Transportation Secretary Gets Pressed Over Repeated Airport Failures And Musk’s FAA Cuts | EUROtoday

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a newly applied federal company beneath the Trump administration, “never” requested him to fireside Federal Aviation Administration air visitors controllers.

While showing on Sunday’s episode of “Meet the Press,” Duffy claimed that he and the tech billionaire “get along great” after host Kristen Welker questioned whether or not he and Musk clashed as a consequence of DOGE’s sweeping federal workforce cuts.

The cuts, which included the potential for layoffs of air visitors controllers, sparked widespread issues in regards to the FAA’s skill to keep up secure and environment friendly air visitors management operations, significantly amid latest plane fatalities.

Welker grilled Duffy over whether or not Musk cuts through DOGE have “made this situation worse” and “increased the challenges and potential safety concerns.”

“We actually have staffed up. We’ve hired more air traffic controllers during this time,” Duffy mentioned whereas claiming that no air visitors controllers had been fired in the course of the cuts. “There were probationary workers that were let go — those were employees who were there less than a year — and again, we excluded the safety positions…most of them have come back.”

He continued, “The FAA has 46,000 employees, and if you lost 350, is this affecting our safety mission? There’s a lot of things the FAA does, but for us safety is key, so no, we’ve retained all those safety positions.”

Welker additional pressed Duffy, questioning him if Musk requested him to “cut air traffic controllers directly.”

Duffy denied ever being demanded by Musk.

“We went back and forth, and Elon agreed and the president agreed: ‘Of course we want to keep air traffic controllers.’ We’re trying to hire more of them…” he mentioned.

Not letting up, Welker then requested instantly if Musk “initially” requested him to chop air visitors controllers and whether or not the 2 had a “dispute” over it.

“Elon and I get along really well. He never called me and said ‘cut air traffic controllers.’ He would never do that,” Duffy defined. “This was a broader conversation about what positions are gonna be preserved. … It was the new employees that we were going to let go, many of them have come back.”

Duffy then mentioned that the SpaceX founder “understands the importance of the air space and the need to have good controllers.”

He added: “Actually SpaceX launches through the airspace and the FAA. We want good controllers that know the airspace to navigate all the issues that come up.”

Elsewhere within the interview, Welker requested Duffy about why incidents with the FAA “keep happening” following a number of gear outages on the Newark Airport.

“Listen, the system is old, right?” he replied. “This is a system that’s 25 [years] at best, sometimes 50 years old. The congress and the country haven’t paid attention to it, they expect it to work. So now I think the lights are blinking, the sirens are turning, and they’re saying, ‘Listen, we have to fix this.’”

Duffy famous that “what you see in Newark is gonna happen in other places across the country,” earlier than explaining that “telecom issues” and “some glitches in our software” have been affecting the system.

“So I’ll just tell you specifically in Newark, we believe we’ll have it up and running in short order,” he added.

Watch Duffy’s look on “Meet the Press” right here.