Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau is moving forward on several initiatives surrounding safety, modernizations, rulemaking, and workforce as he continues to facilitate the transition for the new administration.
Rocheleau, a 22-year agency veteran who returned to the agency in January after a stint as COO at NBAA, noted that he’d previously been through two administration transitions. When offered the role of deputy administrator in the second Trump administration, he agreed. “I thought I’d be able to help because transitions are bumpy. That’s the reality,” he said in an interview with AIN. “Admittedly, this one is equal to or even, in some ways, greater than bumpy. But what is exciting about it is the FAA does crisis well because we have a very resilient workforce.”
A week after Rocheleau arrived at the FAA and on Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s first day, the administration faced the midair collision of the U.S. Army Black Hawk and PSA Airlines CRJ700 (operating as American Airlines Flight 5342) near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (KDCA) and, shortly after that, high-profile crashes in Alaska, Philadelphia, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
“I certainly didn’t expect this to be my beginning with the series of crises,” he said. “There was a lot of news around what happened in the tragedy and the loss of life, but there was also a real workforce there that needed to make sure someone was paying attention to them…I did come in knowing this agency and what helps it drive. To me, it’s evergreen: pick an administrator, pick a deputy administrator, pick a party. Safety is going to be first and foremost.”
With his experience, the agency was able to respond quickly, banning certain mixed helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft corridors as well as launching an investigation into other hot spots. That investigation is already highlighting issues that the agency has begun to work through, including in Las Vegas, Rocheleau said. Other hotspots under the microscope include the Los Angeles Basin area and Alaska.
Further, the agency also had to grapple with two outages of the notam system in recent months and helped sharpen a focus on getting the new architecture for the notam system in place by September, a little earlier than anticipated. In addition, all of this, from the accident at KDCA to the outages, has underscored the need for expediency on modernization.
“We have outages throughout the system on a regular basis,” he said. “We’ve heard plenty about floppy disks, paper strips, and vacuum tubes. Because of the outages, the importance of making sure that we have a modern system, and the [administration’s] desire to drive towards the goals of building out a modern state of the art system, we have tackled this.” As a result, Rocheleau noted that Duffy is “leaning in” on these initiatives, he said.
Same for the workforce, which has come under substantial scrutiny in the aftermath of the KDCA crash. “There's been a lot of talk about DOGE and chopping and getting rid of people,” he noted. “But perhaps because of what happened at the beginning of the year, what happened here with the tragedies, the secretary from day one has been in to preserve any of our safety capabilities, air traffic controllers, safety inspectors, certification engineers. We have not stopped hiring those, and we have just pressed on with all of that.”
Rocheleau conceded that the FAA is behind on its certified professional controller staff, about 20% down from what the agency believes it needs. But the FAA is on track to hire at least 2,000 new controllers this year after bringing 1,800 on board last year.
As far as rulemaking, he noted that “With any presidential transition and new team—and I’m part of that new team—we’re going to want to take a look at where are we at in the current state of affairs, making sure that it is consistent with the new administration, the president’s executive orders. There’s always a process by which people need to go through that.”
But he said that there is a drive to “not use bureaucracy as a way to slow things down,” particularly with enabling rulemaking, such as on beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations. Instead, Rocheleau said, “Where we identify technologies that are safe, efficient, or whatever that benefit is, let’s move out quickly.”
Critical for the agency is sorting through all the mandates of the FAA reauthorization legislation, including many measures surrounding all of his focus areas. “Having had a part in helping write that general aviation section of the FAA reauthorization, I thought, ‘Oh jeez, I’m going to take on some of the stuff I just told the agency to do.’”
He reiterated that he rejoined the agency to help smooth the operation, but said he was excited at the prospect of the deputy position. “I said that’s my sweet spot,” Rocheleau said, focusing on running day-to-day operations, although he did know he was signing up for the acting role for a period of time.
Meanwhile, Congress is vetting the White House nominee for a permanent administrator, Republic Airways president and CEO Bryan Bedford. “I know the secretary is very excited about his arrival. I’m excited about his arrival. I think he’s got a tremendous resume that’s going to help take this agency to the next level,” Rocheleau said.
Having said that, he added that he is continuing with his priorities in the interim. “I will bring to [Bedford] my four priorities that I’ve been running the agency on. I look forward to adapting to his, but I’m very fortunate to have been in this role. At this time, I also look forward to being a really good deputy administrator to the new administrator.”