On February 17, 2025 Delta Airlines/Endeavor Air flight 4819 crashed while landing at Toronto Pearson Airport. Its right wing slammed into the ground flipping the aircraft upside down. Miraculously, no one died. Of the 80 on board at least 21 were injured.
According to Delta, the apparently male captain has been flying since 2007, and the apparently female first officer was hired in January of 2024 and has been flying since April of 2024. Delta said both are “qualified and FAA certified for their positions.”
As one might expect, Democrats/socialists/communists (D/s/cs) are blaming Donald Trump’s FAA personnel cuts for the crash, implying Trump cut air traffic controllers, which must have caused the crash, even though it happened in Canada.
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After the crash, [Delta CEO Ed] Bastian said in an interview with "CBS Mornings" that, despite critics’ assertions, the Trump administration’s budget cuts did not have a negative impact on aviation safety.
"I understand that the cuts at this time are something that are raising questions, but the reality is there's over 50,000 people that work at the FAA. And the cuts, I understand, were 300 people, and they were in non-critical safety functions," Bastian said.
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Since then, Delta hasn’t released names or any other information about the pilots, which considering Delta and Endeavor have long been DEI-mad and publicized their all-female “unmanned” flights, raises reasonable questions.
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Who was actually flying the plane? Were they a DEI hire? Take the link to see the plane’s crash landing. The plane came down fast, apparently off the glide slope. When it touched down, it hit the runway so hard the landing gear collapsed and the right wing was driven into the runway, causing the plane to flip over. If the apparently female co-pilot was in control, why didn’t the reportedly far more experienced male pilot override her uncontrolled descent?
J. Joseph, a Marine aviator with over 30,000 hours, adds:
“What we do see … is that it appears that the rate of descent of the aircraft in the most recent videos shows that it doesn’t appear that the rate of descent was arrested prior to touchdown,” he said.
Joseph says too fast a rate of descent can lead to a hard landing, and “possibly impose structural damage to the aircraft.”
Videos of the incident show the plane bursting into flames upon landing at Pearson before ultimately ending up on its back, something Joseph noted was “very rare.”
Joseph says weather was also a factor, with strong winds reported at the time.
“Again, the very challenging gusty wind conditions that prevailed at the time of the mishap look like they would have contributed significantly to the workload of the pilots.”
“But again, clearly the rate of descent simply has to be arrested prior to touchdown.”
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Again, view the video, which clearly reveals the hard landing that collapsed the landing gear, which surely did “impose structural damage to the aircraft.” The weather conditions that may have contributed to the crash, specifically the rollover, also appear to have miraculously kept the cabin from going up in flames.
While President Trump is doing all he can to eliminate DEI, he has no power to compel it in private business, and even if Delta/Endeavor follows his lead to eliminate DEI it will take years to remove the damage. Trying to blame any crash on a president in office less than a month is ludicrous.
As this is written, we don’t know who was flying the plane. Nor can we be certain what caused the accident. That’s going to take many months and will be primarily investigated by Canadian aviation authorities. The video clearly shows the plane landing too hard, which led to the gear collapse and the rest, but there could be more involved than mere pilot error.
Nor can we hold that women are unable to deal with stressful situations and thus unqualified to be pilots. In 2003, Air Force pilot Kim Campbell’s A-10 was badly damaged on a combat mission. She lost all hydraulic assists and nursed her attack plane, which never flew again, back to safety using a redundant cable control mode which required great strength. She made a perfect landing even though her plane looked like Swiss cheese. It was extraordinary flying using a method few pilots would dare try. She won the Distinguished Flying Cross and was in another A-10 flying missions the next morning. In 2018 Navy F-18 veteran Tammie Jo Shults saved her Boeing 737-700 and everyone on board when an engine exploded at 32,000 feet. The cabin was breached and depressurized and a passenger killed, but Shults, incredibly calm, brought the plummeting airliner under control. Her book is worth reading.
DEI, of necessity, raises questions of competence. Hopefully, we’ll have answers soon, and equally hopefully, DEI will die a rapid and long overdue death.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.