Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma
In his litany of complaints about the federal government, Elon Musk has reserved special ire for the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates SpaceX, one of his companies. With Donald Trump on the way back into the White House, FAA head Michael Whitaker announced on Thursday that he’ll step down in January, despite having years left on his term. His decision to quit represents a tremendous potential gift to Musk, who has maintained that the agency treats his companies unfairly, and who has tried in the past to limit its power.
Musk has complained the FAA is keeping “humanity… confined to Earth.”
Whitaker announced in a note to his staff that he’d step down on January 20, which will clear the path for Donald Trump to make his own pick for FAA head. Whitaker began work in October 2023 and FAA heads generally serve five-year terms. Much of his term has been dominated by responding to Boeing’s safety woes, including by stepping up monitoring and inspection of the company’s facilities after a door plug on a Boeing plane infamously blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
Musk, who is set to co-lead a purported Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, has not yet commented on Whitaker’s move. But he’s complained many times about the FAA, lashing out at the agency in September after it fined SpaceX and delayed a license for a launch on safety grounds.
Whitaker said at the time that SpaceX wasn’t following safety and permitting regulations, and sought to fine the company $633,000 in civil penalties. The agency had previously fined Starlink, the satellite internet company that is a SpaceX subsidiary, $175,000 for failing to submit safety data before launching satellites in 2022. In a House Transportation and Infrastructure hearing, Whitaker explained that the FAA’s civil penalties were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.”
Musk, meanwhile, complained on X that the FAA was “harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect safety while giving a free pass to Boeing,” before adding a call for “resignations from the FAA leadership.”
Musk also complained that the FAA was interfering with his grander visions: “The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” He also vowed to file a lawsuit against the agency for “regulatory overreach,” adding, “I am highly confident that discovery will show improper, politically-motivated behavior by the FAA.”
SpaceX did not ultimately sue the FAA. But instead, in his DOGE role, Musk could soon be empowered to shape its future. Whatever his designs on the FAA, Musk has at least signaled that he understands its role in making commercial air travel safer, tweeting in April of last year that “flying on an airliner in America is super safe” because of the agency’s creation.
