'I was disgusted': Ex-American Airlines pilot blasts Trump's reaction to mid-air collision

A retired pilot condemned president Donald Trump's comments about the midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and U.S. Army helicopter.

The president opened his White House briefing Thursday with a moment of silence and a brief prayer before launching an attack against diversity hiring and Democratic officials. Then he baselessly speculated that the soldier flying the Black Hawk helicopter or air traffic controllers were at fault, and a retired American Airlines captain told CNN that he was appalled by the spectacle.

"I'm sorry, but I was disgusted by that entire press conference and the statements that were made for people that I depended upon throughout my career," said Les Abend, a 40-year veteran in the skies. "The qualifications that are required for a controller are stringent, and it's it's a lot of work. It's at least five years before somebody can actually be solo, for instance, at a particular facility, and each facility has its own difficulty level – same thing for pilots. Pilots aren't hired, there's a specific standard for hiring pilots, whether they're Black, white, purple, brown – it doesn't make any difference. Those standards have to be have to be met, and nobody is going to get hired that doesn't meet those particular those particular standards."

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Abend said he couldn't understand the president's apparent lack of empathy for the victims, and he cast doubt on the possibility that understaffing was a contributing factor because he said that was basically a norm in the aviation industry.

"This hits very close to home to me," the retired pilot said. "Forty-three years ago this month, I flew in the next day after Air Florida had crashed in the Potomac [River], so I flew in looking at pieces of airplane. It stays with you forever, so I can't imagine what these folks are going through, let alone the families. It's just horrible. I have experienced going into particular facilities where a ground controller and a tower controller are combined into one because of the volume of activity has been reduced for that particular time of day, so it's not unusual. I know the NTSB is not focusing on this, they don't want to make this necessarily an issue. Are they going to be investigating this? Yeah, there's a good potential."

"What I can say is that flying into Washington, one of the best controllers, they're just fantastic people," Abend said. "They have protected my life numerous times and just do a tremendous job going into Washington in a very, very challenging airspace situation, challenging approaches. You got to be on your a game, whether you're a controller or a pilot."

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