Elon Musk‘s SpaceX team will visit the Federal Aviation Administration‘s Air Traffic Control System Command Center on Monday as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy looks to reinvent a “better, modern and safer” system following a series of high-profile aviation disasters.
In a post on X, Duffy wrote that he is looking for the “brightest minds in America” to help him create a “world-class air traffic control system” and that members of the SpaceX team will visit the command center to learn about the current tools air traffic controllers use.
“I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country,” Duffy wrote.
The visit comes after last month’s deadly collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight that killed all 67 people on board the two aircraft.
SpaceX’s relationship with the FAA is precarious and filled with possible conflicts of interest. The federal agency has investigated the aerospace company multiple times for alleged safety violations.
Musk, who owns SpaceX and is classified as a special government employee as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, said he would sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach” in September 2024 after facing upwards of $630,000 in fines for violating launch requirements in two 2023 missions. The billionaire also has around $22 billion in government contracts, including with the Defense Department and NASA.
“The safety of air travel is a non-partisan matter,” Musk wrote in a response to Duffy’s post. “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”
Duffy is already pushing back against anyone who claims Musk is getting special treatment. He took a shot at the media and Hillary Clinton, whom Duffy sparred with on X regarding DOGE’s involvement in upgrading the FAA’s aviation system.
“Because I know the media (and Hillary Clinton) will claim Elon’s team is getting special access, let me make clear that the [FAA] regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies,” Duffy said.
“My door at [Transportation Department] is open to any and all patriotic developers or companies who want to help our country in this incredible, game-changing mission,” the secretary continued. “I hope to hear from any company committed to ushering in America’s golden age of travel!”
Duffy said he would also travel to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma later this week to meet with air traffic controller instructors and students to learn about their education and “how we can ensure that only the very best guide our aircrafts.”
Since the American Airlines crash in Washington on Jan. 29, there have been several other aviation disasters.
Just a few days after the Reagan National Airport collision, a medical jet crashed in northeast Philadelphia, leaving seven people dead and dozens injured. In early February, 10 people died in Alaska after a small commuter aircraft went down in the Bering Sea. Two people were killed in a plane crash near Covington Municipal Airport in Georgia on Saturday evening.
After the Washington collision, President Donald Trump claimed without proof that diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices were to blame for the deadly crash.
“We have to have our smartest people,” Trump said in the days following the disaster. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. … They have to be talented, naturally talented. Geniuses. Can’t have regular people doing their job. We can’t have regular people doing this job. They won’t be able to do it, but we’ll restore faith in American air travel.”
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Duffy and Vice President JD Vance have defended Trump’s remarks, with the transportation secretary blaming former President Joe Biden’s administration for being focused “on changing the name from cockpit to flight deck or notice to airmen, they wanted to change it to notice to air mission.”
“They focused on EVs and sustainability and racist roads − things that don’t matter in regard to safety,” Duffy said at the beginning of February, adding later that “we haven’t had enough air traffic controllers in America for a very long time.”