FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford Drives Rapid Modernization with Trump-Era Urgency
Bryan Bedford took over leadership of the FAA in July 2025 after a long career in commercial aviation, including senior roles at Republic Airways and Frontier Airlines. He is an instrument-rated pilot, an aircraft owner, and one of the few recent agency leaders to arrive in Washington, D.C., with direct experience in both a general aviation cockpit and the airline C-suite. Some in aviation may also remember him from an appearance on reality TV's Undercover Boss , a fitting footnote for an executive whose management style has long emphasized seeing operations up close rather than from a distance. So close, in fact, that Bedford can be seen in the show servicing lavatories on a Frontier Airbus jet. That operating background now intersects with a White House that has pushed the FAA to move faster. In FLYING’s conversation with Bedford, he repeatedly pointed to President Donald Trump's role in setting the tone and timetable for the agency's agenda—from air traffic control (ATC) modernization to drone policy, supersonic flight, and broader aviation innovation. Bedford said the president has been unusually clear about what he wants delivered, and he described the FAA and Department of Transportation as "moving at the speed of Trump" on initiatives tied to those priorities. This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine If you're not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Subscribe today to get the issue as soon as it is released in either Print or Digital formats. Subscribe Now Nine months into the job, Bedford framed the FAA less as an agency building toward distant benchmarks than one being pressed to show measurable progress on a shorter clock. He discussed the administration's push for a "brand-new" ATC system, the role AI and machine learning could play in future traffic management, what MOSAIC could mean for general aviation, and why the fight over landing fees and ADS-B has become a safety issue in his eyes. FLYING interviewed Bedford at the agency's headquarters in Washington in April. What follows is an edited Q&A for length and clarity: Setting the Pace FLYING Magazine (FM) : Your first year on the job is coming up this summer. As you look at the agency today, what do you think has changed the most? Bryan Bedford (BB): Well, so much has changed. I want to be careful, but I think the biggest thing is our focus. We've got Flight Plan 2026, and the purpose of that is to drive agency focus from the top of the executive branch all the way down to the front line that's delivering the services, whether you're a technician, a controller, or a regional manager. We just wanted to make sure everybody was aligned on the same priorities. Generally, the FAA, when it would put out a plan, it would be no less than five years and generally a 10-year-long plan. So there was never really that excitement that we can see things being accomplished. So we set goals and we actually finish goals. That ability to connect to the fact that we're doing things and we're doing it at speed, I think, is creating a sense of energy and accomplishment. READ MORE: FAA Aims to Block State, Local Crew Break Requirements READ MORE: FAA Says Happy Fourth of July With $1.776B in Airport Grants Of course, we redesigned the organizational structure, just trying to flatten it out a bit, make it more accountable, and make it easier to manage from an executive sense. And this is my perspective, not necessarily the agency's perspective, but I think most people who come into this role tend to want to fly it at about 30,000 feet. I really want to get below the surface, so to speak, and see if we're being effective. What are the issues that our frontline employees are feeling on a day-to-day basis? And are we giving them the solutions? FM: You came from the private sector, and the airline business moves fast. What was the biggest transition coming into government? BB: As I testified, I'm not political. I don't profess to understand it. It's a contact sport I've never played before. So I have a hard time really adapting to the political nature of some of the decisions that we make. That's created a learning curve for me to understand that I'm not the CEO of a business. I am one cog in a really big machine. Understanding what the big boss wants to deliver and making sure that our resources are aligned with delivering on the executive orders—that's something where frankly the president's been really, really clear about what his priorities are, and that's given the agency a lot of direction that we can actually turn into action, like eVTOLs, supersonic, and space. There's a lot of innovation that this administration is feverishly trying to unlock, and to the extent it touches the FAA or the DOT, we're certainly moving at the speed of Trump to try to make those executive orders turn into rulemaking and then turn into actual innovation that customers feel. FM: That is a striking phrase—"moving at the speed of Trump." Does that urgency change the way the FAA operates? Bryan Bedford (left) is in lockstep with President Donald Trump and DOT Secretary Sean Duffy on the direction of the FAA. [Credit: FAA] BB: It does, because it gives us clarity. The president's been really clear about what his priorities are. That allows us to align resources around delivering on those priorities instead of drifting into long-term discussions without real action. We're trying to do things and do them at speed. Modernizing ATC FM: Let's talk about the new air traffic control system. For pilots, especially in general aviation, what does that actually mean? BB: In the most practical terms, you've seen a step-function change in how aeromedical works. We went from having over 4,900 medical certificates outstanding for more than 18 months to less than 142 outstanding for more than six months. So again, this idea that there's a sense of urgency, and we want to actually fix things that are pain points for our stakeholders. And, certainly, GA is a huge stakeholder for us. But on the modernization side, I think the easiest way to explain it is this: Next-gen, for all of the good things it did, brought us a lot of great technologies, but the adoption cycle is measured in decades, not years. And the president gave me and the secretary very clear instructions that he wants this brand-new air traffic control system built before he leaves office, which gives us a really hard date in 2028. So we've created a waterfall implementation that completes in Q4 of 2028. And we're either on track or ahead of that deployment. The long poles in the tent were on the supply-chain side—buy 612 radars, make sure you got a great price, and they can be delivered and operational in three years. Same thing with voice switches. Same thing with the analog-to-digital conversion. FM: And that is only the first step? BB: Right. [This] is very equipment focused. Modernization, which is what the president really wants to get at, requires a second level of funding, and that is to actually bring advanced automation, AI, machine learning, all of those things that are going to be needed to manage traffic in the 21st century. That stuff has to ride on a cloud-native architecture that has unlimited compute power to do all the things those advanced algorithms need to do. We don't have that in the current data architecture for the FAA. So there is a second step, which we're busily working on, to transform how data is managed and acted upon. FM: You mentioned AI and machine learning. What specifically are you looking at? BB: I won't get too deep into the weeds, but we've got three labs in here competing right now for what we would think of as a transformational use of technology or use of advanced machine learning and AI—pre-flying, if you will, to develop four-dimensional flight trajectories that are strategically deconflicted before planes leave the ground. Versus today, how we manage it is you file a flight plan, we accept your flight plan, you