Biden Set To Nominate Mike Whitaker As FAA Administrator

The eVTOL rumour mill has been cor­rect in recent times suc­cess­ful­ly pre­dict­ing, for exam­ple, that Act­ing FAA Admin­stra­tor, Bil­ly Nolen, would move to Archer Avi­a­tion. Tick!

While rumours sur­round­ing the FAA and who will replace Nolen as the Agency’s next Admin­is­tra­tor have been cir­cu­lat­ing since May, the Wall Street Jour­nal (WSJ) came out this week and pret­ty much stat­ed it would be Super­nal Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, Mike Whitak­er, con­firm­ing the hearsay. Even a news announce­ment day has been men­tioned, today or ear­ly next week. As a rid­er and to save the media out­let’s blush­es, the WSJ has also said, “Talks have not been finalised yet.”

Bil­ly Nolen — Rumours of Mov­ing to Archer Avi­a­tion Were Cor­rect. Is Whitak­er his Replace­ment?

If true, this is excel­lent news for the eVTOL and drone indus­try. Whitak­er is the man they want, hav­ing been sec­ond-in-com­mand under FAA Admin­is­tra­tor Michael Huer­ta from 2013–2016 dur­ing the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion. Before, he was an attor­ney for TWA and then Unit­ed Air­lines. Whitak­er then worked as Group CEO at Indi­an trav­el con­glom­er­ate Inter­Globe. Not for­get­ting he is also a pilot, report­ed­ly obtain­ing his pri­vate pilot cer­tifi­cate while work­ing for the FAA. Mean­while, Whitak­er has been with Hyundai eVTOL com­pa­ny Super­nal since 2020.

evtolinsights.com inter­viewed Mike Whitak­er at last year’s Farn­bor­ough Air­show and cer­tain­ly his gen­er­al aero­nau­ti­cal expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of the new and impend­ing green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion is sec­ond to none.

His present job at Super­nal is to ensure the air­craft fit into the reg­u­la­to­ry regimes of the coun­tries where they’ll oper­ate. His name first came up in May after Biden’s pick of Phil Wash­ing­ton, the CEO of Den­ver Inter­na­tion­al Air­port as the FAA nom­i­nee, with­drew in the face of stiff oppo­si­tion from Sen­ate Repub­li­cans. The rea­son? No need to tit­tle-tat­tle.

Deputy Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Pol­ly Trot­ten­berg is now fill­ing the role of FAA admin­is­tra­tor until a new nom­i­nee is con­firmed.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.faa.gov

(Top image: Mike Whitak­er — Pho­to: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Get­ty Images)