Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on November 6, 2025, that the Federal Aviation Administration would implement a 10% reduction in U.S. air traffic across 40 airports in the coming days due to severe air traffic controller shortages caused by the ongoing government shutdown. The …
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The Trump administration fired hundreds of FAA air traffic control staff while bringing in three SpaceX engineers as Special Government Employees, raising significant regulatory capture concerns. These engineers were allowed to review air traffic control systems despite potential conflicts of …
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The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure released its final 238-page report on the Boeing 737 MAX disasters, concluding that the crashes “were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of …
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The Federal Aviation Administration finally grounded the Boeing 737 MAX on March 13, 2019, three days after the Ethiopian Airlines crash and only after 51 other countries had already banned the aircraft. China acted first on March 11, followed by Indonesia, Singapore, India, the European Union, …
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Boeing obtained FAA approval to exclude the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) from pilot manuals, flight crew operations manuals, and all pilot training materials for the 737 MAX. This deliberate concealment meant that pilots flying the aircraft had no knowledge that a powerful …
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Boeing accelerated 737 MAX development to a “frenetic” pace during 2015, attempting to deliver the aircraft in approximately four years instead of the decade typically required for new aircraft development. The rushed timeline came as Boeing fell nine months behind Airbus’s …
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In August 2013, Ali Bahrami, who led the FAA office overseeing Boeing aircraft certification, departed to join the Aerospace Industries Association. This move epitomizes regulatory capture, as Bahrami had been instrumental in pushing for increased industry self-regulation. Former FAA engineers …
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