Vernon Demerest

As a white male, I’ve spent the last 22 years flying with 99 % white males. I’ve run out of things to talk about and welcome the diversity this might bring to a flight deck I’m a member of. As long as they are qualified to be in the seat, being them on. The difficult part of this ambitious goal (at least 2500 non white males trained/placed at United Express carriers and ultimately United Airlines over the next 10 years) is finding those individuals and steering them in our direction (through Aviate). We won’t be the only carrier trying to attract these underrepresented future pilots. I hope our Aviate group is looking into junior high visits etc where career decisions are often formed because we are really going to need a ton of interest in order to see 2,500 success stories in ten years.

Over the years I’ve noticed a trend. During boarding, young people (age 6-15) traveling with their parents may or may not be interested in stopping by the flight deck for a quick tour and pic and their parents often direct the interest. White parents are far more prone to nudge their kid into the cockpit for a tour. I’ve noticed several parents that were non-white smile at my offer but say things like “he/she doesn’t need to be up there bothering you, or are you serious?” Non- white people don’t often know pilots personally and therefore aren’t as comfortable walking into a strange work environment while a larger percentage of whites do know or have airline pilots in their lives and feel more comfortable interacting with them in this setting. A cockpit visit confirmed my desire to do this for a living. I was around 6.