"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:32:38 -0400, BuzzBoy
wrote in ::


The FAA is filling up with incompetent minorities
That is your big problem

Don't all government employees have to pass the same employment test?
FAA applicants are only given 5% for prior military service and an
additional 5% for a Purple Heart, so there can be a maximum 10%
advantage given to those applicants. But other than that, the playing
field should be level.


When I took the entrance exam back in the late '80's, FAA was "fast
tracking" certain types of applicants. These included women and minorities
but not white males. The idea was apparently to speed up the hiring process
of certain personnel types. Exam score played a lesser role in this hiring
process than it might have otherwise. For example, I scored a 98 on the
civil service controller entrance exam. To this was added an extra 5% for
military service, which gave me a 103 on a test where 100 was the top score.
This put me in the top percent of the huge pool of applicants. However, it
didn't appear to do anything to speed up getting hired. I sat around for
months. Then, I went to the Persian Gulf War. As soon as FAA realized I
was in theater, they "fast tracked" my application and I had a job waiting
on me when I returned. As soon as I was discharged from active duty, I had
a job interview literally within 30 days. Within 90 days I was hired and
with 150 days I was at the Academy. In the meantime, scores of other
"fast-tracked" minority and female applicants with lower test scores had
been hired before me.

When you start applying for staff and management jobs, your minority status
or lack thereof becomes a huge factor. Management has been mostly white and
male since the CAA days. There has been a 15 year push to "normalize"
management by promoting women and minorities over white males, so that FAA
management "reflects the face of America." These days, the nickname
"Fast-track" is derisively applied to our ATC "stars" who spend a year or
two as controllers and then get "promoted" into traffic management or the
supervisor ranks. They are literally like the shake and bake staff NCO's
and 2nd Lieutenants of the early '70's.

In spite of this push, it has to be pointed out that the FAA is currently
*still* being run by a host of incompetent conservative, reactionary white
male feather merchants in upper and middle management. Good controllers
control airplanes. Poor controllers run as fast as they can from
controlling airplanes. The guys currently running FAA from the helms of
upper and middle management were among the worst controllers of their
classes. Also, they have received little to no training in management.
They were promoted under the white male good-old-boy yes-man brown-nosing
patronage system, just as bad IMO as promoting on the base of race or gender
rather than merit, which neither method seems to consider as the primary
qualification. That is our big problem, and it hasn't changed since 1981.

I'm starting to believe that the US Government ought to create a job
specialty called "FAA Management", offer high initial pay, and start
recruiting MBA college post-graduates strait into FAA management. Promotion
out of the ATC ranks would be limited to first level supervisor. The MBA
kids could then slowly start taking over the helm and all sub-departments of
managing the federal air traffic control system. The ATC feather merchants
these MBA's replace could either get a headset and return to work as a line
controller, or they could leave federal service with a swift kick in the
ass. This would leave air traffic controllers to control traffic, allowing
the government to fire or demote the weak controllers instead of promoting
them. Maybe then, FAA would do a hell of a lot better at not wasting tax
money on poorly managed technology projects and poor operational budgeting.
Also, it's possible that people trained in business management at college
would be more savvy at labor relations then the current crop of failed
controllers running the system. At least they would know that it is good
form to kiss labor before you screw labor. Finally, we could privatize all
of the ATC towers across the country. This would allow FAA to move swivel
heads from privatized FAA towers out into the field, where they would serve
as desperately needed radar controller reinforcements at critically
understaffed FAA Tracon and ARTCC facilities, saving the government a wad of
money in controller personnel costs.

Chip, ZTL