FAA's diversity hiring practices were under scrutiny long before the air disaster in Washington

Years before Wednesday’s fatal collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, critics warned that the Obama and Biden administrations had jeopardized safety by prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion at the Federal Aviation Administration.

President Trump faced criticism Thursday after suggesting that the FAA’s DEI-focused hiring practices “could have” contributed to the crash, even while the cause remained under investigation.

“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew up conspiracy theories. It’s another for the president of the United States of America to throw out idle speculation even as victims are still being recovered and families are still being notified. It turns your stomach,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

Critics warned that the FAA’s focus on DEI diverted time and resources from air travel safety. It hobbled the agency as it grappled with air traffic controller shortages, antiquated monitoring equipment and an increase in near misses on crowded airport runways, they said. An unidentified source told The Associated Press on Thursday that the air traffic controller in charge of monitoring the airspace at the time of the fatal collision was performing the work of two people.

Air safety concerns prompted 11 Republican attorneys general to write to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker last year to question the administration’s hiring practices and priorities.

“Unfortunately, the Biden FAA, under your administration, appears to prioritize virtue-signaling ‘diversity’ efforts over aviation expertise. And this calls into question the agency’s commitment to safety,” they wrote.

Diversity goals at the FAA ramped up during the Obama administration, were largely dropped under Mr. Trump’s first term and resumed under President Biden.

During the Obama and Biden administrations, the FAA prioritized hiring more minorities and those with disabilities for key positions, including those in air traffic control.

The Biden-era FAA website, now scrubbed, said, “The FAA’s mission involves securing the skies of a diverse nation. It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation.”

In 2022, the FAA pledged to “diversify its workforce by rethinking its hiring practices,” and administration officials assigned long-term goals to amplify diversity, accessibility and LGBTQ issues.

A 2022 performance target required that the agency “host a national symposium with internal and external stakeholders to socialize efforts on the use of gender-neutral language at FAA.”

The FAA declared 2023 a “Year of Inclusion” and held a three-day symposium that trained FAA employees to understand the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and to overcome and unmask “unconscious bias.”

The FAA’s focus on diversity began under the Obama administration. In 2013, the FAA started using a “biographical assessment” to increase the hiring of preferred minority racial groups at air traffic control centers. The assessment asked applicants about their participation in school sports and the age at which they started earning money.

The assessment disqualified more experienced, qualified applicants, many of whom were Air Traffic Collegiate Training graduates or had other critical experience, such as a pilot’s license.

More than 3,000 rejected applicants filed a lawsuit claiming discrimination. The FAA dropped the biographical assessment in 2018 after Congress enacted a law banning its use.

As late as last year, the FAA was recruiting those with targeted disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.” The recruitment began during the Obama administration and appears to have continued through Mr. Trump’s first term and into Mr. Biden’s presidency.

No evidence indicates that DEI hiring played a role in Wednesday’s crash, which followed Mr. Trump’s Jan. 22 memorandum “terminating a Biden Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hiring policy that prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over safety and efficiency.”

Just hours after the accident, Mr. Trump attacked Pete Buttigieg, who headed the Transportation Department under Mr. Biden.

“He has run FAA right into the ground with his diversity,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Buttigieg responded that no commercial passenger plane crashed during his watch. Wednesday’s crash broke a 15-year safety streak for the U.S. airline industry.

“We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

Later, when Mr. Trump signed a memo ordering an immediate assessment of aviation safety, he doubled down on his pledge to rid the FAA of DEI.

“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We want the most competent people, especially in those positions. And you’re talking about extremely complex things. And if they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do, and bad things will happen.”