Committee wants FAA to replace terms like cockpit & manmade with gender-neutral language

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An advisory committee this week recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration replace burdensome gender-exclusive terms such as "cockpit," "airman," and "manmade" with more inclusive language such as "flight deck," "aviator," and machine made."

The recommendations were made in a report issued Wednesday by the Drone Advisory Committee and obtained by the Washington Post.

In the report, the committee — a subset of the FAA reportedly made up of representatives from 17 organizations in industry, labor, airports, and local government — suggested that the drone industry should begin adopting gender-specific language to evolve along with society, and so should the FAA.

Among the "gender-specific" terms recommended to be replaced were "airman," "cockpit," "repairman," "manmade," "manned aviation," "unmanned aviation" -- and, of course, "he" and "she" and "him" and "her."

Replacing them would be more inclusive terms such as "aviator," "flight deck," "technician," "machine made," "traditional aviation," and "uncrewed aviation."

The committee argued that exclusionary language is a big part of the reason that "women and other marginalized groups are significantly underrepresented in the aviation industry."

What's more, the committee argued, is that the aviation industry has a long history of "homogenous gender and racial participation."

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