United Airlines to use race and sex to determine who will be flying their planes

United Airlines says half of their pilots to be women or people of color

So the question here is whether this will be considered a "good" thing by frequent fliers, or if this would be considered a "bad" thing. For some, there is no job in the world where passing over a white male for pretty much anyone else is not a good thing. But for many jobs, I think most people would just prefer that we use the best available. 

Would anyone knowingly choose to go into a dangerous open heart surgery with a lesser qualified, lesser trained and lesser skilled surgeon because that surgeon happened to be of a particular sex? Would anyone want a lesser  qualified, lesser trained and lesser skilled fire fighter to attempt to save your infant from a burning home, simply because you prefer that person's race? 

At what point do we put our own lives or the lives of loved ones in danger, simply because we want racial and sexual equality? 

Now perhaps the airline will have no trouble finding good qualified highly skilled women and minorities to fill these positions. I would hope that they wouldn't. But if the current system of hiring the best qualified people is not creating the correct racial and sexual make-up, then the problem isn't with the airline, but rather the issue at hand is that apparently not enough women and minorities are apparently wanting to fly airplanes. 

At the end of the day, I couldn't care less what sex or color my pilot is. But I do care about the qualifications, skill level, and experience that a particular pilot has. I would be much less comfortable knowing that an airline was pushing certain people to the front of the line based on anything other than how good of a pilot they are.