PIERS MORGAN: What next for the corporate woke warriors at United Airlines – blind pilots? 

What’s the first thing you think of when you get on a plane?

Safety, right?

I mean, there are lots of other things you might think of as you take your seat – the leg room, the food menu, whether the WiFi works, how unspeakably annoying the stranger sitting next to you might turn out to be, or even worse, if the cabin steward will be one of those ghastly ‘comedian’ types cracking jokes and dancing their way through the safety routine?

But ultimately, the one constant thought process most of us when we board an aircraft that’s going to fly very fast very high up in the air is a simple one: ‘Please get me to my destination in one piece.’

And frankly, I don’t care who makes this happen in the cockpit, so long as they are extremely well trained, experienced and competent pilots who know exactly what they’re doing.

I certainly don’t care about a pilot’s gender or skin color.

What possible impact does that have on their ability to fly a plane safely?

All that matters in a pilot is their skill.

But United Airlines, one of America’s biggest airlines, yesterday announced a new recruitment strategy indicating that gender and skin color should very much now be a determining factor in who flies their planes.

‘Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day,’ read the statement. ‘That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color.’

To which my response is: why?

United Airlines, one of America’s biggest airlines, yesterday announced a new recruitment strategy indicating that gender and skin color should very much now be a determining factor in who flies their planes. Pictured: United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby

In a statement, United Airlines said: ‘Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day,’ read the statement. ‘That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color’

Currently 20% of United's pilots are made up of women or people of color, suggesting there has been absolutely no impediment to people from either of those groups becoming pilots for the airline if they want to, and are good enough. Pictured: United Airlines pilot at Chicago's O'Hare

Currently 20% of United’s pilots are made up of women or people of color, suggesting there has been absolutely no impediment to people from either of those groups becoming pilots for the airline if they want to, and are good enough. Pictured: United Airlines pilot at Chicago’s O’Hare

Currently 20% of United’s pilots are made up of women or people of color, suggesting there has been absolutely no impediment to people from either of those groups becoming pilots for the airline if they want to, and are good enough.

So, what is the need to bring in some 50% quota just to tick some ridiculous virtue-signalling box, with the obvious risk to safety if skill at flying a plane is no longer the key criteria to pilot selection?

And why, if the vast majority of United’s pilots have been white men whilst the airline has maintained a very good safety record, are those same white men now being directly discriminated against?

Why will thousands of them have to be ‘phased out’ to accommodate the new diversity push?

How does any of this make United a safer airline?

Further, as Tucker Carlson said on Fox News last night, if the ‘equity’ rule of diversity is to be truly equitable, then will it also apply to other industries like professional sport?

For example, 74.2% of NBA players are black.

This is not because of their skin color, it’s because they’re the best players.

Yet I haven’t heard woke liberals complain this is discriminatory or demand more ‘equity’ for white players, and a selection criteria that more accurately reflects the make-up of NBA fans (only 47% of whom are black).

The ‘equity’ woke pressure doesn’t work equally.

Carlson accused United’s executives of being ‘ideologues, suffering from an incurable brain disease called wokeness.’

He added: ‘Safety is no longer that airline’s concern – identity politics is.’

And it’s hard to argue against that charge, isn’t it?

The woke tyranny that’s swept through corporate America is now forcing companies like United into making these asinine, potentially deadly decisions purely to appease the woke mob and pre-emptively defend themselves against non-existent racism or sexism.

There’s no evidence that either women or black people have been negatively discriminated against by United in their pursuit of being pilots.

By all accounts, those who have made it have done so purely on merit and their flying ability, which is how it should be.

Just as those who make it in the NBA do so on merit.

It’s been a busy woke week for United who also joined in the corporate attacks on Georgia’s legislators over the State’s electoral reform furore.

(The reforms insist on a new requirement of photo ID or utility bill to support an absentee vote, something which will cause inevitable discrimination against black voters.)

‘Our mission is to connect people and unite the world,’ United tweeted. ‘We believe that one of the most effective ways to do this is to engage in the democratic process, which begins with voting – a vital civic duty. Legislation that infringes on the right to vote of fellow Americans is wrong.’

Twitter users reacting to the United Airlines announcement said that safety should be the focus in training

Twitter users reacting to the United Airlines announcement said that safety should be the focus in training

United thus joined other firms like Apple, Coca Cola and Delta Airlines claiming to be horrified by what Georgia is doing.

Now, let me be clear: I don’t agree with the electoral reforms either – because while they may reduce fraudulent voting, they will also massively reduce legitimate voting too.

That’s voter suppression. Pure and simple.

So, this is a flawed and anti-democratic political decision which should be strongly contested and overturned.

But spare me the indignant rage of firms which support boycotts of the kind conducted by Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred who just pulled the All-Star game from Atlanta – yet all remain in very lucrative uncritical business with China’s Communist Party which has a resolutely undemocratic one-party election system and is currently committing genocide against Uighur Muslims.

And if you really want to talk about discrimination against people of color in Georgia, where’s the woke corporate outcry over the Masters golf tournament which starts today and is run by a club steeped in appalling racism and sexism and whose leadership has refused to condemn Georgia’s electoral reform?

Lest we forget, until 1983, all players in the Masters were required to use the services of an Augusta National Club caddie, who by club tradition was always an African-American man. The club’s co-founder Clifford Roberts is reputed to have said, ‘as long as I’m alive, golfers will be white, and caddies will be black.’

Shamefully, Augusta only admitted its first black member in 1992 and its first woman member in 2012.

In Tiger Woods' absence, there is only one black player in this year's Masters tournament - and minorities make up less than 2% of all PGA pros, despite 21% of all golfers in America being black, Asian or Hispanic

In Tiger Woods' absence, there is only one black player in this year's Masters tournament, Cameron Champ (pictured)

In Tiger Woods’ absence, there is only one black player in this year’s Masters tournament, Cameron Champ (right), and minorities make up less than 2% of all PGA pros, despite 21% of all golfers in America being black, Asian or Hispanic. Yet I don’t hear firms like United querying this apparent discrimination or demanding the introduction of quotas for black golfers to play in the Masters or on the PGA tour

In Tiger Woods’ absence, there is only one black player in this year’s tournament, Cameron Champ, and minorities make up less than 2% of all PGA pros, despite 21% of all golfers in America being black, Asian or Hispanic.

Yet I don’t hear firms like United querying this apparent discrimination or demanding the introduction of quotas for black golfers to play in the Masters or on the PGA tour.

Similarly, spare me the ridiculous hypocrisy from the woke liberals of Hollywood who preach a lot about diversity but rarely practise it.

They’ve been jumping up and down about Georgia’s ‘racist’ electoral reforms.

But it was revealed last month that The Hollywood Foreign Press Association doesn’t have a single black journalist among its 87 members who decide the Golden Globes winners.

THAT is outrageous discrimination, and even more outrageous double standards given how much its members bang on about the urgent need for more diversity.

The bottom line is this: if terrified corporate America doesn’t stop genuflecting so weakly at the intolerant knee of the woke fascists, then where will all this nonsense lead?

Will advocates for blind people demand THEIR equal rights to pilot United planes?

That would be insane, obviously… yet that is where woke tyranny is dragging us, into the world of insanity.