The Trump administration said on Monday it will reorganize the Federal Aviation Administration to consolidate safety functions into a single aviation safety office that brings together work previously spread across five separate units.
The administration presented the change as a component of a broader strategic plan intended to strengthen hiring and training and to better identify hazards in the aviation system. Officials said the restructuring will not involve reductions in force.
The announcement precedes a National Transportation Safety Board hearing on Tuesday where the NTSB is set to fault the FAA for failing to act on repeated near-miss incidents. That hearing will examine the probable cause of the January 2025 collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet near Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people.
As part of the restructure the FAA will form a formal safety management system and put in place a single FAA-wide safety risk management process. The new aviation safety office is intended to consolidate related oversight activities that had been handled by five different offices.
The NTSB has already raised concerns about longstanding close calls around Reagan National. The agency said last year that since 2021 more than 15,000 incidents occurred near Reagan involving commercial airplanes and helicopters with lateral separation of less than 1 nautical mile and vertical separation of less than 400 feet, and that 85 close-call incidents took place during that period. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in August that the FAA had ignored warnings about serious safety issues.
The FAA has taken other actions tied to these safety concerns. In early May the agency barred the Army from helicopter flights around the Pentagon after a close call on May 1 that forced two civilian planes to abort landings. Agency officials are also relocating the FAA headquarters into the main Transportation Department office in Washington.
Leadership at the FAA includes Administrator Bryan Bedford, who took office in July and is overseeing a $12.5 billion rehabilitation of U.S. air traffic control. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has requested an additional $19 billion to complete that work.
Lawmakers from both parties have questioned the FAA's handling of repeated near-miss incidents around Reagan airport in the years before the fatal January 2025 collision. The reorganization aims to centralize safety oversight functions and implement processes designed to detect and mitigate hazards, while officials emphasize the plan will not reduce staffing levels.
Context and next steps
The FAA's restructuring plan establishes new governance for safety oversight and puts in place system-wide risk management processes. The coming NTSB hearing is expected to scrutinize the FAA's historical response to close calls near Reagan airport and may influence how the new office prioritizes its work.