The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

The bar wasn’t lowered at all. What happened was that the FAA stopped giving preferential treatment to a separate group—namely, CTI graduates—by replacing their streamlined path with a flawed biographical screening. Every candidate still has to pass the same rigorous training and certification.

Well, the FAA also leaked the official answers to the biographical screen to black interest groups so that they could teach black applicants to cheat on the screen.

That’s not exactly what happened. The article shows that an FAA employee leaked guidance on answering the biographical questionnaire to members of the NBCFAE. This wasn’t an official FAA policy but a rogue action.

Every candidate still had to pass the same rigorous training and certification process, which is extremely difficult and selective.

That's not an accurate way of describing this.

The biographical screen was not flawed, it was designed to try to pass minority students at higher rates than non minority (for example that question on "your hardest topic" needing to be science). And it did exactly what it was designed to do.

Which had the effect of dramatically reducing the available candidates.

CTI never had preferential treatment, they simply were students who learned the skills needed to pass the actual ability test. That's not preferential treatment, that's exactly what school is meant to do.

> Every candidate still had to pass the same rigorous training and certification process, which is extremely difficult and selective.

According to the post, candidates who weren't capable of passing the training were promoted into management positions instead.

> This was [...] a rogue action aimed at reducing competition, not at giving any specific group an undue advantage.

I'm honestly curious whether you think that sentence means something.

You created this account 1hr ago, and are already 3 comments in on this topic. In all your comments you're doing mental gymnastics on a pretty clear-cut case. they have tapes.

Imagine, for a second, having tapes on someone saying "Our organization, he said, “wasn’t for ~~Caucasians~~ <insert minority here>, it wasn’t for, you know, the ~~white~~ <insert minority here> male, it wasn’t for an alien on Mars,” and he confirmed that he provided information “to minimize the competition.”

Would you still argue this the way you are doing? Would this still have been buried? Are you actually trying to argue this isn't a blatant case of racism?!

Let's focus on the article and evidence rather than personal details or dismissive labels. Personal attacks don't add to the discussion and go against HN guidelines for civil and substantive debate.

You are right. My bad. Please disregard the first line.

The tapes thing still holds, tho. They have tapes. Care to comment on those?

Ok, let's focus on the article. Directly from it:

> they concluded the following:

> Snow was the one in the recording Reilly obtained. He explained to people how they should answer the biographical questionnaire. He advertised the telephone conference process via text, emphasizing that it was for members only, and saying things like “If you don’t answer that your friends feel you are well respected you can cancel yourself out of this announcement.” He instructed people to mention that they were NBCFAE members, as he explained it, “so the FAA would know […] this applicant is being groomed […] by an […] FAA-approved and recognized association.” Our organization, he said, “wasn’t for Caucasians, it wasn’t for, you know, the white male, it wasn’t for an alien on Mars,” and he confirmed that he provided information “to minimize the competition.”14

I disagree with the actions of the rogue employee who leaked those instructions, that's clearly wrong and illegal, and it's right to call that out. However, I believe there is some misunderstanding because sharing those answers doesn’t mean the FAA lowered the bar. What happened was akin to someone unethically telling people how to cheat to get an interview referral at google- yet the actual subsequent qualification process, the rigorous training and certification, including the AT-SAT remained unchanged. The FAA still demands the same high standards from all candidates once they enter the pool.

What if corporation A wanted to fill their CFO position. They put out an ad, but decided to interview folks only from ethnicity W. They then hired a qualified person from ethnicity W. When challenged about excluding from the process non-ethnicity W folks, they respond "but they still had to be qualified." Are you fine with that?

CTI graduates had a much better rate of actually becoming ATC professionals. So why should the FAA ignore that instead of spin one up at Howard?

It's hard to defend it as a rogue action, given:

> The FAA investigated, clearing the NBCFAE and Snow of doing anything wrong in an internal investigation.

They don't seem to have overlooked what he did either, they just determined that it was okay

Respectfully, that's a strawman and not what happened. Realistically the inverse happens more, and we often only interview people from certain backgrounds even though qualified people exist in other walks of life. Just look at the racial and wealth backgrounds of people who eventually become CEOs.

In what context would it ever make sense to preferentially hire a population whose worst high school subject was science and lowest college grades were in history?

Sharing the answers wasn't someone going rogue, it was the whole point.