Senate confirms Bedford to head FAA

Valerie Yurk, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 9, 2025

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The Senate confirmed airline executive Bryan Bedford to lead the Federal Aviation Administration in a 53-43 vote Wednesday.

One of Bedford’s first tasks at the FAA will be to carry out major air traffic control system overhauls promised by President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and in part funded by the reconciliation law enacted last week.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire was the only Democrat who voted in favor of Bedford’s nomination.

“I can assure each of you that if confirmed my top priority will be public safety and restoring the public’s confidence in flying,” Bedford said during his June nomination hearing before the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “I know change can be hard, but I believe the agency can get back on the right track if we can all agree first that the air traffic control system needs significant investment.”

Bedford will take over the agency as investigators are looking into the causes of a January collision between a commercial airliner and an Army helicopter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The crash killed all 67 people aboard both aircraft. Along with several near misses, the crash added to questions about whether the FAA is equipped to safely handle the aviation system.

Bedford said during his hearing that he would also work to address staffing shortages, especially air traffic controllers, and to modernize aging FAA facilities and infrastructure.

The reconciliation law provides $12.5 billion through the end of fiscal 2029 to upgrade FAA facilities and equipment, including $4.75 billion for telecommunications infrastructure and systems and $3 billion for radar systems replacement.

Duffy said at a White House Cabinet meeting Tuesday that the FAA will still need more to overhaul the system.

“It’s a start,” Trump said during the meeting.

Bedford has been the president and CEO of Republic Airways Inc. since 1999. He had previous positions as the chairman of the Regional Airline Association board, president and CEO of regional airlines Mesaba Airlines Inc. and Business Express Airlines Inc., and worked at Phoenix Airline Services, West Air and Aspen Airways.

Democrats opposed Bedford’s nomination over concerns that he would be too lax on safety standards, pointing to a Republic Airways petition to exempt the airline from rules requiring pilots to have 1,500 hours of in-flight experience to fly commercial flights. The FAA denied it in 2022.

“As we’ve looked at the record of aviation safety, Mr. Bedford has been … in a frontline effort to roll back safety reforms and unravel the standards,” Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said on the floor Tuesday. “We gave Mr. Bedford multiple chances in the hearing to tell us that he, if confirmed, would not weaken that rule, but he repeatedly failed to give us an answer … to me, that was the evidence that I needed.”

Cantwell also said she was concerned that Bedford has “signaled an openness” to changing policies to allow a single pilot to operate commercial flights instead of the required two — a captain and first officer.

Bedford defended Republic’s petition during his hearing, adding that the airline’s pilot training program, LIFT Academy, which has become one of the nation’s largest flight academies, promoted “structured” training over the quantity of hours.

“I can’t commit to things that I don’t know, but I can commit to you that we will not have anything that would reduce safety,” Bedford said in response to questions about changing the 1,500-hour rule.