OPINION:
The disturbing rise in near misses at our nation’s airports is no accident. A class-action lawsuit by the Mountain States Legal Foundation has amassed a trove of documents shedding new light on an Obama-era Federal Aviation Administration initiative that rejected prospective air traffic controllers based solely on their race.
A 2013 FAA document, “Controller Hiring by the Numbers,” raised the issue in stark terms, asking, “How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?”
When failure is measured in human blood, the answer should have been none.
At the beginning of the year, five people died at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport after a jumbo jet carrying 379 travelers crashed into a smaller coast guard plane that had mistakenly entered the runway. It’s the job of air traffic controllers to keep this from happening.
There hasn’t been a fatal airline crash in the United States since 2009, but it’s only a matter of time before the streak ends. The FAA recorded two serious, near-miss “runway incursions” at Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International last year.
Vigilance is waning because the nation’s air traffic control towers are woefully understaffed. The people responsible for keeping planes from smashing into one another are tired after working long, mandatory overtime shifts to make up for the lack of controllers.
Contributing to the shortage, the FAA temporarily put the brakes on hiring in 2012 so it could replace race-blind hiring rules with a “Biographical Assessment” stratagem designed to hire more minorities.
This quiz served as further screening of applicants who had already graduated from a 200-hour training program and achieved high scores on AT-SAT, a grueling, eight-hour cognitive test that measures each of the specific skills needed to do the job properly.
The questionnaire sought irrelevant information such as the “college subject in which I received my lowest grade.” Those answering “history/political science” received 15 points. Playing four or more sports in high school was worth 5 points.
By contrast, holding a pilot’s license — a major advantage for a controller — was worth only 2 points. And having valuable experience as an air traffic controller in the military was worth no points at all.
Andrew Brigida became lead plaintiff in the lawsuit after his application was turned down despite his achieving a perfect, 100% score on the AT-SAT. Mr. Brigida’s attorneys claim there was a method to the madness. Race-hustling activist groups conspired with FAA officials to create the quiz so they could let their members in on a secret: Anyone could pass the Biographical Assessment by answering A to all but one of the questions.
More than 3,000 top-performing, motivated applicants lost out because they weren’t members of this ethnic club. After Congress forced the FAA to drop the quiz in 2018, many former applicants reapplied and have since become controllers. Their careers were set back several years for no good reason.
A trial set for summer 2025 will determine the truth of allegations already found plausible by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The final ruling should be seen as an opportunity to send a message to future administrations that race-based hiring is unacceptable, especially when it sets the stage for disaster.
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