Hundreds Of FAA Air Staff Fired Weeks After Fatal DC Plane Crash

Source: Tom Williams / Getty

The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees.

The upending of the staff happened on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Probationary workers were targeted in the late-night emails Friday notifying them they have been fired. This came from David Spero, who is the president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialist union.

The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to media and spoke and condition of anonymity. Spero said messages began arriving after 7 p.m. on Friday and continued late into the night. More might be notified over th long weekend or barred from entering FAA building on Tuesday, he stated.

The employees were fired “without cause nor based on Performace or conduct,” Spero said, and the emails were “from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address” – not a government email address. One FAA employee who was fired over the weekend suggested he was targeted for his view on Tesla and Twitter, not as a part of general probationary-level sweep. Both are owned by Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s effort to cut the federal government.

The Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The firing were first reported by CNN.