President Donald Trump on Thursday correctly noted that Democrats have long sought to lower standards for aviation professionals out of concern that the field is overwhelmingly white and male.
In 2023, President Joe Biden nominated a black man, Phil Washington, to oversee the Federal Aviation Administration despite Washington having little experience in the field. Washington had run Denver’s airport for two years in a job that largely revolved around managing the airport’s commercial space. He withdrew his nomination after he could not answer basic questions about flying in a Senate hearing, leading to bipartisan condemnation.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), a pilot, said “He should have never been appointed for the job. I put this on Joe Biden who was going more for diversity rather than the public safety when it comes to air traffic.”
In 2016, the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General found that a group advocating for black air traffic controllers, the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), gave black applicants the answers to a test, according to Fox News.
The inspector general declined to pursue criminal charges against the cheaters, even though one was caught in a lie by investigators, according to Michael Pearson, an attorney who uncovered the secret report. Pearson added that those implicated remained employed by the FAA.
In 2013, President Barack Obama’s FAA Administrator, Michael Herta, “made an historic commitment to transform the Federal Aviation Administration into a more diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects, understands, and relates to the diverse customers we serve,” after commissioning a paper that said relying on qualifications and test scores created “barriers…for racial/ethnic minorities.”
Seventy-three percent of white applicants passed the qualifications stage, compared to 47% of black applicants and 60% of Hispanic applicants. If the cutoff score for the test was 85, 78% of Asian applicants and 77% of white applicants passed, while only 38% of black applicants and 41% of Hispanic applicants did. But if the cutoff was lowered to 70, racial equity was in sight, with all Asian applicants passing, 99% of white applicants passing, and 90% of black applicants passing, the Obama consultant said.
In the end, the Obama administration opted to add a “Biographical Questionnaire” (BQ) to the application, which was used to give minorities extra points by asking questions about how many sports they played, or asking them to explain the cause of their failures, seemingly “to elicit stories of personal disadvantage.”
Pearson said the questionnaire actually punished people for being competent. It gave them 10 points for saying they’d been unemployed for the last three years, but just two points for saying they were trained pilots. Applicants were also rewarded if they said science was their worst subject in high school.
Historically, air traffic controllers were recruited from the military or elite schools, in a rigorous process reflective of the fact that lives were on the line. But the new process, in a bid to diversify, opened hires to what the FAA called “off-the-street.”
In 2024, House Republicans introduced a provision removing the biographical questionnaire into the FAA’s funding bill. Biden signed the funding package into law in May 2024.
