About the author: William J. McGee is the Senior Fellow for Aviation & Travel at American Economic Liberties Project. An FAA-licensed aircraft dispatcher, he spent seven years in airline flight operations management and was Editor-in-Chief of Consumer Reports Travel Letter. He is the author of Attention All Passengers and teaches at Vaughn College of Aeronautics. There is more at www.economicliberties.us/william-mcgee/.
This may seem painfully obvious, but aviation safety is extremely serious. And yet in 6 weeks, the Trump Administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it’s not treating air safety with the thoroughness and sobriety it demands.
The recent spate of both airline and private aviation accidents has generated nationwide fear, the most I’ve seen in over a decade. Lately I’ve received dozens of emails and texts from friends telling me they now plan to drive or take Amtrak rather than fly. Journalists also keep asking me: Is flying safe?
My answer is yes. But with a huge caveat.
Although commercial aviation remains by far the safest form of transportation, I also believe we’re facing new safety threats since January 20.
What’s happening lately?
There’s an old adage about accidents coming in threes, and indeed we just saw 3 airline crashes within the space of just 20 days.
• American Eagle Flight 5342 collided mid-air with an Army helicopter on January 29 in Washington, killing 67.
• Bering Air Flight 445 was lost on February 6 near Nome, Alaska, killing 10.
• Delta Connection Flight 4819, flying from Minneapolis—St. Paul, crashed upon landing February 17 in Toronto; thankfully, everyone onboard survived a burning aircraft that flipped over onto its roof.
No causal thread has been established to link these events, nor to link other recent private plane crashes in recent weeks. U.S. and Canadian authorities continue investigating all three tragedies, and that takes time.
Initial reports suggest the Washington crash may have been due to situational unawareness by the Army crew; the Nome-bound flight lost communication over the Bering Sea; and video from Toronto indicates an exceptionally hard landing. We’ll know more soon.
While these disasters have spurred endless media and social media discussions about safety and even generated direct blame on the new administration, there’s an inherent irony to doing that because even though the administration has been casting blame before investigations have been conducted, there’s no evidence the three crashes were due to either similar causes or to Donald Trump’s policies.
But key members of this administration, including Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) czar Elon Musk, and the President himself are, in fact, compromising aviation safety.
“Stinks of corruption”
From the start, the second Trump Administration has undermined aviation safety by eliminating the Aviation Security Advisory Committee on Day Two and then by seeking the resignations of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) administrators. Both jobs still remain unfilled at a time when experienced leadership is desperately needed.
Other actions have also undercut the ability of the government to render proper oversight to air safety, such as:
• BLAMING DEI. The administration’s obsession with eradicating all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs famously arose just hours after the Washington crash when President Trump made vague and unfounded accusations the collision had been caused by DEI, even as bodies were still being recovered from the Potomac.
As I wrote here on Frommer’s in January (one day before that Washington crash): “There is no list of unqualified individuals who were hired by the FAA due to race, gender, or any other DEI criteria who were deemed to be unfit for their jobs.”
The responses to Trump’s premature blame were swift, even invoking a short comment from Capt. Sully Sullenberger: “Not surprised. Disgusted.”
• FIRING CRUCIAL WORKERS WITH DOGE. Let’s be clear: The FAA has been tremendously understaffed for decades. Passenger boardings on U.S. airlines tripled from 390 million in 1985 to 946 million in 2023.
If FAA Aviation Safety Inspectors had kept pace with such growth, there would be more than 6,000 inspectors now, but instead the number has flatlined at around 4,000 for many years.
Meanwhile, it’s also well documented that America has long operated under a severe air traffic controller shortage. This has forced flight cancellations and even potentially deadly near-misses, according to a new report from the National Transportation Safety Board just last week.
So why would DOGE even consider firing desperately needed workers at such a critical and understaffed agency? It’s mind-blowing that Musk is laying off, threatening, and harassing employees with mindless tasks like “what-did-you-do-this-week” emails. It’s impossible to even conceive of the negative effects that such behavior will have on the FAA workforce, and by extension on the life-and-death work they perform so well every day.
After nearly 400 “probationary” FAA staff were fired, reports emerged about key tasks that are regularly performed by such workers. These crucial jobs include maintenance of the FAA’s radar and landing and navigational aids. Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS), a union representing FAA employees, stated: “The hastily made decision…did not focus on mission-critical needs and was harmful to employees.”
Musk responded by tweeting: “To the best of our knowledge, no one affecting safety has been fired.” Which prompted Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to respond that Musk’s “thin knowledge” is a “faulty metric,” which was a polite way of saying Musk didn’t know what he was talking about.
Furthermore, arguing that firing critical support staff is acceptable speaks to a lack of knowledge of how the FAA works. Yet Secretary Duffy responded to critics by saying: “For people to say that because we cut 352 people out of… 46,000, that that’s a risk to safety, give me a break.”
But I, and many others with aviation experience, can say that what’s happening is indeed a risk to safety.
“The laws of gravity apply to both Democrats and Republicans alike—even if you don’t believe in them.”
Former FAA administrator Michael Whitaker
• ABANDONING POLICY. Last week, after a private pilot mistakenly taxied into a runway that a Southwest Airlines aircraft was about to land on, Duffy tweeted: “It is imperative that pilots follow the instructions of air traffic controllers. If they do not, their licenses will be pulled.” This statement was made prematurely, without an investigation, and as CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean correctly noted, such threats violate the FAA’s own Compliance Program, which stresses collaboration to enhance safety.
• SERVING CONFLICTING INTERESTS. Musk’s blatant conflicts of interest with the FAA take two separate forms: 1) the FAA oversees and was previously investigating his SpaceX company and 2) he is attempting to replace an existing Verizon contract at the FAA with his own company, Starlink. The FAA signed a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon in 2023 for the company to provide a communications platform for FAA air traffic control facilities. Replacing the Verizon deal with Musk’s own company Starlink lines his pockets and presents a blatant conflict of interest.
As Rep. Rick Larsen (D-OR), Ranking Member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, rightfully stated this “stinks of corruption.”
Safety is not political
Last week I heard Michael Whitaker, the recently departed FAA Administrator, speak at the Wings Club in New York City, and he stressed that safety is not political: “The laws of gravity apply to both Democrats and Republicans alike—even if you don’t believe in them.”
Whitaker added no “serious person” doesn’t believe there’s a role for government in aviation safety, and I certainly agree. I just hope in the coming months government makes our skies safer, not more dangerous.
The FAA has plenty to do, including overseeing airline maintenance outsourcing on foreign shores and fixing the mess at Boeing. The last thing we need is to exacerbate our existing problems. This means that first, the Trump Administration should do no further harm and stop the senseless firings. And second, it should work with Congress to address the staffing and equipment shortages.
This is serious work, and it requires serious responses.