Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has ordered commercial airlines across the United States to halt DEI hiring for pilots or face federal investigation and potential enforcement action.
Duffy said on Friday that the order, sent to airlines by the Federal Aviation Administration in the form of a mandatory ‘Operations Specification’ or OpSpec, was in accordance with one of President Trump’s early executive orders to restore merit-based hiring.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) didn’t actually provide any evidence that any airlines were hiring pilots through DEI initiatives, but Duffy said that rumors and allegations of airlines hiring based on race and sex had prompted the order.
The OpSec applies to 14 CFR Part 121 carriers, which, in layman’s terms, is any U.S. registered airline that operates regularly scheduled, commercial passenger or cargo flights.
The actual order is surprisingly simple and states: “The certificate holder shall ensure pilot hiring is exclusively merit-based to fulfil its duty to provide the highest possible degree of safety in the public interest.”
The FAA is using its powers under 49 U.S. Code § 44701(b) and (d), which allows the agency to prescribe minimum safety standards to enforce the order.
“When families board their aircraft, they should fly with confidence knowing the pilot behind the controls is the best of the best,” commented Duffy on Friday.
“The American people don’t care what their pilot looks like or their gender—they just care that they are most qualified man or woman for the job.”
Duffy added, “Safety drives everything we do, and this commonsense measure will increase transparency between passengers and airlines.”
Within a couple of weeks of Trump’s second term in office, the FAA announced that it was reversing a Biden administration decision that changed the name of an aviation safety publication system from ‘Notice to Airmen’ to ‘Notice to Air Mission.’
Commonly referred to as a NOTAM, the system is the primary method to provide updates to pilots about anything that may affect the safety of flight.
In 2021, the FAA adopted a recommendation from an external committee that had suggested changing the meaning of NOTAM to ‘Notice to Air Mission’ as part of a push to introduce gender-neutral language.
Other gender-neutral changes suggested by the committee included replacing ‘repairman’ with ‘technician,’ ‘airman’ with ‘aviator,’ and ‘manmade’ with ‘manufactured.’
Around the same time, the Biden administration stopped using the ‘cockpit’ and replaced it with ‘flight deck.’
Last September, Trump congratulated Delta Air Lines for its decision to ban two ‘woke’ references in its operations manuals.
The Atlanta-based carrier’s manuals now refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and NOTAMs are now officially known as Notice to Airmen.
Internationally, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) still refers to the Gulf of America as the Gulf of Mexico.
