Several studies have examined biases towards gender and ethnic minorities in professional settings, such as medical practices, academia, and aviation. Our research aims to understand consumers' attitudes towards ethnic minorities and female pilots. A better understanding of the impact of customers' perceptions on these minority groups could improve commercial flight operations and support increasing air travel demands. Specifically, this study investigated consumer perceptions of gender and ethnic bias towards commercial airline pilots and flight students in the United States. In a two-experiment design, participants in Study 1 viewed pictures of current female and male commercial pilots of various races. Participants then rated their opinions on the quality of the pilot (e.g. professionalism, flight safety, smoothness of flight, and their confidence in the pilot). In Study 2, participants viewed pictures of student pilots and rated the individual's likeliness to succeed in flight training. The results indicated that participants favored White male pilots in all conditions and that female and ethnic pilots were generally viewed as less favorable. These findings suggest that overt biases are present towards pilots with implications demonstrating that biases influence the hiring processes for female and minority pilots.

多项研究检查了在医疗环境，学术界和航空业等专业环境中对性别和少数民族的偏见。我们的研究旨在了解消费者对少数民族和女飞行员的态度。更好地了解客户的看法对这些少数群体的影响可以改善商业飞行运营并支持不断增长的航空旅行需求。具体而言，这项研究调查了消费者对美国商业航空公司飞行员和飞行学生的性别和种族偏见的看法。在一项两项实验的设计中，研究1的参与者查看了各种种族的现役女，男商业飞行员的照片。然后，参与者对飞行员的素质（例如专业水平，飞行安全性，飞行的平稳性，以及他们对飞行员的信心）。在研究2中，参与者查看了学生飞行员的照片，并对个人成功进行飞行训练的可能性进行了评估。结果表明，参与者在任何情况下都偏爱白人男性飞行员，而女性和种族飞行员普遍被认为较差。这些发现表明，飞行员存在明显的偏见，暗示偏见会影响女性和少数族裔飞行员的招聘过程。