In the last few years Congress has given the F.A.A. a freer hand in personnel policy and in acquisitions, but it has not gone as far as Canada, which turned its air traffic system over to a nonprofit corporation set up by the government for public benefit, with a board made up of representatives of the airlines, general aviation, controllers and the public.
As part of the English-language proficiency requirements for pilots and air traffic controllers, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) published a rating scale designed to assess pilots' and air traffic controllers' aviation English proficiency.
On the job for 10 months, Mr. Demps is a former air traffic controller who rose to become a high-ranking federal aviation official before turning his attention to the school problems in Kansas City.
He exempted air traffic controllers, aviation inspectors and security specialists from the hiring halt, but not technicians.
Afghanistan's ministry of aviation said its controllers were certain the plane had not crossed their airspace.
The misdirected descent was immediately corrected by an air traffic controller monitoring the plane's course, said Jack Barker, a regional spokesman for the aviation agency.
Seeking to put his Army training as an air traffic controller to use, he was told it did not qualify him for a job in commercial aviation, his wife said.
A plane carrying First Lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden had to abort a landing at Andrews Air Force Base because an air traffic controller allowed it to get too close to a military cargo plane landing ahead of it, a federal aviation official said Tuesday evening.
The planes then flew so close that the targets on radar scopes in Nashua merged into one, a controller told aviation agency officials.
This is given by air traffic controllers and aviation weather reports.
In Tuesday's incident, the aviation agency and the controllers differ on how long the President's plane disappeared from the control center's radar screen.
