Airline Announces It Will Prioritize Racial Quotas Over Qualifications in Pilot Hiring
Nervous flyers have more cause to be anxious after United Airlines announced on Tuesday that it will seek to ensure half of its pilots are women or minorities in the coming years.
That’s not to assume that women and minorities cannot become pilots, or great ones at that. But it is beyond troubling that race and gender, and not skill only, will become criteria for hiring pilots.
In a job where a person is tasked with controlling a large airborne metal object loaded with people that wants by the nature of physics to come down, you’d think a company would want a person controlling it who is most qualified to defy gravity — whoever that person might be.
But corporate America, as we’ve seen in recent weeks and months, has embraced the “woke” politics of the American left.
Companies including United Airlines are now mouthpieces for the Democratic Party and its absurd strawman argument about election integrity and alleged racism. United on Monday lashed out at the state of Georgia for passing sensible election reforms such as requiring IDs for voters.
On Tuesday, the company vowed to enact racial quotas when hiring pilots.
“Over the next decade, United will train 5,000 pilots who will be guaranteed a job with United, after they complete the requirements of the Aviate program — and our plan is for half of them to be women and people of color,” United CEO Scott Kirby said in a media release.
“United will leverage its long-standing relationships with a variety of organizations, including the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, Sisters of the Skies, the Latino Pilots Association and the Professional Asian Pilots Association to help identify and steer highly qualified, diverse candidates to the United Aviate Academy,” United also said. “As key partners, these organizations will select the applicants to receive the scholarships and grants funded by United and JPMorgan Chase.”
The airline alarmed travelers when it took to Twitter to announce the policy to embrace affirmative action in aviation.
Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color. Learn more and apply now: https://t.co/VbOFvFOksB pic.twitter.com/r0ScH6MQAJ
— United Airlines (@united) April 6, 2021
“Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color,” United tweeted with a link for applicants to apply.
The company faced severe pushback, but nothing so severe for it to change course, apparently. United did assure a number of concerned Twitter commenters that its pilots will still be made of the right stuff:
They’ll do exactly that. Safely. Every time. ^MJ
— United Airlines (@united) April 6, 2021
All the highly qualified candidates we accept into the Academy, regardless of race or sex, will have met or exceeded the standards we set for admittance. ^MJ
— United Airlines (@united) April 6, 2021
Is anyone fully buying that?
United finally got its presumably qualified pilots to stop drinking alcohol before ferrying people across the country, and now the company wants to sow doubt in the minds of passengers about what else might be going on in the cockpit.
These are people who just want to compartmentalize air travel in their minds as safe and enjoy the ride — if at all possible.
You want to think your pilot is a calm, collected and cool-under-pressure man or woman — not someone who was chosen for their skin color and genitalia.
You don’t want to have to think about if the plane is in good hands. That should be a given. But United, and presumably other airlines that will follow suit, are taking away the peace of mind of so many people while simultaneously making transportation a partisan social experiment.
United’s woke racial and gender quotas might come at the expense of safety, and they might not.
But why take that chance? Why would a company such as United take its virtue signaling to the point where even if there is no inherent danger, its decisions scare travelers? This isn’t simply a bad move for safety. It’s poor business.
Why?
It’s because being politically enlightened and progressive now supersedes United’s mission — which is to provide safe travel for people who are entrusting their lives to a system that has more moving parts than people would like to think about. United wants you to know how progressive it is. If that means a few planes have to fall out of the sky to get justice for George Floyd or Trayvon Martin, then so be it.
If it means you arrive safely at your destination, but you experienced an added sense of anxiety along the way, then you sacrificed for the noble cause of egalitarian utopia.
Welcome to the era of woke air travel. Put on your mask, muzzle your child and hope your pilot is at least mildly familiar with the controls and instruments. It could be a bumpy ride.
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