Team from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to review air traffic control system

WASHINGTON – A team from billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company will help envision ways to overhaul the nation’s aging air traffic control systems, beginning with a visit to the Federal Aviation Administration’s command center Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said.

Duffy said Sunday in a post on X that the visit to the site in Warrenton, Virginia, by a team from SpaceX would be a chance “to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.”

SpaceX’s rocket launches are regulated by the FAA, and the agency has alleged that the company violated safety rules in the past.

The move was announced as union leaders said the FAA laid off roughly 400 probationary employees as part of sweeping job cuts the Trump administration has imposed across the federal government in recent days.

The cuts represent only a small fraction of the agency’s workforce of almost 47,000, and front-line workers such as air traffic controllers and radar technicians appear to have been spared. “The FAA continues to hire and onboard air traffic controllers and safety professionals, including mechanics and others who support them. The agency has retained employees who perform safety-critical functions,” the Department of Transportation said in a statement Monday.

But union officials and Democrats said the cuts could nonetheless imperil air safety as employees have to carry out their duties with less backup.

“Every one of these folks that they’re letting go performs a job that supports aviation safety in some way, shape or form,” said Dave Spero, the president of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, a union representing some 11,000 FAA workers.

The job losses and the new effort to overhaul the air traffic control system come just weeks after an Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet collided near Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people. It was the first major airline crash in the United States in more than 15 years.

Despite its critical mission, the FAA has struggled for years with both staffing and outmoded technology, according to outside reviews. Any efforts at an overhaul by Duffy and Musk’s SpaceX engineers are likely to run into the same challenges past modernization drives have faced: uncertain funding and a complex web of systems that have to be rebuilt while still safely managing tens of thousands of flights per day.

The Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, said in a report last year that more than a third of the FAA’s systems were “unsustainable,” meaning they were outdated or suffered from a lack of spare parts. Yet the report said the agency had been slow to modernize and lacked plans to tackle some systems entirely. The report pulled from an internal FAA review that was launched after the failure of an FAA computer system in 2023, bringing air traffic nationwide to a halt for about 90 minutes.

A major overhaul of the air traffic control system meant to shift from ground-based radar to a satellite navigation system is expected to continue at least 2030 and cost $35 billion, according to the GAO. The watchdog said the FAA had made only “mixed progress” in meeting project milestones since 2018.

Musk, a Trump ally who is leading an effort to slash the federal government under the auspices of the U.S. DOGE Service, also leads SpaceX, a rocket launch company that has been awarded billions in federal contracts. While the company must coordinate with the FAA on its launches, it was not clear Monday what expertise its engineers have in how the air traffic control system works.

Musk has previously clashed with the FAA over its regulation of SpaceX, calling on its previous leader to resign and threatening to sue the agency after it proposed fining the company. Duffy pledged during his Senate confirmation hearing that he would review those fines.

“The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter,” Musk said on his social media platform X. “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”

Duffy announced the SpaceX plan after the layoffs began to take effect Friday evening. The full scope of the job cuts was not clear. Union officials said that those let go included enforcement lawyers, researchers and analysts. Without their support, air traffic controllers and maintenance technicians might have to pick up some of the work other employees once did, the officials said.

Rep. Rick Larsen (Washington), the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, called on the Trump administration to reverse the cuts.

“Conducting this reckless purge in the wake of the tragic crash at DCA and in the middle of a busy holiday weekend is a terrible idea that puts the traveling public at risk,” Larsen said in a statement, referring to last month’s midair collision.