Remarks as prepared for delivery

Good afternoon, everyone. It’s great to be back addressing NASAO again.

The world looks a lot different than it did the last time I spoke here.

President Trump has taken office – and as with any new administration, there are a number of changes happening across the federal government and at the FAA.

So I’d like to start off today by providing a brief update on where things stand.

As you know, Elaine Chao was recently confirmed as Secretary of Transportation.

She comes to us with a wealth of experience in the public sector. She formerly served as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation under President George H.W. Bush, and the Secretary of Labor under President George W. Bush.

Secretary Chao is in the process of building her team at the Department of Transportation. About 100 political appointees have or will be joining DOT in the coming weeks, and we’ll be welcoming a number of them to the FAA.

I've had the opportunity to meet with the Secretary frequently since she assumed her new role. She has shared that her top priorities for DOT are safety, infrastructure, and innovation. These are topics we obviously know a lot about at the FAA.

Still, this is obviously a period of change for our agency. New administrations always mean new agendas and priorities – and there’s a lot we still don’t know.

What we do know, however, is that our mission remains the same: to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.

And in order to continue meeting that mission, we need the right tools and resources.

We all know how vital aviation is to our national interests. It’s estimated to support nearly 11 million jobs and account for more than five percent of our Gross Domestic Product and $1.6 trillion in total economic activity.

Supporting this industry is important to all of us at the national, state, and local level.

President Trump has said he wants to invest in America’s airports, which is great news.

We hope to see this commitment reflected in our budget and the FAA bill that Congress will take up this year.

We’re also likely to see a major public policy debate play out – about the upgrades being made to our air traffic control system, how it’s being managed, and who should pay for it.

The FAA must and will play an active role in this conversation.

I’ll be recommending to the new Administration that we proactively put forward our own reauthorization proposal.

It should be a plan that helps us build on our safety record, integrate new entrants like drones into our airspace, and continue modernizing our air traffic control system.

All of you have been essential partners in these modernization efforts. NextGen isn’t an FAA project, or an airline project – it’s redefining air traffic control nationwide and delivering benefits in all of your states.

The FAA can demonstrate that it has already delivered more than $2.7 billion in NextGen benefits. We expect that number to climb to $160 billion by 2030.

And for programs already underway, we expect to achieve $13 billion in benefits by 2020. At that point, the benefits will exceed our projected investment in NextGen.

One of the key reasons we’ve been successful is because of the work we’ve done with stakeholders through the NextGen Advisory Committee.

We’ve worked closely with industry and leaders at the state and local level to prioritize our investments and deliver the benefits they need most.

This led us to complete the nationwide rollout of Data Comm more than two years ahead of schedule, for example.

So the facts speak for themselves: NextGen is succeeding. We’re delivering benefits. And our progress is being recognized by industry.

The work we’re doing on NextGen is only one part of a larger cultural change taking place at the FAA.

From its earliest days, aviation has always been defined by innovation. It needs to define our agency, as well.

I’ve been taking that message to every office at every level of the FAA. And we’re seeing results in a wide variety of ways.

In December, we issued a final rule overhauling the FAA’s airworthiness standards for small general aviation airplanes.

There’s a simple idea at the heart of these new certification standards: we don’t want to tell manufacturers how to build things.

Instead of requiring certain technologies or designs, we’re defining the performance objectives we want to achieve.

This approach recognizes that there’s more than one way to deliver on safety. It provides room for flexibility and innovation in the marketplace. And it will allow American businesses to create good manufacturing jobs and better compete in the global market.

We’re not just rethinking how airplanes get designed and built. We’re also looking at what goes into them.

By working closely with industry, we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in the development and deployment of alternative jet fuel.

Over the last seven years, five new drop-in fuels have been approved that are all safe to use in today’s aircraft fleet, and additional fuels are under evaluation.

These fuels come from a wide variety of resources –everything from fats and oils, to sugar and cellulose, to solid and gas waste.

Fuel costs are also decreasing. While early efforts produced fuel at $60 a gallon, some are now coming in at about $3 a gallon.

These new fuels, which a number of operators are beginning to use, offer a tremendous opportunity – not only for the industry, but for reducing aviation’s impact on the environment.

Opportunity drives so much of the innovation happening in aviation today. This industry has never been content with what we have – it’s always focused on what’s possible.

Nowhere are we seeing this more than in commercial space.

Space transportation is more popular than it’s ever been. We’re seeing more vehicles, carrying more types of payloads, launching from more sites.

In fact, we’ve had a 55 percent increase in the number of launch applications compared to this time last year.

With all this growth comes added complexity. So the FAA is looking into new and better ways to integrate these operations into our airspace.

Until now, we’ve considered commercial space launches to be rare events. So we’ve blocked off huge portions of airspace each time a launch occurs.

We know this isn’t sustainable. And we’re working to develop a traffic management system that will allow us to more efficiently block off and release air space so these operations can become a more regular part of our larger air traffic system.

We’re also examining how we should classify spaceports.

There’s a wide range of vehicles that could potentially operate from a commercial space launch site. But not every one of these vehicles can be safely accommodated at every spaceport.

We need to work with industry and your states to discuss how to develop a system for categorizing the various types of spaceports being considered. This will help provide greater clarity on the availability and usage of these sites.

I hope you’ll play an active role in these conversations.

Of course, we can’t talk about integrating new users into our airspace without mentioning drones.

I know Hoot Gibson spoke earlier, so I don’t want to spend too much time on this topic.

But I do want to thank NASAO and its members for supporting our work on unmanned aircraft.

Last year, we formed a Drone Advisory Committee to help us prioritize our unmanned aircraft integration activities over the long term, including the development of future regulations and policies.

It includes representatives from the technology and aviation industries, labor organizations, academia, and state and local governments. NASAO is well-represented.

David Greene from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is serving as a member, and John Eagerton from the Alabama Department of Transportation is heading up one of the Committee’s task groups.

At the DAC's meeting last month, the group discussed the roles and responsibilities of Federal, state, and local governments when it comes to regulating drone operations in low-altitude airspace.

They also considered airspace access, and identifying the highest-priority unmanned aircraft operations beyond those that are currently permitted.

And they started to look into the issue of funding – how best to pay for the services required to integrate unmanned aircraft into our airspace.

At the Committee’s next meeting in May, we’ll be receiving their initial recommendations on these topics. And their feedback will be essential to the FAA’s unmanned aircraft efforts moving forward.

Of course, drones aren’t the only emerging technologies we’re dealing with. 

Remote towers, which use video and surveillance technology to take the place of a manned air traffic control tower, could potentially open up new areas to air service where it wouldn’t otherwise be economically feasible.

This technology is already being used in other countries to offer air traffic services.

And the FAA has been proud to work closely with our partners in Virginia and Colorado to test these remote tower capabilities.

With all of this innovation happening in aviation, it’s no surprise that it captures the attention of a number of young people.

I heard a story on NPR recently about a group of kids from Chicago who got to take a trip to Washington. For many of them, it was their first time leaving Chicago.

The reporter went along for the ride and noted how everything was new to them. While the seasoned travelers were probably only paying casual attention to the pre-flight safety briefing, these kids were riveted to every word.

It was apparently a cloudy day, so when the plane finally broke free of the clouds, one of the kids shouted, “We’re in the blue!”

We often get so caught up in the mechanics of what we do – the politics, the technology, the infrastructure. It can be easy to lose our sense of wonder for flight.

But that sense of wonder is what creates the enthusiasm for aviation that is going to help continue propelling our industry forward.

The FAA has made it a priority to reach out to the next generation through a number of education initiatives.

We’ve hosted Aviation Career Education Academies across the country, which introduce kids to the many careers available in our industry.

And last year, our Aviation and Space Education Program reached nearly 18,000 students with activities supporting STEM subjects.

I know this is also a priority for NASAO and your Chairman, Brad Brandt. And I’m proud that we’ve been able to work together on it.

Most recently, NASAO, the FAA, and other industry partners selected two top aerospace educators for award recognition. And we’ve been happy to help promote NASAO’s International Art Contest, which challenges students to illustrate the importance of aviation through art.

The FAA and NASAO have a long history of cooperation and collaboration, in this and countless other areas.

In fact, we’ll be signing a new Memorandum of Understanding that reinforces this relationship in just a few minutes.

During this period of transition, our partnership will be more important than ever.

We have a new President, a new Transportation Secretary, and a new Congress. In the coming months, we’ll be considering some of the most fundamental questions about our nation’s aviation system.

I hope you’ll make your voices heard.

Thank you.