FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities

trafficinsight said:
Youre right, I could have saved a lot of time and just said "Stop trashing the dead for your ignorant ass political agenda." to you in the first place.


Better?
Click to expand...

We’re not “trashing the dead” for pointing out what the training command and her instructors had attempted to and were unsuccessful at overriding. We are pointing out the truth that the standards can and do get lowered in instances not limited to but definitely including DEI initiatives.

More to the point you’re using other instances of accidents to try and point out that the Navy didn’t engage in manipulation of standards and further surmise that the practice of moving goal posts for whatever reason be it DEI initiatives, or meeting the manpower churn like we did in the early 2000s is similarly non-existent.

Guess what, we’ve told you it happened. We participated in the machine, you didn’t. And instead of listening to that opinion that exercising a drop in standards is and has been practiced when it was suitable (and is actively occurring now as we face a combined DEI and personnel shortfall) you’re still insisting this is merely political and refusing to acknowledge the existence of the practice.

Kara Hultgreen did more to serve this country than you did. Nobody impugned that fact. What she didn’t have to do was be forced into the position she was placed in by a system that failed to protect her in an effort to fit some sort of eye test for politics. But only when it’s acknowledged that dropping standards to meet DEI priorities happens do you and others pick up some attempt to deny it from happening. Why does it matter? Because it’s the easy button that politics would accept as advantageous into filling our DEI quotas and curtailing our personnel shortages instead of say raising pay and quality of life issues to fix the personnel shortfall. Gee, I wonder if that’s political for me or if it’s more the fact I don’t want to see standards drop and quality of population degraded as we refit the military for a large scale combat environment.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
FWIW, the Hultgreen SIR is readily available online. It was protected information and not releasable to the public, as is the case with any USN/USMC SIR, but it was leaked to the media. So if you really care to learn the unblemished facts, it's out there, unlike most mishap reports of its kind.
 
SteveC said:
Plenty of jobs, inside the FAA and elsewhere, that people with those physical and mental disabilities can safely and competently hold. Click bait fear mongering journalism.
Click to expand...

My sister has Down Syndrome, and happily unfolds pizza boxes for Little Caesars in Mount Pleasant. It gets her out into the community, puts a face on people with developmental disabilities, and gives her a needed social outlet.

She could unfold FAA boxes just as well, and they'd be lucky to have her, as she tells the best jokes.
 
jtrain609 said:
My sister has Down Syndrome, and happily unfolds pizza boxes for Little Caesars in Mount Pleasant. It gets her out into the community, puts a face on people with developmental disabilities, and gives her a needed social outlet.

She could unfold FAA boxes just as well, and they'd be lucky to have her, as she tells the best jokes.
Click to expand...
The FAA could use some jokes, and I am NOT referring to Aeromedical here.
 
trafficinsight said:
Youre right, I could have saved a lot of time and just said "Stop trashing the dead for your ignorant ass political agenda." to you in the first place.


Better?
Click to expand...

If this is the only conclusion you can come to after having military tactical jet pilots explain what is what to you on this, then I’m glad you have absolutely zero to do with accident investigation, as you don’t possess the attitude, aptitude, or ability for any kind of critical thought and analysis, as you’ve proven here.

If you are unable to discern that no one is being trashed and there is no political agenda being presented here, merely an analysis of facts, then it’s a complete waste of my time attempting to have you learn anything. The only person making any of this political, is you.

If you can’t understand one accident being an performance challenge issue vs another being a personality and overconfidence in personal ability issue, but only want to write them both off as some kind of DEI issue, then I don’t know what to tell you. You referenced them as incompetent, no one else did here, and actively even explained why that is not the issue. These accidents have zero to do with race, color, creed, or sexual orientation. But hey, listen to only what you want to and what you think you know, which is zero here.

So please, school all of us on what is really going on here, with your many years of tactical jet experience and extensive knowledge of fighter squadron training and ops standards and requirements. I’m eager to learn.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
How many carrier traps did she experience while flying EA-6A’s with VAQ-33?
Click to expand...

Her having been winged (but shore based) it would be interesting to see how much budget money at the time (Clinton Era draw down) played any effort to not taking her and others to go do CQ in a Buckeye or TA-4 before starting her in the Tomcat RAG.

Of the people I’ve met that lived through the Intruder divestiture none seem to have had a lot of good things to say about how big Blue managed it.

Shares a lot in common with our issues now of bringing 58 pilots into other communities while simultaneously slashing the training hour program.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
MikeD said:
Like anywhere, It all comes down to what the position is, with regards to who would be eligible with what disabilities. For example, you aren’t going to be a firefighter at the FAA without extensive training, background, and full physical capability.
Click to expand...
This!

Keep it even simpler. Objective performance standards, rigorously maintained by a culture of competence and excellence. No nepotism. No hate.

A paraplegic could easily be an outstanding controller if s/he demonstrated the skills and knowledge of a controller. What's next, Steven Hawking's insights about the cosmos should be dismissed as politically charged WOKE polemics simply because he couldn't walk?? The next Steven Hawking should be harassed and used as straw horse to convince 6th grade educated rednecks that "this is all a Yuge conspiracy against YOU, the great unwashed entitled??

The FAA has been inhabited by incompetent, ignorant, "Jim Bob's cousin's" for decades already. The bar - even considering "severe intellectual disabilities" - is already particularly low in this particular case. And most cases where some guy got his brother or budro a job with health insurance and a retirement income. The question I have for these folks is, "Did you even notice a difference when you 'retired'?"

The reason everything is broken right now is not because we've allowed immigrants and black people and brown people and even Jews and Catholics to have jobs. The reason everything is broke right now is that Russians and other external enemies along with "domestic billionaires have infected our national "dialogue" so that ~25% of our population is poisoned with hate and fear and irrational divisiveness, and an inability to appreciate actual facts.
 
Last edited:
Lawman said:
Maybe just maybe instead of digging for evidence of a narrative you stop for a second and realize some of us have seen the elephant and you’re getting the first hand account.

Every one of us now telling you have participated in the production of military aviators in some shape or form the bureaucracy/politics that comes with it. I have yet to sit in a PC board where somebody’s gender or age or race was ever a point of discussion. I’ve been on an FEB decision board which was withdrawn because of the subject being female and Hispanic and the command not wanting to touch that third rail. That aviator PCS’d.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
How conveeeenient!

Like I said before: Objective performance standards. Based on cultures of competence and excellence. Maintained by honest, disinterested adherence to standards... and nothing but standards.

If we did THAT, there would be few issues, for either the judges or the judged.

"I don't like him/her/it" just can't EVER cut it. Except in "friendly fire" situations.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
How many carrier traps did she experience while flying EA-6A’s with VAQ-33?
Click to expand...

Zero. They were a land-based tactical support squadron. Given the exclusion of females in combat roles at the time, she also would have not participated in flight school carrier qualifications. Not sure how they bridged that gap, once she got into the Tomcat. She certainly had experience with carrier style approaches, since the EA-6 would have flown a similar pattern and constant AoA approach to the field. But id *guess* they threw her into FCLPs and the boat, directly into the F-14. Could be wrong on that though,
 
MikeD said:
Did the shore VAQs such as -33 or -34 that did support work even go to the boat, either with their EA-6As or their EA-3Bs?
Click to expand...

Nope, for a bunch of good reasons.

I wasn’t taking a shot at Revlon, I was interjecting that she didn’t acquire the same experience and face the same challenges as the average Intruder pilot that made a living around the boat.

It seems that the best candidate for your first female fighter pilot would have been your top plowback. She got a few breaks but wasn’t dealt the best hand.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
That was my point. Somebody suggested she had no issues with the [EA-6A] Intruder without understanding not going to sea was an easier path.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is a valid, and constructive point. I think, without a doubt, the Navy failed her. Not in selecting her, but in the way by which they pushed her through the program. I have a million thoughts about this, and a lot of stories to tell as well over a beer, but the long and short of it is that nothing good ever comes from one particular student being marked as "special" for whatever reason. She didn't ask for special treatment, and we shouldn't have given it to her. Probably would have resulted in more productive feedback, and effective additional training to address whatever skills she needed to succeed. She'd probably still be alive. I knew a couple of her compadres. One was still a reservist when I was flying T-45's, and one was the first female Carrier Air Wing commander. Both very solid aviators and officers.
 
///AMG said:
Yeah, this is a valid, and constructive point. I think, without a doubt, the Navy failed her. Not in selecting her, but in the way by which they pushed her through the program. I have a million thoughts about this, and a lot of stories to tell as well over a beer, but the long and short of it is that nothing good ever comes from one particular student being marked as "special" for whatever reason. She didn't ask for special treatment, and we shouldn't have given it to her. Probably would have resulted in more productive feedback, and effective additional training to address whatever skills she needed to succeed. She'd probably still be alive. I knew a couple of her compadres. One was still a reservist when I was flying T-45's, and one was the first female Carrier Air Wing commander. Both very solid aviators and officers.
Click to expand...

The one saving grace to come out of a major public event like she suffered is that in the end it may stopped negative trends and saved more lives forcing the top office people to go back and re-examine priorities. I don’t doubt a lot outside what was publicly observed occurred directly as a result of reexamination of the chain of events leading to her accident.

It’s just a shame we have to kill people in some circumstances to show we (trainers charged with developing aviators) are being pressured with priorities based off an initiative of change to the status quo (driven by whatever reason) which is highlighting a priority other than “achieve effective training.”
 
Last edited:
I'll just say that my squadron, in the last couple years, put a *first* through our syllabus. It was highly publicized. And in the end, she ended up just being another student. I wasn't around much at the time since I was in NH training, OE, consolidation at the time I believe, but I never heard of her having an issue at all (which I might add is the assumption, for anyone). In spite of the big Navy PR event that happened when she got her wings, they allowed her to be just another student once she got here. That's how it is supposed to work. I'm sure any of these women back in 1994-1995 would have given anything to have been just another name on the flight schedule. We unfortunately didn't extend them such a typical common courtesy at the time.
 
[emoji16]
22cc2ef62b41f2126b22b75f9f7bb7af.jpg


Sent from my Nokia T20 using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top