Posted on 04/26/2022 2:37:21 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
It’s been a half-century since airlines started hiring women and people of color to fly passenger planes, allowing a handful of pioneering pilots into the flight deck.
In the decades since, commercial aviation has grown exponentially, democratizing travel and rewiring how Americans live, work and play. But one part of the industry has remained mostly the same. Piloting is stubbornly monolithic: About 95 percent of airline pilots in the U.S. today are male. Nearly as many are white.
Zakiya Percy is one of a small and growing number of people trying to change that. Ms. Percy, 29, used to dream about flying, watching planes pass overhead when she was growing up in San Francisco.
“I told myself as a kid, you’re already a captain on a 777 flying international,” she said. “You just have to get there.”
Now, Ms. Percy, who is Black and a first-generation college graduate, expects to have her airline pilot’s license within a year, bringing her a step closer to that goal.
For many like Ms. Percy, piloting has long been or seemed out of reach. Few women and people of color aspire to fly planes because they rarely see themselves in today’s flight decks. The cost of training and the toll of discrimination can be discouraging, too. Now there’s urgency for the industry to act. Pilots are in short supply, and if airlines want to make the most of the thriving recovery from the pandemic, they will have to learn to foster lasting change.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
**So you get on a plane, and you peek into the cockpit, and you see Stacey Abrams at the controls.**
And no one else, because there would be no room for a copilot.
I feel safer already.
Like that African guy who crashed the plane into the ocean even after 2 or 3 safety violations. This is what the woke media considers “progress”?
Hey lady!!!!!!
Yet anotger out right racist article by leftist media.
The article itself makes it very clear that cockpits are neither all-male, nor all-white. So the headline is a lie.
Blazin Cockpits!
now it will truly be a . . .
The because thing may be wrong. Not seeing people like yourself in cockpits is not the reason you don’t see people like yourself in cockpits. There are cultural forces at work which we know little about from not being in those cultures.
How long before standards are dropped and they deny doing it?
I think she is a very competent pilot with many years of experience.
Totally agree.....
They will have to stop calling it a “cockpit.”
‘Sup?
A couple months ago we were shooting approaches at Ontario and Approach, literally told a Pilot to NOT CONTACT him again and depart his airspace immediately, Nobody could understand a word he said, that is becoming the norm now for new pilots. Nobody has figured out where they will find Flight Instructors for all the pilots they want to get trained for all the big plans they have.
I forget to add, My flight instructor for private was a Girl!!
Oh, boy. Affirmative action pilots. What could possibly go wrong?
Niraj, published by the NYT, spells one word “white”. Niraj spells another word “Black”. Racist much?
If the intention hadn’t been for pilots to be men exclusively, why did they choose to call their workplace a “cockpit”?
I stopped flying commercial in 2003 thanks to TSA pretend security nonsense. I can drive almost anywhere I need to go in about a day.
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