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A Houston-based Southwest Airlines pilot who inadvertently broadcast a profane rant about his flight attendant co-workers over an air traffic control channel has returned to duty for the company after a suspension, officials confirmed Wednesday.

A recording obtained by the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday captured the pilot, whom the airline would not identify, talking with the first officer in the cockpit about his apparent lack of romantic interest in any of the "continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes" that he said are flight attendants for the airline.

A button activating his microphone was stuck, likely during a flight from Austin to San Diego, according to the FAA.

The pilot was initially suspended without pay after the incident March 25, although Southwest representatives would not say for how long.

Asked about how Southwest had decided to suspend and submit the pilot to diversity training, then send him back to work for the airline, spokeswoman Brandy King said: "That is an internal issue that we've dealt with directly with that employee, and we don't discuss employee matters publicly."

The head of the union representing Southwest flight attendants criticized the airline's response to the incident, in which the pilot made repeated explicit comments about flight attendants' weight, appearance, age and sexual orientation.

"Our union is rooted in fighting for the rights and protections of working people, including forging the battles to end the prohibition of married women, pregnant women and men from serving as flight attendants and we will not go backward by accepting the behavior and speech of this pilot or any other employee," Thom McDaniel, president of the Transportation Workers Union of America chapter representing Southwest flight attendants, said in a statement. The Southwest Airlines Pilots' Association did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

What he said

The pilot, during the rant, said he was frustrated with the appearance of the flight attendants for the airline. At one point, he said, "I still wouldn't want anyone to know if I had (sex with) them."

He said he was upset because the flight attendants that he met on recent flights to Chicago were mostly gay.

"Eleven (expletive) over-the-top (expletive) (expletive) (expletive) homosexuals and a granny," the pilot can be heard saying, criticizing the lack of a dating pool aboard a recent flight. "Eleven. I mean, think of the odds of that. I thought I was in Chicago, which was party land."

He later said Houston was "easily one of the ugliest bases," adding that, "I mean, it's all these (expletive) old dudes and grannies, and there's like maybe a handful of cute chicks."

He said he was upset because he had gone to bars with flight attendants only three times in six months and was not happy with his company.

In a video posted on the company's website, Southwest's vice president of flight operations, Chuck Magill, said the pilot's comments were "offensive and inconsistent with the professional behavior and overall respect we require from all of our employees."

The pilot had been reinstated in his role after undergoing "additional diversity and inclusion training to reinforce the company's expectation that he show respect and treat all with dignity," Magill said.

"He knows what he did cannot happen again," he said.

Southwest did not reprimand the first officer, who was not audible during the conversation, King said.

The tirade lasted about two minutes, with an air traffic controller attempting to interrupt it using tones and responses like, "Whoever's transmitting better watch what you're saying."

'A receptive audience'

Although one incident, the pilot's rant was likely representative of a culture among airline pilots, who are overwhelmingly male, said Elora Shehabuddin, interim director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Rice University. Of the 53,000 members of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, which doesn't include Southwest pilots, 5 percent are women, according to that group.

"The airline industry is a very male environment where pilots who think this way can easily share their opinion," Shehabuddin said. "We didn't hear anything about the other pilot saying, 'Wait you can't think this way.' Obviously he felt no problem sharing his views so he must have had a receptive audience."

Staff writer Terri Langford contributed to this report.

zain.shauk@chron.com