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MayBella82's avatar

As a Navy female pilot, I will take a “Lucy” over a “Steve” every time. I know the difference in the training. No one knows the guys names and they slide by compared to the females who every single person knows each female that is in training. There is nothing that slides by when you are a female pilot. No mistake that is not talked about.

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MayBella82's avatar

BTW, you will not find DEI in aviation. Flying is not for the weak mind.

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Kathy McCullough's avatar

Well maybe more DEI than we could have imagined 😔

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MayBella82's avatar

Sorry Kathy, you are the first non-military female pilot I have met. I will say that my best friend who flies for American only has great things to say about the females she has had the opportunity to fly with. Her comments are always positive about the military ones too. She has some interesting comments about a few of the men who were not military trained. There is about 10 of us who went through flight school that go on vacation together now that our kids are grown. It is interesting to hear the airline pilots compare experiences… we have American, Delta, UPS, FedEx and one who trains foreign students. I injured my back and got out of flying after 10 years.

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MayBella82's avatar

Yes, when the military hasn’t done their job and let women go to the next phase of flying because of pressure from Congress, women have died. I know of one who went into the back end of a carrier and another who ejected into the ground killing both herself and the instructor pilot. DEI doesn’t get you far in an environment that is unforgiving.

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Granite's avatar

Fair enough. When the price of incompetence is frequently death, chumps get weeded out. Especially if the instructor is in the same plane as the student. I can see DEI, etc only mattering on the margins in the naval aviation community.

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MayBella82's avatar

They don’t last … but it is not just the DEI. I’ve seen it with Academy grads given the benefit of doubt and it is the same. Flying doesn’t care about sex, race or how smart… common sense and being coordinated make better pilots.

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MayBella82's avatar

She is a commercial pilot… I said a female military pilot. I don’t trust any commercially train pilot whether a male or female. It is easy to tell them apart especially when landing.

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Kathy McCullough's avatar

Seriously? How? Because they “stick” the landing hard with a tail hook? Navy pilots in a crosswind? Then there’s that icy runway in Anchorage, max gross weight where you want it solid! The lack of knowledge on this thread is weird… how did people become experts on everything they haven’t done?

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MayBella82's avatar

Did you miss the part where I said I was a Navy H-46 pilot? You think it is easy to land on a Navy Aircraft Carrier? Or an Ammo ship where you have 2 feet clearance for your main mounts before you go over the side of the ship on a ship that is pitching and rolling? You must be Wonderwoman because those of us who have flown in that type weather have been to funerals of those who didn’t land the landing.

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Kathy McCullough's avatar

No MayBella - I disagree with your commercially trained pilot comment… seriously? We all have our strong points - airports don’t go up and down! But carriers face into the wind.

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MayBella82's avatar

What is your background? Ever fly at sea? We all have flown over land and landed at airports.

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MayBella82's avatar

And the carrier is still going up and down! I don’t know if you have been on a carrier in the Atlantic but the Atlantic Ocean is not flat. I’ve been in seas up to 35 feet… granted, we were not flying and everyone was strapped in. But we fly in bad weather. My best friend and her co-pilot got vertigo in an E-2… could not get out of it. She landed the plane with a bad case of vertigo and both her and her co-pilot were in medical for 3 days. If they had not landed on the flight deck, their next option was ditching the plane and sending the helo to pick them up out of the water. I don’t know one pilot who not rather land on a runway when there is a problem than having the ocean as your option.

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Kathy McCullough's avatar

You’re not listening to me. I am not not not minimizing your skills. Period. I am saying we all have different ones and the idea that a navy pilot is better than a marine pilot is better than an army pilot is better than a commercial pilot is all BS.

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MayBella82's avatar

I forgot to mention… this is an ad.

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BeadleBlog's avatar

I'm dumbfounded by the misogyny among the females and the blase character attacks of females. I'll bet these same females believe children should be under the care of the "backbiting," hysterical and nasty creatures they describe. I would not have let one of these women near my (3) children when they were young. They should definitely be out of the house and only around adults who can fight back.

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MayBella82's avatar

I am too. None of my friends think like this... and you don't either. I wonder if it is because we worked in a non-traditional job for women... we worked hard and earned the respect of men.

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MayBella82's avatar

Also, I think they have not control over their emotions... two of them was talking about being useless in an emergency. I've been around enough men to know that some of them are horrible in an emergency too. Being calm in an emergemcy has to do with compartimizing and not what sex you are. n

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