Trump Begins Firing Staffers at the FAA

The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails on Friday notifying them they'd been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement. The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing, and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told the AP on condition of anonymity.

Spero said messages began arriving after 7pm on Friday and continued late into the night. More might be notified over the long weekend or barred from entering FAA buildings on Tuesday, he said. The employees were fired "without cause nor based on performance or conduct," Spero said, and the emails were "from an 'exec order' Microsoft email address"—not a government email address. The firings hit the FAA when it faces a shortfall in controllers. Federal officials have been raising concerns about an overtaxed and understaffed air-traffic-control system for years, especially after a series of close calls between planes at US airports. Among the reasons they've cited for staffing shortages are uncompetitive pay, long shifts, intensive training, and mandatory retirements.

In the Jan. 29 fatal crash between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines passenger jet, one controller was handling both commercial airline and helicopter traffic at the busy airport. Just days before the collision, President Trump had fired all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, a panel mandated by Congress after the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing. The committee is charged with examining safety issues at airlines and airports.

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One FAA employee who was fired over the weekend suggested he was targeted for his views on Tesla and X. Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander posted on LinkedIn that he was fired just after midnight Saturday, days after he started getting harassing messages on Facebook. "The official DOGE Facebook page started harassing me on my personal Facebook account after I criticized Tesla and Twitter," Spitzer-Stadtlander wrote. "Less than a week later, I was fired, despite my position allegedly being exempted due to national security." (More Federal Aviation Administration stories.)