The Trump administration is staffing up parts of FAA, it’s also incentivizing thousands of departures and threatening layoffs

The Trump administration is launching new efforts to build up the government’s cadre of air traffic controllers as it responds to multiple crises in the nation’s aviation system, though it is continuing to shed staff in other parts of the Federal Aviation Administration. 

The cuts are raising concerns among lawmakers in both parties and employees in the agency, particularly as it is dealing with technology failures, understaffing and deadly accidents. The Transportation Department has expressed optimism that its air traffic controller hiring will alleviate its issues, but employees and stakeholders suggested ongoing reductions to support staff will continue to hamper agency capacity and passenger safety. 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced a plan to “supercharge” controller hiring, which follows an injection of funding Congress authorized last year for those efforts. The initiative will include new retention incentives, pay bumps for employees who graduate from the controller academy and an initiative to reduce the steps applicants must go through before beginning their careers. FAA plans to hire 2,000 ATCs this year and to slowly grow that number for each of the next several years in an effort to fill its current shortfall of 3,000 staff. 

Even as it undertakes that effort, FAA is encouraging employees elsewhere in the agency to leave. More than 2,700 FAA workers have signed up for Transportation’s “deferred resignation program,” which allows staff to go on paid leave through September when they must leave government, the agency recently told employees.

ATCs and systems technicians — who install, monitor and repair FAA's full suite of radar, communications, navigational and other equipment — were not eligible to take DRP. FAA may end up deeming some of the 2,700 who expressed interest in opting into the program as ineligible to participate, and officials told lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday the agency had not yet finalized the number of employees who will ultimately resign. 

Still, the exodus is expected to have a significant impact on the segment of FAA’s workforce not deemed essential to the national airspace system, or NAS. Support personnel still play a critical role in ensuring the agency functions and can properly oversee the NAS, with one employee noting some of those allowed to take the incentive work directly on safety and aircraft certification. Others impacted could include, the employee cited as an example, engineers who work on grant awards and oversee safety impacts of the funded programs. 

Dave Spero, president of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, which represents thousands of non-controller personnel at FAA, said through a spokesperson he was concerned about losing support personnel at the agency because of the critical role they will play in the modernization efforts Duffy and other Trump administration officials have repeatedly touted. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said at another hearing on Thursday that FAA was losing "really critical employees to the mission," such as technicians and mechanics, through its various incentivized separation programs. 

"You can have all air traffic controllers there, but if they don't have the support staff, we can't know that they're doing the job," Murray said. 

Those taking DRP are not expected to be the only reductions at FAA. Chris Rocheleau, the agency’s acting administrator, told employees at a recent town hall that “we will be leaner in a year, in two years,” according to a transcript of the meeting shared with Government Executive.

“That’s just the fact,” Rocheleau said. 

The acting administrator also suggested layoffs may be coming, and Duffy subsequently told employees such cuts were coming for Transportation by the end of May. Additional employees have left the agency through natural attrition—with a hiring freeze still in place for much of FAA—and early retirement incentives. 

One FAA employee estimated that between 20% and 30% of the non-exempt staff would be leaving the agency, depending on how many employees finalize their DRP agreements. That is on top of existing shortfalls in the agency. 

“The organization is already broadly staffed at a level where further cuts to the non-ATC personnel would only make things run less efficiently and potentially compromise safety,” the employee said. 

At Wednesday’s hearing with FAA officials, Democratic senators took issue with FAA’s efforts to trim its workforce. 

Despite the exemptions, “these reductions can still severely impact FAA operations,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said. He noted FAA fired hundreds of its probationary employees in February—including maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, environmental protection specialists, aviation safety assistants and management and program assistants—though they have been re-hired under a now-defunct court order. 

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that held the hearing, said the Trump administration was taking an ill-advised approach.

“I certainly wouldn't have cut back on staffing in general at the FAA,” Cantwell said. “I think it's a time when we need people to be doing their job.”

In a separate hearing on Wednesday, Duffy told congressional appropriators he was addressing the controller shortfall but was otherwise not concerned about staffing levels anywhere within the Transportation Department. 

“I'm confident that I'm at the staffing levels to accomplish the mission of the department,” Duffy said. 

He added that Transportation is going to “do more with less” but he was willing to unwind cuts as necessary. He noted the deferred resignation program was “not a scalpel,” but would allow the department to reduce its rolls and leave it with employees who are “hungry to do the work.”  

“People are willing to take an opportunity to retire, to resign, we should take them up on that,” Duffy said. “And if we have shortfalls…if I have to hire people back in, I’ll do that to make sure we can do the work.”

In a subsequent Senate hearing on Thursday, however, Duffy said he did not have a “support staff problem” at FAA and did not anticipate having to hire back anyone at the agency. 

In the FAA hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said the agency was creating an environment that would make Duffy’s potential backfilling more difficult to execute even if he were to pursue it.

“They don't think they have job security,” Klobuchar said. “It doesn't seem like a great place to go. And then we don't get people that work there.” 

Watchdogs, review panels, stakeholders and the agency itself have for years sounded the alarm about understaffing at FAA. It has faced criticism for overrelying on overtime, which in turn led to more absenteeism, lower productivity and increased fatigue. 

The issue has returned to the spotlight after a bevy of recent incidents: earlier this month, an outage at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey caused air traffic controllers to lose communications with flights for roughly 90 seconds. Staffing shortages at Newark have also forced delays for inbound flights. In January, an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a commercial airliner near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport collided in midair and killed all 67 people on both aircraft.

The Trump administration’s approach to staffing at the agency has brought at least some bipartisan pushback. 

“I think we need to be a little bit more precise in downsizing a department with a mission as critical as DOT’s,” Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., who chairs the House Appropriations Committee panel that held Wednesday’s hearing, told Duffy.