By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he had appointed a former senior aviation official as the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration, a day after the deadliest U.S. air disaster in more than 20 years.
The announcement came after an American Airlines regional passenger jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River near Reagan Washington National Airport.
Chris Rocheleau, a U.S. Air Force veteran who worked at the FAA for more than 20 years, was previously chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association. Sources said Liam McKenna, who was the counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee, has also been named chief counsel at the FAA.
Rocheleau has been at the FAA since last week, the sources added.
Mike Whitaker, unanimously confirmed as the FAA administrator in October 2023, stepped down early from his five-year term on Jan. 20 when Trump took office and for 10 days the FAA declined to say who was running the agency on an acting basis. Trump has not yet named a permanent candidate to replace Whitaker.
Trump suggested that efforts to boost diversity at the FAA could have been a cause in the crash. At a White House press conference, he harshly criticized Pete Buttigieg, who headed the Transportation Department under President Joe Biden, saying, “he’s a disaster… He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity.”
Buttigieg blasted Trump on social media, calling his comments “despicable.”
“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch,” Buttigieg said.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also criticized Trump’s comments.
“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracies, it’s another for the President of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered,” Schumer said.
Former aides to Buttigieg say the diversity policy cited by Trump had been a long-standing policy and was in effect during Trump’s first term. Buttigieg could not immediately be reached for comment.
“I am not blaming the controller,” Trump added. He said he did not know if diversity was to blame but vowed to investigate. “So we don’t know, but we do know that you had two planes at the same level. You had a helicopter and a plane. That shouldn’t have happened.”
The FAA is about 3,000 controllers behind staffing targets and the agency said in 2023 it had 10,700 certified controllers, about the same as a year earlier.
As well as dealing with the aftermath of the Washington crash, Rocheleau will face key questions in his new role, including when to allow Boeing to boost production of the 737 MAX after a mid-air emergency in January 2024.
(Reporting by Steve Holland, David Shepardson and Daphne Psaledakis, Editing by Franklin, Nick Zieminski and Nia Williams)
