Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Minor

Promote FAA top executives from within and set strict requirements for appointees

Not started

633 19. Department of Transportation

“It is time to consider promoting the FAA’s top executive team from within and requiring strict professional requirements for its top appointees.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The FAA's top job was filled from outside, not from within: Bryan Bedford, a 35-year airline executive and most recently chief executive of Republic Airways, was confirmed as Administrator on 2025-07-09 and sworn in that July. No FAA order, DOT order or statute enacted in the window establishes either a promote-from-within policy for the FAA's executive team or professional qualification requirements for its political appointees beyond the pre-existing aviation-experience requirement for the Administrator in 49 U.S.C. 106(b).

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • appoint ask: checked src/data/people.json first as the plan directs. The roster carries no FAA post and no Current office matching this ask, so it was researched from the nominations Corpus and faa.gov.
  • The Senate nomination record (PN55-6, confirmed 53-43 on 2025-07-09) is at https://www.congress.gov/nomination/119th-congress/55 - congress.gov returns 403 to automated fetches, so it is a lead, not Evidence; the faa.gov key-officials page carries the same fact and was read in full.
  • The ask has two limbs and neither moved. Bedford’s appointment goes on the not started event under playbook section 3b because it is the record moving the other way on the first limb, while arguably satisfying the spirit of the second - he is an aviation professional - without any requirement being written down.
Action
appoint
Object
FAA top executive team and political appointees
ID
1736