The Trump administration continued its streak of federal layoffs over the weekend, firing hundreds of employees with the Federal Aviation Administration, which has been struggling with a staffing crisis.
The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) union, which represents the employees, said in a statement that probationary workers were informed of the news beginning Friday evening, through messages “sent from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address, not an official .gov email address.” A spokesperson for the union told NBC News that nearly 300 people — including maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, environmental protection specialists, aviation safety assistants, and management and program assistants — received termination notices over the weekend.
PASS denounced the firings in its statement, citing three recent plane crashes, including the deadly midair collision between a commercial airplane and a Black Hawk helicopter near Washington, D.C., last month in which there were no survivors. The union called the layoffs “especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”
“This draconian action will increase the workload and place new responsibilities on a workforce that is already stretched thin,” it said.
The FAA has long faced a staffing crisis, which aviation safety experts warned has contributed to near-miss incidents between aircrafts. The deadly plane crash near Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, in January has renewed concerns about reduced staffing as well.
In a statement posted to X on Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy downplayed the mass layoffs.
“[T]he FAA alone has a staggering 45,000 employees,” he wrote. “Less than 400 were let go, and they were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago. Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.”
The FAA layoffs come as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental organization, has instituted a mass reduction of the workforce across federal agencies. Many of those agencies regulate his own companies or have been investigating them, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest. Similarly, the FAA regulates rocket launches by Musk’s aeronautics company SpaceX, and the agency last year proposed civil penalties against SpaceX for allegedly failing to follow license requirements during two launches in 2023. Musk in turn threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach.”
Notably, Duffy said Sunday that he intends to overhaul the air traffic control system with help from a team with Musk’s SpaceX. The team, he said, will visit the FAA’s command center in Virginia and “envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.”
