Despite direct links between the air disaster in Washington, D.C. and federal hiring practices remaining unclear, the deadliest crash in 15 years has returned to the forefront of concerns about aviation industry safety, including past efforts to prioritize diversity over merit in the air traffic control profession. 

After the crash, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump called out past efforts during the Obama and Biden Administrations to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) hiring practices, including for important air traffic control specialist roles, and issued an executive order requiring a review of government hiring in the industry. 

“This shocking event follows problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden Administrations that minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),” Trump wrote in the order. 

"Consistent with the Presidential Memorandum of January 21, 2025, the Secretary and the Administrator shall take all actions necessary to reverse concerning safety and personnel trends during the prior 4 years, instill an unwavering commitment to aviation safety, and ensure that all Americans fly with peace of mind,” he continued. 

The Obama-era changes to air traffic control system hiring has come under scrutiny in the past by prospective air traffic controllers and Congress alike for prioritizing diversity over merit, which critics say could compromise safety. 

One prospective Air Traffic Control Specialist sued in 2015, alleging that the Obama FAA discriminated in its admissions process for air traffic controller training by designing a questionnaire that prioritized minority candidates over others, even those who had completed the FAA’s Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI). 

Just the News reported on this lawsuit last year, which is still ongoing, after the FAA recorded 19 “near misses” at airports across the country that could have led to deadly air disasters much like the one that occurred in D.C. on Wednesday. The incident also follows recent warnings that the air traffic system is suffering from quality control issues and staffing shortages that put safety at risk.

The crash between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet near the Ronald Reagan National Airport left 67 people dead. 

The prospective air traffic controller who filed the lawsuit, Andrew Brigida, said the FAA’s hiring practices, the air traffic controller staffing shortages, and the air disaster that occurred on Wednesday are all interrelated. 

Asked by the Telegraph in the aftermath of the crash whether the years of diversity programs would ensure that an accident was likely to happen eventually, Brigida said, “Yes, that’s kind of accurate.” Brigida added that “There have been plenty of stories of near miss events that have been the cause of staffing issues. It’s surprising that it’s gone on this long without being properly recognised by the government.”

Though it is not known whether it had a direct impact on the incident, staffing shortages were reported at the airport the night of the crash. Sources told ABC News that the staffing levels at the Reagan National Airport control tower were “not normal.” They also said supervisors were forced to assign roles normally designated to two controllers to one controller, a regular occurrence at the airport. 

Brigida believes the staffing issues are a direct result of the FAA prioritizing diversity of its workforce over the qualifications of applicants. The details unearthed in the lawsuit show how the FAA overhauled its hiring system to diversify the pool of air traffic controllers based on immutable characteristics like race and sex. 

Test scores vs. Biography

In December 2013, thousands of students—including Brigida—who had participated in the FAA’s Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI)—a program specifically designed to prepare individuals to become Air Traffic Control Specialists—were informed that their previous scores on a cognitive and skills-based test—known as the AT-SAT—would be discounted. Instead, these students would have to pass a biographical survey before retaking the cognitive portion of the test, Just the News previously reported. 

What the program graduates did not know is that only 14% of them would pass this new biographical questionnaire, despite half of them having previously passed the skills-based test and met all of the FAA pre-qualifications to be referred on the next step to becoming Air Traffic Control Specialists.

This policy shift was undertaken by the Obama-era FAA even though an internal study had found an applicant’s score on the AT-SAT cognitive test was an accurate predictor of how well those recruits would perform in their future training to become air traffic controllers. 

That study recommended that the FAA continue to use the the test to assess aptitude for the job, prioritizing test takers who scored in the “well-qualified” benchmark, and, if the agency needed recruits from the “qualified" benchmark, to give CTI program graduates priority. 

But, the agency went ahead with plans to implement the biographical questionnaire, which ended up disqualifying thousands of the CTI graduates. 

Covering a variety of subjective topics, like learning styles, sports played, and grade school performance in certain subjects, each question had its own weight, which would determine what value that an answer would contribute to a candidate's success or failure in the biographical questionnaire portion.

Disproportional weighting

For example, the questionnaire asked the applicants to choose the class for which they received the lowest grade in high school. However, if an applicant chose “Science,” their answer would be disproportionately weighted compared to other subjects, like math and history.

The class action cited educational data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing Black students' national average scale score in science was lower than any other race to allege that the test was designed to favor certain minorities over other applicants.

Lawyers argue that an email between FAA officials and the outside company tasked with designing the questionnaire uncovered during the lawsuit showed that this and other weights were explicitly constructed to screen out a significant proportion of the candidates, in total, 70% of them.

In 2019, Congress took action and ended the use of biographical questionnaires for air traffic controller recruitment after the allegations surfaced. 

However, the Biden Administration implemented a government-wide diversity push that saw the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, adopt new ways of ensuring DEI practices continued across the agency. 

According to a letter from Republican Senators in Jan. 2023, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg implemented a recruitment quota for 3% of the FAA workforce to identify as an individual with a “targeted disability.” This includes individuals who experience total deafness or blindness, who are missing extremities, or have severe intellectual disabilities.

More broadly, the FAA’s strategic plan for 2022 to 2026 emphasizes the need for the agency to “rethink” its hiring practices to ensure a workforce that more closely resembles broader U.S. demographics. According to the plan, the FAA would “reevaluate the skills” needed for an FAA employee and “refine the interview process,” to meet its hiring goals.