The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.
“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which claims “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”
The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.
The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation, is a government agency charged with regulating civil aviation and employs roughly 45,000 people.
All eyes have been on the FAA and airline industry in recent days, after a plug door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5.
