Senate confirms exDelta exec as FAA administrator

A former Air Force pilot and Delta Air Lines executive was confirmed Wednesday by the Senate to lead the Federal Aviation Administration after overcoming opposition from Democrats who claim that he mistreated a whistleblower during his tenure at Delta.

The 5240 vote on Stephen Dickson broke along party lines.

The FAA has been without a confirmed administrator since January 2018 and has been led since then by an acting chief, former American Airlines pilot Daniel Elwell.

Dickson spent 27 years at Delta, first as a pilot and later overseeing pilots as the senior vice president of flight operations until he retired last fall. President Donald Trump nominated him in March after publicly pondering the possibility of picking his personal pilot for the job.

The FAA has come under fire for relying on Boeing employees to conduct tests and inspections that led to approval of the Boeing 737 Max in 2017, and for declining to ground the plane for more than four months after a fatal crash in Indonesia. The FAA was the last global aviation regulator to ground the plane after a second crash, which happened in March in Ethiopia.

Dickson appeared to be cruising toward confirmation until Democrats on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee learned of his involvement in a whistleblower case while at Delta. An experienced pilot who raised safety concerns to Dickson and another executive claimed that as retaliation, Delta ordered her to go through a psychiatric exam.