FAA Employees Say Trump and Musk’s Purge Is a ‘Threat’ to Air Safety
Donald Trump and Elon Musk fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration workers Friday night, 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.
On a personal level, the fired employee says they “found it very insulting that after [decades] of military and civil service to my country, I was discarded in a moment with an e-mail.” They worry they could lose their home — but they’re more concerned about the well-being of their other fired colleagues.
Asked about Musk’s claim that the FAA didn’t fire anyone affecting safety, they respond: “Well, he’s wrong.” (Musk, whose team at SpaceX was scheduled to tour the FAA’s Air Traffic Control Center on Monday, says his company’s “engineers will help make air travel safer.”)
As news of the purge circulated Friday night and over the weekend, FAA staffers and longtime personnel who were already preparing for the worst were stunned at Trump and Musk’s recklessness, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone.
“Holy hell — that was my response,” one FAA official tersely says, describing their initial reaction.
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.
However, for many of these federal staffers, what Trump and Musk did late last week was considerably more shocking than they expected.
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?”
Spokespeople for the White House and the Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Though Musk and the White House claim their job cuts relate in no way to anyone involved with airline safety, Rolling Stone separately spoke with a second terminated FAA employee whose job was ensuring that pilots are medically able and certified to fly. It’s a vital role, especially given the ongoing airline pilot shortage.
“We were already behind,” says the terminated FAA employee. “The pilots already complained that there’s a shortage in getting their medical certification [approved]. It’s just going to be put further behind now.”
They say the FAA firings came as a surprise: “I don’t think we expected it to happen to us, especially with all the aviation crashes and things going on, all the safety issues that are already out there, and then being already understaffed.”
Since Trump took office, 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.
The fired FAA employee who worked on the obstacle impact team tells Rolling Stone it’s not fair to blame Trump for these incidents — but that the president and Musk are certainly increasing the risk of accidents going forward.
“Firing people that do this sort of work is not conducive to preventing accidents,” they say. “None of these accidents were anything having to do with the new administration — but that’s coming. When you lay off people that investigate these things and prevent these things, it’s only a matter of time.”
Have a tip for our reporters? Contact Andrew Perez on Signal at aperezrs.15 and Asawin Suebsaeng at swin24.68.
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