This Insane Diversity Program Develops Airport Traffic Controllers Based On Race, Not Competence

ATCs must necessarily be among the most skilled and competent federal government employees.

In accordance with an Obama administration plan to “transform” the Federal Aviation Administration into a “more diverse workplace” however, the FAA has abandoned its merit-based hiring program for ATCs, as it implements a plan to hire 1,000 ATCs a year to replace a generation of retiring controllers. Congress can and should intervene in this unfortunate plan to restore sanity and safety to the skies, because it endangers people’s lives.

It is expensive and time-consuming to train ATCs, and many candidates who believe they have what it takes fail to complete the training. To mitigate this issue, the FAA historically hired most ATCs through a successful program known as the Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI), through which it partnered with 36 undergraduate institutions to recruit and train prospective ATCs.

Upon graduating from a CTI school with an aviation degree and obtaining a recommendation from the school, CTI students took a rigorous aptitude assessment known as the AT-SAT.

Under the pretense of increasing ATC diversity, the FAA decided to eliminate the Qualified Applicant Register in December 2013 and instead hire ATCs exclusively off the street, even though the number of black CTI enrollees already exceeded the percentage of African-Americans in the civilian workforce.

Sen. Mike Lee has proposed an amendment to the 2018 FAA Reauthorization bill that would finally restore the common-sense system the Obama administration had jettisoned. Priority for open ATC jobs that experienced controllers did not fill would first go to CTI school graduates and military veterans from Pool 1. Only after this source of capable applicants were exhausted would the FAA would be able to hire off-the-street.

ATCs must necessarily be among the most skilled and competent federal government employees.

[Quoting from a couple of old posts of mine]

I was a guest at the "New York Center" many years ago (before Reagan fired my IFR instructor). And based upon that experience, a sleeping controller would be no big deal. At the NYARTCC, 75% of the people I saw in the building weren't even working. (They were playing bridge, watching TV, etc., and this was at the supposed busiest time of the day.) Of the ones who were working only about one in four were actually directing air traffic. The rest were gofers.

It's pure BS that this is stressful or that the controllers have thousands of lives in their hands, except that they could possibly cause a collision if they wanted to. It does help to know the system from a pilot's point of view and also to be shown it in a trusted way from the controllers point of view as I did and was.

When I first walked into the darkened scope room, it was obvious to me that my visit was not unexpected. One of the guys got up from his scope insanely screaming, "They're gonna collide! They're gonna collide!" It didn't take me long to see that the controllers considered their job a joke. I suppose I could have known that from the chatter my controller IFR instructor engaged in sometimes on the radio while we were flying. It must have just been one big fraternity to him as he seemed to have friends at a number of the facilities we were handled by. (I'm not sure we ever were even handled by his NYARTCC as they only come into play above 7000 feet or something like that.)

My instructor was the senior guy on his team and he had three underlings helping him when he was working the scope. He had a particular sector to work. I think he took handoffs from Cleveland ARTCC of planes flying at altitude, and had to bring the NYC bound ones down to 17,000 feet to handoff to another guy. When he was really working the highest number of planes he was talking to at one time was four. (This was between 6 and 8 PM on a weekday.) But he showed me different views he could see on his scope, so first he didn't eliminate the ones flying lower than his sector. And then he gradually kept increasing the radius of the sector displayed until it eventually was centered on NYC and extended past Boston and Washington. Then there a zillion targets on his screen. That zillion target view is always the one you see on a news feature about air traffic controllers.

It's been a while now since I've flown, but the number of times I had to struggle to get a word in edgewise with the controller who was working me was very low. If you're smart when you fly IFR you pay attention to everything going on on the frequency; and usually it's not hard to do. It's just another clue to the usual workload the controllers experience.

ML/NJ

I used to fly rarely before 9/11 but not at all since then.

Next week I leave on a cross-country trip from Florida to Arizona. I'll return in November.

However, I will not fly. I will drive the 4,300 mile roundtrip for several reasons.

I need a vehicle for 2 months when I get there and I can't afford a rental for that long.

I'm retired so I have all the time I need to drive.

I will not be subjected to the groping security at airports nowadays. Go feel someone else's junk.

The days of flying commercial have been over for me for 20 years now.

Is that what happened to my flight landing in Newark from Denver last week?

Our approach was typical of such flights, a north to south heading toward the airport.

We had seen NYC from the windows on the left of the plane, and the plane had begun its descent. Then we could see lower Manhattan and then the Statue of Liberty as our descent continued.

We began to see we were getting near to landing altitute and very near the airport when suddenly the pilot took the plane into takeoff mode, and we shut up and up in altitude for quite a few minutes. Eventually the pilot came on and announced he had to abort the flight because their was a plane sitting in our path on the runway, and our ground speed would have overtaken it before it could get out of the way.

He eventually made a half circle heading back north to the airport and landed, about 20 minutes late.

We all wondered how in the hell airport traffic countrol did not know that plane was sitting in our way and reassigned our runway before we got so close.

I stopped my flight training at 53 hours with my fixed wing, single engine private signed off. Not because I wanted to stop. I purchased a house that stole all of my discretionary income to fly. While training with my instructor, I spent 3 1/2 hours under the hood. Climbing, descending, turning. All by the numbers from my instructor. He finally said, "you're out of the soup. pull the hood". I was 10 feet above the runway surface and about 10 feet left of centerline...just slightly beyond the numbers. It was a fun evening.

About 3 years later, my income had improved enough to afford some hours again, but an unwelcome visit from cancer put me off a few more months. Kaiser Permanente would not release my records to the flight surgeon to re-up my medical. Absent the records, I was screwed. C'est la vie.

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