Americans care about flight safety, not what the crew \u201clooks like or their gender,\u201d the US transportation secretary has said<\/p>\n
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a sweeping mandate requiring all commercial airlines to formally commit to merit-based hiring for pilots, explicitly barring the use of race or sex as factors in recruitment.
\nThe directive, delivered via a new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Operations Specification\u00a0(OpSpec), demands that carriers certify they have terminated any diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in pilot selection. Airlines that fail to comply face the threat of federal investigation.
\n\u201cWhen families board their aircraft, they should fly with confidence knowing the pilot behind the controls is the best of the best,\u201d Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a statement on Friday. \u201cThe American people don\u2019t care what their pilot looks like or their gender \u2013 they just care that they are the most qualified man or woman for the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
US aviation safety agency hiring people with \u2018severe intellectual disability\u2019<\/p>\n
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford stressed that the rule is fundamentally about safety.\u00a0
\n\u201cIt is a bare minimum expectation for airlines to hire the most qualified individual when making someone responsible for hundreds of lives at a time,\u201d Bedford said. \u201cSomeone\u2019s race, sex, or creed has nothing to do with their ability to fly and land aircraft safely.\u201d
\nThe Trump administration\u2019s focus on aviation hiring practices intensified following a deadly midair collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines regional jet that killed 67 people last January, just days after President Donald Trump took office. In the aftermath, Trump publicly blamed DEI hiring practices at the FAA, which he alleged were inherited from the previous administration.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Pentagon \u2018takes sledgehammer\u2019 to oldest DEI program<\/p>\n
While the FAA has already dismantled its internal DEI offices and raised performance standards, \u201callegations of airlines hiring based on race and sex remain,\u201d according to the DOT. The new OpSpec is designed to close that gap by forcing transparency from the airlines themselves.
\nThe mandate aligns with Trump\u2019s wider campaign to purge DEI initiatives from the federal government and its regulated industries.\u00a0
\nThe Department of War recently announced a \u201cline-by-line\u201d review of its contracts with small businesses, which Secretary Pete Hegseth described as \u201cthe oldest DEI program in the federal government\u201d and a \u201cbreeding ground for fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Americans care about flight safety, not what the crew \u201clooks like or their gender,\u201d the US transportation secretary has said The US Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a sweeping…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t