“President Donald Trump Nominates Bryan Bedford as New Head of FAA”

U.S Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump, is nom­i­nat­ing Repub­lic Air­ways CEO, Bryan Bed­ford, to Head the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) in the face of grow­ing scruti­ny fol­low­ing a series of air crash­es, reports reuters.com.

The FAA posi­tion has been vacant since Jan­u­ary 20th, when Admin­is­tra­tor Mike Whitak­er stepped down a lit­tle more than one year into a five-year term after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took office. Bed­ford would replace the brief inter­im admin­is­tra­tor, Chris Roche­leau.

Bed­ford’s nom­i­na­tion has won praise from across the air­line indus­try.

Adam Gold­stein, co-Founder and CEO of Archer Avi­a­tion post­ed on Linkedin, “Love the pick for FAA Admin by Pres­i­dent Trump. Great to have a for­mer air­line CEO in the role. Look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Bryan Bed­ford to build on con­ver­sa­tions I had with Sec­re­tary Duffy a few weeks back.”

The Nation­al Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NBAA) remarked on its web­site, “Bryan Bed­ford’s depth of expe­ri­ence as a busi­ness leader, his first­hand knowl­edge of avi­a­tion as a pilot and air­line exec­u­tive as well as his rep­u­ta­tion for inno­va­tion, make him well qual­i­fied to serve as FAA admin­is­tra­tor.”

Reuters writes, “Bed­ford, a pilot and indus­try vet­er­an of more than 30 years, pre­vi­ous­ly head­ed two oth­er car­ri­ers and over­saw a sig­nif­i­cant expan­sion of Repub­lic Air­ways. Indi­ana-based Repub­lic is one of the biggest region­al air­lines in North Amer­i­ca, oper­at­ing a fleet of more than 200 Embraer air­craft with 900 dai­ly flights in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. The flights oper­ate under air­line part­ner brands Amer­i­can Eagle, Delta Con­nec­tion and Unit­ed Express.”

Pres­i­dent Trump stat­ed, “Bryan brings over three decades of expe­ri­ence in Avi­a­tion and Exec­u­tive Lead­er­ship to this crit­i­cal posi­tion.”

Mean­while, the FAA has been embroiled with a series of air acci­dents includ­ing the Jan­u­ary 29th trag­ic mid-air col­li­sion between an Amer­i­can Air­lines region­al jet and an army black heli­copter above the Potomac Riv­er, close to the Ronald Rea­gan Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Air­port, Vir­ginia. The crash was respon­si­ble for 67 deaths.

Oth­er recent acci­dents include fatal crash­es of small planes in Alas­ka and Philadel­phia; a region­al Delta jet that flipped upon land­ing in Toron­to; and a near miss at Chica­go Mid­way involv­ing a South­west Air­lines jet.

Reuters con­tin­ues, “If picked, Bed­ford will face key deci­sions includ­ing when to let Boe­ing expand pro­duc­tion of its 737 MAX beyond the cur­rent 38 plane-per-month cap and when to approve two new vari­ants of the best-sell­ing plane.

The new Repub­li­can U.S Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary, Sean Duffy, recent­ly stat­ed that Boe­ing “has lost its way and lost the trust of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” 

Last Fri­day (March 14th), the FAA said it was impos­ing per­ma­nent restric­tions on non-essen­tial heli­copter oper­a­tions at Rea­gan Nation­al after urgent rec­om­men­da­tions from the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board.

Mean­while, Duffy has stat­ed he’ll ask Con­gress for at least USD10 bil­lion to over­haul the nation’s aging and over-stretched air-traf­fic-con­trol sys­tem. The FAA is around 3,500 air traf­fic con­trollers short of tar­get­ed staffing lev­els and in some places con­trollers are work­ing six days a week, using manda­to­ry over­time.

News Source: https://www.reuters.com/

(Top image: Bryan Bed­ford — cred­it @secDuffy)

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