The state officials—led by Kansas AG Kris Kobach—said the FAA appears to be focused on “diversity hiring,” as opposed to “merit-based hiring.”
“We are troubled by some recent reports regarding your agency’s hiring practices and priorities. It seems that the FAA has placed ‘diversity’ bean counting over safety and expertise, and we worry that such misordered priorities could be catastrophic for American travelers,” they wrote.
The letter went on to cite the FAA’s five-year strategic plan, which states that the agency will “diversify its workforce by rethinking its hiring practices and capitalize on opportunities to hire people who will bring new and diverse skills to the agency and reflect the demographics of the U.S. labor force.”
They noted that the Obama administration followed a similar hiring practice when the FAA “sought out applicants with ’severe intellectual‘ and ’psychiatric' disabilities to staff the agency responsible for air traffic control, aviation safety, major airports, commercial space regulation, and security and hazardous materials safety,” the letter states.
‘Virtue-Signaling Diversity Efforts’
“Ironically, this was the same day that the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s race-based admissions policies and powerfully reinforced the principle that all racial discrimination, no matter the motivation, is invidious and unlawful,” the letter reads.
Concluding their letter, the attorneys general said they are concerned that the FAA’s prioritization of “virtue-signaling diversity efforts” over aviation expertise calls into question the agency’s commitment to safety.
They also noted that the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization provides services for more than 45,000 flights and 2.9 million airline passengers on a daily basis.
“Failure is not an option,” they wrote.
Under a strategic plan for the financial years 2022–26, first published in the fall of 2022, the agency is focused on four main pillars: Safety, People, Global Leadership, and Operational Excellence.
‘Safety Is the FAA’s Top Priority’
The People Pillar of that plan emphasizes the “importance of recruiting and maintaining a diverse workforce of the future,” the website states.Last month, the Department of Transportation (DOT), which oversees the FAA, pushed back on claims that its diversity practices impact customer safety.
Referring to the FAA’s website section regarding diversity, the spokesperson said the language “is the exact same today as it was under the Trump Administration and previous administrations before that.”
“Like many large employers, the agency proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that, of course, will vary by position,” the spokesperson said. “The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions.”
FAA officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
The attorneys general letter follows an alarming number of near-collisions involving commercial airlines in recent years. Also, in January, the FAA ordered a temporary grounding of roughly 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 airplanes after a midair incident on an Alaska Airlines airplane in which a fuselage door plug blew out.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are both investigating the incident.
