There are certain jobs where merit, experience, and competence should be the only factors that matter. Fighter pilots, brain surgeons, bomb defusal experts — you get the idea.
Aviation, in particular, is an industry where a single mistake can send hundreds of passengers plummeting toward an unplanned meeting with the ground. So, naturally, the person leading the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) should be a hard-nosed expert in air safety and operations, not a cheerleader for feel-good diversity policies.
And yet, here we are, discussing the potential nomination of Alex Wilcox for FAA Head — a man whose resume screams “corporate woke points” more than “air safety enforcer.”
Wilcox, CEO of JSX, has made it clear that his priorities lean heavily toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), proudly boasting about his company’s perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
In normal times, this might just be another eye-roll-worthy example of corporate virtue signaling. But with a string of recent aviation disasters and near-misses, the last thing America needs is an FAA chief more concerned with social justice initiatives than keeping planes in the air.
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that aviation safety has been on a troubling trajectory. The recent plane crashes, including the tragic Learjet 55 incident in Philadelphia and the horrifying mid-air collision near Washington, D.C., have shattered what was a 15-year streak of major airline crash-free years in the U.S.
Investigations into these disasters have pointed to air traffic control failures, pilot inexperience, and organizational mismanagement — exactly the kind of problems that get worse when hiring decisions are based on DEI checklists instead of raw competence.
Let’s be real: If you’re on a Boeing 737 at 35,000 feet and something goes wrong, do you care about the pilot’s demographic representation, or do you want the absolute best person in the cockpit? The same goes for the air traffic controller guiding them down.
Lives depend on these people being the best of the best, not the most diverse of the diverse.
Wilcox’s nomination highlights a broader problem infecting many high-stakes industries — choosing DEI over raw meritocracy. This isn’t just a theoretical concern; history is littered with examples of what happens when ideology gets in the way of expertise.
Or consider the U.S. military. The Army, Navy, and Air Force have all been struggling with recruiting and readiness issues while simultaneously doubling down on DEI initiatives. We now have West Point cadets receiving lessons on “whiteness” while fighter pilot training is seeing standards adjusted in the name of “equity.”
Call me crazy, but I’d prefer the guy flying an F-35 over enemy territory be selected because he’s the best, not because he checked the right demographic boxes.
But the problem with Wilcox extends far beyond his corporate virtue-signaling.
The leadership of the FAA demands discipline, stability, and an absolute focus on mission-critical operations. It demands a person to make tough, rational decisions under pressure and somebody with unimpeachable integrity. The record of Wilcox in and out of the public eye does not reflect those qualities.
Court filings from his divorce proceedings and other legal records raise serious questions about his personal character. The charges against Wilcox detail a pattern of disturbing behavior including: arrests for abusive behavior, physical altercations with his former wife and child, multiple encounters with police, and protective orders issued against him.
This behavior goes back decades and raises serious questions about his fitness for any leadership position, much less one as sensitive as FAA administrator.
At the end of the day, the FAA has one job: make sure planes take off, fly, and land safely. It doesn’t need a leader who views air travel as another battleground for identity politics.
It needs someone who understands the intricate systems of air traffic control, the regulatory hurdles airlines face, and the ever-evolving challenges of keeping America’s skies the safest in the world.
Instead, we have Wilcox, whose track record calls his personal judgment into question and suggests he’s more concerned with social activism than air safety. His airline, JSX, is essentially a boutique airline that operates on a semi-private business model — not exactly the same thing as managing the safety infrastructure of an entire nation’s commercial air traffic.
President Trump ran on a promise to eliminate DEI bloat from government agencies, and for good reason. The stakes are simply too high to play identity politics with essential services.
The FAA, in particular, should be one of the most ruthlessly meritocratic organizations in the country.
We don’t need an FAA administrator who spends their time bragging about corporate DEI scores. We need someone who will look at the latest near-miss reports, scrutinize pilot training programs, and crack down on regulatory failures before they lead to catastrophe.
Aviation is an industry where even a 99.99% success rate can still mean dozens of crashes and hundreds of lives lost. When competence is literally life or death, there is no room for experiments in social engineering.
Alex Wilcox’s focus on DEI over air safety and his checkered past make him the wrong choice to lead the FAA. We need a leader of unimpeachable integrity who understands that a commercial airline is not a college admissions office — it’s a finely tuned machine that requires the best and brightest, not the most diverse or politically correct.
The recent aviation disasters should serve as a final warning: When lives are on the line, meritocracy isn’t just an option — it’s the only option.
So let’s keep the social experiments where they belong — in liberal arts colleges and corporate HR departments. When it comes to air travel, I’d prefer the safest, most experienced, and most competent people running the show.
And if that’s a controversial take in 2025, then maybe we should all start driving.
Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, cybersecurity researcher, founder of ItFunk.Org, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity and politics, is regularly published by many of the largest news organizations in the world. Read more of his reports — Here.
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