Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said he was taking a team from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to a Federal Aviation Administration command post Monday, as the Trump administration moved to fire hundreds of FAA staff who maintain essential air traffic control infrastructure.
“SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system,” Duffy, former reality show cast member on MTV’s The Real World, said in a tweet on Sunday.
He went on to that suggest journalists—and for some reason Hillary Clinton—would claim Musk’s team is “getting special access” and emphasized that the FAA “regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies.”
That may certainly be true.
But the FAA does not regularly give tours of the command center to companies run by a top White House advisor, charged with slashing hundreds of billions in government spending, immediately after the administration purges its ranks.
Musk’s SpaceX—which manufactures and launches spacecraft and rockets—has also angled for federal contracts, winning hundreds of millions in deals from the Pentagon in recent years.
David Spiro, the head of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) union, said in a statement that “several hundred” FAA employees were notified that they had been fired on Friday.
They were the latest in a series of cuts across the federal government by the administration, which have been driven by or carried out at the behest of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency task force.
The firings targeted new hires still in their probationary period, making them easier to get rid of.
None were air traffic controllers, whose ranks have been at shortage levels for decades.
One air traffic controller told the Associated Press that those let go worked on maintenance for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid.
In a statement, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a group that represents air traffic controllers and other aviation workers, said it “is analyzing the effect of the reported federal employee terminations on aviation safety, the national airspace system and our members.”
The firings come as air safety is a hotly contested subject in Washington and across the country, with a several high-profile plane crashes drawing attention to strains on air traffic control networks. Last month, a descending American Airlines jet and a US army helicopter collided midair outside the capitol, killing 67 people.
Duffy, in his tweet, claimed that the visit by Musk’s SpaceX team would allow him to seek “advice from the brightest minds in America” in order to deliver on President Donald Trump’s request that he “deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world.”
Spiro, the aviation union president, blasted the Trump administration’s cuts as a threat to public safety and the air traffic control system Duffy pledged to improve.
“This draconian action will increase the workload and place new responsibilities on a workforce that is already stretched thin,” he wrote, in a statement.
“This decision did not consider the staffing needs of the FAA, which is already challenged by understaffing. Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”
