In this episode, I sit down with JetBlue Pilot Jean-Briar Carlin, who is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the CDC to block the never-ending federal masking mandates. She and 10 other pilots argue that forced masking harms pilots' health, creates dangers to aviation safety, and is a violation of the 10th Amendment right to self-informed consent. We talk about how they came together to fight the mask mandate, how they formed a group of like-minded pilots to fight it, and how they are fighting for the rights of their fellow pilots to protect themselves and the passengers they fly with. Thank you to our sponsors, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, Southwest, American Airlines, PSA, Southwest Southwest, and PSA as well as our supporters, for supporting our efforts to fight for pilot safety and the safety of our fellow aircrews. We hope you enjoy this episode and share it with your friends, family, co-workers, and the ones you care most deeply about aviation safety. Thank you for being a part of the fight to protect our skies, and for standing up for our rights to fly safely, and to speak out in favor of our safety. This episode is sponsored by JetBlue and Southwest Airlines. Thanks to JetBlue for supporting the fight against the masks mandate and the other pilots who have joined us in our lawsuit. And thank you to PSA and Southwest for supporting us in the fight for our fight for pilots and passengers who are willing to stand up and fight for their health and safety. We're fighting for our pilots and their rights to be able to fly with us. The fight is on behalf of our industry. to fly and breathe! -John Beard, John Beard, Founder of The Aviation Safety Project, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Aviation Safety Watch, and Director of Aviation Lawyer, LLC, and his wife, Jean Vier, Sr., and his two teenage daughter, Katie, and her two teenage son, Kaitlyn, who also works at JetBlue and her husband, Jonathan, who lives in San Antonio, Texas, Texas and works in New York City, New York, and lives in Brooklyn, NY, New Jersey, and travels around the country with her husband works in San Francisco, and has two grandkids in San Diego, NY. and travels in the Bay Area, and she has a great appreciation for what she does for his job.
00:01:09.000Well, I would blame it on the vaccine mandate being brought to us in our employment, our employers.
00:01:16.000It kind of drove a lot of us that are anti-mandate or we have a religious exemption or medical exemption or whatever reason.
00:01:24.000It kind of drove us together to help support each other through those issues.
00:01:29.000And the extension of the mask mandate for the fifth time in January was when We're already like-minded, and then we start discussing that issue more thoroughly and finding out that we all kind of had the same thoughts and concerns about it, as it applies to pilots especially, that we probably needed to stand up and do something about it, or else it was never going to go away.
00:01:53.000And the way in which it came about was obvious that there's no end in sight.
00:01:58.000It doesn't matter if they say it's going to end on a certain date.
00:02:02.000That date comes and goes, and here we are.
00:02:06.000How did you find the other pilots through internet chat groups?
00:02:10.000Well, it's a very small community, aviation is.
00:02:14.000And just within my own friends at JetBlue, when we were helping each other out, kind of navigating our paths in the vaccine mandate, when you start discussing other issues and you find out that everybody's similar-minded in those as well, and then you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, and you start collecting your people.
00:02:33.000So that's how we actually ended up with people from Southwest and American Airlines and PSA as well.
00:02:39.000We actually kept the lawsuit at 10 people so we wouldn't get too unruly because we're all type A and we all have a lot of opinions.
00:02:47.000So we definitely could have had other airlines and a lot more people involved.
00:02:52.000But that's how we got the initial group together.
00:02:55.000And were you talking directly to each other?
00:03:05.000Well, everybody definitely brings a different experience to the issue.
00:03:11.000The networking portion of it actually led me to meet a couple of folks that you might even be interested in talking to that actually A little more persecuted than the rest of us actually being fined by TSA, harassed by their companies and put on medical leave or administrative leave for standing up to the safety concerns of the mask mandate.
00:03:32.000So that probably kind of lit our fire that, you know, we really do have issues and the fact that the mandate never Went through the proper legislative process in the first place.
00:03:44.000Gave us ammunition that our voices weren't heard in any of this.
00:03:48.000It's no longer an emergency issue like it was at first.
00:04:40.000The violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, that it wasn't lawfully enacted in the first place.
00:04:46.000We didn't have a comment period where we would have made these things known.
00:04:50.000The fact that none of the 50 states now has a mask mandate.
00:04:54.000So we're looking at 10th Amendment issues of states' rights.
00:04:57.000The conflict between the actual CDC order vice our regulations under the Federal Aviation Regulations, which are actual real laws that we 100% have to follow in order to be pilots and be safe, it puts us in conflict of the two, whether we Suffocate ourselves by masking vice, certifying ourselves as being fit and healthy to fly an airplane.
00:05:26.000And then there's issues with the informed consent as far as emergency use authorization of masking and the types of masks that are used.
00:05:37.000And the fact that they ignored the studies.
00:05:40.000There were tons of studies early on prior to COVID that That illustrated that masking was not effective.
00:05:48.000And we have never been a masked nation.
00:05:51.000And back to the 1900s with the Spanish flu, where the masking actually was shown to be harmful with the pneumonia.
00:06:00.000Bacterial pneumonia caused by the mask.
00:06:02.000So those are our seven points in our lawsuit.
00:06:09.000So it's not just pilots, but the fact that the mask mandate affects us a little bit differently.
00:06:15.000It's something that we were hoping to use to our advantage in order to get this resolved and hopefully just make it go away for everyone.
00:06:23.000Just so people know, the Administrative Procedure Act sets out the procedures that regulatory agencies need to, all of the regulatory hoops that they need to Jump through in order to promulgate a regulation.
00:07:41.000One is they have to publish a proposed rule in newspapers of records and in newspapers that are likely to be seen by all the people who are affected by the law.
00:07:54.000They then have to issue an environmental impact statement and a regulatory impact statement and an economic impact statement.
00:08:05.000And those documents outline all the science that they relied on That underlie the new rule.
00:08:13.000They also have to do a cost-benefit analysis, saying who's going to be hurt by the rule, who is going to be helped, and showing that the benefits of the rule will, society-wide, exceed the cost.
00:08:27.000And then they have to also show that there are no less burdensome alternatives for accomplishing the same objective.
00:08:39.000Literally, you just had one technocrat, Tony Fauci, who one week says masks don't work, and then two or three weeks later says everybody put them on.
00:08:49.000And he was saying that, by the way, publicly and privately.
00:08:53.000He wasn't just saying it to deter people from buying up a mask supply.
00:08:58.000He was telling it to his boss for her personal purpose.
00:09:05.000He told her in a private email they don't work, but the science is overwhelming and masks don't work.
00:09:14.000There are very few, and I want to put this caveat on, there are very few studies that are peer-reviewed that look at coronavirus.
00:09:23.000Most of the existing study are flu studies, but we definitely need to study it.
00:09:30.000As you say, we should have the regulators after they publish the environmental impact statement.
00:09:37.000There's a notice and comment period where every member of the public can write a letter and a comment and say, hey, you didn't look at this.
00:09:44.000You didn't look at the impact on my industry.
00:09:50.000Tony Fauci has to bring in his witnesses, his scientists, his experts.
00:09:55.000He has to lay out and explain the science that he relied on, and we can cross-examine them.
00:10:01.000And we get to bring our own witnesses, and he can cross-examine them.
00:10:05.000And then you have an administrative law judge that makes a finding that is based upon a rational interpretation of the evidence.
00:10:17.000if it is arbitrary and capricious, all of those safeguards are put in place to make sure that whatever regulation is passed in America, that it first is annealed in the furnace of democracy.
00:11:52.000Like I said, we had the 11 CEOs that wrote the letter to Biden telling them that it was done.
00:11:58.000We have a flight attendant lawsuit that we are not involved with, but we all know each other, so we're helping each other out with what we're learning.
00:12:06.000As we proceed, there's 21 lawsuits against the CDC right now.
00:12:12.000So I know, and even anecdotally, my personal experience is that majority of the feedback to our articles, all of our personal friends and family and acquaintances are supportive.
00:12:25.000And mostly because none of it makes sense anymore, especially because we're the only industry that's still masked.
00:12:31.000But the naysayers, surprisingly, one of the flight attendant unions, I think it's APA, I'm not familiar with all the flight attendant unions, but As far as I know, that's the big one that is lobbying against it.
00:12:44.000And I honestly, other than saying they enjoy their control a little too much, it escapes me why people are still holding on to that, especially in the environment of airplanes.
00:12:55.000You know, early on when all of this started, the airlines and the government, all of a sudden now they had a need to make the public feel ultra safe to get back into aviation so the industry didn't crumble.
00:13:06.000And, you know, Embraer, Airbus, Boeing, Harvard, DARPA, which are U.S. military, they conducted these very extensive studies on how safe the cabin air is, the exchange rate of the cabin air.
00:13:19.000You can't get on a flight and not hear that announcement, you know, three times telling you how safe the air is and are...
00:13:25.000Our HEPA filters are better than hospital grade, and they filter out 99.7% of viruses and pathogens.
00:13:32.000So the masks came later as an added measure.
00:13:36.000Taking them away doesn't negate that bottom line of safety.
00:13:40.000So I honestly can't answer your question, except that some people, and not just flight attendants, it's all over.
00:13:50.000I don't have a better answer than that.
00:13:52.000How do you explain that management is now supporting you?
00:13:55.000Well, I don't understand that myself, to be honest.
00:14:00.000I know that we have a letter from the CEOs, and it kind of touches on a lot of the points that we made in our lawsuit and that we talk about when 10 of us do interviews.
00:14:10.000But we have personal experiences among even just our group of 10 where we're still being harassed up the chain of command management.
00:14:20.000Where we're being brought in because a passenger complains that they may see us without a mask on and they're not happy about it.
00:14:26.000I'm not 100% sure, you know, what their motivations are and how they don't fall in line with the fact that the, you know, even the CEOs of our companies are in support of seeing this.
00:14:38.000Yeah, again, I don't have a good answer for that one either.
00:14:43.000I mean, if you walked onto a fully loaded 747 and you said, we're going to take a pull, you Raise your hand if you want to keep the mask on and raise your hand.
00:15:18.000And If somebody is sitting beside you and they're eating or drinking the whole time, they're technically eating or drinking, which is one of the times where you're exempt to wear a mask.
00:15:41.000Has there been any retribution against you, either from management, I'm assuming the answer to that is no, or from other people, of people getting angry at you?
00:16:00.000But we have to figure out ways where we can maintain the ability to stay healthy so we can continue to fly, as I mentioned before, about the regulations with maintaining our medical certificate.
00:16:12.000So, you know, it impacts each one of us independently.
00:16:15.000So somebody may be fine wearing a mask up to 16 hours a day, but the majority of people, not.
00:16:21.000So we would find ways to make it work so that we would still technically be in compliance but not suffocating ourselves.
00:17:11.000Because that's one of the other things that's contradictory to the mandate.
00:17:16.000We aren't required to wear masks while we're operating the plane.
00:17:21.000Because it could cause a safety issue.
00:17:24.000So if that's the case, why would that not be the case when I'm walking through the airport on my way to the plane or when I'm walking around the airplane, checking the airplane for airworthiness of flight?
00:17:37.000So behind the door, we do not need to have it.
00:17:40.000And each company was left, the FAA left it up to the company to determine what their rules were.
00:17:46.000That's actually another interesting point is that the FAA has never said, What our guidelines are, except for oxygen.
00:17:53.000But in the case of oxygen, they left it up to the airlines to study it and decide what was the best practice.
00:18:01.000So in my own company, they determined that because of the time it takes to actually remove your mask and put on an oxygen mask, if you had a rapid decompression of the airplane, that it probably was a safety of flight issue.
00:18:16.000So the FAA then relaxed the oxygen requirements for us so that we don't have to test our mask.
00:18:22.000We don't have to go on oxygen if the other pilot leaves the cockpit and stuff.
00:18:26.000But that's the only extent that the FAA ever actually made a rule or a judgment pertaining to, you know, our ability to breathe or our safety for flight or the requirements of us to wear the mask.
00:18:39.000Which is interesting because none of the other issues have been studied at all.
00:18:43.000How about your husband who flies in the Navy?
00:18:46.000Are the pilots in the Navy generally against the mandates?
00:18:50.000He's actually been in 28 years, so he's out of the flying role right now.
00:18:55.000He's actually in an academic role, so it's a completely different environment for him.
00:19:00.000So I can't really speak to what the consensus is among military pilots right now.
00:19:06.000You know, one of the things that you've talked about a little bit is the social tensions that arise from these mandates and kind of the opportunity for difficulties between pilots with passengers, etc.
00:19:23.000We call it chaos in the sky in our lawsuit.
00:19:26.000The amount of incidents that we have in the air that involve physical or verbal incidents Basically, where somebody gets a yellow card is what we call it.
00:19:36.000They're warned or they're escorted off the plane at the end of the flight or the flight returns to base and kicks people off.
00:19:43.000We had nearly 6,000 incidents last year and over 4,000 of them were directly related to masking.
00:19:51.000And this year is on course for being an even higher number.
00:19:55.000And over half of those are directly related to masking.
00:19:59.000So there's actually the flight attendants lawsuit that I mentioned goes into a lot more detail about how they're impacted.
00:20:05.000But even the CEO letter recognizes that it puts us in, it makes us federal mask police is what we say.
00:20:14.000You know, we're not federal mask policemen.
00:20:16.000We are pilots, and we're trying to fly the plane safely from point A to point B. And generally, it entails a certain level of stress as it is.
00:20:28.000And dealing with passengers who are upset that somebody is not wearing a mask or a flight attendant is upset that somebody's got Words on their mask that they don't like and they want them kicked off the plane or the two-year-old who just can't seem to figure out, you know, what?
00:21:32.000We actually have a gentleman in our lawsuit group who handled an electrical emergency above 18,000 feet where he actually, you know, had he had his nose You know, he wouldn't have been able to smell it and extra time matters in that kind of a situation.
00:21:49.000So there's a lot more safety issues that pertain to us with regard to masking and pilots.
00:21:56.000And the interesting part in our company in particular, I believe they're taking a wait and see approach with what's going on with the mandate, the vaccine mandate.
00:22:06.000But our manuals have already been changed and we are beholden to Abide by our manuals and the manuals actually talk about if you're not vaccinated that the masking rules are more stringent in the cockpit.
00:22:20.000So now we're back to the fact of do we have to wear a mask while we fly the airplane?
00:22:25.000Do we have to wear a mask when the door is closed?
00:22:27.000Do we have to wear a mask when we're a jump seater up front?
00:22:30.000So it's going to get a little interesting to see how this progresses and that's why I said it's kind of a cornerstone This lawsuit is the cornerstone of the bigger issues that hopefully it will all crumble.
00:22:41.000That's why we're starting where we are.
00:22:43.000Let me ask you about a side issue, which is the vaccines, which is the issue that you just had.
00:22:50.000Those of us who are kind of plugged into the community hear a lot of horror stories about pilots getting injured.
00:22:57.000You don't know how much of that is true and how much of it is just rumor.
00:23:02.000What are you hearing and what are you experiencing?
00:23:06.000Well, first of all, my opinions are my own, obviously, and definitely separate from JetBlue.
00:23:12.000And we all of our group of 10 are representing ourselves and our own opinions.
00:23:17.000And the vaccine issue is not something that I really talk about publicly, but I will tell you for 100% that there are people that are impacted by it and have lost their medical certificates and are on medical leave because they're unable to fly.
00:23:58.000Honestly, when we filed our lawsuit just for the masks, we didn't even have company support at that time.
00:24:04.000But very shortly after that, I'm sure you're aware, the 11 CEOs of the Major airlines wrote a letter to President Biden telling them that they needed this to end.
00:24:38.000Lucas Wall was actually the first person to try to sue the CDC and the TSA. He's a disabled American veteran, and he has kind of taken it upon himself to build up a little coalition, the Americans Against Mask Mandates.
00:24:53.000So we're all putting our brain power together.
00:24:56.000So Lucas has been key in helping us as far as we've gotten in this.
00:26:33.000I'm 100 pages into your Fauci book, and my God, I just never knew that we had so many problems in our country.
00:26:42.000It's terrifying, and I appreciate that your podcast gives hope, because I've actually enjoyed listening to a lot of your guests, to the trucker, convoy, and And JPCers and whatnot, and people who are fighting in different ways, but that's the point, is everybody has got to get involved, especially if you have kids.
00:27:02.000You don't want your kids dealing with this down the road.