FAA Chief Quit on Jan. 20 After Elon Musk Told Him to Resign
www.thedailybeast.com
Michael Whitaker had only been in the role for a year but the SpaceX chief accused him of “harassment.”

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.

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
      134·
      13 hours ago

      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.

      • jballsEnglish
        6·
        10 hours ago

        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.

          • jballsEnglish
            2·
            9 hours ago

            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.

    • BoofStrokeEnglish
      221·
      17 hours ago

      I’m good with the TSA being destroyed. That was just pork barrel politics and security theater from the start.

      • phdepressed
        161·
        17 hours ago

        It’s also one of the largest federal work programs since the civilian conservation Corp. Getting rid of it without a replacement in line =bad for economy and jobs.

        • ayyy
          7·
          12 hours ago

          Put the TSA agents to work doing something actually useful and productive then.

          • Nollij@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            22·
            16 hours ago

            The TSA is the second largest employer of high school dropouts in the country, after Walmart. Education level is highly correlated with voting patterns.

          • mipadaitu@lemmy.worldEnglish
            51·
            16 hours ago

            Probably all of them.

            Edit: Well, all of them that can legally vote. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them had criminal records that prevented them from voting.

    • mattw3496@fedia.io
      131·
      15 hours ago

      Trump’s decisions are bad and wrong, but let’s leave ableist slurs out of it.