United Airlines will prioritize women and people of color as it begins recruiting pilots to fill an impending wave of retirements over the next decade.
United Airlines To Restart Pilot Training Program, Focus On Diversity
In February 2020, United acquired its own flight school, called the United Aviate Academy. Then the pandemic hit and United shelved plans to train new pilots as thousands of its own pilots faced furloughs or work reductions.
But with airline demand surging, optimism over a wider rebound in the months ahead, and United’s pilot base one year older, United will begin accepting applications to its program again starting today.
The plan is to train 5,000 pilots by 2030, all of whom will be guaranteed a job at United. 100 students will be enrolled this year. United will also team up with JPMorgan Chase to offer scholarships to “thousands of students” plus offer financial aid packages through Sallie Mae. United has pledged $1.2 million for scholarships and Chase has pledged to match.
An important component of the program: half the students will be women or people of color. As United CEO Scott Kirby explained:
“Over the next decade, United will train 5,000 pilots who will be guaranteed a job with United, after they complete the requirements of the Aviate program – and our plan is for half of them to be women and people of color. We’re excited that JPMorgan Chase has agreed to support our work to diversify our pilot ranks and create new opportunities for thousands of women and people of color who want to pursue a career in aviation.”
United will ask the following organizations to make recommendations and help it choose scholarship recipients:
- Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals
- Sisters of the Skies
- Latino Pilots Association
- Professional Asian Pilots Association
Candidates that go through the program become pilots within two months, begin by flying for United Express carriers, and eventually transition to United mainline.
CONCLUSION
United Airlines will seek to diversify its flight decks by offering preference to female candidates and those of color. More broadly, it seeks to train and hire 5,000 pilots over the next decade.
images: United
This is a great initiative. Taking steps to improve diversity is important in its own right, but it’s also impressive that United is spending money on training pilots full stop. I mean this weekend Delta showed us what happens if you don’t have enough pilots on your roster.
Too little, too late. Why did it take until 2021 for them to acknowledge that they are racists?
Diversity means hiring a person based on their skin color and passing up other qualified candidates.
United already has more female pilots than any other carrier and they’re taking steps to increase diversity even more. What other airline is doing this? Lots to complain about in this world but no credit where credit is due?
I clicked “reply” to Joe Chivas but looks like it may have posted as a stand-alone comment.
Mark, 7% of United’s pilots are women and 13% are brown-skinned, and you think this is something they should be proud of? I’m sorry, but in today’s world, giving credit for “trying” or “taking steps” isn’t good enough to overcome systemic racism.
What exactly were the barriers to women and brown-skinned people becoming pilots immediately prior to this initiative @JoeChivas?
@Joe. If society were judged on too little too late we are lost as a human race. Are you actually saying because they didn’t recognize and do this before they should be judged now and not given credit for something desperately needed in our country? I don’t see this as a PR move. It’s a tangible step that will, over the next few generations, be a part of the real change. I mean, honestly, are these corporations supposed to just throw their arms up and say, “We did a piss poor job at this over the years so we better not change now or people will just say too little too late and judge us poorly for it.” Sure, judge the past. but how about encouraging the acceptance that they are recognizing the need for change now?
sounds like someone with a chip on her shoulder. And I am a woman
Nothing like picking applications based on their gender and skin color.
What happened to judging people by the content of their character????
Now we’re going back to using skin color as a way to pick people for work????
UAL was the first Major to initiate diversity in the pilot group. The comments here are totally ignorant. 35 years ago UAL hired any Female or Black that submitted an application and they rapidly filled the ranks with substandard and unqualified pilots. A significant number of these hires were unable to pass check rides, simulator training and were permanent F/O’s . This is what happens when you only hire for race and skip qualified applicants because they don’t meet your racial quotas. How would you love your family on a plane landing in CAT 3 conditions to be commanded by a pilot that had to have triple training and was below standard at every check? They are out there. UAL has dealt with this for 30 years and is the industry leader in Non upgradable First Officers. This has nothing to do with their race it is because UAL didn’t look at qualifications. Not everyone can pilot a Heavy Jet and do it perfectly every flight as we do across the industry every day. UAL hasn’t learned from the past. When AA began flow thrus from Eagle the failure rate was 50%! It was not race but below par pilots at Eagle. With safety critical jobs standards must be maintained and be totally color blind.
Many decorated military pilots with heavy time could not get an interview at UAL because they did not check the race box on the application and that was all that was important to UAL back in the day.
If someone self-identifies as a minority woman, can they qualify for the scholarships and hiring preferences?
Asking for a friend…
Unless they establish quotas for blind and/or deaf pilots, this initiative is just for show.
I’m a retired pilot – 12 years with the military and 30 years with the airlines….
Lets not kid ourselves that this is an issue similar to Boardroom diversity.
We want equal opportunity to whomever is able to meet a demonstrated compliance with the very high standards required to pilot an airliner and not simply replace that with a blanketed target of whatever colour, sex or background those applicants might come from to tick certain boxes.
Some of the very best (most capable) pilots I have ever flown with were women, and of all colours / ethnic backgrounds.
We should encourage diversity but ensure we award on merit and not based on aspirational diversity targets.
I think people should be hired based on their EXPERIENCE and QUALIFICATIONS, not on the color of their skin or gender, otherwise (United) it is a “favored” or biased reaction…… sort of like letting someone cut the line to make up for lost time, inequalities, arriving late etc. Life was so much simpler when people had to earn their way by education, experience, ability to cut it etc.
United is planning to become a newer version of Jim Crow. This article reads “United Airlines will seek to diversify its flight decks by offering preference to female candidates and those of color.”
I strongly object.
United’s United Aviate Academy should determine what are important attributes in a United pilot. Some might be
1. sufficient strength (doesn’t have to be Superman but should be able to operate some of the trim controls on a 737 that have been reported in the news to take some degree of strength – – could it be that 85% of people pass? If so, the 15% should not become United pilots).
2. quick thinking and problem solving
3. intermediate math skills, at least
4. good memory
5. psychiatric related issues – working as a team, absence of mental illness, working under pressure, etc.
There are tests for many of these traits. IQ has some relationship to one’s memory. I am sure that women and African Americans can do well when evaluated by these traits. There is probably a smaller pool of women because some women are siphoned off as teachers and nurses, jobs that some men stay away from.
@Derek.. United has done just what you asked for–determine what are the important qualifications to be one of their pilots. The answer was that 50% must be women and POC. In their view that is in and of itself the most important qualification.
Who knows tho–in 20 years the planes may only have computer pilots anyway, and all the human “pilot” will need to do is turn on the power switch.
@Russell , is there anything in what UA said to suggest they are bypassing qualifications and merit like you are worried about?
@JoEllen UA is hiring based on experience and qualifications. They are just acknowledging that it’s not only white men who can be experienced and qualified, or who can succeed and meet standards in their pilot training program.
Is your preference that they coast and continue to have their pilot training program filled by white men? Are you sure those people are actually the most qualified for the job? What makes you think so? Is your contention that women and POC trainees are, by the fact that they were specifically recruited for training because they hadn’t considered the opportunity before, less qualified or capable?
@DMYC,
I’m concerned that the debate is based more upon meeting certain diversity targets than merit…
That I have a problem with yes.
Don’t get me wrong on this either – I’m all for diversity in the flight deck (and anywhere else) but recruitment and upgrade needs to be based upon the core values of merit and capability rather than arbitrary targets of ‘a diversified and representative work-force’ that won’t necessarily make good pilots.
Why then not stick to the basics – As long as you fly well we’ll consider you for hire and upgrade…
Why then even bring diversity issues into it…?
@Russell , I think the difference in what I am saying is that UA is not trying to have a diversified and representative workforce that won’t necessarily make good pilots. They are trying to have a diversified and representative workforce that WILL make good pilots. It’s not an either or choice.
The thing is that this always gets framed as a choice BETWEEN quality and diversity, rather than an acknowledgment that there can and should be both quality and diversity, or an understanding that quality might actually IMPROVE when we increase diversity because we are tapping into pools of talent and experience that we didn’t tap into before.
Good, now that we’re hiring pilots based on what they look like, or their reproductive organs, it’s time for the next step: Duversity of victims. United ought to ensure that no group is over-represented among the victims of its airlines crashing. If an undesirable anomaly is found (say, too many federally-recognized minorities in one crash), a corrective action must be taken (more white cis-gendered men and women should in the next crash).
That would be difficult to achieve with the few crashes US airlines have had to date. But we’re apparently working on undoing that.
Your line of questions and implication towards my comments goes equally well with @Mike, @Cee, @William, @Russell, @ TWAJohn and @jcil. Don’t make people sound “racist” or gender biased because they have a different perspective on the issue…… and if United doesn’t get 50% of their candidates as POC or women, then what do they do to fill the gap ? I’ll wait for your reply.
I’ll choose the airline that doesn’t have diversity (anti white/anti men) quotas. White Men need to stop pretending there isn’t a race and isn’t a culture war going on. We should stop apologizing and stop making accommodations. We should be forcefully advocating for our own people and use our numbers to do so through any means while we still have them. No race in the world other than whites are told they can’t have a voice/pride/a caucus/their own land and countries. No one says Kenya/China/Saudi Arabia aren’t diverse enough. Diversity just means anti white. If you are a white lgbtqa feminist athiest, you might be ok. Sooner or later, non transgender white women will be persona non grata.
@JoEllen , you don’t need MY questions to reveal that your viewpoint assumes that there is naturally a tradeoff between diversity and quality. Is there a difference between a time “when people had to earn their way by education, experience, ability to cut it” and an initiative like UA’s in which a more diverse pool of people will have to earn their way by education, experience, ability to cut it?
(On the flip side, might it be a possibility that, hypothetically, the women and people of color UA will train will make better pilots than the people who would normally have access to the opportunity?)
Again, the point isn’t that they set aside a certain number of spots for women or people of color. It’s a recognition that there is a pool of talent that they have not tapped into. It’s something that they have to invest time and money in in order to find great candidates and train them. To get a training group of 100 white men (like me), all they need to do is post a Craigslist ad. To get 50 white men and 50 women/people of color, they need to actively make the opportunity known to affinity groups, aviation organizations, universities, etc.
They are workin toward a goal. My guess is they won’t quite hit that goal. What that will mean is not that 50% will be white men (for instance), and the rest will be split between qualified and unqualified pilots. The result will be that more than 50% will be white male pilots, a smaller percentage than 50 will be fully qualified women and people of color, and that they will work again to develop the talent pipeline for the next cycle.
Eventually, you want a representative group of qualified candidates to populate your training group with no extra effort! But that doesn’t happen with some effort up front.
TL;DR : It takes comparatively little effort to find qualified white make pilots. It takes more effort to develop a pool of qualified women and people of color. If you want x qualified white male pilots, you probably have to look at, say 5x candidates. If you want x qualified women and people of color, you need to find maybe 20x candidates to evaluate. It’s not because women and people of color are naturally inferior pilots. It’s because there are not a lot of them in the pipeline. It’s initiatives like this that aim to change that over the long term. That is a good thing.
We already elected a VP solely based on sex and color of skin, lol everything is fair game in this day and age
@Jackson Waterson – time for you to start WNA (White Nationalist Airlines)? You can be the CEO and the head of HR…hire all your Proud Boy friends.
@Jan as opposed to the guy elected in 2016, who was elected purely on qualifications, right?
The only thing I want to know is will they offer In flight tacos or waffles and fried chicken. By not offering these new meal choices, United is just all just talk and virtue signaling.
Just what you want in an airline pilot, not the best possible pilot, rather a diversity hire. That will definitely help when you’re nose diving towards the ocean.
Pretty grossed out by all the folks and their pathetic outrage here who believe that EXPANDING diversity means NOT hiring qualified people. And as for those who think white men are some sort of endangered species,
This is only a recruitment campaign, not fact. Not only United, but also all companies – you get hired if you know “someone”. Remember when Scott Kirby became the President of United, Andrew Nocella immediately got an executive position as well. Everyone knows but does not want to admit that “it’s not what you know, but who you know”. No matter how many years of experience, degree(s), qualifications you have, if you are African American, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian, your resume usually ends up in the trash can or the application email got deleted right away without even being read. If your name is “Shaniqua Johnston”, “Phuong Tran”, or “Jose Gonzalez”, good luck applying. You might get an interview as a “set up”, but you will likely get the “Thank you for your interest email”. Diversity is just a joke. All races, except white just have to accept that fact. Why? Because that is life.
Why should we expect or even want half of all commercial airline pilots to be women? “Equity” is a fig leaf for coercion and social engineering. What about three quarters of the NBA being black or teachers being female? Where are diversity, inclusion, and equity in the NBA? Is LeBron James enacting black supremacy?
Is this an April fools joke?
I am female and I think this is an outrage!!! United Airlines sounds so foolish making a statement like that!!! I will never fly United again, I cherish my life. What happened to hiring qualified people!!!! If it so happens that they are white men than so be it!!! This Country has become a nation so intent on proving its not racist that it has beome a nation of reverse raceism against WHITE MEN. In their effort to combat rascism they have become RACIST THEMSELVES! Your are cutting off your nose to spite your face. Good luck staying in business.