Posted on 02/01/2025 5:03:16 AM PST by grundle
Liberals keep insisting that Obama never lowered the standards for air-traffic controllers.
But the proof keeps coming out more and more and more.
I don’t expect the liberals to admit that they were wrong.
But I do like to keep documenting this, and showing it to as many people as possible.
The Telegraph just reported:
An aspiring air traffic controller who claimed he was denied a job because of diversity targets said the aviation agency’s obsession with inclusion made an accident likely to happen.
Andrew Brigida, 35, scored 100 per cent in his training exam but alleged that he was denied a position in an air traffic control tower because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recruitment process favoured diverse candidates. He is part of a class action lawsuit filed against the federal agency.
Speaking after the Washington air disaster, in which 67 people were killed, Mr Brigida claimed that years of diversity hiring meant it was only a matter of time before an accident happened.
“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.”
Mr Brigida graduated from Arizona State University’s collegiate training initiative in 2013 – a partnership programme with the FAA that was previously used to train and select the most qualified applicants.
After scoring top marks in his air traffic control selection and training examination, he was placed on a preferred candidate list until the FAA changed the rules.
Under the Obama administration, the regulator replaced a skills-based test with a biographical questionnaire to attract more diverse applicants.
When Mr Brigida tried again to become an air traffic controller under the new tests, he said he failed the biographical questionnaire because he “didn’t fit the preferred ethnic profile”.
The Washington Post just reported:
For air traffic controllers, the Obama administration in 2013 instituted a new hiring system that introduced a biographical questionnaire to attract minorities, underrepresented in the controller corps. The program was criticized, such as in a Fox News report in 2015, as making it harder for more skilled applicants to get hired as controllers.
The New York Post just reported:
The Federal Aviation Administration was hit with a class action lawsuit last year alleging it had denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets — as it was revealed 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 reemerged, too, as Andrew Brigida — the lead plaintiff in the suit — suggested the federal aviation agency’s obsession with diversity hiring and inclusion had only ensured an accident was likely to happen.
The crux of the lawsuit is that the FAA, under the Obama administration, dropped a skill-based system for hiring controllers and instead replaced it with a “biographical assessment” in an alleged bid to boost the number of minority job applicants.
Brigida, who is white, alleges he was discriminated against solely based on his race when his application was rejected, court papers state.
The vying air traffic controller, who graduated from Arizona State University’s collegiate training initiative in 2013, was turned down for a job even though he had scored 100% on his training exam, the lawsuit alleges.
In 2014, the Wall St. Journal reported:
For years, aspiring air-traffic controllers in the U.S. have enrolled in schools selected by the Federal Aviation Administration to offer special courses that could smooth the way for a job at the agency.
But at the end of December, the FAA abruptly ended that special status for the 36 participating colleges and universities…
… some critics suspect it is intended partly to increase the share of minorities and women among controllers, who are now 83% male and white…
Some school officials say their controller enrollment already has fallen off because of the FAA change.
The FAA’s new stance “just doesn’t make sense,” said Douglas Williams, aviation-program director at the Community College of Baltimore County in Catonsville, Md… “They’re not getting the best-qualified applicants this way,” he said.
Students who have studied for the controller degrees fear they wasted time and money. Navy veteran Oscar Vega recently completed the two-year air-traffic program at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif. He said he passed the FAA controller aptitude test last year, so he was shocked when, in February, he failed the biographical assessment.
“They say you can take it again,” said the 28-year-old. “But it’s not a test you can study for. And we don’t know why we failed because we don’t get any feedback.”
The schools estimate that more than 3,000 graduates have been removed from the FAA’s hiring pool because of the new policy.
In 2014, the Chicago Tribune reported:
More than half of the latest batch of air-traffic controller job offers nationwide went to people with no aviation experience…
The hiring breakdown marks a major shift in FAA recruitment strategy, which is now geared toward… attracting more minorities and women to the nation’s largely white and male controller work force
For almost the last 25 years, until the off-the-street hiring process was implemented in February, the FAA recruited controllers heavily from among military veterans possessing aviation experience and from the 36 FAA-approved college aviation programs across the U.S.
This keeps getting more and more coverage.
I don’t expect the liberals to let this coverage change their mind.
But I will continue to keep documenting it, and showing it to as many people as possible.
DEI racism in action.
This has been going on in our government, forever.
“””””””””””””
Yep at least back to the time Columbus sailed the ocean
blue in 1492. The new comers changed this land as they
rounded up the natives, placed them on reservations, went
to Africa and brought in their natives to do much of the
grunt work. What’s next? Living in outer space, taking
injections/pills for nurshment and who knows what else.
Racism is fine as long as it is against the White Race.
Yes, you are right! Ever since “affirmative action.” I know many superior candidates turned down based on skin color alone. The jobs went to inferior performers and the less qualified. Thank God the president finally got rid of affirmative action. The decades of damage is done. I how it’s not too late.
nothing new here.
the left has been doing this for 10-20 years in higher education and across the various industries.
f*ck the left
Oh, I doubt it’s gone - it’s just going back to the previous out-of-sightline mode it was running on. The woke + ‘white privilege’ sales job was a huge over-reach. The DEI crowd thought they had completed the takeover with Biden election cheat and went nuts implementing their agenda.
They’re getting a smack on the nose now, and we’ll see how it goes.
Keep punching!
I know the feeling. I was turned down for not being diverse. A friendly insider who was rooting for me to join their team told me on the down low. Instead, they got a nice inexperienced younger diverse person who could not do the job and had several accidents in the first year. Yeah. I found a position at another company which turned out to pay more in the long run.
“... we don’t know why we failed because we don’t get any feedback.”
You failed because you didn’t meet the racist Obama’s pigmentation test, Oscar. That’s the bottom line.
google search: “does the military need permission from next of kin to release a name”
No, the military generally does not need permission from the next of kin to release a service member’s name, but they are required to notify the next of kin before publicly disseminating information about a casualty, respecting their privacy and providing them with the news first; this is due to privacy laws and the sensitive nature of casualty notifications.
IOW, the information you want will be released in the near term. Typically, the military will respect the wishes of next of kin for a limited period of time. Not everything is a conspiracy.
It's a questionnaire much like the questionnaires other employers give you. It asks about your choices, your behaviors, high school grades, and so on.
It's not a new idea. The FAA was giving 'biographical assessments' in the 1970s: https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/21231
Someone put the 2014 biographical assessment online. Go ahead and answer the questions yourselves at the link below.
Here are my results:
I FAILED the 2014 FAA Biographical Assessment with a score of 108. Do you have what it takes to become an ATC, unlike me?https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment
APPLICATION STATUS FOR ANNOUNCEMENT FAA-KAI-24-TRACEWG-69420 Score: 108/179
Thank you for submitting your application for announcement FAA-KAI-24-TRACEWG-69420. Based upon your responses to the Biographical Assessment, we have determined that you are NOT eligible for this position as a part of the current vacancy announcement.
The biographical assessment measures ATCS job applicant characteristics that have been "shown empirically" to "predict success" as an air traffic controller in the FAA. These characteristics include factors such as prior general and ATC-specific work experience, education and training, work habits, academic and other achievements, and life experiences among other factors. This biographical assessment was "independently validated" by "outside experts".
Many candidates applied for this totally legitimate position and unfortunately we have fewer job openings (0) than there were candidates. We encourage you to apply to future vacancy announcements. Thank you again for your interest in the Federal Aviation Administration.
With that said, there have been other problems with the 'biographical assessment.' One is that people take the assessment online at home where they can cheat or help each other.
Fair question, and since I’m making a generalization it would speculation on my part.
1. A big distinction between the unwilling and unable.
2. Unwilling would seem persons satisfied with status quo. Perhaps for example a person who is happy on the rung of corporate ladder they’ve reached and no longer needs the title to feel satisfied with their level of success. To your question these probably could care less.
3. Unable would be those who may aspire for greater success. Perhaps an example would be a distance runner that developed cardiovascular problems and can no longer do a marathon. Or in context of the stories posted today, a prospective Air Traffic Controller scoring 100% on his qualifying exam, only to find that his skin color, something he can not control, eliminates him from being hired. That nonsensical standard would be infuriating. I think the unable segment knows frustration very well.
Just my $.02. Now I’m off to work on a different higher standard, climbing a ladder 20 some feet to paint my hallway. ‘Urban Sunrise’ also known as light gray.
Couldn't they even have simulated air traffic with their own planes to ensure that if something did go wrong, it could be controlled?
-PJ
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