When you hear “this is your captain speaking” on an airline flight in the United States, more than 90% of the time, the speaker is a white male. Just 3.4% of U.S. airline pilots are Black, 2.2% are of Asian descent, and a paltry 0.5% are Hispanic or Latino. Women make up just 4.6%.
As the U.S. population trends to greater racial and ethnic diversity, airline pilots look less like their passengers. This imbalance began after World War II when the airlines feasted on the glut of 200,000 military-trained pilots who returned to civilian life.
