Wednesday’s fatal plane crash occurred while no one was leading the agency in charge of air safety.
No one was in charge of the Federal Aviation Administration last night when a commercial flight collided with a helicopter as it was about to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., killing everyone aboard.
Mike Whitaker, the previous FAA administrator, stepped down on Inauguration Day after just over a year on the job. He’d repeatedly clashed with Elon Musk — now in charge of a group tasked with slashing the government’s headcount by President Donald Trump — over safety issues at his space company, SpaceX.