As of November 30, 2025, there has been at least one major U.S. commercial aviation disaster and multiple lawsuits and political controversies around it, but none match the specific pattern Chamath predicted.

After the January 29, 2025 Potomac River mid‑air collision near Washington, D.C., in which American Eagle/PSA Flight 5342 collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and killed all 67 people aboard, victim families filed large wrongful‑death claims and then a consolidated federal lawsuit against American Airlines/PSA, the FAA, and the U.S. Army. These suits allege negligence in airspace design, controller staffing, helicopter altitude, and generic shortcomings in training and oversight, but they do not claim that DEI‑oriented pilot hiring overrode merit, and they do not center on demands to compare the pilots’ qualifications to alternative candidates as a DEI issue. (en.wikipedia.org)

In parallel, there are high‑profile DEI‑related lawsuits in aviation, but they concern air‑traffic controller hiring, not commercial pilots:

• The long‑running class action Brigida v. U.S. Department of Transportation / FAA alleges that the FAA replaced a test‑ and CTI‑based, aptitude‑driven hiring system with a 2013 “biographical questionnaire” designed to favor certain minority applicants, thereby rejecting about 1,000 non‑African‑American CTI graduates who had passed the old AT‑SAT exam. This suit explicitly frames the change as abandoning merit in favor of race‑conscious hiring and is now in active discovery with class certification and expert schedules set through 2025. (mslegal.org)
• Media and advocacy pieces connect that FAA DEI‑linked hiring regime and resulting controller shortages to rising safety risks, and the 2025 Potomac collision has been used rhetorically as proof that such policies “made an accident inevitable.” (unherd.com) However, these are pre‑existing discrimination suits by rejected controller applicants, not new crash‑triggered cases filed by victims’ families.

Political figures, especially President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, have publicly blamed FAA diversity policies for the Potomac crash, arguing that DEI undermined controller quality and staffing. Their comments sparked intense media controversy and rebuttals from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and others, who say certification standards remain uniform regardless of race or disability. (en.wikipedia.org) This is public controversy about DEI and safety, but not the kind of lawsuit‑driven discovery over pilot qualifications Chamath described.

On the pilot side specifically:

• United Airlines’ Aviate Academy, which was publicly marketed in part as a way to increase diversity among pilots and became a flashpoint in the Musk–Cuban DEI debate, is now facing multiple lawsuits from former student pilots. Those suits allege consumer fraud, misrepresentation of program length and quality, inadequate aircraft and instructors, long delays, and accreditation problems. They do not allege that United hired or graduated less‑qualified pilots due to DEI quotas, nor are they tied to any crash or near‑incident. (businessinsider.com)
• A separate suit by three NYPD helicopter pilots claims their former aviation‑unit boss discriminated against them in favor of less experienced Black pilots, allegedly compromising safety. But this is an internal employment‑discrimination case in a police aviation unit, not a commercial passenger incident and not tied to a specific crash. (nypost.com)

In other words:

• We have a deadly commercial accident (Potomac) and many near‑misses.
• We have lawsuits and class actions in aviation that attack DEI‑style hiring (mostly for air‑traffic controllers) and that involve detailed discovery on selection processes and test scores.
• We do not yet have the post‑incident commercial‑pilot lawsuits Chamath sketched—cases where crash victims or passengers allege that DEI‑driven pilot hiring overrode pure skill ranking and specifically demand pilot training records and comparisons to passed‑over candidates as the core legal theory.

Because the triggering condition (a serious incident) has clearly occurred but the specific form of litigation he predicted has not emerged by late 2025, the prediction—as normalized to commercial pilots and DEI‑based pilot selection—is wrong so far, even though related DEI‑and‑safety disputes around FAA controller hiring show that a weaker, controller‑focused version of his concern has partially materialized.