All it takes is one bad apple to enter a governmental agency and ruin its credibility and effectiveness. The last two weeks have shown Americans that the Federal Aviation Administration needs a steady hand and sound decision-making.
The selection of Alex Wilcox to serve as FAA administrator would undermine an agency trying to correct course and throw a wrench into the agency’s efforts to complete its growing to-do list. With a messy history — both personally and professionally — Wilcox is ill-fitted to lead an agency that has the eyes of the country on it after the tragic crashes that occurred in January. In important ways, he is fundamentally out of step with President Trump’s agenda. He has, moreover, proved that his judgment is profoundly questionable.
Many people may not be familiar with Wilcox, but they have likely seen his airline, JSX, on the news or at their local airport. Wilcox has worked in the aviation industry for most of his career. While this likely caught the administration’s attention as they sifted through resumes, a peek under the hood shows that Wilcox was anything but a good businessman and company leader.
For example, in 2015, a pilot working at JetSuite Air was fired for blowing the whistle about unsafe plane conditions. The pilot later sued Wilcox, the CEO at the time, after being “severely reprimanded” and later suspended with pay. The Department of Labor and an administrative law judge ultimately ruled in favor of the pilot.
Blowing the whistle could not have been easy but was nevertheless critical, considering human lives were at risk. For Wilcox, this pilot’s concerns were a threat, and he chose to oversee his company’s retaliation. Wilcox showed early in his career that safety and security were his lowest priorities — an alarming reality for an industry committed to maintaining the highest safety standards.
The controversy and potential conflicts of interest swirling around Wilcox don’t stop there.
Wilcox has a history of progressivism. He has a decades-long track record of donating to former Democratic presidential candidates and Congress members, including those on influential transportation-related committees. In 2024, conveniently, Wilcox stopped donating to Democratic lawmakers.
It should come as no surprise that a registered Democrat and longtime donor has drunk the DEI-commitment Kool-Aid. In fact, Wilcox’s company embraced this movement so much that it received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2021 Corporate Equality Index for its corporate policies and workplace equality measures.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has made considerable efforts to end DEI hiring, instead mandating that the federal government hire based on “merit, excellence and intelligence.” This executive order was one of the first actions taken by Trump, and it’s baffling that his administration would consider agency heads that harbor diametrically opposed positions on DEI and are proven champions of the movement.
It’s worth asking what other anti-conservative positions Wilcox might harbor — positions that might manifest in his work at the FAA. Attempting to reverse the disastrous agenda of the Biden administration with a Democrat heading a major agency raises concerns. If the old saying that “personnel is policy” is true, hiring Wilcox is about as bad as it gets.
Wilcox’s life isn’t spotless outside of his business dealings, either. A history of arrests and allegations of abusive behavior and aggression also mar his personal record. Clearly, there is ample evidence that Wilcox is far from an ideal candidate to lead an administration tasked with ensuring the safety of the nation’s travelers.
While the administration may believe it has found a promising new candidate to run the FAA, a Google search shows that someone didn’t do their homework and vet Wilcox properly. Especially when everyone is unsettled by recent aviation tragedies, putting an ideologically misaligned administrator with faulty judgment and character into one of the most influential roles in the transportation industry is precisely how you lose the trust of the American people.