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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Summary
FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker resigned on Jan. 20, leaving the agency leaderless amid a major aviation crisis.
His departure followed months of clashes with Elon Musk, who criticized the FAA for imposing $600,000 in fines on SpaceX and called for Whitaker’s resignation.
Musk accused the FAA of obstructing space exploration.
Whitaker’s exit comes as the FAA faces air traffic controller shortages and a major runway collision investigation.
Most likely. Like you ask a guy to resign and everything doesn’t instantly crumble. Like I’m sure it can’t help with ATC shortages, but to assume this is related to that is just a massive reach.
Trump is a horrible person and Elon is a cunt, but this seemed like it would happen at some point given DC has a lot of low flying choppers.
Exactly. With that being said, ATC shortages are a serious, serious problem. I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t made more headlines, but maybe that will be a silver lining to this crash. Most major ATC facilities are dangerously understaffed with controllers working mandatory overtime. They are not hiring and training people nearly fast enough to account for the amount of controllers that are set to retire.
It seems insane to me that you would have ATC people working mandatory overtime. Like it’s a role that is very stressful.
Yeah FAA management is really shitting the bed. The controllers that I know also feel like they are unable to seek professional help for stress and health issues out of fear that they would lose their jobs. It’s amazing that there aren’t more disasters.