FAA's Rocheleau: Managing through 'Bumpy' Transition

Chris Rocheleau was named as deputy administrator of the FAA in January but also took on the role of acting administrator with the departure of FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker. A U.S. Air Force veteran, Rocheleau most recently had served as COO at NBAA. The move to the FAA marked a return to the agency where he had previously held numerous senior leadership roles for more than 20 years. He was also among the leaders who helped stand up the Transportation Security Administration in the wake of 9/11. Rocheleau spoke with AIN about his decision to rejoin the FAA, the immediate crises he faced with the agency, his long-term vision, and what was at the time the pending confirmation of Republic Airways CEO Bryan Bedford as permanent administrator.

What brought you back to the FAA?

I had served for 22 years in the agency in a variety of roles and was very fortunate to have the opportunities over time to progress within the agency.  Whether it was in the chief of staff role or international affairs, [I was able to] understand the corporate nature and the importance of all the different pieces of the agency working together to accomplish the goals, whether for the FAA, the wider industry, or the Department of Transportation.

I felt I'd accomplished something in my career, and when the opportunity was given to kind of retire and move on to NBAA, I jumped on it. The COO role at NBAA was enlightening and invigorating. I could help people in the industry—whether an individual operator or jet owner, all the way to a major corporation like NetJets or Coca-Cola—to be able to work better with the FAA. I felt, wow, I really got something to offer.

Then the opportunity came to help with the presidential transition. Someone said, “You've been through two transitions, both from Obama to Trump and then Trump to Biden. How would you like to help in this next transition?”

Talk a little about the transition.

I thought I'd be able to help because transitions are bumpy. That's the reality. Admittedly, this one is equal to, or even some in some in some ways, greater than bumpy. But what is exciting about it is that the FAA does crisis management well because we have a very resilient workforce. I felt that if I could get in there and tap into that, I'll have done my part. There's a lot of good work that we're doing here, even though some of it gets clouded out.

A week after my arrival and on [Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's] first day, we had the tragic crash at DCA [Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport]. That's where I think my training was able to help the secretary manage this crisis and help the team get their arms around what we needed to do immediately, like restricting the airspace around DCA, working with the stakeholders, working with the NTSB, and of course working with our controllers.

There was a lot of news around what happened in the tragedy, but there was also a real workforce there that needed to make sure someone was paying attention to them and they had the support they needed. To me, that was the big piece of this—to help manage through that transition, but also the subsequent crises when we got here.

Coming in as deputy, with knowledge you’d likely become acting, what was your vision and has it changed now?

I certainly didn't expect this to be my beginning, with the series of crises, also including the Bering Air accident in Alaska and the [Learjet medevac] tragedy in Philadelphia. But 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.

It was coming in saying safety is our priority. At a recent town hall, I said, “With all the other noise out there—and there's a lot out there—focus on the job. Come to work, look out for each other, and focus on the safety job that we do every day.” Someone quoted me as saying, “We deliver safety to the American people every day,” and I was really proud of getting that in. To me, it came down to safety first.

And then we have to modernize this agency, whether it's on medical certification work, our air traffic processing, or our notam system, which was another big one. We've got to modernize this place. A major focus right up front was to let people know that for the next three, four, or five years, certainly for this administration, we will focus on modernizing the FAA.

The other piece, and this was a passion of mine, was bringing new innovative technologies into the airspace. I was very involved at the beginning with the Virginia Tech experiment on drone integration. That's expanded appreciably since I left. I wanted to get back in and help with safe drone integration and safe advanced air mobility. Those are two major technologies I think are going to transform not just the U.S. airspace system but the world. I wanted to be a part of facilitating some of the rulemaking and some of the other regulatory work that needs to be done.

The final piece, which you've heard plenty about because the secretary was all-in, was the controller hiring and making sure that we preserve safety positions as we seek to reshape the agency as we become more efficient. There's been a lot of talk about DOGE and chopping and getting rid of people. 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.

If I pick up the phone and call the secretary, I get what I need. So that's been very valuable to focus on the workforce. We're very fortunate to have that resilient workforce and a deep bench. There are a lot of talented people here.

We are behind, we're about 20% at least down on what we need for certified professional controllers. But the agency met its [hiring] goal last year, just exceeded 1,800. This year, we're on track to hit 2,000 plus.

Since the high-profile accidents, you've had to testify before Congress. Do you feel like you've had a different mandate because of this?

Certainly, a presidential transition, particularly one with this president and this Congress, has generated a lot of letters to the FAA for questions and answers.

That hearing [before the Senate Commerce Committee in March] was my first ever. I've done a lot of prep for different administrators over my time. I never sat in the chair, and so that was pretty significant for me. But I felt confident in all the preparation and knowing the agency and being able to answer some of the tough questions, whether it was on Elon Musk or do we have enough people while we're terminating folks or people are retiring.

I also understood the need to respond to Congress. Yes, there are a lot of demands on this agency, and for a good reason, right? We're responsible for making sure the skies are safe every day.

We're responding intentionally; responses involving the NTSB investigation are a perfect example. There's a lot of information that people think they know initially, and it's a challenge. An important thing to remember is that we need to use discipline when we're coming to a conclusion, that we just don't have all the facts. So, I think that the FAA has been very good about being deliberative and being careful about how we respond until all the facts are in.

Yet it didn't hold us back from stopping mixed traffic at DCA or starting our reevaluation of what we call hotspots, or areas where we had mixed traffic or high reports of losses of separation.

Can you talk about these studies, including on hot spots?

When we did our initial scrub of where we were seeing potential losses of separation, TCAS [traffic collision avoidance system] alerts, and those kinds of things, we identified Las Vegas early on because of the nature of the mixed traffic with commercial airlines and air tours.

We identified that there were numbers there that we needed to pay attention to and similarities as they related to the horizontal and vertical separation requirements. We had our team look very carefully at the airspace makeup, as well as what controllers were telling helicopters and airplanes, as it related to traffic advisories. That was a really big thing.

There's no one switch, and we’ve been doing some of this over time. But in the past weeks, we've been working with the controllers and the air tour community there to make sure that they work through the airspace. Just over the past few weeks of that work, we've seen a roughly 30% reduction in the alerts that we were getting.

I think that is significant. We will continue to do that with Vegas specifically. Another location that we've looked at is in the LA basin area with Van Nuys and Burbank airports. That is not necessarily unique to helicopters and fixed-wing, but we've got two airports that are fairly close that see private jets that move very quickly, and we've got Cessna 172s. And that's a dense airspace we're looking into as well. Anything we see that we don't like, we take action on immediately.

At the same time, we're going to look through how the airspace is redesigned and how we might want to change that to make it clearer for helicopters, training aircraft, private jets, and any others going in and out of those airports.

Another I'll flag is in Alaska. After the Bering Air crash, I was able to go up to Alaska and meet with both the investigators as well as [those involved with] the Don Young Aviation Alaska Safety Initiative to talk about the airspace around Anchorage.

You've got high-performance F-35s flying around. You've got float planes. You've got a real mix of traffic in the airport area. That's another area, as they're doing an airspace redesign, that we're going to take the lessons we've learned from DCA and now in Las Vegas, and apply them there.

How do we set boundaries for GA? How do we adhere to Class B or Class C airspace restrictions and then make sure that over time, the people who are in that system every day are able to manage things in a safer but more deliberative manner? We think that what we've designed to date has been very effective, but that doesn't mean we stop, and doesn't mean we don't have an opportunity to learn from what we get out of data, drive those changes, and make it safer and more efficient going forward.

There is a lot of discussion about modernizing technology. What can people expect?

People have asked what the secretary is talking about when he talks about transforming the airspace. It's clear that for years, the FAA has worked through this thing they called NextGen. Some of the technologies and capabilities have been delivered, but not in a timely manner, and not to fully realize the benefits of those technologies.

Partly because of the outages—think about it, we had not just the tragedies of the crashes, but we had two notam outages since the secretary arrived—we've been fortunate to have the secretary lean in with us, not just tell us what to do or stand away.

We have outages throughout the system on a regular basis. It's because we've had technologies that have been in place from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We’ve heard plenty about floppy disks, paper strips, and vacuum tubes.

When we're talking about old-fashioned copper wires and not moving quickly enough to the fiber optic cables, more modern radars, and more common operating platforms, there are a series of things that we use every day in the air traffic system that are functional, that are safe. We moved over a billion people safely last year. When you look at the trend lines, even though we've had this very unfortunate period with loss of life, the system is incredibly safe.

But it is showing signs of decay. It is time that we call people's attention to this problem. The agency has talked about funding instability before, but now we feel it, and so the secretary has made this a priority to build the infrastructure again.  

About 92% of our [facilities and equipment] budget goes towards sustaining those legacy systems. [$262 million of the $2.9 billion budget is used for new technology; $110 million is used to sustain the copper wire telecommunications network alone.]

Are there other technologies right on the horizon?

We've seen incidents over time on surface safety. The Surface Awareness Initiative (SAI) and Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X) are some of the systems that we're rolling out. I think we're on track for 50 towers of these airports to get SAI capability by the end of 2025. [Approach Runway Verification is installed at 77 with 50 more on the plate in upcoming months, and Runway Incursion Device installation began this year with 74 airports slated for it by the end of 2026.]

I can tell you, having talked directly to controllers in Seattle, in Anchorage, here at DCA, everybody is excited. Everybody is welcoming these new tools because they give them the situational awareness they need.

I keep coming back to operations will continue to grow. Our job is to make sure, as they grow, that they're safe, and one of the ways we do that is by giving new tools to the controllers.

Are you already seeing tangible benefits?

We are. I know that the surface safety initiatives have resulted in double-digit improvements. Certainly, incursions have been improved. [In 2024, the rate of serious runway incursions (Category A and B) decreased by 69% from calendar year 2023, from 0.400 per one million airport operations to 0.124 per one million operations.]

Where are your priorities on AAM and drone technology?

On the AAM and drone deliveries, a lot is going on there. I'm going to Dallas to experience firsthand the UTM, the UAS traffic management systems being used in the area. To me, those are game changers when we think about the beyond visual line of sight rule [BVLOS] and enabling drone deliveries.

This is moving toward beyond the line of sight, not just by exception—how we do them today—but more along the lines of here are the rules of the road and here's how we want people to operate in a safe manner.

On advanced air mobility, the agency has been working on that for some time. I understood on my return that there's been some restructuring in the agency. My goal is to inject new energy, new focus in that area. The secretary and I have met with a couple of the companies that are leaders in AAM, and we want to make sure that we're bringing that into the system in a safe manner.

The SFAR, the [enabling] rules, came out last year, and I think part of our goal this year is to make sure that we're utilizing pilot programs or test cases where we bring some of those aircraft in the sky safely. There's a real interest from not just the manufacturers and the operators of these aircraft, but the agency itself. And so, an important focus area is to make sure we're injecting more attention on advanced air mobility.

With several certifications in the works, do you feel like you're getting closer to operations?

There are probably four or five that are game changer [programs]. We are moving down that in a smart, safe, and very focused way to make sure that as the operators are ready to go, they can get into the airspace—not just to be able to fly in the middle of a desert or in an airspace that's been designated for testing, but developed corridors. That's what we're focused on this year.

I think the new administrator will come in at some point, ideally, but I've let the leadership team here know we're not stopping and waiting for anything, whether that's on the workforce hiring, whether that's on modernizing the agency, or whether that's bringing in new technologies into the airspace.

Are there extra hoops now with rulemakings? Where is the agency on the beyond visual line of sight rulemaking?

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 we are in the current state of affairs, making sure that it is consistent with the new administration. There's always a process that people need to go through.

But the nice thing is, and I think the secretary is particularly attuned to this, is we are at a point of let's not use bureaucracy as a way to slow things down. Let's streamline our approval process to get those out quicker. Where we identify technologies that are safe, efficient, or whatever that benefit is, let's move out quickly.

Beyond visual line of sight is one of those rules. It's sooner than shortly. I've heard shortly now for a little while, and I think that we're getting really close. We've talked to the administration about the importance of the enabling nature of this rule.

There is a whole dialogue about how we want less regulation. I'm particularly appreciative of where we have a rule that is enabling to industry, the administration has come out pretty clearly and said we want to let these rules go.

Enabling rules like BVLOS are a priority,100%. Where it is logical, where it is within our grasp to make these things happen, we should be all over that. That's why I think back to the energy of the team here, the FAA team. They want to enable these things, and so I want to make sure that I am putting wind in their sails.

With an FAA administrator nominee, do you plan to stay on as deputy administrator? What is your long-term vision?

I came here to help smooth the transition, knowing that it's so important for the agency to keep moving through a presidential transition. I was very excited to be given the opportunity when I was offered the position as deputy. I said that's my sweet spot. I will be good at the COO role and running day-to-day operations. I knew I was signing up for an acting role for a period.

I have had some dealings with [nominee Republic Airways president 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.

I will bring to him 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, really good deputy administrator to the new administrator.

No more congressional hearings, right?

I won't be running towards any of those anytime soon, but to any extent I can support the new administrator, I'm happy to do that. I think we're going to be a really powerful team.