Americans care about flight safety, not what the crew “looks like or their gender,” the US transportation secretary has said

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a sweeping mandate requiring all commercial airlines to formally commit to merit-based hiring for pilots, explicitly barring the use of race or sex as factors in recruitment.

The directive, delivered via a new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Operations Specification (OpSpec), demands that carriers certify they have terminated any diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in pilot selection. Airlines that fail to comply face the threat of federal investigation.

“When families board their aircraft, they should fly with confidence knowing the pilot behind the controls is the best of the best,” Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a statement on Friday. “The American people don’t care what their pilot looks like or their gender – they just care that they are the most qualified man or woman for the job.”

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FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford stressed that the rule is fundamentally about safety. 

“It is a bare minimum expectation for airlines to hire the most qualified individual when making someone responsible for hundreds of lives at a time,” Bedford said. “Someone’s race, sex, or creed has nothing to do with their ability to fly and land aircraft safely.”

The Trump administration’s focus on aviation hiring practices intensified following a deadly midair collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines regional jet that killed 67 people last January, just days after President Donald Trump took office. In the aftermath, Trump publicly blamed DEI hiring practices at the FAA, which he alleged were inherited from the previous administration.

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While the FAA has already dismantled its internal DEI offices and raised performance standards, “allegations of airlines hiring based on race and sex remain,” according to the DOT. The new OpSpec is designed to close that gap by forcing transparency from the airlines themselves.

The mandate aligns with Trump’s wider campaign to purge DEI initiatives from the federal government and its regulated industries. 

The Department of War recently announced a “line-by-line” review of its contracts with small businesses, which Secretary Pete Hegseth described as “the oldest DEI program in the federal government” and a “breeding ground for fraud.”