FAA Diversity Push Includes Hiring Those With Hearing, Vision, and Psychiatric Disabilities
“The mission of the FAA involves securing the skies of a diverse nation. It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation that it serves.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) DEI initiatives have made the news after Alaska Airlines lost a door during a flight.
The FAA, which is under Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation Department, updated its DEI policies in March 2022.
Because diversity is so critical, FAA actively supports and engages in a variety of associations, programs, coalitions and initiatives to support and accommodate employees from diverse communities and backgrounds. Our people are our strength, and we take great care in investing in and valuing them as such.
The mission of the FAA involves securing the skies of a diverse nation. It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation that it serves.
Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring. They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.
The FAA also has something called on-the-spot hiring, which doesn’t make me feel better:
A non-competitive hiring method for filling vacancies with Veterans and/or individuals with disabilities. Managers can choose to fill an open position through the On-the-Spot hiring process given they provide the required documentation for doing so.
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to worry about places hiring people with disabilities that could not only affect the job but literally affect many lives.
But since the FAA prioritizes diversity, how can we be sure it won’t put people in inappropriate roles?
The FAA has a ton of jobs. Therefore, more than likely, at least I hope, the FAA wouldn’t hire someone in a role that would compromise the lives of others.
The same could be said for the airlines and airline manufacturers. I doubt we won’t have to wait much longer until we see the headline, “Such and such introduces the first blind pilot.”
People have also pointed out that many airlines and airline manufacturers have placed too much emphasis on diversity and not qualifications.
On January 5, an Alaska Airlines flight on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 lost its plug door.
The FAA launched an investigation, grounding all Boeings with the same panel.
Well, look what Boeing did in 2022! The bonus plan added climate and DEI goals.
Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening. https://t.co/FcTyzZD0uW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2024
Boeing’s “Global Equity, Diversity & Inclusion 2023 Report” boasted about adding inclusion to incentive compensation:
Separately, Boeing issued a “Global Equity, Diversity & Inclusion 2023 Report,” which noted that “also in 2022, for the first time in our company’s history, we tied incentive compensation to inclusion.”
“Our goal was to achieve diverse interview slates for at least 90% of manager and executive openings,” the report said, adding that the company exceeded the target, “with 92% of interview slates being diverse, resulting in 47% diverse hires.”
“For 2023, we’ve raised the bar and expect at least 92.5% of those interview slates will be diverse.”
Boeing declined to comment on Thursday.
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Comments
This explains the Boeing mishap. The FAA has an open door hiring policy.
The MANY Boeing failures of the past ten years have nothing to do with DEI or the FAA. It is, at bottom, nothing more than an example of an engineering company now being run by accountants, combined with a lot of left over McDonnel Douglas mentality, with the emphasis being on McDonnell.
Actually, Boeing’s decline can be traced directly back to the decision to cast Jerry Lewis rather than Jack Lemmon as Tony Curtis’s costar in the 1965 movie Boeing Boeing. It has been a clown show ever since.
I’ve heard elsewhere that many of their recent problems are due to offshoring of software development.
Open Frame policy? Expose the world to idiocy….
I see what you did there.
The FAA also has a Mayor Pete problem
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1746759818721845501
This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of @united
. He likes to dress up in drag. United hired a drag queen to be their CEO and now United has turned their focus to incorporating drag into their business and sponsoring drag shows.
———————————
CEO of @united says he takes race and gender into account when hiring and laments that there’s too many white males in the airline industry.
Pix and video at link
Another federal agency without accountability engaged in social engineering to the detriment of the flying public.
Correct
A part of me thinks that this sort of thing is to act as a setup in case a Republican president is elected. Trump, De Santis, or Ramaswamy will reverse a lot of this nonsense and then be called out for being mean to the handicapped blah blah.
The FAA is going to hire sightless persons as air traffic controllers?
Oh, wait — the FAA doesn’t say that.
Never mind.
If you are testing the evacuation of an airplane, you want people with various disabilities as your test subjects. To make sure Boeing, Airbus, etc., are doing the right thing, you want people who can read and enforce the rules. The only “disability” I want those people to have is to be like a drill instructor and have skepticism and a little paranoia.
Scary
This can not be allowed to stand
Why not? The FAA isn’t proposing the hiring of the unqualified for skilled positions.
One of their initiatives is hiring veterans. Isn’t that a good thing?
“The following Direct Hiring Authorities are utilized by the FAA:
Disabled Veteran with 30 percent or more disability:
Disabled Veterans who were retired from active military service with a service-connected disability rating of 30 percent or more. Applicants must meet all qualification requirements.
…
Veteran Recruitment Appointment (VRA):
For Disabled Veterans, Veterans who served in active duty during war and Veterans who have received campaign badges or an Armed Forces Service Medal (AFSM).”
That’s EXACTLY what they are doing. ‘Qualification requirements’? They’ve proven over and over again that they’ll lower those to get their preferred quota of whatever minority they’re trying to boost.
And nice trying to hide the football.
IF YOU OPPOSE THIS YOU HATE HIRING VETERANS.
Just screw off with that nonsense. Hiring veterans has NOTHING to do with hiring with ‘severe intellectual disability’ (their own words!)
Yep they can hire capable disabled veterans without clumsy quota mandates from bureaucracy.
“That’s EXACTLY what they are doing.”
Could you show me? On one hand, I have the FAA stating on their site that applicants have to meet qualifications. OTOH, I have your contention. Surely you can direct me to the FAA’s required quota levels published on their site.
“IF YOU OPPOSE THIS YOU HATE HIRING VETERANS.
Just screw off with that nonsense.”
Who said any such thing? Organizations that actively recruit and hire veterans deserve commendation, not condemnation. During my career, I was honored to work beside and with veterans, one who suffered from a service-connected disability, who were hired as part of the company’s veteran employment initiative.
I’d be willing to bet that those veterans you worked beside were able to do the job without a mandate from above that they be hired. In fact, I’d bet that veterans that don’t just burn out in a few years or less have an advantage in work ethic and analytical, goal-oriented performance.
That’s what happens naturally in a merit-based system and doesn’t require quotas.
healthguyfsu — The national company that employed me had a very strong affirmative action program, aggressively advertised and promoted it, and was written up in several national trade publications as being one of the top AA companies through the ’80s and ’90s, especially in regards to recruiting minorities and vets.
That’s essentially “a mandate from above that they be hired.” I’m not aware of any quotas, but I didn’t have much contact with HR and was not privy to their internal workings.
Are you trying to explain or have me believe this is a good company because of AA?
That’s somewhat irrelevant as veterans are not a birthright form of AA. It’s just common sense to hire people who have taken to the pros of military service and hire them. It’s meritorious by one of its most obvious examples.
But if you think it’s relevant and since you “worked” for this company (past tense) you should have no problem sharing these public notices and the name of the company.
This Administration won’t do anything for Veterans. You’re naive.
I didn’t realize that they made Braille radar screens. There are some…some areas where the disabled might work… might…. but not in critical mission environments. The problem is “mission creep”. Lives are at stake but since they are somebody elses’ lives… that’s AOK.
“The mission of the FAA involves securing the skies of a diverse nation. It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation that it serves.”
No, that makes no sense whatsoever. And any Administrator who utters such sheer bullshit should be summarily fired for dereliction of duty.
Your job is to secure the skies. Full fucking stop. Hire the best people for the job based on their merits.
So, the FAA workforce should all be privileged exploiters full of toxic masculinity? I have been reliably informed that this “reflects the nation”, being the exploiters in charge and guilty of All The Things.
“It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation that it serves.”
I kinda think the more the FAA is fit for a particular purpose, the less it will “reflect” anything else.
That whole statement is full of propaganda non sequitur, and intentional vagaries. It’s what they do. It’s all they do. And they absolutely will not stop, because it’s all they can do.
The visible NTSB crew investigating the Alaska Airlines door was noticeably diverse. I don’t think it even had a white male. Fortunately it’s a easy case.
There is a great picture floating around the internet of an Alaska Airlines jet fully repaired with multiple strips of duct tape wrapped around the fuselage… ala Red Green. A roll of tape is on a truck waiting to resupply.
I still like the new Boeing logo… “When one door closes, another opens”.
Don’t knock duct tape. Some of it is approved for aviation use, patching skin cracks.
During the Gulf War the techs found that putting certain types of duct tape in the leading edges of helicopter blades reduced the wear from the sand.
“Speed tape”…. it’s a great picture. If this wasn’t such a thin skinned society, Alaska should paint duct tape over the door. It was a Boeing issue and Spirit… not Alaska.
During the Falklands War, speed tape patched the holes in the Sea Harriers.
More like, “When one door opens, another opens.” According to my son, the plug door blowing out also blew open the cockpit access door, which is supposed to be vented and fortified against being breachable like that.
Did you forget your /sarc tag?
When I worked for the US Government, I remember having a boss who had a two-drink rule. He needed to have at least two drinks before ordering food.
I remember an afternoon, when he was dictating his merit pay accomplishments, when he complained he did not even have an opportunity to promote any minorities, because there were none in the section.
So will psychotic trans dwarf of color be favored over other psychotic trans dwarves? Hardly seems fair.
It’s OK, they’ll never know because they’re blind.
Our diverse nation has a proportionate population of congenital idiots, too — it’s comforting to know that the FAA is already employing more than its share.
The idiots, useful or otherwise, do seem to have a nearly Freudian attraction to government, don’t they?
Psychopaths provably do, and with them in the mix, idiots are merely comic relief.
Selecting for psychiatric disabilities definitely reflects the nation it serves.
The kind of hiring the FAA is going to do isn’t a bad thing. If its done correctly that is. The IDF has a policy of accepting volunteers with various disabilities including Down’s, autism, blindness, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and cerebral palsy among others.
They aren’t giving make work jobs either, They might be simple as sweeping and cleaning but doing that job relieves another soldier to go into combat, They found that some with autism make great techs monitoring security cameras and image processing because they might see details and changes other miss.
I remember in WW2 aircraft manufactures used people who were deaf doing riveting inside airframe. Hearing people couldn’t stand the noise but the deaf shrugged it off.
What the FFA is doing WILL be a charlie foxtrot which is a shame cuz it can be done correctly.
They don’t need a DEI policy to hire correctly: they just need to do it. Add in the DEI element and you get something else, entirely.
Dan Bongino, on his radio show, read a letter from an airline Captain which revealed that the diversity hires are always paired with a boomer pilot because the new hires are incompetent and the Captain was lamenting the situation when the boomers all retire and the box checkers are left to fend for themselves
I remember this hearing last year, this is the type of person Biden wanted to run the FAA, not a pilot, no knowledge of rules and regulations regarding the aviation industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEj2Yq0okzU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaaxF2-4mCc
After this hearing he took his name out of consideration to run the FAA
The head of the NTSB isn’t a pilot, does not hold a commercial drivers license, never was an engineer on a train. She is a good communicator and can read well of cards so that makes her qualified.
That’s insane. How can a deaf ATC communicate with pilots and ground control? Should people with diabetes be allowed into the military so they can “reflect the nation”?
Please. The FAA isn’t hiring deaf controllers; that would be silly.
They’re hiring blind ones. Says so right in the article.
How can any group of people be said to be “92% diverse” or “47% diverse”? That suggests that each individual can be assigned as either “diverse” or “non-diverse”, which makes no sense with regard to the standard dictionary definition of diversity.
Unless, of course, it’s a euphemism for marking certain people as “desirable ” and others “undesirable” by virtue of their race, sex, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability status.
Because that would be illegal.
“That suggests that each individual can be assigned as either “diverse” or “non-diverse”, which makes no sense”
The tinfoil hat that I wore during my stint at MIT remarks offhandedly, “You just do a Fourier transform.”
As a disabled person (paraplegic) and a recovering leftist (ADAPT) I get around town in my wheelchair.
With that said, does that mean they’ll let me be a pilot? (Do I have to mention astigmatism in both eyes?)
Or perhaps they’ll let me be a flight attendant.
Or maybe as a passenger they’ll let me sit in the seats by the emergency exit doors. It used to be that if you had a mobility impairment, those seats were off limits.
This makes no sense.
Maybe I should use my gimp privilege to get a job I’m not qualified for, then sue for discrimination when they fire me for incompetence.
It’s what this administration does. Anything and everything to “break America”.