The White House announced today, January 6, 2009, that Lynne A. Osmus will take over for Bobby Sturgell effective January 16, 2009.  Near the end of a "personnel announcement," announcing many of President Bush’s last minute appointments is the the statement:  "The President intends to designate Lynne A. Osmus, of Virginia, to be Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, to become effective January 16, 2009."

Ms. Osmus is currently the FAA Assistant Administrator for Security and Hazardous Materials, a position she has held since July 1, 2003.  She has been with the FAA since 1979, and an executive since 1990, primarily in the field of aviation security.  She was appointed to be the Deputy Associate Administrator of FAA’s Civil Aviation Security Program just three months prior to the 9/11 attacks and then led the FAA’s transition of the security programs to the TSA.

More recently, Ms. Osmus was designated as the "transition executive" for the Obama Transition team.  This reunited her with her old boss Jane Garvey, the former FAA Administrator under President Clinton, for whom Ms. Osmus was Chief of Staff.  Ms. Garvey is a member of the Obama Transition team and had been mentioned as a possible nominee for Secretary of Transportation.

The appointment comes as a bit of a surprise, since the current Acting Administrator, Bobby Sturgell, has not been reported as having resigned.  That being said, it was widely assumed that he would be stepping down at the end of the Bush Administration since his effort to remove the "acting" from his title was unsuccessful.  In addition, reports from sources in the FAA had indicated that Mr. Sturgell had presented Ms. Osmus as the new Deputy Administrator in an internal e-mail as recently as Monday, January 5, 2009.