Charlize Gutierrez-Lopez is getting a top-to-bottom look at American Airlines’ vast operations at DFW International Airport this week, touring everything from airplanes to the operations center where the carrier routes aircraft to gates.
American is starting early with students such as 16-year-old Gutierrez-Lopez, hoping the company can steer more young people into the industry, whether it be to fly airplanes or any of the hundreds of other jobs needed to get passengers and jets to their destination on time.
“It does feel like this is something I really could do,” said Gutierrez-Lopez, a home school student in Grapevine, Texas. “I want to go into the Air Force and going to this camp, it really opened up all these different career fields. It’s amazing.”
Grapevine’s Gutierrez-Lopez was one of 20 middle and high school students spending a week at DFW Airport and other aviation centers in North Texas through the Aerospace Career Education Academy headed by the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals.
Not only is the airline industry facing a shortage of pilots that has forced hundreds of flights to be canceled and carriers such as American to cut service to some small airports entirely, but companies are also trying to increase the representation of people of color in its pilot and executive ranks, two fields that have been overwhelmingly and historically white and male.
That pilot shortage is being felt the hardest at regional carriers and American has boosted pay to make it more competitive and offered recruitment bonuses to pay for expensive flight school training, but analysts and executives have said it will likely be years before the shortage is fixed. That’s why airlines are spending more time recruiting high school and middle school students.
“You’re not just harvesting crops, you’re planting trees that take years to produce fruit,” said Cory Glenn, an American Airlines 737 pilot and the company’s director of pilot recruitment.
American Airlines was the first commercial airline to hire a black pilot in 1964 and the first to hire a female pilot in 1973, but it’s been difficult to diversify the flight deck in the decades since. Today, some 13% of American Airlines’ pilots are people of color and 3% are Black. About 5% are women, according to the company.
“People tend to emulate the things that they see and they’re around, so historically there hasn’t been a lot of diversity,” Glenn said. “With cultivating and producing pilots, we’re being more intentional on the front end of making sure that we’re going to communities that represent more diversity.”
There has been some payoff. Among the 2,155 pilots hired in 2021, about 25% are people of color, 8% are women and 5% are Black. American Airlines leaders are hoping that’s just the start.
Chicago-based United Airlines said it wants half of its pilot cadets to be women or people of color by 2030.
Lahcen Armstrong, director of the local Future Aerospace Education program and a pilot with FedEx, said there’s no reason the airline industry shouldn’t reflect a cross-section of the American population.
“And so our goal is to make sure that as many people know about these opportunities and can formulate their educational and work plan to be able to pursue these opportunities down the road,” Armstrong said.
American Airlines’ summer camp is meant to expose students to all aspects of the industry since not everyone is cut out for the rigorous training required to be a commercial airline pilot. Students were shown maintenance, airport management and behind-the-scenes operations such as baggage. They spent a day with flight simulators and even toured a nearby flight kitchen to observe teams making food for passengers.
The program runs eight hours a day over six days. On the last day, they’ll make a trip to Dallas Executive Airport to connect with American Airlines’ Cadet Academy to see what the pilot training program is like.
This is the second of two programs that the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals is doing in North Texas. The organization holds camps in 30 cities nationwide and is starting to take applications for next year.
Gutierrez-Lopez has one advantage that many students don’t have. Her mother is a retired Federal Aviation Administration employee and heard about the program through an email at work. Others got word through high school aviation programs in the region.
But first, she’ll have to finish high school, and then decide if she wants to join the Air Force, go to college or take another path.
“I am thinking of piloting. However, I am (considering) a few other careers,” she said. “So this camp is really helping me decide.”
