The FAA Wants a Certain Group in Charge of Your Flights...There's Just One Problem

Matt Vespa | January 15, 2024 9:00 AM

With airplanes having blowouts midflight, it’s probably not a great idea to hire people who are severely mentally disabled. You’d think this would be a no-brainer decision. You’d be mistaken: the Federal Aviation Administration is taking diversity to extreme lengths with this move. It could put people’s lives at risk. You have to read it to believe it (via Fox News) [emphasis mine]:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer "severe intellectual" disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.
"Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring," the FAA’s website states. "They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism."
The initiative is part of the FAA’s "Diversity and Inclusion" hiring plan, which says "diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond." The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.

FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities https://t.co/hpOg1MnOyM pic.twitter.com/4fYQV74z05
— New York Post (@nypost) January 14, 2024