‘People Will Die’: Musk Warns About DEI Endangering Airline Passenger Safety After Boeing Scare

Musk was responding to revelations that Boeing had implemented several DEI measures.

Billionaire Elon Musk questioned the prioritization of diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) initiatives in the airline industry, warning that these measures are putting the lives of passengers at significant risk.

“Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening,” Mr. Musk said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Jan. 11.

In another post, he wrote, “People will die due to DEI,” referring to the recent midair accident involving Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft. On Jan. 5, after taking off from Portland, Oregon, a door plug of the plane’s fuselage snapped off when it was flying 16,000 feet in the air, leaving a large hole in the aircraft’s body. The cabin depressurized rapidly, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Portland. Some passengers suffered minor injuries.

Mr. Musk’s Jan. 11 post was in response to a series of tweets by author James Lindsay that detailed the various DEI policies implemented by Boeing.

In 2021, only “product safety,” “employee safety,” and “quality” were used as operational performance criteria to judge bonuses for the company’s executives, according to Boeing’s 2022 Proxy Statement. But in 2022, the aircraft manufacturer added “climate” and “diversity, equity, & inclusion” as extra criteria for judging operational performance.

“Up to 40% of the executives’ potential pay is in that ‘annual incentive pay program’ which is tied to hitting DEI targets. For those just catching on, DEI doesn’t have anything to do with aircraft manufacturing or safety,” Mr. Lindsay pointed out in an X post.

“The ‘annual incentive bonus’ tied to DEI targets is more than the base salary for the CEO and CFO. It is equal to the salary for the Chief Legal Officer. These are perverse incentives for ideological projects that, at best, water down Boeing’s mission: building safe aircraft,” he added.

According to Boeing’s 2023 Proxy Statement, the company began to assess suppliers based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors and recognized that “a diverse and inclusive supply chain helps promote economic growth across diverse communities.”

By Naveen Athrappully

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