Yes, Obama and Biden Dumbed Down Air Traffic Controllers and the FAA

By Selwyn Duke

What do you think of the following information about the hiring of air traffic controllers? Candidates “whose worst subject in high school was science [and who played a lot of sports] and candidates who are unemployed receive the most points possible on the test” (for the position), wrote The Blaze in 2018. “In contrast, licensed pilots and those with extensive air traffic control knowledge aren’t highly scored.” How could this be?

It was the result of “diversity” efforts — what’s now called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) — instituted under Barack Obama and continued by Joe Biden. It gets worse, though, too.

These Obama-era DEI efforts also created a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) push to hire people who are deaf, blind, and/or have “severe intellectual” and “psychiatric disabilities.”

It’s obvious why the above is again in the news. With the tragic air disaster Wednesday near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, accusations are flying left and right. (And Left and Right.) The collision, which left no survivors, was between an army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet. Other than that, however, not much is known as of this writing, so blame cannot at present be definitively assigned. But then there’s something else we can know:

Good policy is good policy — and bad policy is bad policy.

And dumbing down the air traffic controller corps and FAA personnel (or anything else) with DEI schemes is bad policy.

“Elections Have Consequences”

Obama sure was right about one thing. “Elections have consequences,” he said shortly after his 2009 presidential inauguration. And a consequence of the last election is that President Donald Trump has been trying to undo the DEI consequences of Obama’s and Biden’s elections. Regarding those latter consequences, The Western Journal reminded us Friday:

Let’s start from an archived 2013 version of the Federal Aviation Administration’s website and its “diversity and inclusion” page.

“Diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond,” the page read. “Because diversity is so critical, FAA actively supports and engages in a variety of associations, programs, coalitions and initiatives to support and accommodate employees from diverse communities and backgrounds. Our people are our strength, and we take great care in investing in and valuing them as such.”

Part of this included hiring those with “targeted disabilities”: “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring. They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

In 2019 — under the Trump administration, it must be said — the FAA “announced a pilot program to help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations.” Again, it emphasized that it was looking “to identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.”

In an archived page from December 2024, the FAA touted “‘On-the-spot’ special appointment authority” to hire individuals via a “non-competitive hiring method,” one of which involved “hiring people with severe physical disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, and intellectual disabilities.”

The DEI Obsession Virus

That the FAA pushed DEI even in 2019 underlines how Trump couldn’t drain the swamp as effectively as he’d intended. (In fairness, he was attacked mercilessly and stymied by the Deep State.) It also illustrates why he’s now, once bitten and twice aggressive, actuating his agenda with a vigor enraging his opponents. And these are people who, tragically, are also opponents of sanity.

For example, consider something called the Collegiate Training Initiative. Operative from 1989 to 2013, The Washington Times reported last year, it

was a pipeline to a career in air traffic control. The program aimed to ensure future air traffic controllers had the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out the job.

More than ten years ago, the Obama Administration scrapped 1000 qualified candidates. The administration’s justification was that the pool of applicants was not diverse enough, so they would be purged from consideration. Instead of hiring candidates with the most competency, individuals were elevated for hiring consideration based on their race.

A case in point was provided by Jason D. Meister, founder of the Last Stand Political Action Committee. Relating the testimonial of a friend who, he says, was a victim of Obama’s purge, he posted to X Thursday:

This led to predictable and potentially dangerous problems. As the Times added:

Despite their intent to expand the air traffic control hiring pool via DEI, the FAA has recently admitted they are woefully understaffed and that current air traffic controllers are severely overworked. One report found that only 3 of the 313 air traffic facilities around the nation met the FAA targets last year. This has forced the agency to admit safety could be jeopardized. To mitigate such danger, the agency has “at times halted departures or otherwise slowed down air traffic.”

Private Sector Infected, Too

What’s more, as if the above isn’t bad enough, we now have to worry about DEI pilots as well. Just consider a 2021 tweet (below) in which United Airlines proudly announced its intention to ensure that 50 percent of the 5,000 pilots they train in the next decade will be women or “people of color.”

Given all the above, is it any wonder that Elon Musk warned last year, “People will die due to DEI”? And, in fact, maybe some already had at the time. After all, there might have been an affirmative-action pilot who crashed a plane in 2023.

The deeper issue, however, is that to eliminate these problems, ending DEI isn’t enough.

We must also scrap the DEI/affirmative action/quota mentality. When even just advocating DEI gets you labeled dangerous and canceled — as it should — we’ll know we’ve turned a corner.

                   This article was originally published at The New American.