UPDATE: Is FAA blackballing veterans?
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist
06/25/09 12:05 AM EDT
Email from a retired USAir captain and former Air Force officer:
“I applied several times to work for the FAA for various positions that I qualified for but I was turned down for various reasons.
“There was a law that was concocted many years ago that stated if you were over the military rank of Major and or Lt Commander you would not be allowed to use your Veteran’s disability Preference points for job consideration. The DOT, OPM and DOL conveniently left off the last paragraph stating that if you were a retired Reservist this rule did not apply.... With the aid of two DOL vets...we were able to find out that the OPM/DOL were intentionally keeping me from being considered for ANY US Government positions that I applied for - and I mean any!!
“The story even gets better. I applied for various FAA air carrier inspector positions...at various bases and was turned down... The former Adjutant General of the National Guard warned me that I needed to apply months in advance for any FAA position in this area... the FAA Administrator would not even hire him and that he had to get a job at [another state] office instead.
“...I personally know that the FAA office is run by incompetent inspectors who are extremely weak Civil Service employees that have no clue what they are doing. Personally I think that my military and airline resume should have put me well ahead of any consideration for any and all positions throughout the FAA.
“Finally one day I reached an administrator who worked at the FAA Oklahoma City Office and she told me that she and others were told to not hire anyone who had the expertise that I and others had. She told me that she was told to hire everyone ahead of me on the register even though I had a 10-point disability. One of the pilots that was hired [who] could barely fly a jet was a foreign green card holder who was fired by the owner of a four-jet fleet....
Why would you hire young inexperienced pilots over well-qualified pilots with experience in over 130 foreign countries, especially when the FAA and the airlines are having so many problems?
The former acting FAA Administrator (Bobby Sturgell) and the FAA Personnel Chief (Ms. Ventris Gibson) were both military veterans, but they both appeared to have gone out of their way to keep well qualified pilots and combat military veterans from any available positions that they were well qualified for at the FAA.... Ms. Ventris Gibson kept changing the FAA software in order to keep competent applicants from being considered for any position. Why was this allowed to happen and to go unchecked for years without question?
I know that the FAA has a few good officials left, but I personally feel that they are scared to say anything for fear of what has happened too many of us in the military. When threats are allowed to go unchecked and wiretapping allowed to exist in certain federal agency, things are out of control to say the least.”
FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette says "that is most certainly not true," adding that "the FAA hires former military pilots who meet our qualifictions. We have lots of former military pilots here."
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