US President Trump's Administration and FAA Management, Lost in the woods, purposefully?

 Transportation Secretary plans to unveil a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul the American air traffic control system. Interesting, just a few thoughts and queries, for the accidents that the Trump administration claim’s leads to these changes did not happen in a vacuum.

a)      In January 2025 around 7 incidents of air traffic fatalities happened and around one hundred deaths occurred (Data from National Transportation Safety Board) (1). In the same month as per data provided on site FAA (2), air traffic incidents occurred for 23 days in the month, two or more incidents happening 13 days of the month. The total number of incidents for January 2025 was 41. Yet on 20^th January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order 14148 (3) “Initial Rescissions of harmful Executive Orders and Actions”, this revoked most of the Presidential Executive Orders of previous President Joe Biden which meant it adversely affected functioning of Federal Workforce including those part of FAA. As some of these executive orders under President Joe Biden were specifically meant to strengthen the federal workforce and strengthen democracy. This included Executive Order 14003, Protecting the Federal Workforce; Executive Order 14012 “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce”.  Why did Trump administration take these steps, even before initiating process to collect data on the issue, especially FAA is a sensitive and critical agency? 

b)     In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed another Executive Order 14158 (4), “Establishing and implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency”. Under Section 1 titled Purpose It states Department of Government Efficiency was created to implement the President’s DOGE agenda by modernising Federal technology and software. While the goal in itself is what America would seek for, why was under Section 4 (c) this added, “This Executive Order displaces all prior Executive Orders and regulations insofar as they are subject to direct Presidential amendment, that might serve as a barrier to providing United States DOGE Services (USDS) access to agency record and systems…” This ensured the existing regulations for smooth functioning of all units/departments under federal services was disturbed. 

c)      Every year in US there is an increase in number of flights and this creates a need for additional air traffic control personnel, but one of the measures taken by the Trump administration was to freeze the hiring of personnel by Federal services without providing clarification as to why and how the decision can be taken unilaterally given the diversity in services provided by Federal agencies is unclear. 

d)     If Trump’s administration and President Donald Trump sort for stability and functionality these executive orders would not be written or executed, and any freeze on hiring wouldn’t happen. As already data from FAA indicated that there is an increase in number of incidents fatal or otherwise in month of January 2025, which was largely attributed to absence of technical experts who function as Air Traffic Controllers. 

e)     Any organization would follow some basic strategies for its smooth overall functioning; these include functionality strategy and operations strategy. Functionality refers to working of different units or segments for over all goal of the organisation and Operations refers to day to day activities carried out and how resource both human and others is allocated towards the same. President Donald Trump and his administration have taken measures that clearly disrupted and dismantled services of the Federal structure, and thereby made it possible that vulnerability and risk increased drastically for FAA to carry out its functions. To make matters worse the DOGE main person Elon Musk took to tweets on private social platform or spoke to media to communicate with federal workforce or rather to discredit federal workforce and accuse specific agencies or units of being Ponzi scheme or carrying out waste, fraud and abuse within Federal system. Without having the opportunity to really carry out assessment DOGE concluded on waste, fraud and abuse and terminated many services by making its staff dysfunctional and this impacted critical and sensitive services including that of air traffic control. None of these disruption and resultant dysfunctionality has anything to do with what kind of technology is being used. It certainly does not provide the rationale for use of Space X or Starlink.

 f)       The adverse impact of DOGE and Trump’s administrative intervention is clearly having a negative impact on staff who are going on leave because trauma faced at workplace. The attempt by agency to hire new staff or to rehire is not seeing results and present need for additional air traffic controllers remains.

 g)      The question is if a different technology was planned to be put in place can it be done in manner that ensures monopoly of companies like SpaceX occurs? What would be the alternative be to deal with power outage which is an existing limitation of the technology? How will adverse impact on environment be addressed. Would there be alternate option, for outage can lead to the more disturbances more than the present ones, increase in air traffic accident incidents and fatalities.

h)     If the plan was to change the technology, wouldn’t it have been better to test it in a small area along with the existing technology and prove its functionality, operational superiority, sustainability, and cost effectiveness in terms of finance, energy consumption, waste production and reliability.

 i)  Or was the purpose to facilitate chaos, assert power and create a sense of fear that can facilitate loss of critical thinking among Americans, and create blind obedience or desire to watch in silence, as federal structure is being dismantled?

 

 Molly Charles

 

Reference

1.      https://www.fox4news.com/news/deadly-plane-crashes-2025-timeline.

2.      https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/accidents-incidents

3.      https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/28/2025-01901/initial-recisssions-of-harmful-executive-orders-and-actions

4. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/29/2025-02005/establishing-and-implementing-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency