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The Federal Aviation Administration is facing its first major aviation disaster in 16 years without a leader because Elon Musk helped push him out.
Michael Whitaker stepped down as FAA administrator on January 20th, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, after clashing with Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is regulated by the agency. Musk publicly called on Whitaker to resign after the FAA fined SpaceX for failing to get approval for launch changes. And now the power vacuum at the agency is coming into sharp focus after an Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet Wednesday evening in Washington, DC, killing everyone on board.
At a press conference Thursday with rescue officials, newly confirmed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ignored reporters’ questions about whether the FAA had an acting director in place to help manage the crisis.
Whitaker was only a year into the job when he announced his intention to step down. He had several years left in his term. His resignation clears the way for President Donald Trump to name his own replacement to run the agency. Later Thursday morning, Trump said he was tapping Chris Rocheleau, a top executive for an aviation business association, as acting FAA administrator, but provided no details about a permanent replacement.
Musk, a major donor to Trump, is reportedly helping the administration vet candidates to certain positions and is directing an effort to purge thousands of federal workers from all levels of the government. And while its unclear whether Musk has been directly involved in picking a new FAA administrator, the billionaire mogul has reportedly been involved in overseeing Boeing’s development of the next Air Force One jets.
But Musk’s efforts to get Whitaker were well known even before Trump’s victory in November. He has complained many times about the FAA, lashing out in September after the agency levied a $633,000 fine for launching missions with unapproved changes. (Musk is worth over $400 billion, making him the richest man in the world.)
The FAA has also fined Starlink, after the SpaceX subsidiary failed to submit safety data before launching satellites in 2022. In a House hearing, Whitaker explained that the FAA’s civil penalties were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.”
On X, Musk complained that the FAA was “harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect safety while giving a free pass to Boeing even after NASA concluded that their spacecraft was not safe enough to bring back the astronauts.” He also claimed that humans would never land on Mars without “radical reform at the FAA.” In September, he wrote “he needs to resign” about Whitaker.
In addition to Musk’s attacks, the FAA has long suffered from underfunding and outdated technology. In 2023, a panel of experts released a report that found that the increasing reliance of overtime to staff air traffic control facilities was putting air safety at risk. The agency has fielded hundreds of complaints from air traffic workers describing dangerous conditions from staff shortages to dilapidated buildings.
Update, January 30th: After this story was publish, Trump announced that he was naming Chris Rocheleau as acting FAA administrator. This story has been updated to reflect that fact.
