Musk Asks Air Traffic Controllers to Come Out of Retirement

Elon Musk on Thursday urged retired air traffic controllers to come back to work.

“There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so,” Musk wrote in a post on social media platform X.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has faced a longstanding shortage of air traffic controllers, but a string of recent aviation incidents has prompted increased scrutiny of the agency.

In January, 67 people were killed in a deadly mid-air collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and a commercial American Airlines plane at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

An FAA preliminary report found that staffing in the air traffic control tower at the airport during that time was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”

At the time of the collision, a single air traffic controller was overseeing helicopters and planes from the Reagan National Airport tower, a position that typically requires two workers.

But even the most experienced pilots in peak flying conditions could face challenges in the busy airspace around the Reagan airport, according to aviation experts.

“This was a disaster waiting to happen,” Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain and chief executive officer of Aero Consulting Experts, said. “Those of us who have been around a long time have been yelling into a vacuum that something like this would happen because our systems are stretched to extremes.”

A January 2025 update on the FAA website outlines the agency’s hiring goals.

“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to hire and train several thousand air traffic controllers over the next decade,” the website states. “FAA’s controller workforce reached 13,853 in fiscal 2023. The FAA hired 1,512 new controllers in fiscal 2023, and has hired more than 4,975 controllers over the last five years.”

The Trump administration has slashed many jobs across multiple federal departments, including the FAA, a part of a larger campaign to cut government waste, fraud, abuse, and size.

Weeks following the collision between the commercial plane and Army helicopter, probationary workers in the FAA were let go in the latest efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory panel led by Musk.

The Trump administration was criticized for targeting the FAA given the crash.

According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, fewer than 400 FAA employees were fired, and no air traffic controllers or critical safety personnel were let go.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.