During a White House meeting with US airline and airport executives, US President Donald Trump was surprised to learn that FAA administrator Michael Huerta is not a pilot and said it would be “better to have a pilot” leading the agency.
Huerta’s five-year term as administrator is set to last until Jan. 7, 2018. “Is the gentleman who’s the head of the FAA right now not a pilot?” Trump asked, according to a transcript of a portion of the meeting released by the White House. “I’d like to find out because I think it maybe would be good to have a pilot, like a really good pilot who knows what’s going on … And I would think you need a very sophisticated person in that job and … frankly, being a pilot would be helpful.”
Trump suggested that FAA’s NextGen air traffic control (ATC) modernization program may be “way over budget [and] way beyond schedule” because the FAA administrator is not a pilot.