The travel chaos that enveloped the country on Wednesday—after a major Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system outage forced thousands of flights to be grounded—has been widely blamed by Republicans on Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who’s been accused of incompetence.
“Every plane in America is currently grounded due to a system error. Mayor Pete, bravo,” tweeted on Wednesday Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
“This is what happens when you hire clueless liberals for jobs they aren’t qualified to do,” she added.
Donald Trump similarly blamed the FAA computer system failure on the transportation secretary, alleging that he was only given the job because he was gay.
But Was Buttigieg To Blame?
But is Pete Buttigieg really to blame for what was the biggest shutdown in U.S. aviation since September 11, 2001?
“No, he is not. He’s the Secretary, a political appointee with no technical background in transportation,” Joseph Schofer, Emeritus Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois, told Newsweek.
“He was selected to be the policy lead, the cheerleader and defender for the administration’s initiatives in transportation. He is doing that, especially in advancing and advocating the IIJA—the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Act.”
The FAA, on the other hand, is “a highly technical agency,” Schofer said, and it’s the largest part of the U.S. Department of Travel, “the part that does multiple things including oversight, regulation, and service delivery—air traffic control.”
FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen, “who has a strong background in aviation and airlines, as well is government administration,” Schofer said, he’s the one who’s in charge of what goes on within the FAA.
“When he’s doing his job, Secretary Buttigieg should be delegating technical matters to experts,” Schofer continued. “That means Administrator Nolen and the team of technical experts Nolen leads.”
According to Schofer, the NOTAM breakdown was “a deep technical problem” which he would “not expect Buttigieg to know anything about it. He leads, sets direction, speaks, serves as the public face.”
The FAA has not yet clearly identified the cause of the computer system outage that left thousands of passengers stranded across the country on Wednesday. Buttigieg, as well as the White House, stated that there was no indication that the incident was a cyberattack.
Though Buttigieg is not responsible for Wednesday’s computer system failure, Schofer said, he’s in charge of what follows this major incident.
“He does have responsibility to lead the response and recovery and set priorities not simply on restoration—I assume Administrator Nolen knows full well the need to restore services rapidly, as he served as an airline pilot—but also on bullet-proofing the FAA systems that sustain the safe operations of aviation and the airline industry,” Schofer said.
But the issue is still likely to be a big headache for the transportation secretary, a rising star of the Democratic Party, especially as the FAA system failure came only a month after the chaos that ensued when Southwestern Airlines’ cancelled thousands of flights due to bad weather over the holiday period.
Both Buttigieg and President Biden are now under significant pressure to discover what caused Wednesday’s travel meltdown.
Buttigieg wrote on Twitter that he has “directed an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps” following Wednesday’s incident.
Biden has asked him to report directly to him once the cause of the computer system failure is found.
Mayor Pete’s Major Problem
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