JUST IN: Understaffed FAA Sued For Allegedly Turning Away 1,000 Applicants Based On Race

A lawsuit filed against the Federal Aviation Administration alleges that approximately 1,000 job applicants in recent years were turned away because of their race, raising questions about whether hiring policies contributed to Wednesday night’s deadly mid-air collision over Washington, D.C.

Understaffing at airport control towers across the U.S. has been a persistent concern from aviation union workers who say the FAA hasn’t done enough to swell their ranks, jeopardizing the safety of airline passengers. A class-action lawsuit filed last year against the FAA is now being revisited as investigators and critics race to find fault for the crash which killed 67 and left no survivors.

Andrew Brigida, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, alleges that the FAA has placed too great an emphasis on using diversity and equality metrics to fill America’s control towers and that an accident was bound to happen as a result.

Central to Brigida’s suit is his complaint that the FAA, under the Obama administration, relaxed requirements including a skill-based system for hiring controllers and instead utilized a “biographical assessment” in a bid to boost the number of minority job applicants, the New York Post reported.

Brigida, who is white, alleges he was unfairly cast out of the hiring process as a result despite graduating from Arizona State University’s collegiate training initiative for controllers and obtaining a perfect score on his training exam. He now works at the FAA as a program manager but still hopes President Donald Trump can “immediately” begin resolving a staffing crisis that has been brewing for more than a decade.

“He obviously sees the issue at hand and if he didn’t, I’m sure people that work in the Department of Transportation and the FAA informed him that there is an issue with staffing and air traffic control and I’m hoping they can work on it immediately,” he told the Telegraph.

Asked if he thought diversity hiring could eventually contribute to a fatal air traffic collision, Brigida replied, “Yes, that’s kind of accurate.”

Initial reports found that the tower at Reagan International Airport was staffing just 19 full-time personnel despite the union’s plea for a full 30 members. In addition, staffing responsibilities were “not normal” at the time of the crash, with one source telling the AP that an individual on the controls was also performing a second employee’s job at the time.

“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” an initial report by the FAA states.

On Friday, President Trump revealed that the Army Black Hawk helicopter was flying “far above the 200-foot limit,” but it still remains unclear if the use of different radio frequencies used by the tower for helicopters and commercial jets caused a miscommunication.

The aviation arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation is fighting the lawsuit, but perhaps not for long. Sean Duffy, President Trump’s new secretary of transportation, has leaned into his allegation that DEI may have played a role in the crash, calling it an “absolutely preventable tragedy.”

The FAA on Friday announced an indefinite pause to helicopter traffic over Washington, D.C., the AP reported.