(Chris Parker, Headline USA) The Biden administration’s tyrannical COVID mandates, combined with excessive regulations and red tape, continue to stagger segments of the economy. The travel and tourism industry, specifically, is now suffering from a critical shortage of pilots.
The pain was felt by thousand of Americans during the July 4 weekend as over 20,000 flights were either canceled or delayed, despite mostly clear weather across the nation.
Current and former pilots blame a trifecta of government infringements for the critical shortage, reported The Federalist.
COVID mandates are largely to blame, pilots said. The U.S. Freedom Flyers grassroots organization assembled around 15,000 employees to protest the vaccine requirement and other mandates. Many of those employees quit when their voices were ignored.
Many pilots also sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over its mandates citing safety concerns, significant legal pressure on airline employees to unofficially double as federal agents, and a lack of scientific evidence in their efficacy.
The latest arrival of another COVID variant will likely put even more pressure on airline employees who are already wary of the government’s mandates.
Pilots have also left the industry after a series of overreaching regulations were passed under the Obama administration. Those regulations hit the industry hard, despite a lack of data supporting their necessity.
It made training new pilots a longer and more expensive process. It also reduced the amount of time that pilots are allowed to fly each day. This means more pilots were needed and required training to take even longer.
Finally, that mandate came at a time when a slew of pilots trained during the Vietnam War were required by FAA regulations to retire at 65. As the government forced more pilots out of the industry, it also made it more difficult to replace them.
The problem has also been accentuated by the racist policies of woke airlines to only hire minority pilots. Those policies have been criticized for the “practical implications of affirmative action in life-or-death situations.”
