Ft. Worth (WBAP/KLIF News) – American Airlines is marking Black History Month by offering a documentary about the Tuskegee Airmen on all of its flights that include in-seat entertainment. The Luft Gangster: Memoirs of a Second Class Hero chronicles the life of a Tuskegee Airman who was also a POW during World War II.
The airline held a screening at its headquarters last week. Several Tuskegee Airmen also spoke with students in Fort Worth.
“There are so many opportunities in this industry, now,” says Eugene Richardson Jr. “There are so many different jobs. People think you’ve got to be a pilot, but somebody has to know how to do the jobs on the ground; somebody has to man the control towers.”
Richardson’s son, Eugene Richardson III, is a current American Airlines captain.
“Having that role model is so important, someone who happens to be your father and you say, ‘Hey, he did that. So can I,’” Richardson III says. “His generation opened up doors for me.”
“They really paved the way for so many others to understand that success comes through hard work. You earn it,” says Jim Palmerscheim, the senior manager for veterans programs at American.
American has about 15,000 pilots and launched its biggest hiring surge in a decade last year.
“It’s really refreshing to see the caliber of folks we’re bringing on board,” Palmerscheim says. “A lot of the military folks we’re bringing on board have an incredible background with the latest technology: the F-35, the F-22, the Osprey.”
Richardson Jr says the military led the way toward the end of discrimination throughout the country.
“Once you got rid of discrimination in the military, it started falling down all over the place,” he says. “Now, there’s black astronauts, commanders. Right now, there’s a female, black four star admiral.”
His son laughed as Richardson Jr said new pilots today may not face gender discrimination, but they do face issues with new technology.
“I got in the airplane with him, his 777. All I could recognize was the magnetic compass. Everything else was computer screens,” he says. “Seeing how this stuff has progressed through the years is really quite impressive.”
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