FAA shuffles staff at air traffic facility involved in Michelle Obama incident

The FAA said the acting manager was not being demoted.

“As part of our top-to-bottom review of the air traffic system, we are working to ensure that we have permanent managers in charge of critical air traffic facilities,” FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement.

Officials stressed that the plane carrying Michelle Obama was never in danger of colliding with the other plane at Andrews Air Force Base, but Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said that going forward, flights carrying the first lady and the vice president’s wife would be monitored in the same way as flights carrying the president.

The incident involving Michelle Obama highlighted the issues with air traffic management that had been bubbling up for almost a month. About seven air traffic controllers were suspended for sleeping on the job, and three have been fired. One controller was discovered to be watching a movie when the audio of the film was transmitted over the flight tower’s radio to a military plane.