On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confronted the question of whether Elon Musk tried to fire air traffic controllers.
The New York Times reported back in March that there was a clash in which Duffy vented about staffers from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort trying to lay off air traffic controllers at a time when the Transportation Department was dealing with multiple plane crashes. Musk reportedly denied the claim.
“Did Elon Musk ask you to cut air traffic controllers directly?” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Duffy during a “Meet The Press” interview.
“So, listen, we were having a conversation about, ‘Who do we preserve?’ And, again, I wanted in those probationary employees to preserve air traffic controllers,” Duffy said. “We went back and forth, and Elon agreed, the president agreed. Of course you want to keep air traffic controllers. We’re trying to hire more of them.”
He added: “But I think the key is, ‘Can your government be more efficient?’ We’ve had a massive expansion of government. You can actually be more efficient and still accomplish the mission of safety, which is what I think we can do. And actually, we are doing that.”
Welker pressed Duffy again.
“Did Elon Musk, though, initially ask you to cut air traffic controllers?” she asked.
“No,” Duffy said.
“And did you dispute that?” Welker asked.
“No,” Duffy replied.
“Did you have a disagreement with him about that?” Welker followed up.
“So, Elon and I get along really well. He never called me and said, ‘Cut air traffic control.’ He would never do that. This was a broader conversation about what positions are going to be preserved, right? So if we’re going to let probationary employees go, again, they’ve – they’re new employees. They just were hired on. Some might have been there for a month, some of them 10 months,” Duffy said.
“It was the new employees that we were going to let go,” he continued. “Many of them have come back. But this is not the institutional knowledge of the FAA that’s being let go. Elon Musk understands the importance of the airspace and the need to have good controllers. Actually, [Musk’s] SpaceX launches through the airspace and the FAA. We want good controllers that know the airspace to navigate all the issues that come up.”
