Not attaching blame, full or partial, to the ATCs, but this is some of the context for Trump's comments yesterday about LIEden's and Butti-something-or-other's FAA ATC hiring standards:
FAA embroiled in lawsuit alleging it turned away 1,000 applicants based on race — that contributed to staffing woeshttps://nypost.com/2025/01/31/us-news/faa-embroiled-in-lawsuit-alleging-it-turned-away-1000-applicants-based-on-race/The Federal Aviation Administration is fighting a class-action lawsuit alleging it denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets — as it was revealed that staffing levels were “not normal” at the time of this week’s deadly midair collision.
Complaints about the FAA’s hiring policies resurfaced after the American Airlines passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, killing 67 people in the country’s deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter-century.
Details of the litigation re-emerged, too, as Andrew Brigida, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed in 2015, suggested the federal aviation agency’s obsession with diversity hiring and inclusion had only ensured that an accident was likely to happen.
When I had my brain tumor removed, I did not care about the neurosurgeon's skin color, ethnic heritage, or how (s)he used their reproductive plumbing. Those and other factors should not be qualifications
for hiring ATCs. Mental ability, stability, and stamina are what matter and if qualified candidates are supplanted by problematic candidates it invites disasters.
Whether LIEden//Butti-something-or-other lower standards mattered in the Reagan National crash is not known.
