The head of the Federal Aviation Administration, who has led a tougher enforcement policy against Boeing since a panel blew off a jetliner in January, said Thursday that he will step down next month, clearing the way for President-elect Donald Trump to name his choice to lead the agency.
Mike Whitaker announced his pending resignation in a message to employees of the FAA, which regulates airlines and aircraft manufacturers and manages the nation’s airspace. He became the agency's administrator in October 2023.
Since then, the challenges confronting Whitaker have included a surge in close calls between planes, a need for stricter oversight of Boeing. antiquated equipment and a shortage of air traffic controllers at a time of high consumer demand for air travel.
“The United States is the safest and most complex airspace in the world, and that is because of your commitment to the safety of the flying public,” Whitaker said in the message to employees. “This has been the best and most challenging job of my career, and I wanted you to hear directly from me that my tenure will come to a close on January 20, 2025.”
Whitaker took the helm of the FAA after the Senate, which is frequently divided along partisan lines, voted 98-0 last year to confirm his selection by President Joe Biden. The agency had been without a Senate-confirmed chief for nearly 19 months, and a previous Biden nominee withdrew in the face of Republican opposition.
FAA administrators — who hold a job that has long been seen as nonpartisan — generally serve for five years, but that has not happened recently. Whitaker's predecessor, Stephen Dickson, also stepped down early before fulfilling his term.
Whitaker worked as a lawyer for TWA and spent 15 years at United Airlines, where he oversaw international and regulatory affairs. He served as deputy FAA administrator during the Obama administration, and later as an executive for an air taxi company.
Less than three months into his tenure leading the FAA, a Boeing 737 Max lost a door-plug panel during an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon, renewing safety concerns about the plane and the company. Whitaker grounded similar models and required Boeing to submit a plan for improving manufacturing quality and safety.
Whitaker said the FAA's oversight of Boeing had been “too hands-off — too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections."
In August, the FAA said it had doubled its enforcement cases against Boeing since the January door-plug blowout.
Senators from both parties praised Whitaker on Thursday before a hearing on the FAA's air traffic control system, which has been plagued by a shortage of controllers and old equipment. A computer system that offers safety information to pilots failed in January 2023, causing more than 1,300 flight cancellations and thousands of delays in a single day.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who led the opposition to Biden’s first pick to lead FAA, said the unanimous confirmation vote for Whitaker was a “testament to his experience, his judgement and his apolitical nature. He has ably led the agency during a challenging period.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who heads the Senate aviation subcommittee, said Whitaker’s oversight of Boeing has been essential. “Our aviation system is safer because of his service,” she said.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which will consider Trump’s nominee to replace Whitaker, said the successor “needs to be ready on day one to continue the job of restoring the FAA’s safety culture and providing real oversight of the aviation sector.”
After Trump was elected president in 2016, he considered his personal pilot for the top FAA job before settling on Dickson, a former Delta Air Lines executive.
Trump's choice this time could be affected by input from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has clashed with the FAA for slowing the Starship mega rocket developed by the billionaire's SpaceX company. Musk, a huge campaign donor whom Trump named to lead an attempt to cut the size of government, has accused the FAA of being overly bureaucratic.
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Business Writer Michelle Chapman in New York contributed to this report.