A Frontier Airlines passenger took to social media to complain about a pilot on board flight 3212 on Monday wearing a Trump cap while taking them from Los Angeles to Dallas – Fort Worth. This is generally not allowed and the photo is going viral across various social media platforms.
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Pilots tend to skew conservative. A few years ago they were making announcements “Let’s Go Brandon” and that made it into air traffic control chatter too.
Unfortunately, Airlines Get Political All The Time
One commenter, obviously with a differing political viewpoint than the pilot, suggests that “He probably assumes that all his passengers agree with him, because you don’t fly Frontier unless you’re a terrible decision maker.”
It’s certainly not only Frontier, though, where cabin crew make political statements with the backing of the airline. United had stood by cabin crew wearing a Palestinian flag pin and keffiyeh lanyard, going through backflips to justify it against uniform standards that wouldn’t allow it, calling the flag pin a ‘language pin’.
And a United pilot who celebrated murder and rape by Hamas on October 7th and was suspended with pay once called out on social media apparently still flies for the carrier, based on a review of their social media.
United, of course, involves itself in political issues having little to do with aviation – for instance asking California voters to support affirmative action.
Former American Airlines CEO Doug Parker replaced his wristband that said CECFTM (“Create an Environment that Cares for our Frontline Team Members”) with a Black Lives Matter wristband in May 2020.
More broadly, though, airlines are intertwined with governments and virtually everything they do becomes political. Airlines frequently operate routes for political rather than economic reasons, whether it’s Qatar, Emirates, Etihad and Saudia all flying to Washington, D.C. or American Airlines explicitly agreeing to continue air service during the pandemic to a small city in exchange for their local representative in Congress supporting continued airline subsidies.
Airports in the U.S. are largely owned by governments, and security screening and air traffic control are carried out by (and not merely regulated by) government. There’s very little in aviation untouched by politics.
This Isn’t An Issue Of Pilot Speech
While attire like this will violate the uniform standards of almost every airline, it’s also problematic for another reason: some of you who like the message might defend it as the pilot’s ‘free speech’ but it’s also asymmetric speech. The pilot exercise command authority over the aircraft and everyone in it.
49 USC § 44902 provides broad latitude, within certain bounds laid out by the FAA, for the captain of an aircraft to refuse transportation to a passenger if they feel that passenger might be “inimical to safety.”
A pilot’s decision cannot be arbitrary or capricious – but that’s not the same as saying it has to be reasonable! It’s generally presumed that the actions of the pilot are reasonable, and judged based on facts the pilot was aware of at the time and the time constraints they’re under.
- If they’re given only one side of the story, and it’s incomplete
- And they make a decision based on that information
- And they’re in a rush to get the plane out
- That’s probably going to be fine under the law
So if the captain felt that a passenger could be a safety risk solely because they expressed political opinions in the cabin contrary to their own they might well be deemed a risk to the safety of the aircraft and there’s very little grounds for reviewing that decision.
Keep Politics Out Of The Cabin
After President Trump was elected the first time, a United Airlines pilot announced that everyone had to keep politics off the plane. Passengers cheered. No matter your feelings about silly memes or the President of the United States, there are some places where we should be left alone. Stuck in a metal tube, you can’t escape a pilot’s politics.