A group of almost a dozen attorneys general across the United States have sent a letter to the Biden administration warning that DEI hiring practices within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are putting airline passengers in danger.
“We are troubled by some recent reports regarding your agency’s hiring practices and priorities,” Kansas Republican AG Kris Kobach and 10 other attorneys general wrote to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker. “It seems that the FAA has placed ‘diversity’ bean counting over safety and expertise, and we worry that such misordered priorities could be catastrophic for American travelers.”
According to the letter, the FAA under the Biden administration “appears to prioritize virtue-signaling ‘diversity’ efforts over aviation expertise” and “this calls into question the agency’s commitment to safety.”
Kobach and the other attorneys general allege that the FAA is no longer focusing on merit when hiring employees and has instead put its focus on diversity and pointed to statements made by the FAA related to a “five year strategic plan” to “diversify its workforce by rethinking its hiring practices and capitalize on opportunities to hire people who will bring new and diverse skills to the agency and reflect the demographics of the U.S. labor force.”
“These efforts follow on work that reportedly started under the Obama Administration when the agency shockingly sought out applicants with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities to staff the agency responsible for air traffic control, aviation safety, major airports, commercial space regulation, and security and hazardous materials safety,” the letter states.
And I hate it because my ass has to fly soon.
Update: Boeing nightmare continues (VIDEO)… 757 emergency landing after wing rips apart midair…
Four bolts were missing from a door panel that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight last month while the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane was flying over Oregon, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.
The bolts are there to prevent the non-operational panel, known as a door plug, from moving upward, the NTSB said. But last year, before the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines, the door panel had to be opened and four bolts removed at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory to replace damaged rivets nearby, the report says.
As part of the investigation, the agency found that the “absence of contact damage or deformation” around holes associated with vertical movement bolts indicates that four bolts of the door panel were missing before the panel moved up off the stop pads, according to the report.
It’s unclear why the bolts were missing. Records show that the rivets were replaced, but photos obtained from Boeing Co. by the NTSB show that the door panel was put back without bolts in three visible locations. The fourth location is obscured in the photo by insulation, the NTSB said.
LA Times
Delusions of Adequacy 