The mystery surrounding the Delta pilot
deepens: Here’s the latest…

One article I read said that the captain of the plane was a male and his voice was on the ATC at approach, which usually means that the first officer (co-pilot) was at the controls. I'll let it to the NTSB and their Canadian counterparts to determine the cause. Thank God there were no fatalities and injuries were basically minor (no one is currently hospitalized). One report I read said that the snow may have put out the fire on landing and improved survivability.

There is NO such thing as a "restricted" Airline Transport Pilot license. You either have one, or you don't. And the co-pilot just got her ATP in January 2025, not 2023, with the MINIMUM number of hours required: 1500. I can tell you from experience, that took a lot of fudging. I would imagine her logbook contains some interesting and clever lies. Just like I thought: she's a DEI hire. She should never have been there. She totaled a multimillion-dollar aircraft, but despite her efforts, no one died. She's through.

She knew there was a sale at DSW and getting that plane on the ground as fast as possible! On the serious note. Right now Delta is trying to figure out how to save themselves from GIGANTIC lawsuits, because it is going to come out that (if she was truly the best qualified for the position there would NO problem releasing her info) she was under-qualified and put in that seat because of what WASN'T between her legs.

A leak on an X post showed her commercial license was issued January 9th of this year. Not proof, just another dot to connect. https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1892258026192556407?mx=2

Saying that "we don't know who was flying" is an uninformed statement. In any normal airline cockpit there is "pilot flying" and "pilot monitoring", and these roles swap, often at each leg. The "pilot monitoring" handles the radios, and the pilot flying only flies, requesting flap settings, etc from the 'pilot monitoring' The ATC tapes show that the pilot talking on the radio was a male, so this is 99% that the female, VERY low time pilot was flying. I didn't see an obviously too steep descent, but there was NO hint of a "flare" where the pilot is supposed to pull back on the yoke at about 30 feet or more above the runway to slow the rate of descent for a gentle touchdown. NO flare was visible, so they hit "harder than normal" due to poor piloting, most likely. It was a gusty day, and perhaps the gusts played somewhat of a factor, but I have flown on many VERY gusty days, in Kansas and especially in Wyoming, and gotten aboard many times without a problem. The ilot flying was a female, 99% sure, and she had very low flying hours, possibly even in the "restricted ATP" pilot credential zone between 1,000 and 1,500 total flying hours. She had to have at least 1,000 to get the 'restricted Airline Transport Pilot' rating to fly right seat (first office/copilot). Some sources say she was still in the "RATP" zone, but that hasn't been officially verified. Also, the landing gear on this skinny, tiny jet is actually mounted on the wings, NOT on the fuselage. So, a gear overload would snap the wing spar. Break the main gear in a hard landing, and the whole wing goes, this is a design "feature". The flight data recorder will get the instantaneous vertical speed at touchdown, and it will be known if this was or was not within the design specs of the main gear. If it was, there could have been a maintenance problem with the right gear. The Lear that crashed in Scottsdale recently had a maintenance problem with it's left main gear, and it snapped off on landing leading to a crash. Possibly something like that here. Or perhaps the rightwing was too low, in a 'forward slip', a valid pilot technique to deal with a right crosswind, but this technique requires the wings to be leveled just at the flare. No flare....no wing leveling??? We will know soon enough. Low time pilots are always more likely to make errors, and she was a low time pilot, by airline standards, but not extremely low. Unfortunately, like all new pilots today, most of her "Pilot in Command" time was sitting in the cockpit while a student flew around, while she occasionally demonstrated something for a minute or two. So 1,000 hours of PIC is NOT 1,000 hours actually doing all the flying.

Not true, #2. The FAA, in their infinite wisdom, raised the minimum flight hours for an ATP from 500 to 1500, which GREATLY exacerbated the airline pilot shortage. So, a few years ago, the FAA created the restricted ATP, which requires graduation from a few listed high quality commercial flight schools to obtain at 1,00 hours. Your information is outdated, was true about 15 years ago.

To think that Delta is my airline of choice. Delta best serves my city, and American and United are even worse. Delta's DEI is immediately apparent when I board the plane and encounter the funky-looking flight attendants, of all races. The upside-down crash in Toronto inspires no confidence in Delta or the other airlines, I think I'm going to sit on the ground for a while and go on road trips.

"A Delta flight operated by Endeavor Air" what does that mean? Was it an airplane owned by Delta Airlines with Endeavor Air pilots flying the plane? So they just swap out pilots from a pool of random pilots from God knows what company? Is this done by other airlines too?

Typo on #4, Restricted ATP' stsarts at 1,000 hours, and runs up to 1,500 hours. Delta's statement is intentionally dancing around with their "fully in compliance with FAA pilot licensing" or whatever similar lawyer-words they used.

Re #2 See this FAA document: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-61/subpart-G Specifically subsection 61.160, paragraph (h). No PIC for these restricted ATP until 1,500 hrs.

Re #8, a different company, a small airline, Endeavor Air, which is working as "doing business as Delta Connect" under contract to Delta. Now I believe that all US airlines except SW use this system.

Delta and Endeavor are in CYA mode at this point in time. The NTSB will take forever to analyze the crash. Both Delta and Endeavor are hoping the flying public will forget about the crash. Delta offering $30K to each passenger is a slap in the face. How about free travel forever on either Delta, or any of their subsidiaries to each passenger? In addition for all future flights, provide to each passenger, the rating, hours flown of each pilot, co-pilot, and any other cockpit trained individuals on any flight.

I've never cared about the color or race of the folks who drive me through the air or who serve me while in air; that's on either side of this argument. A white man flying a plane doesn't make me feel safer than anyone else. I do expect everyone to be adequately trained and capable. The pilots should know how to fly a plane and the attendants should have good manners and a servants heart. Some FAs of all stripes are mini, petty tyrants. Those are the issues for me. I thank the staff when I disembark, cause that's how my parents trained me.

Regardless of the co-pilot's credentials, the landing did not look right to me. My son is a captain for a major carrier and says the same. Meanwhile, others can speculate all they want until the facts become known.

When I saw a female commercial airlines pilot 10 years ago, I thought, there might be no better pilot in the air that night than she. Now, when I see a young white male pilot I think, he must have been SO GOOD in his pre-hire evaluations and testing that the airline could not afford to let him go to another airline.

To be fair to women pilots, my son flew F-15SE’s and believed some of his female colleagues were among the best pilots in each respective squadron of which he was a part. To my knowledge they all received the same training as the men, had to pass the same tests and all came back from tours in Kabul alive, well and successful in their missions. But he flew pre-Biden.

In the future when there is problem landing, they’ll say at least we didn’t crash land. The bar has definitely been raised for bad landings. .