DCA air traffic control tower understaffed, advocacy group points to DEI focus under Biden

A preliminary Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report has found that the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport was essentially understaffed when Wednesday’s American Airlines crash occurred.

The report specifically says that staffing at the tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” as reported by The New York Times.

“The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport’s vicinity Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways,” the Times noted. “Those jobs typically are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.”

Moreover, the tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport had reportedly been understaffed for years on end.

“The tower there was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023,” according to the Times. “The targets set by the F.A.A. and the controllers’ union call for 30.”

Last year, Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle warned Fox News about the FAA’s worker shortages.

“I think we’re 3,000 controllers short right now,” he said. “And so that just causes, when you have a weather event, it just causes there to be more delays. And ultimately, like we’ve seen the last few days, those delays then turn into cancelations because crews time out and so forth.”

Why was there a worker shortage? That remains unclear, though President Donald Trump and other Republicans have speculated that it was because of the Biden administration’s DEI policies.

The Daily Mail reported in January of 2024 that the then-Biden FAA was desperate to hire recruits with “severe intellectual disabilities” so it could hit certain diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) quotas.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the chair of Do No Harm, warned Fox News at the time that this focus on DEI was a big problem.

“Unfortunately, [identity politics] is creating opportunities for so-called oppressed groups by lowering standards for entry into those fields and thereby endangering the safety of those which it’s designed to serve,”he said. “Some endeavors simply do not lend themselves to identity politics.”

Current President Donald Trump responded to some of these reports Thursday by issuing a memo calling for the FA to review the hiring changes that were made during the Biden administration.

“This shocking event [the crash] follows problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden Administrations that minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),” the memo reads, as reported by Newsweek.

In the memo, Trump also ordered Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau “to review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior 4 years, and to take such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety, including the replacement of any individuals who do not meet qualifications standards.”

“During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence,” the memo continued. “The Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”

During a press conference, Trump also stressed that he’d increased the FAA’s standards during his first presidency, only to see them lowered again by former President Joe Biden.

“I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary,”  he said. “You remember that, only the highest aptitude, the highest intellect, and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers.”

“And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level,” he added.

Vivek Saxena

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