Obama Admin Changed FAA Hiring Process To Prioritize Diversity Over Airline Safety
Of all the jobs in America, it’s tough to think of one where quality matters more than keeping the country’s crowded airways running safely.
But thanks to rules implemented by the Obama administration, when it comes to air traffic controllers, the skin color of the candidate applying for the job might matter more than the quality of his work.
And that could be putting the flying public in danger.
As Fox News’ Tucker Carlson reported Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration had for decades relied on a rigorous screening process for potential air traffic controllers that was among the most “selective” for federal employment.
Applicants had to have military service or pass an FAA training program before even being eligible to take a “specially designed exam that tested for relevant job skills,” Carlson reported.
“The system was designed to choose the best, and for decades it worked,” Carlson said.
But then the Obama administration decided it wasn’t working the way liberals wanted it to.
“Activist bureaucrats decided that the pool of air traffic wasn’t diverse enough,” Carlson said. “They never explained why diversity ought to matter in air traffic control, or why it was more important than traditional goals like competence and public safety.”
But still things changed.
The FAA now uses a “biographical questionnaire” to screen applicants, which is apparently intended to increase the number of minorities who qualify for the jobs. What the questionaire scoring system rewards and penalizes is, as Carlson put it, “shocking.”
The questionnaire favors applicants who performed poorly in science class in high school and have not held a job for three years before applying to the FAA, Carlson said. (“Apparently, unemployed people make the best air traffic controllers,” he added. “This is demented, by the way, but it’s real.”)
By contrast, he said, the test does not award high points for actual pilots or those with air traffic control experience.
“This is insane,” Carlson said. “And it’s dangerous. It’s also indefensible.”
Check out the segment here, including Carlson’s interview with Michael Pearson, an attorney suing the FAA over its hiring practices. (Carlson’s monologue covers the first three minutes. The Pearson interview begins about the 3:30 mark.)
“The test was basically meant to screen out people with aviation experience,” Pearson said, in what could be the most damning possible description there could be for an air traffic controller questionnaire.
And the reason the FAA apparently tests for incompetence just to reward it? According to Pearson, it’s because FAA bureaucrats and a group called the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees determined that the workforce was “too white.”
“Quite frankly, they’re sacrificing and have sacrificed safety at the altar of political correctness,” Pearson said.
Now, let’s stipulate what liberals will argue: That there haven’t been any major disasters in the U.S. since the questionnaire went into use.
That doesn’t mean relaxing the standards for a demanding position is a good idea – this is an industry, after all, that takes the idea of precautions to seemingly absurd lengths.
Unionized Transportation Security Administration agents have no problem bossing around the nation’s flyers routinely, even if studies show their efforts to keep weapons off flights are largely a failure when someone is actually trying to fool them. Passengers are told to put up with it because it’s necessary for safety.
But for the Obama administration, liberal, politically correct goals were always more important than the safety of the American public. (Just ask the country’s police officers who saw their comrades die during his indifferent administrations.)
This is one area of Obama stupidity that the Trump administration needs to clean up fast.
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