How Glenn Daley's Experience Shapes Aviation Safety Part 3 | Ep 362

Welcome back to the Hangar Z Podcast, brought to you by Vertical HeliCASTS, in partnership with Vertical Valor Plus.  

Our guest is retired Lieutenant Glenn Daley of the New York City Police Department Aviation Unit. Glenn’s career in airborne law enforcement spans decades of service, leadership, instruction, and experience, that has taken him around the world. This conversation is powerful, emotional, educational, and, without question, one of the most important discussions we have had on this podcast.

This series begins on Sept. 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m., the moment American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Glenn takes us back to that horrific morning and provides a firsthand account of the response by NYPD Aviation assets during one of the darkest days in American history. He shares not only the operational response, but also his personal experiences and how that day forever changed him both professionally and personally.

Throughout this series, we walk through Glenn’s remarkable NYPD career, including his time assigned to the Special Enforcement Unit, and discuss the transition into flying and instructing after retirement from the department. Glenn’s passion for aviation safety and training is evident throughout every episode.

One of the most impactful parts of this conversation is our deep dive into IIMC (inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions). Glenn shares his extensive knowledge and experience on what pilots and crews must do to prevent and survive these situations. We discuss go and no-go decision making, simulator training, proficiency versus currency, instrument ratings, crew coordination, and the mindset required to avoid tragedy. These lessons are real-world, practical, and potentially lifesaving.

Episodes like this truly have the power to save lives someday, and we are incredibly fortunate that Glenn was willing to share his experiences, knowledge, and perspective with all our listeners.

This is a conversation you will not forget.

Thank you to our sponsors Airbus, Dallas Avionics and Spectrolab.

Transcript

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The Hanger Z podcast welcomes retired Lieutenant Glenn Daly of NYPD Aviation. Preparation is the key. Knowing that it can happen to you, that you are not, you know, immune from this happening, and you can't fix it without planning. Again, I say put me with all my, you know, 7,000, 8,000 hours and lots of hundreds of hours in actual FR, put me in a jet ranger, fly me into a cloud tonight. I give myself a 50-50 chance of surviving. There's a video by the U.S. helicopter safety team called 56 Seconds. That's the average time in all these recorded crashes the person has lived after once they penetrated on IMC. Have a plan and make it part of your SOP, part of your protocols. Encourage. Pat the guy on the back and hold the guy up who makes the landing in the park, not who gets it done through thick or thin. Welcome to a very special three-part series of the Hangers E podcast. Our guest is retired Lieutenant Glenn Daly of the New York City Police Department's Aviation Unit. Glenn's career in airborne law enforcement spans decades of service, leadership, instruction, and experience that has taken him around the world. This conversation is powerful, emotional, educational, and without question one of the most important discussions we have had on this podcast. The series begins on September 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m., the moment American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Glenn takes us back to that horrific morning and provides a first-hand account of the response by NYPD aviation assets during one of the darkest days in American history. He shares not only the operational response, but also his personal experiences and how that day forever changed him both professionally and personally. Throughout this series, we walk through Glenn's remarkable NYPD career, including his time assigned to the special enforcement unit, and discuss the transition into flying and instructing after retirement from the department. Glenn's passion for aviation safety and training is evidenced throughout every episode. One of the most impactful parts of this conversation is our deep dive into inadvertent IMC. Glenn shares his extensive knowledge and experience on what pilots and crews must do to prevent and survive these situations. We discuss go and no-go decision making, simulator training, proficiency versus currency, instrument ratings, crew coordination, and the mindset required to avoid tragedy. These lessons are real-world, practical, and potentially life-saving. Episodes like this truly have the power to save lives someday. And we are incredibly fortunate that Glenn was willing to share his experience, knowledge, and perspective with all of our listeners. This is a conversation you will not forget. Thank you to our sponsors, Airbus. Dallas Avionics. And Spectro Lab. Welcome to the Hanger Z Podcast. Brought to you by Vertical Helicast. The Hanger Z Podcast is the first and only podcast dedicated to promoting and exploring the personnel and equipment behind the missions in public safety aviation. So Southbound's getting to a stop, never here. Looks like you're getting ready to bail. Heads up, guys, bailing. Okay, the guy, he's running through the house, jumping the fence, through the shotgun, through something out. Grabbing the shotgun. Don't go over that fence. Dog over that fence. Grab the shotgun again. If he is armed, stay there. Hold your position. So in the time we have left, which is significant, we're gonna go, we're gonna go longer here. We really want to get into an important topic. And and that's inadvertent IMC. This is something that you uh instruct on. Um you've you've instructed on it for quite a long time. Walk us through to start, tell us about why this topic became so important to you, and then we'll we'll we'll dive into this uh in a couple different angles. But why why is Introvert IMC so important to Glenn Daly? Well, a couple of events happened. Back in 2009, 2010, in 2009, New Mexico State Police had a pretty much what could be considered a watershed accident where they were lifting from a mountain off-site at night in bad weather, ended up losing visual reference, losing control of the helicopter, and crashing. At the time I was teaching a lot of classes for ALEA APSA. And they're like, this looks like a trend. Can you do a deep dive into this? And I poured over the accident report, looked at the NTSB files, and what I was very surprised to learn was uh on a whole inadvertent IMC only accounts for about 10% of the overall accidents in the rotorcraft community, which is worldwide per year. But they account for roughly it's 47, but let's say 50% of the fatalities. If you want to kill yourself in a helicopter or kill other people in your helicopter, have an inadvertent IMC encounter without uh without prevention or remedy ready to execute. I I've taught this for a couple of years, then in 2012, very good friend of Jack and I, Doug Brigham, he was a career helicopter pilot with the Pennsylvania State Police, had a long and successful career with them, retired, got his dream job flying an A-Star, and I believe a twin star for a company basically doing power, power line, and pipeline patrol. They let him bring the helicopter home at night because his house was a licensed heliport. It was he was actually, if you looked up heliports, it was Brigham Heliport in his house. So he had a nice perk, saved the commuting time of taking the helicopter home. Well, he departed his backyard heliport pre-dawn, early morning, river bottom, creek bottom fog forming up, departed and within seconds crashed, you know, within yards of his house and his family, was killed immediately in the crash. So I dug more into an advert IMC. They never came out with a hard and fast cause for it, but looking at it as hard as I did with my background, it was inadvertent IMC. A lot of people will fool themselves and go, it's just a layer of fog. If I keep the controls really static, I'll be through that in five, ten seconds and it'll be clear as stars above. Didn't work out that way. So I started doing a huge, huge deep dive on inadvertent IMC. And what I learned was startling. It's the easiest way of getting yourself killed in a helicopter. The number one cause of accidents is auto-rotative training without proper safeguards. You want to bang up a helicopter, do auto-rotative training improperly or without the proper safeguards in place or protocols. You want to get killed in a helicopter, fly into a cloud or weather without a good plan, surest way it's gonna happen. Being that a good chunk of the training, I I I I I teach a lot of different courses, but the two that I teach the most are inadvertent IMC, avoidance and survival, and high-rise fire rescue. And usually my my audience, depending on what conference I'm teaching these things at, are cops. So they get the following analogy, and I always drive this home. In ESU, I used to teach tactics and gunfighting. I call it the gunfight analogy. An inadvertent IMC encounter is like a gunfight. I'm a firm believer, and I'll I'll I'll stand by this claim. 90% of officer-involved shootings can be avoided with good tactics. That 90% of times cops find themselves in bad situations exchanging shots with a suspect. Something wasn't done to the letter of the law alright. Simple, not to harp on it by getting off the elevator at the floor below the job. Something as simple as that. The way you approach a felony stop, the way you do a field interview, your command presence, your stature, your blading your firearm away from a suspect, the numerous ways that we employ tactics to prevent gunfights, I'd say wipes out 90% of shooting encounters. The way you approach inadvertent IMC, exactly the same. 90% of the inadvertent IMC fatalities could have been prevented with proper preparation to stay out of the inadvertent IMC encounter. And then once the game's on, just like a gunfight, there is no cramming, there is no doovers, you're either going to have a skill set to win a gunfight, when that gunfight jumps off, or you're gonna lose. You're gonna have a skill set to save your life flying in a cloud, probably in a light single helicopter with no stability system or force trim. There's a world of difference. I up until I retired, flying the S-92s and the S-76s flew in one of the best instrument platforms there were. I flew instruments almost on a weekly basis. I have a ton of actual IFR experience in helicopters. If you were to put me in an A Star or a 407 or a Jet Ranger or an R44 with my experience and fly me into a cloud, I would maintain I give myself a 50-50 chance at living. And that's someone who flies instruments all the time. So what do you do? You craft policies and procedures that stress prevention, 90% of it, and then the 10% where you you you didn't pay attention and you stumbled into IMC or had a bad plan or didn't have an in-rap decision point, how are you going to survive this encounter? And the the the key is have a plan, have a plan, have a plan. What kills people most often in an invert IMC encounter is the startle effect. And I have friends who are commercial airline pilots that go, Glenn, I don't understand. You're flying an S-92, an S-76 with complete automation. You fly into a cloud that you didn't intend to, you weren't planning to. How do people lose control of these advanced rotor craft? I said it's the startle effect and not having a plan and getting ready to shift into it. And there's there's there's so many slides I could show you of avoidance and game on fighting to save your life. The avoidance simple and simple, know your weather, know your weather, know your weather. And have hard, fast, no-go weather. Easier said than done. Something that will take you a long way is a formal flight risk assessment tool. Most operations, both commercial, civil, law enforcement, still aren't using flight risk assessment tools. Or if they're using them, they're a paper exercise, so people just check boxes, put it in the sergeant's mailbox, and go do the flight they were going to do anyway. They're not using it as a guide. Or a flight risk assessment tool is that little tap on the shoulder going, Do you really want to do this? Are you really sure about this? And one of the weird things I've encountered, I flew the NYPD from 1993 to 2004, 11 years. And for the last 21 years, I've flown V VIP or ultra VIP flights for some very serious people. But what's crazy is it was easier for me to no-go uh uh an actual offshore rescue than sometimes taking a hedge fund manager to a meeting. There was more pressure taking a hedge fund manager to a meeting, and I've watched grown pilots, experienced aviators with thousands of hours of experience crumble under the pressure. Because it's it's you're dealing with human factors here. Most of these positions are super well paid. They take really, really good care of you, and you're dealing with people, not to get too far down the rabbit hole, you're dealing with people who are like the masters of the universe and have someone kiss their ass all day long and cater to them. And the only person in their orbit that ever comes up and says, no, is the helicopter pilot. They get out of bed in the morning, the chef asks them what they want for breakfast, the valet asks him what they want, what suit they want laid out, the chauffeur asks him what time they're going to pick them up. Then they get to Glenn saying the weather's below minimums today, there's a significant risk of going inadvertent IMC, the freezing level's too low to go IMC, we can't use the helicopter today. Now, I'm that 2060-20 rule works for flying VIP too. I've flown with 20% of the people who are some of the most fantastic people on earth who are like, if you say we're not flying, Glenn, we're not flying, I pay you to make hard decisions, I trade stocks and commodities, I don't fly helicopters. The other 60%, if you explain it properly and give them enough uh warning, they'll they don't like what you're telling them, but they'll accept it. And then there's the 20% who are psychotic lunatics who want to end up dead. Yeah who think that you're conniving and you're just lazy and you don't want to do the flight. And I've seen these lunatics browbeat pilots into doing flights, one of which I was on. We got two miles from the pickup point, and I'm like, I was fine, I was second in command, I was f I was flying as co-pilot on it. It was an S-76, like turn this helicopter around. One of the things you should never hear in aviation, the other pilot retorts, if we could just make it, there's an area in Brooklyn called Prospect Park, where most of the obstructions miraculously start. He goes, the weather's supposed to be better than if we could just make it to Prospect Park, we should be okay. I said, we don't buy should. We buy can and will. Turn the helicopter around. This is like real CRM time. This isn't hypothetical. He's gonna be pissed, he's gonna jump up and down, he's gonna scream. I go, if we're working for a person who would fire us and making this decision, we're working at the wrong place. Easier said than done when you've got a mortgage and your kids in this third year of college and you got the electric bill and the cable bill and this bill. These are all easier said than done things. But having strict criteria for launches is the first thing you can do. Having a flight risk assessment tool is the second thing you can do. Having the B, C, D, and E plan once you're launched and in flight is the most important thing you can do. When you say, we've had way too much fun on this flight, it's time to call it quits. We're either going to turn around, transition to IMC if we're equipped and certified, or land the helicopter. One of the most terrifying things that ever happened to me in a helicopter, I was a relatively new pilot. I had a matter of fact, he was the chief pilot, was in the left seat, I was in the right seat. We were doing a cross-country flight to Quanset, Connecticut, to investigate a helicopter underwater emergency egress training facility. And it's it's typical. Now that I teach this stuff for a living, we're getting lower and slower, lower and slower. And okay, now we're just passing some high tension wires. Let's transition to the shoreline where we know there's no high tension wire. Lower and slower. I'm looking for places to put the helicopter down. And Connecticut shoreline is very rocky. There's no flat sandy spots. I'm looking for people's yards. Without utilizing any CRM or aeronautical decision making, the other pilot verbatim, I've had just about enough of this bullshit. Hang on. Pulls 90% torque, which is a B3 jet ranger with a Loran, not even a GPS. Puts us into a climb into the clouds, and I'm like, okay, hopefully we'll break out at about a thousand feet. And we start at zero MSL. We're literally going past people's kitchen windows on the shoreline. Thousand feet, two thousand feet, three thousand feet, four thousand feet. Still squawking 1200, close to controlled airspace, 4,000 feet, 5,000 feet. We break out at 6,000 feet. I have never been so terrified in my life. To his credit, he kept the spinning side up and the skid side down. Yeah. And it's like, now what? I said, now I'm talking to approach and I'm getting his vectors to VMC conditions. Yeah. And you will never do that again with me in a helicopter or anybody else. So maybe nervous. Maybe nervous listening to it. A lot of life lessons learned on that one. Oh, yeah. Another two incidents in the NYPD. But to back up a little bit, I was at an uh there's an organization here in the Northeast U.S. called the Eastern Region Helicopter Council. And every helicopter operator in the Northeast belongs. Police, Medivac, corporate, Ultra VIP, and they meet every several months, networking best practices. I used to be their safety director. And the weekend of one of these meetings, there was a fatal inadvertent IMC crash. And Matt Sicaro, may you rest in peace, used to be the president of HAI. He was the president of HAI at the time. And we were sitting in the back of the hell of the classroom. He goes, God damn it. He goes, why don't they just land the damn helicopter? Yep. And that became part of the HAI now VAI website. What's incredible is we fly machines that we brag to people can be landed virtually anywhere. But when our lives are at real risk, we don't land. And I've gotten every excuse possible. In New York City, it's illegal to land a helicopter off site. Never once has I seen a helicopter operator that landed for due to safety reasons or mechanical reasons ever, ever, ever be the subject of enforcement action. Right. When we used to respond out in the NYPD, we tell them there's a helicopter down with a chip light at Prospect Park. We'd respond, I'd applaud the guy. You didn't try and make it to the heliport or the airport, you put it down with the nearest field. But people don't. People don't. And it's all it's easier when you have the plan B, C, and D. You need SOPs, and you need whether you're a police aviation unit or a corporate flight department. That encourages, if you have a situation that you are not sure, whether it's mechanical or weather closing in on you where you can't continue the flight, you should be praised and and and it should be promoted. Land the helicopter, we'll deal with it on the ground. So so Glenn, let me ask you this. Uh, what do you think is the reason why so many pilots don't? Is it their ego? Is it the pressure from their employer? What do you do you think there's something that jumps out at you there that of why uh pilots don't do the simple thing and land the damn helicopter? There's a bunch of reasons. The one which I dismiss offhand is, oh, we'll get in trouble. That that's nonsense. That is nonsense. That's nonsense. You have a couple of human factors, not to get too nerdy about this. Continuation bias and expectation bias, where continuation bias is you see what you want to see, not what you're actually seeing. And we can keep going and we can keep going. And in a perfect inadvertent IMC mishap, one of two things happen. Lower, slower, lower, slower, lower, slower, penetrate a crowd, have a C fit into terrain. Or we're up in a cloud, we have a startle effect, we lose control of the aircraft, come out of the cloud upside down, out of control of the aircraft. The continuation bias is like the expectation bias. It's almost as if we've come this far, we can probably make it. It's only in the presentation I do an inadvertent IMC, I show a helicopter sitting in a park that's two miles from my house, that is two miles from Westchester County Airport to where he's going. And I praise this pilot because rather than saying we only have two more miles to go, he's like terra firma in a park below me. I'm putting this helicopter on the ground. Yeah. And something the National EMS Pilots Association did is they something trigger points called EDPs, enter out decision points, where if you have to descend to 300 feet AGL during the day, 500 AGL at night, or slow 10% of your normal cruise airspeed. So in a S 92, we would cruise at 140. If I'm cruising at 15 knots slower than that, there's a reason I'm going slow. I'm trying to avoid weather. There's a reason I'm finding myself at 300 feet. The pilot must, and that's the way you've got to word these things, must. Do a 180. And the time for a 180 is before you penetrate a cloud. When you penetrate a cloud, you should make no turns except to avoid known obstacles. But do a 180. Soon as these three trigger points appear, transition to IMC if you're so equipped and certified, or land the damn helicopter. And something I stress everywhere I work is you should have a mental catalog. As varied as New York City is, I can tell you almost every single spot I can fit a helicopter into New York City, as congested as it is. And two police calls I was on, I had to use it. Thanks to our sponsor, Dallas Avionics, who provides innovative products to law enforcement, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Military, Air Medical, Search and Rescue, and Special Missions Operations. Dallas Avionics distributes OEM equipment, including communications equipment, digital audio systems, PA systems, flight tracking, and other mission critical devices. Visit Dallasavionics.com for more details. I went out on one case. It was a police involved shooting. Both of these were heavy calls, and we knew the weather was pretty crummy. I went out with another pilot, and we didn't know it, but we were setting N-Route decision points. This is long before this was envisioned by this is in the late 1990s. Joe looked at me and I looked at Joe. He goes, NYPD put their base, Floyd Benefield, the brilliant move of the place that fogs first and clears last in New York City. And we were always finding ourselves scud running to get back into the base. And it was night and it was dark. And he goes, if we got to go below 400 to get back into base, we're not going back to base. The Brooklyn South Task Force is one mile this way. They have a baseball field next to a police station with rookie cops to watch the helicopters, comfortable couches, and a coffee machine. Everything used to be. That's all you need. Yeah. And we got to the Bell Parkway and we were below 400 feet, and we're like, let's turn around. We've been lucky so far. We went to the Brooklyn South Task Force, had a wonderful evening watching TV. Well, a rookie cop watched the helicopter. Another time I go out with a cop named Eddie, another police involved shooting in the Bronx. We knew we weren't going to get back in. Fog was coming in. We're like, okay, once we finish up on the call, we can either go to XYZ or the heliports in Manhattan. Because New York's Manhattan's got three heliports. A police helicopter can land there off hours. We ended up landing at the place that fixes all of the harbor patrol boats. It's a police station for the harbor patrol with a baseball field and a couch and a rookie cop and a coffee maker. All the necessities of an off-site landing. But people don't do that enough. And in the ultra VIP world, it's almost as an admission of failure. Like I told you we could get you to this place, and I failed. And now I've got you sitting in the middle of a baseball field where you're supposed to be closing a multi-billion dollar deal, and I'm my job might be at risk if I work for an unreasonable person. And it's breaking down the human factors. And it's easier said than done. Everyone says, well, I'll just quit a job like that. Or I'll my my you know, my it's not worth my life to keep a paycheck until it is. Yeah. And people do stupid things. That's right. They do. And it's a matter of drilling it in and holding up the guys who make the right calls as the template for what you want to do. And having the B C and D plan, something is simple. Now, the last 20 years, uh last seven years, I've been flying S-92s, and you don't get any better IFR platform than that. But even on marginal weather days, when we had no intention of flying IFR, we'd have an IFR flight plan on file. So when the weather started closing in, we'd always flight follow with approach, VFR flight following. So you're already in radio contact. Now the weather's coming down a little bit. So look at the guy next to me. I'm not getting warm and fuzzy about this. What's the weather doing at East Hampton, place we always go? They have an LPV approach that has ILS like minimums. You can get in the most bad weather there. Let's activate our flight plan. Now you take the whole startle and the oh shit factor out. New York, Skorski 314 Romeo Golf. Yeah, we're on with UVFR. We're having a problem maintaining IFR. I have one on file from New York City out to East Hampton. You think we could pick that up and route? And nine times out of ten, there's a few exceptions. There'll be wait one. Steer 2090 climb to maintain 3000, consider yourself IFR. Bingo. The B plan executed, all the stress is off, all the oh, we got to explain ourselves to approach, and now we're a pop-up on their screen. The last thing they want to do is work you on a busy day. You try that on a busy Friday where it's like rush hour, helicopters coming and going, though I've already been told you should have gone IFR from the very beginning. I can't handle you. And I've already come back to them at times go, we got a problem. Is there some way you can take me and hold me? Because an S-92 has got like tons of fuel. You can fly for three hours and that thing. But it's having the B C and D plan once in an S-76, the tasking was to fly from a Manhattan heliport to a corporate helipad on Long Island. The A plan was special VFR over the top of LaGuardia, eastbound alongshore. If the weather gets below 1,000, they won't transition you over LaGuardia. Our B plan was special VFR over the Bronx. The C plan was transition to IMC, shooting a GPS approach to the corporate pad. We tried LaGuardia, unable, can't take you overhead, say your intentions. We already had the B plan set. Like the Bronx routing, like to take it to uh Van Courtland Park, Co-op City. These things, unless you're flying New York, have no relevance. Um Clate has requested we get on the B plan. We're a little bit too low and a little bit too slow, and the spidey senses are starting to kick off. I look at the pilot with me, well, why don't we just go IFR? We have an approach into the corporate pad. The weather's good at the corporate pad. Look, Wardia, change of plans. 301 Charlie Victor. Like to like a climb, like to activate our IFR flight plane. We have one on file. You can access it. Hold on, wait one. Okay, can you maintain VFR for the next mile? I'm like, fingers crossed. Yeah, I think so. There's a huge amount of interpretation left in that one. Long story short, climb to 3,000, steer 100, cleared for the GPS, but the uh 6J way at heliport. But it's not, it's giving having options and being mentally prepared to execute, that they're not paper options. Or the alternative is just always saying no. And if you always say no, you probably aren't gonna have your job. That's right. That's right. Talk about this important uh uh topic within inadvertent IMC. Talk about you know, the person says, Well, I got lots of flying experience, I've got the instrument rating, I've I'm I do my approaches, I'm current. Talk about how all that means something, but it doesn't mean everything. There's more to it. An instrument rating moves the needle a little bit. Yeah. But it is not Teflon that protects you against killing yourself for an IMC. Let's go back to the gunfighting analogy. Let's say you're in an agency that sends you to the range once a year for recurrent training. At 360, my luck will be 364 days after I went to the range, I'll be in a gunfight. How effective am I at taking out the threat after not being at the range for 364 days? Once a year you do a little bit of invert IMC training. And if you think you're gonna execute that 11 months later and be crisp and comfortable, when I was I was a contract instructor pilot for the Westchester County Police from 2008 to 2012, and they said, we want everyone to have an instrument rating. I said, Well, you know, you don't fly instrument certified aircraft, they fly 407s. It's a huge expense. I will take your money, and if you want, train everyone up. I'm a I'm a CFAAI, I can train everyone to take their instrument check ride. But you'd be better served with just putting a heavy, heavy dose of inadvertent IMC recovery into their routine patrol flying. Where we're not creating flights for instrument training, but because we were two pilots, because I was the instructor and they were a line pilot. Every flight foggles, every flight foggles, every flight foggles. Know the Westchester County airport with a base, know their ILS 1634, like the back of your hand. No VOR approach to the next best airport, no anything, any ILS you can get vectored onto. Get Microsoft flight simulated, believe it or not. The fidelity of that program is so outstanding. All the frequencies, inbound courses, and altitudes from an approach plate interpret into that quote unquote game 100%. Fly these recoveries on your computer dozens and dozens and dozens of times so it becomes muscle memory. So I know if I'm by Westchester County Airport and I go in Invert and IMC, my first goal is to keep the right side up, keep the aircraft under control. This is not the time to be fumbling around for approach plates or remember frequencies. I know that the ILS 16 to Westchester is 109.7 for the freak and 162 on the inbound heading. Plan A, B, C, D. If you're flying in marginal weather, that ILS should be tuned already. That CDI should be turned inbound. Or the GPS RNA approach you should be using should already be loaded in your FMS GPS. But I told them, I said, rather than going for instrument ratings, just let me do lots of an advert and IMC recovery. They ended up wanting instrument ratings anyway. I'm like, I'll bill you by the hour. But having uh an instrument rating or an ATP, it's not like you're gonna wave that to the clouds and the they're gonna part and you're gonna have safety. Right. It's a it's a it's a lot, it's a it's a part of it. But being not so much current, because you can do that every six months, capable and comfortable. Yeah, by reference to instruments. And again, I stress that in a light single where you are all it, you are you have the tiger by a tail from the minute you enter a cloud. And in an S92, an S76 or 412, if I have the presence of mind, if I go into IMC, I can just go altitude, heading, vertical speed, climb, altitude pre-select, get another thing is in gunfights, I notice on a lot of videos I watch online now, and in invert and IMC situations, people think that talking to approach or dispatch is going to magically save you. Yes. And a gunfight, putting the threat down is gonna save your ass, not screaming shots fired into a radio. It's one of my pet peeves. I hate it. I hate it. And aviate, navigate, communicate, that comes third. Get the aircraft to a safe altitude, free of obstructions, maybe uh VMC on top. Get yourself trimmed out, then squawk if you want 7700, then contact approach. If you were playing heads-up ball, you were already talking to someone before you went to IMC, though. Yeah. So they already know where you are, who you are. Hey, I thought this was going to work out VFR. It's not working out VFR. We need to transition to IMC. The Kobe Bryant case is the poster child for what shouldn't be done. Yep. Yep. Single pilot S76 is ludicrous. VFR only S76, ludicrous. I don't care what my certificate operating certificate says. If my ass is in an S76 and I'm going into clouds, I can't clear, I'm not going to try and scud run anymore. I'm going to climb, navigate, confess, and get that thing onto an instrument approach. That was like, let's list everything we can do wrong in the preparation, not having the BCD plan, continuation bias, expectation bias, and trying to execute a 180 turn, which always ends up in nose high and zeroing out your air speed and falling through or a graveyard spiral. I'll add to that and just say that uh the the day of that that Kobe Bryant was killed in that crash along with his daughter and friends, and 100% avoidable, uh, no doubt. Uh I c I called the heliport and said, Hey, I I was skiing about Bachelor, you know, up in Oregon. But I called the heliport and I talked to a friend and said, Hey, what's the weather like down there? And they go, This is some of the worst weather I've seen in 20 years at air support. And yet, and they were grounded. LAPD was grounded until three o'clock in the afternoon that day. Three o'clock. This happened. I don't know how LA County Fire got there with a four-chip. Oh, I don't know either. I mean, it's risking themselves going in and it's crazy. Uh, but they saw that aircraft coming up the freeway uh that day, that morning, and said, Look at this idiot. And they go, You gotta be kidding me. They he was super low. IFR, I follow freeways, or I follow roads, but in this case freeways, super low heading up toward Burbank. 25 minutes later, they're they're all dead. It was insane. And I remember being asked that day about it, and many, many times since, as John has, as you have, as every helicopter pilot has, you know, and I remember saying, This investigation's easy. If I'm the chief investigator on this, I don't even go to the smoking hole. I I know what happened here. I know exactly what happened. I'm going to the office where they departed from, and I'm talking to the dispatcher or the secretary or the person that was fixing the coffee machine. I don't care who it is. And I want to know about the conversation between that pilot and Kobe Bryant that morning. And it and I will bet that there was pressures that that that existed there to fly in that nonsense. That should have been, Mr. Bryant, we are not flying to a basketball game today. That's not true. Your risk tolerance, it shouldn't, but it does, depending on what sector of the industry you're in. Yeah. In law enforcement, when we fly, we spend money. Yes. And your corporate aviation, when you fly, it costs you money. When you're in 135 charter fractional, every time you don't fly, you don't make money. Yep. And there's this very subtle pressure. I mean, I I was when I was Sikorsky used to have a subdivision called Associated Aircraft Group, Sikorsky shares. We were like net jets with S-76s. People bought shares of our helicopters. And I was a director of ops and director of training there for a while. And I used to always say, you got to present the United Front. On Sunday afternoon, we'd send four helicopters to East Hampton to pick up four hedge fund managers and take them back to Manhattan. I said that one person cancels, everybody cancels. We go with the lowest common denominator because they're going to be at a cocktail party next week discussing my guy got me in. Why didn't your guys get me in? Well, somebody's either a cowboy or somebody's either a chicken. Yeah. Neither one of them are good. Yeah, that's right. There are pressures that are out there. And you know, it takes it takes a strong pilot to say no. It's the right thing to do. Saying no to when it's your job is difficult. Cops know that. Law enforcement aviators know that. You want to go to that help call, but you know that you shouldn't. And maybe you can't. And it's it's tough, but it's the right thing to do. We can't go, partner. Uh, the weather. We can't go because of this or this. Uh decision making is this whole thing is decision making, isn't it, Glenn? Thanks to our sponsor, Airbus. Airbus provides the most efficient helicopter solutions to its customers who serve, protect, save lives, and safely carry passengers in demanding environments. Its civil and military helicopters are flying all over the world, making missions possible. Visit Airbus.com for more information. You gotta have to hire and retain people you trust. Like when I said there was the 2060-20 population in NYPD aviation when I got there, that lower 20%, they would look for reasons not to fly. So you look, you look askance at them when they're canceling the flight for weather, as a brand new police pilot supervisor. I'm like, is this really a no-go? Is it I'd go to some of the senior pilots, the flight instructors, and go, yeah, I'm pretty new to this helicopter gig. Tommy doesn't want to go fly. Oh, Tommy never wants to go fly. But you still can't make Tommy go fly because you'll be your luck, that'll be the day he crashes. Yeah. Yeah. You have to build up your bona fetus. I always say, whether it's a corporate flight department, a charter company, police aviation unit, you've got to do difficult things that aren't pleasant but not hazardous, and develop a reputation where down the road, when you say, look, this isn't happening, the response is, well, if Glenn says it's gonna happen, it's it it's it's it's legit. Yeah. You can't be chicken little, but you can't be, oh, we can fly through anything. We we had those anti-authority pilots too that had to be dealt with in NYPD, and they were eventually dealt with. It took years. But they would go anywhere, anytime, any conditions, half cocked, not armed with the knowledge, and it's by the grace of God they didn't kill kill people. Right. Right. Both populations you want to weed out. Oh, yeah. Like the the at European rotors, I was asked to develop a class on how to say no. And it really took me to some interesting places. And uh, depending on the market segment, there's different ways of saying no. But the bottom line is to communicate no. The bottom line is not to let leave people stuck. That you don't wait till 8.55 for 9 o'clock pickup and call the the millionaire and say, we can't do you the weather. That call should have been made the night before. Like we know you want to fly tomorrow morning. What's the latest I can call you that gives you the option of getting in a car? Now that pressure's removed a little bit. And then when you make the call at 6 o'clock in the morning and the guy just out of bed, hi hi, boss, it's Glenn. We're at the heliport. We thought it'd be clearing, really not comfortable with this weather. I strongly suggest you take the car. That goes over a lot better than calling the guy five minutes before his pickup and going, can't do it, sorry. Exactly. Exactly. And it takes us back to Kobe. I mean, you know, that's why that conversation that you just described is so important. You know, what did that happen the night before? I don't know. Did it happen that morning? I don't know. But I want to know because, you know, there's a chance that you said you said, hey, we really shouldn't be flying today. Hey, I I can't get to this basketball game on time. She'll never be in time for her game. I could leave right now and and speed there and I won't get there. Was that part of the conversation? I I don't know, but I want to know because it's just people think it was just it was just airmanship and it was all about helicopters and flying. No, it was decision making. They were doomed from the night before. Yes, it was decision-making, lack of planning. I look very with great suspicion at a company that flies S-76's single pilot. Yes. Like that would never happen in the Northeast here. It would never, ever, ever in a million years happen. That aircraft is made, it's certified single pilot, but it's made to be flown two professional pilots acting with close CRM and coordination, especially on instruments. Yeah. So I'll interrupt you, Glenn, just for a minute. The point you brought up about advanced warning is huge. And I think about um air support where I worked, the weather at Cable Airport was different than the weather at the main police station. The reason is that the airport was at a higher elevation than the police station was, so patrol officers walk outside and they look up and the clouds look like they're far away from the ground. And the watch commander goes out and was like, oh, the air support can't respond if they if they called hang and request us, and we say, No, we can't go to weather. But if I preface that, or if I leave that shift off with a call to the watch commander and say, hey, right here at cable, just reminder, we're higher altitude, we're we're IMC right now or IFR, we can't respond to anything until something changes, but we'll keep you updated. That same call goes in dispatch. We've kind of planted the seed so that that watch commander and that dispatcher is not uh taken off guard when we say we're down for weather. Because it's that typical, oh, of course you're down for weather. There's a cloud over Hawaii type thing, you know. So same thing in NYPD. As I said, they put the the the police aviation unit where it fogs first and clears last, and I'm getting a call from the Bronx, he's looking at a full moon and stars, and I'm telling him with a straight face, we can't launch due to weather. Yeah. The solution to that was getting the aircraft out of there before it fogs and repo into city heliports where the weather was going to stay. Good. There you go. You got to be creative sometimes. But but a street cop can't understand why they're looking at clear blue sky and you're saying you're giving the weather excuse. Yeah. So I I love that advice. I think it's Great advice for folks that you know the weather's different at their their heliport and then the the uh areas that they serve. Um so great advice there. Uh I've I've got some responsibilities to to go and take care of, but I I do want to end just my time here with you, Glenn, by saying, you know, I felt like uh a student at school today. The the knowledge that you've imparted on me is is outstanding. You know, we talked uh earlier about conferences and and in other podcasts we've talked about. When you go to a conference, you you leave that conference inspired based on the things you've heard people say. Uh and our our goal in the podcast was to further that inspiration. This is uh one of those podcasts that are really inspiring. You know, a lot of the words that you've said are are gonna are gonna be written down by people, people take notes, and there's there's um a lot of episodes that are impactful for different reasons. This is one that I think people are gonna continue to go back to and take notes and learn from. So thank you, Glenn, for I appreciate that. Well, it's 100% true. Thank you for imparting your knowledge on us and our community. Uh, thank you for everything you've done for the industry over the years. You know, all the time you've spent teaching both domestically and internationally is is is so impactful. You know, you've undoubtedly saved lives and improved operations through your teaching worldwide. So thank you for that. Look forward to to uh seeing you in person here pretty soon. Uh I know our paths have crossed many times, uh, but I look forward to to shaking your hand in person and and uh buying you a frosty beverage of your choice as a as a thank you. You can count on it. All right. Well, John, I'm sorry that you're gonna miss the part about his uh free parking activism in New York City. But I'll fill you in later. I'll call you later and and tell you how that part segment of the podcast went. But uh never pay to park. Forget the gunfight analogy, forget plan B C D. You need your parking plan B C D. Sean Johns is falling out of his chair right now. Okay. This is a story I've been hearing about for years. So yeah, it's a good one too. Forward to hearing about it on the uh the final recording. But thank you, gentlemen, for for everything, and I'll catch you later. All right, John. Thank you. See ya. So we're gonna continue here a little bit, Glenn. We're almost done, but I just wanted to uh make sure that John had an opportunity to thank you because I this is impactful. This this conversation will save lives. There's no doubt about that. There's no doubt about it. It sounds corny, but when I teach a class, I look at the assembled students in the class, whether it's in Europe, California, New York, and it sounds corny, but I'm like, if I just get through to that one person, yeah, and eight years from now they find themselves going down the beach and the weather's getting lower and they're getting slower, and they pass a parking lot that they normally would have passed by and they land the damn helicopter. Yeah, my job is done. Yep, that's right. It only one. It's right. You're absolutely right. It only takes one and it's worthwhile. And funny to digress a little bit, on Inadvertent IMC, senior experienced aviators are more likely to be victims of it than new people. Yes. Because they've they have the continuation bias and the expectation bias, and we've seen we've seen worse than this before. We've got it done. Meanwhile, the new guy is like, I don't like this crap. I'm gonna look for a place to put this helicopter. That's right. It's it's true in in all sorts of things in life, but certainly in law enforcement and absolutely in aviation, where just you say, Well, I'm I've got 20 years of experience. That sometimes is works against you. You know, the the the training officer that says, All right, kid, yeah, we got this alarm call at the school. I've been on this alarm call at the school. Same drink of coffee, I'll get out and check it myself. Yes. And and they end up in a gun battle. I mean, that stuff happens, but it's the it's the attitude of I've had I've been here, done that. Well, hold on. It could be different today. You know, maybe today's the day that there is somebody in there and they're armed. Same thing with uh dealing with things in aviation, particularly uh inadvertent IMC. You know, just because you have lots of experience, that doesn't necessarily help you in some of the decision making because of the bias that you're talking about. It's it's just it's amazing the the analogies how in law enforcement in this. Not to dwell on this. I have witnessed people in the New York area where I'm going down the beach in an S-92 and I'm like, we got to get this thing on the ground and go to instruments, and the 407 flies by me. It's 75 feet AGL, just zipping down the beach, like not a care in the world, with no autopilot, no trim system. I'm like, this person is rolling the dice. I'm getting uncomfortable in an S-92. Yes. And he is he's is he's just too foolish to understand what he's doing. Yeah. He and I have the ability to say, approach 314 O'Meal Golf, like to open an IFR flight plan. Okay, great, climb the 3,000, squawk, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. He hasn't had that out. He's either going to crash or land, or through luck, get to his destination. Yes. And what's worse is he's gonna have four people in the backseat who never knew how dangerous how endangered their life was. Yes. So it's so important. Um I just want to touch on one other thing. You talked in the beginning about the two the two events and and Doug Bringham being one of them. I I've I've talked about Doug over the years. Uh you knew him much, much better than I did, but but Doug, I always looked at him as the consummate professional. You know, he's like the professional aviator. And I just I just loved talking to him and I learned so much from him. And when I heard what happened, I was just shocked. And it just it just proved to me that it really doesn't matter how safe you normally are, how how professional you are, how how much foresight you have. We can all make decisions that are poor, you know, that that where we we should have probably done something else. It can happen to all of us. That was an eye-opening event for me. And I I used that in my decision making for years after that. Uh, and I because I just thought he he was much more professional and experienced than I was, and yet it happened to Doug. So if it can happen to Doug, it can happen to all of us. Oh, yeah. And you would you would be you would jump into that as well, agreed. Oh, without a doubt. You're only as good as your last mistake. Yeah. Or your last decision. Yeah. That that was so tragic. Doug was one of the most decent people. I I owe ALEA appsa so much because I've made my lifelong friends through that organization. You being one of them, Doug being one of them. We talked about Jim Kilgore the other day. Yep. I can go on and on and on. Yeah. The legions of people. And Doug was one of my closest friends. I had him part-timing at that Sikorsky shares company that I was doing, but it was a little bit more of a commute. This was a little more convenient for him. Yeah. I wish he would have taken the job with us. He would have been flying to 76 instead of a light single and still be alive. Yeah. Uh it's just, it's just so tragic. And God bless him. It was just a he was a wonderful human. Just a guy that you you met him. I remember meeting him the first time you introduced me and going, I am so glad Glenn introduced me to that guy. Wow, what a gem. And no, a total professional. Yep. Yep. So that's a valuable lesson. It can happen to everybody. The other person that comes to mind, it's not an advert IMC, but I I use this example. I've used it in classes over the years. I use it on the podcast occasionally, is Dale Snodgrass. Snort. Dale Snodgrass is the highest-timed F-14 Tomcat pilot ever. And he flew everything you can name, you know, every war bird. He was an airshow guy. I mean, talk about a professional, experienced guy. And Dale died a few years ago now in Idaho at a small field where the gust lock wasn't taken off the aircraft. I mean, oh my gosh, how does that happen to anybody? But how does it happen to Dale Snodgrass? And it just shows you he's one of the top premier pilots there is. It doesn't matter. We can all miss things. And that's why we have to be diligent and professional and thorough and why we need to talk about this stuff. Uh you know, some some people for years, you know, I taught classes, taught the classes on tactics and stuff, and always talk about fallen officers. And it makes some officers uncomfortable. But what I've always said was, you know, we can't bring them back. Uh we we want to, we can't bring them back. Um, but what we can do is learn from them. And even though it's tragic and it's painful and it's you know, you don't like talking about people that are have have fallen and people that died in crashes. And it's the only good that can come out of it, is us talking about it and learning. Thank you to our sponsor, Spectro Lab. Spectro Lab, a pioneer and world-leading supplier of high-intensity searchlights for all parapublic operations. Visit www.spectrolab.com to learn more about our third generation Night Sun series, high-intensity searchlight, when reliability and performance is critical to your mission. Count on Spectro Lab Night Sun Searchlights. You can't bury the data. It has to be looked at. And there's a right and a respectful way to do it. And you shouldn't finger point like this guy was a jackass. He won an inadvertent IMC. It could happen to me tomorrow. That's right. It has happened to me. Yeah. But whether it be a gunfight or an inadvertent IMC or just an emergency procedure that was executed to varying degrees of professionalism or non-professionalism. Right. You you you have to do a deep dive, an after-action report. You it is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Yeah. And being you're a CFI, I'm a CFI, it's it stresses the importance of when you have a brand new student, ab initio, at the earliest, earliest stages, you inculcate these themes with them. Yeah. Not after they've got bad habits, right in the beginning, just like a rookie cop, day one, slam on the brakes. Where are we? Yeah. I don't know. You should know where we are at every moment. That's right. I I I I not to go back, the guy with the jet ranger belt buckle who I asked about how do I get to the aviation unit, he was a mechanic at the time. By the time I got to the aviation unit, he was an instructor pilot. Wow. He was my instructor pilot. That's how things come. And he was so gung ho. His name was Roy L. Bertie. I owe my career to him. He drummed into me in the beginning. Professionalism, professionalism, decision making. I mean, probably crazy flying over built-up parts of New York, but he'd routinely roll the throttle off. Where are we going, Glenn? I'm over Brooklyn. And there was a schoolyard by nearby. But he learning the right way the first time, it just stays with you. It's so much easier that way than having to retrain somebody to adjust their behavior. Because people and human beings are creatures of habit. They are. And bad habits are very tough to get rid of. Yeah. In the time we have left, and it's very limited, but I wanted you to touch on one of the other topics that you uh instruct on about managing distraction in the cockpit. Talk about that class, what it's about. Uh just give us a quick thumbnail on that. I developed that a couple of years ago where a couple of incidents got my attention. One I was involved in. I'm taxiing Teterborough Airport, for those not in the Northeast, it's the busiest business airport in the world. It is like Hartsfield Jackson plus O'Hare plus JFK on steroids with Gulfstreams and Global Expresses and Learjets, and mix into the Glenn and another guy in an S76. And I'm taxiing on the ramp. I'm spinning, obviously. There's a Gulf Stream to my right, a Global Express to my left, and I got a marshal who looks like he's minimum wage at best, you know, not paying attention, marshaling me. And I look next to me, and the co-pilot is making notations on a trip sheet. I said, do me a favor, take your head out of your ass. You know I'm I'm I'm so diplomatic. You are diplomatic, right? I go and clear the rotors going past this aircraft. Another month later, I'm you've seen the 34th Street Heliport of Manhattan. It's very, very tight. You have the river, some asphalt, and the FDR drive highway. There's zero margin for error. It's a 95-degree day. I'm at max gross weight. It's hot, there's no wind. I'm backing out in an S-76, pulling a hundred plus sort of torque, transitioning to forward flight. And I look over and the co-pilot's making a trip sheet entry as to what time we took off. Yeah. Not the time. Use some choice language at him. I says, the FMS records every flight minute we have in this aircraft. At that time of the flight, you need to be worrying about my takeoff save speed, my gear speed, calling my torque, not writing on trip sheets. And then this also goes into the hangar. I see mechanics leaving tools in aircraft. Meanwhile, they got their iPhone out and they're checking Facebook and they leave a wrench in a baggage compartment. Yeah. Or yours truly are marshaling an S-76 out of a hangar, and I'm calling rather than waiting two minutes to get the aircraft on the flight line, I call the FBO for fuel now because I'm going to save two minutes. That's going to make a lot of difference. And I'm paying attention to the phone call more than the S-76 came this close to putting a rotor blade through a hangar window. Yep. So I started drilling down on the stats. And the the greatest apples to apples comparison is the increase with the texting of car accidents. Yes. And personal injury automobile accidents. Forty percent of personal injury automobile accidents are attributable to driver inattention and texting or talking on the phone. That cannot help but migrate itself into the cockpit. So I'm always like writing, talking, being preoccupied, has never flown a helicopter before. As a TFO, you've got a lot of work to do. But now that's a critical phase of flight, it's time to be eyes outside the aircraft, back up the checklist, get on the ground, just the texting. This has become a Pavlovian response, like Pavlov's dog. I've had pilots with me. I'm short final to 34th Street Heliport, landing between two turning helicopters, and the guy gets it, we all get a text because it's from dispatch, but he has to look at it right then and there when I'm short final, ready to thread the needle between two running helicopters. Unbelievable. I had more choice words for that person. I'm like, that can wait. Yeah. Well, we could have been canceled and we didn't have to land. So we do a landing and we update a paperwork and we take off. Yes. But it it's huge. The two two of the more human factor classes I'm giving now is managing distractions in aviation. I did that at uh PAVCON a couple of times and how to say no, which I did at European rotors. Yeah, that's good stuff. I had I had a supervisor at Plano, Texas PD uh come up to me at one of the breaks of one of my classes, and we talked about uh how you know you don't want to be on when you're sitting on a perimeter, you shouldn't be on your phone, you shouldn't be on the MVT, you shouldn't be should be paying attention. And he held his phone up and said, I call this phone the weapon of mass distraction. And I'm like, Oh, I love that. I will steal that the next time I see because I've stolen it. I mean, weapon of mass distraction. It is exactly what you just described on all those incidents. It's amazing. I mean, uh personally, I was driving through this little sleepy town I live in, and I got a text and I was driving down the road and I ignored the text, and a woman a millisecond later darted out from two-parked cars right in front of my. I jammed the brakes on. I think my bumper touched her sweatpants. Yes. If I was on a cell, if I answered that text, that woman would be dead. That's right. That's right. That was a wake-up call, and it's migrating in there's there's this there's a this there was a case of a of a guy in a ENG helicopter in Arizona who impacted terrain while t while texting. Yeah. Seafit accident. There was a very famous in London, a guy was flying a Gooster 119. He was uh he was VFR on top of a scud layer, texting back and forth about getting into the heliport, no, go to the alternate, don't do this, do that. He ran into a tower crane. It was never determined, was that at the exact time of texting, but I I've looked at the records, I've really analyzed it. He was texting when he hit the crane. Sure. It's it's it's terrible. It shouldn't happen. It does. Uh, we've got to talk about it and fight, fight it. Uh, we've all been guilty of it in our cars. Why wouldn't it translate to a cockpit? You're exactly right. I mean, uh Tracy lets me have it. If she sees me look down at that phone while I'm driving, and I go, eh, I'm a helicopter pilot. I can do two things at once. I multitask. I'm and she just goes, Yeah, whatever. And so I've gotten much better at saying, hey, grab my phone and text back to to uh Glenn and tell him uh tell him I'm gonna get free parking here in a minute. Some I've I've done a couple of safety audits of various corporations checking out their SMS system. And something that some of the really cool progressive operators do, they have a foul line taped around the perimeter of their hangar, which is a cell phone no-go zone. Oh wow. You can't come over that line with a cell phone unless you're using it to perform a maintenance function. Like take a picture of a leaky fitting or packing to send to a tech rep, but not just the phone in your pocket. You're gonna answer instinctively when you were wiring a nut, yeah, or you were torquing something, that that stays on in not in your toolbox either, outside the go-no-go zone, and only comes in if it's required. And that's the exception. Most of these companies have mechanics working all over helicopters distracted by their phone. Yes. Like I was distracted, marshaling the aircraft out, talking to the FBO, almost put a blade through a window. Yes. It can happen. We're human. We're human. We just have to realize our limitations sometimes. You know, a man's got to know his limitations, right? I first did that at PAVCO about a couple of years ago, and it was it was very well received, and I've done it about three, four times since. So, in the in the few minutes we got here, uh talk about PavCon and your longtime relationship with PavCon. What is PAVCO? Some people don't even know. I can thank a man by the name of Bryn Elliott for that. He he's the publisher of Police Aviation News. Everyone in the business at one time or another has read his publication or seen his websites, passionate about police aviation, passionate. In 2006, he was tasked by Shepherd Press with hosting and coordinating a police aviation conference, generically speaking, in London. And he reached out to me and asked me if I would participate, and I participated. That was 2006. And in 2009, he came to the ALEA Northeast Regional Safety Seminar, and I gave a class on high-rise fire rescue. And he got real interested in it, and he really enjoyed the presentation. He says, I am making the Police Aviation Conference my own conference now that I'm running, Police Aviation News. It's called PAVCON, which is obviously short for Police Aviation Conference Europe. So I'm lucky enough where I get in on the ground floor in 2009, and I must be doing something right because every year since 2009, with the exception of COVID, I've been invited and I go to Europe every May and teach, and then usually it's open-ended. They ask me, what do you want to present on? Yeah. And my spring-loaded class, because of the impactfulness of it, is inadvertent IMC. Sure. But I've taught high-rise fire rescue, managing distractions, ice rescue training, which is a real niche class I give. But obviously, if you're from Southern California, you have no need for ice rescue training. But if you're from Norway or Sweden, it might come in handy. Again, planning it before it happens. Yeah. But I but I've again I've made lifelong friends through ALEA APSA in the States. Yes. I have made lifelong friends at PAVCON. Yes. My your my European brothers. Joseba. Many of which have been have been on Road uh Hanger Z. Harold Brink. Joseph Medizabel, Harold Brink. The list goes on and on and on. I look forward to it so much. We get together every year. It's usually late May. It's usually Memorial Day week, weekend. And we get together for two, three days of training and networking. And uh I find that very rewarding because you see the light bulbs come on, because people will dismiss it. Oh, you're from America. What are you gonna show us? Or vice versa, people from America, oh he he's from the Netherlands. What's he gonna show us? The laws of physics and gravity work the same way, I assure you, whether you're over Amsterdam or New York City. Helicopters crash the same exact way whether they're over Paris or Los Angeles. That's right. And suspects with very little difference act the same way and run from the police and hide. They do. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's a universal. And and I'm I'm the uh resident American who's on their Won't call it a board, but on their staff instructors, staff organizers that I luckily get called back every year to give a class. This year it's in May in Malaga, Spain. Yes. And I was hoping to be there this year, and it just did not work with moving and uh with uh another grandchild on the way. Otherwise, I would be joining you this year in Spain. I've been there, I've been to the journey. Priorities. Oh no, we we had a great time at Pavcon. Um we we've had some really good times here. Uh Bill Probst. It was always fun to hang out with you and Bill. As a matter of fact, one of the pictures we're gonna put up on the on the thumbnails that I'm gonna contribute is a great picture of uh myself, you, and Bill uh in Germany at Obercon. That was 2016. Yeah, at Oberman. That was right next to the beer town. Correct. That was fun. Really, really good people there, and they're doing great things, and it's expanded over the years. So I just wanted to to touch touch on that, give PavCon a shout-out shout out. Uh they do they're doing great things there, and you're a big part of that. So uh in wrapping all this, I want to give you the opportunity to just give us one last one last catchphrase or one last thought that is clear, concise, and impactful that everybody can take away when it comes to the topic of inadvertent IMC. If you if you had to give us one line or one phrase, is there something that jumps out at you? Preparation is the key. Knowing that it can happen to you, that you are not uh you know immune from this happening, and you can't fix it without planning. If again, I say put me with all my you know seven, eight thousand hours, lots of hundreds of hours, actual FR, put me in a jet ranger, fly me into a cloud tonight, I give myself a 50-50 chance of surviving. There's a video by the U.S. helicopter safety team called 56 seconds. That's the average time in all these recorded crashes the person has lived after once they penetrated on IMC. That have a plan and and make it part of your SOP, part of your protocols. Encourage pat the guy on the back and hold the guy up who makes the landing in the park, not who gets it done through thick or thin. Good. That's a good way to finish that. I would really appreciate that. Again, this is uh life-saving type of information. Before I go into my thank yous for you, Glenn, I have to say that your your uh free parking uh activism needs to increase dramatically from what I'm hearing out in New York City. They're talking about getting rid of free parking. I knew that would outrage you. I didn't, I know you didn't like that mayor to begin with, but now you really don't like him. Free parking, getting rid of it? What is what is happening in this world? I can't speaking of forget the invert and IMC. Not paying to park will change your life. That's right. And I can vouch for that. I have driven it around in a car and metal. 45 minutes. Glenn, Glenn, I'll pay for parking. There, you just passed six parking garage. I'll pay for it. No, it's the principal. It's the principal. And we always found a free parking spot, but it took a while to do it. Oh, yeah. If you're resourceful, I know they're there. And I I get calls regularly from Sean Johns, where he's in the car with you and he goes, Hey, I'm with Glenn Daly. Guess what I'm doing? I said, looking for free parking. He goes, How did you know? It's it's just goes hand in hand. Well, it's like I have a small shrine to George Costanza from Seinfeld, the the ultimate Parker. That's right. I'm on my dashboard rather than a little plastic Virgin Mary or Jesus. I have a little George Costanza that I say my votives to. That's great. And he always turns up a good parking spot. Good stuff. Well, I am thankful that you came on, and I am thankful that our paths crossed many years ago uh and created a friendship, and I have learned so much from you over the years. I can't even I could I could write a book about it. Well, I appreciate that. Like likewise, likewise. It it's all about benchmarking and networking. You you learn so much more from each other sitting in a bar, you know, versus some contrived class. You can sit in a class and you know in the first five minutes where it's going. When SMS was first rolled out, it was rolled out poorly because the SMS practitioners wanted to show you how smart they were. Yes. Unless you were wearing a lab coat with a pocket protector, you were in a voice guitar. SMS is pretty damn easy when you roll it out the right way. That's right. That's right. Well, I look forward to someday New York City getting back to normal and you and I in the subway looking following frog one uh in the subway system. And uh, you know, for that's my French Connection uh reference that 90% of the people listening are going, what is he talking about? Watch French Connection for God's sakes. Somebody's gotta you got we've got to hand feed these movies to people. Glenn, thank you. This was wonderful. This was a genuine pleasure. I enjoyed every minute of it. Hope I didn't ramble on and babble too much. This was fantastic. It's exactly what I was looking for. I knew you would uh succeed on that, and uh I cannot thank you enough. I appreciate everything that you have done for the industry, and I appreciate the friendship and the willingness to come on the hanger Z. So I hope to see you soon. Uh you know, I know where I know where you are, and now you know where I am, so we'll have to get together again soon. Um I'm retired now, so I have almost total availability. All right. I can get on a plane any weekend. You push the button. Sounds good. You do the same, my friend. So with that, uh, thanks everybody for listening. This was a great conversation, a lot to take in. Uh, this John's right. This will be one that you'll go back to and refer to over the years for training purposes, not just to learn uh about someone or what they did, but these principles are life-saving. And Glenn is first class, uh, first class instructor that is sharing it with you. So uh thanks to MHM, Vertical Valor Plus. Thanks to all of you for listening. We really appreciate the sports, yeah, this the support. And to all our sponsors, man, we we are really grateful. So, with that, everybody remember the principles that Glenn just talked about, then stay safe, and we'll catch you the next time on the Hanger Z Podcast. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Hanger Z Podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe to hear more stories that promote the personnel and equipment behind the missions in public safety aviation. Lastly, stand by for a message after a word from our sponsors. Cheers. Thanks to our sponsor, Airbus. Airbus provides the most efficient helicopter solutions to its customers who serve, protect, save lives, and safely carry passengers in demanding environments. Its civil and military helicopters are flying all over the world, making missions possible. Visit Airbus.com for more information. Thank you to our sponsor, Spectro Lab. Spectro Lab, a pioneer and world-leading supplier of high-intensity searchlights for all parapublic operations. Visit www.spectrolab.com to learn more about our third generation Night Sun series, high-intensity searchlights, when reliability and performance is critical to your mission. Count on Spectro Lab Night Sun Searchlights. Thanks to our sponsor, Dallas Avionics, who provides innovative products to law enforcement, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Military, Air Medical, Search and Rescue, and Special Missions Operations. Dallas Avionics distributes OEM equipment, including communications equipment, digital audio systems, PA systems, flight tracking, and other mission critical devices. Visit Dallasavionics.com for more details. We hope you enjoyed this episode with Lieutenant Glenn Daly. Learning about the behind-the-scenes activity on September 11th with NYPD Aviation was captivating. That day required outside the box thinking, and there was no playbook that had all the answers. Glenn has shared his knowledge and experience with law enforcement aviators around the world. His passion for teaching on topics like inadvertent IMC and distracted flying is saving lives. All three of these episodes should be shared with every pilot you know. Thank you for joining us, Glenn. You continue to make a positive difference in the aviation community. John and I are continuously grateful for being able to bring these conversations to all of you. Thank you for listening, and we would appreciate you sharing, clicking that like button, and subscribing and giving us a positive review. These little actions make a big difference to keep this podcast growing. Thanks again to all of our sponsors for the support. Stay safe, and we'll catch you the next time on the Hangers E podcast.