The FAA’s Second-in-Command Is Leaving, 18 Months After the DCA Collision

FAA deputy administrator Chris Rocheleau told agency employees on July 30, 2026 that he is leaving, ending a stint that began in the first hours of the deadliest US airline accident in more than two decades. He is returning to the National Business Aviation Association as chief operating officer, the job he held before the FAA called him back.

FAA general counsel Liam McKenna will serve as acting deputy administrator. Administrator Bryan Bedford, confirmed in July 2025, stays in post.

He arrived the day after the accident

Rocheleau was named acting FAA administrator on January 30, 2025, one day after an American Eagle regional jet and an Army Black Hawk collided over the Potomac on approach to Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people.

He ran the agency through the immediate response: the helicopter route restrictions around the airport, the initial NTSB coordination, and the political fallout that followed. He handed the top job to Bedford in July 2025 and moved into the deputy administrator’s chair the same month.

Rocheleau is not a political appointee in the usual sense. He worked at the FAA for most of the period between 1996 and 2022, including a run as chief of staff, with a spell at the Transportation Security Administration in between, and retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in 2010.

Why the timing is awkward

The deputy administrator is the FAA’s chief operating role, the person who keeps the agency’s day-to-day machinery running while the administrator handles Congress and the White House. Losing that person mid-agenda matters more than a typical government departure.

Rocheleau’s portfolio included modernizing the National Airspace System, and lately the question of where artificial intelligence fits into it. That work sits on top of the controller shortage the agency has been fighting for years, a staffing gap that predates the collision and has proven stubbornly hard to close.

It also lands two days after the NTSB pressed Congress to enact all 50 of its DCA recommendations, with the safety legislation still stalled between competing bills. The FAA will be implementing whatever emerges from that fight, and it will now do so with an acting deputy.

Where he goes next

NBAA is the main US trade group for business and corporate aviation. Rocheleau was its chief operating officer from 2022 until the FAA recalled him in January 2025, so this is a return rather than a first appointment.

NBAA president Ed Bolen said Rocheleau’s “deep commitment to service, his strategic approach to organizational management and his trusted relationships with top leaders throughout government and industry uniquely qualify him for this important role.”

His last public appearance for the FAA was fittingly a general aviation one. He stood in for Bedford at the “Meet the Administrator” forum at AirVenture, where he suggested the 2030 deadline for ending leaded avgas might slip, days before the agency published its final unleaded fuel transition plan holding that date.