The End of the All-Male, All-White Cockpit

It has been 50 years since airlines started hiring women and people of color to fly passenger planes.

Commercial aviation has democratized travel and changed how Americans live, work and play. One part of the industry has not changed. 95 percent of airline pilots in the U.S. are male. Many of them are white.

A growing number of people are trying to change that. She used to dream about flying when she was a child.

She said that she told herself as a child that she was already a captain on a plane.

She expects to have her airline pilot's license within a year, bringing her a step closer to her goal.

For many like Ms. Percy, piloting has been out of reach. Few women and people of color aspire to fly planes because they don't see themselves in flight decks. The toll of discrimination can be discouraging. There is an urgent need for the industry to act. Airlines will have to learn to foster lasting change if they want to make the most of the recovery from the Pandemic.

Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, told analysts and reporters on Thursday that the pilot shortage is real.

Airlines are starting to do more. At least half of the pilots that United hires in the years ahead will be women or people of color. Similar initiatives have been launched by other carriers. The goal is to have enough staff to meet the industry's needs.

Being a pilot is more about fulfilling a personal dream than it is about meeting a need.

Cetrena Simmons, who grew up in Northern Illinois and recently began working as a pilot at Republic Airways, said it was unbelievable. After graduating college, Ms. Simmons joined Republic as a flight attendant and soon realized she wanted to be a pilot.

She said that even though she flies several times a day, she still feels the thrill every time she lands. It will always be exciting.

As air travel became more popular in the 1970s and 1980s, airline advertisements almost exclusively depicted pilots as white men, with some exceptions in publications directed at Black consumers, said Alan Meyer, a history professor at auburn University who is working on a book on the slow pace of racial integration in

It continues to reinforce the image of whiteness and maleness.

Airlines had only recently started hiring Black pilots, which was why there were few at the time. After winning a discrimination case before the Supreme Court, a former Air Force pilot became the first to be offered a job. Discrimination was banned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The first woman to command the cockpit for a major American passenger airline was hired by Frontier Airlines a decade later.

Undisguised bigotry was common. A co-pilot once told Ms. Warner not to touch anything in the flight deck. David Harris was hired by American Airlines at the same time that Mr. Green was hired, and he had to bite his tongue as a white co-pilot yelled at him.

Consumers or anyone else didn't have to make it a more hospitable work environment for airlines. Piloting jobs were well-paid and people stayed in them for a long time.

The industry's exclusionary past didn't feel so far away when Ms. Percy arrived at Texas Southern University. She and other students would visit a nearby flight school to buy study materials, take written federal exams and receive training because the university didn't own any planes. She said that some of the white students and instructors there made her and her peers feel like outsiders.

We would get very rude comments like, "Oh, wow, you guys are really flying down there?" or, "Oh, you want to be a pilot?" She said, "All of these different comments that suggest this is our club, you can't really be a part of it."

About $100,000 over two years. It takes experience to become a commercial airline pilot.

When she was in high school, Ms. Percy began to research flight training in earnest. She moved to New York City after putting her dream of becoming a pilot on hold and working several jobs to save up for it. She continued to work to pay for her studies at Long Island University.

Ms. Percy would arrive at the airport early to watch the planes and crews come and go. Unable to ignore her dream of becoming a pilot, she transferred to Texas Southern University in 2015, where she continued to work for about a year before deciding to focus on school.

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She asked what the cheat code was for universities.

The university's decision to stop partnering with the flight school made it difficult for Ms. Percy to get the pilot training she needed in time to graduate. She began flight training in earnest after she arrived at the Lt. Col.luke Weathers Jr. Flight Academy. Ms. Percy plans to pursue a PhD after she gets her airline pilot certification.

The payoff of flight school is getting better. The number of airline pilots in the U.S. decreased slightly last year, according to the FAA. Desperate airlines are starting to offer early-career pilots higher salaries, bigger bonuses and better schedules. A student can earn a six-figure salary within a decade of graduating, and a senior pilot at a major airline can easily earn several hundred thousand dollars per year. In an industry that seems to swing between good times and bad, the price is still daunting.

The armed forces have offered a less expensive path in the past. The military has struggled with pilot diversity and shortages. The Air Force has improved diversity among its active duty pilots, but still has a long way to go. The figures are still better than those for commercial airlines.

A lack of role models and exposure has played a central role in keeping women and people of color out of the field.

Allison McKay is the chief executive of Women in Aviation International.

The group is trying to change that. Every year, the nonprofit hosts an annual Girls in Aviation Day, with events around the world connecting pilots and other aviation professionals with children and students. The Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals and other groups are trying to expose more people to the field.

It might have helped Ricki Foster. She had never considered a career in aviation.

She first flew on a plane in 2001 when she was 18. She became a flight attendant after 10 years of working various jobs. A pilot offered to take her on a discovery flight, a common way for people to get an introduction to the profession that typically includes riding in the cockpit of a smaller plane.

Ms. Foster was immediately attracted to her. She had doubts. Is it possible that she could become a pilot with two children at home? Is it too late to switch careers? Is she able to afford the training? She read an article about a black woman who became a full-time United pilot in her 50s after holding several corporate jobs. Ms. Foster was inspired to pursue pilot training after seeing someone who had succeeded as a pilot.

She said it was nice to see herself represented.

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There are two pools, two aircraft maintenance hangars, five dorms, 27 planes, and dozens more on order at the Aviate Academy. It is owned by United, which bought the flight training school in 2020, and is part of the airline's goal of hiring 5,000 pilots by 2030. United is the first large U.S. airline to own a school. The carrier wants at least half of the pilots to be women or people of color. The airline said that 78 percent of the students are women or nonwhite.

Other efforts from major and regional carriers include United's school. American launched a partnership with flight schools in Arizona, Florida and Texas, offering prospective pilots training, financing and mentoring, with an eye toward diversity. Alaska Airlines and its regional partner unveiled a similar program in March. Universities with flight training programs are trying to recruit more women and people of color, and many have launched scholarships for students from underrepresented communities.

Major U.S. airlines are confident that they will be able to hire pilots in the future. Regional carriers that supply airlines with flights are struggling.

SkyWest, the largest regional airline, expects its aircraft utilization to be lower this year because it doesn't have enough pilots. The airline, which operates hundreds of daily flights for American, Delta Air Lines and United, had been working to address the shortage for years, but the PAIN made it worse, according to Robert Simmons, its chief financial officer.

After large scale buyouts and early retirements, large airlines have been picking up hundreds of pilots per month from regionals like SkyWest. Many of those being lured away are pilots.

The demand for our product has never been higher, Mr. Simmons said.

For years, Republic Airways has had shortages. Republic opened its own flight school three years before United.

Ms. Simmons was in the inaugural class. She applied for many jobs before she flew, including at Republic.

As soon as I got on the airplane for the first time as a flight attendant, I looked in the flight deck and said, "I would much rather do that."

The flight school can now train up to 300 students per year, thanks to Ms. Simmons. She started training after applying.

Ms. Simmons flew from Indianapolis to Newark. The captain of the flight let her take the lead.

We are lined up on the runway and I am not sure if this is a simulation or not. She recalled that there were people back there. I will definitely never forget it, it was very, very awesome.