Agency Claims It Cannot Recover Documents It Says Are 'Corrupted'

The FAA has admitted in court that it is not able to recover emails that are key to a lawsuit involving applicants rejected from the agency's ATC selection process.

An investigation called for by House Aviation Subcommittee Chair Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) centers on the FAAs sudden change in hiring standards for Air Traffic Controllers in 2013, resulting in the rejection of thousands of candidates who had completed approved training courses. The change was an attempt to make the ranks of controllers "more diverse," according to the FAA.

Fox Business reports that LoBiondo and other congressmen submitted an FOIA request for emails between FAA representatives and officers of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE) between December 1, 2013 and June 24 2015. Some of those emails were handed over, but in the motion to dismiss the request for the emails filed in Federal District Court in Arizona on February 29th, the FAA said "The Lotus Notes Archive for December 2013 was unable to retrieve data and was identified as unreadable and corrupted.”

Michael Pearson, an attorney representing the rejected applicants, said it is obvious that the agency is "hiding embarrassing information."

An internal FAA investigation cleared the NBCFAE and its officers of any wrongdoing.

In its motion to dismiss, the FAA said that it had requested the emails from its contractor, Iron Mountain of Boston, MA, which had "tried several techniques" to recover the emails but was unable to do so.

But even NBCFAE vice president Moranda Reilly says that is suspicious. She said that it is "interesting" that the internal FAA investigation found that they were not at fault for something that "by their own admission they don't have all the evidence."

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