FAA reportedly ordered employees to find millions of dollars to fund Starlink deals
according to Rolling stonesOn Friday, FAA employees were told to “start searching for tens of millions of dollars in interstellar link deals,” after which Washington Post The report said the FAA could cancel a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon to overhaul the U.S. airspace management system and work with Elon Musk’s company. Whether the FAA has indeed given up on the Verizon deal on Starlink has not been publicly confirmed.
Anonymous source tells Rolling stones On Friday, FAA officials’ orders “verbally” to staff “unusually.” A few days later, Musk claimed on X that the situation around air traffic control communications was “very terrible”, saying that the existing system (he mistakenly attributed to Verizon and then added corrections) “decomposed very quickly”. He went on to say, “The Starlink terminal is not required to be sent to taxpayers to restore air traffic control connections.”
Bloombergciting sources close to the matter, had previously reported that 4,000 Starlink terminals are being sent to help upgrade FAA’s network, the FAA confirmed. In a statement released on X last week, the FAA claimed it was “considering using Starlink since the previous administration.” But, just Wednesday, the FAA said in a statement Washington Post and other publications that have not yet made decisions about its Verizon agreement.
The agency is one of many agencies that have laid off employees over the past few weeks led by Musk’s Doge, and in February, hundreds of FAA employees were fired.
