Nearly a dozen aviation insiders, including a whistleblower who filed a federal complaint, asserted that diversity initiatives cause unneeded distractions.
For one veteran airline captain, a routine flight to Denver changed her view about aviation safetyโbut not because of an in-flight crisis.
Rather, the captain heard a story thatโfor the first time in her decades-long careerโmade her uneasy about putting her loved ones on a plane.
During a 2024 conversation, a flight instructor described unusual steps managers had taken to salvage the career of a young female trainee pilot. The instructor described an โegregiousโ example of standards apparently being relaxed to meet diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, the captain said.
The trainee repeatedly failed rudimentary pilot training tests. By โcrashingโ a computer simulation โflight,โ she proved her inability to operate an airplaneโs three most basic control mechanisms, the instructor said.
Yet management balked when the instructor failed her.
โShe was rehabilitated and allowed to continue, even though she should have been washed out,โ the captain told The Epoch Times, speaking on condition of anonymity because her employer had not authorized her to speak to reporters.
โI donโt care if youโre a man or a woman, that is concerning to me.โ
Disturbed that such a trainee may still be in the cockpit, the captain said: โI donโt want myself or my family to be in the back of that airplane. … Thatโs really what it comes down to, right? Would you want to be in the back of that airplane?โ
The captain, a woman who was hired long before DEI programs took hold, said the story of the trainee shows how far her airline was willing to go for the apparent sake of DEI.
These programsโaimed at boosting women and minoritiesโremain entrenched at airlines, despite President Donald Trumpโs DEI-ending executive orders and growing concerns over air crashes and safety incidents, the captain and other workers said. The captain pointed to signs of additional inept trainees being โpushed through.โ
After simulator training, trainees fly an actual aircraft under the guidance of โline-check airmen.โ These expert pilots have reported that some students are now taking four times as long to finish a mandatory training as they should, the captain said.
Frustrated, some of these line-check airmen are stepping aside; one told the captain, โI saw the quality of pilots that we were hiring, and I donโt want anything to do with it.โ
When paired with new hires, experienced pilots increasingly find themselves intervening to avert accidents or incidents, straining veteran captains to exhaustion, one flight attendant said.
Byย Janice Hisle