Billionaire Elon Musk reportedly helped forced out FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker before the Jan. 29 collision of an American Airlines flight and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people and another plane crash in Philadelphia on Jan. 31.
BREAKING: This is being described as a plane brash in the area of Bustleton and Cottman Avenues in Northeast Philadelphia. Doorbell camera provided by a viewer. pic.twitter.com/zgsk1P12K2
— Jason Martinez (@JasonFox29) January 31, 2025
The FAA is supposed to investigate the crash, but the FAA website lists both the Administrator’s and Deputy Administrator’s jobs as “Vacant.”
TIME notes that Musk demanded Whitaker resign io September 25, 2024 over Musk’s SpaceX being fined for violating safety rules:
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!”
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.”
(Sources: Twitter, FAA, TIME, Twitter, The Guardian)