A guy named Andrew Brigida, who scored 100% on the air-traffic controller exam, was turned down for the job because he was white

By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)

February 1, 2025

Liberals keep insisting that Obama never lowered the standards for air-traffic controllers.

But the proof keeps coming out more and more and more.

I don’t expect the liberals to admit that they were wrong.

But I do like to keep documenting this, and showing it to as many people as possible.

The Telegraph just reported:

https://archive.ph/5iuqQ

An aspiring air traffic controller who claimed he was denied a job because of diversity targets said the aviation agency’s obsession with inclusion made an accident likely to happen.

Andrew Brigida, 35, scored 100 per cent in his training exam but alleged that he was denied a position in an air traffic control tower because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recruitment process favoured diverse candidates. He is part of a class action lawsuit filed against the federal agency.

Speaking after the Washington air disaster, in which 67 people were killed, Mr Brigida claimed that years of diversity hiring meant it was only a matter of time before an accident happened.

“You want to hire the best and the brightest for this kind of job because it is a very stressful job and it can take a toll on you, age you prematurely,” he told The Telegraph. “You want to make sure that the people that are doing it are the best.”

Mr Brigida graduated from Arizona State University’s collegiate training initiative in 2013 – a partnership programme with the FAA that was previously used to train and select the most qualified applicants.

After scoring top marks in his air traffic control selection and training examination, he was placed on a preferred candidate list until the FAA changed the rules.

Under the Obama administration, the regulator replaced a skills-based test with a biographical questionnaire to attract more diverse applicants.

When Mr Brigida tried again to become an air traffic controller under the new tests, he said he failed the biographical questionnaire because he “didn’t fit the preferred ethnic profile”.

The Washington Post just reported:

https://archive.ph/Vk5fy

For air traffic controllers, the Obama administration in 2013 instituted a new hiring system that introduced a biographical questionnaire to attract minorities, underrepresented in the controller corps. The program was criticized, such as in a Fox News report in 2015, as making it harder for more skilled applicants to get hired as controllers.

The New York Post just reported:

https://archive.ph/To915

The Federal Aviation Administration was hit with a class action lawsuit last year alleging it had denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets — as it was revealed staffing levels were “not normal” at the time of this week’s deadly midair collision.

Complaints about the FAA’s hiring policies resurfaced after the American Airlines passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, killing 67 people in the country’s deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter century.

Details of the litigation reemerged, too, as Andrew Brigida — the lead plaintiff in the suit — suggested the federal aviation agency’s obsession with diversity hiring and inclusion had only ensured an accident was likely to happen.

The crux of the lawsuit is that the FAA, under the Obama administration, dropped a skill-based system for hiring controllers and instead replaced it with a “biographical assessment” in an alleged bid to boost the number of minority job applicants.
 
Brigida, who is white, alleges he was discriminated against solely based on his race when his application was rejected, court papers state.

The vying air traffic controller, who graduated from Arizona State University’s collegiate training initiative in 2013, was turned down for a job even though he had scored 100% on his training exam, the lawsuit alleges.

In 2014, the Wall St. Journal reported:

https://archive.ph/nlpF5

For years, aspiring air-traffic controllers in the U.S. have enrolled in schools selected by the Federal Aviation Administration to offer special courses that could smooth the way for a job at the agency.

But at the end of December, the FAA abruptly ended that special status for the 36 participating colleges and universities…

… some critics suspect it is intended partly to increase the share of minorities and women among controllers, who are now 83% male and white…

Some school officials say their controller enrollment already has fallen off because of the FAA change.

The FAA’s new stance “just doesn’t make sense,” said Douglas Williams, aviation-program director at the Community College of Baltimore County in Catonsville, Md… “They’re not getting the best-qualified applicants this way,” he said.

Students who have studied for the controller degrees fear they wasted time and money. Navy veteran Oscar Vega recently completed the two-year air-traffic program at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif. He said he passed the FAA controller aptitude test last year, so he was shocked when, in February, he failed the biographical assessment.

“They say you can take it again,” said the 28-year-old. “But it’s not a test you can study for. And we don’t know why we failed because we don’t get any feedback.”

The schools estimate that more than 3,000 graduates have been removed from the FAA’s hiring pool because of the new policy.

In 2014, the Chicago Tribune reported:

https://archive.ph/1LeDQ

More than half of the latest batch of air-traffic controller job offers nationwide went to people with no aviation experience…

The hiring breakdown marks a major shift in FAA recruitment strategy, which is now geared toward… attracting more minorities and women to the nation’s largely white and male controller work force

For almost the last 25 years, until the off-the-street hiring process was implemented in February, the FAA recruited controllers heavily from among military veterans possessing aviation experience and from the 36 FAA-approved college aviation programs across the U.S.

This keeps getting more and more coverage.

I don’t expect the liberals to let this coverage change their mind.

But I will continue to keep documenting it, and showing it to as many people as possible.

February 1, 2025. Tags: air-traffic controllers, Andrew Brigida, Barack Obama, DEI, Dumbing down, FAA, Flight 5342, plane crashes, Racism, Social justice warriors. Barack Obama, DEI, Dumbing down, Racism, Social justice warriors. 1 comment.