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Rumors (and take them as such until proven) on X were that the Captain is a male with 20 years of experience - but that he had failed in an attempt to move up to a First Officer seat at the big airline and had been in charge of conducting simulator training at Endeavor until recently, so he had less recent flying time than might be expected. He was handling the radios.

Girl First Officer was flying the plane - just got her ATP certificate in January. She has been flying smaller aircraft for a long time so does not lack experience in the air but she does not have many hours in the type - especially handling difficult crosswind landings.

How much of this was DEI promotion and how much was just the generic state of regional air crew hiring in 2025 remains to be seen. But if true it's a huge black eye for a lot of executives.

I was cabin crew on an incident in 2001 — B-747 landing at Dulles. I was sitting at 4R jumpseat. You can always feel the "flare" even though you can't see the ground, so I know when we're about to touch down. We were floating for way too long, it seemed, and I never saw the lighting shift through the windows that indicates the flare, and then suddenly the pilot dropped it straight down. (Beautiful day, no shear involved.) We hit so freaking hard that we bounced up in the air and came back down and hit so hard that all the oxygen masks deployed, overhead bins opened, and the video monitor fell out of the ceiling (fortunately those things are on cables). Everyone was screaming. I immediately felt my spine compress and I knew my neck was messed up.

Once they got it down on the ground, all call rang out and I picked it up. Captain asking if everyone was okay. Reports from throughout the cabin of bins, suitcases falling out of overhead, galley bins fallen onto floor, etc. Then I told him I had snapped my neck. He goes, "Where are you sitting?" "4 Right." "Yeah, you got the brunt of it," was his response. I had to go to the emergency room that night for x-rays and they deadheaded me back home the next day. Turned out it was the First Officer's very first landing on the 747 out of simulator qualification. Yikes.

I had three months of physical therapy and doctor's appointments, but you know what? Me being in that hard landing meant I wasn't flying on 9/11 the following week. Blessing.