This week we are joined by Matthew Stafford! No, not the quarterback for the LA Rams... it's Matthew Stafford the United Airlines dispatcher. Enjoy this fascinating behind the scenes look at airline operations at one of the nation's largest carriers.
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop 773 cranky number two following twin traffic three mile final one trolley bravo makesford in Runway two five going four mile.
00:10
Nick Alan
This is behind the prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot Bobby Doss and his co host, major airline captain and designated pilot examiner Wally Mulhern. Now let's go behind the prop.
00:24
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:26
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:27
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. It's been a few weeks since we've had a good guest on the show and this is somebody that I think a lot of our listeners have been asking for us to put on the show. And we have a dispatcher from a major airline and a, and two quarterbacks. It's actually the same person, but we have Matthew Ryan Stafford. So if you're a football fan, you know there's a Matthew Ryan and there's a Matthew Stafford all playing in the NFL. But we have the dispatcher, Matthew Stafford with us from a major airline. Matthew. Matthew, thank you for joining the show.
00:59
Mathew Stafford
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you guys having me.
01:02
Bobby Doss
And this is also kind of like out of the last two guests, these are both first time podcasters. So he's nervous. He doesn't know what to expect. We did a little warm up and I think we're ready to go. So I'm pretty excited about learning everything that a dispatcher does and had no idea some of the things that we're going to learn today. So we're going to jump into the introduction. So Matthew, I like stats. So tell me, at a major airline, how many aircraft are in the air at any given time? Normally you think?
01:31
Mathew Stafford
I would say easy 6 to 700. Probably a pretty good guess based on like a day shift between 10:10am to like noon time period. That's kind of when the hustle and bustle of the airline's kind of kicking off and just about everything is airborne other than maybe the last few wide bodies that are coming in from the International.
01:59
Bobby Doss
Assuming 150 passengers per plane, that's like almost 100 grand. 100,000 people in the air going to the bathroom, eating. All those things. Right. Are happening at once. Right. It's not a small operation to say the least. For sure.
02:14
Mathew Stafford
Oh yeah, A lot of people. A lot of people and a lot of metal.
02:17
Bobby Doss
And so I don't even know that I knew that there was such a thing as a dispatcher. I mean, I kind of thought that Wally worked hard and now I think, as I've learned from you, Wally doesn't Really do much at all other than steer. Sorry, Wally, but so I mean first let's just walk through the job. Like how did you find out about the job? How did you train to become a dispatcher? Do you go to school? Are you certified? Kind of just walk us through the life to become a dispatcher and then what it means to be a dispatcher on a daily basis.
02:54
Mathew Stafford
Cool. Yeah. So to become a dispatcher, there technically is no college degree required, but you are a certified airman, you take some of the same testing as an actual pilot. A lot of people do go to college and get four year degrees, but it isn't a prerequisite to get your license. You take a, you'll take an oral and a practical test which is pretty, you know, pretty intense, like an eight hour FAA examination to get your license. And it basically everything is like down to the basics. So in terms of hand flight planning, which one flight plan from Chicago to Nashville can take you up to three hours to complete doing the ground speed, the crosswind, you know, the course and all that fun stuff. So once you actually do get your license, there's several ways to actually get a job.
04:04
Mathew Stafford
The most common way is to start applying at regional airlines. And most people spend one to two years at a regional airline before making their way to a major airline. That's one way. The second way would be working in being an internal candidate for whatever airline already having your foot in the door with your dispatch license and gaining your experience that way, whether it's, you know, learning about the different airports and the different airplanes and systems of that particular airline. So those are kind of the two ways to get a job as well as you know how you get your license the day to day for a, for dispatcher, you go into work, you'll take on your incoming handoff flights. So you'll have all these flights that are airborne at one time.
05:03
Mathew Stafford
It can be anywhere from 15 to 30, maybe even more depending on your airline or what region that you're working. So you will take on those, those flights. You'll be passing along any type of pireps, thunderstorm info, anything that's safety related, you're going to be keeping the pilot updated until from the time they take off to the time they land. So you're doing that while you're also planning up flights that need to still be worked up. So the most important part is of course the airborne flights keeping things moving safely. But as workload permits, you'll be Planning up flight two, three, sometimes four hours before the flight leaves. And you're doing everything from the fuel, planning the altitudes, the speeds, your payload guide measurements, anything associated with the flight.
06:00
Mathew Stafford
We're going to release out this flight, file it with atc, and then sometimes we even do briefings with the crews, letting them know what to expect, why we did certain things for the flight, and then me and the captain will sign off on a release, which is then a legal binding document for both the dispatcher and the pilot side. So it's a joint responsibility for the flight. And that's kind of, I would say, that kind of a good summary of how it goes day to day.
06:36
Bobby Doss
So you walk into work, most of us are sitting around a water cooler or a coffee pot and getting warmed up like everybody else. But I'm assuming there's. I guess I'm imagining I might be wrong, but there's chair time. Kind of like an air traffic controller or captain, like you're in it and you're responsible. But you say you're taking on flights that are in the air. I don't know that I thought about that. But, you know, if Wally's flying from Honolulu to Denver, then he's in flight and you're taking over that flight from dispatcher A. That was night shift or day shift. You're now responsible. He's maybe mid Pacific. You take on his. Something could be brewing in California from a storm perspective or a volcano or whatever.
07:20
Bobby Doss
Your job is to then keep him informed and get him to the end of his route successfully. And you're picking that up. Is that kind of what you mean by the flights in the air?
07:29
Mathew Stafford
Yeah. And something that a lot of, you know, that a lot of pilots kind of forget about is we don't just have that one flight on that route during that time. There's a good chance that we have 15, 20, all within the same vicinity. The same kind of aircraft type that we're. We're kind of passing along reports as they go, keeping. Keeping everybody safe. But, you know, it's not just that one flight. Sometimes it can be several, you know, so the workload can be high in terms of, you know, any type of event or severe turbulence or volcanoes lately have kind of been a big topic. So.
08:16
Bobby Doss
And that brings up another thought that I haven't thought about. Matthew Stafford might be a great quarterback, but you're not in charge of the entire fleet. How many dispatchers are on duty at any point in time?
08:26
Mathew Stafford
It. If I were to Guess so if were to just talk about the four major. The big airlines, if you will, I would say anywhere from. Anywhere from 60 to 80 dispatchers on a day and afternoon shift. And things kind of die down on the midnight shift. And a lot of desk will be consolidated due to not as much domestic traffic. And that is across the board for any of the airlines. But one thing that does kick off on the night shift is a lot of the. The wide bodies get going, whether it's to Deep South America, Europe, and kind of like what you were referring to, the Asia Pacific markets as well. And Instead of the 150 passengers on most narrow bodies, you're going up to 300 to 350 passengers per piece of metal. So.
09:28
Bobby Doss
So, Matthew, I understand that you are certified. We talked about that. And I assume that certificate looks a lot like a pilot certificate. But one of the things Wally shared that I wasn't aware of is that you're not required to have a medical. And I think that's a unique thing about a dispatcher role at a major airline.
09:44
Mathew Stafford
Yeah, that definitely an advantage to being a dispatcher in terms of comparing it to a pilot or an air traffic controller is not having to hold that medical. I actually work with a lot of prior pilots as well as prior air traffic controllers that kind of shifted their experience in the aviation world. So it's definitely a good job for people that maybe cannot keep doing the original job that they thought that they wanted to do in terms of medical or pet, you know, whatever they have going on in their lives. But then they can bring that knowledge with them and become great dispatchers and.
10:37
Bobby Doss
Yeah, that's awesome. The one thing that I think about is, and I'm a small business owner, so there's a million little widgets that I'm keeping up with every day that no one knows that I'm keeping up with. And I assume that's probably what a dispatcher's job is like. You're not worried about just the metal, the plane. I'm assuming that there's crews, both pilot attendance, there's got to be catering that you're. I don't know if you're dealing with it. Maybe there's 15 other kind of dispatchers that are helping you. But there's the plan, the weather, the crew, the other crew members, the ground, the gate. Like, how in the heck do you keep up with all that? To be able to get Wally from Houston to wherever he's going and then make sure. That those fundamentals on that flight are taken care of as well.
11:25
Bobby Doss
Like who's taking care of the headphones? Like, I mean, I don't understand that as a joke.
11:31
Mathew Stafford
Yeah, you know, it definitely a lot of moving parts. Once you get into the hang of it's, it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like just being in high school. When you first start off in high school, you're kind of nervous. You don't really know what you're doing, you know, and then as you get comfortable doing it, you know what to look for, you know what things could be potential problems, what things are not. And you kind of just get into the hang of things, you know, after about, I'd say after about a year, you start getting into the hang of it. You know exactly what to do, what to look for, depending on what, you know, what season you're in, for instance. So right now we're in the like late summer. But summer is when airlines make most of their money.
12:22
Mathew Stafford
That's when all the weather happens. That's when all the diversions happen, and that's when all of most airlines hubs meltdown. So that's when our job becomes, comes crucial to how an airline operates.
12:39
Bobby Doss
So we have this weird hurricane in the Gulf right now, and I'm sure that's wreaking havoc on New Orleans and some Florida airports and some other places. Atlanta is probably worried about what's going to happen in the next little bit as well. But what, what happens when Wally's coming from Honolulu to New Orleans hypothetically, and he can't land there? Like, there's got to be a million little things that happen and change and planes get diverted and other planes pick up people and taking places. I assume that's the dispatcher's role to solve all those problems.
13:15
Mathew Stafford
Yeah. So to give you kind of an example, so you use Honolulu as an example. But if were to shift gears, let's say you were planning something from Panama to New Orleans, something that happens just about every day that there's weather in the Gulf is there's actual airways or just invisible little highways up in the sky that we use to get from the Yucatan up to southern Texas, and they' close those airways based on where the weather is or where the weather isn't. So we would guide him and say, hey, request this routing on this airway, you know, and we would say, you know, this airway is closed, or I see, you know, I see this other airline ahead deviating west or east. So we give them kind of route suggestions while they're in route, moving along.
14:14
Mathew Stafford
And in terms of like, alternates, if he was going to New Orleans, we would be looking at Houston, Dallas, probably an alternate on both sides and giving them fuel burns that way. The pilots are like, okay, we're going to calculate our fuel, our bingo fuel to come up with a, okay, if this happens, we're going to this place to the east, or if this happens, we're going to go and we get to a certain fuel, we're going to go to this airport to the west. So just coming up with backup scenarios.
14:46
Bobby Doss
And this probably to you two who actually deal with each other regularly, it may sound stupid, but are you really talking or are these like messages through your internal systems? Is it text messaging? Like, how are y' all having this conversation?
15:00
Mathew Stafford
So honestly, it honestly depends the situation. If, if Wally's cruising, you know, over the Cancun area and he's coming up to New Orleans, we have plenty of time, right? Plenty of time to come up with a plan and come up with fuel burns and, hey, we'll do this if we, if this happens or whatnot. But if things start really going south, they start closing airspace, they start just scattering airplanes all over the place, right? Sending planes over to Corpus or sending planes over to Orlando or something. Something crazy. We have. So we normally rely on acars, which is through vhf. It's like a text message as if you were on your phone.
15:49
Mathew Stafford
So that's the primary, the secondary on the wide body airplanes, Most wide bodies is going to be satcom, which is a phone that's in the cockpit or a phone in the dispatch office. I literally hit a button and it dials the plane and me and him can talk. For a lot of the narrow body aircraft, they don't have satcom, so we will be relying on radio operators. So we have one in, one that is New York and one in San Francisco. It's air rink. So we'll use them. We'll tell them the aircraft info, the flight number and they'll patch us in and we'll be doing radio comms back and forth.
16:31
Bobby Doss
Wow. Wow. So, Wally, we didn't prep for much of this, but what are your views as a captain of a major airline and your use and, or partnership with the dispatcher? Like, what's your day in the life like? We talked about what Matthew does when he comes to work. But how do you interact or how do you see your role and your crew's participation with the dispatch team?
16:55
Wally Mulhern
Well, the dispatcher is huge. I mean when I, a day in the life is I, I drive to work and I get on the employee bus and I, I ride on a bus for about 10 to 15 minutes and that's usually where I pull up my flight plan by. You know, this is usually now two hours before departure time, an hour and a half before departure time, something like that. I, I'll pull up on my EFB and I will see whether the dispatcher has released the flight and about 98% of the time it has been released. So I'll look at it and I'll say okay, we're going from here to there, we're going to Honolulu. I'll look at the time and route.
17:40
Wally Mulhern
I'll, I'll look at my routing, I'll look at all the fuel and you know, I, I can accept the release at that point. Typically what I like to do is I like to talk to the other pilots, whether it be one, two or three other pilots. And you know, because sometimes they catch something. You know, I'll go in, I'll say are you guys happy with the release? And 995 of the time they are. But occasionally I'll say hey, I was wondering, you know, they've got us on an extremely northern, you know, northern rooting. What's, what's up with that? And so at that point, you know, a lot of times it's just a call to the dispatcher and say hey, why are we going so far north? And they may say well there's a, you know, there's a rocket launch out in Arizona today.
18:31
Wally Mulhern
Oh, okay, well that makes sense. I, I, I, I, yeah, I see that way down here in the notams. But you know, for most of our listeners who are pilots, you know, they're used to doing their, you know, their cross country planning. Well, for us that's what the dispatcher does. They, they file our flight plan with atc. They sent us a nice package of paperwork that's usually about, I don't know, about 70 pages long with weather, all kinds of stuff. Everything you want to know is in there. And then there's another aspect that we haven't even touched on is we have a, another person called the load planner, another person who decide, you know, figures Out. Okay, we've got X amount of Cargo, you know, £51,000 of cargo. We got to put, you know, we got to put 30,000 in the aft cargo.
19:37
Wally Mulhern
We got to put 21 in the forward or whatever. And they, they basically do our weight and balance for us. So, yeah, we just kind of show up and start the engines and go. Not really. We do a little bit more, but. And on the longer flights, we are required to call the dispatcher and we get a phone briefing. And, you know, most of the time it's, you know, I'd say 70% of the time it's the, it's a very vanilla briefing. But sometimes there are some things to discuss. You know, volcanoes going off, you know, going up to, maybe tokyo, out of Houston. You know, a lot of times we go up over Alaska. But if they've got a volcano spewing its top, maybe that's not very conducive to safe operation.
20:37
Bobby Doss
Interesting. Interesting. Y' all both have said the word volcano more than I've said in like the last five years. I don't, and I'm shocked. A rocket launch really bothers a commercial flight. I'm being facetious, but yes, I think a rocket going to space would be a very bad thing for a wing on a commercial airliner. But, but all very interesting stuff and things that I don't think the normal public thinks about when they just jump on their plane and their plane's five minutes late. Making a deviation for a volcano is probably worth the five minute delay, no matter how important your flight time is for whoever's flying.
21:13
Wally Mulhern
And I would say probably most of my interactions with dispatchers en route are over medical emergencies. Yeah.
21:25
Bobby Doss
You know, and we've talked about that a lot. Yeah. Are you, are you calling or talking to someone like Matthew when there is a medical emergency?
21:32
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, well, he's the middleman. And we have, we have this service that we, that our airline uses that is you will actually speak to a doctor. And so if we have someone that's, you know, passed out in the back or whatever, we will, we'll make a call to dispatch. You know, I usually, what will happen is we'll get word from the flight attendants. We have someone that's feeling ill. We'll get you the specifics here shortly. And I will probably immediately send a text message to dispatch, say, hey, gun. Medical situation will be calling you soon. And so we'll call them and then we'll get a Phone patch to this other, the doctors and you know, we'll say we have a, you know, a 45 year old male complaining of chest pains.
22:31
Wally Mulhern
We, we have a, an ER doctor in the back and they will say, okay, give them this much oxygen, open up this kit and give them this drug or whatever. And they basically will kind of authorize us to continue or turn around, divert and they'll make arrangements for EMS to meet the airplane. It, it. I'm on my flights, I probably average once a month. One, one time a month I'm talking to the doc. I mean I'm on a first name basis with the doctors now.
23:08
Bobby Doss
That's interesting. Matthew, how many, I mean you're touching more flights than Wally's touching. How many times does something like that happen to where you're getting a doctor involved for a medical emergency.
23:21
Mathew Stafford
On the, on the North Atlantic? At least once or twice a week at a minimum. I've had it to where I've had something happen every single night.
23:31
Bobby Doss
And I've had a family, what I would call a family friend when I was younger that actually passed away on a flight, right. Just he had a heart attack and they were probably midway from here to Europe and they just finished the flight. Right. Devastating for his wife. And it's a real part of it, right, that you, you guys deal with. And I very rarely think about it, but not much you can do if somebody has a massive heart attack at 38, 000ft, like right between two continents.
24:01
Mathew Stafford
Yep. Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's, you know, things like that have happened to me and around me and yeah, it's kind of like what if that kind of event has just happened. There's not really much you can do but continue on, get over land and either continue to your destination or stop short and you know, there's not really much you can do, you know, so.
24:28
Bobby Doss
So from that sad topic, let's jump into the. Some of the cool things that dispatchers can do that the normal public can do. I think there's got to be some unknowns about your job, some neat things that we don't know about. Tell us about some of those things. And we talked a little bit beforehand. I mean you get to fly up front in the cockpit, like how's that possible? And I want a piece of that action. Then Wally won't take me anywhere.
24:50
Mathew Stafford
Yeah, yeah, no, it's definitely a perk to the job. It really it really kind of opens your eyes to the pilot side and lets you kind of see what the pilots are going through, especially coming out of some of these international stations. And you're wondering like, well, what, why is this pilot wanting his paperwork seven hours before the departure? Well, he's leaving out of a third world country, getting on a bus that's an hour away from the airport, you know, so you get to really kind of experience what the pilot goes through before they get on the flight. And then as well as in the cockpit, you get to be up in there in a jump seat right between the captain and the first officer. And it's, it's awesome. It's.
25:39
Bobby Doss
Are you required to do any of that or is that just luck like you, like a, a good thing, or do you have to do two legs, a quarter or two legs a month, once a year?
25:48
Mathew Stafford
So you're required by the FAA to do a route call is what we call them. And it's, there's like time parameters and you can reduce it by every takeoff and landing or whatnot. But yeah, once a year you're required to do it and you can kind of, you know, turn it into a vacation if you want. But it's pretty awesome. You get to see different airports. You know, I've seen all kinds of airports along the East Coast. I've seen them down South America. So it's really neat to be able to experience that. A lot of people don't get to.
26:24
Wally Mulhern
Do that, in fact. And in fact, that's how we met. I mean, I remember seeing Matthew's name on dispatch releases and I, you know, I saw Matthew Stafford and I remember calling you one time. I didn't need a briefing, but I just wanted to, you know, at the time you were playing for Detroit and it was the off season, and I called you up and I said, so is this your off season job? And you know, we had some fun with that and so I would always recognize your name on the release. And, and one time you did actually ride on our jumpsuit. So we met face to face.
27:02
Mathew Stafford
Yeah. That's awesome.
27:05
Bobby Doss
I'm guessing that Matthew Stafford doesn't need to make extra money in the off season, but, you know, maybe a passion for aviation that we don't know about. That's good.
27:14
Mathew Stafford
It's always good to have a backup plan, right?
27:16
Wally Mulhern
That's right.
27:17
Bobby Doss
So one last neatness about your job, I guess. What's the schedule like? I mean, I work kind of day shift every day. Wally works some crazy hours flying across the Pacific. What is a, what does a work schedule look like? If you can share any of that with the public, like what is a, what does a dispatcher's work schedule look like?
27:37
Mathew Stafford
Yeah, so more times than not, it will not be a Monday to Friday unless you're in like a staff position. Most, a lot of times you're in some sort of a rotation. Whether it's a four on, four off or a five on, three off, five on, two off. There's different rotations that each airline uses for their group. Most, almost all of the dispatch groups are going to be under a union, so they have specific work rules that are different. So each airline has, you know, different work rules. But yeah, the work rotations are awesome. You work a lot less than what you realize. Once you, once you sit back and you start counting up your days, you're like, man, I, I, I work less than a school teacher, you know, so it's, it's pretty, it's pretty nice.
28:33
Bobby Doss
Wow. So those listening that maybe want a job in the airlines but don't want to be a pilot, maybe it's something to think about for sure.
28:40
Wally Mulhern
Matthew, are there schools, for instance, if I want to go get, if I'm, if I want to go get a private pilot certificate, I can go to the local airport and find a flight school. Are there schools that specifically do dispatcher training?
28:56
Mathew Stafford
Yep. Yes, there are there and they're everywhere. If you just do a Google search, flight dispatch schools near me, you can, you know, you can find a school. A lot of times the curriculum, you know, instead of a four year degree, they take the curriculum and they squeeze it down. So you'll go, you know, five days a week for eight weeks, every day for a few hours. And there's like a minimum amount of time that you have to do. But yeah, there are schools that you can go to that, you know, not necessarily have to go to college and get a degree and pay a ton of money. You can go to like a nearby flight school just like for being a pilot.
29:40
Bobby Doss
Okay, well, I was going to say as we kind of wrap up, one, really thank you Matthew, for being on the show. And then two, we don't record this show and then publish it one hour later. Like we always record this show a few days before we release it. And we just so happen to be recording on September 11, which is near and dear to all of our hearts. In aviation. And Matthew, I joke because you look so young on our screens right now, you weren't probably out of junior high when the real 911 happened, but how hellish would 911 be? Or something like any event even close to that be for a dispatcher? And the work and the workflow that you would have to do to make the pilots and the airlines be safe in such a situation.
30:28
Mathew Stafford
Would honestly be crazy. Just, just to think about the mass amount of airplanes that are in the sky at any given time. The. The increase in airplanes per airline has done nothing but, you know, probably tenfold versus what it was back in. Back in 911 or during 9 11. I'm sorry, it would. It'd be crazy.
30:58
Bobby Doss
And I would think that the facilities are built for like half in the air, half, not half on the ground. Right. Like in that moment when everyone was being grounded. I mean, you're going to any airport. You're not. You weren't going to hubs. You were going, I assume, to any airport. And the operations couldn't even handle all those planes. There weren't enough gates for all the planes were going to be on the ground and going to places you weren't used to going. I can't even imagine what that was like. I was starting my adult life in a career, and the one thing I tell everybody is I was on the. I flew the first day that airports opened, and it was crazy. The amount of security. It's probably the safest day ever to fly because of the amount of extra security.
31:41
Bobby Doss
But we appreciate everybody out there that does a job in aviation that puts their life on the line at some level of risk that the normal public doesn't do. And on a really weird day in aviation that we all will never forget, it's a weird time to be recording a show with a dispatcher and a major airline pilot that is always subject to some. Some level of risk that the rest of the public's not. So thank you for your work and your service and we really appreciate you being on the show. Wally, anything to close as we wrap up this episode of behind the Prop?
32:16
Wally Mulhern
No, but thanks for being with us, Matthew.
32:19
Mathew Stafford
Yeah.
32:20
Bobby Doss
Yep. Good luck in your next football game. Matthew Ryan and Matthew Stafford, we wish you the best. Thanks for being on the show. Lots of people have asked for a dispatcher to join us, so we really appreciate it. Hopefully we'll have other future guests. And for all those listening, don't ever forget to stay behind the prize. And thanks for listening to the show.
32:41
Nick Alan
Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast, be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@bravetheprop.com behind the Prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co host is Wally Mulhern. The show is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening and remember, fly safe.