Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called out the Trump administration for firing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees as even more planes crash during Trump’s second term in office.

A Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis crashed upside down in Toronto yesterday and caught on fire. There were 80 people on the flight and they all survived, but 18 passengers were injured. This comes shortly after a military flight in San Diego crashed into the bay late last week. The two pilots on board managed to eject before the plane crashed.

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Pete Buttigieg slams Trump administration for focusing on “gender terminology” as planes crash
The FAA is re-gendering terms while the Trump administration claims it’s focused on air safety.

Attention has been focused on plane crashes since a military helicopter collided with American Eagle Flight 5342 near Reagan National Airport on January 29. Over 67 people on the helicopter and the plane died that day.

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At least three more planes have crashed since then, including a small plane veering off the runway in Arizona and crashing into another plane, killing at least one person; a commuter flight in Alaska that crashed and killed 10 people; and a plane that sliced through another while taxiing at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

In the middle of the spat of plane crashes came news that the Trump administration had started the process of firing several hundred FAA employees. The FAA is the agency in charge of air safety.

The employees received emails late on Friday telling them that they had been fired, according to Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union President David Spero. The workers were involved in FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, according to the AP. Spero said that the employees were fired for no reason related to performance or conduct.

Buttigieg’s replacement, former reality TV star and Fox personality Sean Duffy, said that no air traffic controllers or “critical safety personnel” were fired, but Buttigieg wants more information about who was fired.

“The flying public needs answers,” Buttigieg posted to Bluesky. “How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?”

The flying public needs answers. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?

— Pete Buttigieg (@petebuttigieg.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 3:12 PM

“Mass firings of FAA workers – at a time when they already have serious staffing problems – would be dangerous at any time,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA). “Musk and Trump doing this weeks after the deadliest crash in years is stupid beyond belief.”

Professor of Public Policy Don Moynihan pointed out that the firings come at a time when the FAA is experiencing staffing shortages.

“Even after a bunch of accidents that highlighted FAA staffing shortages they still went ahead and fired FAA staff,” he said. “They don’t know what they are doing.”

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said yesterday that it was still analyzing the effect of the terminations on air safety. Some of the fired FAA workers said that they were working on an early warning radar system for Hawaii to detect incoming missiles in a program funded by the Defense Department.

“This is about protecting national security, and I’m scared to death,” said one of the terminated employees about the Hawaii program. “And the American public should be scared too.”

The firings come as the FAA faces an inability to hire air traffic controllers, putting more stress on the current air traffic controllers due to long shifts.

Elon Musk pushed the head of the FAA, Michael Whitaker, to step down in the first week of Trump’s second term. Whitaker had clashed with Musk, suggesting last year that Musk’s company SpaceX would be fined over $600,000 for multiple safety violations.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been blaming the plane crashes on diversity initiatives. When Trump was asked why he believed that the American Eagle flight crashed because of “DEI,” he said, “I have common sense, and unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

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