Musk's 'Pointless Bloodbath' At FAA Is Clumsy, Reckless And Will Likely Get People Killed

If all the recent air disasters have you worried about flying, the actions that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Trump are taking at the Federal Aviation Administration probably won't make you feel any better. In fact, if you simply stop flying altogether, that would be completely understandable. Last week, Musk and Trump fired hundreds of FAA employees, many of whom worked in vital safety roles. The firings have also left the agency feeling blindsided, as there appears to be no rhyme or reason behind who was fired and who wasn't, sources recently told Rolling Stone.

Among those fired were "multiple lawyers whose job was to help prevent pilots with drug and alcohol problems from getting in the cockpit," but Musk didn't stop there. He also fired Air Traffic control support staff who, once again, were doing actual important work. One fired staffer that Rolling Stone spoke to had previously worked to ensure "flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings," while another "ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly." Musk also got rid of "several attorneys who work to ensure that licensed pilots in the United States aren't putting the broader public in danger or hiding criminal records, health concerns, or serious addictions," a move that reportedly shocked even some Trump loyalists who looked forward to him crashing the DMV's economy.

As important as it is to keep planes from crashing into cranes or new buildings and ensure pilots are sober, the fired lawyers do vital work and can't easily be replaced:

This work in the Aviation Litigation Division involves investigating flight schools that improperly or negligently train pilots; potentially suspending the licenses of private or commercial-airline pilots who get DUIs and other relevant criminal charges that would suggest it is unwise to allow them to fly planes full of passengers; dealing with commercial pilots if they're caught engaging in reckless or unsafe behavior, or lying about a drinking problem or an illicit drug dependency; and addressing reports that drone operators are breaking FAA rules and regulations.

Across the country, the FAA employs just dozens of these types of lawyers who handle this kind of enforcement. Last week, Trump and Musk abruptly got rid of several of them, which some estimated to be upwards of 10 percent of an already overworked legal team. This was handled so chaotically by the Trump administration and Musk's DOGE that some of these fired lawyers' bosses were caught off guard entirely by the news.

The terminated FAA staffer, who worked to medically certify pilots, similarly says their own firing came as a surprise given "all the aviation crashes and things going on" — though they note that since Trump took office, "it's just been one sh*tstorm after the other."

If you ask the Department of Transportation, though, none of those fired employees actually did anything important, with a spokesperson telling Rolling Stone, "The FAA continues to hire and onboard air traffic controllers and safety professionals, including mechanics and others who support them. The agency has retained employees who perform safety-critical functions." At an event on Thursday, former "Real World" contestant and current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the fired employees were probationary and "not the highest-skilled of the FAA," adding that he had "exempted people who work in critical safety positions."

The people on the ground, however, disagree, with one current FAA employee saying, "It's a bunch of bullsh*t. The definition of 'critical' can be f*cked around with as much as they'd like. We were already an underfunded and understaffed agency." 

Additionally, while probationary employees are often new hires, as Rolling Stone points out, they can also be experienced employees who were simply promoted recently.

"It's such a pointless bloodbath," another source told Rolling Stone. "Every time we try to figure out why this or that was done, the answers you get from the Trump and Musk guys usually amount to: Because we can. We've never seen anything like this."

Trump has only been in power for a month and we've already seen the deadliest commercial air disaster in decades after a U.S. Army Blackhawk collided with an American Airlines jet. Since then, a medical jet has crashed in Pennsylvania, we had another fatal plane crash near Nome, Alaska, a plane landed upside down in Toronto and a mid-air collision over Arizona. It also isn't like we haven't seen issues with pilots in recent years, either. In fact, just last year a pilot was sentenced for showing up to fly drunk with a blood alcohol content more than double the legal limit. Oh, and don't forget the guy who tried to turn off the engines and the fact that he was apparently on mushrooms when it happened.

Any normal person would think you'd want to hire more people at the FAA to prevent these kinds of things from happening in the future, but nope. Not Musk, Trump, and Duffy. Maybe eventually we'll realize we were too worried about air safety before, and dying in a plane crash is fun, actually. Instead, the plan appears to be to let Elon Musk do whatever he wants and bring in a bunch of SpaceX loyalists to make everything worse. Actually figuring out who does why and why it's important, however, doesn't appear to be part of Musk's plan. 

"There's a lot of worry people are going to get fired, because the DOGE people don't know what we do before they fire people," one current FAA employee told Rolling Stone. "How are you going to make efficiency changes when you don't even know the basics?" The staffer then added, "Who knows who they'll be willing to get rid of next."