Just when you thought politics couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Tommy Tuberville launches himself into the fray with an issue that is not only a bizarre misinterpretation of reality, but one that has no bearing at all on safety or anything else. I’m speaking, of course, about the Alabama senator’s expose’ of an alleged infestation of “furries” in the airline industry.
In a 20-minute floor speech followed by a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Tuberville breathlessly opined, “I know the deranged Democrats don’t like the fact that I called out the insane FURRY CULTURE this week. But the truth is, there is an ALARMING number of these DERANGED people working in our airline industry.” [All emphasis is his.]
If you’re wondering just what in Sam Hill the former Auburn coach is talking about, he provides a clue, adding, “Don’t believe me? Just a few months ago, PILOTS were MEOWING and BARKING at each other over the radio at DCA.”
The incident at DCA, better known to the nonflying public as Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, was real, but it doesn’t necessarily mean what Tuberville thinks it does. Back in April, there was an incident where someone was making animal noises on an air traffic frequency at the airport. If Tuberville is really concerned about this dire emergency, it isn’t clear why he waited five months to sound the alarm.
Here’s the backstory on the meowing. For quite some time now, there has been an epidemic of meowing on an emergency frequency known as “Guard.” Guard is supposed to be a frequency that is reserved for emergencies only, and good practice is to maintain a listening watch on a standby radio while workloads are low during cruise flight. Several years ago, it became a game for some pilots to meow on the Guard frequency when they get bored. I blame millennials and the 2001 movie, “Super Troopers,” which featured a scene in which state troopers meowed at a motorist they had pulled over.
At any rate, meowing has been a thing for years now, but it doesn’t follow that meowing on the radio means the perpetrators are furries. For one thing, if a pilot was really a furry, he’d probably want to keep a low profile rather than risk outing himself by meowing over the radio.
For those who don’t know, furries are people who enjoy dressing up in animal fursuits. Forbes notes that, for some, this is “part of a sexual fetish and incorporate the furry identity into a broader lifestyle, but for many it is a hobby not of a sexualized nature,” and I’m going to take their word for it without googling further.
Tuberville defended his alarmism in another post in which he claims that a recent furry convention in Minneapolis included an “Aviation Furs Meet-up,” and asked, “Would you be comfortable with a MENTALLY ILL FURRY being your pilot?”
But the senator fails to make the case either that there are a significant number of furries in the airlines or aviation in general, or that, if there are, they are a safety risk. There has never been an incident or accident that was related to furry behavior, and the vast majority of pilots have private licenses and do not fly commercially. The aviation furry meet didn’t necessarily include any commercial pilots.
Further, the evidence that furries are mentally ill is lacking. Psychology Today says furries “represent what you would expect to find in a typical geek or nerd subculture: Above-average school performance (nearly half are college students), an interest in computers and science, and a passion for video games, science fiction, fantasy, and anime,” also noting they are “seven times more likely than the general population to identify as transgender and about five times more likely to identify as non-heterosexual.”
In particular, however, the article declines to call furries mentally ill, but characterizes them as fans of animals and animal characters who enjoy engaging in fantasy. In other words, furries are akin to other fandoms that engage in dressing up as make-believe characters from genres like Star Wars or superhero franchises. They don’t believe that they are actually animals any more than Star Wars fans believe they are actually stormtroopers.
I will acknowledge Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, had apparent ties to the furry community. A lot still isn’t known about Robinson’s motive, and correlation is not causation, but this one horrific crime is not an indictment of all furries. There are no official statistics on violence by or against furries, but such crimes seem to be rare.
Tuberville’s alarmism over furries reminds me a lot of Charlie Kirk talking about DEI at the airlines. Back in 2024, Kirk alleged that black airline pilots might not be safe, musing, “If I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.’”
Kirk’s fears were unfounded, just like Tuberville’s, and I’ll explain why. Any pilot hired by the airlines has already been certified multiple times by FAA-designated check airmen before they get near an airline cockpit. These examiners are governed by specific guidelines. They are not allowed to make subjective rulings based on factors like gender or race.
The federal prescreening of prospective pilots also includes a periodic medical exam that includes questions about mental health. Certain mental health issues are disqualifying, but as we have discussed, furry fandom is not considered a mental illness.
Once the pilot is hired, they go through an airline training program for their specific aircraft. Even if they’ve flown the airplane previously, they go through the entire course and take another flight test in the simulator. The instructors and check airmen are airline employees, but they answer to the FAA and must follow the same defined standards. Race and gender considerations might get an applicant to the top of the hiring list, but it won’t get them past the checkride.
When training and checking new and recurrent pilots, check airmen also ask themselves the question, “Would I want to entrust my family to this pilot?” This is not a rhetorical question given the flight benefits that families of airline employees enjoy. The checkers want safe pilots flying for their company.
Tommy Tuberville doesn’t seem to understand either aviation or furries, but that should be no surprise. He has never been assumed to be the sharpest tool in the shed, rising to political power amid a string of bigoted attacks on blacks, Muslims, and immigrants, among others. That may be enough to put him in the Alabama governor’s mansion as well.
Do I think furries are a bit weird? Yes, I do, but I also think that any adult who likes to play dress-up is a bit weird. I don’t make distinctions between those who dress up as animals, sci-fi characters, historical figures, or superheroes. I think furries are probably less harmful to the nation than Patriot Front members who cosplay as fascist brownshirts (although I don’t think that’s cosplay).
Having said that, I also don’t think that dressing up like an animal (or a stormtrooper or whatever) has any effect on a person’s ability to fly an airplane safely. If they can pass the tests, including recurrent training, and hold a medical certificate without raising red flags from examiners or coworkers, then they are most likely safe to fly passengers around the world. Based on the Psychology Today statistics and my own time at the airlines, I’d venture a guess that furries are more likely to be flight attendants than pilots, but I have never known any aviation worker to be a furry.
Tuberville’s rant is yet another attempt to distract from MAGA’s problems by stoking fear at misunderstood subcultures. The fear of flying furries fits with Trump’s claim that immigrants were eating pets, claims that schools were deploying litter boxes for students who identified as cats, or the perennial claims that migrant caravans are about to swarm across the southern border (a claim that I saw again today). These claims have all been debunked, but they are used by the internet pundits to create an atmosphere of chaos in an attempt to induce people to vote Republican.
If Tuberville really wants to help make aviation safer, he could push the FAA to take a more enlightened stance on mental health treatments. Because of the adversarial relationship between the FAA and pilots who need to keep their medical certificates active to keep their jobs, many pilots forgo mental health treatments for actual problems because of the fear of losing their livelihood. Mental health problems exist in the flying community, but they have been driven underground. Maybe Senator Tuberville could advocate for the reform bill backed by the Air Line Pilots Association that would help to address this problem.
Don’t worry about the furries. And also don’t be distracted from the real issues that we, as a country, face in the upcoming elections. I’m talking about political officials who partied with and protected Jeffrey Epstein, a slowing economy with rising prices (better known as “stagflation” in the 1970s), and a president who has indicated that he plans to resume bombing Iran after the midterms, as well as potentially starting yet another new forever war in Cuba.
Yes, the furries are deeply weird, but they aren’t the deranged ones.
FAIRFIELD FUROR On Sunday, major news broke about an attempted bombing at RAF Fairford in the UK. Per news reports, locals tipped off police to the presence of strange men and three vans, which turned out to contain explosives. The base was reportedly already on high alert due to intelligence about a possible attack. Iran is my prime suspect in the incident.
RAF Fairfield is one of the US bases in the UK that was used to stage bombing missions on Iran. The video below from March shows B-1 bombers launching on attack missions from the base.
Because American standoff weapons and interceptor missiles have made it difficult for Iran to strike back with conventional weapons, it should come as no suprise that that they are attempting to use asymmetric warfare. I’m just surprised that it was car bombs and possibly suicide vests as opposed to a swarm of drones.
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Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in DCA :)
This did not disappoint.