Speech

ABA Air & Space Forum

This is one of those subjects that’s open to quite a bit of debate, some of which you’ll hear over the next hour or so. The good news is that we all agree that aviation safety standards need to be harmonized and consistently implemented around the world. There are shades of gray when it comes to how to get there, but we’re not fighting the battle of why safety needs to be a priority.

Because it all comes down to it, safety is the foundation for public confidence in aviation. It’s public confidence that’s fuels the industry’s economic viability. What the public trusts, the public buys.

The key to ensuring the long-term global success of aviation is cooperation on safety. It’s because of international cooperation we have come a long way in a relatively short period of time.

Over 60 years ago, almost no one agreed on international safety standards or operating procedures. Each nation retained rights over its airspace. But cooler heads prevailed and we realized that if we wanted an international aviation system, we had to solve the regulatory and institutional matters first.

Fortunately, the safety issues were left to the technicians. In 1944, 54 countries met in Chicago to establish a commitment to a common set of aviation standards and operating procedures. And so from this city came the Chicago Convention and the decision to establish ICAO to develop and oversee international safety standards.

Today, 190 countries have signed up to adopt these standard and to recognize certificates and licenses issued under those standards. What an elegant solution.

For a long time we assumed that compliance with ICAO Standards was addressed by an air carrier’s homeland government. But the crash of a foreign flag carrier near the John F. Kennedy airport in New York in the early 1990s raised questions of whether civil aviation authorities were meeting their commitments.

FAA established a program to verify that other authorities were meeting their commitments — and there’s nothing new in safety professionals holding each other accountable. The International Aviation Safety Assessment program was established to ensure that foreign air carriers operating to and from the United States are properly licensed and had safety oversight provided by a competent authority in accordance with the applicable ICAO standards.

It was a question that needed to be asked, and we found many locations couldn’t show they met international standards. It was unpopular and we had some different experiences, but in many cases our findings helped civil aviation authorities get the resources and support they needed.

When the FAA completed its first round of IASA assessments about 15 years ago, two-thirds of those states didn’t meet minimum international standards. Today, it’s the opposite. Three-fourths meet international standards.

We’re not the only ones holding each other accountable. Europe has established its inspection program and its blacklist.

ICAO also stepped up its oversight with the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Program. We’ve all been audited and we’ve seen each others results.

But, audits of compliance are just the first step. The next step is to assist the state in establishing full compliance. The FAA has initiated a number of programs to assist states in meeting ICAO Standards.

We’ve developed and we update a model civil aviation law and regulations for adoption by a state. This is available in both English and Spanish and is being translated into French. We’re partnering with ICAO and other states to develop and teach ICAO endorsed training for safety inspectors and personnel in operations, airworthiness, and personnel licensing. And we also provide technical assistance for states working on action plans.

We provided long term technical assistance in Africa, South America, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Just this year we made 24 technical assistance visits. We’ve trained more than 200 foreign aviation safety inspectors.

As many of you know, we also established the Commercial Aviation Safety Team to identify common causes of accidents and develop safety enhancements to reduce risk.

We wanted to reduce the U.S. fatal accident rates, and we did. When you look at accident rates worldwide, you’ll see we need the same focus worldwide. And we’re trying. We’ve shared the CAST analyses and safety enhancements worldwide. Europe has taken a step of its own, ECAST, and adopted 46 of the CAST safety recommendations.

In Asia, ICAO is coordinating the adoption of 40 safety enhancements in aircraft operations, maintenance, runway safety and air traffic control. Because we know there’s safety in the numbers, FAA, ICAO and Europe are developing a common taxonomy worldwide to support our ability to share and analyze data.

We keep working to harmonize our standards.

The FAA and EASA have a yearly rulemaking meeting to discussing rulemaking priorities. When we undertake rulemaking, our process requires us to address “international compatibility” and to indicate how our proposed rule compares with ICAO. We’re also sharing safety data. We have developed an International Aviation Safety Data Exchange Program to share ramp inspection data by civil aviation authority staff at a technical level.

So, is there de facto global regulation of aviation safety? Hardly! It was planned that there would be global regulation of aviation. But the three pronged approach — hold each other to the standards, provide assistance where needed, and proactively identify and address risk enhances safe air transportation around the world.