The Matt Walsh Show - June 21, 2025


DEI Is Destroying The Air Travel Industry ｜ Proof For Your Liberal Friend

Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Conrad Aska Atlas Air Walsh Teresa Claiborne Elizabeth State Jada Williamson Keenan
Ep. 1617 - The Trans Agenda Was Just Dealt A Fatal Blow Ep. 1618 - Trump Bombed Iran. What's Next？

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

166.5

Word count

3,584

Sentence count

244

Harmful content

Misogyny

17

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

United Airlines says it wants to hire 50% of its new airline pilots to be women or people of color, but how many are they actually getting? And why aren t more Black women in the cockpit? To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsors

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 We require women and people of color to be involved in the interview.
00:00:06.120 I have never seen a black woman fly a plane. 1.00
00:00:09.260 With fewer than 1% of pilots and women of color.
00:00:12.620 In their various public statements and press releases, United Airlines has made it very clear that
00:00:16.720 they are mainly interested in hiring pilots on the basis of skin color and gender rather than competence.
00:00:23.080 In fact, they participated in a Vice documentary back in 2022, United did, about their DEI initiatives.
00:00:31.660 Watch.
00:00:32.940 So we are in a plane right now, about to take off with a student from United's new ABA Academy.
00:00:37.800 A bit nervous, but let's do this.
00:00:42.200 Pure 4 is training to become a pilot with United Airlines, which became the first major airline
00:00:47.460 to launch its own flight school at the beginning of this year.
00:00:50.240 But United is making another push.
00:00:53.620 It said half of its recruits are going to be women or people of color.
00:00:57.660 A pretty ambitious goal for airline pilots who are 93% white and 95% male.
00:01:04.500 Black women make up less than 1% of the pilot industry. 0.97
00:01:09.080 I have a confession, guys. 0.93
00:01:11.100 I have never seen a black woman fly a plane. 1.00
00:01:15.000 What made you want to become a pilot?
00:01:16.580 So I was a flight attendant for three years at a major U.S. airline and absolutely loved it.
00:01:23.020 So a couple of years ago, United decided that 50% of its new pilot recruits are going to be women or people of color,
00:01:29.640 and they're promoting flight attendants to make that happen. 0.97
00:01:32.060 Later on in that Vice documentary, it suggested that the point of this initiative is to alleviate the pilot shortage.
00:01:38.920 Well, how is that going?
00:01:40.860 A few days ago, the conservative commentator Ashley St. Clair posed a few questions to United based on some information
00:01:46.240 that she had received, and here's what she wrote, quote,
00:01:49.380 On July 29th, a United plane was nearly totaled after a hard landing.
00:01:54.180 Who was flying that aircraft?
00:01:55.800 Was the co-pilot a former flight attendant who was fired and then rehired through United's DEI program,
00:02:01.340 despite being on a list to not return to United?
00:02:04.180 Am I correct that this individual failed multiple trainings, including simulator training?
00:02:08.640 Am I also correct that United has covered up this DEI disaster and many others?
00:02:12.160 That's the question she posed, again, based on insider information that she had received.
00:02:18.180 Now, United didn't reply, which you may have noticed is something of a pattern.
00:02:22.700 No one thinks we deserve to know anything about what's going on in the cockpits of the planes that we are flying in.
00:02:28.700 You're just supposed to assume that everything's fine and that the flight attendants are transforming into master pilots at United's training academy.
00:02:36.220 But the more you look into the specifics of United's diversity initiatives, the less solid that assumption seems to be.
00:02:44.500 It turns out that United partners with several historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, as a way of recruiting pilots.
00:02:53.260 One of the popular statistics-focused accounts on X, which uses the name IO,
00:02:57.480 notice that two of the schools that United has decided to team up with, which is Delaware State and Elizabeth City State University,
00:03:05.640 are, quote, in the bottom 2% of all undergraduate institutions in the United States.
00:03:10.900 The bottom 2% is where they're finding their pilots.
00:03:15.420 Elizabeth State, the account noted, quote,
00:03:17.760 That's a pretty sobering reality, especially if you plan on flying United anytime soon.
00:03:36.160 Now, to be fair to United, they don't just recruit from HBCUs with no standards.
00:03:40.260 As a writer who goes by the pseudonym Pichi Kenan found, United also recruits from an organization called Sisters of the Skies.
00:03:48.500 Yes, that is an organization that sends pilots to United Airlines, and their acronym is literally SOS.
00:03:56.600 At least you can rest assured that they have a sense of humor at United as your plane is plummeting to the ground.
00:04:02.000 Maybe that will give you a little bit of a laugh.
00:04:04.720 And it gets better. Watch.
00:04:07.260 Jada Williamson's always dreamed of sitting in the cockpit and calling the shots. 1.00
00:04:11.880 What I like about flying is you get to see different things you've never seen.
00:04:17.480 But that dream of a career in aviation is a rare one for black girls to accomplish, with fewer than 1% of pilots women of color.
00:04:26.220 It was tough, I won't lie, because there was no one that looked like me.
00:04:29.640 Now, Captain Teresa Claiborne is part of a group of trailblazing black women pilots hoping to increase those numbers. 1.00
00:04:36.760 We believe if they see it, they can be it.
00:04:38.360 She was the first black female pilot in the U.S. Air Force and is president of Sisters of the Skies.
00:04:44.940 She is now a United Airlines pilot.
00:04:48.100 Why do you think more black women aren't becoming pilots? 1.00
00:04:51.540 It's extremely expensive.
00:04:53.300 I mean, it takes upwards of $100,000 to get your licensing to fly.
00:04:57.180 So, if our young ladies are not seeing it, if their parents don't have the funding for it, then it's not going to happen.
00:05:05.980 Well, that's inspirational.
00:05:07.280 If they can see it, they can be it.
00:05:10.120 You know, that's the kind of thing.
00:05:11.040 If you're flying in a plane, you know, that's what you want out of your pilot.
00:05:16.860 To know that, well, they saw it, at least.
00:05:20.080 That's the qualification that they fall into, that they saw it and they became it.
00:05:26.080 Now, again, this is an organization that's training the pilots that are flying commercial aircraft.
00:05:31.500 And this isn't training, really.
00:05:33.080 It's like a kindergarten classroom.
00:05:35.540 And with these vapid self-help slogans and inspirational slogans, at no point are these people concerned about safety or competence.
00:05:42.720 They want to put black women in the cockpit because they want to inspire more black women, and that makes them feel good.
00:05:51.420 Not because they think they're getting smarter or better pilots.
00:05:54.520 Because if you want to get smarter or better pilots, then that's all you're concerned with.
00:05:58.500 You just go looking for pilots who fit these qualifications, regardless of what they look like.
00:06:02.840 If they happen to be a black woman, then great. 1.00
00:06:05.180 If it ends up that you have no black women pilots, then that is also great. 1.00
00:06:08.880 Because if you're just hiring and recruiting based on merit, then whoever's in there is the best for the job.
00:06:14.260 And it's fantastic.
00:06:15.660 And this is not just some PR stunt.
00:06:17.340 United is actually falling through on this.
00:06:19.260 According to United's latest corporate diversity report, of the 51 students that graduated from United's first class of pilots,
00:06:25.420 quote, nearly 80% were women or people of color.
00:06:30.040 So they vastly exceeded their target of 50%.
00:06:33.120 And you can just decide for yourself whether they got to that 80% figure because it just so happened that almost all the most qualified people were women or people of color.
00:06:44.420 I mean, if you believe that, then fine.
00:06:47.760 They've almost completely eliminated white men in their training classes. 0.82
00:06:52.520 And we're led to believe that this is progress.
00:06:54.780 Meanwhile, pay no attention to the planes plummeting towards the ocean or smashing into the runway, which is happening right now.
00:07:04.020 To be clear, this is a problem that extends far beyond United Airlines.
00:07:07.820 I mean, they're maybe the most vocal about their DEI practices, but every airline does.
00:07:11.700 A few years ago, in February of 2019, an Amazon Air cargo plane, a Boeing 767 operated by a contractor called Atlas Air,
00:07:20.340 plummeted into the Trinity Bay near Houston.
00:07:22.780 Now, what was the reason for that crash?
00:07:25.820 Well, the first officer, Conrad Aska, accidentally pressed the button, giving the plane a massive jolt and thrust, which pitched the nose up.
00:07:34.300 And instead of reacting calmly to the situation, as trained good pilots are supposed to do,
00:07:40.020 he panicked and he forced the control column all the way down.
00:07:43.480 The plane broke through the clouds and disintegrated on impact with the water.
00:07:49.020 Now, Conrad Aska never should have been flying that plane.
00:07:51.800 Prior to joining Atlas Air and Amazon, he had worked for seven different airlines where he developed a reputation for pressing random buttons in emergencies.
00:08:00.680 He would always panic in the simulator and just lose all situational awareness and start pressing buttons.
00:08:07.320 But airlines kept putting him in the cockpit anyway.
00:08:11.360 And that's why, in its final report on the crash, the NTSB cited, quote,
00:08:15.220 systemic deficiencies in the aviation industry's selection and performance measurement practices,
00:08:20.160 which failed to address the first officer's aptitude-related deficiencies and maladaptive stress response.
00:08:25.980 Now, what explains those systemic deficiencies?
00:08:31.080 Well, we can't say for sure.
00:08:32.520 We do know that Conrad Aska was born in the Caribbean nation of Antigua.
00:08:36.660 He was a black man, which certainly checks some diversity boxes.
00:08:40.460 And we also know that Atlas Air's website is full of platitudes about the importance of hiring candidates based on certain characteristics,
00:08:47.080 like their race and gender.
00:08:48.300 So, we can come to some unauthorized theories here about why Conrad Aska was flying that plane.
00:08:57.100 And none of them are very encouraging.
00:08:59.940 Now, this is not to single out Amazon or United or Atlas.
00:09:04.500 This kind of diversity hiring is endemic in the aviation industry.
00:09:07.640 Keenan says that she's received several messages from pilots warning her of this danger in recent days.
00:09:14.260 So, here's one anonymous message that she posted, quote,
00:09:19.900 Every airline has an informal pilot assignment program that makes sure their unfireable DEI problem children are always paired with adult supervision.
00:09:29.220 These programs are maintained by aging boomers who are immune to the Kool-Aid. 1.00
00:09:33.720 As these guys retire, every flight will be a roll of the dice.
00:09:39.220 Now, remember back, we just talked about that flight that almost crashed into the ocean.
00:09:42.500 And you had the one person who didn't know what they were doing and pressed the wrong button.
00:09:47.040 And then the other guy that's trying to figure out, is that one of those situations?
00:09:51.580 Was this a babysitting mission?
00:09:53.440 We don't know.
00:09:55.380 This rampant DEI mandate doesn't just extend to airlines either.
00:09:58.720 A few weeks ago on the show, when I predicted that we're due for a major air disaster soon,
00:10:02.520 I talked mainly about DEI-based hiring and air traffic control.
00:10:06.340 There's also a push to diversify the ranks of companies that manufacture and install various airline parts.
00:10:11.560 And that includes companies like Spirit Aerosystems, which is no relation to Spirit Airlines,
00:10:16.760 which manufactured that door that blew out on the Alaska Airlines flight over Portland the other day.
00:10:23.000 Like United and Atlas Air, Spirit Aerosystems' website is full of DEI propaganda.
00:10:27.840 In fact, just days before the door blew out on the plane,
00:10:31.600 Spirit executives were posting eagerly on LinkedIn about their next big diversity event.
00:10:36.420 Meanwhile, the company knew they had more serious problems.
00:10:41.140 Shortly before the door fell off of a passenger plane mid-flight,
00:10:43.940 Spirit Aerosystems was hit with a class-action lawsuit in federal court.
00:10:48.220 And in the lawsuit, investors alleged that Spirit was aware of the systemic defects in their products,
00:10:54.120 but ignored them and falsified documents to hide them.
00:10:57.740 In one instance, the lawsuit alleged,
00:11:01.020 auditors repeatedly found torque wrenches in mechanics toolboxes that were not properly calibrated.
00:11:06.700 This was a potentially serious problem as a torque wrench that is out of calibration may not torque fasteners to the correct levels,
00:11:12.800 resulting in over-tightening or under-tightening that could threaten the structural integrity of the parts in question.
00:11:19.100 But the mechanics didn't want to comply with the audit.
00:11:21.120 Now, obviously, if these accusations are even remotely true,
00:11:35.660 they reveal some very concerning problems at a company that makes critical components for the planes that you are flying in.
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00:12:38.380 Moving on to this, Fox News says the Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers
00:12:43.920 who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions
00:12:48.980 under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency's website.
00:12:55.380 The FAA's website states,
00:12:56.720 Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy,
00:13:00.780 has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring.
00:13:04.820 They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy,
00:13:10.160 severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.
00:13:13.760 The initiative is part of the FAA's Diversity and Inclusion Hiring Plan,
00:13:17.540 which says diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel
00:13:22.380 across our nation and beyond.
00:13:25.320 The FAA's website shows the agency's guidelines on diversity hiring
00:13:27.920 were last updated on March 23rd, 2022.
00:13:34.360 So this is part of their diversity efforts is to get in people with disabilities.
00:13:40.120 Now, in fairness, just so that we don't engage in any clickbait hyperbole here,
00:13:46.820 this doesn't mean that United Airlines or Southwest is going to go and hire a blind,
00:13:54.380 mentally disabled dwarf to be a commercial pilot.
00:13:58.280 Now, I wouldn't be surprised if we get to that point, but that's not what this means,
00:14:03.500 at least not yet.
00:14:04.240 There are a lot of other jobs in the airline industry generally,
00:14:08.720 a lot of other jobs in the FAA.
00:14:11.180 And people who defend this policy or any DEI policy will argue that, you know,
00:14:15.480 they still have the same hiring standards in place that they always have.
00:14:19.140 So if they hire somebody with a physical disability or a psychiatric problem,
00:14:22.900 that person is still going to have to pass all the same tests
00:14:25.640 and demonstrate his fitness in the same way as anybody else,
00:14:28.060 which means that if they get the job, then they're qualified.
00:14:31.320 And that's the claim, right?
00:14:34.240 That's the DEI defense.
00:14:36.440 And in theory, that could be true in some cases.
00:14:41.260 Like, if there's a job filing paperwork or whatever at the FAA office,
00:14:46.960 there's no reason why somebody who's hearing impaired 1.00
00:14:50.040 couldn't be perfectly qualified to do that job.
00:14:54.000 So in theory, someone who happens to fulfill a DEI quota
00:14:57.180 doesn't need to be unqualified.
00:14:59.600 In theory.
00:15:02.340 But if that's all that was happening, right?
00:15:05.240 If they were just letting anybody apply and then hiring the best of that crop,
00:15:10.980 then you wouldn't need DEI because that was already the case.
00:15:17.020 Okay?
00:15:17.500 But, like, I'm pretty sure that prior to this DEI standard being put up on the website
00:15:23.980 or updated in 2022, prior to that, you know, you could be a hearing impaired person
00:15:31.360 and get a job filing paperwork at the FAA or whatever.
00:15:34.500 I mean, that was already the case.
00:15:36.620 So when you add in DEI, you're adding in something extra.
00:15:43.320 And what are you adding in?
00:15:44.480 Well, the moment you say, we need to get more of this sort of person into these positions,
00:15:51.740 right?
00:15:51.920 You're looking at a particular demographic, whether it's disabled, whether it's black people,
00:15:57.220 whether it's women, and you're looking at demographics and saying, we need more of them 0.97
00:16:01.000 specifically.
00:16:02.140 You're not saying, we need more qualified people.
00:16:04.320 You're saying, we need more of those people.
00:16:07.540 And even if you're saying, we need the most qualified of those people into this position,
00:16:11.920 even if that's what you're saying, which even that is not actually, like, that would
00:16:15.780 be better.
00:16:16.360 That would still be terrible.
00:16:17.600 That would be better than what they're actually doing.
00:16:22.380 But the moment you do that, then you are going to end up lowering standards.
00:16:27.020 Because with the current standards, right, before DEI, whatever the standards were, you
00:16:33.920 had however many people you had in whatever demographic, right?
00:16:38.300 And if you want more of that demographic, the standards are going to get lowered. 0.71
00:16:43.760 Because with the standards up here, you had, you know, standards were up here, you had X
00:16:48.960 number of people in your favorite demographic.
00:16:52.380 So if you want to get even more, then that means the standards are going down here.
00:16:57.020 And it's insane.
00:16:58.360 It's insane on many levels.
00:16:59.480 It's especially insane because to begin with, if you're looking at the airline industry and
00:17:06.420 you say, well, we have a minority of women, or we have a minority of black people, or we 0.83
00:17:10.380 have a minority of disabled people, that's not a problem.
00:17:15.020 Like, why is that a problem?
00:17:18.280 If the ranks are full of people who are qualified and few of the qualified people happen to be
00:17:24.440 female or black or whatever, who cares? 1.00
00:17:27.800 It doesn't matter.
00:17:28.920 It doesn't make a difference.
00:17:30.800 It's not a problem that needs to be solved.
00:17:34.580 As long as you're bringing in the most qualified people, whatever the demographic makeup happens
00:17:39.060 to be at the end of that, it doesn't matter.
00:17:41.240 It's not a problem.
00:17:42.080 And so if no one is black that ends up in that camp, not a problem. 1.00
00:17:56.360 If you end up with everyone is black, also not a problem, as long as race is not taken
00:18:01.220 into account at all and you're just hiring the best people.
00:18:04.040 But again, that's not how it goes.
00:18:06.940 And here's the CEO of United making it clear how it really works.
00:18:11.060 Listen.
00:18:11.180 How is diversity and diversity targets working into the Aviate Academy?
00:18:15.760 We have committed that 50% of the classes will be women or people of color.
00:18:22.340 Today, only 19% of our pilots at United Airlines are women or people of color.
00:18:27.220 And by the way, from all the data I've seen, that's the highest of any airline in the country.
00:18:31.140 White males don't just dominate in the cockpits. 0.99
00:18:32.880 Also, in the C-suite at United Airlines.
00:18:35.420 Well, look, at United, I'm proud of the diversity that we actually have in our C-suite.
00:18:39.100 I think if you look around corporate America.
00:18:41.060 Correct me if I'm saying, though, so this is just based off your website, the people you
00:18:43.500 list as executives, but out of 11 people, three are women.
00:18:46.120 I believe one is a person of color.
00:18:48.440 That's correct.
00:18:50.560 But in corporate America, I think.
00:18:52.740 That's a low bar.
00:18:53.660 How do you raise your own bar?
00:18:55.420 Well, a lot of this is focusing on it.
00:18:57.840 We have programs to.
00:18:59.980 One of the things we do is for every job when we're doing an interview, we require women 1.00
00:19:04.600 and people of color to be involved in the interview process.
00:19:07.780 Bringing people in early in their careers as well and giving them those opportunities.
00:19:13.620 Yeah, you know, you got to get those white males out of there, right? 1.00
00:19:17.440 You know, the white males, you know, the people that have made air travel into the safest form 0.96
00:19:24.640 of travel that's ever existed.
00:19:27.260 The form of travel where you're 35,000 feet in the air and going 400 miles an hour.
00:19:32.620 And that's the safest.
00:19:37.540 So, and the people who predominantly who achieved that were white males.
00:19:42.280 And so how do we thank them?
00:19:44.120 Let's get them out of there. 0.89
00:19:45.420 And when I say that the people who predominantly achieved that are white males, I'm not making
00:19:49.920 that up.
00:19:50.260 That's the proponents of DEI are the first to say that.
00:19:53.040 Like, they're the ones who are going to look at it and say, well, historically, it's been
00:19:56.220 a white male dominated field.
00:19:58.280 Okay, so you're the one saying that.
00:20:01.640 Okay, well, also, historically, what has this field achieved?
00:20:06.400 Those white males who are dominating the field, were they doing poorly?
00:20:10.200 Was there an issue?
00:20:11.020 Was there a problem?
00:20:12.320 Were they screwing up?
00:20:14.460 No.
00:20:14.840 Well, the people who not only invented human flight to begin with were white males. 0.59
00:20:22.940 And then the people who, even according to the DEI proponents, who made it unbelievably
00:20:27.260 safe were also predominantly white males.
00:20:31.900 So, yeah, we got to get them out.
00:20:33.740 Got to get those numbers down.
00:20:37.160 This is what we're doing.
00:20:37.860 We're looking at, we're saying, okay, here's an industry that's doing fantastically well,
00:20:46.540 has achieved feats unknown to mankind.
00:20:52.420 What's the demographic predominantly responsible for that?
00:20:56.840 Let's single them out and then try to get rid of them.
00:21:03.640 And that's what they're doing now. 0.70
00:21:05.000 It is, it is suicidal.
00:21:08.720 Well, I was going to say it's suicidal, but it's not really because the CEO of United probably
00:21:12.160 isn't even flying.
00:21:13.320 Like, he's probably flying private.
00:21:14.980 You know, he's not backing coach on a United flight.
00:21:18.860 So, it's not suicidal for him.
00:21:21.500 I bet you he wants to make sure that people flying his planes that he's on are the most
00:21:25.480 qualified.
00:21:26.600 So, no, it's not suicidal, really, as far as, it's homicidal, actually, is what it is.