I think a lot of people are under this impression that you can objectively rank your candidates from 1 to 75,000 and just pick the top 10K. But we’re talking about admission to a flight school. Most applicants will have zero flight time or aviation experience, so what metrics are you going to use to make those rankings? Aptitude tests? (Can be helpful, but certainly not definitive.) In person interviews are far from objective. (How many excellent pilots have you known that interviewed here & didn’t get the job?) The Hogan? High school grades? (You’re gonna cut a guy who eats & breathes aviation because the other guy rocked it on his AP Chem test?)

How do you tell that #526 is 1 ranking better than #527, and so on? Show me a ranking system that does this & I’ll show you a consulting firm that walked away with $10M of our profit sharing by pulling the Hogan 2.0 entirely out of their backsides.

If you believe that it is, in fact possible to rank people that specifically, then I can totally follow your logic that a diversity initiative must necessarily involve compromising standards. I don’t personally believe that it is possible, which pretty well sums up the point where our realities diverge.

And understand, I’m not even arguing that implementing a diversity target is the right way to do things, just that as long as they are doing it in choosing from among well qualified candidates, it is a social, not a safety issue.

Their first criteria will likely be the Hogan.

Yeah and this is what it looks like at 30W in a B777 when you're heading from FRA to ORD. No relief pilot and a 22 year old who doesn't have a third of the hours needed for a American ATP.

Yea not the standard to be shooting for!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...ding-gear.html

The percentage is irrelevant. It is the fact that people are being hired and others are being excluded solely based on race. That is what this program does. Excluding minorities and women based solely on race was wrong and hiring the someone based solely on race is wrong too.
Are we going to make the NBA hire a certain percentage of white Or Asian guys and girls? Would that requirement and increased diversity make the league better? Maybe they should just continue to be able to hire the best basketball players? Maybe we should just hire the best pilots and leave race out of it. I have flown with awesome guys and girls of all races. Impeding the progress of someone who is white so that someone of color can take his place is racist.

So a 5'7" white guy can't play basketball in the NBA? That's discrimination. We need 50% of the slots going to short white guys from now on. Same goes for the NFL.

We have yet to see what the pool inbound to Aviate looks like, but I would assume that competitive applicants would have credentials far in excess of the minimums, just like those for any other competitive program. So while a GED is all that is required for Aviate, since a 4-year degree is required to be hired by United, I’m sure there will be ample college graduates applying to fill their rosters and then some. The my have some other basic aptitude stuff on the application as well. So while it may be more difficult to measure the difference between 1&10, it probably isn’t hard to differentiate between 1&1000.

I don’t know if I necessarily agree with that number, but at a certain distance, the differences on the spectrum of aptitude will be easier to see. What you really end up with is a certain percentage of guys that are over-qualified, a certain percentage that are adequately qualified, and a certain percentage that are under-qualified. Within those general divisions, a lot of the candidates will look the same on paper; and I’m skeptical of anyone in any industry who claims they can make much more accurate assessments than that from a resume, a personality test, or even an in-person interview.

Your stated measuring criteria of a 4 year degree & “basic aptitude stuff” will surely eliminate some from the bottom end, but are unlikely to do much to create clear rankings among the many thousands who will meet those standards. My sense is that United will have plenty of applicants that are either very well or adequately qualified for admission to a flight training program- to the extent they’ll be able to choose a diverse group from among their best options to fill 5,000 slots without needing to draw from the under-qualified ones. (My opinion only.) If they can’t, they’re not bound contractually (or even verbally if you look closely at their statements) to meet any diversity metric. In 2 months, no one’s going to remember they made this announcement- much less in 15 years when we can finally assess whether or not it actually resulted in a more diverse airline- so what would be the benefit to UAL of wasting training dollars on Aviate candidates that are measurably more likely to wash out than their peers?

That’s why I’m not bothered by this. But again, for anyone who thinks aptitude & qualification are as linear and easily apparent as many on this forum seem to, I can at least understand why that leads to outrage over the announcement.

This thread really needs the dead horse GIF of flightnfo.com days. Oh please weigh in General Lee...

This would be hysterically funny if not so tragic. Hard to imagine these two handling an emergency. Hiring pilots is serious business; social engineering should not be part of it. The most qualified candidates should be selected, regardless of skin color or gender.

“The two pilots were oblivious to the landing wheels being down and diverted to Nagpur when the fuel ran low, it was reported.

It was when they tried to lower the landing gear as they prepared to land that they realised it was already down, a source told The Times of India.

A spokesman for Air India told the paper that the two female pilots have been suspended.

He said: ‘The pilots were de-rostered (taken off flying duty) after the incident was reported.’

A serving long-haul airline captain told MailOnline Travel that he was surprised the pilots hadn't noticed the landing gear being down, if that was indeed the issue.

He said: 'I would say it is pretty staggering that the pilots - and cabin crew - wouldn't notice the huge difference in noise levels with the gear left down.”