It sounds like he had to go to an Executive Order to get the FAA to comply.
Even if Trump were to give a phone call along the lines of 'Ground the Plane or else I'll write an executive order' , the optics of the situation would be so much better if Chao (Secretary of Transportation) or Dan Elwell (FAA Acting Administrator) were to give the announcement instead.
Personally involving himself unnecessarily is Trump's MO. "Only I can fix it." was one of the themes of his 2016 RNC speech.
If the President is requiring it then the proper mechanism to do that is an order.
You're suggesting a side-channel phone call and a threat so that he's still deciding but it's recorded as someone else's decision for PR purposes, and you think that's better? That's a terrible idea.
I disagree with GP, but this is basically how firings are handled at high levels.
It's very rare for a POTUS or a corporate CEO to actually fire a direct report. Instead, they say "you have X days to resign before I fire you" via a side channel, and most of the time the report opts for the resignation.
(funny thing is, at the first company I worked for, the CEO did this to the VP of Engineering... and the VP assumed he was bluffing, waited out the whole 30-day period he was given without resigning, and then got walked out of the building one morning in front of everyone who was there that early... and the guy who was in charge of walking him out was one of the people who was promoted to replace him)
I actually don't believe this is true - I can look up citations in a bit, but the FAA is an independent body whose directors are appointed by the president.
The Federal Aviation Agency was an independent agency, but the Federal Aviation Administration, which it became, is a subordinate agency within the Department of Transportation. It has an Administrator, but it does not have directors, commissioners, or some other multimember voting governing body.
more to the point, who told the FAA bods not to pull the plane? Was this the President too?
Because of how this has been handled by the Trump I think Boeing now have a 'Samsung Note 7' on their hands, i.e. a product that isn't going to be re-released as it is poorly engineered and can't be fixed by just changing a supplier or two. It was a hack with another hack to keep the hack okay. There will be a who knew what and when scandal. This won't be like the Dreamliner teething issues due to two lost planes. People can forgive teething issues but a scandal is a different beast.
> In August 1989, a Trump Shuttle flight arriving in Boston incurred a nose gear failure upon landing due to maintenance errors by Eastern personnel prior to the acquisition. Trump personally flew on the next Trump Shuttle flight to Boston in order to manage the media reaction to the incident.[3]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/boeing-shares-fall-after-rep...
Yes, but it'd not be unusual for the agency's director to check in with the president on a course of action or vice versa, verbally or via memorandum, without the president formally invoking his presidential authority via executive order.
To put the whole thing in perspective, the number of EOs issued annually by recent presidents Bush and Obama was very modest, averaging 36.4 and 34.6 respectively.
The words he used was "emergency order" and "we", not "executive order" and "I". CNBC is reporting it (not quoting any official source which says that, and citing only the President's "emergency order" public statement) as an "executive order", but other news sources are not, and Boeing is saying that they recommended the grounding to the FAA.
My initial impression is that this is an FAA action based on Boeing's recommendation that the White House wanted to take the press attention for.
That would make me feel better if this were true. It seems to match my expectations for who is in charge of various decisions, as well as the politics that Trump likes to play. So it makes sense at least.
> Early Tuesday, Dennis A. Muilenburg, the chief executive of Boeing, spoke to President Trump on the phone and made the case that the 737 Max planes should not be grounded in the United States, according to two people briefed on the conversation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/boeing-737-groun...
Maybe Boeing changed it's mind in between yesterday and today?Or that reporting was inaccurate?
Or, that's exactly what happened, but then today either Trump or Boeing or both of them realized this wasn't gonna fly (no pun intended), and that they had to be grounded, they talked to each other again, Trump decided he wanted to make an announcement about it because he likes being on TV about whatever he's thinking about at the moment. (I'm not sure an "emergency order", which Trump said it was, is even a thing?)
I mean, really, who the fuck knows. This administration doesn't tend to make a lot of sense, and it's kind of kremlinology trying to guess why they do what they do.
Well, the link to the order has that in its title (but is also a dead link right now):
[page with link] https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=93206
[target of link] https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Emergency_Order.pdf%2...
[EDIT: Oh, they f-ed up the URL in the link with a trailing space, and didn't verify it before posting: https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Emergency_Order.pdf ; It is indeed an "Emergency Order of Prohibition", and an FAA emergency order is an actual distinct legal thing under 49 USC Sec. 46105(c) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46105 ]