I got to go. I have. I have been called in the middle of of like MMA training.

1:29:54 Oh really? Yeah. Oh yeah. Shit. I got around. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm rolling with someone. And then like phone rings and I'm like, oh, shit. And then it's like, you got to go to Vegas and I'm like, well, that's not that bad. I'll see you guys later, dude. Yeah. Could you finish the fight? Train on the road, huh? Do you train on the road? Like do you roll on the road if you're, if you're traveling, if you go to Japan or anything like that, you don't like stop in the place and train? I would love to, I think that'll be pretty cool, but it just were I I would do it if I was travelling by myself that. 'D be really cool, dude. It'd be really cool to like, just like everywhere you like, you know, like I, I love my craft beer. I'm into breweries, so I've been to breweries in like more than half the States and like, you know, oh, that's a bunch of different countries.

1:30:40 Yeah. And like, it'd be cool to like, you know, like, OK, like, I've rolled in like 50 different countries and like, I'm sure the cultures are so cool and different, you know, that you can probably run so much, you know? For sure, I would love to do that in in Thailand. I would love to do like go to a Maui Thai gym. Yeah, yeah. Have you been to Thailand? No, not yet. Not yet. That's in the works, man. That's in the works. That's in the works, dude. That's in the works. Did you watch White Lotus? Are you a fan? No, my wife is. Yeah, she loves. Piece of views. I'm never like, The thing is like she watches her stuff when I go to MMA training and I go and I'm always at MMA training like at night. So my my stuff is at 7:30 PM and that's when she usually watches a lot of so I miss out on a lot of shows. And where's your gym?

1:31:27 Where do you train? I train in close to Fort Lauderdale, so I train in, I train in no, maybe like still 15 minutes away, 15 to 20 minutes away from Guy 11 place is in Weston, the jujitsu places in Western, which is Gracie behind the other one's premier martial arts. So Premier Martial Arts, they have a lot of schools in South Florida, they. Have. Yeah, I've heard the name. Yeah, they have it in like Fort Lauderdale. I think it's like Oakland Park, Coconut Creek, all these different places. So that's pretty much where I where I go train and it usually runs 7:30 to 9:00 PM. So like I basically get home.

1:32:10 We try to watch at least one episode of something and then let's say right now we're watching one called Waterfront, which is like about like this, a family that owns a fishery in North Carolina and then they get involved with like drug runs and it. Looks great. It looks. Pretty good. It looks pretty good. What's that on? It's on Netflix, Yeah. Yeah, it's called, I think it's called Waterfront. Waterfront. I'm looking for a new show, dude. I mean, there's been a lot of great content out recently, but I've been, I've been finding all of it. Dude. Dude, this is a good age for this past year. Has a lot of good television the last couple of years. Yeah, yeah, it's been really good. It's been fun. It's been fun, dude. I really appreciate the time, man. I appreciate you doing this.

1:32:51 You know, this is so much fun. It's so cool. I'd love to. We'll hang out. We'll hang out in person. I'll meet you. You're welcome to come over. I'll meet you at guy's gym. We'll get, we'll get adjusted or roll maybe. And dude, this is so much fun. I hope to do this again, man. Thank you so much for coming on. Yes, of course. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure talking with you and being able to share a little bit of aviation fitness and stuff like that. So thanks. We're gonna have you. Yeah, Dude, I'm very excited about this episode, man. This is awesome. Thanks so much. We'll be in touch. Take care, brother. All right. Have a good day, brother. Bye.