
Former Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has lashed out at the White House in a war of words over whether the Biden administration put American travelers in harm’s way by pushing DEI efforts for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Buttigieg has been using his personal X account to counter suggestions by President Trump and other senior administration officials that the past two Democrat governments prioritized ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ over skills-based hiring.
“To be abundantly clear: we did not change the rigorous standard for becoming a certified air traffic controller,” Buttigieg said in an X post on Sunday. “Those claiming otherwise are mistaken or lying,” the former DOT secretary slammed.
Buttigieg insists that under the Biden administration, the FAA grew the ATC workforce and increased funding and training following years of declining numbers, including under the former Trump presidency.
The post didn’t take long to be targeted with proposed ‘community notes,’ challenging the veracity of Buttigieg’s claims.
It’s no secret that despite hitting hiring targets, the FAA has struggled in recent years with chronically understaffed ATC centers across the United States, especially across the congested skies above the Northeast.
The FAA has already admitted that on the evening of January 29 when a military Blackhawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines regional jet on final approach to Reagan National Airport over the Potomac River, ATC levels were ‘not normal.’
Rather than having two controllers managing helicopter and airliner traffic around the airport, there was only one controller doing the job of two at the time of the accident.
Late last year, United Airlines slammed the FAA over its alleged failure to properly staff a major ATC center that covers a large area across the Northeast, including the airline’s Newark hub.
As of May 2024, the FAA was said to be short of nearly 3,000 air traffic controllers across the United States, although the agency then said in September that it had hit its goal of hiring 1,800 new air traffic controllers for the year.
President Trump has already signed an executive order aimed at banning the FAA from hiring workers based on “race, sex, disability, or any other criteria other than the safety of airline passengers and overall job excellence, competency, and qualification, harms all Americans, who deserve to fly with confidence.”
Although there is no evidence that DEI initiatives contributed in any way to the tragic mid-air collision of American Airlines flight AA5342, President Trump has lambasted the Obama and Biden administrations for putting inclusivity above safety.
“My administration will set the very highest possible bar for aviation safety,” President Trump said during a controversial press conference following the crash. “We have to have our smartest people. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.”
Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since... most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.
The DEI hire trump was probably referring to was Buttigieg. He was completely under qualified for that position and incompetent on top of it. I’m not saying trump’s pick is going to be any better in fact I would say he is just as unqualified to be in that position. How ever ATC is severely under staffed because Buttigieg stopped controller training for @ 2 years during covid. Because covid was scary. Any other reason put forward is not true. Also at the current training rate ATC will at best cover retirement attrition over the next several years and make 0 headway on the chronic understaffing problem.