After Trump and Musk Purge FAA Employees and Administrator, a Plane Crashes in Washington D.C.
A military helicopter crashed into a commercial flight from Kansas near D.C., likely killing all 60 passengers.
Update: A small correction was made. The article originally stated that the plane crashed into the helicopter, rather than the other way around.
Late last night, a commercial flight carrying 60 people departing from Wichita, Kansas was impacted by a military helicopter over D.C.’s nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, likely killing all on board. The plane was carrying some notable passengers, including world-class figure skaters and their associates. This marks the first plane crash in the U.S. since 2009.
In predictable fashion, Trump and his allies are rushing to implicate DEI here, but as of this writing, there is no evidence that any parties involved benefitted from DEI programs in any meaningful way, nor has Trump provided any such evidence. What we do know is that Musk pushed out the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) administrator over a personal feud regarding SpaceX fines, and so there has been no acting administrator since the day of Trump’s inauguration. Additionally, various anecdotal accounts suggest that staffing is being directly impacted by Trump’s elective mass layoff of federal employees.
The FAA is a government agency tasked with certifying, regulating, and monitoring air traffic, airline personnel, and airline equipment.
Airline safety as an issue more broadly has come under much public scrutiny recently. Last year, Boeing was subject to much of this scrutiny when its planes seemed to spontaneously malfunction in significant and dangerous ways. It’s worth noting that Trump and others in the GOP have done much to help Boeing escape accountability and avoid safety regulation. Both parties in Washington have been complicit in placating airline industry lobbyists and weakening the FAA, including allowing airline manufacturers to have a lot of sway in appointing their own oversight personnel, a move which some might say is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.