Sadly, last week marked the end of the longest accident-free period in U.S. aviation history.
The sixteen years since the Colgan Air tragedy in Buffalo, New York, has taught us much. It also has also given way to a deadly presumption that safety can be equal or secondary to social engineering. While we do not yet know the cause of last week’s mid-air collision over the Potomac, President Donald Trump, in his January 30 press conference, pointed out the need to end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in all safety-sensitive positions across the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the military, and the aviation industry.
Ending DEI in U.S. air travel is arguably the single most important passenger safety goal the Trump administration faces. On January 22, Trump announced that the FAA will base all hiring and promotions only on merit. Those who control our skies, inspect and oversee manufacturers, airlines, and route systems, authorize pilot and technician credentials, and establish regulations—the 45,000-plus employees of the FAA—must be promoted solely on achievement. Sanity, it appears, is returning to our nation’s skies. We were tragically reminded last week why this initiative is imperative.
DEI-based hiring among airline pilots must likewise end. Most major airlines are government contractors. They fly the mail, move government personnel and equipment, and make up the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF). CRAF is a program that contractually commits airlines to provide supplement Defense Department airlifts in times of war or other national emergencies. As such, the administration’s policy applies to these contractor carriers. Yet, the airlines continue their DEI initiatives.
In a June 2021 Axios interview, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby stated that the airline is “committed to ensuring 50% of their graduating pilot classes will be women or people of color.” It is imperative that the federal government demand its contractors end woke hiring practices that put race and gender ahead of skill. The flying public and our nation’s troops deserve it.
Still, much work is ahead. Trump announced in his inaugural address that there are only two biological sexes—male and female. As such, the FAA’s pilot certification policies should follow suit. In 2016, the FAA loosened the rules for certifying transgender airline pilots by removing the label “gender identity disorder” for the term “Gender Dysphoria.”
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders states while “gender non-conformity is not in itself a mental disorder…Impulsivity, mood lability, and suicidal ideation occur commonly.” Suicide by airplane, while rare, happens. Germanwings 9525 was deliberately crashed by a suicidal co-pilot in March 2015, killing all on board.
That same year, “the U.S. Transgender Survey reported [that] 82% of respondents considered and 40% attempted suicide, 7% of whom attempted suicide during the past year.” Still, a year later, the FAA changed certification policy without conducting any formal studies examining the physical and mental effects of hormone therapy in pilots. In 2023, Nature magazine published an article examining 46 subsequent studies that detailed the side-effects of transgender hormone therapy, including increased anger and aggression, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and polycythemia [increased red blood cells that can lead to blood clots] which can lead to pilot incapacitation. Until these issues are addressed, the FAA must immediately stop issuing First Class Medical Certificates to gender dysphoric commercial airline pilots.
While the president’s two-sex mandate also warrants that the FAA stop issuing printed credentials that do not reflect birth sex, Trump’s order also applies to the flying public. The Real Id program is mandatory for all passengers transiting Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoints beginning May 7, 2025. As such, the agency can no longer accept identifications with “X” or genders other than birth-sex. Airline security requires transparency and truth. This is a huge win at a time when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that “the threat of Domestic and Foreign Terrorism in the Homeland Remains High.”
I applaud Trump and his cabinet team as they lead us through this terrible time with somber professionalism. The 67 souls lost in the Potomac crash last week must not have died in vain. Our industry must take bold action to implement policies that will ensure that safety, not social justice, is our guiding star. I am confident that the Trump administration will act on these, and other critical safety issues, in the coming weeks so that we can Make Aviation Great Again!
Captain Sherry Walker is a 33-year international wide-body Captain in the airline industry. She is also a professor, researcher, author, former union representative, pilot advocate, principal and founder of Walker Aero Solutions, expert witness, and co-founder of Airline Employees 4 Health Freedom.
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