In the days following the Jan. 29, 2025, crash of a commercial plane with a Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C., social media posts suggested that Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, had pushed Federal Aviation Administration chief Mike Whitaker to resign immediately after U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.
For example, one post (archived) on X implied that Whitaker's departure had been a result of Musk retaliating for a fine the FAA slapped on SpaceX the year before:
The post had amassed 2.6 million views and 72,000 likes as of this writing. The claim spread on X, shared also by Robert Reich, who was secretary of labor under former President Bill Clinton (archived):
(X / @RBReich)
People on Reddit also shared versions of the claim.
It is true that Whitaker and Musk have clashed in the past. The FAA said on Sept. 17, 2024, that SpaceX should be fined $633,009 in civil penalties. Days later, during a hearing at the House of Representatives, Whitaker explained the rationale for the fine (the exchange started at around 43:00):
Whitaker said during the hearing:
Safety is in the public interest, and that's our primary focus with the proposed civil penalty. It involved a failure to comply with the launch requirements before launching. They launched without a permit. The allegations are that they moved a fuel farm closer to the population and did not do a risk analysis before launching. It's the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.
SpaceX immediately rebutted some of Whitaker's claims letter to Rep. Kevin Kiley, the California Republican who questioned Whitaker in the hearing. The company shared the letter on X (archived):
On Sept. 25, 2024, Musk said on X that Whitaker should resign (archived):
Since then, Musk became the head of the new U.S. Department of Government Efficiency. But months separated Musk's call for Whitaker's resignation and Whitaker's departure from the FAA, and Snopes could find no evidence that Musk had arranged for Trump to request Whitaker's resignation.
Whitaker was confirmed as FAA administrator on Oct. 24, 2023, for a five-year term, without any opposition. He announced in a Dec. 12, 2024, email that he would resign, and did so on Jan. 20, 2025, the day of Trump's inauguration, only 15 months into his tenure. It is not unusual, however, for agency heads to resign as new presidential administrations begin.
For 10 days, no one at the top of the FAA's leadership chart. On Jan. 30, 2025, Trump appointed Chris Rocheleau as acting administrator, according to the FAA website.
We contacted the FAA to ask about the reasons for Whitaker's resignation, as well as SpaceX to ask whether Musk had pressed for it.
Snopes has also looked into claims that Trump had fired 3,000 air traffic controllers, only to find that there was no evidence for this. Further, Snopes found that while it is true that Trump fired the heads of the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration, and that he also disbanded the Aviation Security Advisory Committee at the Department of Homeland Security, there is no evidence that he fired 400 FAA officials.