Elon Musk’s SpaceX engineers have already descended on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to help modernize air traffic control under the Trump administration.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in a post to X on Wednesday that the deadly Jan. 29 crash between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight landing at Reagan airport in Washington, D.C., served as “a heartbreaking wake-up call that improvements must be made.”
“This is why I’ve enlisted the brightest minds, including SpaceX engineers, to help upgrade our aviation system,” Duffy wrote. “I am fully committed to transportation excellence, as well as transparency and honesty with the public.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation reportedly told Reuters that SpaceX engineers tapped as part of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team at the FAA are serving as special government employees and will be kept separate from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation – which handles regulations for the company – to avoid any conflicts of interest.
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Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau said in a Wednesday email to employees that the DOGE team would be visiting more FAA facilities – including FAA headquarters – after Monday stops at the Air Traffic Control Command Center and Potomac TRACON in Warrenton, Virginia, Reuters reported.
“We are asking for their help to engineer solutions while we keep the airspace open and safe,” Rocheleau wrote. “They will contribute to our goal of continuous improvement, which is the key to making sure flying continues to be the safest mode of transportation. We will learn from them, and they will learn more about aviation safety from us.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was among critics to claim Musk’s team was inappropriately gaining special access to the FAA.
Duffy told Fox News that the SpaceX engineers had gone to the FAA on Monday to “just observe” and would “craft a phased approach on how we might be able to fix the American system.” He added, “It’s not just SpaceX, we’re going to ask everyone else to come in that’s smart and bright and loves America to think through the process.”
“We’re like using a rotary phone,” Duffy said. “We’re spending 90% of our money to keep the rotary phone working from back in the 1980s as opposed to thinking, well, we use cell phones today. We have such antiquated, old equipment that no one has fixed. Donald Trump has said, ‘Fix this system, make it work, keep people safe.’”
Duffy said he planned on Wednesday to visit the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, but the trip was canceled due to bad weather and would be rescheduled. The secretary said he would go to the Air Traffic Control Command Center in Virginia on Wednesday to talk with FAA employees about “the critical need to upgrade our air traffic systems.”
The D.C. crash, which killed all 67 people aboard both craft, happened nine days after President Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president. It was the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster since 9/11.
That crash was the first of several major North American aviation disasters within the last month. In Canada this week, a Delta flight from Minneapolis dramatically flipped upside down and burst into flames while landing at Toronto’s airport, but everyone aboard survived.
In his post to X on Wednesday, Duffy rejected what he described as the “growing media narrative that there are more airplane crashes now in Trump’s presidency than under Biden.” He asserted that there were 57 aviation incidents in the U.S. during President Joe Biden’s first month in office, “compared to 35 under Trump,” adding that “the need for immediate improvement to our safety infrastructure is long overdue.”
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