WASHINGTON—President Trump’s executive orders and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)’s activities could have good and bad consequences on the FAA, as pointed out during the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA)’s annual Symposium March 19-21.
“In some cases, things are actually getting done more quickly” due to less bureaucracy, “which is a positive,” ARSA EVP Christian Klein says.
“Our motto is the highest level of safety at the most efficient means possible, and we don’t think we’re at the most efficient means possible,” he says of the way regulatory matters are handled.
One long-time complaint is the amount of paperwork, including how guidance materials can balloon into more than 100 pages. “The truth is, the government is swollen by its own paperwork” ARSA Executive Director Sarah MacLeod says.
“If the goal is smaller, smarter government, I think we can all get on board with that,” says Caitlin Locke, executive director of FAA’s Aircraft Certification Services. “There are barriers that we run into ourselves that are self inflicted.”
It’s a matter of evaluating statues and rules and figuring out how they became inflated. She suggests it’s a matter of focusing on the essentials and “not things that have been ‘Christmas tree-ed’ over time, where you just keep adding additional requirements, checks and paperwork that are not actually helping make the system safer,” Locke says.
While some of DOGE’s actions are quickly upending departments, programs, policies and people, Klein says “I almost feel like there are folks at the FAA who have been liberated to speak more expansively about opportunities, without any reduction in safety, to make the FAA more efficient.”
However, he points out people have concerns about how DOGE is doing its work and the uncertainty that it is causing. People don’t know if their jobs or programs or departments will be cut. The anxiety causes distractions and makes it hard to focus.
Locke says the FAA usually has about an 11% attrition rate but thinks it to be a little higher this year. That means new people will be joining. Because the FAA did a “pretty significant reorganization” to harmonize decision-making and processes across the organization to make them as consistent as possible, Locke sees this as an opportunity to train people in the new way of doing things. They won’t inherit the bad habits “from when we had 12 different ACOs (Aircraft Certification Offices), because there is going to be one way of doing this,” she says.
The FAA reauthorization signed in May 2024, which funds the organization through financial year 2028, includes provisions to make aviation safety regulations more consistent and transparent, so some of the agency’s reorganization and policy shifts are due to this.
However, “it’s all sort of happening at the same time,” so the FAA is trying to ensure “we’re tempering the survival aspects of it and focusing on how this can be a positive thing for us as an organization that generally relies on black and white. We’re in a lot of gray right now.”
The Trump administration nominated Bryan Bedford, Republic Airways CEO, as FAA administrator. Chris Rocheleau has been serving as acting administrator since January. He held various senior leadership roles within FAA for more than 20 years before most recently serving as NBAA’s chief operating officer.
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