FAA workers dont need phony trauma leave after Newark airport disaster

The Newark-Liberty airport mess just keeps getting more alarming: Now it turns out that an insane leave policy for air-traffic controllers is adding to the chaos. Yes, controllers can take 45 days off to handle alleged “trauma” caused by ..

.equipment failures. Yes, preventing plane crashes is a high-stress job, and it’s surely freaky when your radar cuts out — but that’s not trauma, and treating it as such is deeply irresponsible. One, it’s yet another major intrusion of therapy culture into everyday life, in which which the slightest adverse event gets magnified into a life-altering disaster that requires endless healing time. Two, it’s literally putting other people’s lives in danger. When towers are understaffed, accidents grow more likely.

How is that not a thousand times more traumatic — for the controllers and for fliers — than a tough night caused by tech going on the fritz?At least five FAA employees who work on Newark traffic took this pseudo-medical leave after last week’s 90-second radar outage caused a crippling cascade of cancellations and delays.No, decaying infrastructure is not the fault of the guys in the tower, but the people who took trauma leave saw a bad situation and decided to make it worse.  Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Please provide a valid email address.By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Never miss a story.Either because they had fooled themselves into thinking they were “traumatized” or — much more likely — as a misguided protest. President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy are taking initial actions to try to fix the conditions that caused this Charlie Fox; they must go as fast as they can. But a big reason things are where they are now is that under the last guy the FAA was focused on woke nonsense.So leave the “trauma” whining out of it: That’s how we got here...