Here’s the Alaska Airlines July 2024 DEI update:
Their commitments didn’t include committing to flying to Seattle from FLL on February 20, 2025 at 7:00 am. I got a text message from them about cancellation just as I was walking up to the gate shortly before 6:00 am. Note that their plan is a 30-hour delay (the substitute 3-leg flight is on February 21, a day later than the original 2-leg flight):
(A lot of other passengers got texts with the same itinerary and none of them complained to the gate agent because Alaska Airlines had wisely chosen not to send any personnel to the gate. Everyone gathered in a Fall of Saigon scene back at the ticket counter and then at a carousel to retrieve what would have been our checked bags.)
What was Alaska Airlines working on if not getting us to the destination that we’d paid for? The skin tone and gender ID of the pilots: “125 new students enrolled in the Ascend Pilot Academy (26% BIPOC, 36% Female). Surpassed commitment to increase Black female pilots at Air Group by nearly 33%.”
For those concerned about safety, the good news is that a DEI pilot hire can’t crash an airliner that never takes off.
My DEI day started hours earlier. If I’d wanted to do a slow three-leg trip to Fairbanks I could have done it starting at nearby PBI. Instead, I chose to fly from FLL, which is an hour’s drive away. Because it would be 4:15 am and I might want to snooze, I reserved “Uber Premier” at over $190 rather than Uber Comfort at $110. Initially a pavement-melting GMC Yukon was going to show up, but then either the driver canceled or Uber canceled him because he wasn’t expected to arrive by 4:15 am. A 2022 Tesla 3 was substituted. The driver was a nice guy and I learned a fair amount about Teslas (he’s test-driven the new Model 3 and says that it is noticeably quieter inside, the doors close more solidly, and FSD works great). However, I don’t think the Model 3 qualifies as “Premier”; it’s a “Comfort”-class car. Uber still charged the originally quoted $190+ price despite not delivering a “Premier” car. I’m surprised that they haven’t been sued for this by an energetic class action lawyer. Uber doesn’t have a customer service phone number (some sort of AI chatbot instead for questions about charges), which means Uber has pocketed the extra cash for all similar downgrades unless a customer has gone to the trouble of disputing the charge with his/her/zir/their credit card bank.
Here’s part of Uber’s site:
From their 2024 ESG report:
They weren’t committed to keeping the Uber Premier appointment that they’d made, but they say they are committed to “racial equity”.
Rationally I can accept that incompetence and indifference to the customer are both possible (even plausible given the concentration and lack of competition in both U.S. airlines and U.S. ride sharing) without a percentage of corporate focus being devoted to DEI. But it is tough to avoid the temptation to search for “Company X diversity” after a negative customer experience. That makes me a hater?
The logical conclusion is that DEI and a breakdown in being able to operate complex systems are related… Zimbabwe has great DEI, but they can’t manage commercial farming practices, so they’re starving.
The “I” in DEI is entirely one-sided. “Inclusion” only applies if you conform to their beliefs (and embrace the Rainbow flag if you’re part of LGBTQIA2-S).
And since “I” is one-sided, “E” naturally fails — there can be no true “Equity” without genuine “Inclusion.”
“D,” however, is the exception — it’s the only part that isn’t one-sided, as long as you belong to the DEI club.
We should soon find out where the Supreme Court stands on DEI: “Supreme Court signals it will make it easier for Americans to file ‘reverse discrimination’ suits” [1].
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/politics/reverse-discrimination-supreme-court-melanie-ames/index.html
I think you are reading too much in these web pages. The fact a company claims ‘we are committed to whatever’, well, that is purely advertising. The fact Uber is happy to take your money leaving you with little recourse is clear sign of their commitment to making $$$, and leaves open to empirical questioning any other form of commitment. The fact that an airliner leaves you stranded could be more simply explained by incompetence, which is likely present irrespective of any DEI commitment or action.
Federico: unless Alaska Airlines has infinite staff and capacity, isn’t it inevitable that hours and effort devoted to DEI (including preparing reports and web pages) are unavailable to support other corporate priorities, such as flight operations?
I used to like fly Alaskan. I valued flying safely over the fact that some of their (wite male) pilots wer far from be courteous. They were always a little early at their destinations. Some flights were eventful as we flew in a version of Boeing that was soon grounded. Lack of pilot courtesy was well compensated by courteous female stuardesses. Recently Alaskan anounced merge with Hawaian and apparently updated their website
If Alaskan now swaps rude pilots and courteoses stuardesses places I might have to cut my flying time.
Phil, aside that the code monkeys doing webpages would not be doing anything useful for your trip, doesn’t Alaska A. simply outsource this kind of work? who does it in house? and, aside from a trivially small investment in having a DEI page, do we know that Alaska A. is actually investing anything more than petty cash in it, so much so that your trip was impacted? do you know they prepare reports? and do you know that preparing reports would come at a cost in operational effectiveness?
If you look at the referenced page, the company has at least a couple of dozen DEI initiatives. They pay a director-level executive specifically for DEI: https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/dei-director-2021/
Alaska Airlines seems to have chosen half of its board of directors to meet a stated DEI objective of “gender parity”: “ Alaska is proud to be the only airline – and the first West Coast Fortune 500 company – to achieve gender parity among independent board directors.” — https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/gender-diversity-2/
Instead of paying DEI staff, the airline could be paying some reserve flight attendants. Had they paid a reserve F/A instead of a DEI staffer they would not have left 150 people stranded in Fort Lauderdale. I assume that DEI has business value because otherwise big American companies wouldn’t invest in it. Maybe the value is to righteous customers or government overlords. But it has no value to me since I (1) don’t see color or gender ID, and (2) wanted to get to Alaska.
Phil, how do you know any cash saved by doing whatever would have not then just siphoned off as extra salary for the CEO and the board? your argument could have been ‘if they halved the pay of the CEO and the boards they could have had enough money for one F/A’ with no change in logic.
Federico: if we assume that Alaska Airlines pays market salaries for each role, the savings from getting rid of a function (DEI) are real while there are no savings from paying less (since the result would be getting lower quality people). Imagine a company with a basket-weaving department in which the baskets produced are never sold. It would be 100% savings if this department were axed.
Federico, how do you know that the DEI money would not have instead go to Alaskan owners, ie investors? Because large investors seat on the board and pay the CEO. So they and the CEO already have minimal compensation for which they agree to invest their capital and time, they would be someplace else otherwise. For them, DEI grade is a substitute for customer satisfaction. If not it they would care more for the passengers and would have committed more resources to keep customer happy instead of DEI branding.
@Federico, you’re assuming that to fund DEI a budget cuts is made somewhere. That’s hardly the case. The most common and logical way companies fund DEI is by increasing the price of the goods and services they sell. In the end, with DEI, everyone loses.
I thought DEI was part of the western-world corporogovernance ESG push, so likely Alaskan was trying to maximize investment compliance.
Zero evidence of DEI influence here. But hey, this is now a post-fact world.
It is great that the USA gives you the freedom to be scammed like this. If your flight had been in the EU, you’d be entitled to a full refund plus €600 compensation (soon worth about $1000).
JC: I think the cancellation can be 100 percent attributed to DEI. The airline chose to invest its scarce resources in a DEI director rather than some reserve flight attendants. We couldn’t go because they were short one F/A. https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/dei-director-2021/
JC, factually we can not 100% derive that cancelled flight was due to DEI. Similarly, back in for.mer USSR, I could not 100% derive that line for shooes in government store I and my mother were standing on for two hours were due to communism ideology-ruled central economy, but it was. It is undue burden and gaslighting to demand from the victims proof that they suffer from bad public policies. Alaskan was OK before the policies were introduced, it is bad now, after policies took effect – this is enough of a test to reject the policies. And not instead promise improvements in not foreseeable future or demand more continuous sacrifices. And yes, I have never stood on any line since the fall of communism, except at the department of motor vehicles and to get admitted into federal buildings
Alaskan airlines is one of the best domestic airlines to fly. It always ranks in top 3.