Investigators are still looking into the incident, though early reports suggest the air traffic controllers were responsible.
A follow-up report by the Times revealed that Austin's airport alone has experienced so many close calls as a result of air traffic controller error that a pilot proclaimed, "They're trying to kill us in Austin." One such incident involved an air traffic controller clearing a FedEx cargo plane to land on a runway just as a Southwest Airlines jet was set to take off on the same runway.
The air traffic controller in question said the Southwest jet would take off before the FedEx plane got too close, though the two planes ended up just seconds from colliding, with the FedEx plane skimming less than 100 feet over the Southwest jet, whose 128 passengers had no clue how narrowly they just escaped death.
Below is an audio recording of the exchange between the pilots and air traffic controllers.
Despite the remarkable lack of transparency with respect to such near misses and the air traffic controllers behind them, the Times was able to identify the controller behind this incident as one Damian Campbell, a "Navy veteran and self-published poet." According to the report, even fellow air traffic controllers were "Baffled" by Campbell's actions.
Such is the extreme reluctance to show an image of Mr. Campbell that the only reference we could find is from a Twitter user who posted a screenshot of the LinkedIn profile of one Damian Campbell who works as an air traffic controller in Austin, Texas.
The LinkedIn link has since been scrubbed: Notice that, apart from being a Damian Campbell in Austin, Texas, who works as an air traffic controller, the brief bio above mentions service in the military, which would match the Times' description of Campbell as a Navy veteran.
In short, COVID policies have gutted the quantity of air traffic controllers, and diversity policies have gutted the quality of air traffic controllers, creating unprecedented danger for the aviation industry.
The only way to get any real answers is to talk to actual Air Traffic Controllers and pilots directly and to probe whatever documents have been made public.
While we can only make educated inferences as to what extent vaccine mandates impacted the Air Traffic Controller staffing shortage, Dr. McCormick's acknowledgment of the devastating impact of the COVID-era hiring freeze is damning enough.
In 2012, three years before Obama put policies to increase diversity in air traffic control into effect, the FAA released an unclassified report titled, "Development, Validation, and Fairness of Biographical Data Questionnaire for the Air Traffic Control Specialist Occupation." The report explicitly recommends the use of biographical data, or "Biodata"-personal information about applicants-in place of the blind method of measuring competency to promote racial equality.
In 2013, these reports and their suggestions culminated in the Obama administration's decision to force the FAA to abandon its Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative schools, which used clinically verified aptitude tests to admit and train ATCs.
Last, the air traffic controller profession is a well-compensated workforce with high job satisfaction.
A former senior air traffic official assures us that the elimination of merit-based criteria to select employees in order to maximize diversity has not in fact diminished the quality of the talent pool because, among other things, the new employees grew up playing more advanced video games! This is not only intuitively ridiculous, but it contradicts the assessments of every senior air traffic controller we spoke with, all of whom agreed to speak on background.
The FAA could even create a new lavishly funded diversity department and encourage airlines to hire "Diverse" employees for more public-facing roles to compensate for reserving Air Traffic Control employees for merit-based positions.
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