“Danger To National Airspace Cannot Be Understated” says Fired FAA Employee Blowing the Whistle

You heard yesterday about the stunning airplane accident in Canada, where the aircraft flipped over and was sitting there on the tarmac belly up, as it was evacuated. “We were hanging there like bats,” said one passenger. That is a perfect image for both the American government in Trump 2.0 and the state of American aviation safety. We are profoundly compromised at this point in time. Air travel has far outweighed ground travel as a safe means of transportation but with all the massive budget cuts and the dancing Sean Duffy as the head of the Department Of Transportation, let’s just say that so far both the results and the optics of the current DOT have been underwhelming.

Elon Musk says “to the best of our knowledge no one affecting safety has been fired.” Actual FAA employees say differently? Who are you going to believe, especially with airplane incidents becoming a near daily occurrence? While Trump is out playing golf and going to car races, today being the third day in a row he’s decided to amuse himself rather than do the job he was elected to do?

“To the best of our knowledge” isn’t good enough.

Not when thousands of lives are on the line every minute of every day in the air.

Either your people are CERTAIN nobody affecting safety was fired or get the hell out of the way and let the adults into the room.

— Artie Vandelay (@ArtieVandelay1) February 18, 2025

Donald Trump and Elon Musk fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration workers Friday night, according to Rolling Stone, “amid a startling series of plane crashes and other air-related incidents in recent weeks. A few days later, the Trump administration is telling Americans not to worry, because they didn’t fire anyone too important.”

Musk posted on X on Monday: “To the best of our knowledge, no one affecting safety has been fired.” Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt similarly wrote that no employees “who perform safety-critical functions were terminated,” calling it “fake news” to report otherwise.

Former and current FAA officials, however, say the purge could certainly affect air safety going forward. According to the Associated Press, the mass firings included “personnel hired for FAA radar, landing, and navigational aid maintenance.”

Rolling Stone spoke with a fired FAA employee who was among a handful of employees working on an obstacle impact team at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City. The team evaluates many tens of thousands of potential new hazards — such as new buildings, windmills, and especially cranes — to inform flight procedures each year.

The obstacle impact team was already understaffed before it was gutted. “There are currently four people remaining over there to do the work of 15 people,” they say, adding: “The danger to the national airspace can’t be understated. This is a very real threat to the American flying public.”

While the mass firings targeted “probationary” employees, that doesn’t mean the cuts only affected employees with limited experience. The fired FAA employee, a veteran, previously performed the same role for years for a government contractor; after the contract ended, the FAA hired most of the team back directly. The probationary status, however, made the obstacle impact team ripe targets for Musk’s hit squad at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. […]

Asked on Tuesday about Musk and the Trump White House’s line that it’s “fake news” that the new administration sacked a bunch of safety-critical personnel over the long weekend, the FAA official simply replies: “How do they think airports and airplanes work?”

During the first month of the second Trump presidency, numerous staffers and career officials within the FAA and Department of Transportation have been preparing exit strategies in the event of further purges of probationary employees and other staffers, and actively fearing potential worst-case scenarios, the sources say.

We’re seeing the worst case scenarios. We’re seeing situations happen within a few weeks time that basically only happen every few years, if that often. DOGE and Sean Duffy have no remote clue how airplanes and airports work. They are a group of billionaire bros and Fox News hosts who have been appointed to positions in government that they would never occupy except under the presidency of a TV game show host.

Life is not a game. And air safety is not something you can bullshit. It’s either there or it’s not.

Another source who works with the Transportation Department says they couldn’t help themselves and immediately informed their spouse that Americans could die from this.

“President Plane Accident,” this source says. “Is that how Donald Trump wants to be remembered?”

What we know for a fact is that since Trump took office and these firings began (and just the fear of a second Trump presidency, and the woke words idiocy) “there has been a spate of terrifying air accidents — including a deadly mid-air collision just outside Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army helicopter; a fatal plane crash in Philadelphia; and another fatal plane crash off the coast of Alaska. On Monday, a plane traveling from Minneapolis crash-landed in Toronto, Canada.”

And maybe these are not directly attributable to Trump. But nobody is arguing the fact that if you fire people who prevent these kinds of incidents and who investigate them when they do happen, that it’s a surefire set up for more accidents.

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