EXCLUSIVEHow Obama's FAA used a skewed multiple-choice quiz to prioritize DEI applicants and bar the brightest from air traffic controller jobs
A job questionnaire for aspiring air traffic controllers introduced by the Obama administration was designed to meet secret DEI target numbers, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The aspiring controllers were given extra credit for being 'risk takers', in the bizarre multiple-choice quiz to secretly prioritize DEI applicants.
It required virtually no knowledge of aviation to pass but top marks were awarded to candidates who 'need a great deal of time to complete assignments' and 'take chances very often'.
And playing three or more sports in high school was rated more valuable than having a stint as an air traffic controller in the military.
Now DailyMail.com has obtained the quiz so you can see how you would fare.
The 2014 entry test proved notoriously hard to pass for elite, mostly white college graduates who excelled in traditional cognitive tests.
But race reformers said it paved the way for more 'off the street' hires – namely women and minorities – to land high stakes jobs responsible for the lives of millions of air passengers.
'Bonkers is the right word for this,' one aviation expert told DailyMail.com.
Air Force veteran Ben Avni (left) who took the test in 2014, was rejected for a flight controller job despite having nearly-five years of service as an Air Battle Manager. It was a similar story for Matthew Douglas who put himself through an FAA-approved CTI (College Training Initiative) course and was forced to reapply from scratch when the FAA unveiled the new rules in a December 30, 2013
The multiple-choice quiz was quietly inserted into the FAA's confidential hiring process during an Obama-era minority recruitment drive and required virtually no knowledge of aviation
'It's absolute madness to think that you want to hire someone who takes a lot of chances to be an air traffic controller.'
The test comes to light as the Federal Aviation Administration grapples with a public safety crisis after a spate of deadly crashes and collisions that President Donald Trump has blamed on DEI hiring.
A presidential memo issued in the aftermath of the January 29 disaster at Reagan National Airport prohibits the regulator from promoting diversity, equity and inclusion over competence.
No such directives were in place in late 2013 when powerful lobby groups pressured the FAA behind the scenes to draw up the astonishing questionnaire that we reproduce today.
The majority of controller jobs had previously gone to veterans or standout graduates from government-accredited college programs who earned a place on a 'qualified applicant register'.
They had all passed a rigorous, peer-reviewed aptitude test, the AT-SAT, which prioritized numerical ability, decisiveness and complex problem solving.
'You might get a question saying an airplane takes off and is climbing at 380 feet per minute at 230 miles per hour, how high will it be after 28 minutes?' explained Sam Fischer, a professor in the aviation department of Florida State College at Jacksonville.
'You had to do that in your head. There was no pencil, no pen, no calculator.'
Unknown to candidates, many questions had a zero 'scoring weight' under the confidential scoring formula. That meant multiple questions had no bearing whatsoever on the result
A candidate who admitted struggling in high school science or flunking history/political science at college would score 15 points, the most valuable answers on the entire test
They were also asked how many times they made the honor roll and what their class standing in high school was
THE TEST IN FULL
When a 2012 'barrier analysis' suggested the AT-SAT posed a problem for minority applicants, lobbyists from the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE) succeeded in getting it scrapped.
Potential hires would still have to take a shorter cognitive test known as the AT-SA - but first they had to navigate a 'biographical assessment', taken online with no time limit.
To emphasize its importance, the biographical score was worth 2.5 times the cognition portion when determining whether a candidate would land a job and progress to the FAA's Air Traffic Controller Academy.
A draft copy of the test obtained by DailyMail.com and verified as real by multiple sources reveals that just eight of the 62 questions made any mention of aviation.
The rest of the document – headed 'For official use only: exempt from public disclosure' – is a banal mix of sports participation, personality traits and unemployment history.
More than half the survey consists of dummy questions, meaning that candidates were picking answers that had no bearing on whether they passed or failed.
The convoluted scoring system doesn't seem to have favored candidates with previous air traffic control experience in either civilian life (worth no points) or the military (worth just three).
Applicants who were unemployed (10 points) or struggled to meet deadlines (five points) had a much better chance of hitting the 114-point pass mark, however.
When it came to high school arithmetic, a C grade (zero points) was worth less than 'D' or 'don't remember' (one point).
A candidate who selected 'science' as his or her weakest subject would stumble into a 15-point jackpot. Conversely, only two points were on offer for being a pilot.
A document breaking down the best possible answers showed playing '4 or more sports in high school' was rated more valuable than a stint as an air traffic controller in the military
The biographical score of the FAA's test was worth 2.5 times the cognition portion when determining whether a candidate would land a job and progress to the FAA's Air Traffic Controller Academy in Oklahoma (pictured)
Being bothered by criticism 'much more than most' was another valuable response (10 points).
'I fail to see what sports participation or any of this stuff has to do with aviation,' said Ben Avni, an Air Force veteran who took the test in 2014.
Despite nearly-five years of service as an Air Battle Manager, Ben, 41, received a notification saying he was ineligible for a flight controller job that could have earned him a salary of around $158,000.
'I thought it was a mistake because I'm a military veteran. I didn't give the questions that much thought, I just answered them honestly,' he told DailyMail.com.
It was a similar story for Matthew Douglas, who put himself through an FAA-approved AT-CTI (College Training Initiative) course in Alaska at great expense and got a 100 percent score in the AT-SAT.
Matthew was among 2,800 graduates forced to reapply from scratch when the FAA unveiled the new rules in a December 30, 2013, email. His degree and perfect result now counted for nothing.
'I was like, what the hell is this? This has zero aviation. It was things like, how many jobs do you have? What was your favorite subject at school? How many sports did you play?' said Matthew, 36.
He had interned at the FAA, graduated with a 4.0 GPA and, as an Inupiaq Native American, was a member of a protected minority. He took the test again a year later and failed a second time.
Disaster struck again earlier this month, when a Delta Airlines-operated CRJ-900 aircraft crashed on the runway while landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport on February 18, 2025. Everyone onboard miraculously survived
The FAA's hiring policies came under sharp scrutiny after President Donald Trump controversially blamed the January 29 Ronald Reagan National Airport crash on DEI
During a press briefing on the mid-air collision, Trump said he put 'safety' first while Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden prioritized politics
'I took on debt, I left a promising tech job. I was absolutely devastated. I'm over it now because I have a wonderful wife and daughter. But I can't tell you how long it bothered me,' he added.
Matthew became one of two plaintiffs in a decade-long class action lawsuit that accused the Department of Transportation of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Their suit, which is still being litigated in Federal Court, alleges that 'the weighting of at least some of the questions appears to symptomatically favor African American applicants'.
They point out, for example, that black high school students typically achieve lower grades in science than any other race, citing national statistics.
Congress passed Public Law 114-190 in 2016 which barred the FAA from using a biographical assessment as an entry-point exam for new hires.
But Matthew's lawyers suspect the regulator got around the ban by migrating its 'racial screening' elements into the AT-SA, which candidates still take today.
They don't know for sure because it's one of 15,000 documents that the Department of Transportation has asserted legal privilege over and refused to disclose.
'The FAA has a section in the AT-SA called the 'personality test'. That's where we believe the FAA still uses race and discriminates,' Michael Pearson, the lead attorney in the suit, told DailyMail.com.
President Trump signed an executive order last month abolishing the government's DEI agenda and stressed that hiring shouldn't be on anything 'other than the brain'
Trump and the GOP have largely been against DEI efforts as shown by a sign hanging outside the office of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
'If President Trump or [Transportation] Secretary Sean Duffy released all the documents the flying public would likely see the true story and be shocked.'
None of the experts and former candidates we spoke to would go as far as the President in categorically blaming DEI for the 67 lives lost when an American Eagle jet slammed into a military Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac.
But they all agreed the FAA's woke objectives starved the system of elite candidates capable of completing the roughly five-year process to become fully certified controllers, contributing to a chronic staffing shortfall that persists to this day.
When last month's crash unfolded, there was only one controller managing traffic for both helicopters and planes – a job normally handled by two people - according to The New York Times.
In 2024, some 1,800 new air traffic controllers joined the ranks but that still leaves an estimated nationwide shortfall of 3,000 to 4,000.
'Controllers have been working six-day weeks, eight to 10 hours a day, they get one day off then go back to work and do it again,' added Pearson, a former air traffic controller and teacher.
'They all tell me they are getting fatigued. And fatigue can lead to mistakes.
'Now, whether it's actually correlated to the accident or not, I don't know. But it's certain that that facility was understaffed.'
After abandoning a career as a flight controller, Matthew worked for a drone startup and several more private aviation companies before switching careers to become a barber.
He's haunted by the idea that the safety of 2.9 million Americans who board commercial flights each day may rely upon exhausted, underqualified controllers who react negatively to criticism or take chances.
'Social engineering is what it is,' reflected Matthew of Hailey, Idaho. 'They had the perfect pipeline for talent and they dismantled it.
'I remember telling my professor, I guarantee that this is going to lead to something that nobody should ever have to endure. And that's what happened in D.C.'
