United Airlines is taking a bizarre business risk and announcing to the world that it will no longer hire the best pilots available but will instead make sure that 50% of their trainees for flying you around the world will be women and minorities—talent and skill be damned. I’m not making this up. I wish I were.
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
Their website details this diversity commitment with more wokespeak than I can usually tolerate in one paragraph.
Today, United has one of the most diverse pilot populations of any U.S. carrier with nearly 20% of our pilot group made up of women and people of color. We are working toward raising that number even higher by partnering with diversity-led organizations and continuing to remove gender and racial barriers. And we’re going one step further with plans for 50% of United Aviate Academy students being women and people of color to ensure our students reflect the diversity of the customers and communities we serve.
Now, I don’t have a problem with women or minority pilots if they’ve graduated at the top of their class and met all the safety requirements and passed all their tests that are required to become a pilot. I don’t think anyone does. What is concerning about the new “diversity” push is that this action will necessarily push out other qualified, possibly better-skilled non-women and non-minorities.
Is that how we want our pilots to be chosen? I don’t know about you, but if a plane I’m on is plummeting to the ground, I’m not feeling grateful that “at least the pilot is a minority who experienced gender discrimination!” Maybe that makes me a bigot. But I don’t seem to be the only one.
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
If there’s one place where meritocracy should rule, shouldn’t it be in the pilot’s chair of massive jumbo jets carrying hundreds of people? I don’t know, and maybe I’m not woke enough, but I’m far less concerned with the racial makeup of the pilots than I am with their plane-flying skills.
Matt Walsh gets it.
It Is An Honor To Die In This Diverse And Equitable Plane Crash | Ep. 695https://t.co/5AFKpu1Q7S
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 7, 2021
And before the charges of bigotry set in, no one is saying women or minorities are more likely to run planes into the ground. What we are saying is, no one should get preferential treatment in order to learn how to fly planes unless that preferential treatment is based on talent and skill. Why are these things unacceptable measures of fitness for such an important job as being a pilot? We have seen with the attempts to diversify the fire departments how women have lowered standards of fitness and made people less safe. You know how I know that? A friend of mine died from anaphylactic shock when two female firefighters could not carry him to the ambulance, dropped him twice, and let him die. That wouldn’t have happened if two men had been there to do the job of transporting a 200-pound man. It’s science.
It’s total stupidity to require diversity in jobs for which the only component that matters is ability and skill. Stop the madness. Hire the best-qualified people for the job based on merit and nothing else. United now joins the list of airlines I never intend to fly again, along with the horrendously-run Spirit Airlines. Great job, marketing.
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