Safety impact of FAA firings analyzed

A union representing air safety personnel said it’s reviewing the fallout from a slew of firings late Friday that affected U.S. Federal Aviation Administration employees, just a few weeks after the worst U.S. civil aviation disaster in decades.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents air traffic controllers, engineers and other aviation safety professionals, said in a statement that it “is analyzing the effect of the reported federal employee terminations on aviation safety, the national airspace system and our members.”

Hundreds of FAA workers in their one-year probationary period began receiving messages about the firings after 7 p.m. New York time on Friday, according to the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, a union that also represents federal employees at the aviation regulator.

NATCA Region X employees, which include engineers, aircraft certification specialists, staff support specialists and aviation technical system specialists, were among those affected, according to the union. NATCA said it hasn’t received any reports of air traffic controllers being included in the terminations.

The firings come at a critical time for air safety, with a number of high-profile crashes already this year, including the midair collision between a U.S. Army helicopter and an American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet that killed 67 people.

At the same time, the U.S. Transportation Department has said it’s enlisting the help of billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system — a massive undertaking that officials have been trying to tackle for years.

Broadcom mulls bid for part of Intel

Broadcom Inc. has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp.’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal.

Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of Trump administration officials, as the president looks to boost American manufacturing and maintain U.S. leadership in critical technologies.

Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing aren’t working together, and all talks so far are preliminary and largely informal, the Journal reported.

Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman called for less opacity in bank oversight, saying the supervisory and regulatory approach needs updating so it better serves the financial system.

“The greater flexibility afforded in the supervisory process can lead to poor outcomes, often caused by the temptation to use inaction and opacity as supervisory tools,” she said Monday in prepared remarks for an American Bankers Association conference for community bankers in Phoenix. “These tools, inaction and opacity, are not appropriate and must be subject to appropriate scrutiny or purged from the toolkit altogether.”

Bowman pointed to several areas she believes should be reviewed, including supervision, bank applications and regulation.

— Wire reports