RUTHFULLY YOURS

After the mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport, President Donald Trump cast blame on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration. But the problem goes much, much deeper than that.

Decades of gross mismanagement and chronic waste have left the FAA’s air traffic control (ATC) system dangerously ill-prepared to safely do its job. And the only fix is a complete overhaul – something Canada and most other industrial nations did years ago.

“I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first,” Trump said, suggesting they hired people based on membership in “protected classes” rather than merit.

Naturally, the press sprang into action to attack that claim. But it’s possible that DEI contributed to the calamity, if indirectly.

In 2012, for example, the FAA temporarily halted new hires “so it could replace race-blind hiring rules with a ‘Biographical Assessment’ stratagem designed to hire more minorities,” according to the Washington Times. Congress forced the FAA to drop this “assessment” in 2018, but the FAA now faces a class action lawsuit from more than 2,000 qualified air traffic control applicants who say they were sidelined to make room for “diversity” candidates.

In June 2023, the Transportation Department’s inspector general reported that the “FAA continues to face staffing challenges and lacks a plan to address them,” prompting lawmakers to attack then-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for being “focused on advancing racist and divisive DEI agenda” instead of filling this alarming gap.

The FAA itself admitted that the staffing level at Reagan National Airport on the night of the crash was “not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic.”

But personnel is only half the problem with air traffic control. The other is woefully antiquated technology used by traffic controllers. “For over four decades we have reported on challenges facing FAA’s modernization of its ATC systems,” the Government Accountability Office said in December.

The GAO found that:

The Federal Aviation Administration relies on information systems to help air traffic controllers keep the airspace safe and efficient. Last year, FAA determined that 51 of its 138 systems are unsustainable, citing outdated functionality, a lack of spare parts, and more.

Over half of these unsustainable systems are especially concerning, but FAA has been slow to modernize. Some system modernization projects won’t be complete for another 10-13 years. FAA also doesn’t have plans to modernize other systems in need — 3 of which are at least 30 years old.

Just this weekend, the FAA’s critical “Notice to Air Missions” warning system – which relays important information about possible hazards to pilots and airports – went down, causing delays across the country.

This, mind you, is despite billions spent by the FAA over the past 20 years on a modernization project called NextGen, which was supposed to be finished by now, but has been plagued by – you guessed it – cost overruns and delays.

This is the stuff of Third World countries.

So, what can be done? The answer is simple. Do what Canada did in 1995 when Nav Canada, a nonprofit private company funded by user fees, took over the country’s air traffic control system. The result was rapid modernization, increased efficiency, and lower costs for airlines funding the system.

Canada isn’t alone. As the Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole, who is the preeminent expert in air traffic control modernization, noted: “Over the past 30 years, nearly all major countries have separated air traffic control from their transportation ministries and converted it into a user-funded utility.”

Way back in 1993, Vice President Al Gore recommended taking this step as part of his “reinventing government” effort. Nothing happened.

Poole notes that over the past decade a large coalition – including most airlines, the air traffic controllers’ and the pilots’ unions, and “a large number of former U.S. Department of Transportation and FAA officials” – wants to make this change. In his first term, Trump backed a House bill that would “corporatize” air traffic control.

So, here’s a suggestion for the president: Forget about blaming DEI or Biden or Buttigieg, and fix the problem. Unleash Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency and have them drag the nation’s air traffic control system into the 21st century.