US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is launching a “full investigation” into the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Duffy disclosed the probe in a 14 March post on social media platform X, which linked to audio purportedly showing that a “DEI activist” had shared exam answers with “minority” air traffic controller (ATC) candidates.
“If true, swift accountability will come for those responsible,” he says. “We need the best and brightest, not buzzword, DEI hires.”
Duffy has previously echoed president Donald Trump’s comments suggesting DEI hiring – and alleged resulting shortages of skilled controllers – played a role in the catastrophic January accident in which a PSA Airlines regional jet collided with a US Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan National airport in Washington, DC, killing 67 people and shaking a US airline industry that had gone more than 15 years without such a massive loss of life.
A Trump appointee and former Fox News contributor, Duffy was sworn in to lead the US Department of Transportation – which oversees the FAA – the day before the PSA accident.
In a 14 March Fox News interview, Duffy pointed to the administration of former US President Barack Obama as having encouraged diverse candidates to enrol in the FAA’s ATC training programme.
”You can get into law school, but if you can’t pass the bar [exam], you can’t become a lawyer,” Duffy says. ”You still have to pass that bar. What this has done for us, here – we should do an investigation. I want to know: are there DEI practices still in place? Because the president has been incredibly clear. He wants the best and the brightest air traffic controllers controlling our skies.
“I agree with him on that, so we’re going to do an OIG investigation,” he says, likely referring to the DOT Office of Inspector General. ”We’re working with a law firm that is going to do an independent investigation into our air traffic control system.”
Duffy does not provide a timeline for completing the probe.
He is promising to reveal in coming weeks a sweeping plan to modernise ATC and improve air safety in the USA, saying he will ask the US Congress for required funding “upfront”.
Notably, the US National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report on the Reagan National collision has faulted the FAA for failing to act on thousands of “close proximity events” in which military helicopters flew too close to commercial aircraft on approach to the airport.
The FAA has shut down the previously busy helicopter corridor along the Potomac River in response to the accident.
