On December 1, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln told Congress that “we cannot escape history.” President Lincoln knew then that historical events have apparent and remote causes. Modern events have allowed us to see this inescapable fact, whether in joy or in sorrow.
The mid-air collision of American Eagle Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River was on January 29 – a couple of weeks ago. Since then, we have learned that the Air Traffic Control Tower at Reagan National Airport (FAA location ID: DCA) that night had only one controller handling both the inbound American Eagle flight and the Army Black Hawk helicopter transiting the constantly-busy airspace.
Some people have whining and squealing because the United States President Donald J. Trump suggested that a remote cause of the crash may lie with the Joe Biden regime’s DEI quotas for the Federal Aviation Administration’s roster of air traffic controllers.
Why would President Trump jump out front of the media speculation, suggesting that DEI may be part of the cause? Because history – and experts – tend to prove correct. We cannot escape history.
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On January 28, 1986, America’s space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral. All seven astronauts died and the $1 billion spacecraft was destroyed. NASA immediately started investigating, but on February 3, 1986, President Ronald Reagan pushed NASA aside and announced the Rogers Commission to investigate the disaster.
Why?
Probably because engineers like Roger Boisjoly, Allan McDonald, and Rocco Petrone had tried to “sound the alarm” and prevent the ill-advised launch. After the disaster, I am sure that engineers and experts like these people used back-channels to reach out to the President.
The testimony before the Rogers Commission laid bare the tragic problems with equipment and with bureaucracy. On February 11, 1986, NASA budget analyst Richard Cooke testified that he had warned of problems with the O-rings and seals in the summer of 1985. Morton-Thiokol engineer Allan McDonald testified that he told his managers that “if anything happened to this launch, I sure wouldn’t want to be the person that had to stand in front of a board of inquiry and explain why I launched this outside of the qualification for the solid rocket motor.”
Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly’s testimony was even more damning: “There was never one positive pro-launch statement ever made. By anybody.” But Morton-Thiokol VP Joe Kilminster overruled his engineers.
Rockwell International engineer Rocco Petrone (himself a former senior administrator at NASA) testified to the Commission that at 5:45 a.m. ET on January 28 that he called his program managers in Florida and said that he told them “…we cannot recommend launching from here” because they were afraid of ice damage to the shuttle.
The apparent cause of Challenger was the failure of O-rings in the SRBs, but the Commission also found that the massive bureaucracy and communication failures at NASA and Thiokol made the failure possible.
Ultimately, they were proved correct. Boisjoly was made a pariah at Thiokol, but wiser people with more integrity lauded him. And in 1998, the American Association for the Advancement of Science gave Boisjoly their Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.
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Back to the present: Multiple reports have emerged that more than 90% of FAA air traffic control towers lack enough air traffic controllers to operate at sufficient standards. While the COVID panic affected staffing, the main problem appears to be the Joe Biden and Barack Obama regimes imposing DEI quotas for new controllers. The Washington Times has reported that 11 attorneys general wrote to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker, calling out the FAA under Biden for “prioritiz(ing) virtue-signaling ‘diversity’ efforts over aviation expertise. And this calls into question the agency’s commitment to safety.” During his time as Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg had already been under fire from airlines and aviation experts for failing to give attention to other immediate nationwide air traffic equipment improvement needs.
Further, Emily Franklin and Ben Kochman of the New York Post have reported that the FAA has been fighting a class action lawsuit alleging that under the Barack Obama regime, “dropped a skill-based system for hiring controllers and replaced it with a ‘biographical assessment’ in an alleged bid to boost the number of minority job applicants.”
Separately, this writer is acquainted with an intelligent young lady who graduated from the University of North Dakota—one of the most respected civilian schools in aviation—intending to apply for an air traffic control trainee slot. She was rejected, to the shock of several of us who have met her.
Because of a chain of failures, shortcomings, and avoidable remote causes, 67 people died needlessly on January 29. This writer believes that the American public will eventually rue the inept and disastrous eras of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with the colossal leadership failure of Pete Buttigieg. I believe that these innocent people died partly because of DEI.
Based on the problems with bloated and non-responsive government bureaucrats, as well as on the sordid behavior of bureaucrats that led to the Challenger disaster in 1986, this writer suspects that President Donald Trump will be proved correct about the DEI debacle. Again.
We cannot escape history.
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Torleif Sorenson is a lowly, humble, scum-of-the-earth technical writer and editor with special interests in aviation and in music.
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