The precise cause of the deadly midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter in Washington last week will not be determined until the National Transportation Safety Board completes its full investigation which could take a year or longer. However, the NTSB will likely release a preliminary report within 30 days.
In the meantime, based on the limited information that has trickled out, people have begun to form their own opinions. And the conversation keeps returning to two explanations. Both are deeply troubling.
The data discrepancy
The first and most widely reported issue was that the Black Hawk was flying above the Federal Aviation Administration’s maximum allowed altitude limit of 200 feet. According to agency rules, “helicopters, which regularly cross through and around Washington, between military bases, the Pentagon and other locations, must fly in the area close to the airport at a maximum of 200 feet.”
“Tragically, last night a mistake was made,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a White House briefing after the crash. “There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DoD and Army level.”
Chiming in on Truth Social, President Donald Trump wrote, “The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”
At a weekend press conference, NTSB member Todd Inman announced that his team successfully downloaded data from the flight data recorder, also known as the black box, of the passenger jet. The data showed the jet was flying at approximately 325 feet at the time of impact “plus or minus 25 feet.” This would indicate that the helicopter had exceeded its altitude limit of 200 feet.
And NTSB safety investigator Brice Banning said that “on the tower’s radar data scope that was available to the controller, initial data indicates that he may have seen” the helicopter flying at 200 feet. Banning emphasized that these are only “preliminary data.”
Staffing woes
In the days following the crash, an internal preliminary report from the FAA and reviewed by the New York Times suggested that staffing levels at the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on the night of the crash were “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”
Specifically, the FAA determined that a single air traffic controller was performing the duties of two people at the time of the incident, communicating with both the helicopter and the plane.
According to the New York Times, during the busiest hours of the day, from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., “those jobs are typically assigned to two people, not one.” However, after 9:30 p.m., “those duties may be combined.” The collision occurred at 8:48 p.m.
On that fateful night, one air traffic controller reportedly left work early, as per the report. That may have resulted in a single controller managing both aircraft.
During a press conference the following day, Trump suggested that the FAA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion program was partly to blame for the tower being understaffed. In his eyes, that would make DEI a factor in the crash — not the sole cause, but a contributing factor nonetheless.
Trump was widely criticized for this remark. But given the FAA’s well-documented emphasis on diversity in its hiring process, his concern is legitimate.
A crisis of the FAA’s own making
The FAA has long struggled with a shortage of air traffic controllers. According to Congress’s Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan report, the air traffic control facility at Reagan National Airport had only “19 fully certified controllers on deck as of September 2023.”
The New York Post reported that the goal set by the FAA and air traffic controllers’ union for this airport is 30. Due to the shortfall, “many controllers work 10-hour days and six-day weeks.”
In the report, the FAA claimed it is “committed to maximum hiring for the next few years to recover from substantial under-hiring due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lapse in funding in 2019.”
However, the agency also reaffirmed its strict adherence to DEI policies, stating, “The FAA is fully committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity while maintaining the highest safety standards, as outlined in the agency’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2021-2025.”
“These principles are supported by focusing and increasing outreach and recruitment to underrepresented communities through intern programs, outreach to colleges, universities, and community organizations and partnerships with other federal agencies,” the report continued.
In the clip below, recorded in 2023, then-FAA Deputy Administrator Brad Mims appeals to “students and alumni from HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal colleges to apply now to become air traffic controllers.”
This intense fixation on DEI is a recurring theme in much of the discussion surrounding this agency and may very well be the reason for its staffing challenges. In other words, the shortage of air traffic controllers appears to be a crisis of the FAA’s own making.
Diversity over merit
In 2015, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the FAA, alleging that it had rejected 1,000 qualified applicants for air traffic control positions in 2013 based on race. The lead plaintiff in the case, Andrew Brigida, who received a perfect score on his entrance exam, is white.
The plaintiffs claim that “the FAA under the Obama administration dropped a skill-based system for hiring air traffic controllers and replaced it with a ‘biographical assessment,’ which was allegedly used to attract more minority applicants.”
The lead attorney in the case, William Perry Pendley, told Newsweek that in January 2014, “Brigida received an email informing him that the FAA was ‘implementing changes to improve and streamline’ the hiring process for air traffic controllers and that his application was ‘impacted’ by these changes.”
The FAA and the Transportation Department are contesting the lawsuit, according to Newsweek. It should be noted that Congress ended the use of the biographical assessment in 2018.
Pendley’s law firm issued a statement the day after the crash that read, “DEI hiring policies have no place in America, especially in safety-critical industries, yet they have shaped the FAA’s hiring decisions for years. Last night’s accident is a sobering reminder of the cost of placing ideology over expertise. … It’s time to demand accountability, end DEI hiring in aviation, and restore safety as the top priority in our airways.”
DEI obsession takes flight in the airline industry
Prioritizing diversity over merit is just as reckless in the airline industry, where pilot error could result in hundreds of deaths.
In 2023, at the height of DEI-mania in the United States, United Airlines boasted on X that an all-LGBT crew had just completed a flight from San Francisco to Sydney. A video inside the post showed two employees unveiling the image of a koala bear wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and waving an enormous LGBT flag on the side of the aircraft.
The airline may have been surprised to learn that, for many passengers, safety takes precedence over diversity. While some celebrated the milestone, many more were concerned with reaching their destination safely.
One flyer commented, “I don’t care how many boxes your crew checks, but what I do care about is their qualifications. You made it clear that an all-LGBTQ+ crew was your number one priority above safety and qualifications. I will never fly United Airlines again.”
Just two years earlier, United announced that “50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade” would be “women or people of color.”
“Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day.”
The Biden administration’s embrace of DEI
DEI was a top priority for former President Joe Biden’s administration. In June 2021, Biden signed a sweeping executive order aimed at promoting DEI throughout the federal government.
On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order “terminating all DEI initiatives within federal agencies.”
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Two days later and one week before the horrific crash, Trump issued a separate order to eliminate DEI within the FAA. The White House fact sheet reads, “In line with this directive, the FAA has been instructed to cease DEI-related hiring and training programs. The administration argues that previous DEI efforts compromised safety by prioritizing diversity over competence.”
We’ll leave it to the experts to determine the specific cause of the crash. But it would be difficult to argue that the FAA’s preoccupation with DEI did not play a role. At the very least, it is reasonable to conclude that it contributed to the staffing shortage that was most definitely an issue on that fateful day at the Reagan National Airport.
Elizabeth Stauffer writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and the Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the editorial board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Follow her on LinkedIn or X.