It is necessary to fact-check Trump’s D.C. Plane Crash News Conference

The Aviation Development Program: A Program for Air Traffic Controllers with Targeted Disabilities to Train Pilots and Mechanics

He added that the rigorous standards for hiring pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers were never relaxed to meet diversity goals, but rather that previous administrations and the commercial air industry overall have worked to remove barriers to entry.

He said that of the over 900 Black pilots who were a part of the group, only one became a commercial pilot. Black men and women had to work in separate parts of the industry before the civil rights movement began.

Robert Fowler Jr., who is a pilot and professor at Middle Tennessee State University, said that there were still significant obstacles to overcome when obtaining a pilot’s license. Despite the industry’s attempt to provide scholarships and cast a wider recruiting net, diversity efforts have not been all that successful.

“Historically, there has never been an incident, big or small, where D.E.I. or diversity has ever been attributed as a sole cause or contributing cause,” said Tennessee Garvey, a pilot and the chairman of the board of directors for the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals.

The first three air traffic controller training candidates graduated from the F.A.A. Academy in 2021, according to the post. It is unclear how many people who graduated from that program are air traffic controllers today.

“The candidates in this program will receive the same rigorous consideration in terms of aptitude, medical and security qualifications as those individuals considered for a standard public opening for air traffic controller jobs,” the F.A.A. said in 2019. Air traffic skills assessment and medical exam are included in those standards.

Under Mr. Trump in April 2019, the F.A.A. announced a pilot program for 20 people with targeted disabilities to work in air traffic operations. Targeted disabilities are a set of disabilities which the federal government is focused on recruiting. An archived page from June 2019 named the initiative the Aviation Development Program, which “provides an opportunity for persons with targeted disabilities to gain aviation knowledge and experience as an air traffic control student trainee.”

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump was referring to information that is not widely known, but at the time of his remarks, the identities of the pilots and air traffic controllers involved had not been made public.

We took care of the entire population of African Americans, Hispanics and everyone else, at levels never before seen. One of the reasons I won was that they came out with a directive. Too white.

The second term of my time at the F.A.A. was recently over and the agency is now hiring workers who suffer from severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative.

The President excoriates the diversity goals of his predecessors and the FAA on Thursday as he updates the public about the deadly collision over the river.

Even as he acknowledged that he had no evidence, but was instead relying on “common sense,” he suggested that efforts to hire more people with disabilities and diversify the ranks of the F.A.A. were to blame for the accident late Wednesday that killed 67 people.

Buttigieg responded to a post with “despicable” on X. (Let’s say where the post Can we say where the “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. Out of millions of flights on or watch, we had no commercial airline crash killings, we drove down close calls, and grew Air Traffic Control.

Trump criticized Biden’s secretary of transportation, buttigieg. Trump said, “He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity.”

Diversity efforts at the FAA, including the hiring of people with disabilities, had been suggested by Trump. He said the crash of a commercial jet and a military helicopter Wednesday night “could have been” caused by diversity in hiring, but noted that the investigation into the cause is still going on.

In his press conference about Wednesday night’s accident, Trump quoted that Fox News article to say, falsely, that unqualified people with disabilities were being hired in positions like air traffic controller.

There is a recent history of some people trying to link air safety problems to diversity – including the hiring of people with disabilities – not just with Wednesday’s crash but also when a Boeing aircraft lost a door while in flight last January.

The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, believes that scapegoating them is not consistent with the facts.