Bryan Bedford, Donald Trump‘s nominee to guide the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has misled the general public, claiming to have a “business” pilot license that he doesn’t maintain, Politico reported.
Bedford, who serves as president and CEO of Republic Airways, was listed on the airline’s web site as holding “business, multi-engine and instrument pilot rankings” as just lately as Thursday, in keeping with Politico. However after the outlet inquired about Bedford’s credentials, the airline eliminated “business” from the webpage on Friday, the publication reported.
Based on Politico, Bedford doesn’t have a business pilot’s license listed within the FAA registry. However Bedford has claimed since at the least 2010 to have that sort of license in keeping with the Web Archive’s Wayback Machine data of Republic Airways’ web site.
Bedford does have a non-public pilot’s license, together with credentials that he can fly multi-engine planes and fly in unhealthy climate and at nighttime.
The Division of Transportation (DOT) instructed Politico that Bedford has handed “written and oral exams” to fly business plane. The division moreover stated that Bedford had not “personally nor publicly claimed to be a business airline pilot.”
“Bryan by no means misrepresented his credential; it was an administrative error that was instantly corrected,” DOT stated in a press release.
As Politico famous, The Air Present in an April 2025 article about Bedford additionally identified that the CEO is just not a business pilot. “Bedford is a pilot himself, though not a business pilot, as he has generally claimed to be,” The Air Present wrote.
Given latest occasions, together with the Jan. 2025 collision between a U.S. Military Black Hawk helicopter and American Airways Flight 5342 over the Potomac River close to Washington-Reagan Nationwide Airport that killed 67 individuals, many wish to the FAA to enhance the air site visitors management system. Elon Musk, whereas main the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, tried to put off swaths of air site visitors controllers however was stopped by the DOT. Trump blamed variety, fairness, and inclusion (DEI) practices for the crash.
Bedford confronted questioning final week from the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee as a part of his nomination course of. Members of the committee grilled him about how his firm tried (and failed) to certify pilots who solely met half of the federally required flight hours.
When questioned by Sen. Tammy Duckworth about whether or not he would preserve the variety of required hours to 1,500, Bedford wouldn’t give a straight reply.
“It doesn’t sound like a sure,” Duckworth stated. “It sounds such as you’re leaving the door open to cut back the variety of flight hours beneath 1,500.”
“What I’m saying is I don’t consider security is static,” Bedford responded.
