BobD, you’ve nailed it. This tragedy should be about understanding what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again, not about pushing political agendas. The fact that DEI gets dragged into the conversation only when a woman or person of color is involved says a lot. If errors made by white male pilots aren’t automatically questioned as a result of their gender or race, why should it be any different here? Let’s focus on the facts, not convenient scapegoats.
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I think the first thing we should do is remove all the boxes on forms that have you check a box declaring your color. If color doesn’t matter, why is that box even there?
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We are witnessing in a few short weeks a conservative wokeness and right-wing DEI hypocrisy with the purging of anyone who is not loyal and does not bend the knee to trump. Republicans brazenly are exercising their own version of DEI and nepotism - as if nepotism justifiably is ok, but not DEI initiatives.
Also down the flightpath this nonsense about the horror of DEI initiatives reveals a deliberate smoke screen to obscure the project 2025 co-option of the administrative state - and its direct affect on aviation to come.
How the nation including the pilot community is still so blind to the rope-a-dope that is trump’s favorite trick is pathetic and dangerously regressive.
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Long ago I was observing a check ride after we finished the avionics test flight I was on board the commercial Hercules airfreighter for.
One checkee was doing a NDP approach, IIRC to 600 feet and a mile - when blind pulled away runway was not in sight.
He was a mile abeam it.
A very capable F/O in the third seat tried to give him a clue by asking him where he was, checkee just pointed to instruments and carried on.
(I did not understand what he did, from my seat at the navigator table well behind him.)
[The operator was using relatively inexperienced pilots in the third seat which has limited duties in the Herc - a small overhead panel. But the failed checkee - a male person - had been an instructor for a flying school!
OTOH, the F/O was an ace, became captain far earlier than typical.]
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I’ve filled out a lot of forms over a fairly long life and don’t think I’ve ever seen one requesting color, other than the forms that have to help caucasians understand the term. I’ve never seen one with black, brown, beige, etc as an information category. I’m not saying that race (color) doesn’t matter, it’s obvious by the amount of racism we see in America today that is does matter. If you doubt me I can give you the name of a couple hunting forums with a general discussion (political discussion) forum where racism is displayed frequently, often daily. What I’m saying is that it shouldn’t matter. It’s because it does that DEI type programs, not quota programs, are necessary. Just one man’s opinion, but I think it’s a bit disingenuous to believe that all people, regardless of race, gender and orientation, have the same opportunity for all the same jobs. I think they should. You may disagree.
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I must be misreading your post. It seems like you’re saying that the bulk of Army aviation or Air Traffic Controller positions have to " meet a DEI litmus test vs letting merit decide the cut."
I’ve not seen any job placement statistics, but I don’t think that is accurate. I could be wrong though.
Some points I wish to make.
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So great to hear from Mr. Paul Bertorelli. You are the reason I started reading AVweb. You used to make me laugh. Not today though.
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DEI as an ethical principal, is without question the core of our cultural American identity. After all, it’s in the first sentence of the second paragraph of the declaration of independence. As a practical policy of government, it is an abject failure and a mere political football.
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As an LT-LT-IR-PP and aviation fanatic, I love to read the comments from so many highly intelligent, highly experienced and highly competent aviation professionals. Men and women who understand the true nature of what it means to take a man-made machine operated by a man-made man (or woman) into an environment where the margin of error is so slim for ensuring a safe flight outcome, it’s almost nonexistent. Put simply, it takes _ _lls. To state that recruiting and training should be based on merit only, is a laudable (admirable) and a logical goal. But imagine it’s YOUR job to choose who has merit and will be hired and trained. You must overcome unconscious bias, cultural bias (both societal and corporate), and your own preconceived conscious biases (you are a professional after all). Not so simple huh? Your choices could affect or even cause an outcome not unlike this tragic event if you choose wrong. As someone who has had some experience of hiring, training and managing people I would say, NO. If there is any logic or reason that goes into hiring, training and managing people to perform a job so illogical and unreasonable as aviator, it’s probably a small percentage. IMHO
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I wish to thank all the military pilots, controllers and technicians (both current and former) who may read this, for your service. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Including the three who tragically lost their lives, training to keep our country safe and free.
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Surprised to read about Kara Hultgreen incident. Wanted to bring IMHO some insight on what was going on in that time frame. I was a C2A instructor with students trying to get them carrier qualified at the same time Kara was out there trying to do the same thing. Well back then in the Navy women were not allowed to fly carrier based combat fixed wing aircraft–only exception was flying the C2A. The COD “carrier onboard delivery” cargo to the carrier. I also believe women were not flying operational combat jets for the air force or marine corp back then either. Well Kara was a naval aviator and graduated jet flight school. She landed a T2C and A4 jets on a carrier as part of her training. Once graduated she could not fly carrier naval fighter aircraft. So some women became T2C or A4 flight instructors. Others flew naval corporate jets. Some went to fly the EA6B land based. I believe that is what Kara did.
So in September 1991 the Navy had a big party in Las Vegas called Tail Hook ( they have it every year until then). Unfortunately a female helo pilot was sexually assaulted. Big dumpster fire. A lot of heads rolled in the Navy. So why was Kara put into that position back then? Political reasons. In the Navy’s infinite wisdom they decided to put women in combat carrier based jets so they would be the “first” and try to distance themselves from the Tail Hook incident. I believe they were in such a rush they picked Kara and the other woman because they already graduated naval jet flight school. I believe that is were the rub lies on them being pushed to the head of the line. As for her getting extra flight instruction above and beyond. Well guess what. Pretty much all student Naval pilots will get some extra instruction if they are struggling with an aspect in training ie… extra flight time or sim time etc… but to a point. Back then there was discrimination and it was not right. I believe we have come a long way since then.
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Politics aside. Please. I can’t speak for anyone else here, but when I had 450 hours total time, I had no business flying into those conditions as PIC. I had such supervised training conditions, I simply didn’t have the experience to recognize and prioritize threats. I think most of us learn TEM from vast experience and dumb mistakes we learn from flying the line or mission assigned. I might be a slow learner, but I tend to remember the egregious errors I’ve made, don’t repeat them, try to pass them on to my FO’s, and that simply takes experience far more than 500 hours. The notion of absolving ATC by "traffic in sight’ needs to go away as well. VFR departures by helicopters at my own base has caused me several TA’s and at least on RA they depart between active runways as we are cleared to an RNAV waypoint simultaneously. “See and avoid” was appropriate in the 70’s, it sounds logical, but it’s just legal jargon now. How the heck can I see a departing chopper with a 15 degree nose up deck angle at 500ft agl in a 321 with a chopper departing between parallel runways on a VFR clearance? Rules for VFR helicopter operations at major airports need to change.
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Hahah. You might read The Declaration and The Constitution before you claim boogieman 2025.
Thanks, Russ. More of this caliber of Guest Blog will go a long way toward ameliorating the damage to AvWeb’s reputation from last week’s “blog”. (Was that only a week ago?) Bertorelli is the closest thing we have to Bax these days, and I miss them both terribly.
Apparently, we have a lot of blind men, and “DEI” is the elephant. It is merely the latest in a long line of “Fair Hiring”, “Affirmative Action”, and many other well-intentioned attempts to mitigate the effects of cronyism in government hiring. It won’t be the last.
In a fair society, government jobs would go to those who are the best suited to be successful at them, since that is best for the society. We’ve never had that, due to ignorance, fear, and greed by those with the power to do the hiring. DEI says nothing about the results of employment efforts; it addresses the candidate pool from which you pluck your new hire. As long as you can prove that your cohort met the guidelines for “open-mindedness”, you are free to hire nothing but left-handed, one-eyed, ass-kissers, as long those were the actual and documented criteria for that federal job. But you’d better be able to prove that was the case. If not, you will have a different part of the legal system up in your grill.
All DEI requires is that your pool of applicants must be sufficiently diverse in the first place. It’s all about the group you start with, not the end results. Does that make it harder for Pussy Galore to hire gorgeous young women to fly formation over Ft. Knox. Perhaps, as it should. But she wasn’t the National Guard, or the FAA.
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From an article in Barrons:
" Air-Traffic Controllers Make $158,000 a Year. Why There Is Still a Shortage?"
“Despite high average pay of $158,000 for fully certified controllers, slow hiring combined with a wave of retirees have driven the shortage.”
“Nearly 80% of the busiest control towers in the U.S. were staffed below the threshold at which the Federal Aviation Administration prioritizes placement of controllers at that facility…”
“Budget constraints and hiring setbacks have exacerbated the problem. The 2019 government shutdown along with training pauses during the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to the number of fully certified controllers falling from around 11,800 in 2012 to the current 10,800. To be fully staffed, some 14,300 certified controllers are needed…”
“… only about 60% of new hires make the cut. “The other 40% are removed, resign, or remain in training”
“To get accepted into the FAA’s training academy in Oklahoma City, applicants must pass an assessment test, as well as drug testing, a personality test, and a medical and physical exam. They must also undergo fingerprinting and a federal background test. Once they graduate from the academy, their starting salary is $60,000 on average.”
“An accelerated pension schedule makes them eligible for full benefits at any age after[ 25 years of service versus 30 years for most civilian government workers.”
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Fshaw, actually, I’m old. It is probable that I see more medical forms these days than anything else, and I do understand that knowing someone’s race could be important in that situation.
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My favorite ATC traffic callout of airliners when out bugs-smashing VFR…after confirming visual, ATC’s “maintain visual separation”…really? if that airliner wants to hit me, they will, going 2-3x faster, climbing 3-4x greater and much bigger. though I realize I’m harder to see than they are.
Sorry for those inconvenienced, but I no longer play and let ATC maintain IFR separation and just monitor ATC freqs to listen to confirm being tracked and when being called as traffic. Last straw was getting pestered flight following with departure for hand flying instead of GPS coupled autopilot and a bit later a Lear climbing towards me called an RA as I looked down his intakes…ATC “sorry, forgot about him”
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Of course no reasonable person is opposed to eliminating bias and discrimination. But the problem is that DEI is /by design/ biased and discriminatory.
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The problem is that DEI does NOT provide for equal opportunity. If you have two equally qualified candidates, then why not flip a coin? Why discriminate based on race? Discrimination based on race is WRONG. The solution to past discrimination is to STOP discriminating based on race!
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You’re right, but some people just constantly ignore the context and twist everything President Trump says.
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That was a long time ago. In the Hamas pogrom, the all female intelligence unit closest to the border was left without weapons, and their reports of increased enemy activity – what they were there to monitor – laughed at.
Whole unit was killed or captured – held hostage for 400 odd days.
The largely male infantry took two hours to start to respond to the attack.
Time flies, the first Gulf War (1990-1991) was a long time ago, kids born then in their 30s now. With different views on chivalry.
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We have come a long way from the days when “pilot error” was declared over wrecks still smoking. We have come to understand that hunting for single errors usually won’t result in a useful result as it is chains of errors that make wrecks. Therefore it makes sense to explore the whole chain which might reveal deeper-lying reasons for the setup and/or actions that created the risk. In the case at hand it might look obvious that the helo pilot accepted a clearance for visual separation and was unable to execute it but a detailed explanation should reveal clues as to why visual separation did not work, why the clearance was given and whether the rules that allowed them might be based on wrong assumptions.
A few things:
Visual separation: Any time visual separation is used in an area with multiple aircraft around, there is a possibility that the pilot involved will acquire the wrong aircraft. Like that’s never happened before? It doesn’t automatically make the pilot some kind of natural-born fool, “DEI hire”, or any other aspersive characterization. Given that if the helo crew had been looking at the right aircraft they presumably wouldn’t have hit it, it seems like that’s a good place to start. We’re human. It happens. Look for ways to improve procedures instead of beating up the pilot.
Altitude: From an ATC standpoint, nobody in their right mind is going to count on a displayed 100 foot altitude difference being enough to let targets merge. With 100 foot display resolution, 200 feet and 300 feet could be 249 feet and 251 feet in reality. These aircraft needed some daylight between horizontal positions, which is likely what the helo crew would have done if they saw the right jet coming, and what ATC was trying to do with the “pass behind” instruction after the conflict alert went off. As the jet was on a visual approach, their altitude was not constrained to anything in particular. A nominal 3 degree approach path would have had the jet at about 250 feet at the east bank of the river descending to 50 feet on the west side: whether the helo was at 150, 200, or 250 feet, lateral separation was needed. Based on the crew’s acceptance of visual, the controller thought this conflict was fixed, right up until it wasn’t. Focusing on altitude is a bit of a red herring: the needed solution was to not be in the same geographic place at the same time.
Tower staffing: it’s perfectly normal for various positions to be combined or decombined based on the judgement of the supervisor in charge about traffic levels, the experience of the controllers on duty, weather conditions, training in progress, etc, etc. Having positions split has its own overhead - there’s a coordination workload when split that isn’t there when working combined. Having HC/LC combined 45 minutes before the “normal” HC closing time doesn’t stun me at all. Assuming that there was some staffing deficiency affecting this case is premature at best. Let the investigation evaluate that in the context of this accident - which in no way negates concern about overall staffing issues in the ATC system.
“Military training flight!” - Yes, doing exactly the same thing as any other helicopter following published helicopter route 1 to route 4. Would there be less consternation if this had involved some civil operator following the existing-for-decades route structure? “Should these helicopter routes be where they are?” is a perfectly reasonable discussion to have, but the military nature of this particular operation seems irrelevant.
Trump attributed his DEI comments on the accident to “common sense”, or (loosely translated) “I’m making it up.” I eagerly await his analysis of the Philadelphia Lear crash. Should save NTSB a lot of time and money looking at facts and evidence.
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