A document leaked to the Wall Street Journal shows that a troubling number of employees have left the FAA, right ahead of the busy U.S. summer travel season. The workers who have left include technical experts, mission support staff, and experienced managers and leaders. Roughly 1,200 FAA employees have now left, representing 2.6% of the agency’s 46,000 workers.
This mass walkout comes amidst continuing problems that the FAA has experienced throughout 2025, including a January midair collision between American Eagle Flight 5342 and an Army helicopter, recent Air Traffic Control issues in and around Newark Liberty International Airport, radar outages, and several near misses in the air and on runways.
The worker departures have come after Elon Musk, through the administration’s DOGE initiative, sent an email to hundreds of thousands of government employees describing a “fork in the road.” The email offered deferred resignation packages, leading to many of the 1,200 workers leaving the FAA.
In response to the persistent worker shortage issue, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced a plan in which existing air traffic controllers are being offered a 20% bonus to delay their retirements. Still, Duffy indicated that the ongoing staffing shortage would take, “months, if not years” to resolve.
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