The Trump administration fired hundreds of federal aviation employees and overturned staff over a busy air travel weekend after weeks of January’s fatal air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. I’ve started.
David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Professionals Union, said in a statement that the probationary workers targeted them on Friday notifying them that they had been fired.
The affected workers include maintenance of personnel hired for the FAA radar, landings and navigation aid, an air traffic controller told The Associated Press. Air traffic controllers were not permitted to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Spero said messages began to arrive after 7pm on Friday, and lasted until late into the night. He said there may be more notifications over the long weekend or they may be banned from entering the FAA building on Tuesday.
The employee was “dismissed based on performance or behavior for no reason,” Spero said, and the email was “from an “exec Microsoft email address” rather than a government email address.
The firing collided with the FAA when faced with a lack of controllers. Federal officials have raised concerns over the years about overtensive and understaffed air traffic control systems, particularly after a series of close calls between planes at US airports. Some of the reasons they cited due to a lack of staff include uncompetitive pay, long shifts, intensive training and mandatory retirement.
On January 29th, in a fatal crash between the US Army Black Hawk helicopter and the American Airlines passenger jet still under investigation, one controller was handling both commercial airline and helicopter traffic at a busy airport. I did.
A few days before the clash, President Donald Trump had already fired all members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, a panel mandated by Parliament after the 1988 Panam 103 bombing of the Panam 103 bombing in Scotland. The committee is being charged with investigating safety issues at airlines and airports.
One FAA employee fired over the weekend suggested that he was not part of a common trial level sweep, but targeted his views on his previous Twitter, Tesla and X . Both are owned by Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s efforts to cut the federal government.
Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander posted on LinkedIn that he was fired shortly after midnight on Saturday, days after he began receiving messages on Facebook.
“The official Doge Facebook page started harassing me on my personal Facebook account after criticising Tesla and Twitter,” writes Spitzer-Stadtlander.
He added: “When Doge fired me, they turned my computer off and wiped all my files without warning.”
Spitzer-Stadtlander said he should be exempt from probation shootings as the FAA office worked focusing on national security threats, such as Drone’s attacks on national airspace.
The efficiency of the Musk-led government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The firing was first reported by CNN.
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Associated Press writer Ellen Nick Meyer contributed from Washington.
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