What is the FAA?


The FAA is a federal agency whose statutory duties enable it to regulate nearly every aspect of civil aviation in the United States and its territories. Among the FAA's duties are:
The FAA is also responsible for operating the National Airspace System (NAS), the United States' air traffic control system, which is responsible for preventing aircraft collisions, and for organizing and expediting the flow of air traffic. To do this, the FAA operates a branch called the Air Traffic Organization, or ATO, which is the FAA's largest organizational component.

↑ Return to top

What is wrong with the FAA?


As there are multiple organizations within the FAA, each tasked with particular regulatory function, so too are there multiple problems within the FAA. This site particularly focuses on issues pertaining to five FAA organizations:
  1. Office of the Administrator (AOA)
  2. Office of Human Resources (AHR)
  3. Air Traffic Organization (ATO)
  4. Office of Finance and Management (AFN)
  5. Office of Civil Rights (ACR)

Collectively, these organizations, and the officials who manage them, are responsible for one of the largest and most complex scandals in the history of the federal civil service, much of which is still being uncovered (and simultaneously covered up) today.

↑ Return to top

What is the FAA ATC hiring scandal?

1. It started with a letter.


On the evening of December 30, 2013, the FAA sent this letter to all of the program directors at colleges and universities that were designated FAA Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) schools. The letter read:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with your organization and values our partnership in the training of potential Air Traffic Controllers (ATC).

  Recently, the FAA completed a barrier analysis of the ATC occupation pursuant to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) Management Directive 715. As a result of the analysis, recommendations were identified that we are implementing to improve and streamline the selection of ATC candidates. These improvements will have a direct and present impact on all hiring sources, including CTI.
An overview of the immediate changes being made to the ATC hiring process is presented below. Revisions to ATC Hiring Process * A nationwide competitive FG-01 vacancy announcement open to all U.S. Citizens will be issued in February 2014. Any individual desiring consideration for employment (including CTI graduates) MUST apply. Existing inventories of past applicants will not be used.
* All applicants will be evaluated against the same set of qualification standards. Specifically, applicants must have at least 3 years of progressively responsible work experience, a 4 year degree, or a  combination of the two.
* The existing testing process has been updated. The revised testing process is comprised of a biographical questionnaire (completed as part of the application process) and the cognitive portion of the AT-SAT. The cognitive portion of the AT-SAT will be administered only to those who meet the qualification standards and pass the biographical questionnaire. Applicants for the February 2014 announcement will be required to take and pass the new assessments in order to be referred on for a selection decision.
* Since a single vacancy announcement will be used for all applicant sources, a single nationwide referral list will be generated containing all candidates who meet the qualification standards and pass the assessments. Location preference will no longer be used as a determining factor for referral or selection. Centralized selection panels will no longer be convened to make selections from the referral list. Selections will now be fully automated, grouping candidates by assessment scores and veteran’s preference.
These improvements to the ATC hiring process will significantly strengthen the long term sustainability of our program and offer our candidates a fair and viable opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities and potential for the ATC position. We recognize that you may have questions concerning these changes. Considering the upcoming holiday season, we are planning a teleconference for Mid-January when we will more fully address questions and concerns you may have.

  We want to reiterate that we very much value our partnership with the CTI program and look forward to assisting you in understanding our changes to the ATC selection process. We will be contacting you soon to schedule the January teleconference.


Written in the vagueness that only an official within a bureaucracy could deliver, the letter basically informed the directors of the CTI programs that the FAA would re-open hiring announcements for air traffic controllers to the general public, and would require all of the students from within the CTI programs to compete for air traffic controller vacancies as equals.

This decision overturned a 4-year freeze on general public hiring, which had been encouraged by numerous internal and external review boards. By the time 2013 had come around, the FAA had even been actively advising anyone interested in air traffic control to attend a 2- or 4-year program at a CTI program first.

2. It continued with an unvalidated "biographical questionnaire" (BQ).


The infamous "BQ" made its debut in the February 2014 hiring process, less than two months after the FAA  announced it. By the FAA's own account, 28,000 applicants from among the general public, CTI program graduates, and military personnel took the test -- and only 2,800 passed. This BQ was infamous for its extremely irrelevant questions like "How many sports did you play in high school?"

This BQ has since been speculated to have not been validated whatsoever. We know this because prior to the March 2015 hiring announcement -- the second announcement following the December 2013 "changes to hiring process" letter -- the entire BQ was revamped and renamed the "Biographical Assessment" (BA). This notwithstanding, the FAA has admitted in federal court that it overhauled the BQ for use in subsequent years.

3. The FAA refused to release even mere summaries of validation studies of its BQ, generating suspicions about the validity of that test.


In response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by individuals and organizations, the FAA categorically refused to release studies, or even summaries of the studies,  demonstrating the empirical validity of the February 2014 Biographical Questionnaire (BQ).

Prior to these denials, the FAA had historically always released validity information about the tests it administered to air traffic control applicants. For example, in 1981, when the Occupational Knowledge Test (OKT) was utilized, the FAA published a validity study for that test. Later, when the FAA switched to the Controller Background Assessment Survey (CBAS), a similar study was published. In the early 90s, when the FAA began using the Air Traffic Selection and Assessment Test (AT-SAT) -- which it did until 2014 -- a two-volume validity study was published.

To date, the FAA continues to fight against the release of virtually any information about the 2014 Biographical Questionnaire. The FAA has engaged its top legal representatives to defend its absurd position against release of any of this information in a FOIA case currently before the U.S. District Court for Arizona entitled Rojas v. Federal Aviation Administration, et al. (Case No. 13-3067).

Although these events have not yet been widely reported in the mainstream press, there has been some notable media coverage by Fox Business as well as independent media outlets like this one.

↑ Return to top

What is the FAA ATC training scandal?


Around the same time that the December 2013 letter concerning changes to the air traffic control hiring process was released, the FAA made several drastic changes to its training program at the FAA Academy. Prior to December 2013, the FAA Academy had been closed for several months. Academy leaders claim the closure was due to sequestration, but records released under the Freedom of Information Act paint a different picture.

What emerged in the months following December 2013 was a revamped academy that featured different coursework, and most notably, a different criteria for evaluating trainees during their end-of-course evaluations. What was previously known as the Performance Verification (PV) had been changed into the Performance Assessment (PA). Along with that change came several undesirable results.

Rather than assessing academy trainees on an objective, cumulative measure of skill, hundreds of trainees are terminated each year based on their performance during one final evaluation. This is because of the way those evaluations are graded.

For example, in the tower program, four evaluations are administered at the end of the trainee's course. Two are worth 30% of a trainee's course score, and two are worth 15%. (The remaining 10% is earned in classroom instruction at the very beginning of the course). The evaluations are administered during the last two days of a trainee's time at the FAA Academy.

One "bad run" on an evaluation often means that a trainee will be instantly terminated, because evaluations can range in scores from -100% to +100%. Unlike evaluations of skill in any other reputable fields of study, evaluations at the FAA Academy can have a negative point value. Thus, one evaluation is suddenly heavily weighted enough such that it can drag a trainee's cumulative course score below 70% -- despite his or her scores on any other assessments. As soon as this occurs, the trainee is said to be "mathematically eliminated," regardless of any other criteria.

Prior to 2014, the FAA used to administer targeted re-training to a trainee who was found to be deficient during an evaluation. They would then re-evaluate the trainee and make a determination as to his fitness for training in an air traffic control tower in the field. This practice has gone by the wayside as the FAA has elected to favor a much more subjective approach to evaluating trainees.

This is but a brief glimpse into the overall story that encompasses the ongoing training scandal at the FAA Academy. More information is available on our site.