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Close calls involving commercial flights have been happening with greater frequency recently, and many of them are being attributed to human error. From air traffic controller mistakes to pilot errors, the number of close calls has reached a level so concerning that the New York Times launched an investigation into it this summer. As the incidents continue to pile up, many people are asking what is behind the phenomenon, and one big part of the answer is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hires.
Journalist Ashley St. Clair shared some disturbing information about an incident that took place on July 29 in which a United Airlines plane suffered from a hard landing and was nearly totaled.
The info she obtained indicated that the copilot of the plane was a former flight attendant who had been fired from their post and then rehired as part of United Airlines’ DEI program, even though their name appeared on a list of employees who could not return to the company. Moreover, the individual reportedly failed numerous trainings, including the crucial simulator training that pilots must undergo.
St. Clair implied that it’s not the first time something like this had happened and that United has a history of covering up disasters involving DEI hires.
She asked: “Was the #2 at the Denver hiring center also onboarded through DEI? Did she or did she not change fail grades for DEI hires because “it makes the numbers look bad”? Did the instructor who failed this co-pilot ask corporate why they passed him?”
In November, an incident took place in which two private planes collided on a Houston airport runway. Although no one involved was seriously injured, investigators pointed to air traffic controllers as being the responsible parties. This was yet another example of what the New York Times deemed “an alarming pattern of safety lapses and near misses in the skies and on the runways in the USA.”
As part of its investigation, the paper found that runway incursions had nearly doubled during the period they studied despite major advancements in technology that should have helped reduce the numbers.
DEI hiring is putting lives in jeopardy
Revolver News spoke to several FAA employees and air traffic controllers, many of which asked for anonymity and were only willing to speak off the record. Although the publication found that worsening aviation safety is a complicated matter, there are two main factors that are playing a role. First, they say, is the way that COVID policies affected staffing levels in air traffic control rooms. The second is the way that “aggressive affirmative action policies” that were put in place by the Obama administration have caused a major deterioration in the quality of air traffic controllers, with diversity policies causing a decline in quality that is putting the aviation industry in danger.
They warned: “The aggressive substitution of merit in favor of diversity has led to a so-called competency crisis, jeopardizing not only our ability to generate innovative technology but, in a more dire sense, our ability to simply maintain the proper functioning of various complex systems vital to our existence as a first-world civilization.”
In November, the nonprofit group America First Legal filed a series of complaints with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seeking a probe into the DEI initiatives used by Southwest, United and American Airlines. They accused Southwest and United of using illegal quota systems to advance their DEI goals and said that hiring practices were a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 given that they are “based on the race or color of the individuals involved.”
Most rational American passengers will tell you that they would like to see the most qualified individual possible flying their plane. Pilots, air traffic controllers and everyone else involved in aviation have the lives of hundreds or even thousands of people in their hands every day, and hiring for these roles should be based on merit and nothing else.