They’re still having echoes of the 1981 strike - the replacements had a retirement wave 20 years ago, and here we are 20 years later. “Authorized staffing” numbers can also keep FAA from hiring to replace retiring controllers until they actually leave a vacant position, even though training can take 3-4 years to complete. They’re constantly playing catch-up.
1 Like
Other than Trump pulling DEI claims out of his posterior for political reasons, there is no evidence at all of any role for DEI in this accident. Tower staffing seems reasonable for that time of night, and the particular positions open or closed are at the discretion of the tower supervisor. I’m 100% sure that the NTSB will look at every bit of that to see if the configuration was driven by any kind of shortage. Tower radar displays all have aural alarms backing up visual alerts because tower controllers generally focus on looking outside: that’s what they’re supposed to be doing, not staring at the radar.
Was that military or civilian training, and for fixed-wing or helicopter? The answer does matter. I do not have military flight training, but everyone I know who has been through it has said that it is much different than civilian flight training, and military flight time is generally counted at 1.5-2x civilian flight time due to the intensity of the training. Similarly, helicopter flight training (military or civilian) is a more precise level of flight training (where you are physically manipulating the controls every second of flight, as opposed to fixed-wing where you can take you hands and feet off the controls for several seconds without anything bad typically happening), and the FAA recognizes that with the flight time requirements for advanced ratings.
1 Like
I don’t agree man. I was put in 1900 left seat with 4,500 TT and 350 hours in the right seat. No autopilot 14-16 leg days. I learned more about flying low in bad weather, low vis and icing in the NE to the deep south than any quality of intense training could have taught me in my first 1,000 hrs in that left seat. No one knows “ATIS might lie to you” until it does. Training is just that. Intense or not. DCA has always been a goat rope as has Bogotá, you can train for it, but you don’t learn it without experience. It’s usually a cakewalk, but do it enough and everybody gets their turn in the barrel. That’s when the learning takes place. 500 Hours mil or Riddle training? I wouldn’t put my loved ones in the back of a C-172 with them, unless they were the type that knew that didn’t know that there’s a lot they don’t know and had a healthy respect for that lack of knowledge. We just have different opinions.
Paul, I feel that everyone is misinterpreting the President and SecDef’s words a bit as they both have reiterated several times now that they weren’t saying that DEI had any specific link to an individual in this accident. What they are saying and I absolutely agree with is, was this caused by a lack of staffing due to DEI policies and how many other close calls have there been because of it.
More information will come out about those specifically involved but at the end of the day, the most secure airspace in the world just suffered the worst aviation accident in a generation at the tail end of an FAA that is more worried about the color of your skin versus the individuals actual qualifications. That is a 100% undeniable fact and I feel that this President is pissed off by it, as he should be.
3 Likes
Marz, let’s be real here, blaming DEI for this tragedy is a lazy scapegoat with no evidence to back it up. The FAA’s staffing crisis wasn’t caused by diversity programs but by years of budget cuts, retirements, and poor management. Pointing fingers at ‘skin color’ instead of actual hiring bottlenecks is a fear-driven narrative that’s designed to distract us from solving the real problem. DEI isn’t about putting unqualified people in jobs, it’s about finding talent that the old, exclusionary systems overlooked.
If anything, this outdated ‘merit’ excuse is a smokescreen to protect the same power structures that have caused stagnation in the first place. And this fear of ‘losing ground’ is nothing new. Just like Jim Crow laws emerged to keep white dominance intact after Reconstruction, today’s anti-DEI crusade is a reaction to a changing, diversifying nation. Politicians know this and are using that fear to score political points, just as they did back then. If we don’t recognize that, we’ll be stuck repeating the same cycles of discrimination and exclusion under a different name, and aviation, like many industries, will suffer the consequences
1 Like
The lazy scapegoat is in the white house. Conclusions before all the facts in. Shaming women aviators as well as “minority” aviators. Shame.
1 Like
We seem to be missing the culprit here. The FAA is broken.
And the FAA is broken because Congress is broken. Unfortunately, Congress is broken because the electorate keeps electing the same type of people who broke it in the first place.
But that’s neither here nor there, since it doesn’t address the human factors that lead to this mid-air. Clearly the situation around DCA and the helicopter routes have been like this for a while, so what factors on this particular night lead to the mid-air, and what could have been done differently. Those are the questions to be answered here.
1 Like
I think you’re still missing the point. Go watch all related pressers immediately following the accident and how many times does the administration have to say they aren’t aware of any specific deficiencies?
This is a much larger issue than those involved in this accident. Instead of being worried about the color of an individuals skin, or their gender, why are we not prioritizing investing in the ATC modernization and focusing on hiring the best individuals for the job instead of filling quotas?
Pro-DEI individuals completely miss the point. I want the BEST individual for the job, regardless of skin color or gender. Now people are realizing that when you go so aggressively in this direction, when people see a minority on an ivy league campus, in the cockpit, or the control tower, people will question why they are there and that is ridiculously unfair to quality candidates that deserve to be there.
2 Likes
Disclosure! I am a retired Commissioned Officer Army Aviator. There is something missing in every comment here so far. This female Commissioned Officer Aviator had 450 hours total flight time. That’s about 200 in Initial Rotary Wing Flight Training, and only about 50 hours a year after that as a Reserve Commissioned Officer aviator. That 50 hours a year is about the MINIMUM flight time that a Reserve Commissioned Officer aviator could get and be considered “current.” She MAY have gotten some flight simulator time in addition, that is not stated. But the US Army considers Commissioned Officer aviators as managers first and aviators second, as opposed to Warrant Officer aviators who are aviators first. We sometimes said, in jest, that every Commissioned Officer aviator needed to fly with a Warrant Officer aviator to keep him out of trouble, and that two Commissioned Officer aviators flying together was an accident looking for a place to happen. A successful Commissioned Officer aviator in the Army needs to have much better flying skills than the average Warrant Officer aviator to get any respect with regards to his/her aviator skills. Sad fact of life.
2 Likes
Good point, Polkovnik … tho it was sorta mentioned glancingly in a few comments. I’ve uncovered pictures of her all dressed up in her Class A’s doing VIP duty in the white house. So that substantiates your position (and my own). Maybe that was the purpose for the recurrency flight that night?
In the USAF, the same problem occurs. They want every officer to train to ultimately be the Chief of Staff even pilots who don’t give a damn about such things. And they wonder why there’s a pilot / retention problem. I think it’s time for ALL of the military to reexamine this posture and do something about it. One commenter above moaned about all the “extra” jobs they expected the aviators to be doing; same problem / different flavor. In the end, there’s no way a low time pilot can retain their skills without sufficient flying time. Further – in THIS case – I’m sure she was nervous trying to pass her check ride?
Curious … what’s your position on a regular officer being evaluated by a Warrant officer? Is that a problem in the Army?
Well, there ya have it. We should dismiss the “obsessive, time consuming and costly NTSB investigation results to figure it mostly out,” because in LarryS’s expert opinion he assigns “70% of the blame on the helo crew and Army training SOP. The other 30% goes to ATC.”
Better yet, let’s just save shitload of expense and effort to investigate accidents by embracing his political blathering and asking HIM to render his opinions on the “fault” he assigns to ALL accidents. That oughta learn 'em.
FAA ATC classes over the past few years have been unable to be filled. A leading reason for this was qualified candidates being turned away because they didn’t fit the identity required for the DEI-mandated quotas. This has been a contributor to the FAA controller shortage nationwide, and has been a problem at DCA for some time.
Highlights from a recent Washington Times article:
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.
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.
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.
Avweb has reported on the increased number of close calls for several years, and stated in an article from Nov. 2023, A few days after a damning report from the National Airspace System Safety Review Team essentially told the FAA that the clock is ticking on a major aviation catastrophe in the U.S. It additionally stated newly-mandated FAA standards “canceled the interview guarantee for AT-CTI grads and decreed that selection for Oklahoma City be based solely on the applicants’ psychological profiles. The advantage for degree holders, the administration decided, presented an unfair barrier to Americans who historically have lower participation in higher education. It was about leveling the playing field.”
One of the main goals of DEI programs has been to level the playing field. Turning away qualified controller candidates has leveled the playing field; leveled it right into the Potomac.
Many in aviation have seen this coming for a decade, but many haven’t been able or willing to identify the causal factors. It’s pretty hard to not see some connection of the recent fatal crashes with the government’s push for DEI mandates and the FAA controller shortage and training reductions.
Sorry, but saying this and many other recent close calls not being affected by DEI is putting your head in the sand. Aviation has had a long history of writing new regulations in blood when people refused to admit the actual causes of accidents. Removing these DEI requirements will be the next reg caused by deaths. In this case, 67 lives were the cost for a political grandstand. I pray that number doesn’t increase further in the process the unraveling the rest of these disastrous identity-based requirements.
As a side not, I would include article links and proper punctuation for the quotes listed here, but AvWeb automatically flags those due to their community standards. Moderators, if I anm unable to include links and quotes from official sources (media articles, FAA, NTSB, etc.), how exactly should I properly do this?
3 Likes
Typically, ALL training after Initial Entry Rotary Wing Qualification and ALL flight evaluations are done by Warrant Officer pilots. WO pilots are THE Professional Pilot Corps of the US Army. And I totally agree about Air Force Pilots as well. I have many friends who retired from AD, ANG or AF Res when they had 20 years so that they could concentrate on flying elsewhere. A lot of experience lost when it could have been passed on to others.
1 Like
Affirmative Action, EEO, DEI … ALL forms of social engineering are wrong, and DISGUSTING, to use the word you seem so enamoured with. The only way to ensure the best qualified people get the jobs is through merit-based selection.
Next time you need surgery, report back on how your Affirmative Action surgeon did.
2 Likes
The location of the crash is obvious. The jet was on or very close to the VASI glide path. The helo violated the altitude and flight path for the route.The route and altitude are not optional, they are MANDATORY. Even at the wrong altitude if the helo had been on the proper flight path the collision would not have occurred.
By your support of DEI and your rants against Pres. Trump you have established yourself as a strong candidate for a padded cell.
1 Like
FAA controller classes have been unable to be filled because of racial requirements. There’s an article in the Washington Times from a week ago that highlights this.
In 2013, under the Obama administration, the FAA started using a biographical assessment to increase the hiring of preferred minority racial groups at air traffic control centers.This automatically disqualified experienced and qualified applicants, with many of them being Air Traffic Collegiate graduates or those who had a pilot’s license. More than 3,000 rejected applicants filed a lawsuit claiming discrimination.
The FAA has stated they are about 3000 controllers short and are unable to meet recruitment goals still. If only they had hired those applicants turned away because they didn’t fit the racial requirements to fill the quota mandated. Even as late as 2023 the FAA held a three-day symposium that trained FAA employees to understand the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion. I guess we now know the biggest impact was worsening the shortage of qualified controllers.
The moderators must have woken up on the extra sensitive side today. I’ve had two posts automatically flagged for being offensive. One of them directly quoted an AvWeb article about contributing causes of the FAA controller shortage and another mentioned a study by the NTSB. How exactly is anyone supposed to attribute credit from other sources without using quotation marks or linking an article?
Maybe try a switch to decaf instead of CBD kombucha…
1 Like
After the investigations are finished and the probable cause is released, then DEI or blame can start. Conjecture is difficult to decimate when seeking the truth.
1 Like