Trump Attacks DEI Programs at FAA Following Midair Collision
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump quickly politicized the air collision between an American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet and a military helicopter, blaming diversity, equity and inclusion programs for the most deadly US commercial airline accident in over a decade.
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Trump said he didn’t know the true cause of the deadly crash, but said he had opinions, reaching for his familiar attack on diversity initiatives. When pressed for evidence, Trump credited his conclusion to “common sense.”
“I have common sense, okay? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t,” he said. “We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level, when you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time.”
His remarks broke with a longstanding policy of transportation safety officials serving as the primary source of public information about accidents under investigation.
Trump did say he believed that there was “a pilot problem, from the standpoint of the helicopter” and conceded he did not “know that necessarily it’s even the controller’s fault.” Still, he repeatedly returned to criticism of federal hiring practices and the administration of former President Joe Biden in his remarks.
Later Thursday, Trump signed an executive action that directs the Department of Transportation and the FAA “to review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior 4 years, and to take such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety, including the replacement of any individuals who do not meet qualification standards.”
Trump has long attacked diversity and inclusion programs. He began his remarks on Thursday by insinuating that the outcomes don’t produce the most qualified employees, as well as mentioning natural intellect.
“Facts matter,” said Katie Thomson, the FAA’s former deputy administrator under Biden, who left shortly before Trump took office. “All air traffic controllers are hired under objective, merit-based criteria and must meet and maintain rigorous training requirements.”
The Federal Aviation Administration’s air-traffic control workforce of more than 18,000 is overwhelmingly white and male, according to an agency website. About 75% of air traffic controllers are white, while nearly 84% are male, according to agency figures from fiscal year 2024. Roughly 93% were listed as having no disability.
The Biden administration did take steps to hire more people from diverse backgrounds, including individuals with disabilities and people of color. That included increasing FAA recruitment efforts in underrepresented communities.
“There are thousands of factors that go into any plane crash investigation, and the diversity-hiring initiative status of the workers that day is not one of them,” said Jess Davidson, a spokeswoman with the American Association of People with Disabilities. “It is extremely inappropriate for the president to use this tragedy to push an anti-diversity hiring agenda. Doing so makes all Americans less safe.”
Diversity practices also haven’t been linked to recent accidents and near-misses. The consensus among safety experts is that one of the main problems is a shortage of pilots and air-traffic controllers, in large part due to the Covid-19 pandemic when hiring and training were disrupted. At the same time, there’s been a huge resurgence in air travel since the pandemic, which has further strained the aviation system.
“The NAACP is disgusted by this display of unpresidential, divisive behavior. The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said.
Staffing at the airport control tower was not normal for the volume of traffic and time of day, the New York Times reported Thursday.
The National Airspace Traffic Controllers Association, the industry’s labor union, said that as of the end of September, there was was still a shortage of more than 3,500 certified air-traffic controllers.
Accident Reaction
Trump’s comments ridiculing DEI programs were echoed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the briefing Thursday at the White House, while Vice President JD Vance suggested that when you were “not getting the best people in government” it puts “stresses on the people who are already there.”
Trump defended his approach, suggesting that raising the political issues would not make a difference to those who had perished in the crash.
The administration will be closely watched over how it handles the crash, with some top cabinet officials only days into their roles. Hegseth was sworn into his post on Saturday, while Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — whose department houses the FAA — was sworn in Tuesday.
Potentially complicating matters, the FAA does not have a Senate-confirmed administrator at the moment after Mike Whitaker stepped down on the day of Trump’s inauguration. Trump said Thursday that Chris Rocheleau, the former chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association, will serve in that role on an acting basis.
The FAA said it would launch a probe into the crash alongside the National Transportation Safety Board, which will lead the inquiry. Hegseth said the Pentagon has also launched its own investigation into the incident.
Crash Norms
Under longstanding rules, investigative authorities including the NTSB, have served as the sole provider of public information about aviation and other disasters being probed. As of early Thursday afternoon, no NTSB official, including Chair Jennifer Homendy, have provided a public update about their investigation.
The agency tightly controls the release of information to ensure that only facts unearthed through their work inform their findings about an accident’s most likely cause. Those findings also underpin subsequent recommendations to prevent future tragedies.
The NTSB has responded harshly when others break with that practice. The agency, which is expected to give its first briefing on the DC crash on Thursday, chastised Boeing Co. last year for holding an unauthorized briefing with reporters related to the midair blowout on one of its jets.
Duffy tested those communication protocols, when he told reporters earlier on Thursday that the flight paths of both aircraft were “normal” and “not unusual for what happens in the DC airspace.” He later said he thought the accident was “absolutely” preventable.
“I think he went out of his lane a little bit,” said Jeffrey Guzzetti, a former accident investigation chief for the FAA. He attributed the misstep to Duffy being new to his job.
Early Response
The plane operated by American Airlines subsidiary PSA Airlines, collided with a Sikorsky H-60 helicopter while on approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport just before 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday night, according to the FAA. The flight, carrying 60 passengers and four crew on board, had departed from Wichita, Kansas, and was set to land at Reagan airport, which is in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the nation’s capital and just south of the Pentagon. There were no survivors.
The Army’s Black Hawk helicopter had three airmen aboard, according to an Army official who asked not to be identified discussing details that hadn’t been publicly disclosed. The helicopter was based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The Army for years has flown night and day helicopter missions in the Northern Virginia skies near Reagan Airport, including missions that are sometimes classified.
(Updates with executive action.)
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