Trump admin emails air traffic controllers: quit your jobs
Trump admin emails air traffic controllers: quit your jobs
Federal employees were told they could use their paid time off to explore “dream destinations” before quitting.
Summary
The Trump administration emailed air traffic controllers urging them to quit and accept buyouts 24 hours after a fatal Reagan plane crash.
At 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the email urged federal employees to pursue private-sector jobs, offering pay incentives and vacation benefits while on government payroll.
This program contradicts established rules by allowing second employment, sparking union concerns about losing experienced personnel amid an air traffic controller shortage.
Trump blamed previous administrations for safety issues and misrepresented FAA standards, intensifying culture wars as officials remain uncertain about the buyout program's future.
Replacing them will take months at a minimum. The FAA website says it takes 1-3yrs on the job to be certified after months of training. Who will direct air traffic if a large number take the deal? Especially with current shortage. How will this improve air safety? How is this "good" in any way, shape or form?
It’s not good, he’s intentionally breaking things for some reason. A lot of things. A distressing number of things.
“…for some reason…”
The reason is the same as all fascist takeovers. The coup works slowly, then suddenly. We are in the acceleration phase, it’s ramping up, just as they said it would in the Project 2025 documents.
I REPEAT: THIS WAS ALL ANNOUNCED BEFOREHAND. Plus, history explains.
The script is to combine a shock and awe campaign of massive change on so many fronts that no one could possibly resist them all, and to demoralize and deflate opposition.
Once this phase is complete, the power thieves will have sufficiently infiltrated the monopoly on violence (military and policing management) and the bureaucratic and technocratic key elements will be gutted or loyalized, so that a full coup can occur. Full control of media, a massive apparatus of repression and surveillance, and a hot mess of mistrust throughout society.
Interpersonal and community relations will be broken and replaced by dependency on authority for guidance and morality and information. Rights will be crushed and perverted. Power and money will only flow to the top, and poverty will become the norm.
US international influence will contract and enemies will be constructed. Blame Canada.
Just a warning though, when you folks are finally conscripted to invade northwards, we have a lot of methods and welcoming gifts to make it regrettable, and people here are getting prepared. I’d dodge the draft, when it comes, if I were you.
This was the Nazi playbook in the 1930s .... cause widespread chaos and disruption throughout the country. Everything breaks down and becomes lawless and disorganized, so government is forced to step in and impose a heavy handed authoritarian control of everything to save the nation.
They set the fire, blame someone (anyone), then put out the fire themselves and push the message that they saved everyone from the fire. Blast the message over and over again and drown out any dissent or opposition and gain complete control of everything.
Then every professional, logical thinking individual, academic, politician, highly trained person in the land turns a blind eye and writes a book about it all 50 years from now with criticisms as to how everyone could be so deluded as to fall for the trap a second time.
Because Trump drinks his own kool aid. He really, actually thinks these controllers are useless because of DEI, and he trusts fox over his own presidential information feed.
This is a peculiar thing to me. Many autocratic regimes are seem more self aware.
They later came out and said they aren't eligible for this deal. It was a mass email to every gov employee.
So re-send of the last one?
How long until people stop booking flights because they've lost confidence in the FAA's ability to manage its air traffic? There are already plenty who wouldn't fly on a Boeing
This one doesn't look like it's on the FAA or the controller.
The controller was aware of the possible conflict, informed the helicopter pilot - twice. And twice, the helicopter pilot informed the ATC that they had the conflicting traffic in sight, and requested permission to maintain their own, visual separation from that conflicting traffic.
What seems to have happened is that the helicopter pilots saw a second jet in the distance, landing on another runway. They probably thought that second jet was the conflicting traffic, and they never actually saw the first.
Additionally, the helicopter pilots were supposed to be in an established track on the east side of the river, no higher than 200 feet. Aircraft on final approach descend from east to west as they cross the river; there is more vertical clearance on the east side, but the helicopter was closer to the west side of the river. Further, the helicopter was flying at 300 feet, rather than 200.
I don't want to disparage the helicopter pilot(s), but from what I see right now, this seems to be primarily on them. They requested permission to (and responsibility for) maintaining separation - twice. This collision is primarily their responsibility.
I just flew from Kansas to Florida. My first flight yesterday was delayed until this morning. They got me on a new flight. I flew to Minnesota. And then connected to a flight to Florida. Both of those flights were also delayed.
It's already happening. I'm worried about the delays when I try to get home on Wednesday.
Maybe with the lack of air traffic controllers some helicopter will crash into his plane with fElon in it. Two birds with one stone.
Two birds with one
stonecesna.
Every one of these plane crashzs is trunps fault
Gosh, what a fantastic "leader" this donvict is.
Pretty brave for someone who flies so much.
There were a couple of mass emails sent. One before the crash and another after the crash. From another source:
The email, sent from President Trump’s Office of Personnel Management to employees across the sprawling federal government, arrived just before 8:30 p.m. Thursday — almost exactly 24 hours after an air crash in Washington that killed 67 people. The message reiterated an offer earlier this week from the administration encouraging federal employees to seek new jobs in the private sector — and did so in terms that appeared to denigrate their contributions, if not cast them as lazy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/federal-workers-opm.html