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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

FWIW Obama’s administration instituted a diversity program for ATC that gave points to people that did poorly in school and haven’t had a job recently and penalized people with pilots licenses or military ATC experience and other qualifications. The ATC was considered “too white”.

In essence they worked backwards to figure out how to hit their arbitrary diversity targets without considering the lives of everyone that flies. Yes, they put your life at risk to fulfill an anti-racism agenda. This is criminal.

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This would be very interesting to look into if you cited a source.

"Affirmative Action Lands in the Air Traffic Control Tower", Wall Street Journal (June 2, 2015): https://archive.is/lDyOB

>A recently completed six-month investigation by Fox Business Network found that the Federal Aviation Administration has quietly moved away from merit-based hiring criteria in order to increase the number of women and minorities who staff airport control towers. The changes come despite the fact that the FAA’s own internal reports describe the evidence for changing the hiring process as “weak.”

>Until 2013, the FAA gave hiring preference to controller applicants who earned a degree from one of its Collegiate Training Initiative schools and scored high enough on an eight-hour screening test called the Air Traffic Selection and Training exam, or AT-SAT, which measures cognitive skills. The Obama administration, however, determined that the process excluded too many from minority groups.

This is very troubling if it is true, but the reporting felt a bit thin. If there was an article with interviews and more concrete evidence I would be more satisfied.

"Fox Business (officially known as Fox Business Network, or FBN) is an American conservative business news channel and website publication owned by the Fox News Media division of Fox Corporation." ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Business

A few weeks ago I heard about this from another pilot; I found several sources with a minimum of effort. I only fly in Europe, so I have zero personal experience with what is going on in US, but the narative makes sense to me as I saw it personally in other areas.

Here's an academic publication from 2018, but it doesn't seem to make any explicit claims about diversity related reasons for the changes in the hiring process:

>The hiring process for aspiring federal air traffic controllers from approved Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative (AT-CTI) institutions has undergone several revisions in recent years. Prior to 2014, graduates from AT-CTI programs were given preferential hiring from the FAA. In 2014, the FAA announced that AT-CTI graduates would equally compete with thousands of people the FAA calls “off the street hires”--anyone can literally walk in off the street without any previous training and apply for a federal air traffic control job. To apply, the FAA requires that a candidate has United States (U.S.) citizenship, a high school diploma, speaks English, and passes the FAA’s new Biographical Questionnaire (BQ).

>Another concerning perspective from AT-CTI administrators is that CTI graduates are at an employment disadvantage with the new hiring initiatives. One of the responding administrators expressed concern that off the street applicants have increased odds of employment over CTI applicants because CTI students are combined in track one with Veteran’s Readjustment Appointment (VRA) applicants putting CTI students second while all off the street applicants are grouped as one and have an equal opportunity for selection.

>The new FAA hiring protocol for federal air traffic controllers that was implemented in February 2014 included several significant changes. In particular, the FAA reduced the role of the CTI-approved program; therefore, the only remaining advantage for CTI graduates is that they are eligible to bypass the Air Traffic Basics Course, which is the first five weeks of qualification training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City (FAA, 2018). In addition, the FAA introduced the Biographical Questionnaire which was envisioned to predict controller performance through a process of asking individuals to recall their typical and/or specific behaviors from earlier times in their lives. But due to the lengthy process of hiring and training an air traffic controller which can take several years, it is too soon to conclude whether the FAA’s new hiring policies improved the ability to hire individuals who are more likely to successfully become federal controllers (FAA, 2017b).

https://ojs.library.okstate.edu/osu/index.php/CARI/article/v...

Agreed on this (the DEI part, not the obama part. It's much bigger than that.). Previously it was a mutual understand that ATC wouldn't get snarky with pilots in th air until they are on the ground as pilots have the final say.

Lately on youtube, i've seen nothing but bad behavior from ATC. And let's just say, there were certain qualities that were common between the incidents.

And what were those certain qualities? We aren't mind-readers.

They were black

ATC has always been terse and made you feel like a bother

What, that 90% of them are from contracted towers, whose contractor can get away with understaffing and overworking their controllers, and the controllers know they won't face consequences, because the FAA has no better solution (money, personnel) for staffing said towers and there's no political drive to force the issue?

It's sad that this is getting downvoted. What you posted is a fact and it should be addressed. We shouldn't bury our heads in the sand just because it's an issue of race.

I think if it were a fact, it would be supported by argument and evidence. What we have here is simply a claim, which was not supported by any evidence. I am perfectly willing to accept that poorly thought out diversity policies can have adverse effects on organizations, which is especially troubling if that organization manages vital infrastructure. But I would need to see good evidence, and argument with that evidence, to prove it, and not just a claim standing alone.

So if you don't agree with a claim, instead of asking for evidence you flag and terminate the discussion? This is what happened here.

The very person you are asking did ask for evidence right here in a peer comment 34 minutes before your comment, see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38587616

There's still a lack of any hard evidence beyond a speculative Fox News | Tucker Carlson | Sean Hannity dog whistle article.

The primary article of this submission indicates more that overall systemic changes from the top are the root cause rather than being entirely the workers fault; less staff, more hours, reduced training, etc.

1. Lack of response is not lack of proof.

2. People don't leave on HN, demanding an answer and waiting 34 minute before nuking from orbit is illogic.

3. There was a source and some information to support the claim. Also part of the claim is self-explanatory (lowering the standards for new hires to meet some hiring targets).

4. There is ample evidence in so many other places about the effects of lowering standards to meet diverse hiring targets. I cannot publish the results in my own company with close to 100,000 employees because they are not public, but they exist and they are embarrassing at least.

I am not the one that made the claim and I am not interested to support or explain it, but I am disappointed by the reaction: cancel any discussion that does not fit your views. Burn Giordano Bruno at stake, he did not present proof enough and fast enough.

I didn't flag the comment.

https://archive.is/lDyOB

I have no idea whether affirmative action in Air Traffic Control has anything to do with increased incidents. Either way, I think affirmative action as applied here is a travesty.

HN's flagged comments are the most interesting.

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