Enjoy Your Self-Landing Planes, America
Elon Musk is axing FAA workers and SpaceXing aviation safety systems
The Trump administration is laying off several hundred employees of the Federal Aviation Administration, the federal agency that runs civilian air navigation.
The layoff efforts are being led by Elon Musk, perhaps best known until now for killing people with self-piloting vehicles on land. The layoffs reportedly began Friday night.
Until joining the government last month, Musk had focused on cars that allegedly didn’t need anyone steering them. But as head of the Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he’s now poised to achieve far greater efficiency in transportation-related deaths.
The Trump administration scored America’s first passenger-jet crash in more than 20 years back on Jan. 29. In that crash, a military helicopter overseen by former Fox weekend co-host Pete Hegseth, the new defense secretary, flew into a passenger plane as the two vehicles were guided by the FAA under the leadership of former “Road Rules: All Stars” and “Real World: Boston” star Sean Duffy, President Donald Trump’s new Transportation secretary. Sixty-seven people died.
Other crashes since then have left seven people dead in Philadelphia, ten in Alaska, and one fatality killed by a Mötley Crüe plane.
Earlier today, Musk’s own mötley crëw showed up at a key FAA nerve center in Virginia. Their goal, Politico reports, is to make “rapid safety upgrades.” Because who doesn’t want safety upgrades done rapidly?
Musk’s most famous deaths are those involving his cars — 647 as of press time. And the Trump administration’s aviation fatalities so far have followed the morbidity patterns of Musk’s cars: Vehicles crashing into things at high speeds.
Now, however, Musk has brought in a new team with a different expertise. The crew “upgrading” FAA safety hails from SpaceX, the Musk company that’s had at least seven rockets and other pieces of shit blow up, mostly by themselves, auto-exploding without even hitting anything else first.
Duffy announced that the SpaceX team will “learn what [remaining] air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system” despite the team’s total ignorance about everything else involved.
How good is SpaceX at designing new, better, modern, and safer systems? The company has a worse-than-average safety record, Reuters reported last year. And it wasn’t getting better or safer as of 2023, records showed.
At its facility in Texas, which Musk prefers due to the relative lack of regulations, SpaceX had 4.8 injuries per 100 workers in 2022. Which means one out of 20 workers got hurt in some way other than their feelings.
The space-industry average is 0.8 injuries per every 100 workers, meaning that, at most companies, no more than 0.8 out of every 100 workers got an injury that year.
The following year, SpaceX’s injury rate rocketed up to 5.9 injuries per 100 workers. It’s not clear whether the SpaceX team now “upgrading” the FAA hail from the company’s legions of wounded or from the ranks of the leadership responsible.
The Reuters investigation uncovered injuries including head wounds, crushed limbs, amputations of said crushed limbs, and one extremely severe case of not breathing anymore.
Professional Aviation Safety Specialists Pres. David Spero said in a statement that termination notices came with no cause and were sent via non-governmental email addresses, which TFN notes may have violated laws regulating official communications.
Spero’s union is part of the AFL-CIO, and Spero said workers may not be allowed entry tomorrow. In that event, they would not be available to train their hypothetical replacements.
Spero also warned that:
This draconian action will increase the workload and place new responsibilities on a workforce that is already stretched thin. … Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.
Trump has blamed the Jan. 29 crash on an excessive number of non-white people working at the FAA, and the fact that some FAA employees lack even a single penis. Musk’s DOGE teams, by contrast, include members who have members and have records of opposing non-white people.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in response to the racist/sexist scapegoating, “[A]ll air traffic controllers — regardless of race or gender — are well-trained and highly skilled dedicated professionals who keep the national airspace system safe and maintain its efficiency on behalf of all Americans.”
Some of the fired FAA staffers worked on national-security systems. They were laid off despite working on an early-warning radar system in Hawaii with the FAA’s National Defense Program (NDP). Funded by the Defense Department, the warning system is intended to spot cruise missiles.
One laid-off NDP employee told the Associated Press, “I don’t think they even knew what NDP does, they just thought, oh no big deal, he just works for the FAA.”
The worker open-to-work person told the AP, “This is about protecting national security, and I’m scared to death.” He added, “the American public should be scared too.”
Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes at MSNBC and was a Countdown with Keith Olbermann writer and senior producer. He helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and also worked at The Young Turks and The Daily Show with John Stewart.
In Walter Isaacson’s bio of Musk he talks a lot about how Musk demands cutting everything down the barest minimum, using the rule that if 10% MORE THAN IS SAFE is not cut, then not enough was cut. You use destruction and failure as part of “design process” and then add back just enough to make it “work.” And Trump has filed for bankruptcy how many times?? The problem - this isn’t a casino or a high rise or a rocket - it’s our country and our values and people are dying. Neither man is capable of empathy and so they don’t feel our pain. They can’t. This is similar to Theranos, where start-up rules were used in the medical field. The playing field isn’t the same - unless you’re a sociopath or delusional. They are willing to let you DIE, even though having a good life is supposed to be the goal. Because that is the “design process”.
As a 43 year ATC, let me just say, YOU FUCKING CHUDS HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU"RE TALKING ABOUT!!!!!!! Keep on Keepin' on douche nuggets.......when one of the aircraft you or a family member is on ends up in the Potomac, MAYBE you will understand 'consequences'.......