FAA’s Diversity Policies Under Fire After Deadly Air Collision

[impulse]

6 minutes ago, WDSmart said:

@proton, After reading your response above, I saw a book on DEI that I thought you might like...

 

There it is.  I want the most qualified candidates flying the plane and running ATC desks, regardless of race.  (As required by the US Constitution).   And that makes me a racist.

 

[proton]

2 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

There it is.  I want the most qualified candidates flying the plane and running ATC desks, regardless of race.  (As required by the US Constitution).   And that makes me a racist.

 

 

Or maybe a corpse when the DEI appointee is flying a plane, in the control tower or turns up to put a fire out and wets herself.

[impulse]

7 minutes ago, Thingamabob said:

Good point. Better late than never for a thorough review of hiring policy. Surely the fundamental criteria for selecting somebody for work as important as flight traffic control must be to appoint the person best qualified to do the job.

 

It's a shame that it took a tragedy(s) (and a change in the Oval Office) for all the dirt to come out.  And come out, it is.  All over the right wing press.  MSM?  Still hiding it.  That's why their credibility, the public's trust, and their stock price is in the tank.

 

[Woke to Sounds of Horking]

10 hours ago, Social Media said:

“You want to hire the best and the brightest for this kind of job because it is a very stressful job and it can take a toll on you, age you prematurely,” he told The Telegraph. “You want to make sure that the people that are doing it are the best.”  

 

Wait a minute... this reeks of nonsense... is he parroting what Mr Trump said?

 

Or is The Telegraph full of A.I. bullship?

 

Why is he posing for a photo for The Telegraph?

 

President Trump said those exact words a day (or so) ago: "You want to hire the best and the brightest..."

 

So is this kid just a parrot or is this just more A.I. nonsense designed to shape opinion?

[mikebike]

🤣 hilarious responses.

 

The biggest DEI hires in civil aviation are former military pilots. Yes, hiring veterans falls directly under DEI.

 

It's like most of you barf out DEI without having a clue about it 😔

[WDSmart]

6 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

There it is.  I want the most qualified candidates flying the plane and running ATC desks, regardless of race.  (As required by the US Constitution).   And that makes me a racist.

 

I think we differ in two areas on this.
One is that I want only QUALIFIED candidates employed, not necessarily the MOST QUALIFIED. The final decision considers other things, such as years of experience, salary expectations, and, yes, DEI.
The second is that it makes me a non-racist and a proponent of DEI. 

[alanrchase]

38 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

I'd suggest you look at the article in VigilantNews entitled Did DEI Hiring Policies Contribute to the Reagan Airport Midair Collision? 

 

Don't even bother to look at their analysis of the facts.  Just the facts...  They passed over thousands of tested, qualified ATC candidates in favor of DEI.  Or was it DIE?

 

But there aren't any relevant facts in the article.

[candide]

2 hours ago, novacova said:

Yet a 1st grade graduate can understand that the FAA is still suffering from Biden’s administration’s failure 

Yet a first grade graduate can understand d it was a parody of usual MAGA statements! 😆

[candide]

Could it be simply that these people were not good enough to succesfully pass the exams and tests? 🙂

[candide]

3 hours ago, novacova said:

Yet a 1st grade graduate can understand that the FAA is still suffering from Biden’s administration’s failure 

Suuuure! Look on the graph how the number of controllers decreased under Trump (after Obama), and started to increase under Biden

 

https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/FAA Controller Staffing and Training at Critical Facilities Final Report-06-21-23.pdf

 

The FAA also exceeded targets in 2023/2024 and recruited 1800.

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-hits-air-traffic-controller-hiring-goal

 

But don't let facts get in the way of a good MAGA story! 😆

 

[Watawattana]

7 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Is that what normally happens?

Please tells us from your experience in that job.

Do you have any experience in or around that job?

I can't answer for thaibeachlovers.  But I have over 30 years of direct experience in this stuff and can answer.  Safety has to be first, last and at every point in between.  It absolutely is normal practice to reduce the volume of traffic to maintain a safe level of service.  I got some examples later of this being done well, and being done very, very badly.

 

Keeping it basic, the safest air traffic service is one that has zero flights.  Every air traffic movement added after that increases risk.  Risks are mitigated through the use of systems, procedures and people.  There comes a time when these 3 mitigations are insufficient.  That is usually determined through modelling and the controller training, testing and regulatory monitoring process.  

 

This process is often held offline.  On the training system scenarios can get designed to effectively test the controller towards breaking point (making mistakes, not mental breakdown), often well beyond the allowable sector capacity.  So, when they pass their regulatory assessment 'live', they are at a comfortable and competent level, with capacity to keep things safe and to handle any situation that goes wrong (emergencies etc.).  The training process 'should' weed out any controller not up to the job long before they talk to actual aircraft, and any live training should then further weed out anyone who is unable to jump from the training to the 'live' environment. This is why I believe the noise about DEI hires is bovine 💩.  If DEI hires were allowed to control despite not being good enough then that should be a MASSIVE national scandal.  No, a worldwide scandal.

 

I cannot say what happened in the tower here, but the FAA acknowledged that staffing levels at the time were “not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic.”  I'm sure this will be a focus in the investigation, as will be the height of the helicopter, or why there doesn't appear to be a system available that gave the controller a very obvious and urgent warning of dangerous proximity.  And many other things of course.  

 

Especially WHY traffic was not reduced to maintain a safe level of service, for example any arrogance that led the controller to think he'll  be okay, any pressure on the controller to keep going so as not to upset the flying public or to keep the ATC revenue stream at full throttle or to break service level records.

 

But, please note.  This exact thing HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. Überlingen.

https://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/Eurocontrol/Ueberlingen/Ueberlingen_Final_Report.PDF

 

The controller was overloaded and it led to a mid-air crash.  The controller got murdered by the parent of a child who died in that crash.  But actually, the "why" the controller was overloaded was the key to this overload.  The FAA will be very well aware of what happened over Überlingen, should have learnt those lessons and should have NEVER allowed a single controller to manage the workload that led to the crash over the Potomac.

 

Going back to DEI.  It might be that there was not enough air traffic controllers or the systems are not up to the most modern standards, I don't know.  These 2 things cost money.  Money doesn't grow on trees; the FAA has a budget.  But if that budget is being spent on things that don't matter, e.g. DEI, then it isn't being spent on front line controllers, the best systems available and the training and procedures to make sure the whole ATC system purrs perfectly.  I think the timing of Trump's comments was appalling, but the essence of what he was getting at has some potential to being a contributing factor in this.

 

Now, back to the reduction the volume of traffic to maintain a safe level of service.  This is extremely common in around the world, and it does happen in the USA, be it weather or peaks in traffic volume.  But the most relevant item for my response is traffic reduction due to under-staffing.  It has happened a lot.  Recently at London's Gatwick Airport, the world's busiest single runway airport.

https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/air/air-traffic-controller-staff-shortages-disrupt-gatwick-flights

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/gatwick-flight-cancellations-easyjet-air-traffic-control-b2609196.html

 

The key quote from The Independent is "According to NATS, the air-traffic control provider that runs the tower, temporary air traffic restrictions are currently in place at the airport “in order to maintain safety”."

 

NATS got a massive amount of 💩 for this but they put safety first, last and at every point in between.  And nobody died.  The main reason for NATS struggling on this was COVID, and that they couldn't train the required supply of new controllers to replace the normal attrition of older controllers (deaths and retirements).

 

Hope this helps.