FLYHT's JumpSeat
FLYHT's JumpSeat
From Fighter Jets to Cargo Flights: Ted McFann’s Story
What happens when a childhood surrounded by aviation leads to a storied career in both military and commercial flight technology? Meet Ted McFann, our guest who has lived that journey and more. From working on mission computers for fighter jets at the Naval Warfare Center to his long-standing role at FedEx, Ted’s experiences are a goldmine of insight. Listen as he shares his unique perspectives on the evolution of airline maintenance, the impact of technological advancements, and the important considerations around intellectual property in the MRO industry.
Ever wondered about the complexities of obtaining an STC for airlines? Ted breaks it down for us, covering everything from compliance with federal regulations to the meticulous process of data gathering and flight tests. We'll also explore global aviation trends, including the ripple effects of airline consolidation and the burgeoning opportunities in cybersecurity. Join us as we sprinkle in some memorable travel anecdotes and underscore the unparalleled value of networking at industry conferences like the AMC. This episode is a treasure trove of technical insights, personal stories, and industry trends that any aviation enthusiast will find enlightening.
Welcome to another edition of the Jump Seat. My name is Chris Glass, I'm a product owner here with Flight and I am with Ted McFann. Ted, welcome to the Jump Seat.
Ted McFann:Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Chris Glass:Awesome Ted, tell me about yourself.
Ted McFann:Well, I pretty much was born into aviation. My father was a pilot for Delta Airlines. The story goes that he was hired like one year before my birth and that something maybe after his first round of pilot training something occurred. That here I am and so.
Ted McFann:I used to fly a lot as a kid jump seating. We would go places and you know, love to do plane watching in the Miami International Airport with the family. And I learned to fly the Naval Warfare Center in the Pataxin River, maryland, as a civil servant for the Navy, working on mission computers for AV-8Bs, f-18s you know the earlier models. After about eight years there I worked for once. My father retired from Delta. I worked for Delta as a component engineer, so you followed in his footsteps. Well, he was a pilot.
Chris Glass:Yeah, but same company, yeah, same company.
Ted McFann:I always loved it, and also as a systems engineer working on navigation systems, specifically like enhanced ground prox, because that was a one of my big projects in the Navy was working on on helping to develop a ground proximity warning system for fighters and other naval jets. So that was always something special to me. And after the 9-11 and around 2004, before Delta declared bankruptcy, I turned west to Memphis and I got a job with FedEx and come December I'll be working for them for 20 years. I work a variety of projects from HUD and EFES to, again, enhanced ground products, and now I'm a manager of what we call our aircraft data management group.
Chris Glass:Excellent. So I want to hit on your time with the Navy, because fighter jets sounds cool, so let's talk a little bit about that. What was your exposure to some of those iconic planes?
Ted McFann:Oh, it was very fun. You know Top Gun back in the 14 days.
Ted McFann:You know, at Pax River they have a actual catapult takeoff system on one of the runways and so you can watch planes that were on some kind of test mission catapulting off there. And you learn very carefully to make sure that you're paying attention to what's going on, because the where the car can pass by is not too far away from where you go full afterburner Right. So if you don't like rocks in your paint job or something like that, you stop. And so it also was neat they had the officer's golf course that was right on another runway, so as you're playing golf, you're watching all these airplanes landing, and it was really cool.
Chris Glass:So that must be a good uh nine or eighteen holes to see uh those fighter jets led if you love airplanes, it is right, what? What was your favorite plane from that time?
Ted McFann:um, I guess I would have to say the f-18. It flies like a.
Ted McFann:Where I was working at the time, or at least for most of my time, there was what we call the man flight simulator building right even though I was working with a time, or at least for most of my time, there was what we call the manned flight simulator, building Right, even though I was working with a black box, or actually a gray box, sometimes when there was downtime you could fly different airplanes. So I learned to fly the V-22. Wow, f-14. Because of the variable wings and since it was automatic and I did not understand the aerodynamics of a F-14 as much as Tom Cruise did. But the F-18 flew like a Cessna.
Chris Glass:Wow.
Ted McFann:It is a at least from a similar standpoint. It is a beautiful airplane to fly.
Chris Glass:So your time with Delta led you to the Navy. Let's talk about your time with Delta, so where you started cutting your teeth. How did that go? Where were you based out of for Delta for the first place?
Ted McFann:I moved from Maryland to Atlanta what kind of happens. I've always loved commercial aviation more than military aviation, because back in the day, before all the security when we would travel, there was a hangar in Miami International a Delta hangar and so my father could park the car with the family and we'd walk across the tarmac to the pilot area. And this was like in the early 70s. And so as a little kid I'm looking up at these big airplanes and I was enamored by it. And so one day I was doing a lot of travel with the Navy to St Louis and to Minneapolis, and every day, you know, I parked in a parking lot back in BWI that allowed you to kind of walk near the terminals. And so there was always this morning, united 737-200 there. And you know I think you know I probably would enjoy working for the airline.
Ted McFann:And you know, I immediately thought of Delta when my father retired. And just so happened certain events happened that a wonderful man by the name of Steve Bullard he was a manager was building up a component engineering group for the component shops, and one of my friends who knew him got us together and so he hired me on. I supported the AMTs in the ATA 34 and 31 shops, and you had again ground products ATA 34 and 31 shops and you had again ground products. You had auto-throttle flight control computers, air data computers, irus, and so I would come up with alternate test procedures or helping with service bulletins or other things of that nature, and then that kind of grew into other shops. You know, so I got to do weather radar, communications displays, a lot of different, got my hands on a lot of different pieces of equipment.
Chris Glass:So in your time, how has that changed? Like with technological advancements, how has that work changed?
Ted McFann:The one thing that I think is the biggest change to the airline MRO concept is that a lot of the OEMs are pulling back on what the information on the CMMs make because they now consider it intellectual property Right. And so, on the one hand it makes it, you know, for just doing the normal CMM repairs or going down to that level three, you know, component on a board repair, it makes it more difficult for the shop mechanic to be able to perform those without having to send it back to the OEM, to be able to perform those without having to send it back to the OEM, where you have to buy expensive soldering equipment in order to do the surface mount boards and things of that nature. I think that's one of the bigger difficulties and, along with that, just trying to keep a more detailed record of what the teardown was Right. That's one of the things that we currently have a working group that we're standing up to try to standardize what the teardown report is. That should be starting sometime this year as an AMC subcommittee.
Chris Glass:And what is your role with that subcommittee?
Ted McFann:Right now I don't have a role with that committee. What I work in as a manager is more on aircraft systems and so because I have that background with component maintenance, I will talk to our FedEx component shops and work with them or help them out where I can. But I think there are other people within our organization, or different groups I think, who would Fit the role. Yeah, more like in our component reliability group who are doing a lot of great things to analyze component reliability and predictive component reliability.
Chris Glass:So you have seen the commercial side, you've seen the military side and you've seen the cargo side. Those are three very distinct versions of airlines, if you will. They're all fleets, they all have parts, they all need to be up and running. What's the major differences between the three?
Ted McFann:With the military, at least as it relates to the installation of equipment, you don't have the same oversight from the FAA. Right, you are contracting with OEM or a vendor to design and develop something and so, as an engineer or part of one of the commands, you have kind of this ability to do for the most part not everything, but for the most part you're designing your own thing and you're not under. You have a special set of regulations or things that you're trying to attain that are not within the FARs, that you know air cargo and commercial passenger airplanes have to deal with. And the other thing that I found is that and I understand it, but in the military there's a lot of shells you, the vendor, shall ensure the performance is going to be x, y and z right, and you do all these different things, whereas the in regulation it's not so much of a request, but it's more ambiguous as far as you know, more ambiguous as far as you know, the ACO in Atlanta can interpret a particular regulation differently from the ACO in Seattle.
Ted McFann:And so when you're trying to get an STC or something like that, or when you're having to cross because you have a different, you're doing it for a different fleet. You know, sometimes you're doing the same thing. It's like this person accepts it. This other person says no, you have to do something different.
Chris Glass:Yeah, so that consistency isn't there.
Ted McFann:Yes.
Chris Glass:Oh, interesting. So talk a little bit about the STC process. What goes into that? Because I know in our company we have oh gosh, I can't even think of all the STCs we have right now. But talk to me about that process.
Ted McFann:Well, for an airline, you know you have two choices. It all depends upon do you have in-house DERs or if you don't, then normally you have to defer to a third party SDC vendor. What you're trying to do and you start going, you know and the features that you want and you know what that end result is going to be. And then from there, if you're doing it yourself, you start developing your cert plan, defining it for you know the FAA. This is what we're going to do. Here are the regulations that you know we think that we're going to touch, or you know we comply with all these regulations and now the ones that you're going to be touching is like by figuring out, by analysis, by test or by other means, that you know this is how we're going to show. You know, show compliance to federal regulations, and so then, after that, that, everything starts building up from there.
Ted McFann:It's like you start doing several different things in that um.
Ted McFann:You know if you're working with a vendor for a particular you know, like you know one of your company's right products or something like that. If I was doing the stc, I'd be getting a lot of data like um drawing, outline drawings and interface control documents and other things of you know what wiring I'd have to hook up in order to make that system work, and so you start kind of doing that from the ground up and then you start looking at manuals like standard wiring, practices manual and things like that. You start looking at your. You know how you're going to do the wiring. You go into looking at the EWIS analysis and you're doing all this writing and all this report generation of you know here's our ICA, you're creating the different drawings and the instructions and so and you're working with the FAA through your DER, that you're submitting reports. Reports they're going to make changes to what some things they want or if they identify something that is unique as far as, like you know, consider EFBs using a tablet right um the iPad.
Ted McFann:At one point it was unique and it's like well, we need to do a position paper on something like that.
Ted McFann:Now it's you know. You know they have advisory circulars and things like that. But that's the other important thing. The FAA does have a lot of good documentation on the advisory circulars, on a method of doing these different tests, and so for SDCs, you just follow that and follow along with your own company's processes and it goes along. You know, a lot of times it's just where to find that information and so you do all that. That usually can take, depending upon the complexity of the project, six months to a year's time and then, depending upon the complexity, the hard part is trying to get an airplane Right. I've worked on projects where an airplane, because of the complex nature of the modification, it'd be grounded for six months as you're doing the work and then you know another 90 days or something like that while you're waiting for the approvals. But this is where the excitement comes in. When you do the show, compliance testing, you get your amTs working on the project. You find out how good your manuals actually are the litmus test right?
Ted McFann:Yes, you know you work very hard to have this perfect document and it's like well, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong and it's like okay, we make those corrections and you update the documents Right. And then you know I enjoy doing the flight testing. Especially I love and then you know I enjoy doing the flight testing. I especially love enhanced ground products flight testing where you get to fly at peaks of mountains.
Ted McFann:Oh, yes, and do a whole bunch of things that you don't normally want to occur during a commercial flight. You know you do that, you get all the reports and you know, within a period of time you get the STC and now the fun begins of installing it on your fleet. It's a very rewarding project for an airline engineer to do. I think when you do it yourself you learn more than when you rely on the third-party vendor, because one of the things I have found that third-party vendors are good, but a lot of times they only get to touch the airplane irregularly. Right, and if the engineer for the airline is not aware of it really, or you know, they don't talk to their tech pilots about hey, where do you want this panel? Do you want it?
Ted McFann:You know when do you want the light to come on? Because you know the dark cockpit concept. A lot of times nowadays you get STCs where the light is on. When it's on, it's like, well, no, it needs to be off. You only want it on when you have trouble to point attention to it, especially for FedEx, since we fly predominantly at night. It's not as much or as true today as it was in the past, but nevertheless you're flying at night, and so you don't want lights, needlessly.
Chris Glass:Yeah, you don't want the background. Yes, yeah, exactly you want it to alert.
Ted McFann:Like in your car, the fuel empty. That's drawing your attention to something that needs immediate attention.
Chris Glass:Check engine light pops on, you draw your eyes to it right away.
Ted McFann:Exactly.
Chris Glass:So and I'm not sure if you have experience with this, so forgive me if you don't, but that's the FAA Does the STC process change from different regulators, like if you were with the YASA or like in Canada Transport Canada? Are there huge variations in what you have to do to get your STCs or is it pretty standard across the different regulations? Is it pretty standard across the different regulations?
Ted McFann:Normally, or at least in my own experience, I have not had to apply for YASA STC. I think there's a general rule that YASA will accept the FAA's approval of the STC.
Ted McFann:And vice versa and vice versa Transport Canada. They don't have that same relationship, yeah yeah. And so sometimes we, you know, we have a team of people who work in Canada and so when we need to get transport Canada's approval, we kind of let that team run the show. We provide them all the data and they do the submittals and get the approval. It's usually a fairly painless process. It's not like you're going to have to get more data, but you have to do the application for it.
Chris Glass:See, you're highlighting a really important concern that I've always had that six to 12-month process to get something new that's been identified by the airline that you need. You know this is one of the harder parts about being nimble and being able to test out new technology, and it's why I think the industry is kind of lagging behind when it comes to what you see in other industries right with cars and one of the things that I've loved since I've been here in Phoenix is that you know they have fully automated self-driving cars. I'm not saying any airline wants to try that, but you look at all the technological advancements that's come in such a short period of time. When you put in those regulations, it's tough for airlines to pivot quickly. Have you seen that?
Ted McFann:Definitely it's throughout the industry. When I graduated college back in 1990, right when I was leaving, you know I was out, walking out of the engineering building as I was seeing them pull out the old 8-bit, you know 80, 50 computers that we had to use and I learned program assembly language. And you know, in the engineering department they had mainframes for the computer science department but they were bringing in all these brand new IBM PCs and it's like man, you know. So just one year later, and you know, get to, you know, actually you were to have this, buy a model of the F-18, the most advanced fighter out there, you know, highly technical, computerized. And then I'm thinking, oh great, I'm going to get involved with this modern stuff. Well, it's a 16-bit assembly language.
Chris Glass:You know it was a federated system and everything.
Ted McFann:But you know they still had like core memory.
Ted McFann:You know you had the arrays with the magnetic uh rings around them and and and so you still actually had some of that technology and it's like what a bummer I. I became very an expert at programming and assembly language and, you know, feeding, getting every bit out of the processor. And because I was in that so long I didn't have, you know, I kind of lost getting into Windows and other things and so I can do a lot of real-time embedded programming. But don't ask me to use C Sharp today or something like that with integrated Windows products and things of that nature, and it's the same thing today. It's like I have.
Ted McFann:You know, sometimes people see, um, even I think a 787. You know, definitely for us triple sevens, you know, think they're brand new, but that technology is from the 1994. The tools that you have to use some of of them are still like Windows NT or something like that for some of the test sets and things that you know, for pieces of up in this year's AMC of you know, should we have a standard or committee or something about how do you manage old software? Because after the pandemic, a lot of that expertise you know has left.
Ted McFann:And there was not a opportunity to do that transfer of knowledge from the old to the young.
Chris Glass:And you know, some people don't know how to program a flight management computer from something that was designed in like the late 80s or 90s, because you just don't world we're living in anymore yeah, and I think the airlines have been hit super hard with uh that brain drain from the pandemic, not only uh in this area, but ames uh even with pilots and office staff with all that knowledge walking out the door, finding new careers, finding new, new uh job opportunities, and then you're left with trying to run an airline without having that expertise in-house. So I think it's a problem, a real problem that's going to be facing the industry for at least the next five, six years on how to replenish that talent and to bring people up in it.
Ted McFann:I think that you see that in the AMC today. Yeah, that you know. Last year I didn't get to go to the AMC because I was going to my son's graduation. Oh, yes.
Ted McFann:And came back and found out that certain colleagues of mine hadn't retired and I didn't even get to say goodbye. And like that person I'm traveling around the world and you know I was asking some of his former colleagues of how he's doing. I said I don't know. He is just falling off the face of the earth doing his thing. And Ron Parpart from Collins, who if you were to look at previous transcripts and things like that, he would be the person reading out Colin's response and he was always working with the airlines.
Chris Glass:Fully embedded in the ecosystem?
Ted McFann:Yes, and he retired this year and I had a chance to talk to him but I was happy for him, but at the same time it's like man, we're losing another experienced person and you're seeing all these new people and but it's fascinating to see those new people and you know, I was in your suite last night listening to an airline talking about some products and some of the problems they're having. I'm just smiling, listening, you know, because been there, done that, right, and but it's like, well, you know, I'm flying older airplanes and you're talking 787s and Max's.
Chris Glass:I'll just stay out and listen to your problems. Sharing of knowledge that we have in this building today that's going to be the solution to that problem. I think is is making sure that, even though we're all competitors in a in a very highly competitive industry, that we can share the commonalities and share the learnings that we have between different carriers and different vendors. So it's been for me. This has been a great experience to hear where everybody's different perspectives are. So what do you think the future of AMC is?
Ted McFann:There are a lot of opportunities and a lot of hurdles to overcome. I think one of the big hurdles right now is the continuing contraction of both airlines and OEMs. This year I realized this when I was doing as I was preparing to moderate the opening discussion session. I was looking at the airlines and there were more international airlines here today than there were US airlines. If you think about in the early 90s, you had Eastern. You know, before they went bankrupt you had Pan Am.
Chris Glass:America.
Ted McFann:West America, west Braniff, continental, northwest US Air All these different US airlines, and you used to only have the national airline for international country. Now you have Jet Two, a low-cost carrier from England. You have other low-cost carriers that are participating, which is really good, and we want to continue to reach out to them, but this was like the first year that international airlines actually outnumbered US airlines, and so you know Consolidation is really having its effect.
Chris Glass:Yes, yes, consolidation is really having its effect.
Ted McFann:Yes, and look at the number of suites that you have. It used to be a lot larger because you had Rockwell Collin, you had United Technologies, a whole bunch of different companies that are now consolidated into one group Again, when you have those companies consolidate, you have overlapping people. People that you work with get laid off, or you have new people taking over that don't have that same experience and less points of view in the room right Like if you have less airlines.
Chris Glass:The big guys do things a certain way. You have less big guys.
Ted McFann:You're only looking at it from one side of the coin you see the paradigm shift happening but it's like what can you do or what should you do? And then, but there the opportunities are that you have cyber security, you have, um, a lot of the software issues and things of that nature and the paradigm shift from hardware components to more software related things, and you know the ability to work with the vendors on specs and things of that nature and trying to come up with new maintenance type of standards that will help people to avoid parts obsolescence and software obsolescence and software obsolescence and things of that nature in the future. So I think there are a lot of good opportunities there for the AMC and the AEC as well.
Chris Glass:We're just about at the end of our time today and I ask everybody on this, because I like to travel and I like to see the world and I like different perspectives Where's the best place you've ever gone? Where should I go next on my journeys?
Ted McFann:Huh, the interesting thing about that is, you know, I grew up in an airline family. When I you know the fabulous woman that I dated and eventually married when we were dating, I made the wrong move in trying to impress her with taking her up in the Cessna 172. And after that she found out she's not really a fan of flying.
Ted McFann:Oh, wow so you know we do a lot of driving to various places within the southeast, but there are a lot of different places that I've been over the years that I don't really have a specific thing and it all depends upon your flavor. Singapore is a nice place. Prague when we've had AMCs, there is a wonderful place to visit.
Chris Glass:This was my first AMC. I love Phoenix, I think it's great, but I think I missed out on some opportunities to do some real traveling, like going to Prague, going to some of these more exotic destinations. So I'm hopeful the next couple of years we could give me a destination that's a little bit further away from home.
Ted McFann:Well, I think, even here, you know, you know, even seeing the local spots, and everything can be good, especially if you don't get to travel a lot. I think that the hard part is is that this is, you know, one of the things I'm telling the vendors. This is not a show.
Chris Glass:This is a conference.
Ted McFann:Don't ever tell my VP. I've been to a show. There was no singing, there was no dancing. We're actually doing a lot of solid work here.
Chris Glass:Right.
Ted McFann:And so there's really not a lot of time to go visit. You know the surrounding.
Chris Glass:Yeah, I've had the opportunity to look out the window. That's about all I've gotten it. You?
Ted McFann:know, yeah, I've had the opportunity to look out the window. That's about all I've gotten, yeah, and and so it is not really, if you're, if you're savvy enough, you, you will find the opportunities to go out and see things. And, um, you know, like, when I talk about singapore, that was on a business trip for my company me working on a modification out there and so, yeah, I was there for 14 days and you had some downtime. So, yeah, I explored the island a little bit.
Ted McFann:The AMC is a great place to meet people and to reunite with friends and colleagues within the industry. It's a very small community where you run into people a lot doing different things and I I think that is the most thrilling part about attending the amc. Outside of what we do, you know, and trying to solve problems and prove the industry and create new standards and specs, um, it's just you have that one-on-one collaboration with your peer at United American, westjet or whoever, and you experience what other people are having problems with or what their success stories are, and it's like, oh, wow, can I apply that to our company? And I think that is the true benefit outside the travel.
Chris Glass:Well, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. I know you're a busy guy. You got to get back to the conference. We'll be back with more great Jump Seat episodes later on today. Thank you very much.
