WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he had appointed a former senior aviation official as the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration administrator.
The announcement comes after an American Airlines regional passenger jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River near Reagan Washington National Airport.
Chris Rocheleau, a U.S. Air Force veteran who worked at the FAA for more than 20 years, was previously chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association. Sources said Liam McKenna, who was the counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee, has been named chief counsel at the FAA.
Sources told Reuters that Rocheleau has been at the FAA since last week.
Mike Whitaker, who was unanimously confirmed as the FAA administrator in October 2023, stepped down on Jan. 20 when Trump took office. Trump has not named a nominee to replace Whitaker and the FAA for 10 days has declined to say who was running the agency on an acting basis.
Trump still not named a permanent candidate to head the FAA.
Trump suggested that efforts to boost diversity at the FAA could have been a cause in the crash and harshly criticized Pete Buttigieg, who headed the Transportation Department under President Joe Biden, saying “he’s a disaster… He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity.”
Former aides to Buttigieg say the diversity policy cited by Trump had been a long-standing policy and was in effect during Trump’s first term. Buttigieg could not immediately be reached for comment.
“I am not blaming the controller,” Trump said, saying he did not know if diversity was to blame but vowed to investigate. “So we don’t know, but we do know that you had two planes at the same level. You had a helicopter and a plane. That shouldn’t have happened.”
The FAA is about 3,000 controllers behind staffing targets and the agency said in 2023 it had 10,700 certified controllers, about the same as a year earlier.
In recent years, the FAA has been forced to routinely assign controllers six-day work weeks and slow air traffic in the New York area. The FAA in June extended cuts to minimum flight requirements at congested New York City-area airports through October 2025, saying the number of controllers handling traffic in New York was insufficient for normal traffic levels.
(Reporting by Steve Holland, David Shepardson and Daphne Psaledakis, Editing by Franklin and Nick Zieminski)
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