Another DC Plane Collision Puts Trump and Musk’s FAA Cuts in the Spotlight

On April 10, two American Airlines jets clipped wings on the taxiway at Reagan Washington National Airport outside Washington, D.C. No one was injured in the minor collision, in which six members of Congress were among the 143 passengers.

Just two weeks before, on March 28, a formation of four military jets on their way to a flyover of Arlington National Cemetery came within five seconds of colliding with a commercial Delta flight also taking off from Reagan. The harrowing incident came one day after a fistfight broke out among employees in the Reagan air traffic control tower.

The incidents occurred at the same busy airport where 67 people died two months earlier on January 29, when an Army helicopter crashed into a passenger plane in midair. But crashes and near-misses seem to be happening all over: Two days after the deadly helicopter crash, a medical jet crashed in Northeast Philadelphia, killing everyone on board and an additional person on the ground. Then on February 17, a Delta flight from Minneapolis carrying 80 passengers crashed, skidded, caught on fire and turned upside down in Toronto. In two separate incidents on the morning of February 25, an American Airlines flight aborted its descent in Washington to avoid a collision, while a Southwest plane emergency aborted its landing in Chicago to avoid hitting a private jet that had entered the runway without authorization.

Just days before the D.C. crash involving the military helicopter — the deadliest air crash since 2001 — President Donald Trump eliminated the membership of the congressionally mandated Aviation Security Committee. And weeks later, Elon Musk’s DOGE fired around 400 employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). These “probationary” employees, who had been in their current roles for less than a year, were fired in late-night emails from a non-governmental email address.

Meanwhile, in response to the deadly January 27 crash, Trump went on a raving rant, incorrectly blaming the disaster on DEI. His claims were echoed by his Transportation Secretary, former Real World and Road Rules reality television contestant Sean Duffy.

It is well known that FAA systems are aging and need updating: A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report last September revealed that 51 of the FAA’s 138 systems are “unsustainable,” citing issues like outdated functionality and a lack of spare parts. In 2023, the FAA awarded a 15-year, $2.4 billion contract to Verizon to upgrade and modernize the agency’s telecommunications and IT network.

But Musk appears eager to capitalize on problems at the FAA. In late February, The Washington Post reported that the FAA was close to canceling the Verizon contract and instead awarding the work to Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet company. In mid-March, Duffy criticized Verizon’s speed on the project, stating in a press conference: “I want companies that want to move fast. I can’t wait 10 years.”

Starlink Contract

Musk has also stoked concerns about Verizon, claiming on social media that “the Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down very rapidly. The FAA assessment is single digit months to catastrophic failure, putting air traveler safety at serious risk.” Not only was there no source for the “single digit months to catastrophic failure” claim, but Verizon does not yet operate the system.

Meanwhile, DOGE brought in employees from Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, to work on FAA technology. Some of these employees have been given FAA email addresses, according to the Post. In late February, the FAA announced it was testing Starlink terminals in New Jersey and Alaska, and Musk reportedly approved a shipment of 4,000 Starlink terminals to the FAA. Ted Malaska, a SpaceX engineer and “temporary special government employee” with DOGE, told FAA staff that if they “impeded” efforts to deploy Starlink terminals, they risked “losing their jobs.”

Meanwhile, sources at the FAA told Rolling Stone that FAA officials ordered staff to find tens of millions of dollars for Starlink deals, mostly via verbal directives that suggest “someone does not want to leave a paper trail.”

In late March, the FAA approved the use of Starlink WiFi on United planes. The Starlink-United agreement was signed last September, and the timeline was accelerated in early January. Also in late March, the FAA began allowing private jet owners to request the omission of their names and other personal information from public display online, making it harder for climate advocates and hobbyist jet trackers to track and publicize the private flights of the ultra-rich. This change came following 2024 legislation allowing for increased privacy. Musk has always hated being tracked: In December 2022, two months after he purchased Twitter, the site suspended the account for ElonJet, a Musk plane tracker run by a college student.

“This is a glaring conflict of interest,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D–Connecticut) and James E. Clyburn (D—South Carolina) said in a joint statement on March 1, referring to the increased use of Starlink technology at the FAA. “These changes are not about Americans’ safety; instead, these are dangerous actions that put Elon Musk’s personal wealth over the American people’s lives.” Congressman Hank Johnson (D—Georgia) concurred: “This kind of corruption and cronyism is breathtaking, and it’s a threat to the safety of the public.”

Musk’s History With the FAA

Musk seems to have a personal vendetta against the FAA, which is responsible for overseeing SpaceX. Last year, the FAA fined SpaceX $633,009 in civil penalties for violations during two spacecraft launches. The agency also launched a “mishap investigation” when a SpaceX rocket exploded in midair in January, shedding debris into the Gulf of Mexico and forcing the FAA to delay nearby air traffic. Musk downplayed the explosion, insisting SpaceX would carry out its next scheduled launch. Sure enough, the next SpaceX launch went forward in March, exploding yet again mid-flight, and once again raining debris and delaying flights in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Musk and SpaceX argue that the company needs to move quickly and make mistakes in order to learn — calling explosions “barely a bump in the road.” But the resulting flight delays, damage and pollution have real effects. An April 2023 SpaceX liftoff and subsequent explosion shook homes, broke at least one window, and covered Port Isabel, Texas, with brown grime, which one woman described to The New York Times as “truly terrifying.” Local officials in Texas say Musk misled them about his plans when he initially purchased the land for his SpaceX facility, which has since shed debris and shrapnel into a nearby bird habitat, as well as a state park and beach. According to one scientific study, a SpaceX explosion in November 2023 temporarily ripped a hole in the upper atmosphere.

Musk has historically been aggressive toward the FAA. Following his September fines, he threatened to sue for alleged “regulatory overreach” and called for the resignation of then-FAA chief Mike Whitaker. Months later, Whitaker stepped down on the day of Trump’s inauguration, four years before the end of his term.

“That [Musk] now gets to provide government oversight over the things that he is trying to get permission to do is one of the most significant conflicts of interest I’ve seen in my career, and it’s inexplicable to me,” Moriba Jah, an aerospace engineering professor and former member of an FAA advisory committee, told ProPublica following the January explosion.

Are Trump and Musk Making Air Travel More Dangerous?

Many have been quick to point out that air travel remains generally safe in the United States, and that the string of crashes and near-misses cannot be directly attributed to Trump and Musk.

But aviation experts fear that DOGE’s actions at the FAA will lead to more incidents. Trump wants to roll back more governmental regulations, and issued a January 31 executive order instructing agencies to repeal 10 rules for every new regulation put in place. Airline deregulation has a poor safety record: after the FAA began allowing Boeing to self-certify the safety of its own planes in 2009, two 737 Max airliners crashed in 2018 and 2019.

And aviation safety experts fear that federal regulation of airline safety is becoming even more challenging. Over the past two decades, airlines have generally stopped conducting their own fleet maintenance in-house, instead sending the planes overseas to be serviced by third parties. Now, in recent years, private equity firms have moved heavily into this airplane maintenance industry — potentially bringing dangerous cost-cutting tactics and a powerful lobbying arm to fight federal regulation.

Meanwhile, the DOGE firings are only stretching an understaffed FAA even thinner. In an explosive meeting between Trump, Musk and cabinet members on March 6, Duffy complained that DOGE members had tried to fire air traffic controllers, The New York Times reported. Musk called the claims, which Duffy insisted were true, a “lie.”

Even if no air traffic controllers were let go, hundreds of other crucial employees were fired. DOGE’s FAA firings included employees who work in air traffic control support, as well as people tasked with identifying hazardous obstacles in flight paths, and lawyers responsible for keeping drunk or reckless pilots from flying, according to Rolling Stone. Other terminated employees were working on a classified early warning radar system to detect incoming cruise missiles.

In Congressional testimony in early March, aviation leaders warned that the firings have put additional stress on the aviation system. “Haphazardly eliminating positions and encouraging resignations are having a demoralizing effect on the workforce,” testified David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, a union representing 132 of the terminated FAA workers. (In mid-March, a federal judge in Maryland issued a Temporary Restraining Order, ordering the reinstatement of those 132 FAA workers, along with tens of thousands of other terminated probationary federal employees, while litigation continues. That order still currently stands, although on April 8, the Supreme Court halted another order from a federal judge in California that had similarly reinstated fired federal employees.)

Duffy has put out a call to hire more air traffic controllers, a field that has been short staffed for decades. Currently, 10,800 controllers fill what should be 14,600 positions, with many working 6-day, 10-hour workweeks. Union reps say the field is struggling to attract more applicants because of the poor work environment, on top of its rigorous standards and long training process. The FAA’s ATC training academy closed operations during the 35-day shutdown under Trump’s first presidency, contributing to the FAA missing its hiring goals by over 500 trainees.

“I think recruitment right now is sort of a difficult thing,” Spero said in his testimony. “I don’t really know anybody out there that’s dying to become a federal employee right now, given all the attacks that are happening on them, and that’s what we’re hearing from our folks.” Following the February near-collision in Chicago, Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Connecticut) posted on social media: “Maybe not the best time to fire hundreds of FAA workers, tell the remaining workers you want to ‘put them in trauma’, and let Musk in to cannibalize the FAA for profit.”

“Firing people that do this sort of work is not conducive to preventing accidents,” one source told Rolling Stone. “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.”

U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D—New Jersey) was among the six members of Congress whose New York-bound plane was clipped on April 10. Posting about the incident on social media that afternoon, he wrote: “Just a reminder: Recent cuts to the FAA weaken our skies and public safety.”