President Biden’s nomination of flying taxi executive Michael Whitaker to run the Federal Aviation Administration stands to complete a Washington version of the circle of life.
A few months earlier, the agency’s interim leader had left to serve as an executive at another flying taxi company.
The moves, along with those by other former FAA leaders and lower-ranking officials, demonstrate the fledgling industry’s growing foothold in Washington as a handful of companies — each backed by billions of dollars in investor money — race to deploy electric aircraft. The industry’s pitch is that it will revolutionize travel with clean, quiet flights in vehicles that combine the advantages of planes and helicopters and might one day operate autonomously.
But the path from science fiction to reality lies through the FAA, which must approve the novel aircraft as a safe addition to the nation’s busy skies. It is a critical moment for an agency recovering from investigations into two Boeing jet crashes, which concluded the FAA became too close to the industry and overlooked design flaws in the planes. While FAA officials say safety is their top priority, they have not been immune to the excitement the new industry has whipped up, pledging to get flying taxis into widespread use by 2028.
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Industry leaders are open about the potential benefits of having one of their own as the agency’s next leader. They have established offices in Washington to help manage the relationship with regulators and market themselves to lawmakers.
On a recent day this month, Archer Aviation parked a sleek 12-rotor aircraft it calls Midnight just off Pennsylvania Avenue NW, three blocks from the White House. Office workers stopped to take pictures and ask questions about the buglike vehicle on their lunch breaks.
The occasion was a U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference on the future of aviation, which drew many of the industry’s leading players. The companies hope that in a few years, their aircraft — which can take off vertically before cruising like a plane — will inexpensively fly from “vertiports” to take passengers to their destinations or to major airports. The industry refers to itself as eVTOL (electric vertical take off and landing) while the FAA calls it “advanced air mobility.”
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Onstage at the conference, Adam Goldstein, Archer’s founder and chief executive, asked former acting FAA administrator Billy Nolen why he decided to leave government earlier this year to work for the company as its chief safety officer — a step Goldstein called “a huge vote of confidence for the industry.”
“I’m a Trekkie, I’m a ‘Star Wars’ fan,” Nolen said. “This is our moment. When you think of everything eVTOL, it is our version of the space race, and it is ours to win or it’s ours to lose.”
Shortly after Nolen left the agency, the FAA issued a 40-page document laying out steps toward deploying flying taxis by 2028. The date coincides with the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where industry leaders expect to showcase the ability of their aircraft to bust the city’s notorious traffic.
“A new era of aviation once only portrayed in movies or science fiction is taking off,” the document’s first paragraph reads.
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Asked in an interview if the FAA risked being swept up in the hype surrounding the industry, Nolen said he had confidence in the FAA’s safety division.
“There is zero pressure to cut corners,” he said.
Individual elements of the aircraft, such as vertical launches and battery power, are familiar to the FAA. But the combination of several new technologies in a single aircraft is unexpected territory. There are signs that the FAA is taking steps the industry disagrees with, for example, proposing rules on pilot training that manufacturers have pushed back against.
“Safety will always dictate the certification and implementation timelines,” the FAA said in a statement. “We will ensure this new generation of air taxis maintains the high level of safety that defines modern aviation.”
The crashes of two newly approved 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 have cast a shadow over the agency. House Democrats concluded in an investigation that Boeing had put its finances ahead of safety in pushing the plane forward and called the FAA’s review of design changes “grossly insufficient.” A survey of FAA safety experts, as part of an internal review, found they believed agency leaders were too close with business interests and reported feeling pressure from the industry.
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The crash investigations also highlighted how Boeing and other manufacturers are authorized to use company engineers to carry out safety work on the public’s behalf, a process known as delegation. The FAA said it has not taken that step with any company in the air taxi industry.
John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union, said it is too soon to know what approach the FAA will take with the flying taxi industry, but he said the rapid evolution of technology makes it a “dangerous time.”
“They’ve got to understand you can’t take a technology and hawk it, and not go through generationally tested processes,” said Samuelsen, whose union represents about 70,000 airline workers. “The FAA needs to temper the exuberance of the creators of this technology.”
Share this articleShareWhitaker’s nomination on Sept. 7 was widely praised by aviation industry leaders, who have been waiting for stable leadership at the FAA. The agency has been without a Senate-confirmed leader since March 2022, a period in which it has faced new safety challenges and disruptions to air travel.
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Whitaker has three decades of aviation experience, working as an executive at United Airlines and previously serving as the FAA’s second-in-command. In 2020, he joined Supernal, a flying taxi company that is part of Korean manufacturer Hyundai, and is its chief operating officer. A Biden administration official said that, if confirmed, Whitaker would follow ethics rules set by the Office of Government Ethics, the Department of Transportation and the FAA, as well as the administration’s ethics pledge barring officials from working on regulations or contracts related to their former employers for two years. Nolen is bound by similar rules, barred from communicating with the FAA for a year after his departure.
Supernal said Whitaker’s expertise makes him the right candidate to lead the FAA, adding in a statement that he “has both the vision and hands-on experience to manage today’s aviation system while also preparing for the industry’s future.”
Executives at Supernal’s competition said it would be an advantage to have someone so familiar with the nascent industry running the FAA. The agency occasionally has struggled to keep pace with the change of technology, another weakness Congress highlighted in the wake of the Boeing crashes. Lawmakers have since provided money to the FAA to recruit more specialists, but a June report by the Transportation Department’s inspector general said agency employees are concerned about having the resources to adequately review the new segment of the industry.
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As advancements are made in the industry, companies are reaching beyond traditional aviation companies to recruit engineers, drawing on expertise from the automotive and computer sectors. Archer’s Goldstein said in an interview that the company has focused on recruiting workers who are well-versed in the technology needed to build a new breed of aircraft, but also is bringing in people like Nolen, who have deep roots in the industry and are well-versed in the FAA’s certification process.
“These people are critical because we have to figure out how to build something that will be certifiable,” said Goldstein, whose company has backing from United Airlines. “We can’t build a new piece of technology without using the lessons that, through history, have made aviation the safest form of transportation today.”
In addition to Whitaker and Nolen, former Obama-era FAA administrator Michael Huerta is on the board of Joby Aviation, which also counts former acting FAA administrator Dan Elwell and air traffic controller union president Paul Rinaldi as advisers. Electric-plane maker Beta Technologies, which is more focused on cargo aircraft, recruited Brian Klinka, an FAA official who helped launch the agency’s work on certifying novel aircraft. Supernal announced in February that it hired Jay Merkle, who ran the FAA’s drone office.
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Huerta said the companies that will be most successful are those able to bridge the gap between two different cultures — the tech industry’s “move fast, break things and innovate” approach and that of aviation, a culture that is “incredibly cautious” — and who can bring together people from those different backgrounds to help.
Liz Hempowicz, a vice president at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group, said without strong transparency rules, close links between industry executives and top federal officials can undermine public confidence.
“It makes sense to have folks with industry-specific experience in these kinds of leadership roles, but it also raises some serious questions from the public if those decision-makers are making decisions with the public interest in mind,” she said.
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While Whitaker’s nomination received widespread praise, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), his party’s leader on the committee that will consider his nomination, said he had questions about Whitaker’s background. In a speech at the Chamber of Commerce event Wednesday, Cruz highlighted that Whitaker’s previous stint at the FAA was when much of the review of the 737 Max was carried out.
“The FAA is first and foremost a safety organization with many constituents — it is not the place for political agendas,” Cruz said. “Every decision should be driven by fact, risk analysis and data.”
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