13 (Safety, Gary Niemann, Craig Jakubowski)

Today's SWAPA Number is 13. That's the number of pilots on staff at SWAPA Safety. This includes investigations, the Aviation Safety Action Program or ASAP and Air Traffic Services to name a few. Safety covers a lot of topics and is at the core of what we do on every flight. So today we're sitting down with SWAPA Safety chair, Gary Niemann and SWAPA investigation specialist, Craig Jakubowski to talk all things flight safety.

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Transcript

Matt McCants:

Today's SWAPA Number is 13. That's the number of pilots on staff at SWAPA Safety. This includes investigations, the Aviation Safety Action Program, or ASAP, and Air Traffic Services to name a few.

Tony Mulhare:

Safety covers a lot of topics and is at the core of what we do on every flight. So today we're sitting down with SWAPA safety chair, Gary Niemann, and SWAPA investigation specialist, Craig Jakubowski, to talk all things flight safety.

Matt McCants:

I'm Matt McCants.

Tony Mulhare:

And I'm Tony Mulhare. And here's our conversation with Gary and Craig.

Matt McCants:

Okay, guys, there might not be a better time to talk about flight safety, right? Between processes, procedures, the continuing education that goes with that. There's been on a lot of the news in the last several months that touches your world, and we'll get to that later. But let's go around the horn first on your staff and tell the membership about what each of your team members does because they each have their own lane in this highway of flight safety.

Gary Niemann:

Probably the best way for me to break that down is I'll look at it more of like, "How do I do my budget?" Because there are multiple teams inside of safety. And so, what I would call safety general, right? So this is just what the nurturing and feeding of everyday work, phone calls that come in, attending meetings that happen at the Company, attending just to the budgetary side of the committee itself is really falls primarily to three people. Me, Craig Jakubowski and Ken Shortner we're the ones that are doing the lion's share of going to meetings, but that's just a very high level.

Then you start breaking it down into the different committees that are inside of safety. So you have ASAP. ASAP has three people on it. Mike Harris, judges also are, Ken Shortner is on that as well, along with Mike Earl. Then we have FDAP, Scott Reed leads that team. So these are your gatekeepers are going be calling from FDAP, Scott Sitterling and Kevin Thompson. Then we have our fatigue group, which is headed by Scott Hutchinson, Justin Fry, and Tony Cook.

Air Traffic Services is a one-man show of Brad Sims. It's not really a committee, but then we fall into the investigations and that's being led by Craig, that's here with me today, and Chris Shaver. So those are the big overarching committee. So when you look at it in total, there's 13 of us on the committee. So it puts us as one of the larger committees inside of SWAPA.

Tony Mulhare:

When you stand up an investigation, is that something that you just pick members that are available at the time? How does that work?

Craig Jakubowski:

Yeah, so a little bit of both. Depends on who's available. There's oftentimes where one of us might be on vacation and someone will backfill, but when we stand up an investigation, if it's an NTSB reportable event, myself and Chris Shaver will generally be party coordinator on these. And then the NTSB will structure it out. It's a party system. It's a small organization with the NTSB, about 480 employees currently at this time.

So they stand up ops groups, ATC groups, structure, systems, whatever area they're looking to expert to really investigate on this event. And then we'll assign from our committee, we have about 18 go team members, and on top of this current SWAPA structure that Gary just mentioned. And every investigation is a little different, so we just have to work with what the NTSB needs.

Gary Niemann:

Craig mentioned being on vacation, but there really is no vacation because we have a current NTSB investigation that's ongoing right now that occurred last year. Well, that happened when Craig was literally on a boat on vacation. And he became the party coordinator and he was doing the work while on vacation. So I mean, this is a job that we love. Sometimes it interferes with our personal lives, but that's just what we signed up for. So I still apologize to him for that.

Matt McCants:

Well, flight safety never stops, right? And it's like a lot of our committees, you liaise with the Company quite a bit too, sharing data, communicating literally all the time and sharing some of that project workload. So what does that look like on a weekly basis?

Gary Niemann:

A weekly basis is, so there's a constant cadence of meetings that happen, but I don't want to frame it in that because meetings are meetings. But on any given week, me or Craig, all those guys I just mentioned earlier, Scott Hutchinson, Scott Reed, especially all the leads of each of the group, we are on the phone with somebody from the Company, I don't want to say on a daily basis, but with every other day at least. And that includes Saturday and Sunday.

I was on the phone this past Saturday, early in the morning with our VP of safety and security because of an event that happened. And it wasn't that, "Hey, I'm SWAPA and I'm hanging here around this." We were working together. And I really want to get that across. The partnership between SWAPA Safety and the Company is very strong. Same way with ASAP. We're on the phone with ASAP all the time, and it's a very good partnership. It requires a lot of trust. There is a lot of trust there that's built up over time. And it is a partnership.

One way you can describe it is a marriage in which divorce isn't an option. You have your ups and you have your downs. And there are times where we disagree. And that goes both ways, but we're looking at it always as what is best for the pilot? And the Company does the same thing. Sometimes we disagree on what that looks like, but at the end of the day, we'll always come to a resolution on that.

Tony Mulhare:

Contract 2020 had some big wins when it came to flight safety, right? the Company is actually funding a pretty significant portion of our safety budget. So talk about that a little bit and what else the CBA offers as far as protections for the pilot group.

Gary Niemann:

Yeah, there were definitely some big gains in the contract. So in the old contract, and I can't remember all of it, because that was the old contract, there were little basically carve outs of where the Company would pay 50% for a little piece of this and 50% of that. And that was well outside of the industry standard. And so when you look at the CBA now, they're paying for three full-time positions, a safety chair, fatigue and a gatekeeper.

And then there's other positions where they're paying part-time. And of course that part-time is then defined later on in the contract at like 60 TFP a month. But when you take it all out, what it equates to is a little bit over about $2 million in gains. So when you looked at our budget before this contract versus the current budget, we used to run a budget of about it was like $2.9 million and you'd have about a half a million dollars that was carved out that the Company would pay for. So the membership was responsible for about $2.3 million.

Well, in this budget, we still maintain that $2.9 million threshold, but the membership is only paying for about 650,000 because the Company is paying for over $2 million in that. So from a financial side, there was a lot of gains in there. And the main thing in that, and we negotiated hard for that, was that safety had to maintain its autonomy from the Company. And what I mean by that is the Company cannot dictate how we do our work. And those protections are in the contract as well for them.

Matt McCants:

Is there anything else in section 20 the membership should be familiar with when it comes to that alphabet soup of all the different entities that are in there, the ERC, the LSO, FMRP or FRMP Safety Management System? Or is that more just the administrative structure of all the flight safety programs?

Gary Niemann:

Section 20 is a pretty short section of the contract, but there are definitely protections in there. One of the things that's in there is it lists all of our safety programs and how those safety programs have to report. So, not having the contract in front of me but, like I said, it lists out all of the safety programs. And those programs have to report to the VP of flight ops or the VP of safety and security or somebody who reports to them.

So what I mean by that is you can't take a safety program and then all of a sudden ship it over to somebody that has no knowledge of voluntary safety programs. Because one of the biggest gains that's happened in aviation safety over the last 30 years, maybe even longer, is the voluntary safety programs, right? Because you go back in the day, it was all extremely punitive. And if you made a mistake, what'd you do? Well, you hid it. If nobody knows about it, I can't get in trouble about it.

And so what we've advocated for in the industry in general, is a very robust, a healthy safety culture of, "Look, we're human, we're fallible, we make a mistake." If you make a mistake, bring that mistake forward because other people can learn from that mistake. And if you made that mistake, guess what? There's probably 100 other people that made the same mistake. Is there a problem in the system, right? How do you identify a system problem? And that's where the voluntary safety programs are huge.

Tony Mulhare:

And I think a recent success story that came out of that was the DCA RNAV, VNAV disconnects. You get a bunch of ASAP reports that guys may have thought they had screwed something up. It turns out there was just a problem with the approach and the RNAV going into runway one, nine at DCA. And then based on all that reporting, you guys were like, "Hey, something's going on here," and we were able to go find that there was an altitude discrepancy somewhere in the system. Right? Something like that.

Craig Jakubowski:

Yeah. And to your point, not just that, it could be a general safety concern in the system. It could be lighting on a ramp, it could be taxiway confusion, taxiing. The ASAP program, the volunteer programs gives us so much information we would not know. So when I get phone calls about, "Should I file an ASAP or not," it's just simply checking out the safety concern box. If you see something on the line, report it. It gives us so much optics and it gives us a lens with the Company to look into issues and identify it, and hopefully bring it to the pilots or through our Safety Digest that the Company puts out. Or if we have to put a blast out. The whole point is to make the system safer and better for our pilots and easier to operate, hopefully in a complicated airspace system.

Tony Mulhare:

So let's stay on that topic for just a second. What's the big difference in your guys' view between an ASAP and an IR?

Craig Jakubowski:

I know Gary alluded earlier to our committee and what we do on a normal weekday basis, it's 24/7. So our phones go and our phone numbers are on the SWAPA app. Any pilot who has a question, come to us. But an IR is a factual based, if you look at chapter 22 of the FOM, the required notification system, we just want the facts, short and to the point. ASAP is to go in and say, "Here's what I really learned" you can go into the detail, into the weeds of really telling us, painting us a picture of what happened that day.

Matt McCants:

Sure. And let's remind the membership, who sees IRs and who sees ASAPs?

Gary Niemann:

Well, the list of people who sees IRs is very long, and I cannot tell you how many people are on that distribution list other than the number so I've been told is in excess of 100.

Matt McCants:

Wow.

Gary Niemann:

The ASAP completely different. So that is going to the ERC. So that's going to only be seen by the ERC members, which is one of the three individuals that is on the SWAPA ERC, one of the individuals that's on the Company ERC, and one of the two individuals that's on the FAA that sits on the ERC because the ASAP is that three-legged stool, the Company, the union, and the FAA. So the audience is very, very narrow on the ASAP.

Craig Jakubowski:

And to Gary's point, those names are not on the report. When the ERC sees it, it's been removed, so it's completely de-identified.

Tony Mulhare:

That's an important point there. So just to sum up IRs, short, sweet, factual. And then get into the details in the ASAP, especially maybe the why, what you were thinking, all of that kind of stuff. What was going on in your brain as to why you made whatever decision you made, that's in the ASAP?

Craig Jakubowski:

Correct. And you might get a phone call sometimes after an event happens. It could be a low speed rejected takeoff. You might get a call from one of our critical incident response team, the CIRT members. And we've been working with them very closely over the last year. And sometimes they'll reach out to the crew before we even get a hold of a pilot and they'll mention, "Hey, here's sometimes what's required next paperwork wise, IR, ASAPs." Before you file the IR, reach out to SWAPA Safety. They might give you my phone number, Gary's phone number, Ken's phone number, somebody on our committee. And it's been great to get ahead of IRs just to explain it to a normal line pilot who might not file one very often, just a reminder of what we're looking for and what we need. And that's our job, so we're here for them.

Tony Mulhare:

And you can also send a draft of your IR to a domicile rep, right?

Craig Jakubowski:

You could or you could just simply email it to safety@swapa.org.

Tony Mulhare:

Okay.

Gary Niemann:

I want to add something to that. I don't want it to come across as a perception that we're trying to get our pilots to hide anything in the IR.

Tony Mulhare:

Sure.

Gary Niemann:

In fact, I have conversations with our chiefs. In fact, I flew yesterday and I was talking with my chief. And he actually thanked me for the work that we do on the IRs because it makes their job easiest because they will, every now and then they will get an IR that is two and a half pages long, that talks about everything but the event and goes... And they have to send it back because it's not germane to the event. So I just want to make sure that that doesn't come across as an impression of, "SWAPA is trying to hide anything in the IR." We're absolutely not. We're trying to make it easier for everybody.

Matt McCants:

I think it gives everybody a warm fuzzy too of like, "Hey, as soon as you hit send on an IR, it's not a fire and forget." If there's something a little bit askew there, we can take a step back and correct it. So don't feel like as soon as you send that you've just signed your life away because that's just not the case. You guys have talked about a very healthy partnership with the Company, and I think that's important to stress, but it's not just the Company that you maintain these partnerships and relationships with. It's the FAA, air traffic control and even Boeing. Correct?

Gary Niemann:

Yeah. And the partnerships too is certainly with the FAA. And it's funny, we were having this conversation earlier. I actually, it's not very often that I speak with our POI, but I will occasionally speak with our POI. And that has actually been a really good thing because our current POI has been very receptive to our input.

Matt McCants:

And POI, you're speaking of?

Gary Niemann:

Principal operating inspector of the airline.

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Gary Niemann:

So this is the inspector who's in charge of Southwest Airlines.

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Gary Niemann:

And it hasn't always been that way. And getting back to that safety culture and the FAA is embracing this as well, right? I wouldn't say the FAA is in a just culture environment yet, but they're in a compliance culture, right? Earlier we mentioned punitive, right? That's how the FAA worked for decades, right? Make a mistake, bonk him on the head, he won't do it again. And they realized that doesn't work. Airlines have realized that doesn't work. That's the reason the ASAP is not punitive, ASAP is, and by definition a just culture. So, and the FAA realized that 15 years ago I think.

Craig Jakubowski:

That's about right.

Gary Niemann:

And so they've gone more of a compliance culture. And so the reason I mentioned that is because even the FAA is coming to SWAPA and they want SWAPA's input as well, not just the companies at that level. And so that's been a productive relationship.

Craig Jakubowski:

And to the labor side of it, ALPA and APA, we have really good relationship with them. There's been a lot of events in the news over the last few months. We're in constant contact with ALPA, with APA. We're offering our assistance like they would do for us. If there's anything we can do, we're here for them. So there's a lot of good relationships out there.

Tony Mulhare:

Are you able to see their safety information to get the lessons learned out? Or do you have to wait until the NTSB report comes out?

Gary Niemann:

What I would say on that, so last week, American had an incident in Denver that everyone's familiar with. Airplane pulls into the gate, something sparks an ignition, there's an evacuation, an un-commanded evacuation, people standing out on the wing.

Matt McCants:

And people are filming it while it's happening.

Gary Niemann:

Right. That's also an important point. Everything you do now is filmed. Just go into that. Everything you do is being filmed. So that evening I sent a text message to the APA safety chairman and said, "Hey, I just heard about this. Let me know if you need any assistance." And he literally called me back in about 30 seconds and said, "Hey, I appreciate it. It's still a very fluid situation, but I'll let you know if I need anything."

The next day he called me. Now SWAPA didn't have anything to do with this. This was all in the Company. The Company offered American Airlines our hangar in Denver. And so that airplane was towed over to Denver into our hangar, and they went up there. And that's a current NTSB investigation.

To the question of do they share anything with us? No, they can't. They have party status, just like we do on the open NTSB investigations that we have. It's one of those unspoken rules where, "Hey, I'm not going to ask you about it because you know those are the rules." So you can't divulge any information that isn't public even on inside baseball.

Tony Mulhare:

And so if there was something that happened that would be applicable to the entire industry, that would be something that the NTSB or the FAA would then address with everybody, or how would that get disseminated?

Gary Niemann:

Let's step back away a minute from like a major incident that makes the news, or in these days a YouTube video. We talk with APA a lot. We talk with Alaska a fair amount, and to some degree United now as well.

To give you an example, about three or four months ago, I got a call from APA saying, "Hey, we're starting to get an increase in RAs going into Las Vegas, one left, one, right. Are you guys getting the same in your FDAP data?" And so with that relationship, then I'm able to go to our FDAP people and go, "Hey, industry across the street is seeing this. What are we seeing?" And so, sure enough, they pulled the data, we weren't seeing anything. So that allows APA to go, "Okay, maybe there's something going on with our procedures."

The same thing as we talked about the VNAV disconnects. So you talked about DCA. So we were seeing that across the NAS and DCA, both in the Boeing and the Airbus fleet because of those relationships that we have. So that's how they were able to pinpoint that down into a coding change that happened going into that runway. Southwest is having some other VNAV disconnects that no one else in the industry is seeing right now.

And so we've now pinpointed that down, but that's where those relationships across the industry help. It's like I say, it's not so much like an NTSB investigation, but it's just what's the general temperature of the water here and there, and there's a lot of information sharing there.

Tony Mulhare:

So you just mentioned a YouTube video. And we sent out a blast not long ago talking about the MAX's Load Reduction Device, or LRD. Can you talk a little bit about how the communications between us, the Company and Boeing and the FAA, all resulted in the communications that we set out and how those processes work?

Craig Jakubowski:

Yeah, so we are party status on the New Orleans Southwest 554. It was a bird strike back in 2023 of December. Because we're party status, anything we have to put out comm-wise from SWAPA has to be approved by the party coordinator of the NTSB, the IIC, the investigator in charge, his name is Bryce Banning. So before that comm came out from us and the Company, we had to run it through the NTSB for approval.

If you are party status in an investigation and you put out a communication without approval from the NTSB, SWAPA will risk the potential of a loss of party status on that investigation. No different than what happened years ago with the UPS in Birmingham, Alabama. So we worked with the Company. There was meetings that week, Gary, for about two or three days. We were working very closely with the Company throughout. You agree?

Gary Niemann:

Yeah. Initially we were going to put out a comm and it goes back to that level of trust and the relationships that have been built with the Company. Initially we were going to put out our own comm and the Company was going to do their own comm. Through some conversations that happened, they said, "Hey, this might be an opportunity to do a joint communication." So there was a lot of back and forth, but it was a solid probably two to three days.

Craig Jakubowski:

Yeah. So a Friday evening that about five o'clock on Friday, we decided to go ahead with the joint communication with the Company. We had already received approval from the NTSB for our statement to the pilots. And then I picked up the phone and called the IIC and told them that there was a change of plans. We would have a change of communication, which we provided to them that evening.

 was flying Saturday morning, three leg day. And I'm in Los Angeles on an aircraft swap. I'm getting questions from SWAPA and from the Company, " Hey, where are we at with the NTSB? Do we have a thumbs up to send this out to our pilot group?" And it was something we wanted to get out pretty quickly. And I picked up the phone and the NTSB investigator in charge, Bryce Benning was wonderful. He put everything down. I talked to him. I was in the flight deck, the changes being proposed. He responded within minutes with us and the Company on it. And we had that come out by the time I was landing in Las Vegas by noon, I believe.

And then later that day we had a lot of questions from our pilots, which is great. Everyone's talking about this Load Reduction Device. And that's the behind the scenes of how that all transpired. It was a busy 24 hours. And in the future, anytime we're party status, that's how it has to be done for SWAPA. We still always want NTSB approval first.

Matt McCants:

Yeah, I think there's some really important takeaways from this that we need to foot stomp so that everyone has a firm understanding of this process. Party status is one of them. But understand that also there's this series of very solid lines of communication between the Company and the NTSB and us and the membership. So, we have these safety situations. Some of them fit in this box, some of them fit in this box. But all the processes that are involved with communicating about each of these events are on their own. And we release the information when we have good data, we are firm about what we're trying to communicate and why. And that takes some time sometimes.

Craig Jakubowski:

For example, we had an event a couple weeks ago in Midway with the go around. And the preliminary report came out from the NTSB, I believe two days ago. And then we have an ops group, which we just interviewed the pilots of Flexjet and the pilots of Southwest Airlines. And then there's still a lot going in right now from a human factor side of the clearance of the taxi clearance for the Flexjet crew, our pilots, the signage of the taxiway ramps and hold short markings. It takes time is the whole point before we can come to a conclusion of the final outcome of what we want to share yet. So, sometimes it can be six months. Oftentimes it's about a year before the NTSB will close an investigation.

Tony Mulhare:

So when some of us are from different backgrounds that had safety channels inside, I was an Air Force guy. And so you had a safety channel and that was a protected communication there. We got used to seeing information fairly quickly in the NTSB process for a lot of us with that background is relatively slow just because of their process and it's all releasable to the public. So can you talk a little bit about the difference between those two worlds and why we have to wait for the NTSB? And where can pilots go in the meantime to find some updates that are releasable as they come out, like the ASAP, AGRAM, and those types of things?

Gary Niemann:

I'll let Craig talk to the NTSB side. As far as safety goes, it was mentioned the safety scorecard comes out on our publication every month. Now, I will add a caveat to that, is that this current month, it was omitted due to some staffing issues.

Tony Mulhare:

In the March RP, yeah.

Gary Niemann:

Yeah. In the March RP. But that is coming back. There's tons of resources inside of your EFB as well. If you go to flying and safety, there's a lot of safety resources there. You mentioned the ASAP, AGRAM. So a lot of that is all available to the pilots and that is all built together and jointly with the Company and the union. So we do keep, on the SWAPA website, there is the safety scorecard that's archived in there, so that is there as well. But there again, that's a little bit more of archived information. Real-time information it also is a safety trends inside of your EFB, that's updated constantly with ASAP information where the airport falls from an average across the system. We also have excerpts in there from ASAP.

Tony Mulhare:

You can get to that from the SIP page as well, right?

Gary Niemann:

Correct.

Tony Mulhare:

Yep.

Craig Jakubowski:

The NTSB is an independent agency that is all about being transparent. You have to also remember their aviation side of the house, about 200 or something employees. And they do a very, very thorough investigation and they don't want to put something out and jump the gun and come up with the aha theory or solution or answer that they think is. They want to do their full due diligence to the public. And that's oftentimes why it takes so long. And that's the truth.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah, it's like a sheer volume issue. The Air Force was able to do that in 90 days because they had a much smaller volume of reporting than what's going on in the NTSB. I can't even imagine to guess what their total number of reports is every year. But it's a lot.

Craig Jakubowski:

Yeah. I mean currently we have five open investigations that we're party to right now, so it's busy.

Gary Niemann:

Yeah, and just to piggyback on that, we think about the NTSB of these very big events that happen in commercial aviation. Craig said, we have our five, obviously we had the DC tragedy. But what you don't see and don't hear is all the GA stuff as well. And the NTSB, they have to investigate all those as well.

So, at any given time, I can't come up with a number. I know one of their board members was at a conference we were just at, and he spoke. And he did that as well in front of the podium as well as the DC event was unraveling that this is not new to them. They are used to dealing with hundreds of investigations at a time, but it's still a very small organization.

And they very much pride themselves, as Craig said, as the gold standard of the world. And so, they don't leave any stone unturned. And so like you said, that takes time. And in a society that loves to click and scroll and have the attention of my eight-year-old, that's difficult.

Matt McCants:

Yeah, I think it's a very good point. As we are getting conditioned to thinking that we need the answer and should have the answer immediately. And safety is not like that at all. There are processes in place where there are due diligences to maintain and that's why they are as good at their job as they are.

Tony Mulhare:

Correct is better than fast, right?

Craig Jakubowski:

Correct. Yeah. So they don't want... And they do a great job, but the agency of the NTSB of not allowing pressure to change the outcome. And that's one thing that they're facing I believe more is with all the social media and the 24-hour news cycle, the pressure put on their investigators to hurry up and come to a final conclusion. Now, if they're doing an investigation ongoing and they find something, they will put that out right away.

Matt McCants:

That's happened before?

Craig Jakubowski:

Yeah. So if there's a safety recommendation or something that they're identifying early in the process, they're going to share that. But the final report might still be a year later.

Gary Niemann:

Right. And to your point, the NTSB did just put out, I believe it was two emergency recommendations as a result of the DC tragedy.

Matt McCants:

All right. Let's shift gears a little bit. We mentioned the LRD, Load Reduction Device, on the MAX a little bit earlier. On the topic of the MAX, and it's a hot topic with everyone right now, is what is the current status with the MAX 7? Are there several paths here or really just one? And what do we know at this point?

Gary Niemann:

I believe the aircraft was supposed to enter service in 2019. Here we are in 2025. It's not going to enter service in 2025. It could possibly enter service in 2026. The biggest hangup with the MAX still, or the MAX 7, is the engine anti-ice system.

So we get updates on that periodically. They thought they had a fix for it. They thought that fix was going to be done in February. We're obviously past February. It's still ongoing. We don't have total transparency onto it. We do know that they've made some modifications. It's our understanding those modifications aren't performing to the level that they expected. So, it's the same way it's been for the last five years. We're just sitting on our hands hoping. And that's just where we're at with it right now.

Obviously, we also know that Boeing has also asked for some exceptions to their stall management computer. We don't take any exception with that. That just has to do with some of the certification changes that happen. That stall management computer has something like 290 million flight hours on it. So it's not a safety issue that we're concerned about at all. But the holdup has been the change in how they certify airplanes.

Matt McCants:

So this is a certification issue that we are now tracing to the engine anti-ice.

Gary Niemann:

Right. Well, there's a lot of stuff that changed in the aviation's... There's the Aviation Certification Safety and Accountability Act. And so it's a completely different way that they have to certify the airplane. The MAX 7 is the first airplane that's going down this pathway.

Matt McCants:

Really?

Gary Niemann:

Yeah. There was a lot of things that had to happen and it's just been a very slow-

Tony Mulhare:

Those changes were made because of the MAX 8 issues, right? That's all a response to that.

Gary Niemann:

Right. Well, everything was a response to the MCAS.

Craig Jakubowski:

Yeah. And to that point, with the new certification, there's a lot more human factor side of it. So, the certification of the MAX 7 isn't going through the same certification the MAX 8 went through originally. And with that is creating more... Boeing tells us they're well on their way according to the Company. They have frequent meetings with Boeing. But another thing that might get thrown into it is a load reduction device now, that this proposed software fix with Boeing, they're thinking later half of 2026 before it's approved. That could possibly hold up the certification. We don't know that, but that's a potential risk.

Matt McCants:

Okay. With regards to MAX 7, obviously we are just a pilot union in this situation. So who are the key players that can affect this timeline when it comes to MAX 7 certification?

Craig Jakubowski:

I would say Boeing and the FAA.

Gary Niemann:

I agree. I mean, those are really the only two really, I mean it's the FAA. I mean the FAA is-

Matt McCants:

They own the certification.

Gary Niemann:

They own the certification. Right. And I can't really think of anyone else that's going to be able to have an outside influence into the certification of the MAX 7.

Craig Jakubowski:

And the FAA did change. They used to allow the manufacturer to do a lot of the certifications. That's all gone. So now you have to remember, the staffing level of the FAA, the oversight of the FAA, that slows down the right people. And that was a problem in the past. The FAA said, "We can't keep up with the private sector." So a lot of these people go to Boeing and work for them. I'm just bringing this up.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah, yeah. That was a huge issue after, because that was when they came down and said, "We're going to change all this," they didn't have the right people with the right backgrounds, with the right experience.

Craig Jakubowski:

So you have that spool up time that took place.

Matt McCants:

Hence the change in the certification process.

Craig Jakubowski:

Yes.

Tony Mulhare:

Okay. On the topic of human factors, let's talk about something that you guys have had a hand in developing in conjunction with the Company that we recently put out on the line, and that's red-eye flying. And what was your safety's role in helping the Company build the pairings and the rest requirements to mitigate fatigue and other safety concerns?

Gary Niemann:

Yeah, so SWAPA played a really big role in that. And I really need to give a shout-out to our fatigue group, Scott Hutchinson, Justin, and Tony. In the beginning there was a lot of, "How are we going to mitigate fatigue for these red-eye pairings?" They hired a consulting firm, Baines Simmons, to come in and look at pairing construction. We ran it through a program that's called SAFTE-FAST. Those are used throughout the industry of line construction, and it'll basically score a pairing of how does a pairing score from a fatigue standpoint.

But there was a lot of other things that we looked at as well, is how do we protect flights that are going to do the red-eye? So the way our red-eye flying is a little bit different for Southwest right now, especially in the beginning, because it all started on the East Coast. We ship a crew out to the West Coast and then they're there for 22, 25 hours and then they come back to the East Coast. Well, how do you protect that crew so that they don't get five hours delayed, six hours delayed? How do you protect that crew so that they're not rerouted?

Well, just like everything, just like baseball, nobody bats 1,000. So the very first day that we launched the red-eye, we actually had a crew that got rerouted. And we thought that those mitigators were in place. They're again, to the Company's credit, I mean they ate some crow on it and go, "Yeah, we missed that one." But they're putting stuff in place.

So, now that the red-eyes are going, and where I really want to give our team kudos is we are actively soliciting those pilots, both before they do the pairing and after they do the pairing to submit a fatigue report, talking about those voluntary safety programs again. Going, "Hey, what's working, what's not?" And so here we are into it, I think three, about three weeks I guess, into the red-eye flying, and we've had approximately 70 fatigue reports submitted from our crews that have done their red-eyes. Now, when I say, "Fatigue report," is not because they called in fatigue.

Matt McCants:

They're not calling in fatigue.

Gary Niemann:

No.

Matt McCants:

They're just soliciting information.

Gary Niemann:

Right. Fatigue is just like the ASAP. You don't have to file an ASAP because you did something. You can do a general safety concern. Fatigue is the same way. You can do a general... And so, we're getting really good feedback from our crews on that that we're now injecting as the red-eye flying starts to increase. We started at five, went to 16, then it's going up to 36, I believe sometime this summer. So the red-eye flying is, it's a new thing for Southwest, but all indications are it's here to stay and it's just going to become part of our normal operation.

Tony Mulhare:

And they've been open to your inputs?

Gary Niemann:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Tony Mulhare:

Very good.

Gary Niemann:

Very much so.

Tony Mulhare:

So let's talk about another hot topic that was in the headlines recently, and that we also put out a safety blast about, and that's safety protocols, and some of the communications that came out from some fairly high level people in the government that made some of our pilots hesitant to submit an ASAP. We talked about it in our comm, but would you talk about that comm piece and then where that conversation has gone over the last couple of weeks with the FAA?

Gary Niemann:

So this all stems from our midway incident, right after the event happened. I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, right? I mean, the president of the United States put out a whatever true social post. And then Secretary of Transportation then retweeted it, then he went on a TV show. And that sent chills down really the industry's spine. As we talked about earlier, the biggest thing that the industry has going for it is the voluntary safety reporting.

And so there was a lot of concerns then that, "Oh my gosh, we're going to send people underground." And so, there were some very frank conversations with the Secretary of Transportation, not only with the SWAPA executives, but also with ALPA. When Secretary Duffy made those comments, he has since clarified that he felt they were taken out of context. And he has come out saying that he fully supports voluntary safety programs. And all indications at this point is that the federal government, and certainly the FAA, fully support voluntary safety programs,

Matt McCants:

They understand the programs, why they're there, what they're for.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah. So the bottom line to our pilots is their information is still going to be protected once it's accepted into the ASAP program by the ERC. Right?

Gary Niemann:

Absolutely. And you know, when I was talking with Jody, because obviously you know, Jody did a joint video with Dave Hunt and Justin Jones. And Jody and I had an extensive conversation before that video, and then we were writing the comp for that, is that those protections are guaranteed under the advisory circular and the contract. So regardless of what anybody says, you are fully protected, period.

Matt McCants:

Okay. We covered a lot of ground and a lot of topics here. And now, God forbid, you find yourself in an even more serious situation like an aircraft accident or incident, we have a lot of resources to walk you through and what to do, right?

Craig Jakubowski:

That's correct. And one thing at first I would say is to make sure you download the SWAPA app on your personal device. If you go to the home button on the bottom right there is an emergency tab to select on, it will walk you through the process, the circuit breakers to pull for the CVR, notify dispatch, our SWAPA hotline, who to email. You can go down the list.

One thing I will also say is if you're flying internationally, a good habit to get into now is have your passport on you. I always when I verify international, I'll have it in my pocket, on my pilot uniform shirt. Because in the event you have to egress, there's an evacuation, that's the most important document you want to have with you at all times.

Another pointer would be to save the SWAPA phone number on your personal device. This way you can just call it and we'll be answering right away. So there's also on the SWAPA website itself, we have an incident response document as well, but the SWAPA app is your tool.

Tony Mulhare:

So if it's not obvious to our listener, and sometimes we have an audience that includes people who aren't pilots, safety is a topic that we don't just throw around nonchalantly. It's not a buzzword, it's not a crutch, it's not an excuse. It's the number one priority in this business, and we take it very seriously. And as I like to tell my non-pilot friends, "I want to get home from my trip to see my wife and family too." And so what would you say to wrap up today's podcast and emphasize the priority of safety and the processes that we have in place?

Craig Jakubowski:

What I would say is our safety is number one priority. If you ever make a judgment call on the line as a captain, first officer, let's say you're fatigued or you don't want to accept an aircraft or whatever it might be. First of all, SWAPA will always have your back.

Second of all, the Company is very responsive to safety. I've never heard pilots tell me otherwise. Any time you have, we're constantly monitoring the operation from SWAPA safety with dispatch. They'll send out notifications. If you don't hear from us, pick up the phone and call us. But I think what you'll see is if you operate with safety as your number one priority, no one will ever question you.

Gary Niemann:

I think the main thing, and I think we've gotten this across, is we really are a 24/7 operation. Is that if there is an issue, there's always a resource available. And if we don't know the information or the answer, we know the person to call to get it.

Matt McCants:

We'd like to thank Gary and Craig for taking the time out of their schedules to sit down with us, the membership and the audience at large, to talk about all the different places that flight safety lives. As they've made clear, this is the backbone of our profession. It is ours to keep, and we will never stop getting better at it. If you have any feedback for this podcast or any of our comm products, drop us a line at comm@swapa.org. We really do want to hear from you.

Tony Mulhare:

Finally, today's bonus number is 10,090. That's the number of ASAP reports that were filed by SWAPA pilots in 2024. And to foot stomp what we discussed in today's podcast, the program and its protections are here to stay.