"Any future-history of US airline disasters in 2026 or beyond will probably start its narrative in this past holiday weekend of 2025. That is when the Musk tech-bro team known as DOGE, instructed by Russel Vought and empowered by Trump, began its mass layoffs of air-safety officials whose employment status showed 'probationary.'”

~ James Fallows

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/1

https://fallows.substack.com/p/from-defund-the-police-to-defund

"For 16 years, U.S. aviation had a perfect record—zero major commercial plane crashes. Air travel was the safest it had ever been.

Then Trump returned, gutted the FAA, and in just 29 days, we’ve had seven crashes, 15 aviation disasters, and 85 dead."

~ God

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/2

https://www.thegodpodcast.com/p/donald-is-making-airplanes-crash

"Yesterday, a Delta flight from Minnesota to Toronto ended up upside-down on the runway, training a spotlight on the raft of crashes and collisions that have eroded Americans’ trust in air travel and, to a broader degree, their faith in an administration more focused on cutting costs than ensuring the basic functioning of society."

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/4

@wdlindsy they don’t care

"For posterity, here’s a brief timeline of what happened leading up to this spate of crashes. On January 20, Trump and Elon Musk pushed out the FAA administrator without immediately naming a replacement. Also on January 20, Trump implemented a federal hiring freeze, which included air traffic controllers. On January 21, Trump disbanded the Aviation Security Advisory Committee and fired the TSA Director."

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/5

On January 22, the White House posted that 'PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP ENDS DEI MADNESS AND RESTORES EXCELLENCE AND SAFETY WITHIN THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION.' On January 28, Sean Duffy was confirmed as Transportation Secretary. And things went decidedly south from there.

On January 29, the first commercial plane crash in 16 years took place in DC.

On January 31, a Learjet crashed in Philadelphia."

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/6

"On February 6, a Bering Air flight wrecked in Nome, Alaska

On February 10, a plane crashed in Scottsdale, Arizona.

On February 12, a military fighter jet crashed into the San Diego Bay.

On February 16, a plane crashed in Covington, Georgia.

And on February 17, a Delta flight from Minnesota crash landed in Toronto."

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/7

"In another of those coincidences that are starting to feel really damn common, the Trump-Musk administration yesterday slashed more than 300 jobs at the Federal Aviation Agency, the same day as a Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis crash-landed on the runway in Toronto."

~ Doktor Zoom

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/8

https://www.wonkette.com/p/why-do-planes-fall-down-from-the

Yesterday, my spouse and I flew home from a gathering in Connecticut to commemorate my brother, who died in December. We flew from White Plains, New York, to Atlanta, and then to Little Rock. Though the weather was clear nationwide (with some wind on the east coast) our flight out of White Plains was delayed, as were numerous others we heard about as we sat in the airport waiting room.

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/9

A flight from White Plains to Charleston scheduled for 12:30 today was rescheduled for 10:30 tomorrow.

We finally got into Atlanta with some 15 minutes to make our connection, then found the flight to Little Rock was delayed. Six out of eight of every gate signs we passed as we walked some 30 gates to our departure gate had delayed notices.

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/10

We took off very late from Atlanta, with periodic announcements as we sat on the plane that its water system was not working and this was the reason for the delay.

We appreciated the good cabin service from the gay man overseeing the flight crew and the two African-American flight attendants working with him.

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/11

It struck me, of course, that the whole highly competent flight crew were the very kind of people being targeted by President Musk to satisfy the hatreds of the white Christian base that placed him and Mr. Trump in power.

Flying in the US is rapidly becoming perceptibly much more dangerous, more unpleasant, more haphazard.

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/12

You cannot disrupt well-functioning, complex, established systems and fire people willy-nilly to satisfy the ravening hatreds of a religious base which claims the right to control everyone else in a big, multicultural, pluralistic nation — you cannot do all this wiithout causing serious problems that will affect multiple people deleteriously.

#Musk #Trump #FAA #AirTrafficControl #AirSafety #destruction #techbros
/13