Prozac

Free financial/marital/medical advice from senior captains?

And there it is. The explanation for white males being an overwhelming majority of professional pilots must be that white males are more inherently suited to the job than any other group. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is not what you really think, but you should understand what it sounds like when you make this argument. Same with the pro sports analogies. I think we can all agree that there are certain physical and genetic attributes that allow people to perform at the ultra high levels of professional athletes. There are absolutely not similar limitations for performance in a cockpit. Are certain individuals more suited to flying airplanes? Of course. But you won’t convince me that the requisite skills skew to the tune of 95% white male. We got to affirmative action/DEI/whatever you want to call it for a reason. There absolutely are barriers for certain groups that shouldn’t be there. I agree that in a perfect world we would all be judged, in the words of Dr. King, by the content of our character vs the color of our skin or any other physical attribute. Unfortunately, that is not the world in which we inhabit. There are still groups that need help breaking breaking barriers because people are still shitty. DEI is an admittedly imperfect band aid for the real world. If people want to debate better solutions, fine, but don’t blow sunshine up everybody’s ass by pretending we live in a post racism/sexism world.

Wait a minute! I resemble that remark. Actually happy to continue the fight. I just think we’ve stumbled into the airways when we should’ve kept it in the MOA. Like I said, happy to continue the discussion as I think there is a lot of nuance and detail on both sides that all parties may not have considered. Perhaps we should start a diversity/affirmative action thread?

Disagree. I specifically asked for statistical evidence and not one-off anecdotal examples. Atlas absolutely got that hire wrong. Doesn’t change the fact that aviation has never been more safe. Blaming “diversity” for perceived a decline in safety that in reality is nonexistent is absolutely counterproductive.

Because I think it’s unfair to folks who are looking for real, useful information for you and I to turn this into a left/right shitthrowing contest & I regret engaging in the first place. I will answer your last question though. How does diversity improve airline safety? It doesn’t. That’s not the point of diversity. Diversity opens up the career to people for whom it may have been closed in the past. If it doesn’t harm safety (and despite the one off example you presented, statistically, aviation has gotten safer, not less safe since these hiring policies were implemented) then why is that a bad thing?

Too much thread derailment here & I fully admit to my role in it. Happy to continue this discussion in another thread. Let’s get back to helping good dudes & dudettes make career decisions & get hired.

I agree 100%. I worked at Giant for a stint & still have many friends there. I was shocked when that crash occurred & even more shocked when I heard about the circumstances. Epic fail on Atlas’s part. Can you think of any accidents that were caused by white pilots that had no business at the helm of a transport category aircraft? I can. Unfortunately, people slip through training for myriad reasons. In my experience, we’re doing a better job weeding them out now than we ever have before. Again, show me a statistic that says “diversity” is making us less safe.

So here’s where we diverge from the “why are these issues happening” discussion and get into the whole philosophy of diversity thing. I didn’t really want to engage earlier but I think this is important. Do you think there was ever a “meritocracy hiring system”? I don’t. There was a good ol’ boy network, but never a meritocracy. One of the benefits of of diversity is tight there in the description: you diversify your hiring pool. You end up with a larger pool of qualified candidates than you would’ve had before. Does it work perfectly? Of course not. But neither did the old system. You don’t think Billy Bob ever got put in the front seat of an F-4 or 727 because his brother-in-law knew the chief pilot & not because he was the best guy for the job? It’s all well and good to want to hire the best candidate but often times that’s an unrealistic pipe dream. Always has been. Always will be. For the folks arguing that we are less safe today because “diversity”, I challenge you to prove it. Don’t give me some one off, anecdotal example. Show me statistics that say commercial aviation is getting progressively less safe. Because all of the evidence that I’ve seen shows that we are far safer now than we were when Jimbo the Chief Pilot had the sole and final say on who got hired.

I am very much in favor of hiring qualified candidates, period. If unqualified people are in fact being hired, and lapses in safety are resulting, then that absolutely needs to be investigated. I’ve seen exactly zero actual evidence presented here to support that case. What does appear to be happening is that certain people would like to frame this issue to fit their own personal culture war narratives. This will not help us fix the problem.

TLDR version: Biden’s fault.

To be fair, various sources seem to have him somewhere between 30M on the low end, to over 500M on the high end. Salary figures vary wildly as well. I’m sure that just about every one of these “sources” is trying to paint a picture, be it good or bad. Suffice to say, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle & what I posted was, admittedly, likely at the high end. I stand by my sentiment however.

Guys, guys….GUYS! Listen up. Bashi appears to have this all figured out. He’s onto some obscure intel that we’ve all just missed somehow (it’s called RT or something). Now, he apparently had the whole Covid thing shacked from the get go, so obviously the US government and all its institutions will be wrong about everything, forever going forward. I say we just save ourselves some time, make him the Chief of Staff & then hopefully get a successful presidential campaign going for him for 2028. We’ll be back to being feared and respected (alongside our Russian allies) in no time.

Similar to where the Republicans were in 2016. I’m so tired of these parties and politicians running against something/someone rather than passionately advocating for their own platforms and ideas. And pundits like Carlson get an equal share of the blame (yeah, plenty of the CNN/MSNBC crowd does the same….this discussion is about the little bow tie boy for now). If he gave a shit about making this country a better place, he’d spend more time telling you why DeSantis or Haley make the best candidate, and less time getting you outraged at whatever perceived atrocity the other side has committed most recently. He doesn’t. He cares about ratings and being filthy rich (he’s worth $420M. His salary is $35M). Hell, even Rupert Murdoch admits he’s a shill but he’ll never be fired because he makes Fox too much money. Fuck Tucker and everyone like him.

Ahhh, so Tucker releases a few videos and says “see, all those people were just peaceful tourists”, and you take him at face value? You can have whatever opinion you want on whatever politician, but let’s get a few facts straight. Those people were not part of the guided Capitol tour. They broke through police lines and barricades and entered the building illegally. Were some of them calm and “peaceful”? Probably. But there were plenty who were willing to assault police officers and more than a few explicit threats directed at the lives politicians. Sorry, but when you join the angry mob, MAGA, woke, or otherwise, you’re signing up for potential unpleasant consequences. Veterans of all people should’ve understood the ramifications of the event they were choosing to participate in. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes and all that.

Great race yesterday from 3rd place down. Congrats to Fernando for representing the old guys. Where the hell did Aston Martin just come from? Also a solid showing at Williams which was solidly mid pack. Points for Albon and a good finish for the new Yank, Sergeant, who beat all of his rookie competitors. Shaping up to be an interesting season with some potential upsetters in the field. Not sure if anyone has the pace to chase down the Bulls though.