A push for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) within Australia’s airline industry risks turning our skies “into a deadly experiment”, a political commentator has warned.
John Mac Ghlionn wrote in a piece for Sky News on Tuesday that the “noble pursuit” of diversity brings with it a grave risk of danger by prioritising identity over competence, declaring that a “workforce selected for optics rather than expertise is destined for failure”.
“Australia has long prided itself on a world-class aviation sector, but recent trends in hiring practices could jeopardise the very safety that has earned it international respect,” Mac Ghlionn said.
He noted that DEI demands have been “enforced across all levels of aviation, from airport ground staff to pilots and air traffic controllers”, and that this has been driven by groups like the Australian Airports Alliance (AAA) and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).
The AAA “has embraced DEI policies with zeal, aiming to create workplaces that mirror Australia’s diverse population”, while CASA – the organisation responsible for regulating pilots, air-traffic controllers and engineers – has “aligned itself with the Diversity Council of Australia”, Mac Ghlionn said in his article.
Mac Ghlionn noted that ground operations at Australian airports were already plagued with delays and baggage issues, and said that DEI could have catastrophic flow-on effects as airports are “high-stakes hubs of precision” where missteps can cascade.
“Treating [airports] as social experiments risks more than efficiency; it risks lives,” he wrote.
Mac Ghlionn’s warning comes in the wake of the United States’ worst aviation disaster in over a decade when a passenger jet and a helicopter collided and crashed into the Potomac River near Washington DC on January 29, killing 67.
President Donald Trump blamed the rise of DEI and diversity directives brought in during the Biden administration for this and other related events.
This collision and Trump’s comments come just days after the President issued an executive order ending Biden-era DEI demands across America’s aviation industry.
As a press statement from the Trump White House announced, under ex-President Biden, America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sought to hire “individuals with serious infirmities that could impact the execution of their essential life-saving duties.”
“The Biden FAA specifically recruited and hired individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities, psychiatric issues and complete paralysis over other individuals who sought to work for the FAA,” the White House said.
Trump’s Presidential Memorandum aims to “End DEI Madness” as it instructs the Secretary of Transportation and the FAA to cease the DEI directives of the former administration and to “return to non-discriminatory, merit-based hiring”.
An Equal Opportunity Commission report that shows that the number of people working with disabilities in US agencies grew from 8.7% in the fiscal year 2016 to 10.5% at present.
A 2023 investigation by the New York Times revealed that near-collisions between commercial airlines occurred “multiple times a week, and at nearly all major airports”, and the FAA announced that 2024 saw the highest number of “serious runway incursions” since 2016.
Just this week there was another fatality in Arizona when two planes collided on a runaway, bringing the total number of fatal aviation incidents in America to four in the last two weeks alone.
These and related incidents across a range of sectors form what American essayist Harold Robertson has dubbed a Competence Crisis within which “changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent”.
Header image: Melbourne Airport (Phil Vabre (GFDL or GFDL), via Wikimedia Commons)
