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After Delta Airlines reaffirmed its full commitment to the DEI ideology, one of its planes crash-landed, flipped upside down, and burst into flames at Toronto Airport. Everyone miraculously survived this latest plane crash that happened once the plane was oddly cleared to land amid a crosswind having gusts up to 40 mph on its approach to the airport.
DEI means that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are the priority in hiring and promotion, and protection against firing inept workers. President Trump has issued two Executive Orders against DEI, and many large corporations have recently rescinded or rolled back their DEI programs, including Amazon, Disney, Google, GE, GM, and Pepsi, while major banks are taking DEI off their websites.
Donald Trump’s trademark phrase was “You’re fired!” long before he ran for president. Now, as president for the second time, he’s been refreshingly firing everyone who stands in the way of transforming the federal government from DEI to a merit-based system.
Trump should consider firing those in charge of air travel safety, including investigators of these crashes. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) asserts exclusive authority over analyzing such crashes in the United States, but this federal agency is liberal like other federal agencies.
The initial statements by the NTSB chairwoman last Friday seemed to avoid holding anyone accountable for the mid-air collision last month in D.C., despite how it killed all 67 people on the American Airlines plane and a military helicopter. No collision of this magnitude should happen today, and any suggestion that no one was severely at fault is grounds for firing the investigators.
Yet at this rate no air traffic controller will be fired for this deadly collision near Reagan National Airport, even though the day before a similar mid-air collision near the same airport was averted only by an alert pilot aborting his landing and recircling. Air traffic controllers are federal employees and they adopted a policy a decade ago to make it nearly impossible to fire any of them, no matter how incompetent.
During the Obama Administration the use of a merit and skills-based exam, the AT-SAT, was deemphasized in hiring air traffic controllers. Instead a biographical test based on DEI became more important in hiring decisions in this occupation on which the lives of thousands depend daily.
An air traffic control expert, Michael Pearson, told Just the News that the numerous errors made by air traffic control in the recent D.C. crash included failing to “tell the jet that the helicopter was in sight” and failing to give timely “safety advisories” when alerted about the impending collision in the sky. In addition, the “helicopter route was horrible” while “the controller didn’t apply the rules properly,” Pearson said.
But the air traffic controllers’ association, which functions like a union in impeding the ability to fire workers, has immunized the federal employees against being fired by adopting the Air Traffic Safety Action Program. Under this policy “employees are promised that no punitive or disciplinary actions will be taken as a result of reporting errors that could impact safety, provided those errors are not the result of gross negligence or illegal activity.”
The NTSB is already protecting its fellow federal government workers by speculating that the altitude meter in the military helicopter may have somehow malfunctioned, and that a belated warning was “stepped on” by an interruption and hence may not have been heard. But air traffic controllers should ensure their messages are timely heard and acted upon, or else take immediate action to warn others as the DC controllers failed to do.
Missing from the NTSB statements is criticism of air traffic control for not alerting the helicopter pilots to divert their course until less than 30 seconds before the collision. Subsequently the air traffic controller told the helicopter pilot to fly “behind” the landing aircraft, which lacked an urgent altitude change needed.
Pete Buttigieg, who oversaw the air traffic controllers for four years in the Biden Administration, is turning the tables by demanding, “The flying public needs answers.” So while the biased NTSB withholds real answers, Buttigieg blames Trump to boost his campaign for U.S. Senate in his adopted state of Michigan.
A lawsuit has been pending for many years in federal court challenging how air traffic control hiring practices have disadvantaged qualified candidates from the leading training program, called the Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative. This lawsuit, captioned Brigida v. US Dept of Transportation, was certified as a class action in February 2022 in federal court in DC.
Several hundred employees of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been fired by Trump, but not any air traffic controllers or their supervisors. The recent two crashes, one in Canada, suggest that replacing DEI with a merit-based system for air traffic control is badly needed.
This commentary/editorial is waaay off. First, I don’t want the Agency Chairwoman to conclude ANYthing about the crash. I want a level headed report from the NTSB detailing all of the problems they discover that led to the crash – including the pilot of the blackhawk who was flying higher than the ATC ordered. This commentary leaps to the ATC. I also support the no-fault reporting policy – its the right way to root out problems.
The ATC issue is complicated. The ATController that night was likely overworked due to a lacking workforce. In other words, the fact the FAA wouldn’t permit the hiring of about 1,000 controllers due to race is probably a contributing factor.
Anyway, this commentary is poorly thought out and doesn’t appreciate the need for a Joe Friday approach to NTSB investigations
Diversity Perversity – Elevating whim over wisdom & preference over merit.
The NTSB recently finished its review of the near-collision of Feb. 4, 2023 in Austin, Texas. NTSB finds “Air Traffic Control Issues, Lack of Safety Technology” was at fault. That is like saying spoons make us fat.
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20240606.aspx
The audio transcript between the tower and the two planes (Fed Ex and Southwest) reveals the controller directing the planes into danger was black. He stops talking entirely while Fed Ex begins speaking directly to Southwest because the tower is obviously worse than vacant:
I tend to watch these videos and find DEI popping up with alarming regularity. Does this unqualified air traffic controller still work in the tower? Likely yes because these jobs have many protections.
Just a few weeks later, a female pilot of an American Airlines at JFK taxied across one of the two active runways directly into the path of a departing Delta 737, whose pilot’s quick actions narrowly avoided a MAJOR disaster:
The NTSB concluded the accident was caused by “Interruptions and multitasking [leading] to distractions that caused the three-member flight crew of a B-777 airliner to mistakenly cross a runway occupied by another airplane taking off at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York….” Since when have pilots been unable to multitask? Deal with distractions?
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20240604a.aspx
We will not have the full picture of what happened in Toronto for a while, but the cockpit and tower recordings reveal the more experienced pilot was communicating with the tower –a job usually handled by the first officer. That leaves the probable captain as Kendal Swanson, a brand-new, cute, blonde 26-year-old girl handling what was a difficult landing with strong, gusting cross winds blowing snow and ice.
I used to fly small planes. I accumulated about 1000 hours and was instrument rated. As part of my own safety practices, I read the accident analyses published by the NTSB. At that time, they seemed well done but that was 40 years ago. It seems DEI has taken its toll on the nature of that agency which of course leads to loss of life. DEI is poison for the mind and inevitably gets people killed.
Disordered Democratic liberal DEI politics has absolutely “no place” in America’ hiring process of employment! Merit, testing, qualifications, rationale, exceptionalism, ability and “zero racial” reason of hiring SHOULD be the criteria specified for obtaining ANY and ALL employee hiring in the American job sector!
President Donald Trump, his cabinet appointees, and ANY rationale clear thinking American citizen white, black, hispanic, etc. agree regardless of the opposing disordered leftist Democratic woke thinking!
Interestingly, it would not allow me to Like this comment. DEI anyone? Hmmm?
Please dear God! I live in Michigan, and I do NOT want Pete Buttigieg as my next senator!
Those qualified applicants rejected for whiteness should get job offers ASAP.
“DEI means that ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ are the priority in hiring and promotion, and protection against firing inept workers.’ ”
It really means no white men. It is not diverse, equitable or inclusive.
“The recent two crashes, one in Canada, suggest that replacing DEI with a merit-based system for air traffic control is badly needed.”
And it is racist to believe a merit-based system would exclude all who are not white. For sure, there will be a lot of white men who make the grade, but the non-whites who also make the grade will not arouse suspicion.
FWIW, if I recall (and I think I do) the Biden administration’s FAA gave applicants for ATC training as many points on their point system for being black (no advantage in being an ATC) as for being a licensed pilot (a great advantage in being an ATC).
It all started under Obama, but just look at Biden’s nominee for Administrator to the Federal Aviation Association:
Shocking.
I can remember when Reagan fired all those Patco Workers for taking a illegal Strike and not one single Airline Accident happened