The ex-partner of American Airlines Flight 5342 pilot expresses fury and rebukes Donald Trump’s DEI accusations

The Hill

While the cause of the crash remains undetermined and families only beginning to grieve, blaming diversity hiring on the crash was “enraging” and “infuriating” Suissa said.
A 2015 graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Campos flew aircraft for over a decade, including for at least six years with American Airlines.
She described Campos as the ultimate adrenaline junkie, learning to instruct other pilots, fly helicopters, scuba dive, snowboard and skydive.
While Campos liked pushing his limits during his hobbies, Suissa said he took nothing as seriously as he did flying commercially.
Epic Flight Academy — where Campos worked as an instructor — remembered him as “a skilled and dedicated pilot with an undeniable passion for flying.”

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The grief that followed the news of Jonathan Campos’ death was swiftly replaced by rage for his family and friends. Campos was the captain of American Airlines Flight 5342, which crashed into the Potomac River on Wednesday after colliding with a Black Hawk helicopter.

According to Campos’ ex-fiancee, the death of her loved one swiftly became politicized, overshadowing his life story and interfering with the family’s grief, as President Donald Trump made baseless accusations that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies were to blame for the midair collision.

“We’re talking about him being unqualified because his name is Campos,” Nicole Suissa told ABC News, adding that the man’s body hadn’t even been removed from the river yet.

During a White House briefing the day after the deadliest American plane crash in more than 20 years, Trump implied that the crash was partly caused by Federal Aviation’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for air traffic controllers.

“The most qualified individuals are what we seek. Regardless of their race, we don’t care,” the president declared. “They won’t be very good at what they do and bad things will happen if they don’t have a great brain or great brain power.”. “.”.

Blaming diversity hiring for the crash was “enraging” and “infuriating,” according to Suissa, even though the cause of the accident is still unknown and the families are just starting to grieve.

“What truly annoyed me was that when they revealed Jonathan’s name and his strikingly Puerto Rican face the following day, all I could hear in the back of my mind was all these people, all these DEI fear-mongers saying, ‘You see, I knew he’d be Hispanic,’ and I went crazy,” Suissa said. “This man’s death should never have been politicized. That is disgusting. That’s shameful. To put it mildly, it is insensitive. “..”.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were still working to determine what caused the midair crash that killed 67 people on both planes as of Tuesday. The commercial airliner’s fuselage has been recovered from the Potomac by authorities, who have identified 55 sets of remains.

As the investigation and recovery effort proceed, Suissa expressed her hope that people will remember Campos as the man she had known and loved for the previous 20 years—someone who persevered through life’s challenges to fulfill his dream of becoming a professional pilot before it was dashed.

“He was doing all the right things. He fulfilled all of his obligations,” she remarked. “As a pilot who followed the rules, he fulfilled all of his obligations, and I believed that when you do everything correctly, you get to live. “..”.

Suissa had known Campos since their freshman year at Brooklyn, New York’s John Dewey High School, where she had watched him work for years to fulfill his life’s ambition of becoming a pilot. Campos, a 2015 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate, has over ten years of aviation experience, including at least six years with American Airlines. Suissa said she thinks Campos would have been the one who managed to safely land that aircraft last week.

According to her, “He never took that lightly, and he would have done everything he could to land that plane because there were sixty people on it.”.

As a New York Police Department officer, Campos held his father in high regard. However, Campos’ stepmother and aunt had to raise him after his father passed away from liver failure in 1999 when he was only 9 years old. Both women went to D.O.C. “to identify their son after the crash,” Suissa said.

“I wanted him, I definitely wanted him to outlive his father, and I still wanted him to, you know, live this long, happy, fulfilling life,” she stated. For 15 years of my life, I believed that I would be signing his marriage license rather than his death certificate. We are now here. “,”.

Over the course of more than two decades, Suissa herself dated Campos intermittently, got engaged and then broke it off, and finally decided to be close friends.

She remarked, “Honestly, it’s funny that we each went to prom with someone else—more out of spite than anything.”. “We stayed friends even though we had come to terms with the fact that the romantic aspect of it was over. We continued to communicate with one another. “..”.

As the family’s spokesperson and organizer of Campos’ funeral, Suissa described their national escape room hobby, which has taken them to places like Las Vegas, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Orlando, Florida.

She declared, “Just the two of us, we would beat the whole thing in less than an hour.”. In that sense, we kind of complemented one another. It was our talents that complemented each other, not our temperaments. “,”.

According to her, Campos is an extreme thrill-seeker who has learned to skydive, scuba dive, snowboard, fly helicopters, and instruct other pilots.

Although Campos enjoyed pushing himself in his hobbies, Suissa claimed that he didn’t take anything as seriously as he did when flying for a living. “A skilled and dedicated pilot with an undeniable passion for flying,” according to Campos’s memories of his time as an instructor at Epic Flight Academy. “..”.

Although she is still incensed by the political controversy surrounding Campos’ passing, she said she has accepted his passing and is organizing his funeral.

If he could have prevented it in any way, she said, “I don’t doubt for a moment that he would have.”.

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