Ray Cardello April 9, 2021

As a passenger on a commercial airliner, my only concern for the person in the pilot’s seat is that they are the most competent person available to get me and / or my loved ones off the ground, to our destination and safely back on the ground…..period. I don’t care if the person with the stripes on their arm is male or female, white or black or brown, young or old as long as they have the ability and competence to safely get the thin skinned metal tube with wings into the air, fly it a nearly 600 MPH at 40,000 feet and return it to the ground at our chosen destination. For United Airlines, that is all about to change. In an effort to improve the diversity of their staff of pilots, they will make safety secondary in their mission statement. My first and primary consideration on my travel mission statement is to never fly United Airlines in the future.

Currently, there are just 7% of United pilots that are women and 13% are people of color. That is about to change. In an aggressive new training program, over the next 10 years, 50% of the 5,000 pilots United will train will be women or people of color. There is no consideration of competence or level of safety, just diversity. According to United, it is time to diversify the cockpit!

I have always been mystified by flight. So much so that years ago I was working on getting my Sport Pilot license. No matter what the purpose for a given training flight, safety was always the number one consideration. Nothing else was even close. If you could not fly the plane safely, you didn’t fly. I believe every passenger on the thousands of planes in the sky above us have one thought in mind….they have faith in the ability of the pilot and crew and could not care less about the color or gender make-up of the cockpit. Unfortunately in this new woke world, United Airlines now feels that diversity usurps safety. It is far more important to have a black woman with marginal ability then an older white guy with thousands of hours of safe flight time in his log book. First of all, this is reverse discrimination and secondly, when safety is no longer a concern, I am no longer a passenger. It is amazing how open United is about this initiative. Being woke does not mean being smart. It is just a way to stay a step ahead of the cancel culture. When it comes to safety, give me a CEO with a spine and not one who kneels to the woke.

If a CEO of a corporation has the audacity to state that diversity of his workforce is more paramount than the safety of his customers, he or she has lost their way. When a passenger boards a plane with any colors on it wings or fuselage, they do so with an understanding that the crew on that plane is trained, competent and committed to the safety of their passengers. When a CEO deviates from this safety first mission, they need to find another career. They have become a danger to the public.

There appears to be no limit to the reach of the woke cancel culture. They are violating every aspect of our lives. Common sense is long gone and that is the first victim of any of these actions or decisions. As I mentioned in my post about MLB and the Georgia Voting Law, I do not agree with mass boycotts. I do believe that anyone thinking of flying on a United Airlines flight think twice. Not just to think about the actions of the company to change the make up of their workforce but think hard as to how safe you are getting into a plane operated by a company who has moved safety down their list of priorities. I will never sit in a United jet until they retract this incredibly stupid position. There are other planes in the air and most are still committed to getting you where you want to go safely and I don’t care what the pilot looks like.