UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

Your posting perked my ears up right away since my youngest sister is a pilot with over 11,000 hours and most of them in jets, with not so much as a scratch on any of those planes and no negative reports from any agency...so I called her to get her comments.

First off, she's against quotas just to check a box (i.e. # of Females...check; number of minorities...check)...but at the same time, over her career she's seen more than enough examples of gender bias against highly qualified women pilots, and I suspect she'd agree on the minority side as well. In my own biased opinion based on many talks with her, as well as a few flights, she's a fabulous pilot...and I'd tell anyone to trust their - and their families/friends - lives with her. She's obviously flown mostly with men and while the vast majority have been a pleasure to team with, there have been more than a few who took a "macho" approach to the unforgiving craft of flying, thereby upping the risk factor for passengers and crew.

My sister's view is that encouraging women and minorities to apply for training is a very good thing, but there must be no slackening of requirements when it comes to granting licenses and recruitment. If I remember the conversation accurately, the keys to an evaluation should not include gender, race or appearance, but rather Hours...Equipment (i.e. types of aircraft)...weather experience...types of flying...airports used, etc. While she benefitted from our Dad being a WWII B-17 pilot and later retired from a major airline flying everything from DC-3s to 747s and passing along a wealth of basic and subtle insights, the most important lesson she learned was that the aircraft only cares about 'how much you weigh'...everything about flying is physics and decision making... not gender, race, appearance or even sexual preference. Only in rare situations is a "manly" pilot needed (e.g. flying a P-51...need a super strong right leg to counter that engine's torque).

To that point about decision making...in my own experience, I once had a flight from Denver to Houston that was experiencing a protracted delay. As all of us passengers are twiddling our thumbs waiting for word on when we might leave, it becomes known that the entire crew for this flight is female...pilot, co-pilot and all cabin attendants...we also learn that the Captain is arguing for an alternate route that would take us around San Antonio, hang a left and come into Houston from the 'back side'...all because of concerns for serious weather. My sister acknowledged my suspicion that management was reluctant to authorize extra fuel and time for this route, but the Captain insisted and ultimately prevailed. Once we were in the air (it was nighttime) we could see off to our left a non-stop 'Fourth of July" display of lightning strikes all the way along our path to San Antonio...we all looked at each other and nodded silent thanks for the Captain's delay.

I'm not saying that every woman pilot is a 'Sully", or that the majority of male pilots of oafs...just that there's plenty of 'non-traditional' talent out there that needs to be sourced and evaluated fairly.