Donald Trump spent an hour Thursday morning spewing vile lies about DEI being the reason a helicopter and plane collided at Reagan National, killing 67 people.
Turns out, it was a staffing issue, and Trump knew it when he stepped in front of the TV cameras.
An internal report from the FAA that Trump claims to have read tells us that staffing at the airport Wednesday night was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”
Seems there was only one air traffic controller on duty to handle both helicopters and planes in the airport’s vicinity.
ICYMI
Those tasks, we have learned, are usually assigned to two people, for probably obvious reasons.
If it’s not obvious, air traffic controllers use different radio frequencies for chopper and airplane pilots, and it’s typical that the pilots aren’t able to talk to each other.
Ergo, you have two people doing two jobs.
You have one person doing two jobs, and mistakes can happen.
Which is to say, it wasn’t DEI; it was a long-standing issue with simply not having enough ATCs.
A congressional report issued last year had Reagan running with 19 fully certified controllers, under the recommended 30.
The understaffing – a function of low pay – results in controllers working upwards of 60 hours a week.
The Trump federal hiring freeze isn’t helping; neither is the resignation, at the request of Elon Musk, of the head of the FAA.
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Chris Graham
