It seems like they may be overworked and understaffed, especially considering the recent acceleration in Falcon 9 launch cadence:

SpaceX is on pace to launch about 90 rockets this year, primarily Falcon 9 boosters from Florida. Next year, the company aims to increase that rate by about 50 percent. That is on top of new entrants such as United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and other smaller rockets coming online. Then there is the increased flight rate by Virgin Galactic, the return to flight by Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital tourism rocket, and the potential for high-altitude balloon flights.

“We see a trainwreck coming,” said one of the SpaceX officials, citing all of this work that the FAA needs to perform.

“Next year could be a pretty dynamic time with lots of providers in spaceflight," another SpaceX official said. "Our concern is even today Falcon and Dragon are sometimes competing for FAA resources with Starship, and the FAA can’t handle those three activities together. So let alone what’s coming next year, or maybe even later this year, we just don’t think the FAA is staffed ready to support that.”

“I think people assume because Falcon flies every four days on average that that licensing process is kind of a well-oiled machine,” one SpaceX official said. “Certainly AST has made it work, and we have made it work, but I can assure you that it is very challenging. It’s very cumbersome. In many cases, we have deferred work that is associated with those programs because we know if we put those documents in front of FAA it is going to redirect their attention away from our Starship program, and vice versa. There is a very real problem here, with resourcing, where our programs are competing with each other.”

It will be interesting to see if and how these processes change going forward.