Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) suspects woke hiring practices might be behind recent airline near catastrophes and has asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate.
Cruz wrote to the GAO Thursday in advance of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on “addressing close calls to improve aviation safety” to request an investigation into the extent to which recent ‘near-misses’ are a result of overworked controllers due to Obama’s woke policy change that prioritized diversity over graduates of air traffic Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) programs, which resulted in thousands of qualified applicants leaving the controller pipeline.
“There have been numerous Category A and B near-misses at U.S. airports this year,” Cruz, the top Republican on the committee, writes. “While many are still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, it appears controller error played a role in some of the runway incursions.”
He continues, “To ensure only the most qualified controllers are recruited and retained, we must understand whether previous political decisions influenced the current state of the controller workforce.”
The Obama administration in 2013 introduced a biographical questionnaire (BQ) into the Air Traffic Control (ATC) hiring process in an attempt to improve ATC diversity. In his letter, Cruz writes, “After the FAA adopted the BQ and began favoring ‘off-the-street’ hiring over graduates of air traffic CTI programs, thousands of qualified applicants left the controller pipeline.”
His letter requests the GAO assess the impact of the biographical questionnaire on the controller workforce and the extent to which recent near-misses are a result of controllers being less-well-trained due to the Obama policy change.
Cruz says that the BQ “reportedly awarded more points for applicants who scored lower in science and were unemployed during the previous three years.
“The BQ has never been made public, but it also reportedly asked applicants about their favorite music and colors to learn more about an applicant’s background.”
The Trump administration ended use of the biographical assessment in 2018 after more than 2,000 FAA ATC applicants successfully sued the FAA after their test scores were invalidated after not having participated in the questionnaire.
But Cruz’s letter suggests that significant damage to the employee pipeline may have already been done.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continues to blame flight delays and ‘near collisions’ on ATC staffing shortages. In March, it was forced to issue a “safety alert” after multiple near-miss incidents on runways at major airports.
Since April, Cruz has been urging Treasury Secretary Pete Buttigieg for answers regarding the FAA’s inability to tackle congestion and air traffic controller shortages.
Under Buttigieg, the department seems to have prioritized woke policies over its core mission. The secretary appointed 24 diversity advisers, installed a senior labor adviser to give unions direct access to the FAA administrator, and perhaps most notably worked to change the ‘Notice to Airmen’ (NOTAM) notification designation to ‘Notice to Air Missions’ instead of making much-needed changes to the outdated system itself.
Failure of the NOTAM system in January led to Buttigieg ordering the first full airspace stop since 9/11.
Buttigieg, who oversees a department employing around of 55,000, previously was mayor of South Bend, Indiana, where he oversaw an employee workforce of around 1,000.
The low-profile FAA has become a punching bag under Buttigieg, whose popularity has plummeted since taking the post, as high-profile incidents across the department have warranted scrutiny of his record.
A Rasmussen Reports survey released in March found that a majority of likely voters wanted Buttigieg to resign for the way he handled the toxic train derailment affecting East Palestine, Ohio.
Buttigieg also took heat in 2021 for going on paid leave to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies as cargo ships congested at U.S. ports creating an unprecedented crisis.
Wednesday, the House passed an amendment to reduce Buttigieg’s salary to $1.
Follow Bradley Jaye on Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
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