
A New York Times report saying the air control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has been understaffed for years came amid a lawsuit claiming the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) discriminated against air traffic controller applicants based on their race.
The Times report said the tower at the airport was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023, citing the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, an annual report to Congress that contains target and actual staffing levels.
The targets set by the F.A.A. and the controllers union call for 30.
The lawsuit represents nearly 1,000 individuals who went to school to become air traffic controllers . They passed the normal test to obtain the position right before the Obama administration said the class was too white and threw out the tests with the applicants, the suit alleges.
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who serves as co-counsel for Mountain States Legal Foundation, based in Colorado, is leading efforts for a lawsuit.
“When you travel and have a delay, it’s because there aren’t enough of these people,” Laxalt told the Wall Street Journal last year. “When you see these near incidents in air traffic control, it’s because there aren’t enough people. There are only 14,000 air traffic controllers. A thousand were scrapped a decade ago, and the bottom line is they’ve never made up losing all of this pipeline.”
Leave a Reply