There's a reason Tina Fey makes you laugh with this joke:
When you riff on patterns and stereotypes, you create comedy.
But comedy stops being funny when 67 people are killed in a horrific fireball over D.C.
After the horrific collision between the U.S. Army helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 at Reagan International Airport in January, the media slammed anyone who claimed the incident had anything to do with woke hiring principles that prioritize "diversity" and "inclusion" over ability and merit.
There was a coordinated media effort to hide the fact that one of the soldiers onboard was Captain Rebecca Lobach. That might raise harmful stereotypes that would hurt feelings, and feelings are the most important thing in the universe, right?
Lobach was flying that fateful night as part of annual flight evaluation that included the use of night-vision goggles. Her co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, warned her 15 seconds before the collision that she needed to turn.
From The New York Times:
Seconds after the Black Hawk crossed over the Tidal Basin, a shallow lake near the Washington Monument ringed by cherry trees, the controller informed the Army crew that a regional jet — Flight 5342 — was 'circling' to Runway 33.
Aviation experts said that development may have blindsided Captain Lobach.
Though she had flown four or five similar practice rides there over the years, she might have never confronted a landing on Runway 33, because it is used only 4 to 5 percent of the time.
Someone on the helicopter was holding down the microphone key when traffic controllers told the pilots that Flight 5342 was circling.
Still, Chief Warrant Officer Eaves confirmed that he was aware of Flight 5342 and responded to the tower.
Around 8:46 p.m., Warrant Officer Eaves responded to whatever he did hear of the circle-landing notification, using the call sign for his own flight: 'PAT two-five has traffic in sight. Request visual separation.'
"Visual separation" is pilot-speak for "I'll use my eyeballs to avoid other aircraft."
The air traffic controller granted the request, but it soon became clear that the helicopter was not deviating and the two aircraft were only a mile or so apart. To make matters worse, Lobach had flown the helicopter above the 200-foot maximum altitude for her flight plan.
'PAT two-five, do you have the CRJ in sight?' [the controller] asked, using the abbreviation for the model of Flight 5342's aircraft.
There was no response, even as a "conflict alert" chimed in the tower. The controller told the Army helicopter to "pass behind" Flight 5342, though the controller failed to warn them that the aircraft appeared "likely to merge" (what a euphemism).
At that point, Warrant Officer Eaves confirmed that he saw Flight 5342 a second time (requesting visual separation again) and told Captain Lobach to turn left.
The Black Hawk was 15 seconds away from crossing paths with the jet. Warrant Officer Eaves then turned his attention to Captain Lobach.
He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank.
Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at an altitude of roughly 300 feet.
She did not turn left.
What a brutal sentence.
Here's another brutal sentence:
Instead of seeing and avoiding Flight 5342, Captain Lobach continued flying straight at it.
The New York Times notes that Lobach had no known health or mental health issues. She simply didn't heed the order. We'll never know why.
It's sad that it reminds me of this Office clip:
We're so afraid as a culture of hurting people's feelings that we don't talk about things that are true.
We are only allowed to state truths in one direction. I can say "women drive less recklessly than men" and everyone would agree. No one would bat an eye if I said testosterone makes men more prone to risky behavior.
But if I note that men, on average, have superior spacial awareness, hand-eye coordination, and motor cortex activation due to testosterone, larger parietal lobes, etc ... well then, everyone loses their minds.
The question here is not whether women can become pilots. The question is whether Marxist hiring principles led Rebecca Lobach to fly a Blackhawk at night in congested airspace.
In other words, was Lobach trained as a pilot because she was a woman, or because she was qualified?
Considering the pictures of her support for LGBT causes and her time as a handpicked aide in the White House with Joe Biden, one has to wonder.
Unfortunately, woke DEI principles make it so we can't answer the question of competence (this is by design). That is why tensions between men and women and different groups are rising. Wokeness has destroyed trust. It was always intended to destroy trust.
And without trust in the system, people are going to assume that the worst is true to keep themselves safe.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
