Buttigieg’s Transportation Department Expands Vacation Amid Aviation Crisis

“Secretary Pete” It seems to be more focused on holiday leaves than on resolving issues with the Department of Transportation.

Things aren’t going to well for Pete Buttigieg On a variety of fronts. As secretary of transportation, he also oversees the Federal Aviation Administration.

Wednesday morning saw all outbound flights in the United States halted by the FAA. This was due to the Notification to Air Missions System not working. It provides vital information to flight operations personnel and caused a grounding for all U.S. outbound aircraft for the first time since September 11. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Buttigieg is focused on fixing the problem as quickly as possible.  Around 10 a.m. Wednesday, amid the FAA crisis, the assistant transportation secretary for administration, Philip A. McNamara, sent an email to all DOT employees, which The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project obtained.

He wrote: “To begin the upcoming holiday weekend, we have approved a three-hour early release on Friday, January 13 for all DOT federal employees in work status, including telework/  Employees designated as essential may be required by their supervisor to remain on duty.”

In June, President Joe Biden appointed Phil Washington to the FAA Administrator position, but he was not confirmed by the Senate. Washington was also named in an aforementioned document. Criminal search warrant These are connected to Public corruption allegations.

Washington was renominated last week for the position. He will be able, if confirmed, to hold the position for five year, unlike other political appointments that end with the presidential term.

Billy Nolen is an FAA Associate Administrator and has been acting as the administrator for around eight months. Political appointee, Nolen joined the FAA in August 2008. Biden administration Nolen in his FAA role, January 2022. Nolen previously served as vice president, safety, security and quality, WestJet Airlines Canada. Unfortunately, scandals plagued the FAA’s acting tenure. 

On April 21, 2022, a few weeks into Nolen’s acting role, the FAA forgot to notify the Secret Service, Park Police, and Capitol Police of a scheduled flyover and a parachute stunt into Nationals Park. The U.S. Army Golden Knights airplane flew by the Capitol ComplexThis prompted law enforcement to immediately evacuate the Capitol Complex and issue an alert.  

On April 22, 2022 the FAA issued an unsigned apology, which stated, “We deeply regret that we contributed to a precautionary evacuation of the Capitol complex and apologize for the disruption and fear experienced by those who work there.”

Buttigieg was criticized for using the FAA’s private fleet Most recently, the jets were used to conduct a radio interview in New York City. The Washington Post reported once that the FAA charged approximately $5,000 an hour for private jet use during Trump’s administration. The DOT attempted to assure the public about this too. 

“Given that commercial air travel is usually the cheapest way for the Secretary and his staff to travel, 108 of the 126 flights for DOT trips he has taken have been on commercial airlines. However, there are some cases where it is more efficient and/or less expensive for the Secretary and accompanying personnel to fly on a 9-seater FAA plane rather than commercial flights,” A spokesperson said. “Use of the FAA plane in limited, specific cases has helped to maximize efficiency and save thousands of taxpayer dollars.”

The White House attempted explanations for Wednesday’s flight crisis.

Karine Jean-Pierre (White House Press Secretary) posted the following tweet: “The President has been briefed by the Secretary of Transportation this morning on the FAA system outage. There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the president directed DOT to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates. Since no cause has been determined, it appears that the DOT should be all hands on deck to determine the issue and ensure that this doesn’t happen again.” 

I sent McNamara several questions about this statement. These are the questions I sent McNamara.

I have received an email from you today, announcing an early holiday release in support of MLK Day. Can you confirm? 

Is it a common practice for the DOT to release employees before a Federal holiday? 

Do you think Secretary Buttigieg will prioritize Federal Holiday Leave for his employees regardless of the workload or emergency at DOT?

 He forwarded my questions on to the press office. They responded to my email. 

“Emergency and essential personnel will be working as mentioned in the notice,” A spokesperson said.

McNamara was kind enough to give three hours of paid leave. After some research, I discovered the following: average salary For a federal employee working in the United States, $108,584.00 annually. That’s $52.20 an hour if you consider that employees work 2,080 hours on average each year. This gift amounts to $8.613,634.62 considering there are 55,000 employees of DOT. How much tax dollars will this practice cost if it is a regular practice for federal holidays?

The FAA’s extra time off extended to federal employees working from home. Workers who don’t commute will get the same time off.

Uncertainty remains about the number of emergency and essential personnel who will be on duty. Contrary to the DOT spokesperson’s email to me, the initial announcement about the time off says the decision will be up to supervisors, not applied across the board.

If the DOT focused more on solving issues and not on employee time off, maybe it wouldn’t have so many crises.   

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