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The Trump administration has accused the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of “elevating dangerous discrimination over excellence” as the President criticized his last two predecessors for lowering the standards required to become an Air Traffic Controller during a media briefing on Thursday.
“Prior to my Inauguration, the FAA Diversity and Inclusion website revealed that the prior administration sought to specifically recruit and hire individuals with serious infirmities that could impact the execution of their essential life-saving duties,” the President wrote in one of the hundreds of executive orders he has already signed.
The order continued: “Illegal and discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring, including on the basis of race, sex, disability, or any other criteria other than the safety of airline passengers and overall job excellence, competency, and qualification, harms all Americans, who deserve to fly with confidence.”
In the wake of the mid-air collision between American Airlines flight AA5342 and a military Sikorsky H-60 helicopter that tragically claimed the lives of all 67 people aboard both aircraft, Trump once again double-downed on his claims about DEI practices at the FAA during the Biden administration.
“Their policy was horrible, and their politics were even worse,” Trump said of former President Joe Biden and Barack Obama. “My administration will set the very highest possible bar for aviation safety. We have to have our smartest people. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.”
“We will restore faith in American air travel,” the President continued.
There is, however, no evidence to suggest that DEI initiatives had anything to do with Wednesday night’s fatal accident at Regan National Airport in Washington DC, and the President’s comments have drawn sharp criticism from senior Biden administration officials.
The National Transporation Safety Agency (NTSB) is still to hold a press conference on the accident, and experts have cautioned to avoid speculation about the cause of the mid-air collision until an investigation has been completed.
Following the presser, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called Trump’s comments “despicable.”
“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch,” Buttigieg wrote in a post on X.
“President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe.”
Following the ousting of former FAA administrator Michael Whitaker on January 20 by Trump, the position had remained vacant and there was no one at the helm of the FAA when Wednesday night’s crash occurred.
Trump has now belatedly announced that Chris Rocheleaua, a former FAA veteran of 22 years and lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, will take over as acting administrator of the agency.
Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since... most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.
Are you seriously suggesting that having someone in place of the previous FAA Administrator who was fired 10 days ago, would have prevented this tragedy? Stop using human catastrophes for your political agenda. This incident happened regardless of who (or even anyone at all) was at the helm of the FAA. And please provide proof to substantiate your statement “
Anything Pete B says is false. He is what is wrong with America.