Reports: The Air Traffic Control Tower in DC Was Understaffed

But wait until you hear why.

President Trump confirmed Thursday that there are no survivors after an American Airlines plane and an Army helicopter collided in the air over Washington DC Wednesday night. The search-and-rescue operation became a recovery mission in the early morning hours, officials said.

The flight from Wichita, Kan., collided with the military chopper while approaching Runaway 33 at Reagan National airport around 9 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

There were 64 people aboard American Flight 5324, with 28 bodies recovered from the river so far, officials said Thursday afternoon. The bodies of all three soldiers who were on the Army helicopter had been recovered as well.

..

The air traffic controller working at the time of the deadly plane-helicopter crash in Washington was doing the work of two people, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Staffing in the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport was "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic," the FAA found in its preliminary report, according to the New York Times.

Why was it understaffed? Well, the claim being made by corrupt paid-off NeverTrumpers and leftwing media propagandists is that Trump Did It in the past 8 days. Click-farmer and disinformation peddler Aaron Rupar claimed that the crash was caused by Trump firing the head of the TSA -- who has nothing to do with air flights, and is only responsible for setting the correct molestation parameters for groping people at the airport -- and the head of the Coast Guard, because he decided that Boats Are the Airplanes of the Sea.

Also pushing this line was CNN's criminally-stupid Bakari Sellers and "Muh Principles" NeverTrump grifter/nobody Heath Mayo.

There is an alternative explanation, though: The Biden Administration stopped hiring qualified air traffic controllers because the qualified candidates they were getting were "too white."

They changed the test to be "biographical" -- code for, "We're going to ask you about any racism you've experienced in your life," wink-wink -- and refused to hire 3000 qualified "too white" candidates.

And apparently they just couldn't find enough marginally-qualified DEI candidates, either:

Jerry Dunleavy IV @JerryDunleavy

"The tower was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of Sept. ***2023***... The shortage -- caused by ***years*** of employee turnover and tight budgets, among other factors -- has forced many controllers to work up to six days a week..."

And also, too mentally sane and too non-developmentally-disabled. Biden pushed to recruit "people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities," because those are just the folks you want in the incredibly stressful air traffic control towers where workers are literally keeping planes from hitting each other every minute.

Trump just signed an order authorizing an investigation into the FAA's deadly DEI policies:

posted by Ace at 04:15 PM

| Access Comments