Female pilots are out there flying and dying.
(Sometimes their own fault like the person who shortcutted a route in SE Asia and found out the hard way why the route is long - margin for error.
Sometimes not their own fault - Candace Loving’s DC9 fell into the Everglades when improperly shipped oxygen mask generators ignited tires in forward cargo hold.)
Yes, still a minority but for example I knew Gretchen Matheson who knew as a teenager that she wanted to fly, she did, retired as head of a large flying club. And I met Marg Fane who said she almost always had a job in aviation on the variable west coast, she was qualified as:
Stewardess
Dispatcher (a very important job on the coast)
Pilot
A century ago Bessie Coleman flew, albeit she had to go to France to get training and a license.
Later a lady in TX met three of your checkboxes but probably didn’t care (female, black African genetics, North American Indian genetics).
Yes, discrimination enabled by government in some cases for sure: after WW II pilot unions in the US convinced the government that persons who test flew hastily assembled aircraft then ferried them across the stormy North Atlantic without good weather forecasting were not temperamentally suited to fly passengers in controlled domestic airspace.
You don’t suppose that the penultimate sentence of the article, “President Trump addressed the collision during a press conference on Thursday where he suggested that the FAA’s DEI hiring could have contributed to the crash”, could have had anything to do with that, do you?
‘Maybe the people commenting here should dump the politics and consider the technical facts concerning the recent accident when they are known.’
So you must be furious with the President.
We’re just the peanut gallery, bloviating and wack-a-moling what we think is or isn’t relevant to the crash, derived from mostly experienced pilots, controllers and students of aviation.
If I could find any proven antithesis to DEI in the POTUS remarks and cabinet appointments, I would surely consider the value of DEI debate.
Its got EVERYTHING to do with merit. NOBODY gets to ATC without being fully qualified. Merit is based on meeting and exceeding qualifications and doesn’t have a damned thing to do with DEI.
My only point is that the “Trump is wrong” or “Trump is right” debate adds nothing to the real cause analysis. It is hard enough sometimes to determine the cause of an aircraft accident without bringing in politics.
Political (POTUS) noise has no place here. What’s at stake is public trust in aviation safety, and that trust comes from evidence-based outcomes - not baseless and/or intimidationg distractions.
Tragic event where the indications are that the helicopter was 100 ft too high. As I have never encountered airway separations of less than 500 ft, that could imply that the aircraft might have been 400 ft too low ?
Perhaps you should read my posting a little more carefully, Keith. I was rejecting rpstrong’s assertion that there were “DEI goals” in the first place. DEI says nothing about individual applicants, it simply says that the applicant pool should, as much as possible, reflect the demographics of America at-large.
So yes, you might find that your pool of sperm donors is overwhelmingly male, but the racial, socio-economic, sexual preference, and other factors should reflect the population at large. It says nothing about the individual chosen.
“Political noise has no place here.”
That’s EXACTLY what I said. All factors should be equally evaluated and you do not get to exclude DEI or any other political nonsense. That’s the ONLY way that there can be trust. Trust means honesty and honesty means no sacred cows during the investigation.
The POTUS’ comments put the NTSB investigators in an interesting quandary. If the Final Report does NOT list DEI as a contributing factor…or, even worse, if the report states that all concerned were fully qualified for their jobs…will the investigators be considered disloyal to the administration?
Such disloyalty is considered grounds for firing.
It may be moot. The investigators themselves (who do the research and write the report) are ordinary employees, while the actual Board members are political appointees. The Board has full control over what goes out. They’ll just modify the report and assign Probable Cause to align with what the White House says.
One thing we might expect is a much longer than normal cycle time. NTSB reports are occasionally delayed due to publicity/political considerations, and this one has been put squarely in the crosshairs.
Staffing is bad now, yes. Just wait until 2027-2028 when its at least twice as bad as the staffing crisis it is now. Hiring 1500 controllers of the 3000 shortage is fake news. Those are only the ones who made it out of the academy. Of those Id venture to say 20% wont make it at their first facility.
As Mr Milkshake said, if the helo had been where he was supposed to be, over the eastern edge of the river at 200’ or below, this would have been a non-event.
"Air traffic controllers earn the prestigious and elite status of being a fully certified professional controller after successfully completing a series of rigorous training milestones. The standards to achieve certifications are not based on race or gender,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA)
Government was in part manipulating I take it - with war over females should be home raising children.
No doubt many wanted to - the beginning of the Boomer generation of offspring, but many wanted to keep flying. Several years ago the Seattle Times highlighted a few in its region.
TheMouthT has now taken a step back, saying something like ‘I don’t know, but maybe just is’.
He has a practice of being inflammatory to get a reaction or pressure someone, but sometimes imply puts his foot in his mouth by putting mouth in motion before brain in gear. (Joe Biden did similar, should stick to thought out statements read on teleprompter. Trump also rambles.)
But I will assert that if DEI goals are part of the hiring consideration, […]
DEI does not mandate “goals” that applicants must meet.
I did not mean that applicants should meet certain goals; I meant that the agencies are expected to meet certain hiring goals. I apologize for the misunderstanding.