Even before emergency workers finish recovering the bodies of the 67 people who died in Wednesday’s collision of an American Airlines flight and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, all eyes are turning to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Accident Investigation & Prevention. The office is responsible for looking into the cause of the crash—which occurred over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C. as the plane was preparing to land—and what can be done to improve safety in the future.
There’s one problem though. While that office may be ready to go to work, the FAA itself is not fully on the job. That’s because it’s without an administrator. Michael Whitaker, who had led the administration since Oct., 2023, stepped down earlier this month, announcing in a Dec. 12 email to his staff that he would be leaving the post effective Jan. 20, the day President Donald Trump took office. The leadership page of the FAA website lists both the Administrator’s and Deputy Administrator’s jobs as “Vacant.”
“Serving as the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration—with this incredible team—has been the honor of my lifetime,” Whitaker wrote. “This has been the best and most challenging job of my career.”
The FAA employees will have to take Whitaker’s word that it’s indeed been the best job he’s ever held. But it’s a matter of public record that it’s been an exceedingly challenging one, since a dust-up last September with SpaceX boss and presidential pal Elon Musk led to Musk taking to X and calling for Whitaker to quit his post. “He needs to resign,” Musk posted flatly on Sept. 25, 2024, over a picture of Whitaker.
The post came just over a week after Musk blamed the FAA for nothing short of stifling the dreams of the human race as a whole. “The fundamental problem,” he posted on Sept. 17, “is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!”
That’s a big accusation for what stems from a relatively small kerfuffle.
The Musk-Whitaker feud goes back to two SpaceX launches in the summer of 2023—before Whitaker had even taken over at the FAA. In a Sept. 17, 2024, post on its website, the FAA said that in June 2023 SpaceX used a new launch control room for an uncrewed satellite mission that had not been approved by the FAA. It also failed to conduct a required and routine safety poll of flight controllers before the launch, according to the FAA. The FAA proposed fines of $175,000 for each of those violations. The next month, the administration charged, SpaceX used rocket fuel from a “rocket propellant farm” that had not been FAA-approved. That violation resulted in a $283,009 penalty. The company was given 30 days to appeal the fines, which totalled $633,009.
“Safety drives everything we do at the FAA, including a legal responsibility for the safety oversight of companies with commercial space transportation licenses,” said FAA Chief Counsel Marc Nichols in a statement at the time. “Failure of a company to comply with the safety requirements will result in consequences.”
Musk hit back with his pair of X posts, and with another one on Sept. 17, 2024, warning that, “SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach.”
Two days later, SpaceX sent and publicly posted a letter to Congress objecting to the fines, adding, “For nearly two years, SpaceX has voiced its concerns with the FAA’s inability to keep pace with the commercial spaceflight industry. It is clear that the Agency lacks the resources to timely review licensing materials, but also focuses its limited resources on areas unrelated to public safety. These distractions continue to directly threaten national priorities and undercut American industry’s ability to innovate.”
Whitaker got his chance to respond five days later, on Sept. 24, when he testified before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation, saying: “They’ve [SpaceX] been around 20 years, and I think they need to operate at the highest level of safety and that includes adopting [a safety management] program, that includes having a whistleblower program. They launched without a permit. [Fines are] the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.”
At the same hearing, Whitaker addressed the FAA’s plans to delay the fifth launch of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket at least until November 2024, blaming the decision on SpaceX’s failing to conduct a proper sonic boom impact study, and its allegedly using unclean water to cool the launch pad in its “deluge” system. In a blog post, SpaceX wrote: “Environmental regulations and mitigations serve a noble purpose, stemming from common-sense safeguards to enable progress while preventing undue impact to the environment. However, with the licensing process being drawn out for Flight 5, we find ourselves delayed for unreasonable and exasperating reasons.”
SpaceX added and posted a more pointed letter to friendly House committee member Kevin Kiley, (R-Calif.), who had questioned Whitaker about the treatment SpaceX was getting at the hands of the FAA, compared to Boeing, whose defective Starliner spacecraft has left two NASA astronauts effectively stranded aboard the International Space Station since their June 2024 launch on a mission that was supposed to last just eight days. Kiley said that the FAA’s reaction to Starship’s problems “put in sharp relief an issue that many have raised regarding, perhaps, the undue scrutiny that [the] agency is giving to SpaceX.”
SpaceX agreed, saying, in its letter to Kiley: “SpaceX writes to thank you for taking the opportunity to seek answers from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Mike Whitaker on FAA’s licensing challenges relating to commercial space launch…SpaceX rejects any allegations from FAA that SpaceX violated any laws.”
The fifth Starship launch ultimately was cleared to fly on Oct. 13, 2024, ahead of the FAA’s November projection.
Whitaker has made no public statements about whether the broadsides from Musk, who has stayed close to Trump—despite recent reports that Musk is being denied a West Wing office he had been eyeballing—had any influence on his decision to step down. And Musk and his newly established Department of Government Efficiency performed no public touchdown dances after Whitaker quit. Either way, the absence of an FAA administrator as numerous families are grieving their loved ones is not a good look for the new administration.
