FAA Chief Dumps Millions in Airline Stock Months After His Ethics Agreement Deadline

Bryan Bedford, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, maintained a multimillion-dollar financial stake in an airline company his agency regulates for more than seven months after he took the top job, despite saying he’d fully divest within 90 days.

This week, Bedford disclosed the sale of $5 million to $26 million worth of airline stock in February, raising questions of whether he maintained a financial conflict of interest well into his tenure as FAA administrator and violated an ethics agreement he signed ahead of his confirmation.

The FAA acknowledged NOTUS’ request for comment but did not answer emailed questions.

Bedford is the former longtime chief executive of Republic Airways Holdings, an aviation holding company that owns two airlines. He held millions of dollars worth of stock in the company when he was confirmed by the Senate on July 9, 2025, according to federal records.

An Embraer 190 airliner (ERJ-190-100), belonging to Republic Airways, lands at Calgary, Alberta, on June 14, 2014. Larry MacDougal/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A month earlier, in June, Bedford wrote in a signed ethics agreement that “I will divest my equity as soon as practicable but not later than 90 days after my confirmation.” That put the deadline for Bedford to sell his shares on October 7, 2025.

“It’s concerning that Administrator Bedford failed to follow his ethics agreement and divest from Republic Airways Holdings in a timely manner,” Project On Government Oversight General Counsel Scott Amey told NOTUS in a statement. “The executive branch has ethics rules for a reason: the public should be able to trust that the head of the FAA is making decisions to benefit the public, not to line their own pockets. Investigating this delay is essential to ensure the public comes first.”

“This appears to be a serious matter,” Foundation for Aviation Safety Executive Director Ed Pierson said in a statement.

The foundation, he said, “expects FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, and all government officials, to fully comply with the law and to avoid any potential financial conflicts of interest. Unethical and/or illegal behavior has no place in the aviation industry.”

In December, the Office of Government Ethics notified Sen. Ted Cruz, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee’s chair, that Bedford “has failed to timely comply with certain terms of the ethics agreement he signed,” having not submitted a full Certification of Ethics Agreement Compliance and still appearing to retain stock in Republic Airways Holdings.

“This is unacceptable and demands a full accounting,” the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, wrote in a letter to Bedford at the time.

The Office of Government Ethics rejected a request by Bedford last year to extend the deadline to divest by 60 days. This week’s disclosure shows that Bedford retained millions worth of Republic Airways stock for months after the 90-day deadline, despite not being granted an extension.

In March, Bedford disclosed that he had fully divested from Republic Airways in February, Politico first reported, but did not at the time reveal the extent to which he had still been invested in the company.

Bedford isn’t the only Trump administration official to have stock in a company related to the field his agency regulates. Over December and January, the Federal Highway Administration’s administrator, Sean McMaster, bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock in a company that offers transportation services, NOTUS reported last month.

President Donald Trump himself bought Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery bonds last December in the midst of the streaming giant’s attempted takeover bid. And the White House dragged its feet on the full financial disclosures required of officials, including border czar Tom Homan.

Late financial disclosures are also not uncommon for Republican and Democratic members of Congress alike, who regularly find themselves on the opposite side of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act by disclosing stock trades after the required 45-day deadline.

Just this week, Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii, Rich McCormick of Georgia and Kelly Morrison of Minnesota violated the STOCK Act’s transparency provisions.