If you’re like me, a plane crash is your worst nightmare. No amount of miles logged, research into flight safety statistics, or $27 airport whiskeys will ever make you feel more confident. Every hint of turbulence makes you white knuckle your armrest and tensely start to pray. So if you’re nervous even under the best conditions, what do you do when the news is filled with videos of planes exploding and falling from the sky?
The Boeing 737 MAX is one of the most common commercial airlines, used by United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, and Alaska Airlines to funnel Americans around the country. But seemingly all hell broke loose after Boeing ordered airlines to conduct safety checks over a “possible loose bolt” in the rudder control system at the end of December.
In the first week of January, a window blew out on a 737 MAX 9 leading to an emergency landing and a “temporary grounding” for 171 models. The cause? A torn off door plug that had already shown a pressurization issue in the plane’s safety system; Alaska Airlines decided to fly it anyway. United then found similar issues in at least five of their planes. After three weeks of worldwide grounding, the 737 Max 9 is now back in the sky. While Boeing is assuring the public the model is safe, it won’t expand the fleet any further until they resolve the ongoing “quality control issues.”
Yet after a few more emergency landings, the real nightmare fuel came when video footage showed a Boeing cargo plane, engulfed in flames, barreling towards the ground after an engine malfunction. Thankfully, the plane made a successful emergency landing and everyone on board was alright. But it’s hard to imagine ever getting on a plane again when the top American manufacturer in the industry just can’t seem to do anything right. (RELATED: Boeing Could Lose Huge Foreign Client Following Alaska Air Incident: REPORT)
“It’s on fire!” Boeing 747 cargo jet catches fire shortly after taking off from Miami International Airport. The pilots safely returned the plane to the airport. pic.twitter.com/vKjeP6X69f
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) January 19, 2024
Given all the issues, you’d think both airlines and the manufacturers would be frantically attempting to pick up the slack: if they can’t guarantee safety, then they won’t turn a profit. But in Joe Biden’s backward America, up is down, left is right, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is actually the safety standard par excellence.
“We set a goal to increase the Black representation rate in the U.S. by 20% over our baseline of 6.4%. Since that time, Black representation has increased to 7.1%, signifying a rate increase of 11%,” reads Boeing’s 2023 DEI report.
“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,” reads a diversity statement from United Airlines in 2021. American Airlines has indicated a commitment to the same 50% “representation” figure.
Proponents of the DEI regime assure us there’s nothing to see here — it’s merely a new front in the culture war for “right-wing influencers.” The argument in defense of DEI pilots might sound plausible: just because the airline industry is expanding recruitment efforts to target “diverse” individuals does not mean it is putting incompetent pilots in the air. At the end of the day, everyone still has to pass the same rigorous exam qualifications to become a commercial pilot. Since there’s no rational reason to oppose, the backlash amounts to nothing more than a “last-ditch effort to preserve a more white-centered United States culture.”
In case you’re wondering what @Alaskaair has been focusing on, it’s diversity & inclusion, making their planes gay, and having drag queen flight attendants.
If you’re on an Alaska plane, just pray their diversity hires don’t screw up and they’re putting this same energy into… pic.twitter.com/xg41yL9UYQ
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 11, 2024
But as always with the left, they’re hiding the ball: DEI commitments mean the airline industry is necessarily recruiting from a less-qualified candidate pool to begin with. (RELATED: Biden And Kamala’s Chief Diversity Officer Departing White House)
Let’s say 100 open pilot positions can be filled by either tall or short people. Under normal conditions, the airline would rightly assume height does not make you better or worse at flying, so it will ignore that metric and instead recruit the people with the most skill and experience at flying planes. However, it just so happens that the airline winds up recruiting 75 tall people and only 25 short people.
Now imagine that the airline decides upfront that it needs to fill those 100 positions with at least half short people. So, the original 25 short people of course make the cut, but an extra 25 with subpar skill and experience also come on board as well. That means 25 tall pilots with more skill and experience do not get recruited, just so the airline can fill its quota of short people.
And it’s not that tall people are inherently more qualified because they are tall. But the fact remains — the airline has not recruited the best of the best. The existence of the quota means people getting considered who would have otherwise never been considered.
Now, the short people may still all go on to pass their required safety exams and wind up being satisfactory pilots in nearly every condition. But in the freak chance where a split-second decision could mean the difference between life and death, shouldn’t we all be able to agree that we want to put our lives in the hands of the absolute best?