Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us.

This is an exciting day for the FAA, for the aviation and manufacturing industries, and for pilots across the country.

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve issued a final rule overhauling the FAA’s airworthiness standards for small general aviation airplanes.

The rule will usher in a new era of safety and innovation for general aviation in America.

It establishes performance-based standards for aircraft that weigh less than 19,000 pounds and with 19 or fewer seats.

It also adds new certification standards to address loss-of-control – the number one cause of fatal general aviation accidents.

This rule, which is better known as Part 23, is an exciting breakthrough for the aviation industry and our economy as a whole.

Aviation manufacturing is our nation’s top export, and general aviation alone contributes approximately $80 billion and 400,000 jobs to our economy.

By encouraging innovation and increasing flexibility, the new Part 23 will allow American businesses to create good manufacturing jobs and better compete in the global market.

Additionally, we are harmonizing Part 23 with our international counterparts to reduce certification costs for manufacturers who want to export their products.

This rule is critical to maintaining and increasing America’s role as the world leader in aviation innovation and safety.

It demonstrates that we can simultaneously enhance safety and reduce burdens on industry.

And it represents a fundamental shift in how the FAA approaches certification.

For a long time, we told manufacturers how to build a safe airplane. We required specific technologies with precise design elements.

But this system became strained as the industry evolved.

Companies have made tremendous strides forward in aircraft design. And as they kept coming to us with new ideas, our certification processes struggled to keep up.

To address this, we made some improvements around the edges over the years. But they were often incremental and independent from one another.

It became obvious that we needed a complete overhaul in how we certify aircraft if we wanted to increase safety and help products get to market faster.

We needed to rethink how we function as a regulator.

There’s a simple idea at the heart of our new airworthiness 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 – and it provides room for flexibility and innovation in the marketplace.

Part 23 is an important step forward in the FAA’s efforts to increase safety by incorporating risk-based decision-making into everything we do.

By making it easier, faster, and less expensive to get safety-enhancing technologies into small airplanes, we will continue to reduce the number of fatal general aviation accidents and save lives.

It was a huge undertaking – truly one of the most extensive and challenging rewrites ever tackled by our agency.

And it wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of our team at the FAA. My sincere thanks go out to everyone across the agency who contributed to the new Part 23.

We also couldn’t have gotten this rule across the finish line without the input and buy-in from stakeholders in the general aviation and manufacturing communities.

This rule is a model of what we can accomplish for American competitiveness when government and industry work together.

We have several of our partners here with us today, who are going to share how our new certification standards will benefit their companies and constituents.

First, we have Simon Caldecott, President and CEO of Piper Aircraft. He also serves as the Chairman of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.

We’re also joined by Brad Mottier from GE Aviation, who serves as the Vice President and General Manager of Business and General Aviation and Integrated Systems.

And finally, we have Joe Brown, President of Hartzell Propeller.

I’d also like to acknowledge Senator Amy Klobuchar and Congressman Mike Pompeo, who have been big supporters of this rule and general aviation as a whole.

Senator Klobuchar and Congressman Pompeo weren’t able to be here today, but they sent representatives from their offices, and we’re pleased to have them.

Now, let me turn things over to Simon Caldecott.