“And they said I couldn’t hit the ocean!”
United Airlines has set itself a goal: 50% of its airline pilots have to be women or [trumpets, please] People Of Color. Whether they can actually fly the plane or not, who cares? It’s affirmative action!
A few days ago Tucker Carlson ruffled some feathers by alluding to a Boeing 767 cargo plane crash in 2019 (https://thenewamerican.com/equity-over-safety-did-an-affirmative-action-pilot-crash-a-plane/). The pilot, originally from Antigua, did poorly on his tests, displaying “a history of acting impulsively” and “an inability to remain calm during stressful situations,” a federal investigator said.
So half the time he jumped the gun and half the time he froze, they hired him anyway because it’s virtue signalling… and he crashed the plane.
Wait’ll in starts raining airplanes. But who cares? The jidrools who make the rules all fly on private jets anyhow–what’s an airliner full of plebs to them?
Live by insane public policies, die by insane public policies.
No one should pilot any aircraft unless they are capable of flying to the standards required for the job. There is a huge pilot shortage, right now, and it’s hard to find qualified people. If they slip the standards, we will all be living with the risk of an “aluminum shower”.
Recently, there have been two very close calls which apparently were caused by errors that shouldn’t have occurred. The one at LaGuardia could have resulted in significant loss of life, had a very sharp pilot and a very sharp controller hadn’t acted instantly. It could have been a US repeat of the Tenerife catastrophe, which was the worst loss of life aviation accident in history.
There was another incident in Austin, TX which points to a possible failure by an Air Traffic Controller, and we came within 150’ (vertical separation) from losing a 737 full of passengers and a 767 FedEx cargo flight. 150’ feet of separation, in aviation terms, is incredibly tight.
Just writing about these events is stressful. I’ve had a couple of close calls, when inattentive pilots violated airspace and I got a closeup view of a Cessna that I never wanted. Pilots, controllers, etc. need to be hired based upon qualifications, and nothing else. Quotas will not improve safety, and safety is EVERYTHING, in aviation.
What? You mean Diversity and Inclusion are less important than surviving your flight? Really, now!
Let’s put it like this; in a fatal airplane crash, the Captain and First Officer are the first people at the scene of the crash. For the sake of the pilots, if no one else, they should be as qualified as possible.
I haven’t flown as pilot in command for some time now, because I don’t want to incur the expense of staying current, nor do I have the time. I’m a decent enough pilot, but unless I can fly frequently, I’m not goin to put myself at risk by flying when my skills are not top notch.
I believe that anyone of normal intelligence can master the skills of flying an aircraft, but it requires fervent interest in the field to develop the mindset of an aviator. Sure, the money that a senior captain makes is great, but most transport category pilots are there because they want to fly; in many cases more than they want anything else in life. If I’m going to put my life in the hands of a pilot, I want that pilot to live and breathe aviation. Regardless of background, that is the kind of people they should hire.
The private jet crowd doesn’t think us plebs are worthy of good pilots.
It’s no fun to be caught in an aluminum shower. Perhaps a few among the private jet crowd should be exposed to some reality.
If you’ve ever physically been in the presence of a crashed airliner … let’s just say it’s life changing. I get an upset stomach just remembering seeing it, and this was after it had been moved inside a hangar, long after the human rescue/recovery was finished. No sane person should want to decrease air safety, and even the private jet crowd should think this through, because an unskilled transport pilot puts every airport user at risk.
When Patty was a little girl in grade school, a plane crashed right next door to her school. She never forgot it.
I can relate. I’ve had some close calls, and even decades later, I shudder at the thought. I’ve seen any number of wrecked planes, mostly small, but I also saw the wreckage of Continental Airline Flight 1713, and it put my heart in my throat. I actually saw it twice. I saw it in a hangar a few days after the crash and I saw some of the materials loaded onto a trailer, on their way to the scrapyard.
When you look at a roughly DC-9 shaped pile of twisted aluminum with the knowledge that 28 people died on it, the result is profound. It’s sobering to see something as large and powerful as an airliner, twisted like an empty beer can. We live simple, safe lives, for the most part, but we need to remember that bad things can, and do, happen.
She had nightmares about that crash for a long time–all the kids at that school saw it happen.
I’ve seen security camera videos of light aircraft crashing, and they are exceptionally violent. It happens so fast that you can barely comprehend it.
It is all about the Revolution – the socialist/communist takeover of the world by Satan.