Kai writes a personal blog and hosts a copy of the FAA's biographical assessment once used to screen air traffic controller applicants.
HN links the replica of the FAA hiring quiz, which commenters find baffling, in discussions of FAA hiring failures and controller shortages.
I think it's unfortunate if this is your only take away.
Two things can be true at once:
A) Diversity hiring is unrelated to the crash
B) There is a real scandal with hiring and the FAA
What I have read so far about this situation is outrageous. My understanding is that in 2014, Obama appointed a head of the FAA who wanted to diversify the workforce.
They introduced a biographical questionnaire which had rather arbitrary criteria for passing. It appears to have been explicitly designed to fail people that do not know the magical answers. The failure rate was 90%.
This is not the only example, but perhaps the most egregious questions: you are asked what your best subject was in highschool. If you answered science, you get 15 points (a substantial amount). No points for any other subject. Next, you're asked your best subject in college. If you answer history, you get 15 points. No points for any other subject.
Here is an alleged recreation of the test: https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
There are supposedly voicemails in which they helped select candidates pass this biographical questionnaire by providing their preferred race/gendered candidates with the answers. I haven't been able to find a voice mail online, but Fox Business reported that these voicemails exist.
Per a 2016 Yahoo Finance article, an internal FAA report falsely cleared the employee of wrongdoing.
It's my understanding that there is currently a lawsuit making its way through…
> As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly’s friends in the program encouraged her to join the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), telling her it would help improve her chances of being hired. She signed up as the February wave started. Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA employee Shelton Snow:
> “I know each of you are eager very eager to apply for this job vacancy announcement and trust after tonight you will be able to do so….there is some valuable pieces of information that I have taken a screen shot of and I am going to send that to you via email. Trust and believe it will be something you will appreciate to the utmost. Keep in mind we are trying to maximize your opportunities…I am going to send it out to each of you and as you progress through the stages refer to those images so you will know which icons you should select…I am about 99 point 99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question in order to get through the first phase.”2
> The biographical questionnaire Snow referred to as the “first phase” was an unsupervised questionnaire candidates were expected to take at home. You can take a replica copy here. Questions were chosen and weighted bizarrely, with candidates able to answer “A” to all but one question to get through.
From the first article on The scandal:…
> Obama's FAA disincentivised its traditional "feeder" colleges that do ATC courses to "promote diversity", net outcome was fewer applicants
It was much worse than that. Students who had already spent years studying to be air traffic controllers through the CTI program were subject to a sudden policy change that disqualified them from entering the profession unless they passed a “biographical questionnaire.”
85% of candidates failed this questionnaire, but the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (the organization that pushed for this change to begin with) was feeding the “right” answers to its own members.
“Right” answers included things like having gotten bad grades in high school science class. You can take the test for yourself here and see how you score: https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
I can’t blame anyone for thinking this sounds too outrageous to be real, but all of it is public record at this point and the subject of an ongoing lawsuit: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring
Is this for real: (questions for becoming an ATC, linked from the article you liked. It's so weird so I'm not sure)
https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
The questions are mind-blowing. And:
> In the present day, there is a critical shortage of ATCs, with the FAA having 1,000 fewer ATCs in 2023 than it did in 2012.
If that's how they were hiring (although they don't do today), I could understand if that has a bit contributed to fewer ATCs today.
Seems it is for real: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/30/faa-diversity-hiring-practices-scrutiny-long-air-d/
"... In 2013, the FAA started using a “biographical assessment” to increase the hiring of preferred minority racial groups at air traffic control centers. The assessment asked applicants about their participation in school sports and the age at which they started earning money."
"The assessment disqualified more experienced, qualified applicants ..."
Personality tests being useful makes sense, but personality tests where candidates are sparse and the training/hiring bottleneck has already been passed by candidates is terrible.
Also, I have a very hard time believing these "correct" answers are representative of the already hired candidates. Worst subject in school was science, worst in college was history, and participated in four or more high school sports, but no correlation on whether they believe it is important to be fast or accurate in their work? Applied to five or six jobs in the last three years? Is bothered "more than most" by criticism from others? [1] I almost find it easier to believe that they were blatantly playing into negative stereotypes of certain minority demographics than that this survey was fit to describe already hired ATCs.
[1] https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
The FAA were already not allowed to ask employees about their demographics. The article you're commenting on states that the actual problem was that the FAA added a new biographical questionnaire to the ATC hiring process, which had strangely weighted questions and a >90% fail rate. Applicants who failed the questionnaire were rejected with no chance to appeal. Employees at the FAA then leaked the correct answers to the questionnaire to student members of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees to work around the fact that they couldn't directly ask applicants for their race. Here's a replica of the questionnaire if you're interested: https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/