Posted on 01/30/2025 4:59:19 PM PST by Macho MAGA Man
President Trump zinged a reporter asking if he will visit the site of the American Airlines plane crash.
.... Snip....
“Do you have a plan to go visit the site?” a reporter asked Trump.
“I have a plan to visit – what’s the site? The water? Do you want me to go swimming?” Trump said.
“Well, to me, it’s the first responders down there,” the reporter said.
WATCH:
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Like it’s supposed to be his fault or something. :[
LOL
That is so funny
great instincts
So-called news people don’t have to be DEI hires. They are naturally libtarded. The tower was understaffed, they claim, and that is Trump’s fault.
All he could possibly do there is get in the way. He’s smart enough to know that.
Exhausted, stressed-out air traffic controllers a risk to flight safety
by Diana HembreeDecember 6, 2023
Greetings, MindSite News Readers. In today’s Daily, air traffic controllers say they are so overworked and mentally exhausted that our aviation safety system is at risk. Four Black professionals in Los Angeles have created organizations that promote community and help people heal. And research finds that mental health apps, while helpful, fail to protect user data and privacy.
Air traffic controllers are exhausted, overworked and making dangerous mistakes
Air traffic controllers say they’re overworked, demoralized, and mentally exhausted to the point where one told the New York Times, “a deadly crash is inevitable.” They’re concerned that if nothing soon changes, cracks will become holes in a critical component of the nation’s aviation safety system. A primary issue is staffing shortages which are so severe that many controllers are on mandatory six-day, 10-hour work shifts, some which end just eight hours before they are to return to work. In the past two years, air traffic controllers and others have sent hundreds of complaints to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), putting unsuitable work conditions and concerns about controllers’ mental health on record. The Times investigative report is based on more than 70 interviews with current and former air traffic controllers, pilots, and federal officials, as well as federal safety reports and FAA records that the paper obtained.
The air safety problem linked to the burnout that controllers are facing cannot be overstated. A database of aviation safety issues shows one controller in Southern California who directed a plane to fly too low and wrote, “If I can make a small mistake like that, I can make a bigger one.” The error was attributed to exhaustion and working continuous overtime. And the controllers’ work is only growing. In the fiscal year that ended September 30, air traffic grew by 4 percent, as controller errors classified as “significant” rose more than 65 percent.
Overwork is also causing mental and physical health issues that some controllers are afraid to report, for fear of not receiving the medical clearances they need to stay on the job. To cope, some say they’ve turned to dangerous levels of caffeine, alcohol, and sleeping pills. Others simply retire, exacerbating the staffing shortage issue. The FAA estimates that roughly 10 percent of all controllers, or 1,400 people, will retire this year, and the National Airspace System Safety Review Team says the agency’s current hiring plan can’t replace them quickly enough. A net increase of fewer than 200 controllers is expected by 2032.
“We have recently had a heart attack, multiple panic attacks (including my own), people losing their medicals due to depression and some that just outright quit the FAA because it has gotten so bad,” one controller wrote in a confidential safety report. “Who knows how many other stress-induced physical and mental issues are happening that we don’t even know about yet. This place is breaking people. We need help. I’ll say it again, SOS!!” In support, Jennifer Homendy, the chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Board, told the Senate last month that the mental and physical pressure put upon controllers puts the nation’s air safety at risk. “We are putting the psychological stress of the entire aviation safety system on the shoulders of our ATC work force,” she said, “and this is unacceptable..
READ all at: https://mindsitenews.org/newsletter/exhausted-stressed-out-air-traffic-controllers-a-risk-to-flight-safety/
It’s like water dude.
If he visits there will be a huge security detail that will shut everything down. Is that what the reporter wants?
https://www.transportation.gov/testimony/air-traffic-control-facility-staffing
STATEMENT OFand guess what happened in 2015 under Zero:HANK KRAKOWSKI,
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER,
AIR TRAFFIC ORGANIZATION,
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION,BEFORE THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION,HEARING ON
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL FACILITY STAFFING.
JUNE 11, 2008.
Chairman Costello, Congressman Petri, Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for inviting me here to testify today on air traffic controller staffing issues. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is its workforce, and we consider these issues to be of the utmost importance to maintaining the safest aviation system in the world. In my testimony today, I would like to give you both an historical, as well as current, overview of the national airspace system (NAS) and the staffing issues facing us today. As part of that, I would also like to discuss some of our efforts to recruit, retain, and train controllers, and note some of our other safety initiatives to ensure that our air traffic system remains as safe as possible for the traveling public.
Historical Overview
Let me first begin by taking you back to 1981, when President Reagan fired over 10,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Control Organization (PATCO) for an illegal strike. In the wake of that event, our controller workforce was reduced to less than 4,700. The FAA began a large-scale recruitment and selection process to rebuild the controller workforce. By 1992, when our controller workforce was once again fully staffed, almost 28,000 people had entered the FAA Academy screening program. Of that number, 16,000 individuals or 57 percent successfully completed the program, 33 percent did not pass, and 10 percent left the program for other reasons.
Of the remaining 16,000 individuals, approximately 72 percent of those assigned to Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) achieved the Certified Professional Controller (CPC) status, while 84 percent assigned to terminal facilities achieved CPC status. Many of those not successful in the facility-training program were reassigned to less demanding facilities and ultimately achieved CPC status, while others secured jobs elsewhere within the FAA. The remainder resigned or were dismissed from the agency.
Recruitment and Retention
Even though the controller workforce was once again fully staffed, the realities were that, because of the concentrated, post-strike period of hiring, the FAA would have to once again begin a major recruitment effort as these controllers began to age out of the system. The vast numbers of controllers hired in the 1980s were long-predicted to retire once they reached retirement eligibility after 25 years of service.
As you know, the FAA initially developed a 10-year controller workforce staffing plan in 2004. We refine this plan each year. Last year, for example, we developed staffing ranges for each facility. The long-term focus of these ranges is on the CPC, who provides the maximum scheduling flexibility for a facility. As we update and refine our ranges, we will continue to make adjustments based on facility traffic performance. In the interim, many facilities will be in a state of transition as the agency manages through the ongoing retirements and concurrently certifies newly hired controllers.
However, the ranges also take into account the fact that developmental controllers, especially those in the later stages of training, can and do staff positions for which they are fully certified.[1] This is not a new practice. For example, Philadelphia International Airport is a Combination Radar Approach Control and Tower with Radar facility, in which controllers work in the tower cab portion and in the radar room (also known as a “TRACON ”). In order to be a CPC in these types of facilities, the controllers must be “checked out” or qualified on all of the positions in both the tower and the TRACON . Thus, a developmental controller who has completed 50 percent of the required training to achieve CPC status, is fully certified to work all positions in the tower independently, while continuing to qualify for the radar positions.
In 2007, the anticipated retirement wave began, and we project that retirements will continue to hit record numbers in 2008 and 2009. While our historical hiring goal was a “one-for-one” model (one new hire for every one retirement), beginning in 2004, we increased our hiring requests to prepare for the anticipated retirements in the next decade. Our strategic hiring plan took into account both projected retirements as well as expected attrition in new hires. From 2008-2017, we plan to hire approximately 17,000 new air traffic controllers.
To achieve these ambitious goals, the FAA has been recruiting aggressively. In addition to our more traditional vacancy announcements to recruit from the general public, retired military controllers, eligible veterans, and current and former civilian air traffic controllers, we have been using major Internet outlets such as Careerbuilder.com, Monster.com, and CraigsList, as well as the social/professional networking site, LinkedIn. We have participated in military job fairs across the country, as well as advertised in USA Today and Aviation Week & Space Technology.
In an effort to recruit more women and minorities, we have also advertised in special interest newspapers and magazines, such as Native American Times, Asian Week, Latina, and Minority Careers. The FAA has also participated in the NAACP Diversity Job Fair, the Congressional Black Caucus Diversity Job Fair, and the League of United Latin American Citizens Job Fair in FY 2007. Additionally, our joint effort with the Department of Veterans Affairs enables veterans with disabilities to take advantage of on-the-job training opportunities through FAA’s new Veterans’ Employment Program. This initiative allows veterans with disabilities to train for air traffic control and airway transportation systems specialist positions.
Affirmative Action Lands In The Air Traffic Control Tower
The Obama administration forces the Federal Aviation Administration to move away from merit-based hiring criteria.We all know that it's gotten worse and that they've been dodging bullets ever since.When a plane starts its final descent, are the passengers more concerned about the competence or about the skin color of the air-traffic controllers on the ground who will help the pilot land safely? The answer may be obvious to readers, if not to the Obama administration.
A recently completed six-month investigation by Fox Business Network found that the Federal Aviation Administration has quietly moved away from merit-based hiring criteria in order to increase the number of women and minorities who staff airport control towers. The changes come despite the fact that the FAA's own internal reports describe the evidence for changing the hiring process as “weak.”
Until 2013, the FAA gave hiring preference to controller applicants who earned a degree from one of its Collegiate Training Initiative schools and scored high enough on an eight-hour screening test called the Air Traffic Selection and Training exam, or AT-SAT, which measures cognitive skills. The Obama administration, however, determined that the process excluded too many from minority groups. In May 2013, the FAA's civil rights administrator issued “barrier analyses” of the agency's employment procedures, which recommended “revising how the AT-SAT is used in establishing best-qualified lists.”
By the start of last year, the FAA was using a biographical questionnaire (BQ) to initially vet potential hires. The questions—“How many sports did you play in high school?”, “What has been the major cause of your failures?”—seem designed to elicit stories of personal disadvantage or family hardship rather than determine success on the job.
“The FAA says it created the BQ to promote diversity among its workforce,” reported Adam Shapiro of Fox Business. “All air traffic control applicants are required to take it. Those who pass are deemed eligible and those who fail are ruled ineligible.”
The FAA would not tell Fox Business what the biographical test is trying to measure and did not return my phone calls. But an FAA report released in October, “Using Biodata to Select Air Traffic Controllers,” concluded that the AT-SAT exam, not the biographical questionnaire, is a much better predictor of performance. “The biodata items assessed did little to improve our ability to select applicants most likely” to complete training successfully, said the study. “If biodata are to be used to select controllers, additional research is required to identify those biodata items that will add to the prediction of controller training performance over and above the effect of AT-SAT score.”
Given that training an air-traffic controller can cost more than $400,000 on average, selecting candidates based on who is likely to complete the process makes economic sense. Hans Bader, a legal scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes that the FAA's focus on diversity is not only inefficient but may be a violation of the Civil Rights Act. “The FAA's jettisoning of merit-based hiring criteria violated the Supreme Court's Ricci decision, [Ricci v. DeStefano, 2009] which limits agencies' ability to discard hiring criteria in order to increase minority representation, especially when there is no strong evidence that the criteria are not job-related,” said Mr. Bader.
After the FAA changed its screening process in 2014, thousands of applicants who were already in the pipeline—people who had obtained an FAA-accredited degree, taken the AT-SAT exam and had been designated “well-qualified” to become air-traffic controllers—were told by the government that they would have to start the process again. “But this time, when they applied for a job, their college degrees and previous military experience would mean nothing,” reported Fox Business. “They would now compete with thousands of people the agency calls ‘off the street hires'; anyone who wants to, can walk in off the street without any previous training and apply for an air traffic control job.”
In other words, the current policy is to deliberately favor less-qualified applicants over more qualified applicants in the name of obtaining the “right” racial and gender mix among air-traffic controllers. Advocates of “diversity” insist that discounting objective measures of ability and competence is harmless, but history shows that it can be deadly.
In 1973 Patrick Chavis was one of five black students admitted to a medical school in California through an affirmative-action program designed to increase minority enrollment. Allan Bakke, a white applicant who was rejected despite having much higher test scores than the black applicants, sued. In 1978 the Supreme Court struck down the program, but Chavis would go on to earn his medical degree and become a poster child for advocates of racial preferences. In 1995 he made the cover of the New York Times magazine. Sen. Ted Kennedy called him “the perfect example” of how affirmative action worked. In 1998 the California medical board revoked Chavis's medical license, noting his “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician” after several patients in his care died or were severely injured.
Admitting poorly qualified students to medical school increases the number of incompetent doctors. A selection process for air-traffic controllers that favors race and gender over ability is no less dangerous.
As for the difficulty of their job, the bar to become a controller has always (at least pre-DEI) been extremely high, with fewer than 10% making it through the initial screening and training. Again, with the qualifier of pre-DEI, controllers have mostly been very highly skilled if they made it through the training. There are some exceptions, though. When I worked airport operations at a busy GA airport early in my career, there was one female controller who was known for just melting down and abandoning her position when she got stressed. She would just, without warning, suddenly freak out and abandon the tower cab, leaving the other controllers to scramble to take over her position and the traffic she was working (she didn’t get fired, they just kept trying to work with her to somehow rehabilitate her).
Worse was one particular controller that I knew back then. He happened to be black and one day when some of us were making small talk in the hall, he came by and joined the conversation. At some point he amazingly admitted that he was intentionally making mistakes to try to get demoted to the Flight Service Station. He said that Flight Service was easier and lower stress, and the FAA couldn’t reduce his pay, so he was intentionally screwing up so that he could work a desk job for controllers’ pay. I was stunned at his brazenness.
Harder to evaluate is how much stress controllers experience. While NATCA, the controllers’ union, will naturally always try to depict controllers as under constant stress, that isn’t always the case. It’s certainly a high-stress job at times, but the demands placed upon controllers vary widely. I’ve seen controllers under high stress, and I’ve seen them perform heroically during incidents, but I’ve also known those who routinely slept in the tower during midnight shifts, and for every high-pressure traffic bank at a major hub airport, there are also dead times in between or at night. And the demands placed upon controllers are highly dependent upon the level of facility they’re assigned to, and the design of that facility and the airport or airports it serves. Some airports are much easier or harder to work than others, even with similar activity levels.
Obviously.
True dat. Do you happen to know its pronouns?
and
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4293837/posts#2
“This is even worse than we thought. A 2 min video on DEI in the FAA...
https://x.com/JohnStrandUSA/status/1885173868916052041
2 posted on 1/31/2025, 5:07:25 AM by mewzilla”
Excellent use of details and values to shown the mainstream ABCNNBCBS lies about DIE hiring practices by the Obama-Biden-Harris administrations. Thank you.
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