Tag Archives for FAA.
Nearly 11,000 flights were delayed or canceled Friday as thunderstorms hammered the Northeast and air traffic control staffing problems made recovery harder. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed controllers calling out sick, but FAA advisories throughout the day suggest weather was the primary driver, with staffing constraints becoming a compounding problem rather than the whole story.
The FAA is creating a permanent prohibited airspace area over Trump Tower, requiring Secret Service permission to fly within roughly one nautical mile and up to 1,000 feet. That may be defensible while Trump is president, but making the restriction open-ended creates a lasting federal privilege for private commercial property even after he leaves office.
The U.S. keeps pouring billions into FAA-run air traffic control while staffing, technology, and accountability lag. Canada’s nonprofit NAV CANADA model shows a better path: separate regulator from operator, fund the system through users, and modernize without waiting on Congress.
Starting July 20, Boeing will again issue final airworthiness certificates for newly built 737 MAX and 787 aircraft—authority the FAA reserved after fatal crashes and production failures. The agency says eight months of alternating inspections produced comparable quality findings, while federal audits and production oversight will continue.
FAA is proposing to override state meal and rest-break rules for flight attendants, arguing that federal aviation safety rules already govern crew duty and rest and that state requirements can conflict with the need for crew to remain available in emergencies. The rulemaking would strengthen airlines’ preemption argument, but unions, states, and courts will still have a say before any final rule actually blocks these laws.
The FAA says Spirit’s valuable LaGuardia slots should go to a low-cost airline or be retired entirely, not simply sold to whoever values them most. That is the same central-planning impulse airline regulators keep falling into: trying to engineer competition from Washington instead of using prices to allocate scarce airport capacity and letting airlines prove which business models actually work.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford says Trump’s first air traffic control modernization push was “hijacked” into a privatization debate by airlines — but Trump himself explicitly proposed moving ATC into a self-financing nonprofit. Bedford’s Airlines Confidential interview reveals a broader problem: the FAA wants more central control over airline schedules while still running, regulating, and excusing the system whose failures it is supposed to fix.
A single overheated circuit board was enough to ground flights across five Washington-area airports, forcing controllers to evacuate Potomac TRACON and exposing just how fragile the FAA’s aging infrastructure has become. The deeper problem, though, is not one smoking board — it is an air traffic control system where routine maintenance on old equipment was reportedly allowed to slide, making breakdowns like this far more likely.
United and American Airlines have scheduled so many flights into Chicago O’Hare that the FAA is now stepping in, forcing both carriers to slash flights this summer to prevent massive delays and chaos at one of America’s busiest airports.
The FAA just issued a new mandate requiring airlines to certify that pilot hiring is based solely on merit—not diversity initiatives—despite zero evidence of compromised safety. Is this regulation necessary, and even legal or just political signaling?
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
