Just tell them he identifies as African-American and he'll get in...........
Posted on 07/07/2015 8:16:23 AM PDT by HomerBohn
SACRAMENTO-
Jason Bigler has spent the past two years at Sacramento City College’s aeronautics department, preparing to become an air traffic controller.
Time he and his classmates may have wasted now that the Federal Aviation Administration has changed its hiring process.
“It appears that military experience, CTI program aviation experience in general, played a part,” Bigler said.
In fact, Professor Scott Miller’s entire class at McClellan Airfield may have been preparing for the wrong type of test. It used to be that people like Bigler would have to finish his schooling, and take the AT-SAT, the test to screen air traffic controllers.
But now the FAA says to apply for the job, there’s no experience necessary.
“The students that had completed the program and graduated, they were told that those scores would be disregarded and they would have to apply off the street like everyone else,” Miller said.
Starting this year, the FAA only requires students to pass a biographical questionnaire, which Bigler said has little to do with aviation.
“There were questions in there about your time in high school, what kind of sports you played,” Bigler said.
While the FAA isn’t explaining the change, Miller and other critics believe it has to do with a recent FAA study citing lack of diversity.
“The two year schools, like Sacramento City College, which is very proud of its diversity, was not considered as part of its study,” Miller said.
And few of Miller’s qualified students are passing that questionnaire. In fact out of all of Miller’s 38 students, the only one to pass that questionnaire was Bigler.
“Not in the slightest, I have no idea (what I said differently than the other students),” Bigler said.
Meanwhile the FAA released this statement:
“In 2013, the FAA reviewed the end-to-end process of hiring and assigning air traffic control specialists. As a result, in order to recruit a better qualified candidate and reduce costs associated with testing and training, the FAA chose to make several improvements to the way it selects, trains, and assigns air traffic controllers. Improvements were made to enhance decision making and increase objectivity in the assessment of candidates.
“The selection process for new air traffic controllers was very competitive.
“In the course of two weeks, we received over 28,000 applications for 1,700 positions. We expect to hire additional controllers next year and have encouraged those not selected to reapply then,” said Ian Gregor, Public Affairs Manager for the FAA Pacific Division.”
I realize this is old news and has been ongoing for some time now, but somehow I missed the story. This is utter nonsense!
My first exclusion criterion would be Muslim.
Just tell them he identifies as African-American and he'll get in...........
This is a big scandal at the FAA and their have been stories posted here. Fox business had an expose’on this story- whitecontrollercareersdon’tmatter!
The LAST thing we need is Affirmative Action in the hiring of Air Traffic Controllers!
I once attended a hiring session in Atlanta for Management Trainees at Norfolk Southern. It actually was a detriment that I had 15 years of railroad experience, half of which was in management.
Similarly, I have had friends looking for positions with 25 years experience running locomotives, that were turned away and left to continue collecting railroad retirement, while NJ Transit hired completely inexperienced people off the street.
They simply want to fill a position, and hiring experienced people is a problem because with experience comes a culture that often conflicts with the railroad management's notion that perfect brainwashed unthinking automaton employees can be had by selecting those that are inexperienced.
Wanna know why that Amtrak Train was doing 106 through a 50MPH curve? There you have it.
I also saw the "Military" push when I was working for GE on the BNSF account. While I was there working in the field, on my team the shop manager hired 2 guys with ZERO railroad experience... they did well, because they learned how to "gundeck" assignments... and they would track metrics on things like quality audits, and the Technical Directors that were actually doing the quality audits according to the workscopes were penalized because the military guys were merely sitting in the office filling out online forms showing they did the audits than actually going out and crawling under the locomotive and DOING the inspections. When the shop manager was going to punish me, who every night had to "save the railroad" and make up all the lost time while dayshift was goofing off, and then go and reward the dayshift TDs I basically told the manager to go F himself. Last I heard that manager was fired.
Yes, it should be limited to nuclear plant operators and brain surgeons only! /s
My step-father was a FAA computer tech for one of the ATC Centers in FL in the 60’s to the 80’s. He was always going to OK City for training .......................
Haven't flown commercial since 2003 and this ensures I probably won't ever again.
Current ATC here...there may be a class action lawsuit still in the works by the passed over CTI grads, and our union (NATCA) is not happy with this either...
http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/05/29/natl-air-traffic-controllers-assn-demands-faa-investigation/
Negroes will get the jobs whites will not get the jobs. It will be interesting to see the accident rates once this EEOP program has been fully implemented.
Basically the black air traffic controller union is behind the dumbed down testing and hiring practices
It is scary to know your pilot may know how to dribble, but flying airplanes?
We just experienced Affirmative Action in the last two presidential elections.
We got a half-witted Mau Mau foreign exchange student who hated this country.
Trump and Cruz can clean up the trash.
Thanks for the article...I started following this issue thanks to FR. I wondered what was behind the last “off the street” bid. NATCA has been strong on safety issues and on raising standards, especially at the FAA Academy Screen (post BQ and AT-SAT exams).
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