The terrible crash of an airliner and Army helicopter over Washington, D.C.’s, Reagan National Airport has cast a spotlight on the dangerous diversity, equity, and inclusion policies at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the last 12 years.
President Donald Trump denounced the DEI policies established during the Biden administration at a news conference today. But the trouble began during the Obama administration, when the FAA dropped a skills-based test for air traffic controllers and replaced it with a “biographical test” to increase the number of women and minorities.
The FAA rejected some 1,000 applicants, some of them minorities, because of the change, Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) claims in its ongoing discrimination lawsuit against the agency.
Though FAA dropped the biographical assessment during the first Trump administration, the Biden administration sought severely handicapped applicants, including those who are “completely paralyzed.”
Biden’s FAA
Today’s crash killed 60 passengers on the jet, along with four crew members. The Army’s Black Hawk helicopter carried three.
Citing an FAA report, The Associated Press reported that one air traffic controller was doing the work of two.
“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the report said, AP reported.
Whatever its ultimate cause, Trump’s presser on the crash included a denunciation of the Biden administration’s DEI, which included hiring the severely disabled.
Trump cited a Fox News article from last January about the FAA’s DEI push.
As The New American reported at time, that push came as a door blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 when it was 16,000 feet over Oregon with 171 passengers and six crewmen. The airline did not ground the plane despite cabin pressurization warning lights going on in the two days prior to the flight.
Homosexual Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg wanted three percent of all new hires to have “targeted disabilities.”
They included the following:
• Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
• Vision (blind)
• Missing extremities
• Partial paralysis
• Complete paralysis, epilepsy
• Severe intellectual disability
• Psychiatric disability
• Dwarfism
Applicants with those conditions enjoyed access to “on the spot” hiring.
Obama’s FAA
Crazy as that policy was, another came from Biden’s former boss, President Barack Hussein Obama. As The Washington Times reported last year, in 2013, his FAA published “Controller Hiring by the Numbers.” It asked, “How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?”
FAA answered by abandoning the standard skill test to become an air traffic controller and replacing it with a “biographical assessment,” which included 114 multiple-choice questions to “explore your personality traits and your approach to work.”
Its inquiries included these pressing matters:
• Approaches to decision making
• Handling pressure, risk, and uncertainty
• Reactions to criticism, mistakes, and setbacks
• Teamwork and communication styles and preferences
• Efficiency, accuracy, and prioritization
• Confidence and initiative
• Responsibility and reliability
• Learning styles and technological aptitude
• Et cetera
FAA abandoned it in 2018.
Mountain States Legal Foundation has sued on behalf of applicants the agency rejected because they did not score high enough on the biographical test. Some received 100 percent on the skills test. The lawsuit claims unlawful racial discrimination. Or, as lead counsel Will Trachman said, the rejected applicants were “too white.”
Among the biographical questions, MSLF reported, were “the number of different high school sports I participated in,” and “the age at which I first started to earn money (other than an allowance).”
“The questionnaire sought irrelevant information such as the ‘college subject in which I received my lowest grade,’” The Times reported:
Those answering “history/political science” received 15 points. Playing four or more sports in high school was worth 5 points.
By contrast, holding a pilot’s license — a major advantage for a controller — was worth only 2 points. And having valuable experience as an air traffic controller in the military was worth no points at all.
The lead plaintiff in the ongoing suit, now considered a class action, is Andrew Brigida, who “graduated from Arizona State University’s Collegiate Training Initiative [CTI] — a partnership program with the FAA which had previously been used to train and select the most qualified applicants,” MSLF reported.
Brigida aced the Air Traffic Control Selection and Training examination, thus earning a spot on FAA’s preferred hiring list. But then the FAA “changed the rules,” MSLF continued:
When Andrew tried again to become an air traffic controller under the new rules he “failed” the biographical questionnaire. He didn’t fit the ethnic profile the FAA was seeking under the Obama administration.
Another victim was American Indian Matthew Douglas-Cook. MSLF noted:
Although he was a highly qualified CTI graduate, he, like Brigida, did not score high enough under the FAA’s biographical questionnaire to be considered for [air traffic controller] positions. Instead, others who were less qualified were given a hiring preference.
In 2020, the lawsuit became a class action. More than 1,000 unfairly rejected applicants are now plaintiffs.
FAA Diversity
After yesterday’s crash, the End Wokeness X feed posted two videos that demonstrated just how obsessed the FAA and Biden administration were with DEI.
In one from May 7, 2023, which FAA posted to its Facebook page, Deputy Administrator Bradley Mims discussed the pressing need for diversity at the agency.
Another reprises the failure of Phillip Washington, Biden’s nominee to run the agency, to answer simple questions about aviation during his confirmation hearing on March 1, 2023.
Washington said he couldn’t answer the questions, in some cases, because “I’m not a pilot.”
At the time, Washington was the chief executive of Denver International Airport. He still is.
