The New York Times has just published a story with details of President Trump’s latest cabinet meeting, were Elon Musk was (of course) also in attendance. While there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, there’s one that has a particular impact on aviation.
Elon Musk’s DOGE tried to fire air traffic controllers
During Trump’s latest cabinet meeting, there was reportedly a heated exchange between Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Elon Musk (whatever title you’d like to give him).
As we all know, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is trying to reduce waste (or something), and that involves layoffs across the government. According to the Transportation Secretary, employees at DOGE had demanded that some air traffic controllers be laid off.
Here’s the exchange that reportedly took place between Musk and Duffy:
Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?
Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a “lie.” Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: Give me their names. Tell me their names.
Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.
As you can see, Musk claimed this wasn’t true, but Duffy insisted it was, so you can decide who you believe (if anyone). Just a couple of weeks ago, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) fired around 400 employees as part of the DOGE crackdown. It was claimed that no air traffic controllers or critical safety personnel were let go.
Trump wants MIT “geniuses” as air traffic controllers
In the same discussion, Trump reportedly told Duffy that he wanted to hire “geniuses” from MIT as air traffic controllers:
The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.
I feel like that kind of misses the point of what’s wrong with our air traffic control system. We have two major issues — the technology we’re using for air traffic control are woefully outdated, and on top of that, there are major staffing shortages, leading to low morale and fatigue.
The current administration has placed a lot of the blame on the concept of DEI, though the simple reality is that it has been hard to even recruit enough people interested in becoming air traffic controllers. If you think we’re currently dealing with shortages of air traffic controllers, let’s see how this works out if the goal is just to recruit “geniuses” from MIT.
Bottom line
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Elon Musk reportedly had a heated exchange during a recent cabinet meeting. Duffy claimed that DOGE was trying to lay off air traffic controllers, while Musk claimed that wasn’t true. Meanwhile Trump claimed that the problem with air traffic control is that we need “geniuses” from MIT as controllers, rather than addressing the other systematic issues.
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