In a news conference on Thursday, Trump said that under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden candidates with “severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities” could be hired as air traffic controllers (ATCs). He suggested, without offering any evidence, that this could be to blame for the crash.
When challenged by reporters about why he thought this, he responded: “Because I have common sense.”
The investigation into the cause of the crash – which officials say killed 67 people – is continuing. The president has also blamed the helicopter’s flight path for the collision.
Some aviation experts said that while there had been diversity recruitment schemes within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), ATC candidates still had to pass rigorous medical and psychological tests.
BBC Verify has looked into the facts behind the president’s claims.
President Trump said a “diversity push” by the FAA – the US government agency in charge of civil aviation – had focused “on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities”.
He added: “They can be air traffic controllers.”
The president appeared to be referring to diversity and inclusion policies established during the Obama administration. They included “targeted disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring”.
The FAA employs around 45,000 people, of which ATC staff number about 14,000.
A new programme was established in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office, seeking to give people with disabilities a pathway to work in air traffic operations.
When talking about standards in the aviation agency under the Obama administration, Trump said: “They actually came out with a directive, too white.”
In 2011 Obama did introduce an initiative to make the FAA a “more diverse and inclusive workplace” – although this didn’t label the agency “too white”.
The Obama administration also added a “biographical questionnaire” to the air traffic control recruitment process as part of efforts to hire more diverse candidates.
This came after several reviews had found equal opportunity issues with the FAA’s hiring process.
In 2019, a legal firm filed a lawsuit against the FAA because of this questionnaire on behalf of more than 2,500 aspiring air traffic controllers.
BBC Verify has not been able to independently verify the marking system for the questionnaire.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that they were discriminated against by the FAA because they did not fit its “preferred ethnic profile as determined in the biographical questionnaire”.
The FAA and the Department of Transportation are contesting the lawsuit.
The questionnaire was removed for air traffic controllers in 2018 under Trump.
In 2024, it was removed for wider FAA hiring, after Republicans in Congress introduced a provision to scrap the biographical questionnaire into a funding bill, which was signed by then-President Biden.
The diversity of the FAA workforce, on some measures, has gradually increased in recent years, according to the agency’s Office of Civil Rights.
In 2016, under Obama, white men made up 59% of the workforce and people with targeted disabilities made up 0.7%.
In 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term, 57% were white men and 1% of the workforce had targeted disabilities.
In 2023, those figures stood at 55% and 2%.
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