Canceled flights, long lines, and overall chaos. Airlines are trying to keep up as travel demand goes through the roof following pandemic-related restrictions.
“We can't hire enough pilots to keep up with how many airplanes we have to fly,” Captain M’Lis Ward with United Airlines said. She is also an evaluator at the training center and has been flying for more than 30 years.At United Airlines’ expanding training center, pilots get first-hand experience in simulators. United plans to train around 5,000 pilots by 2030 through their United Aviate Academy, their pilot training school. Captain Champion said United is pretty well staffed currently.
“I'm not going to say that I felt incredibly welcomed as a woman of color…when I first got hired,” she said. “Thirty years ago to today, it's completely opposite.” “If you look at the demand for airline employees over the course of the next decade, if we don't cast a wider net and get underrepresented groups more excited about careers in aviation, we’re never going to be able to find the numbers of people that we need to staff our airline. Both at the airports and on board our aircraft. So that's a business imperative for us,” Captain Champion said.
Despite their skin color or what's in their pants let's just make sure the airlines maintain quality of pilots instead of sacrificing passenger safety.