Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a newly implemented federal agency under the Trump administration, “never” asked him to fire Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers.
While appearing on Sunday’s episode of “Meet the Press,” Duffy claimed that he and the tech billionaire “get along great” after host Kristen Welker questioned whether he and Musk clashed due to DOGE’s sweeping federal workforce cuts.
The cuts, which included the potential for layoffs of air traffic controllers, sparked widespread concerns about the FAA’s ability to maintain safe and efficient air traffic control operations, particularly amid recent aircraft fatalities.
Welker grilled Duffy over whether Musk cuts via DOGE have “made this situation worse” and “increased the challenges and potential safety concerns.”
“We actually have staffed up. We’ve hired more air traffic controllers during this time,” Duffy said while claiming that no air traffic controllers were fired during the cuts. “There were probationary workers that were let go — those were employees who were there less than a year — and again, we excluded the safety positions…most of them have come back.”
He continued, “The FAA has 46,000 employees, and if you lost 350, is this affecting our safety mission? There’s a lot of things the FAA does, but for us safety is key, so no, we’ve retained all those safety positions.”
Welker further pressed Duffy, questioning him if Musk asked him to “cut air traffic controllers directly.”
Duffy denied ever being demanded by Musk.
“We went back and forth, and Elon agreed and the president agreed: ‘Of course we want to keep air traffic controllers.’ We’re trying to hire more of them…” he said.
Not letting up, Welker then asked directly if Musk “initially” asked him to cut air traffic controllers and whether the two had a “dispute” over it.
“Elon and I get along really well. He never called me and said ‘cut air traffic controllers.’ He would never do that,” Duffy explained. “This was a broader conversation about what positions are gonna be preserved. … It was the new employees that we were going to let go, many of them have come back.”
Duffy then said that the SpaceX founder “understands the importance of the air space and the need to have good controllers.”
He added: “Actually SpaceX launches through the airspace and the FAA. We want good controllers that know the airspace to navigate all the issues that come up.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Welker asked Duffy about why incidents with the FAA “keep happening” following multiple equipment outages at the Newark Airport.
“Listen, the system is old, right?” he replied. “This is a system that’s 25 [years] at best, sometimes 50 years old. The congress and the country haven’t paid attention to it, they expect it to work. So now I think the lights are blinking, the sirens are turning, and they’re saying, ‘Listen, we have to fix this.’”
Duffy noted that “what you see in Newark is gonna happen in other places across the country,” before explaining that “telecom issues” and “some glitches in our software” have been affecting the system.
“So I’ll just tell you specifically in Newark, we believe we’ll have it up and running in short order,” he added.
Watch Duffy’s appearance on “Meet the Press” here.
