Subject: Re: Common Sense
A thread on common sense. Okay.

You know who display common sense, way back in 2014 when the FAA started introducing DEI to hire controllers?

None other than Patty Murray, senator from Washington. I've met Patty. This is probably the most intelligent thing she's ever said in Congress:

https://x.com/BonillaJL/status...

The media immediately went to the “without evidence” card after
@realDonaldTrump
referenced hiring changes at the FAA. Well, here’s Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) in a 2014 hearing, relaying those same concerns to DoT Secretary Foxx, well before DEI was part of the lexicon.

"I really want to talk about the CTI schools and the fact that just a few months ago the FAA made some very dramatic changes to the way they’re hiring our air traffic controllers. And among those changes, the FAA now no longer relies on a pool of graduates from its Collegiate Training Initiatives, our CTI schools.

The FAA has added a new test to screen candidates they call the 'biographical questionnaire.' What I’m hearing from our CTI schools in my state, Washington state, that they’re very worried about their graduates, and I’m hearing from the graduates as well.

One CTI graduate from Washington State graduated with high honors, passed an FAA test for initial qualification, has almost five years of service in the Air Force, and a commercial pilot certificate with an instrumental rating. That young man took this biographical questionnaire and failed it for reasons that are very unclear, and he’s not the only one in this situation. So I want you to explain to us how the FAA has improved this process if this kind of applicant that I just described and many others are failing this initial screening."

The FAA abandoned the "Biographical questionnaire" (which allowed them to reject candidates they didn't think were diverse enough) in 2018 when Congress made them get rid of it. They still haven't been able to "widen the aperture" - read: Hire more people who look like what we think ATC's should look like - as evidenced by them falling short on their quotas for years.