Just weeks after a tragic mid-flight crash at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January, the Trump administration has started firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy weekend for air travel.
David Spero, head of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement late Friday that probationary employees were the subject of late-night emails informing them of their termination.
According to an Associated Press interview, the affected employees include those employed for FAA radar, landing, and navigational assistance maintenance. The air traffic controller talked on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the media.
In a succinct statement on Monday, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association stated that it was doing an analysis of the impact of the reported terminations of federal employees on aviation safety, the national airspace system, and its members.
An urgent and classified early warning radar system the Air Force revealed in 2023 for Hawaii to detect incoming cruise missiles was being developed by other FAA personnel who were let go as part of a program partially sponsored by the Department of Defense. The FAA’s National Defense Program oversees a number of programs that use radars to detect objects farther away from the nation’s borders.
Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander, one of the employees in that branch who was fired, stated that because of the nature of their work, staff members in that office usually give a thorough knowledge transfer before retiring to ensure that no institutional knowledge is lost.
According to Spitzer-Stadtlander, the goal of the Hawaii radar and the FAA National Defense Program office developing it is to safeguard national security. They probably had no idea what NDP did; they simply assumed that he was employed by the FAA.
Spitzer-Stadtlander declared, “I’m terrified to death because this is about protecting national security.” The American public ought to be alarmed as well.
According to Spero, messages started to come in after 7 p.m. on Friday and kept coming in late at night. He said more could be banned from FAA buildings on Tuesday or alerted over the long weekend.
According to Spero, the emails came from an executive order Microsoft email address rather than a government email address, and the employees were fired without explanation or on the basis of their performance or behavior. [email protected] is the sender address on a copy of the termination email that was given to the AP.
The FAA is facing a controller shortage as a result of the firings. For years, federal authorities have voiced concerns about an overburdened and understaffed air traffic control system, particularly in the wake of many near-misses at American airports. They have listed obligatory retirements, lengthy shifts, intense training, and uncompetitive pay as some of the causes of staffing shortages.
One controller was managing both commercial airline and helicopter traffic at the crowded airport on January 29 when a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger flight crashed, killing the pilot. The cause of the tragedy is still being investigated.
President Donald Trump dismissed every member of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which was established by Congress in response to the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, only days prior to the crash. The committee’s job is to investigate airport and airline safety concerns.
Spitzer-Stadtlander said that his firing was not a result of a broad probationary-level sweep, but rather of his opinions on Tesla and X, formerly Twitter. Elon Musk, the owner of both businesses, is spearheading Trump’s drive to reduce the size of the federal government.
Being Jewish, Spitzer-Stadtlander was incensed by Elon Musk’s straight arm salute during Trump’s inauguration. In reaction, he asked pals to delete their Teslas and X, or Twitter, accounts on his personal Facebook page.
A DOGE Facebook account noticed that post and responded with a laughing emoji. Through his personal Facebook page, he soon noticed the same account responding to posts that were much older.
“After I criticized Tesla and Twitter, the official DOGE Facebook page began harassing me on my personal Facebook account,” Spitzer-Stadtlander wrote in a post on Linked In over the weekend. Even though my job was purportedly exempt because of national security, I was fired less than a week later.
He went on to say: DOGE abruptly shut down my computer and erased all of my files after firing me.
Spitzer-Stadtlander claimed that because the FAA office he worked at concentrated on national security risks like drone strikes on the country’s airspace, he was meant to be excluded from the probationary firings.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by the Department of Government Efficiency, which is chaired by Musk. CNN was the first to report on the firings.
— Associated Press/TARA COPP
From Washington, Associated Press reporter Ellen Knickmeyer provided a contribution.
