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.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“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.”
The last time I flew was in 2016, a couple weeks before I retired. I flew on business regularly. I don’t miss it at all.
Well, best you start getting in shape!
You gotta lotta walking in your future!
BTW, thanks for noticing!
And here I thought stupid COVID regulations would keep me from flying ever again, but hiring pilots based solely on their skin color is the final nail.
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