Taking old, resolved scandals - slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, so we should be extra wary of stories like this being massaged.
Respectfully, thats not accurate.
The article actually shows that dei considerations were central to the original changes, not just recent framing. The FOIA requests show explicit discussions about "diversity vs performance tradeoffs" from the beginning. The NBCFAE role and the "barrier analysis" were both explicitly focused on diversity outcomes in 2013.
The article provides primary sources (internal FAA documents, recorded messages, investigation reports) showing that racial considerations were explicitly part of the decision making process from the start. This is documented in realtime communications.
The scandal involved both improper hiring practices (cheating) AND questionable DEI implementation. These aren't mutually exclusive; they're interrelated aspects of the same event.
> Taking old, resolved scandals
In what way do you consider this resolved?
The class action lawsuit hasn't even gone to trial yet (2026).
The FAA is still dealing with controller shortages. (facilities are operating understaffed,controllers are working 6-day weeks due to staffing shortages, training pipelines remain backed up)
The relationship between the FAA and CTI schools remains damaged, applicant numbers have declined significantly since 2014.
For example, here's an FAA slide from 2013 which explicitly publishes the ambition to place DEI as the core issue ("- How much of a change in jo performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?"):
The evidence in this source does not discuss cronyism, although I believe you that it could have been relevant to your personal experience; it's just false to claim the issue as a whole was unrelated to DEI.
It says the answers were sent from the FAA to members of the "National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees". It went to all of them, not just friends. It was DEI, not cronyism.
Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA employee Shelton Snow:
You might be confused by this line:
As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly’s friends in the program encouraged her to join the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees
That may or not be cronyism, but once she joined, the whole org got the answers, so clearly it was aimed at getting more Blacks through the process.
And the beauty is, the more brackets, the more true this is, and the more can be extracted from the system.
But to actually answer the question: while it can absolutely be both, you need to provide proof of the additional claim. "People cheated for DEI reasons" and "People cheated for cronyism reasons" are two separate claims. The article provides plenty of evidence for the former and not much for the latter.
In addition, this is a diversion from the elephant in the room, which is that right after some dramatic executive action, many people died within a short amount of time due to a crash that had nothing to do with race and everything to do with chaotic governance.
Cronyism is advancing the interests of your personal connections. Friends and family. If you want an explicit cutoff, the Dunbar Number suggests this group should have 100, maybe 150 people in it.
Conversely, there's 40 million black people in the US, and I really doubt anyone is even associated with all of them, much less calling them one of their friends.
You can change who you're friends with a lot easier than you can change your skin color, so the two result in different problems. They're both bad, of course. Similar to how "wage theft" and "shoplifting" are different crimes, even though both of them involve taking money from someone else.
Only hiring people who belong to the same fraternity is also cronyism, and is the same problem.
In this case, a criteria for joining this ‘fraternity’ is the color of their skin.
Hence double applicable with DEI.
Why do you keep insisting on ignoring half of what you are pasting?
First, the FAA and the NBCFAE are different organizations.
Second, "Associate" does not mean "employed at the same massive organization". It means someone you actually know, on a personal level. You and I are not "associates" just because we both post on Hacker News.
Third, the question is whether you're associated with the individual, not the organization that they're a part of.
> Only hiring people who belong to the same fraternity is also cronyism
If you only hire from Harvard or some other prestigious university is that also cronyism?
Are all internal promotions cronyism?
If you only hire people who live in your city, is that also cronyism? Keep in mind that there's plenty of rural towns that have fewer people than a big fraternity does. Does this change if all th qualified workers in the town are black, so you're only hiring black workers?
You presumably have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise "only hiring US citizens" is also cronyism. Where, exactly, are you suggesting that line should be?
Also, going out of your way to hire people of specific skin color where you work, is racism.
Seems like a bunch of folks at the FAA were doing both here, yes?
I'll offer up the Wikipedia definition, since it is perhaps slightly clearer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism defines it as "friends or trusted colleagues".