As a pilot with over 45 years experience in aviation, nearly 37 of them as a pilot for a major international airline, I believe I have ample credibility for what I’m going to say in this post. The management of all the airlines currently operating in this country would disagree, but the facts bear me out.
As I have stated before on this site, flying, whether it be in a J-3 Piper Cub or the largest, most sophisticated airliner, is inherently dangerous. What keeps it safe, in the final analysis, is the skill of the pilots manipulating the controls in the cockpit. However, that is about to be called into question by events beyond our control.
As I told you, at the top of the list of those events, is a large number of age related mandatory retirements in the airline industry. Unlike in the past, there aren’t a lot of former military pilots in the hiring pool. There was a time, basically until the mid 1960s, when military trained pilots were the backbone of the new hire pilot group in the airline industry, with over 90% of that group being ex-military, and only 10% coming from a civil aviation background. That time is long past, and the percentages today are essentially reversed.
With the cost of civilian pilot training constantly on the rise, due to the cost of suitable training aircraft, and skyrocketing fuel costs etc, even the civilian trained pilot pool is shrinking. As such, virtually all the airlines have had to lower their standards, accepting pilot applicants with much fewer flight hours logged. This hasn’t happened since the late 1960s and early 70s, when the Viet Nam War was at its height, and military pilots were having their tours of duty involuntarily extended.
To deal with this problem, the airlines are beginning to establish their own flight schools, to train their future pilots basically from the ground up, a practice foreign airlines have used for many years, with varying degrees of success. However, as I stated in a previous post, there is another very dangerous factor which has entered the mix. Certain “woke” airline CEOs are directing their HR departments to develop a quota system to insure that there is “equity” in the pilot hiring process. In other words, it is more important that the makeup of the cockpit, is politically correct than competent.
For instance, take United Airlines. Scott Kirby, the United CEO, has stated that of the projected 5000 pilots United expects to hire by 2030, a minimum of 50% of them must be women or people of color. Unfortunately, other airlines might go down this path as they attempt to curry favor with the Biden Administration. This brings up another factor. If the available applicants don’t meet United’s current minimum standards? No problem. Just lower the standards to achieve the desired equity goal.
Pete Buttigieg, the admittedly woke head of the Department of Transportation, heartily supports Phil Washington, the Biden nominee for the new FAA Administrator. Not surprising, since Buttigieg had no experience which would qualify him to be the head of the Department of Transportation. Why would he be skeptical of Washington, who knows nothing about airplanes or aviation? Washington is an African-American, which checks a very important box in a woke administrations goal of “equity”. Competence be damned.
Beyond the question of future pilot competence, the recent rash of near-miss incidents at our nations airports brings into question the standards employed in air traffic controller hiring and training. Add this to sub-standard infrastructure at many of our largest airports, and you have a serious potential air safety problem bubbling just below the surface. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that all of this will blow up in our face if not addressed, and soon. People will die. That is almost inevitable. This is a serious business.