In March of 2021, there was that hot mic incident, where a Southwest pilot was caught heaping abuse on Silicon Valley and the bay area in general - called us "goddamn liberal fucks” and “fucking weirdos.” He also slammed people from the Bay Area as people who are "probably driving around in fucking Hyundais. You don’t have balls unless you’re fucking rolling coal, man, goddamn it,”
Then there was the one who added “Let’s Go Brandon” to his intercom speech to the passengers, which I understand is a sort of pro-Trump political chant. This was strictly against the Southwest’s rules, too.
And now there was an October 18 incident which occurred at a San Jose hotel bar and involved a disagreement over mask wearing or masks, and the pilot assaulted another crew member.
Just where are they recruiting these yahoos from? I haven’t flown Southwest in a long time, and now I’m thinking I never will. I don’t want someone this unstable flying my metal tube.
Most pilots for the airlines were ex-Military. That was been true until the 2000s.
Now companies like Southwest are only 30% vets and the rest are through Private Flight Schools. Southwest runs their own, which might contribute to observed issues with their pilots.
BTW: in 1980s 70% of the pilots were vets. A lot of this is the boomers have retired out and the airlines weren’t prepared.
I would guess it’s happening at other airlines as well, but they have not been caught. Yet.
I have not flown since the pandemic but flew about a month ago on Southwest and no such incident on my flights. Bad eggs, broad brush, and all that - it’s is probably a rare thing to happen, but when it gets caught - hoo boy.
US Navy pilots on average might be the best pilots in the world. It takes a lot of skill and discipline to land on an air craft carrier at night. I mean I guess there are ones better at dogfights, but for the skills that apply to passenger jets, I’ll take a Navy Pilot.
Southwest does fly to some airports with rather short runways – Chicago-Midway, Burbank, Orange County. I’ve never flown from there, but I’ve heard a takeoff from Orange County is quite the experience.
There was another hot-mike incident in 2011, where the Southwest pilot complained that the flight crew he spent six months with was “a continuous stream of gays, grannies, and grandes.”:
Apparently Southwest has an Asshole Equal Opportunity hiring program.
I’m a poor traveler and had heard all the “warnings” about flying out of John Wayne Airport. So of course I found myself in that position in spring 1994, on a flight from Orange County to San Jose. The pilot made some speech about what was about to happen.
I was nervous as hell. But to be honest the difference between a “normal” takeoff and that one was minimal.
I was half expecting to go up nearly vertical, being pinned to my seat at 5g. It was really ordinary.
“Let’s Go Brandon” also apparently broadcast that slogan over the ATC emergency channel 121.5. Which is strictly against the FAA’s rules - it’s called the emergency channel for a reason. Also, that frequency gets picked up by ALL the towers and ATC’s in range and gets people alerted/alarmed. Really, that was the aviation equivalent of pranking the 911 system. Except aviation tends to frown even more heavily on that than the ground-based jurisdictions. Not Cool.
Having known a fair number of Southwest pilots in my time: yes, yes they do. Also some fine individuals there, too, but as usual the asshats attract the most attention.
Pilots overall, at least in my experience in the US, tend conservative/Republican/Libertarian. There are exceptions (looks in the mirror) but most of 'em seem to be to the right politically.
A white mother and her 10-year-old Black daughter were stopped by a Southwest employee and two Denver police officers after a flight attendant found them suspicious and suspected the mother of human trafficking.
This is apparently because they got on late (the mother’s brother had suddenly died) and wanted to sit together.
I thought the “Let’s go Brandon” meme was started by an NBC commentator at a NASCAR race thinking the crowd was chanting ‘Let’s go Brandon’, but actually they were chanting “F— Joe Biden”. How is that remotely like pranking the 911 system?
A non-emergency broadcast on frequency 121.5 is against the rules. Using that frequency to repeat a political slogan is pretty much the same as calling 911 and shouting “Let’s go Brandon!” into the handset. Except you wouldn’t be calling just one 911 in your area, it’s like calling ALL of the 911 operators in your area.
Ok I can see the connection… Pranking 911 could cost lives, so could pranking the ATC channel. I couldn’t find any info on the SW pilot using the ATC channel. Would you send a link to that? All I could find was that he used a plane’s public address system (CNN article). Thanks
And finally, Wikipedia which seems to indicate this was not limited to just one pilot.
Oh, and I’ll just throw in - aviation radio frequencies are strictly one-at-a-time transmissions - if two people try to talk at once all you get is a squeal. So if asshats are mucking up 121.5 with their political slogans then a REAL emergency call might not be able to get through the muck. Which is why you’re supposed to stay off it unless you’re actually having an emergency.
The general public might be more aware of/cheesed off by the intercom message. As a pilot I’m not happy about that, but people using 121.5 as a bully pulpit concerns me more.
Being just general public, I didn’t understand that pilots were using 121.5 to express political BS. I just thought it was a single-flight intercom, which is stupid but not actually hurting anyone. As a pilot, do you think it’s common for pilots to use 121.5 for personal agenda?
It’s happened at Southwest much too often to just be due to random chance. It does sound like a problem with pilot culture at this particular airline.
And these antics have resulted in multiple safety violations. In the latest case, it was malicious abuse of an emergency frequency. (A contributing factor to the worst accident in aviation history, the collision of two Boeing 747s at Tenerife, was a simultaneous pair of transmissions that interfered with each other and prevented the KLM jet from hearing a transmission that firmly established that the Pan Am jet was still on the runway.) In another case, the asshole mouthing off about “liberals” in the Bay area was not only getting worked up and angry in a critical phase of flight that should have had his full and undivided attention, he was explicitly violating the FAA rule about “no unnecessary chatter” during critical phases of flight operation. Lives were being endangered.