Some of the 400 jobs that were cut at the FAA helped support air safety, a union says

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has said no one at the Federal Aviation Administration with a “critical safety” position has been fired as it cuts the federal workforce, but some FAA jobs that were eliminated had direct roles in supporting safety inspectors and airport operations, according to their union and former employees.

About 400 personnel were let go starting Friday. There is still not a complete picture of who was fired, but the union representing about 130 of them said the staffers included aviation safety assistants, maintenance mechanics and nautical information specialists.

They are the types of workers tasked with helping aircraft safety inspectors, repairing air traffic control facilities and updating digital maps that pilots use in flight, such as making any changes that the FAA may direct for airplanes flying in Washington airspace following last month’s fatal midair collision.

FAA Administrator Sean Duffy said over the weekend that no air traffic controllers or critical safety personnel were cut.

“We protected roles that are critical to safety,” Department of Transportation spokesperson Halee Dobbins said Wednesday. “On the layoffs, these were probationary employees — meaning they had only been at the FAA for less than two years, represented less than 1% of FAA’s more than 45,000 employees.”

Philip Mann, a former FAA certified technician, said whether someone’s position is defined as “critical to safety” can come down to whether that person is authorized to perform a certified inspection of the equipment being worked on.

While those who were fired were not those doing those inspections, they supported that work.

“It’s a stretch, but that is usually where they can draw a line to say, ‘If you can certify stuff, then you have a safety critical job. And if you don’t certify stuff, you don’t have a safety critical job,’” Mann said.

But the loss of those personnel “is going to have long-term safety implications — just work that simply can’t be done,” he said.

It comes as Americans’ confidence in air travel has fallen since a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet collided in January at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Wednesday.

The poll shows that 64% of U.S. adults say plane travel is “very safe” or “somewhat safe.” That’s down slightly from last year, when 71% said that. About 2 in 10 U.S. adults now say air transportation is very or somewhat unsafe, up from 12% in 2024.

Meanwhile, in the firings, 18 air traffic control facilities lost maintenance mechanics, employees who work on electronic issues and other building repairs at those facilities, said David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Specialists Association, a union representing about 130 of the roughly 400 FAA staffers who were fired.

Work on critical infrastructure like radars could be affected because the certified technicians responsible for those systems may now have to absorb the maintenance mechanics’ responsibilities.

“All of these people are part of the safety net,” Spero said. “The more of them that are not there, the more difficult it becomes to do the actual safety oversight.”

The cuts to nautical aviation specialists mean updating digital maps used by pilots will take longer. For airline safety inspections, aviation safety assistants “are like a paralegal to a lawyer,” Spero said. They do the paperwork so the inspector focuses on the airplane.

There were 26 assistants cut, and each one is typically supporting 10 safety inspectors at a time. Spero said the added paperwork will likely fall to inspectors, increasing the time it takes to get an aircraft checked.

“They’re not going to be able to do as much oversight of those industries as they were doing before,” Spero said.

The same added workload will affect certified technicians, Mann said.

“As short-staffed as air traffic controllers are, there are about three air traffic controllers for every technician,” Mann said.

The FAA is already short-staffed — federal officials have been raising concerns about an overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system for years, and even major airports that used to have round-the-clock coverage with technicians no longer do.

Spero said a temporary power outage on a radar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport last July caused a ground stop there and at five surrounding airports because air traffic controllers weren’t getting an accurate feed on planes' locations. There was no technician on duty with the skills to reset it.

The union did not know details of the other positions among the roughly 400 that were cut. Some of the staffers were part of FAA programs supporting other agencies, such as a classified early warning radar system in Hawaii meant to detect incoming cruise missiles that was being worked on with the Defence Department.

Trump, a Republican, has implemented sweeping changes in the first weeks of his second administration, from firing career agency employees to freezing trillions of dollars in federal grant funds, as he tries to make good on his campaign promise to root out fraud, waste and abuse in the federal government. Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is leading the effort to cut the federal government.

The rapid firings across the government have caught leaders at some agencies off guard. In some cases, the firings generated immediate backlash and staffers were directed to return to work, including at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for nuclear warheads.

“What I would hope is that the FAA would reinstate these people,” Spero said. “And then if they need to assess the size of the government, actually, the FAA can do it in a thoughtful and methodical way to make a determination as to what are the impacts to aviation safety.”

Article written by Tara Copp, The Associated Press