But Army authorities are not naming her. Why would they want to delay on this? Any guesses? Nobody’s assuming anything, The co-pilot had around 500 hours of flying experience. But why is her identity under wraps?

Among the many dozens of commercial flights I’ve taken over the last half-century, I’m presuming that a certain percentage were piloted by women, and that’s fine. No big deal, par for the course, etc.

That said, I’m not about to discount concerns about DEI hires having an adverse or questionable effect on the aviation industry.

Try to be honest — if you were about to choose between two commercial flights from New York to Paris, and you knew for a fact that the pilot of flight #1, a middle-aged male veteran, had been hired on merit, and the pilot of flight #2, a woman in her 30s or 40s, had been hired to satisfy DEI quotas….which flight would you rather be on?

If you were told that two aircraft controllers monitoring the progress of your flight were (a) a merit-based hire and (b) a DEI hire, which would you choose?