Maverick tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has also become an influential figure in the Donald Trump administration (as the DOGE boss), has now fixed his gaze on the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As the “spearhead” of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), Musk seeks to transform air travel, a sector “riddled with a baggage of regulation and oversight.”
Musk, who, apart from owning Tesla and SpaceX, possesses a private pilot’s certificate, has locked horns with the American aviation watchdog.
“In a moment charged with peculiarity, Musk shared his bewilderment on social media over the non-linear flight path of a commercial jet. The post ignited conversations about the intricate calculus that governs flight paths, highlighting Musk’s missteps in understanding a system he aims to revamp,” a report from Science Magazine summed up the whole thing in these following words.
Elon Musk vs FAA
Conversations on X (formerly Twitter and also owned by the Tesla and SpaceX chief) show Elon Musk and his allies are overlooking variables like weather conditions, air traffic nuances, and federally dictated air highways—factors that dictate the journeys of commercial aircraft, aspects that prioritise safety and efficiency above speed.
SpaceX engineers have already entered the scene to “help” the FAA modernise its air traffic control under the Trump administration. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in an X post that the deadly January 29 crash between a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight landing at Reagan Airport in Washington served as “a heartbreaking wake-up call that improvements must be made.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation reportedly told Reuters that SpaceX engineers tapped as part of Musk’s DOGE team at the FAA are serving as special government employees and will be kept separate from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which handles regulations for the company, to avoid any conflicts of interest.
In an email to the employees, Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau said that the DOGE team would be visiting more FAA facilities, including FAA headquarters, after stops at the Air Traffic Control Command Centre and Potomac TRACON in Warrenton, Virginia.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (whom Trump defeated in the 2016 Presidential Election) was among critics to claim Musk’s team was inappropriately gaining special access to the FAA. Duffy told Fox News that the SpaceX engineers had gone to the FAA on February 24 to “just observe and would craft a phased approach on how we might be able to fix the American system.”
He added, “It’s not just SpaceX. We’re going to ask everyone else to come in that’s smart and bright and loves America to think through the process. We’re like using a rotary phone. We’re spending 90% of our money to keep the rotary phone working from back in the 1980s as opposed to thinking, well, we use cell phones today. We have such antiquated, old equipment that no one has fixed. Donald Trump has said, fix this system, make it work, keep people safe.”
As part of his outreach effort, Duffy will visit Air Traffic Control Command Centres across the United States to talk with FAA employees about “the critical need to upgrade the existing air traffic systems.”
The DC crash, which killed all 67 people aboard both craft, happened nine days after President Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president. It was the deadliest American aviation disaster since 9/11.
In another X post, Duffy rejected what he described as the “growing media narrative that there are more aeroplane crashes now in Trump’s presidency than under Biden.”
He asserted that there were 57 aviation incidents in the United States during President Joe Biden’s first month in office, “compared to 35 under Trump,” while stating, “the need for immediate improvement to our safety infrastructure is long overdue.”
Criticisms galore
Elon Musk did qualify for a private pilot certificate in 2002. However, as mentioned in the article’s beginning, the tech billionaire and his allies have been overlooking the crucial variables that control the safety and efficiency of commercial aviation.
One very good example to validate this was the supply chain company CEO Ryan Petersen sharing a screenshot of the projected flight path of a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Houston on X, which hewed close to the southern US border with Mexico.
“Why is this plane not flying in a straight line?” Petersen wondered. Musk replied, “It should be.”
“While both men appeared to suggest there was something irregular or suspicious about the flight plan, this was not the case. Planes may take certain less direct routes due to weather, air traffic, or any number of factors. Indeed, Musk’s own private jet has flown on curved trajectories, as captured in screenshots of flight records shared on X by Jack Sweeney, a software engineer who has worked for American Airlines and the aviation consultant UberJets, and famously aroused Musk’s ire by tracking the movements of his private jet with ElonJet, a network of social accounts. Sweeney posted the flight path that Trump’s plane took from Southern Florida to Texas in November ahead of a SpaceX launch, which for a while hugged the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico instead of tracing a straight line over the body of water,” reported Rolling Stone magazine.
“There are countless reasons why a flight might not follow a straight path — weather, [Extended-range Twin-engine Operations Performance Standards] regulations, or optimising fuel efficiency by following favourable winds,” Sweeney stated on X.
Sweeney told the magazine that Petersen and Musk appeared to be “jumping to conclusions” to “push a point that our system is outdated, which, there’s definitely things that can be updated.”
However, he added, “It’s a complex system currently in place, and there are reasons things were designed the way they were, including with established routes in the sky that function as aerial highways. It takes time for things to get updated properly.”
The software engineer also felt that Musk’s DOGE has not taken into account these technicalities, while it seeks to slash away at vital federal agencies, including the FAA.
“That predicted line that is on that picture is usually [navigational] points picked by the dispatchers or the pilot,” Sweeney mentioned, while referring to Petersen’s screenshot.
He found further flight data that showed the flight route was initially straight but adjusted to avoid turbulence. Scott Manley, a science educator, physicist, and licensed private pilot, offered another potential reason for the curved route between the two cities, which he said adds about 50 miles, or 12 minutes to the trip.
“The US military has a huge chunk of airspace it randomly closes to let their pilots train or to test new weapons,” he wrote in a post on X, sharing a map screenshot with a circle drawn around an area west of Bakersfield, California.
According to reports, Musk’s DOGE project directed the firing of hundreds of FAA employees. The White House has claimed that none of the workers who were fired were performing safety-critical functions. Musk backed it with his X post, which stated, “To the best of our knowledge, no one affecting safety has been fired.”
However, when Rolling Stone spoke with several current and former FAA workers, the latter mentioned that the vital jobs the fired employees were doing included air traffic control support, obstacle impact that studies and identifies hazardous obstacles (like new buildings and cranes) to inform flight paths around the country, keeping drunk or reckless pilots out of the skies, and airman certification that decides whether pilots are medically fit enough to fly their aircraft. Are SpaceX employees, who are going to replace these professionals in the FAA, are aware of the complexities associated with these roles?
FAA in complete mess
On January 20 (the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration), Michael Whitaker stepped down as FAA administrator after clashing with Elon Musk. The SpaceX CEO publicly called on Whitaker to resign after the FAA fined the company for failing to get approval for launch changes.
Whitaker was only a year into the top job and had several years left in his term. While Trump appointed Chris Rocheleau, a top executive for an aviation business association, as acting FAA administrator, there is no clarity yet on when the aviation watchdog will get its new full-time boss.
Elon Musk has been a bitter critic of Whitaker. The SpaceX boss has complained many times about the FAA, including a September 2024 outrage after the agency levied a $633,000 fine for launching missions with unapproved changes. The FAA also fined Starlink after the SpaceX subsidiary failed to submit safety data before launching satellites in 2022.
However, the biggest issue here is the FAA suffering from underfunding and outdated technology. In 2023, an expert panel’s report found that the watchdog’s increasing reliance on overtime to staff air traffic control facilities was putting air safety at risk. The agency has fielded hundreds of complaints from air traffic workers describing dangerous conditions from staff shortages to dilapidated buildings.
Now Musk wants retired air traffic controllers to consider returning to work amid staffing shortages, but to ensure that, a federal law needs to be reformed. The law requires air traffic controllers to retire by “the last day of the month” in which they turn 56.
The Transportation Secretary can exempt controllers “having exceptional skills and experience” from automatic separation, but only until that person is 61. The retired air traffic controllers, before they rejoin, also must pass annual medical examinations with strict physical requirements, like having 20/20 vision, sufficient hearing, and proper blood pressure levels.
While Duffy has announced a plan to “supercharge” controller hiring (by simplifying the existing hiring process and increasing starting salaries), the newly-appointed Transportation Secretary also plans to “make an offer” to air traffic controllers to let them stay longer, past the mandatory retirement age of 56.
However, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents the country’s air traffic controllers, told Flying Magazine that Duffy’s suggestion was not the answer to filling thousands of shortages.
“The solution to the ATC staffing crisis is a long-term commitment to hiring and training and the retention of the experience of all the highly skilled, highly trained air traffic controllers,” the union said, noting that in 2026, just dozens of air traffic controllers across 35 facilities will reach 56.
While the FAA has tried to boost recruitment efforts amid ongoing staffing and retention issues, the process of recruiting air traffic controllers is a long and strenuous one. Including training, it takes three years, while the attrition level constantly remains on the higher side.
Conflict of interest to haunt Musk?
According to reports, Starlink may secure a multibillion-dollar contract to overhaul the US air traffic control communication system, potentially displacing the long-standing contractor Verizon. The FAA is preparing to cancel its $2.4 billion deal with Verizon and shift the work to the SpaceX subsidiary, according to The Washington Post. The news got further corroborated by both Bloomberg and The Associated Press.
And if things pan out as claimed by the media outlets, there will be serious accusations of favouritism, cronyism, and conflicts of interest against Elon Musk. Why so? The SpaceX boss has raised concerns over the Verizon system, claiming without evidence that it is “not working and putting air travellers at serious risk.” In one of his X posts, the tech billionaire argued that the Verizon communication system was “breaking down very rapidly,” adding that the “FAA assessment is single digit months to catastrophic failure, putting air traveller safety at serious risk.”
“The FAA had been scheduled to begin disbursing funds for the Verizon contract next month (March 2025), but SpaceX’s team reportedly recommended that Starlink be awarded the deal instead,” reported The Washington Post.
However, the process of shifting the contract from one contractor to another needs a proper procedure, and while senior FAA officials are said to have refused to approve the proposal, Elon Musk’s team is now looking to seek assistance from a Trump-appointed official within the agency.
As per Bloomberg, Musk has reportedly approved a shipment of 4,000 Starlink terminals to the FAA, and one such terminal has already been installed at the FAA’s ATC technology lab in New Jersey. There will be a new programme “TDM X,” with the goal being to have the upgrades fully functional in 12–18 months.
Speaking to Bloomberg, an FAA spokesperson confirmed that testing has been completed for one Starlink terminal in Atlantic City (New Jersey) and two other terminals at non-safety-critical sites in Alaska.
“The FAA has been considering the use of Starlink to fix telecommunication connections to provide more reliable weather information at remote sites, including in Alaska,” the spokesperson added.
Hitting back at the DOGE chief, Verizon said that “the FAA systems currently in place are run by L3Harris and not Verizon.”
Musk later corrected himself and said that L3Harris is responsible for the “rapidly declining” system.
“Our company is working on building the next-generation system for the FAA which will support the agency’s mission for safe and secure air travel. We are at the beginning of a multi-year contract to replace antiquated, legacy systems. Our teams have been working with the FAA’s technology teams, and our solution stands ready to be deployed. We continue to partner with the FAA on achieving its modernisation objectives,” Verizon stated.
Elon Musk and DOGE will be under some scrutiny in the coming days. While they need to find a quick fix to the problem of recruiting a massive number of air traffic controllers in a short period, apart from making sure that FAA gets its house in order, any increased participation from SpaceX and Starlink in this process will be seen as a potential “Conflict of Interest.”
It’s a tightrope situation and DOGE has already entered into it proactively through its decision of downsizing the FAA workforce. There is no backing out from here.