Drones: A Story of Revolution and Evolution

Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us here today.  I hope you had a great holiday, and I want to wish you all a very Happy New Year.

For 50 years, the Consumer Electronics Show has been the place where technology meets everyday life. In the past, that wouldn’t be a place where you’d expect to meet someone from the FAA.

But, with its eager embrace of drone technology, CES has soared into the frontier of aviation. And that means this is exactly where we need to be.

We have a whole FAA team staffing a booth down in the drone marketplace. They’re available to answer questions and get any feedback that attendees have to offer. I encourage you all to stop by for a visit.

For me personally, this is my second straight year visiting CES. And I have to tell you, I find the array of products on display to be just as spectacular as I did a year ago. Maybe even more so.

There is cutting-edge innovation all around us: Artificial intelligence. Virtual reality. Wearables. Digital imaging. And, of course, drones.

Since my last visit here, the story of drones has continued to be a story of revolution and evolution.

Revolution in the technology and how it’s being used. And evolution in the way we, the FAA, are approaching integrating this new entrant into the National Airspace System.

Our challenge is to find the right balance where safety and innovation co-exist on relatively equal planes. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we have accomplished more toward this goal in the past year than we did in all previous years combined.

We worked with industry to establish the first set of comprehensive rules for flying small unmanned aircraft.

We established a Drone Advisory Committee and held our first annual unmanned aircraft symposium.

We’re researching everything from how to detect rogue drones to managing future drone traffic.

And we’re redesigning our website to make it more user-friendly for consumers.

With so many people channeling so much energy toward innovation, it’s hard to predict what the next great technological breakthrough in the drone field will be. But one thing is certain: our challenges are only going to get more complicated.

The sheer number of drones entering our airspace is a case in point. Just like last year, drones were one of the hottest gift items this past holiday season. 

But unlike a lot of holiday gifts, this one is clearly not a fad.

Indeed, our latest aerospace forecast estimates that there could be as many as 7 million drones sold in the United States by 2020. That’s about 2 ½ times the population of the state of Nevada. 

And the pace of change is breathtaking. It seems like someone is coming up with a new way to use drones every day.

Just this week, the city of Henderson and the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems broke ground on a new drone testing range located near Nevada State College.    

With both technology and innovation blazing ahead at warp speed, we know that as regulators, we have to lean forward. We have to approach our challenges with the same kind of creativity and open-mindedness that is fueling the drone revolution.

We also know that for us to be successful, we cannot dictate from above. We must work in close collaboration and partnership with the industry and those who fly unmanned aircraft for both recreation and commercial purposes.

So instead of telling the drone industry and drone operators what they can’t do, we’re helping them do what they want to do – while ensuring they operate safely.

That’s the approach we took with the small unmanned aircraft rule.

The rule, which took effect in August, enables people to fly drones for non-hobby purposes without getting specific authorization from the FAA – provided they operate within certain parameters.

As long as the operator earns a Remote Pilot Certificate, he or she can fly a registered drone weighing less than 55 pounds, during the daytime, up to 400 feet above ground level in uncontrolled airspace.

With the FAA’s permission, drone operators can fly in controlled airspace. And drone operators seeking to conduct expanded operations – at night time, over people, or beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight – can request a waiver.

In the four months since this rule went into effect, more than 30,000 people have started the Remote Pilot Application process. About 16,000 have taken the Remote Pilot Knowledge Exam, and almost 90 percent have passed. 

The next step in this evolution is to allow small unmanned aircraft to be flown over people under specific circumstances.

As many of you know, we’ve been working diligently on a proposed rule to allow just that, building on the foundation from the advisory rulemaking committee we convened last spring.

Allowing unmanned aircraft to fly over people raises safety questions because of the risk of injury to those underneath in the event of a failure.

It also raises security issues. As drone flights over people become more and more commonplace, imagine the challenge of a local police officer at a parade trying to determine which drones are properly there to photograph the festivities – and which may be operated by individuals with more sinister purposes.

The process of working with our interagency partners to reconcile these challenges is taking time. In addition, meetings conducted with industry stakeholders as part of the rulemaking process have raised a number of issues.

But you have my steadfast commitment to doing all I can to advance this effort. And we will be looking to our industry partners to develop more ingenious ways to ensure drones can fly over people without sacrificing safety or security.

And further down the road, we’re going to implement rules that will allow routine unmanned aircraft operations beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight.

This need to involve all stakeholders in framing challenges and finding solutions drove a pair of important new initiatives last year.

One was the formation of the Drone Advisory Committee, or DAC for short. The other was our decision to hold an annual unmanned aircraft symposium.

We formed the DAC last summer. It’s chaired by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, and its members include representatives from the industry, government, labor and academia.

This allows us to look at drone use from every angle, while considering the different viewpoints and needs of this diverse community.

The group held its first meeting in September, and they’ve started work on helping us determine two important things:

• What the highest-priority UAS operations are and how industry can gain access to the airspace to conduct these operations.
• And identifying the roles and responsibilities of drone operators, manufacturers, and federal, state, and local officials related to drone use in populated areas.

The DAC’s next meeting will be held here in Nevada later this month – up north in Reno.

A number of our DAC members will also be participating in the second annual unmanned aircraft symposium in the Washington, DC, area in March. The symposium is really the ultimate exercise in democracy. Anyone who registers has the opportunity to talk face-to-face with federal regulators and industry representatives about regulations, research and integration initiatives.

These kinds of frank conversations are critical as we begin to tackle the bigger challenges that integration poses. And they’re helping to inform the work that the DAC undertakes.

During the upcoming symposium, these conversations will touch on the intersection of privacy and preemption. The importance of harmonizing global regulations so they’re the same if you’re flying in London or Long Island.

And they’ll also touch on the array of new safety and security risks associated with this pioneering form of aviation.

These risks include users who do not understand what it means to fly safely. People who don’t think they should be regulated and are determined to operate as they please. And actual bad actors, such as criminals and terrorists, who seek to use unmanned aircraft for malicious purposes.

Just as there’s a broad range of risks, so too is there a broad range of potential tools to address these risks.

One of our most important tools is education. And one of our most important education initiatives is the drone registry that we implemented just before Christmas 2015.

In the past year, more than 670,000 drone users have registered aircraft – including more than 37,000 during the last two weeks of December. All of these people have received our important safety messages that are part of the registration process.  

And our B4UFLY app alerts operators to airspace restrictions or requirements in effect in the areas where they want to fly.  

While education will always be a fundamental underpinning of safety, sometimes it is not enough.

For example, despite our education efforts, we’re seeing an increasing number of drone-sighting reports from pilots. We had about 1,800 in 2016, compared to about 1,200 the year before.

So we’re working closely with other government agencies and some of our Pathfinder Partners on a drone-detection security effort.

This involves testing technologies designed to detect unauthorized drone operations near airports and other critical infrastructure, or in unauthorized airspace.

We’ve evaluated some of these technologies around airports in New York, Atlantic City and Denver, and will be doing additional research at Dallas-Fort Worth later this year.  

We will use the data and findings from these evaluations to draft recommendations for standards. These standards will help inform airport operators nationwide who are considering installing drone-detection systems.

One of the many things we have learned during the past few years is that when it comes to drones, the future can become the present in the blink of an eye. With this in mind, we have to figure out how to manage drone traffic in airspace that is shared with manned aircraft.

Toward that end, we’re working with NASA to develop a concept for an unmanned aircraft traffic management system – an effort called UTM.

At the unmanned aircraft test site here in Nevada, the University of Nevada-Reno is helping NASA conduct tests to support this effort.  

This past October, they flew – and tracked – five drones at the same time beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight from Reno-Stead Airport. Each drone accomplished a separate simulated task, including looking for a lost hiker, covering a sporting event, monitoring wildlife and surveying environmental hazards.

Tests like these will help build the foundation for managing much greater amounts of drone traffic in the coming years.

In all of the work we’re doing, we are not forgetting about the needs of the individual consumer. We’re designing a common web portal that will act as one-stop-shop for all unmanned aircraft interactions with the FAA.

It will allow drone owners and operators to register their aircraft, apply for an airspace authorization or waiver, file an accident report and keep abreast of the latest FAA news and announcements about unmanned aircraft.

It will be designed for desktops, laptops, tablets and phones, and will serve as the platform for future communication with the FAA as unmanned aircraft rules and regulations evolve.

The progress that we have made during the past year would have seemed unimaginable not long ago.

It’s a great start, but it’s just the beginning.

We know there are many important issues yet to be addressed. And we know we can’t do it alone.

We will always need the input and expertise of all of our stakeholders, so we can craft the right kinds of policies and solutions to the challenges before us.

CES will continue to be a valuable forum, where we can give and take information, as we work our way down this path.

Thank you for joining us here today and being part of this journey.

Part 23 Press Conference

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.

FAA Caribbean Initiative

Ontario Airport Transfer Ceremony

As Prepared for Delivery

Thank you for that introduction, Alan, and good afternoon everybody.

I am very happy to be back home in Southern California. And I am delighted to be able to help celebrate this landmark occasion with you today.

Some of you might know that I grew up just a few miles from here, in the community formerly known as Rubidoux, and that is now known as the City of Jurupa Valley.

Over the years, my work has taken me far away, to places including San Francisco, New York, Salt Lake City and, now, the nation’s capital.

But the Inland Empire will always be home.

You know, one of the things I remember most clearly about living here in the 1960s and 1970s was how bad the air was.

It seemed like this soupy, brown smog was always hovering just above our heads.

Back then, we also had a saying that the Inland Empire was an hour away from amazing beaches, pristine desert and verdant mountains. But to my friends and me, we joked that that meant we were in the middle of nowhere.

Well, things have certainly changed, haven’t they? And that didn’t happen by chance.

At my alma mater, UC Riverside, one of the main focuses of the campus was how science and public policy could be combined and applied to improving air quality.

The work done there helped this region become one of the driving forces behind scrubbing California’s air of the omnipresent brown haze.

And, over time, California became a worldwide leader in developing and enacting strategies for improving air quality.

This region also took steps to strip itself of the “middle of nowhere” moniker.

Local leaders didn’t want to be just a bedroom community of Los Angeles.

They realized that to control their own destiny, they had to actively build their own economy. And build they did.

In the process, they were smart about attracting a diverse foundation of businesses to the area. And, just as important, they were smart about establishing the right zoning regulations around Ontario International Airport.

Aviation is 5 percent of the national Gross Domestic Product, and the Inland Empire’s leadership understood that the airport is a vital economic engine.

They acted to protect it from incompatible surrounding development that could threaten its viability.

As a result of their forethought and deliberate planning, the middle of nowhere gradually morphed into the middle of everywhere.

In recent years, you decided that gaining local control over the local airport was the next logical progression in this ongoing master plan.

When the folks here first started talking about assuming control of the airport, I think it’s fair to say that the betting line in Vegas would have been solidly against them.

This was really a monumental undertaking, with scores of moving parts that had to fuse together perfectly for this thing to work. And the roadblocks were incredibly daunting.

First you had to get consensus that local control was really something the region collectively wanted to achieve.

Then you had to form an airport authority.

Then you had to reach an agreement with the City of Los Angeles to part with an asset it had run for nearly half a century.

And, once that agreement was forged, you had to assemble a leadership team capable of crafting a vision for this airport and piloting it into the future.

The process could have derailed at any point, and more than a few people predicted it would. The fact that it didn’t speaks to the drive and determination of the leadership here in the Inland Empire.

And it also speaks to the commitment of the City of Los Angeles to embrace and help effect this change.

I often talk about the importance of flexibility and collaboration to our success at the FAA. It’s critical to the effectiveness of everything from our aviation safety oversight system to our efforts to safely integrate drones into the national airspace.

Flexibility and collaboration were also key to steering you to where you are today with this airport. It took the efforts of everyone directly involved in the process, and a number of others on the outside, to make this happen.

I cannot begin to recognize everyone who played a critical role in forging this transfer. But I do want to acknowledge some of the key players:

U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

Congressman Ken Calvert.

Congresswoman Grace Napolitano.

Congresswoman Norma Torres.

Ontario Mayor Paul Leon, and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Ontario International Airport Authority President Alan Wapner, and CEO Kelly Fredericks.

And, of course, Los Angeles World Airports CEO Deborah Flint.

The danger in recognizing a few is you leave out many whose efforts were critical to us being able to gather here today. So to everyone who played a role in this process, I say congratulations for a job well done.

Well, Ontario, you are now the dog that caught the car.

As of today, the public record shows that the Ontario International Airport Authority owns and operates Ontario International Airport.

From this day on, your job isn’t just to grow the airport.

Your job is also to maintain an airport that is safe.

That is publicly available to all users.

That meticulously observes every requirement of our comprehensive commercial airport regulations.

You have the responsibility to be good stewards of this vital asset. And you have the opportunity to even further define the future of this region.

Your journey has been—and will continue to be --challenging, enlightening, frustrating and invigorating – sometimes all at once.

But I think your future is a bright one.

Now the key question is this: what is the story that will be written for Ontario International Airport and the Inland Empire?

Marketing and building up service at medium-sized airports like Ontario has never been an easy task. And the challenge is arguably greater today than it has been in the past.

The FAA forecasts that much of the nation’s passenger growth over the next 20 years will occur at the largest and busiest airports as airlines continue to consolidate their structures and schedules to become more profitable.

The airline industry also has experienced unprecedented consolidation, with four major mergers in five years.

But with great challenges come great opportunities.

Here in the Inland Empire, a wide range of groups and interests have shown they’re adept at working together toward a common goal. That is very important.

And the region has an awful lot going for it.

You’ve seen impressive economic growth, adding nearly 200,000 jobs over the last five years. And in 2016, you’re on track to add another 50,000 jobs.

Much of this growth reflects the region's traditional strength in logistics. But healthcare and manufacturing are also seeing significant gains.

A strong business base translates to strong business demand for air transportation service. And economic growth means more demand from leisure travelers as well.

Moreover, Ontario's location in the heart of the Inland Empire is an advantage for area residents who want to avoid languishing in Southern California's infamous traffic congestion.

You have embraced change and challenges head-on, with an unwavering determination to achieve your goals, regardless of what roadblocks rise up in front of you.

If I were a betting man, I would say the odds in Vegas have flipped since this process first started. I’d say smart money would be placed on Ontario International Airport to succeed.

I won’t be surprised if, in a decade or two, we look back at this very occasion as a seminal moment in the history of this airport.

I won’t be surprised if we say this was the beginning of its ascendance toward becoming an even stronger and more vibrant regional anchor than it is today.

Again, thank you very much for allowing me to be part of this celebration.

And congratulations to everyone for persevering to get to where we are today.

Thank you.

And now, I would like to ask Alan Wapner and Kelly Fredericks to come up. 

I am pleased to present to you, the Ontario International Airport operating certificate, and the airport transfer letter.

Again, congratulations.

ATCA Conference Keynote Address

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thank you, Pete. It’s great to be here at ATCA. These conferences are always a great place to catch a broad cross-section of the industry and to see some of the latest technologies being showcased.

But you know, I sometimes wonder about what’s NOT being showcased. 

In other words, what’s still being conceptualized that we might see in the coming years? 

What advanced projects are under development that could foster the next set of innovations for aviation?

I’m reminded of Lockheed Martin Co.’s Skunk Works, which many of you know something about. The Skunk is the company’s official advanced project unit that started during World War II.

Or so we’re told that’s when it started. After all, it was pretty secret.

The Skunk Works is where they came up with the designs for famous aircraft such as the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-22 Raptor.

Skunk Works engineers were successful because they had the freedom to be creative and to pursue futuristic ideas. Many times, they started a project before the contract was even awarded. There was just a request from the customer, followed by a handshake.

The idea was that with less bureaucratic red tape, they could create an environment where innovation could thrive.  And thrive it did!

In fact, in 1943, the Skunk Works designed and produced the first American jet fighter, and it was completed in only 143 days—a week before the deadline. 

Today, the term “skunk works” is a widely used nickname in many sectors of industry.

Like Lockheed’s real unit, the term refers to that group within an organization that, to put it simply, is working on a lot of cool stuff—stuff that has the potential to change our lives.

So I wonder what projects are being developed in all of the skunk works-like groups that exist across America, and what we’ll see coming out of them in the future.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job, it’s this:  the future is a lot closer than most people think it is.  Aviation is making technological leaps forward that are making a difference today.

One thing is clear – industry is moving at the speed of innovation.  We can’t afford to move at the traditional speed of government. 

And that’s not just a call for us at the FAA. It’s a call for all of us – as an aviation community. Because so much of what the FAA does now is in collaboration with all of you. 

Our collective success is a function of how well we can work together, and how nimble and flexible we can be, in this rapidly changing time. 

I don’t think there is a better example of changing times than what we’re seeing with drones. They’re being used in so many industries like filmmaking, agriculture, search and rescue operations, inspections of rail tracks and pipelines, and many others.

The FAA’s Small UAS rule went into effect in late August. And within six weeks, about 19,000 people had applications either completed, or in process, for their Remote Pilot Certificate.

And one forecast estimates that there could be as many as 7 million drones sold in the United States by 2020.  That’s about 1 million more than the population here in the state of Maryland.      

We are only beginning to see some of the ingenious uses of new and miniaturized technologies developed for drones.

Moreover, they’re thinking the product life cycle for drones might be a mere 4-6 months. That’s how fast things are changing.

But this new industry is not without its growing pains.

Safely integrating drones into a system that already includes everything from crop dusters to commercial rockets is a big challenge.

At last year’s convention, you may remember me talking about the FAA’s work to set up a drone registry. 

Secretary Foxx had asked us to set it up before Christmas, because we knew a lot of people were going to get drones in their stocking.

We only had two months, which was a pretty ambitious timetable. I heard from a number of people who thought we’d made a promise we couldn’t keep.

But we got to work. We weren’t going to let traditional processes or assumptions determine what we were capable of. We had to think outside the box. 

We took advice from experts in the aviation and technology industries.

We held daily meetings between employees at every level of the agency. This helped us to improve coordination and troubleshoot issues more efficiently.

We succeeded in getting the drone registry up and running before Christmas. And in the ten months since then, more than 576,000 UAS users have registered. This far exceeds the nearly 320,000 manned aircraft we have registered. And it took us 100 years to reach that number! 

The success of the drone registry is a testament to how much can be achieved when government and industry work together.

Now is not the time to get comfortable, because we expect this industry to evolve rapidly. Today, we’re talking about small-sized UAS operating within the pilot’s visual line of sight.

In the months and years ahead, we’ll be transitioning to larger UAS, flying over populated areas, and traveling beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight.

Our goal is that any sized drone can operate safely in virtually every type of airspace. We have to ensure the safety of traditional aircraft, and ensure the safety of people and property on the ground.

We’re making several efforts here. We’re looking at research being conducted by Assure, the FAA’s UAS Center of Excellence, which includes more than 20 universities.

We will also be watching the progress of the FAA-NASA UAS Traffic Management initiative. How can we use emerging technologies to help solve potential airspace conflicts in such a way that the aircraft can predict and avoid a problem long before the operator sees it?

I’ll tell a little story on us here.

A few days ago, as part of our agency wide Combined Federal Campaign to raise money from workers for worthwhile charities, the FAA’s Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City held an agency fair to highlight some of the things we do at the center.

One of the employees had proposed conducting a recreational drone flight at the center to highlight our UAS work.

Well, the aeronautical center is on the grounds of Will Rogers World Airport, which means it’s clearly inside the magic five-mile circle.

The employee did everything right to obtain the necessary approvals – including earning his Part 107 pilot certificate!

But because of built-in geo-fencing software, the drone wouldn’t even leave the ground unless the employee entered a special code from the manufacturer.

Thanks to the industry, this software is on tens of thousands of drones, providing one more defense against an unwanted conflict.

As we move forward, we’ll be working closely with industry experts and stakeholders to mutually solve challenges like this.

Last month, the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee, or DAC, held its first meeting.   

The DAC includes representatives from the technology and aviation industries, labor organizations, and state and local governments. It will help us prioritize our unmanned aircraft integration activities, including the development of future regulations and policies.

Now, we didn’t start from scratch when we came up with the idea for the DAC. It’s closely modeled after our NextGen Advisory Committee – another collaboration with industry that has been essential to the FAA’s work modernizing our air traffic system.

One thing that’s abundantly clear is that you need buy-in from a wide variety of stakeholders if you want to get a big project like NextGen right.

I know Teri Bristol gave you an excellent recap of how we are hitting all of the major milestones with NextGen. What I’d like to do is highlight how we’ve been successful. And it’s been because of this buy-in.

Let me give you an example.

As many of you know, Data Communications, or Data Comm, is a NextGen technology that allows air traffic controllers and pilots to exchange information using digital data exchange, in addition to voice communications.

When we started working on Data Comm several years ago, one of our first priorities was to engage with stakeholders. We wanted them to see the benefits, and we wanted their input.

Ultimately, pilots and controllers have to want to use it. They have to buy in.

We started off by conducting trials at Newark and Memphis International Airports to test equipment and develop flight deck and tower procedures. And we worked closely with partners like United Airlines, FedEx, and UPS to measure the fuel and time savings Data Comm could provide.

The industry immediately started to see the benefit. 

In fact, our airline partners on the NextGen Advisory Committee asked us to make Data Comm a priority so they could take advantage of its capabilities more quickly and in more locations.

And we listened. We initially envisioned rolling it out in three years. But we took what we learned from the trials, and accelerated the plan.

At the start of the year, Data Comm was operational at five airports.

Today, it’s up and running at 48 air traffic control towers nationwide. The program is two years ahead of schedule. 

But NextGen is not without its challenges.

Performance Based Navigation has certainly made flights more efficient, which saves money and reduces pollution. And while the more precise navigation paths expose fewer people to noise, it can potentially concentrate noise on a smaller geographical area directly beneath those flight paths.

As a result, we’ve seen an increasing level of public debate, political interest, and even litigation.

The FAA has stepped up its public engagement across the United States in response to these trends. It’s an effort we believe in. Because we need to make sure that all voices are heard when we are doing something that affects a community. 

Truly engaging the community may mean more time spent on a project upfront, but we believe the savings on the back end and our ability to use PBN to make things better for people are well worth it.

To support this effort, we recently named an ATO Community Involvement Manager. Her name is Julie Marks, and she will help us engage with citizens. We want to understand their concerns, so we can consider ways to address them.

For instance, we can try to place flight routes over less populated areas, where possible, or there may be an ability to have a steeper climb that reduces the noise footprint.

We’ve talked about what we called the “80% solution.”

If we can get an 80% improvement in flight operation efficiency, we’ll take it instead of pushing for a higher percentage of efficiency with a resulting cost of greater noise impact. 

But the FAA can’t solve this problem alone. All aviation stakeholders, from local airport authorities to the airlines, must take an ownership stake on noise issues.

We have to continue to address these issues, more creatively, more flexibly and more collaboratively than ever before.

We cannot be shackled by past processes that may no longer make sense, or are simply too inefficient to keep up with rapidly changing conditions.

The pace of change is only going to keep accelerating. That means we need to get comfortable with always being a little uncomfortable.

In the skunk works labs of America, great new products are being developed. Things with the potential to change our lives—things that can make aviation even safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly.

We at the FAA, along with the aviation community, must match their speed. We have to tackle our mission with ingenuity and urgency.

Our ability to do that will determine our success in the 21st century.

Thank you.

State of the ATO

Thank you, Pete. I’m glad to be here. I have some news to share with all of you. And this might come as a really big surprise. 

No one talks about this. 

And it’s never on the news. 

But, we have a national election coming up. I know that wasn’t on your radar. It’s a big shock. But trust me, I looked it up, and it’s happening on November 8^th.

And whether it’s a race for President, Congress, state, local, PTA, condo association, every campaign is trying to answer the exact same question, “How do we get our message out?”

We’re asking that question at the FAA – “How do WE get OUR message out, about the progress being made?” 

Sure, wedo Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, but nothing beats telling you face-to-face. And one of the best places to do it is right here at ATCA. 

So today, I want to give you theState of the ATO. And my message is simple: We’re making great progress on many fronts.

We’re improving NAS performance.

Delivering benefits through NextGen.

And integrating drones and rockets into the airspace system.

I’ll talk about each of these three areas. Let’s start with improving NAS performance, which includes our efforts to reduce safety risk. 

A common analogy in aviation safety is to compare the occurrence of accidents to the holes lining up in a block of Swiss cheese. If we change one factor, the holes don’t line up, and the accident doesn’t happen. We’re committed to preventing even two holes from lining up. 

Our approach can be summed up in three words: Collect, Find, Fix. We collect data from many sources including voluntary safety reports by pilots and controllers, automated data gathering tools, and other sources. 

We analyze this data to find potential hazards, by identifying unsafe trends, causal factors and precursors to accidents. 

Then we fix the problems by implementing corrective actions that are measured and monitored to ensure effectiveness. 

One of the best ways we employ Collect, Find, Fix is our Top 5 Hazard list. This past fiscal year, we developed 26 corrective actions to address potential risks associated with helicopter operations, visual scanning by controllers, and access to weather information for controllers, along with two potential hazards associated with wake turbulence. 

For Fiscal Year 2017, we’re tackling potential hazards involving: close encounters between IFR and VFR aircraft, NOTAM issuance and cancellation, NOTAM prioritization and filtering, runway flyovers, and aircraft landing on the wrong runway or taxiway, or at the wrong airport.

This is the sixth year that we’re using the Top 5 Hazard approach. Each year, we refine our data collection and analysis.  And each year, we gain new insights.    

With regard to runway safety, we’re implementing the corrective action plans developed from last year’s Call to Action with the aviation community. Many of you may have participated in that event. These corrective actions including things like:  

• Enhancing the information provided to pilots and vehicle operators about surface construction projects. 
• Providing better guidance, training and alert technology for vehicle drivers.
• And we’re exploring voice recognition technology that would give an immediate warning to a controller if they instructed a pilot to proceed onto a closed runway.

These proactive investments – safety data collection, analysis, collaboration with stakeholders – are all yielding bigdividends.  We’re making our outstandingly safe aviation system, even safer!

We’re also using data to make the NAS more efficient.  Two months ago, we started a nationwide initiative called PERTI. It stands for: Plan, Execute, Review, Train and Improve. 

Through PERTI, we’re looking at how NAS resources, processes and systems are managed and how they can be improved.  

You could think of it like football. Teams put together a game plan several days before the game. 

Then they execute the plan on game day.

Then on Monday morning, they look at the tape to see how well it worked and what could’ve been done differently. 

PERTI is like that for the NAS. We want to move our daily air traffic planning up a few days. This gives our customers more lead time so they can better manager their resources. 

Then after we execute the plan on a given day, we will assess how it worked, and determine its impact and what, if anything, could have been done differently. Once reviewed, the plan is documented and used to train our workforce, so that we can make improvements in the future.

Earlier this year, we tested elements of PERTI at the three major airports in the New York area (Newark, Kennedy, LaGuardia). We found fewer operational disruptions, and we received positive feedback from stakeholders. Now that PERTI’s implemented NAS-wide, we look forward to seeing greater improvements.    

But we want to go beyond the NAS. After all, benefits shouldn’t stop when you get to an airspace boundary. 

We’ve been working with our Caribbean partners to improve air traffic performance in that region. We expect traffic to grow between 5-8% in this region in the coming years. 

More specifically, we want to develop ways for the regional air traffic service providers to more efficiently exchange air traffic data and establish more common situational awareness. We think it can be especially beneficial for an area like the Caribbean with multiple States in close proximity and multiple Flight Information Regions. 

In support of this effort, the FAA and CANSO have established a joint Air Traffic Flow Management Data Exchange Network for the Americas. It’s called CADENA, which fittingly, means “chain” in Spanish. The Caribbean is a chain of islands, and we’re also trying to link up more effectively, so the acronym works on two levels. 

As part of this work, we’re planning to stand up a recurring operations conference call for the Caribbean region by the end of the year. 

This will allow regional air traffic providers to engage in collaborative decision making so we can better balance air traffic demand with capacity. As things move forward, we will incorporate the airlines and other airspace users to the call.

So as we take steps to improve daily NAS performance, we’re also on track to meet the major NextGen air traffic management objectives by 2025.

I talked earlier about the importance of getting our message out – because if you listen to some of our critics, you might not think we’re making progress.

But let’s look at the facts.

We recently celebrated the completion of automation upgrades at our 11 largest TRACONs. This was done on time, within budget, and in collaboration with labor and industry.  This effort builds on the successful completion of the En Route Automation Modernization last year. And these upgrades will serve as NextGen’s core foundation for decades to come. 

Today, we can tell with a greatdegree of accuracy the current location of an aircraft. But when NextGen is fully implemented, we’ll be able to tell with pinpointaccuracy where that aircraft will be at any point in time along its flight. This time-based system will have a tremendous impact on our ability to manage traffic efficiently. 

I look forward to that. But in the near-term, we’re working hard to deliver NextGen benefits. We’re doing it by working closely with industry, through the FAA’s NextGen Advisory Committee. Together, we crafted the NextGen Priorities Joint Implementation Plan to make near-term progress in four key areas. 

I’ll discuss each area in a moment, but let me say that this process has served us well. To date, we’ve completed 103 planned commitments and we’ve just extended the plan through 2019. 

These are not in rank order. But the first NextGen priority I want to discuss has to do with increasing the use of Performance-Based Navigation, which is a key part of the FAA’s Metroplex initiative to reduce congestion in busy metro areas. 

We have 11 active or completed Metroplex initiatives across the country. 

We’re in the process of publishing PBN procedures in Charlotte and Atlanta. 

And we recently published our PBN NAS Navigation strategy, a 15-year plan to transition to PBN as the primary means of navigation in the United States.

A second NextGen priority is to improve operations on the airport surface. We’ve established agreements with air carriers to receive 11 surface data elements from them. One of these elements is Earliest Off Block Time, or EOBT, which helps us to update our departure times so we can better model system demand and make surface operations more efficient. 

These efforts will be leveraged into our Terminal Flight Data Manager, or TFDM, program. TFDM will allow airspace users to share up-to-date automated information such as a flight’s readiness to depart and taxi information for each aircraft.  With this tool, controllers can better manage the efficiency of departure queues and decrease the time the aircraft spends waiting to taxi. In 2019, we plan to start deploying TFDM at airports around the country.

A third near-term NextGen priority is to make multiple runway operations more efficient. As part of this effort, we’ve now safely reduced wake separation standards at 27 airports around the nation. 

For instance, at Memphis Airport, FedEx is getting a 17 percent capacity gain, a three-minute reduction in taxi-out time, and a 2.5-minute reduction in approach time. They’re saving more than 10 million gallons of jet fuel and they’ve reduced carbon dioxide emissions by more than 100,000 metric tons.  To put it differently, FedEx has stated they’re getting 14 days of flying for free. 

Finally, a fourth priority is Data Communications. We’ve now deployed Data Communications departure clearance service at 48control towers, and we’re 24months ahead of schedule.  More than 13,000 air traffic operations per week benefit from this capability.

We’re on track to have Data Comm operational at more than 50 airports in 2016, and in 2019, we’ll start to deploy Data Comm in our en route centers.

We’re very encouraged by the way industry has equipped for Data Comm. In fact, JetBlue told us their equipping their fleet with Data Comm. And they told us why they’re doing it.  They said they saw the progress the FAA was making. And they could see the benefits they would accrue over time.    

We estimate that Data Comm will save operators more than $10 billion over the next 30 years – along with saving the FAA about $1 billion.

Operators are also equipping with ADS-B, as required by the FAA’s 2020 mandate. The airlines have shared plans to equip 90% of the air carrier fleet. 

And last month, we launched a financial incentive for general aviation aircraft owners to equip early, and we’ve have had a strong initial response.

As you can see with NextGen –

The ground systems are being putting in place. 

The cockpit systems are being put in place. 

And when all planned NextGen improvements are made, we estimate more than $160 billion in benefits including savings in time, fuel,and crew and maintenance costs,as well as fewer emissions and increased safety.

As we look forward to realizing these benefits, we know that risks can come from introducing these new innovations into the NAS. Along with safety risk management, we’re taking proactive steps to ensure cyber security. 

We just stood up a new NAS Cybersecurity organization. In addition, we’re working with the FAA’s NextGen office to develop an enterprise level threat model to identify and assess the risk of potential cyber threats.

Day by day, NextGen is revolutionizing the airspace system.   

But we have another big effort going on now – drones and rockets.    

On August 29, the FAA’s small UAS rule went into effect.  It allows drones weighing less than 55 pounds to fly up to 400 feet above ground level in uncontrolled airspace, and in controlled airspace with the FAA’s permission. 

Throughout the fall, we will be phasing in authorizations of drone use for each airspace class.  

And we’re developing a series of metrics to collect data on authorization requests, enabling us to measure and fine tune the process as we move forward. 

And just like with NextGen, we value the input and collaboration of our stakeholders. We’re working with the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee or DAC. It’s a 35-member group representing the interests of industry, labor, and academia.  The DAC will help us prioritize and address the key issues affecting the integration of UAS into the airspace system. 

We’re also working with industry and other federal agencies on what we call Counter UAS, an effort to detect unauthorized drone operations near airports and in unauthorized airspace. We have to determine the roles and responsibilities regarding use of these technologies in airport and air traffic operations. We’ve already tested some of these technologies at JFK and Atlantic City airports, and we’re planning to conduct a pilot program at two major airports by next summer.    

It’s important that the ATO be fully engaged in these efforts. Ultimately, air traffic controllers will be addressing the impact of UAS on manned aircraft operations in the NAS. We must make sure our controllers get the training and tools they need.

We’re also working to safely integrate commercial space operations into our airspace. Today, we’re talking about two or three dozen launches a year. But within several years, we could see multiple launches per day. 

Currently, we accommodate these operations by blocking off airspace. As they increase, we’ll have to move from accommodation to integration, meaning that we take into account the needs of all airspace users – just as we are doing with unmanned aircraft. 

In November, the FAA expects to complete our Commercial Space Integration Roadmap that will define changes in airspace usage policy, regulation, procedures and automation capabilities, and determine the schedule by which these changes will be made.  

The FAA is prototyping a technology called the Space Data Integrator, or SDI. We believe this tool will help us determine how much airspace we have to block off in advance to ensure a safe operation, and how we can more efficiently release the blocked airspace so it’s available for other users.

Before I close, let me touch on funding. The FAA’s funding has been extended until this December 9^th. And Congress extended our authorization until September of 2017.  We’re still concerned that it doesn’t provide us with the long term stability we need to effectively manage and implement our modernization efforts and other key initiatives. 

But while we wait to see what comes next, let me say that I’m very proud of the work we do.

Today, we’re moving about 50,000 flights. 

We’re providing services for more than 2 million passengers. 

We seamlessly manage civilian and military aircraft.

We’re controlling air traffic over 31 million square miles of airspace – over big cities, over vast oceans, and through all kinds of weather.   

We’re doing it safely. We’re doing it efficiently. And tomorrow, we’ll do it all over again. 

I’m looking forward to being here all afternoon, seeing the exhibits and talking with many of you.     

Redefining Business As Usual

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for having me.

It’s always a pleasure to be back at the Aero Club of Washington.

This was one of my first stops after getting confirmed as FAA Administrator in 2013. In fact, I was sworn in here. And I get the same feeling today as I did then.

It’s an honor to address a forum that has hosted so many of the giants from our nation’s rich aviation history.

Late last month, we lost one of those giants.

Joe Sutter, the “Father of the Boeing 747” and a recipient of the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, passed away at the age of 95.

Joe was an inspiration and mentor for three generations of engineers.

Although he was officially retired, he maintained an office at Boeing and frequently met with potential customers. Nobody knew more about “his” airplane than Joe.

With its wide body and distinctive upper deck, the 747 is one of the world’s most recognizable aircraft. But that almost wasn’t the case.

When the 747 first came out in 1968, Boeing anticipated selling no more than 400 planes. It was supposed to be a stopgap aircraft that would soon be eclipsed by supersonic transport.

Obviously that didn’t happen.

Joe and his colleagues at Boeing learned a valuable lesson that’s just as true today as it was then: when it comes to aviation, our world is constantly changing. The winners are those who adapt.

Some of this change is cause for celebration. Thanks to the work we’ve done in conjunction with industry, flying in the United States is safer than it’s ever been.

We’ve all but eliminated the traditional causes of commercial airline accidents.

The low-hanging fruit is gone – but that doesn’t mean our job is done.

Now more than ever, aviation is an international – and interconnected – industry. When an airplane crashes, our entire community feels it. These tragedies don’t just happen in one country, or to one airline. They happen to all of us, and we share collectively in the loss.

How do we prevent these incidents from occurring? How do we improve our processes and procedures? How do we make the world’s safest form of transportation even safer?

When you get down to it, that’s the true underlying product of our worldwide industry: safety.

And if we’re going to continue raising the bar on safety, we have to get creative.

Creativity has always kept aviation moving forward – pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

The same spirit that inspired Wilbur Wright to fill notebook after notebook with drawings of birds drove the imaginations of modern-day engineers to design the GE9X – a jet engine wider than the fuselage of a Boeing 737.

So how does an industry that’s always changing intersect with an agency whose mission of safety and efficiency remains the same?

That’s the question people want me to answer anytime I speak to groups like this one. And it’s one we talk about on a daily basis at the FAA.

When I started thinking about what I wanted to say today, I went back and read some of my previous Aero Club speeches.

It was interesting to see how much our industry – and the FAA – have changed in just that short period of time.

Three years ago, drones were – pardon the expression – barely a blip on our radar. Today, hardly a day goes by that I don’t deal with them.

I’d even say there’s no better parallel for what’s happening in aviation as a whole than what’s happening with drones.

Unmanned aircraft have gone from being a niche interest to an actual segment of aviation that’s growing at an unprecedented pace.

They’re transforming industries like filmmaking and agriculture.

They’re improving the safety of our transportation infrastructure by inspecting miles of rail tracks and pipelines.

And they’re tackling jobs that can be dangerous for people or other aircraft to do, such as search-and-rescue operations.

With all of these options, unmanned aircraft usage has soared in recent years – but not without its share of growing pains.

Safely integrating drones into a system that already includes everything from commercial airliners and business jets to helicopters and general aviation airplanes is one of our industry’s top priorities.

Last summer, we saw numerous reports about unmanned aircraft interfering with wildfire operations. Some were spotted too close to airplanes and airports. One even crashed into Arthur Ashe Stadium during the U.S. Open.

The FAA needed to take action – to educate operators about airspace rules so they could fly safely, and to help law enforcement identify people who weren’t obeying the rules.

We decided to create an online registration system for unmanned aircraft last October. And since we were looking ahead to a holiday season where drones were at the top of thousands of wish lists, it would have to be launched before Christmas – less than two months away.

When we announced this ambitious schedule, I heard from a number of people – some in this room – who thought we’d made a promise we couldn’t keep.

After all, government isn’t supposed to be able to work on that kind of timeline.

Getting it done required some outside-the-box thinking within the FAA. We didn’t let well-worn internal processes dictate how we’d achieve our goal. Instead, we charted new paths.

We solicited advice from a task force of heavy-hitters from the aviation and technology industries. Daily meetings between employees at every level of the agency improved coordination and allowed for real-time troubleshooting.

And it turned out that a bit of chaos and uncertainty, coupled with an immovable deadline, was a pretty powerful focusing mechanism.

Our drone registration system was up and running before Santa could start his annual flight. Nine months later, more than 550,000 users have registered.

To put that in perspective, we only have 320,000 registered manned aircraft – and it took us 100 years to get there.

This success is a testament to how much can be achieved when government and industry work together.

Last week, we took a step to formalize that partnership with the first meeting of our Drone Advisory Committee.

The DAC is chaired by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and includes representatives from the technology and aviation industries, labor organizations, and state and local governments.

I’ve asked this committee to help us prioritize our unmanned aircraft integration activities, including the development of future regulations and policies.

Now we didn’t start from scratch when we came up with the idea for the DAC. It’s closely modeled after our NextGen Advisory Committee – another collaboration with industry that has been essential to the FAA’s work modernizing our air traffic system.

The United States has always been a global aviation leader. And that’s because we haven’t shied away from making the big investments – the kind that can transform the way we move people and goods, not for a few years, but for generations.

When we first started thinking about what it would take to modernize our air traffic system for the 21^st century, we knew that “going small” wasn’t an option.

NextGen is nothing less than the reinvention of the way we manage air traffic. It touches every phase of flight – from takeoff, to navigation, to landing.

But the thing about a transformative project like NextGen is: it’s not easy. One of my predecessors compared it to changing the tire on a moving car.

I’d amend that slightly. It’s like changing the engine on a moving jetliner. At altitude.

If you want to get a big project right, you need time and you need resources. But just as important, you need buy-in from a wide variety of stakeholders.

These foundational pieces are now in place.

We upgraded the computer platform that had its roots in the 1960s.

We installed ground infrastructure nationwide to support satellite-based aircraft tracking, and we launched a $10 million rebate program this week that will make it easier for general aviation pilots to equip their planes to take advantage of it.

The good news is that we’re on track to meet our NextGen objectives by 2025. But NextGen is delivering real, measurable benefits today – for airlines, for businesses, and for the American people.

And it’s happening at an accelerated pace that’s being driven by industry needs.

Let me give you an example. Data Communications, or Data Comm, is a NextGen technology that allows air traffic controllers and pilots to transmit flight plans and other essential safety messages by text instead of time-consuming radio transmissions.

Now that seems pretty simple – and even a little boring – at first glance. But Data Comm’s true potential is obvious as soon as you see it in action.

Airlines stay on schedule, packages get delivered on time, and passengers get off the ground and to their destinations more quickly.

In fact, we estimate that Data Comm will save operators more than $10 billion over the next 30 years – along with saving the FAA about $1 billion.

We started working on Data Comm about four years ago. Engaging with stakeholders – and getting them on board with the technology and its benefits – was one of our first priorities.

We launched trials at Newark and Memphis International Airports to test equipment and develop flight deck and tower procedures. And we worked closely with partners like United Airlines, FedEx, and UPS to measure the fuel and time savings Data Comm could provide.

The results were quite impressive.

It wasn’t long before we heard from our airline partners on the NextGen Advisory Committee. They asked us to prioritize Data Comm so they could take advantage of its capabilities more quickly and in more locations.

We had originally created a plan that would widely deploy Data Comm at airports over the course of three years. Instead we used the lessons learned in Newark and Memphis to condense it to one.

At the beginning of this year, Data Comm was operational at five airports.

Today, it’s up and running at 44 air traffic control towers nationwide, including major markets like New York, Los Angeles, and right here in Washington, DC.

We plan to have it in more than 50 towers by the end of 2016. That’s nearly two years ahead of schedule.

NextGen technologies like Data Comm are game-changers. They’re making us more efficient, saving millions of dollars in fuel costs, and reducing the creation of greenhouse gases.

But as with any major effort, there are challenges.

Over the last two decades, we’ve made significant progress in reducing aircraft noise for people living around airports. Advances in aircraft technology, operational procedures, and programs with airports all work together to mitigate noise.

But as individual aircraft noise levels have decreased, we’ve seen increases in the number of operations, particularly at night, and in the number of people living around airports.

Using NextGen procedures also sometimes results in changes in flight patterns and noise for communities around airports.

As a result, we’ve seen an increasing level of public debate, political interest, and even litigation related to aircraft noise.

The FAA has stepped up its public engagement efforts across the United States in response to these trends. Most recently, we held meetings in Cleveland and Detroit, as well as here in the DC metro area.

But the FAA can’t solve this problem alone. All aviation stakeholders, from local airport authorities to the airlines, must take an ownership stake on noise issues.

Some of you already have, and I thank you for that.

Now we need to do more.

We need to work together to engage communities early and often – and that means meeting them where they live.

We need to listen to people’s concerns and make an earnest effort to find solutions that work for everyone.

There’s no question that NextGen advancements are revolutionizing the way the FAA manages air traffic. But technology isn’t just changing the way we do business.

Manufacturers are taking tremendous strides forward in aircraft design and production. To keep pace with these innovations, the FAA is redefining its role as a regulator.

For a long time, the FAA 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. Manufacturers kept coming to us with new ideas, and our certification processes struggled to keep up.

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 to overhaul our approach to certifying aircraft if we wanted to increase safety and to help products get to market faster.

We currently have a final rule in executive review that would rewrite our small airplane certification standards – better known as Part 23.

There’s a simple idea at the heart of it: The FAA doesn’t want to tell manufacturers how to build things.

We’re not in the engineering business, and we can’t assume we have all the answers about the best way to develop an aircraft.

Our business is safety – and the new Part 23 recognizes that. Instead of requiring certain technologies or designs, it will define the performance objectives we want to achieve.

This is a fundamental shift for our agency.

We’re not waiting around to find the best way to respond to a specific innovation. We’re creating an organization that can respond nimbly and flexibly to any innovation.

Most importantly, this approach lets the dreamers and innovators do what they do best. 

We don’t want bureaucratic red tape to hamper their progress. On the contrary: we want to support it. And that’s a message I’ve been taking to every office – at every level – of the FAA.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been attending the agency’s annual award ceremonies to celebrate the work we’re doing across our lines of business. We recognize individuals who go above and beyond in times of crisis, and teams that band together to achieve extraordinary things.

While we’re obviously proud of these efforts, I often hear that this intensity and focus isn’t sustainable in the long-term for the FAA as a whole.

It’s like we’re a rubber band. In the right circumstances, we can really stretch far and do incredible things. But like a lot of other large organizations, as soon as we’re done, we snap back to the old way of doing business.

I’ve even had some people tell me they can’t wait for certain initiatives to be over so they can get back to their “real jobs.”

But this is our “real job.” This is the new normal.

I’ve heard that same sentiment from some of our traditional constituents as we’ve been redefining how we interact with industry on a number of fronts.

The fact is, aviation has never stood still. And the pace of change is only going to keep accelerating. That means we need to get comfortable with always being a little uncomfortable.

As you can imagine, this can be a tough thing to sell to an industry filled with engineering-minded people who thrive on certainty.

But as I’ve challenged our teams at the FAA to think differently, I’ve seen some promising results.

Take our Aeronautical Information Services division, which is responsible for collecting and publishing aviation data.

This is an office with roots that go all the way back to 1926 – when navigational charts had to be drawn by hand. And some of the processes they relied on weren’t much newer.

Now it would have been very easy for this group to dig in and insist that the core function of their office was to print paper charts.

But instead, they’ve done something I believe is essential for any organization that wants to evolve. They stepped back and said, “Are we asking the right questions about what we do?”

They quickly realized that their core function isn’t actually printing charts. It’s delivering high-quality, accurate aviation data.

So the Aeronautical Information Services team, working with our Office of Information and Technology, started asking employees about ways to deliver that data more efficiently.

Now, to be honest, there was some resistance at first. But as employees were encouraged to bring any and all ideas to the table, the fear of the unknown was replaced with excitement – to tear up the rule book and to innovate.

The team knew that manufacturers and developers could build new flight management tools to improve safety and performance if they had better access to information.

So we created Got Data – a campaign to help the private sector better access our existing aeronautical information, and to identify additional data resources we might be able to provide.

We got a lot of great feedback from the general aviation community and app developers when Mike Whitaker, our former Deputy Administrator, launched Got Data at Sun ‘n Fun in April.

And by the time I went to Oshkosh in July, our team had already used the recommendations to create a Data Innovation Center as a central location for all of our aeronautical data.

They also launched automated digital product downloads that make it easier for users to take advantage of the most up-to-date information.

This is only the beginning for Got Data – and for the transformation of our Aeronautical Information Services division.

I couldn’t be prouder – not only of what they’re accomplishing, but how they’re doing it. They represent a more innovative – and a more responsive – FAA.

We have an amazing pool of talent at our agency – and our achievements rely on it. Every improvement that an individual makes strengthens our foundation – and gives us more capacity to tackle our mission with ingenuity and urgency.

More than any one program or initiative, that’s what will determine the success of the FAA in the 21^st century.

We’re creating a culture that doesn’t just look for answers, but makes sure we’re asking the right questions. A culture that’s willing to move forward, even when we don’t have everything figured out just yet.

We’re making progress – and people are noticing.

This job has taken me to a lot of interesting places – from air traffic control towers and aircraft manufacturing plants, to right here at the Aero Club. But it’s also taken me where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find the head of the FAA.

I spoke at the Peres Center for Peace in Israel about the importance of keeping aviation safe in conflict zones.

While talking with insurance underwriters at Lloyd’s of London about their expanded role in aviation, I saw the storied Lutine Bell. Over the decades it rang to signal claims resulting from ships lost at sea.

I even attended the Consumer Electronics Show and participated in a panel at South by Southwest as we engaged with stakeholders on how to integrate drones into our airspace.

At so many of these events, across the country and around the world, people stop to tell me how excited they are about something the FAA is working on. And there’s this note of shock they can’t quite keep out of their voices.

What I end up hearing is something like, “Who are you, and what have you done with the FAA?”

It always gets a smile out of me. But it also motivates me to do more.

I want to keep striving for a day when the transformative work that we’re doing – whether it’s integrating unmanned aircraft, or delivering NextGen benefits, or overhauling certification and data sharing – isn’t considered extraordinary.

When it’s just business as usual at the FAA.

Thank you for being here today.

Air Transportation Information Exchange

Thank you, Abby. I’m so happy to be here. It’s good to see so many colleagues from the FAA, industry, and our international partners all together in one room.

As you can probably imagine, I do a lot of speaking as FAA Administrator, to a wide variety of groups. I’m particularly happy to be here at the Air Transportation Information Exchange Conference.  And that’s because I believe that the free and open exchange of information is one of the most important things that we can do as an aviation and aerospace industry if we want to improve aviation safety.

Today, no matter where you look, we as a society are awash in a sea of data. Whether it’s from a smart phone app or a triple-redundant fly-by-wire flight control system on a modern jetliner, almost every move we make generates a stream of ones and zeroes.

It’s been said that we’re living in the age of “Big Data,” but it wasn’t always like that.

In the early 1950s, the aviation industry was baffled by a string of crashes involving the DeHavilland Comet, the world’s first production jetliner. David Warren, an Australian researcher, believed investigators would be better able to determine the probable cause of crashes if the pilots’ voices could be captured, along with a few key instrument readings.

Warren developed the first “black box” for commercial airliners – which he called a Flight Memory Unit – in 1957. And even back then, the black box wasn’t black; it was red. Go figure.

During the first couple of decades, flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders remained fairly primitive due to limitations with the technology at the time.

Even into the 1980s, they recorded only a handful of parameters that were etched into aluminum foil or recorded on a 30-minute loop of magnetic tape.

This data was extremely helpful for accident investigations, considering that before that, there was nothing.    

Today, a flight data recorder on a modern jet can record hours of data including several hundred parameters on solid-state memory.

And although accidents involving commercial aircraft are exceedingly rare, flight recorders are still one of the most valuable safety tools we have to ensure safety in aviation.

In fact, in many ways, we’ve entered a new frontier when it comes to aviation data. Because we have so much information, we no longer have to wait for an incident to occur before we identify a safety problem.

For example, today we can use data from a recorder on a jet engine to potentially predict an imminent failure that first manifests itself as something as innocuous as a high oil temperature reading.

In recent years, aviation safety has evolved from a discipline dominated by aerospace engineers to one in which Information Technology professionals are helping us spot the problems that might have been in the system all along.

So we have to find ways to share information, and to share data, more freely and also find new ways to figure out what the data can tell us.  For instance, safety data could lead to smarter designs of aircraft or better pilot training.

Let me share an example that I think speaks volumes about what we can accomplish when we have an open exchange of data.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a conversation that began about how we can drive down the commercial fatal accident risk rate. 

In that time period, we experienced a series of crashes that raised questions in the public and in Congress that basically boiled down to this: Was aviation safe? Or was it even possible to make it safe? 

A White House Commission recommended that we set a goal to reduce the fatal accident rate by 80 percent in 10 years. Then a Congressional Commission recommended that the government and the aviation industry, together, develop a joint safety agenda to meet this goal. 

So the FAA and industry made this commitment. We set up the Commercial Aviation Safety Team.  We agreed that we would share data between the industry and government, we would analyze that data together, and we would develop an agenda to mitigate risk.

Ten years later, in 2008, we achieved our goal. We had reduced the commercial fatality risk not just by 80 percent, but by 84 percent in that 10-year period.

This is held up, not just in aviation, but across the entire transportation spectrum as being one of the most profound successes we’ve ever had. Aviation is far safer than it’s ever been. And lessons are being applied to other modes of transportation. 

Building on this progress, we then shifted from a forensic approach to managing safety to a more prognostic approach. This shift recognized that we could rely on safety data from across the industry, not just to solve the last accident, but to prevent an accident from happening in the first place. 

This proactive, data-driven approach is now at the center of all of the FAA’s safety efforts. 

Whether we’re working to mitigate safety risk, maximize air traffic efficiency, or any other goal in aviation, one thing is clear – information sharing, broadly across the industry, between industry and governments, between governments throughout the world,is the key to our success.

The more we can find ways of getting accurate, timely, secure data in the hands of the people who need it, the better off we will all be in the aviation industry. 

We’re really only scratching the surface today. There is a lot of data out there and it’s going to require creativity to find new ways to harness the full extent of what that data is telling us.

This is true in every segment of society, not just the aviation industry. In fact, President Obama issued a White House directive calling for an Open Data Policy in May of 2013.

The idea is that by making information resources easy to find, making them more accessible, and making them more usable, we can fuel entrepreneurship, innovation and scientific discovery that can improve the lives of all Americans and spur job creation here in the United States.

We want to get data into the hands of those that can make great use of it. It’s especially important when you consider that in our industry, aviation, things are moving at the speed of innovation. We can’t be moving at the speed of government. 

So at the FAA, we’re doing our part to support the President’s Open Data Policy.

Earlier this year, we started the “Got Data?” initiative.  It’s an effort to engage with our external stakeholders to better understand the kind of data they find useful and how we can get it to them in a quick and efficient manner. 

Avionics manufacturers turn the navigational charts and instrument approaches the FAA produces into a wide variety of electronic products. These feed into the aircraft’s flight management systems, iPads, and other mobile devices.

The biggest advantage of these new products is that they enable pilots to have greater situational awareness about where they are, and what lies ahead, than ever before. And it all fits in the space of a silicon chip.

Now imagine what could be possible if we opened up more of our data to more partners. That’s the idea behind Got Data.

We want to find better ways to help the private sector access aeronautical data currently offered by the FAA. We also want to identify additional data resources that we could potentially provide.

Our goal is to help industry be in a position to create innovative products and technologies that can improve safety and efficiency in the aviation industry.

We’ve created a Data Innovation Center that serves as a new central location for all of the FAA’s aeronautical information.

We also launched automated digital product downloads that will make it easier for users to ensure they’re using the most up-to-date data.

We’re seeing that app developers can use the underlying data to build charts. They can change the color of airports based on whether they have part-time or full-time control tower service. They’re developing ways to display Temporary Flight Restrictions visually for pilots.

We’ve made this progress in only two and a half months, and we’re just getting started.

We’re going to continue working closely with aircraft owners, application developers, and manufacturers to provide new and better data that will improve the products that pilots use in the cockpit for the safety and efficiency of our airspace.

I want to see these kinds of benefits across the globe as well. After all, the need for accurate, timely air traffic information doesn’t stop at our FIR boundary. Passengers expect one level of safety, whether they’re flying at home or abroad. 

Ensuring that level of safety requires the sharing of data between nations. And while we want global aviation to be safer, we also want it to be more efficient and greener. 

Over the past 10 years, the FAA and EUROCONTROL have worked together to improve the global exchange of several types of air transportation information.

Until recently, our information was still based on the ability for the human to read and verbalize the concept.  This led to many different formats and lots of time and money spent adapting to one another’s rules, definitions and formats.

In an environment in which automation is now supporting our decisions, we have come together to develop standard models for the exchange of flight, weather and aeronautical information.

To support aeronautical information exchange, the FAA implemented a Digital Notices to Airmen system in 2013.

Under the digital system, authorized persons can submit NOTAMS directly into the system. Airspace users can more easily filter and sort the NOTAMs, which enables better flight planning and greater situational awareness for users of the system.  With the legacy system, it took about 15 minutes to originate a NOTAM. By going digital, it takes about five seconds. Clearly, that is a huge improvement in getting timely information to users.  

We’re using similar tools to digitize flight planning and the exchange of weather information.

I want to thank everyone here for the great job that’s been done in making this possible. 

This work now continues into the newly-formed ICAO Information Management Panel, where we are supporting the development of overall global information management standards and practices that impact all of the information domains.

All of these efforts have laid the groundwork for a more global structure for information access. We’ll be able to exchange greater amounts of relevant information in a timelier and less costly way. As we do these things, we’ll make international aviation more seamless.  We’ll make it more efficient.  We’re also going to make it safer, and we never want to lose sight of that.

The FAA and EUROCONTROL have hosted separate demonstrations showing that a global structure can work very well. These demonstrations have used simulated and live flight data to support things like flight plan submission, boundary coordination, dangerous goods transport, and fleet prioritization. 

Through these demonstrations and a lot of other work, the FAA and EUROCONTROL have demonstrated global leadership on this issue, which is helping to support the Global Air Navigation Service Plan and helping to support individual participants in the system. 

We’re big supporters of ICAO’s Information Management Panel, which is doing the foundational work to make these international exchange models work for all nations. We want to exchange timely, secure, and relevant information to users in a way that is flexible, adaptable and scalable.

I’ve mentioned a few ways that data is changing aviation, but really, it would be difficult to make a comprehensive list.

The FAA realizes that the real key to making real progress in harnessing the power of data lies in forming collaborative relationships with those who understand it best.

The good news is that we are headed in the right direction.

As we move further into this age of Big Data, the world aviation community needs to rise to the challenge of using this information in the best possible way. In doing so, something extremely important happens. We make a system that is already the gold standard for safety and transportation, and we make it even safer. 

It’s all in the data. How we use it. How we leverage it. How we share it and how we collaborate as organizations.

Thank you for participating in this conference, and I hope you have a productive exchange of information and ideas. Best of luck to you.   

It’s All New

Good morning, and thank you, Dr. Greaves, for that kind introduction.  Let me start out by saying what an honor it is for me to share the stage with Dr. Greaves.  I started my career a long time ago with Boeing as a junior engineer, so I’ve been dealing with engines and commercial aircraft for quite some time.  Dr. Greaves, your resume speaks for itself.  You have made a difference in aviation … in aerospace.  So, thank you for that.

I’d also be remiss not to tip my hat to SAE itself.  More than half of the standards out there come from SAE.  When the need arises for a standard, we at the FAA know that we can count on SAE to develop the standard, and do so quickly.  You’re working on a dozen things for us at any given time.  That’s what we need.  I think SAE standards are mentioned in upwards of 200 TSO standards and policy guidance.  That tells you something right there.

So if you’re sitting here in the audience and you’re looking for a takeaway, here it is:  your SAE work matters.  We need your help in developing technical standards which we can use in our regulatory process to improve aviation safety.  It’s a team effort.  We want your help in developing technical standards in more and more evolving areas.  You are relevant.  You’re working on things we need.

No doubt about it, the FAA depends on you.  There’s a lot of brainpower in this room, and we rely on it.  The “A” in SAE may have started out as “automotive,” but ask around at 800 Independence Avenue.  We think that A in SAE now stands for aviation.  I think we’re right. 

Now that I’ve set the stage, let’s talk about for a moment about how much the scope of our work is changing.  I mentioned a moment ago about being a junior engineer at Boeing.  In college, you’re an expert, and you already know everything.  For example, commercial aircraft are gigantic, and back in the day, guys like Joe Sutter were pushing the envelope into something everyone now calls the jumbo jet. 

And that was my frame of reference for a lot of years. 

Now, the paradigm has shifted.  We’re dealing with a new entrant in the NAS … an aircraft that the kid who lives next door to you is probably going to open on Christmas Day.

It surprised me at how quickly unmanned aircraft came along. I have to admit when I was in college and working on aerodynamics I knew I’d be dealing with the Boeing, the McDonnell-Douglas, the Uniteds of the world. Little did I know that I’d be dealing with K-Mart and Amazon. The UAS is a very different animal. When you think of the relatively slow growth that commercial aviation experienced over 113 years, in relative terms, UAS is coming in lightning speed.  Part of the struggle has been the difficulty in maintaining our traditional FAA responsibilities for the NAS while keeping up with the demand of new commercial interests.

There was an “aha” moment when UAS really started to come into play two, three, or four years ago.  The business community had to recognize that anything that can leave the ground on its own power is considered aircraft.  Therefore, these aircraft then fall within FAA’s domain since we are the organization that approves anyone or anything flying in the NAS.

As the idea caught on, business quickly saw immediate applications—like real estate, surveying, news gathering.  Those type of activities fall within our jurisdiction, and we were shaping the parameters for operation as quickly as we could.  That said, companies wanted to petition for an exemption to commercially operate these drones, and some petitions started coming in. Legislation was then passed by Congress that outlined an exemption process, which opened the floodgates.

More applications were coming in than we could have handled using our normal exemption process.  We had to come up with creative ways to pump that up from a few each week to well over 100 a week. We’re well past 15,000 exemptions. The good news is we finalized a rule which obviates the need for an exemption in most cases.  This rule limits operations to UAS less than 55 pounds, flown in visual line of sight, and below 400 ft.  As a result, it frees up many of the commercial uses for UAS for real estate photography, precision agriculture, and other applications that were in high demand

So … where do we stand?  FAA clarified appropriate use of hobbyist UAS on where you can and can’t fly; including clarifications on how to fly safely and not endanger manned aviation.  There’s actually an app—B4UFLY.  When I was in school, “apps” were a slide rule.

We’ve set a baseline to understand the types of small UAS being used through our registration process.  To date, more than 500,000 small UAS users have registered.  Think about this for a moment:  There are more drones than there are traditional aircraft. 

We continue to evaluate and revise current regulations to allow the safe introduction and integration of UAS into the NAS by processing waivers and exemptions to accommodate future operations.  We’re working with colleges, universities, state and local governments, law enforcement, railroads—and CNN—to sharpen our understanding of what constitutes safe operation for unmanned systems; including learning the unique aspects of this new/novel technology.

So … where are we?  This is not your father’s NAS.  Not anymore. 

The definition of what’s flying is changing.  So is what powers what’s flying.  We’ve used gas and Jet A for a long time.  Before that, guys like Icarus used wax, and that didn’t end well.  

But there is a bright spot, and SAE has been instrumental in bringing this from a good idea to what I think will be a terrific innovation.  I’m talking about the development of standards for the ground based electric vehicle market.  As you know, this isn’t just airplanes, but cars, trains and boats as well. 

We initiated the efforts in working on electric propulsion for manned and unmanned aircraft.  We’ve had experimental aircraft flying with electric propulsion systems for many years.  The bottom line here is that we’re waiting for Industry to develop a mature type of battery and motor technology so the usable flight time could be achieved to meet its intended application.

We don’t have any specific tasking at this time with SAE.  Looking into the future, we may be able to utilize SAE’s experience from other electric transportation standards to identify requirements for airborne systems.

So far, we’ve talked about the changing scope of what defines an aircraft and what powers an aircraft. What’s inside the cabin is changing as well.

For those of you who haven’t had the chance, you should familiarize yourselves with the FAA’s Technical Center in Atlantic City.  There are labs where full scale aircraft are set on fire, where smoke evacuation tests are run, where runway braking is tested.  There’s also a facility specifically used for crashworthiness. 

The traditional aircraft seat is designed to transfer the dynamic energy of a crash away from the occupant and into the seat itself.  The legs of the seat are meant to crumple, they’re meant to take the shock.

We’re well into the age of composite materials, and composites don’t crumple—certainly not the way traditional metal would.  So the big question becomes:  where does that energy go? 

The use of composite materials in seats is expected to increase significantly in the future due to significant weight savings over traditional metallic materials. 

The current standards for aircraft seats do not specifically address the unique technical challenges in the certification of composite seats.  To address these challenges, the FAA is developing a specific Issue Paper for a given certification project.  As a point of reference, EASA is undertaking a similar review on the European side.

To standardize and streamline composite seat certification, the FAA and EASA are actively engaged with SAE to develop an Aerospace Recommended Practice for Composite Seats. This recommended practice will address several key areas where composites differ from traditional metallic structure certification … things like material qualification, fabrication, environmental conditions, and non-visual damage from in service use.  

The recommended practice for composite seats may serve as the basis for design, test, and related requirements that support an update to the FAA TSO for seats qualification.  We hope to achieve a harmonized position between the authorities to support the FAA/EASA TCCA streamlining certification process.

With respect to composite seats:  stay tuned.  

Before I close, I’d be remiss not to mention additive manufacturing.  I’m not going to get into a discussion of powder bed fusion or directed energy deposition, but I will tell you what I do know.

I find the concept of 3D printing to be mind-blowing.  There was a time when Chuck Yeager and Scott Crossfield didn’t know if they would break apart when aircraft first broke the sound barrier.  But we did it.

I think 3D printing is going to be the same kind of leap.  We’re thinking, “How the hell do they do that?”  But there will be a day where we look back and think, “Of course, they could do that.”

In aviation, this refers to a range of manufacturing methods where the purchased feedstock material like powder or wire is consolidated by an energy source into a near-finished part.

We’ve already certified metal AM parts in aircraft engines and approved AM parts in a TSO, which were fabricated using the additive manufacturing technology.  The FAA is currently working the first certification project using this technology.  The FAA also certified additive manufacturing parts that made from powder and polymers as installed on aircraft cabin interior, galley carts, air-condition ducts, and related areas.

I’m glad to see that SAE has created a Data Management subcommittee for additive manufacturing.  This committee will develop guidance for data collection and analysis unique to AM.  For our part, we actively support the development of four additive manufacturing specifications and the Additive Manufacturing Data Management subcommittee.

In closing, as you are all well aware, standardization is one of the most critical aspects of aviation. We depend on organizations like SAE to provide the technical specifications that promote this standardization throughout the entire system. As our national airspace system becomes more and more interconnected with the international aviation system, this standardization becomes even more critical. 

In all of these examples, we’re focusing our efforts on achieving standardization.  We must ensure that our direction incorporates the international perspective.

All of us rely on ICAO to promote harmonization worldwide.  As the scope of this worldwide standardization becomes increasingly complex, it is important to consider where it may be appropriate to include ICAO direction into our standards-making efforts.

I say this because we’re actually at a very delicate spot in the history of aviation.  We haven’t had a commercial passenger fatality on a U.S. air carrier. since February 12, 2009.  That’s quite a streak, but the danger in a streak like that is complacency.  Now is the very specific and direct moment in time where we must redouble our efforts for safety.

Everything is clicking.  We’re making advances like we never have before.  The accident rate is so low that we track accidents that didn’t happen.  SAE needs to be a part of that focus.  Our system has never been safer. And there’s never been a time where we’ve needed to make sure that we raise the safety bar even higher.  We can’t do that without you. 

Utah Drone Symposium

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. The last time I had the opportunity to come to Utah was during the 2002 Winter Olympics when I was an FAA intelligence analyst working in the FBI’s Olympic Intelligence Watch Center. I appreciate the chance to come back to your beautiful state.

When I was here in 2002, Unmanned Aircraft Systems–at least of the size, variety and capability that we see today–were not on our radar in domestic civil aviation safety and security.

Today, however, highly automated unmanned aircraft come in all shapes and sizes. Unmanned aircraft can range in weight from a few grams to thousands of pounds, and can operate at altitudes from near surface to the edge of space. Some can remain aloft for only a few minutes, and others for days.

As varied as these designs are, their potential uses are even greater.

Once the domain of either the Department of Defense or remote control model aircraft enthusiasts, unmanned aircraft today spark excitement among hobbyists, businesses, critical infrastructure owners, and public sector entities such as law enforcement and firefighters.

Unmanned aircraft are transforming industries – providing filmmakers with a fresh angle on the world, and giving first responders a new tool for search-and-rescue operations.

They’re improving the safety of our transportation infrastructure – inspecting miles of rail tracks and pipelines that crisscross our country.

And they’re tackling jobs that can be dangerous for people or other aircraft to do, such as smokestack and power line inspections.

As with any new technology, unmanned aircraft bring both opportunities and risks—both in safety and security.

We need to incorporate unmanned aircraft and their users into a shared culture of safety, security and responsible operation.

We’ve found that the best way to accomplish this is to partner with a wide range of government, aviation, and technology stakeholders, which is one reason I am here today.

America has the most complex airspace in the world – and it’s the FAA’s job to ensure the safety and efficiency of the National Airspace System for the flying public and everyone who wants to use it. We also have a duty to protect national and homeland security, and we must work closely with our security and law enforcement partners at the federal, state, and local levels.

Today, I would like to talk about what the FAA is doing–along with our partners in industry, government, and user communities–to address safety and security concerns associated with increasing unmanned aircraft activity in the National Airspace System, and indeed around the world.

The array of safety and security risks ranges from users who do not understand the obligations of safe and compliant operations in the National Airspace System to those who do not care for FAA constraints and restrictions to the actual bad actors, such as criminals and terrorists, who seek to use unmanned aircraft as a means to do harm to people or property. 

Similarly, there is a broad range of mitigation techniques that can be used to address these risks. These range from education and public awareness efforts, to grounding manned aircraft or vectoring them away from unmanned aircraft operating in the area, to using technologies that assist law enforcement in locating the non-compliant operator or removing the unmanned aircraft from specific operating areas.

In all of our efforts, our partnerships are key. We’re receiving valuable input on regulations, and building consensus around public education campaigns. And it’s helping us make substantial progress on safely integrating unmanned aircraft into our airspace.

We saw this firsthand when an industry task force developed recommendations that helped the FAA create a drone registration system in just a matter of weeks last fall. And in the eight months since the system went live, more than 500,000 hobbyists have registered their unmanned aircraft.

To put that in perspective, we only have 320,000 registered manned aircraft – and it took us 100 years to get there.

Registration of unmanned aircraft, whether operated commercially or for hobby, gives us a direct connection to these unmanned aircraft owners both initially and on a recurring basis. It allows us to educate users about rules, accountability and responsibility for safe operation. It encourages unmanned aircraft owners to become part of the safety culture that has been deeply embedded in traditional manned aviation for more than a century.

Registration also can assist us with enforcement by allowing us to connect a drone with its operator in cases where people aren’t following the rules.

To identify new ways to make the registration process easier, we are working to support potential third-party applications, such as smart phone apps, that could enable manufacturers or retailers to scan a code on a drone and automatically register it.

We’re also encouraging operators to download our free smartphone app, B4UFLY, which lets you know where it’s safe and legal to fly a drone. It’s available for both Apple and Android devices, and it’s already been downloaded more than 85,000 times.

We continue to expand our ongoing “No Drone Zone” campaign to remind people to leave their unmanned aircraft at home during major public events like the Super Bowl and most recently the political conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia.

In addition to educating hobbyists, we’re putting a regulatory framework in place to address the commercial use of drones.

On August 29^th, our first regulation to enable routine commercial use of small unmanned aircraft takes effect.

It allows unmanned aircraft weighing less than 55 pounds to fly within visual line of sight, up to 400 feet high, and up to 100 miles per hour during daylight hours. This rule is designed to allow commercial and other non-hobby drone operations while minimizing safety risks to other aircraft, as well as people and property on the ground. And it will provide an important regulatory foundation for allowing additional operations in the future.

However, you still can’t fly a small unmanned aircraft over anyone who is not directly participating in the operation or under a covered structure or stationary vehicle. But we’re working on that, and toward that end, we hope to propose a rule on unmanned aircraft operations over people by the end of this year.

Despite our progress on integration, we know our work has just begun.

So we established a Drone Advisory Committee that will be chaired by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. This Committee will help us prioritize our unmanned aircraft integration activities, including the development of future regulations and policies. It will include representatives from across the aviation spectrum, and we’ll be announcing the members soon.

We’re also chartering an Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team that will include a wide variety of stakeholders from the drone and aviation industries. Similar to the highly successful Commercial Aviation Safety Team, this group will analyze safety data to identify emerging threats that drones may pose to aircraft, people, and property. It will also develop mitigation strategies to address these threats and prevent future accidents.

The creation of the Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team and the Drone Advisory Committee reflects the importance of this issue to our agency, and the value of our collaboration with stakeholders.

One ongoing trend that is particularly troubling to the FAA and our stakeholder partners is the number of unmanned aircraft sightings reported near or around airports and manned aircraft. Despite our collaborative efforts to educate unmanned aircraft users on responsible operations, the number of these sightings continues to rise each year. 

To date, we have received more than 1,100 reports in Fiscal Year 2016, which exceeds 100 per month. We are on pace to surpass last year’s numbers, and this really drives home  the need for careful and safe integration. 

The FAA wants to send a clear message that such operations are dangerous and illegal. We are working closely with the law enforcement community to identify and investigate unauthorized unmanned aircraft operations. The FAA has levied civil penalties for a number of unauthorized flights in various parts of the country, and we have many open enforcement cases.

We also have received a disturbing number of reports about unmanned aircraft interfering with wildfire fighting operations, including just last week here in Utah, over the Corner Canyon Fire. Wildfire suppression requires extensive support from and coordination with aircraft that deliver water and chemicals, and transport firefighters.  These aircraft conduct high risk operations that have been slowed or stopped on multiple occasions due to unmanned aircraft flying in the area without coordination. 

These reckless activities endanger lives in the air and lives and property on the ground when minutes can count.

Utah’s recent adoption of a state law that increases the criminal penalties for such activity is a clear effort to try to mitigate this risk. 

Similarly, in the FAA’s recently signed reauthorization extension legislation, Congress gave us authority to levy a civil penalty of up to $20,000 against any unmanned aircraft operator who interferes with wildfire suppression, law enforcement activity, or emergency response efforts.

Although unmanned aircraft can sometimes hinder such operations, they also can be great tools to support firefighting and other beneficial operations. Indeed, in two sections of our 2016 Reauthorization act, Congress directed the FAA to take actions to enable expeditious approval of unmanned aircraft operations in support of firefighting operations, emergency response efforts, and restoration of utilities.

As we work to identify and mitigate safety concerns, we recognize that unmanned aircraft operations also have implications for privacy and security.

The FAA is mindful of privacy concerns and has been actively engaged with our interagency partners to address this issue. We have provided support to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's multi-stakeholder process directed by Presidential Memorandum to develop and communicate best practices for privacy, accountability, and transparency for both commercial and private unmanned aircraft use. This initiative recently resulted in the publication of voluntary best practices, which is an important step forward in addressing an issue that affects us all.

As part of a privacy education campaign, the FAA will provide all drone users with the NTIA’s recommended privacy guidelines as part of the unmanned aircraft registration process and through the FAA’s B4UFly mobile app. The FAA also will educate all commercial unmanned aircraft pilots on privacy during their pilot certification process; and we will issue new guidance to state and local governments on drone privacy issues as well.

Apart from privacy concerns, unmanned aircraft can also present security risks.

Several high profile events in 2015, including an unmanned aircraft landing on the White House lawn, highlighted the potential security risks and the challenges in countering them.

The US Government has a well-established policy and capability to react to traditional aviation threats. However, the nature of unmanned aircraft operations means we currently lack the technical capability to easily identify, track and respond to these threats using traditional means.

The Department of Homeland Security was designated as the lead federal agency for focusing federal partners, including the FAA, Department of Defense and others, on this thorny problem.  We and other agencies are also working with industry stakeholders on possible technologies to help detect and track unmanned aircraft movement through the National Airspace System, as well as options for mitigating threats. 

This group has engaged law enforcement agencies and state and local governments in and around the National Capital Region as part of this effort, but we need to expand that engagement to other state and local government partners as well.

There are three main focus areas of this work currently underway:

• Rules of engagement and common operating procedures for law enforcement, since they and security forces will be the last line of defense for most security risks presented by unmanned aircraft.
• Technology research, development and evaluation, and
• Legal issues, which can affect the use of possible detection and mitigation options to address safety and security risks.

Law enforcement agencies in the National Capitol Region are developing training and education guidance that will help ensure that all the local, state and federal partners are working from the same information and have a coordinated response.

This information will be pushed out to the broader state and local law enforcement community.

The FAA also has a Law Enforcement Assistance Program, with special agents located across the country and responsible for providing support nationwide.  Just as we do with drug-related and other criminal matters associated with aviation, our agents can provide support to law enforcement and other government agencies by providing training, confirming unmanned aircraft registration, and identifying if the unmanned aircraft was conducting approved operations.

Toward this end, we published a law enforcement assistance guide that is available on the FAA website and is being updated to reflect the Part 107 rule. It provides some basic guidance about what type of information to collect and whom to contact at the FAA if you have an unmanned aircraft incident at your site or facility.

If anyone is interested in learning more about our LEAP program, I am happy to talk during a break.

The FAA and the Department of Homeland Security also are co-leading an Interagency UAS Detection at Airports Strategy Working Group.  This group includes the Department of Defense, FBI, U.S. Secret Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Interior, NASA and the Federal Communications Commission.

The group is focusing on the safety and security needs of airports against errant or hostile unmanned aircraft by creating a safe, efficient, and flexible framework to assess the integration of unmanned aircraft detection technologies. Results of these assessments will also help inform partner agencies and stakeholders that are responsible for safeguarding critical infrastructure.

The FAA’s focus is on evaluating technology that can help us detect and track unmanned aircraft movement in the National Airspace System, which will enable us to mitigate the safety risks of unmanned aircraft flying near manned aircraft and airports. We evaluated one vendor's product at Atlantic City airport this winter and worked with the FBI on deploying a system at JFK earlier this spring. We are currently working with several other manufacturers and airports to coordinate additional equipment evaluations over the next six to nine months.

Although some of these technologies have been used successfully by DOD overseas, the FAA and other agencies are evaluating whether these technologies can effectively operate in a civil environment, such as an airport or around other critical infrastructure.  

We are looking at UAS detection as a whole of government exercise, which was reinforced by Congress in our 2016 Reauthorization, directing FAA to work with DOD and Homeland Security, as well as other relevant federal partners, to establish a pilot program focused on airspace hazard mitigation in and around airports and critical infrastructure.

We must ensure we understand the impacts these technologies could have on aircraft, airports, and air navigation systems.  We don’t want deployment of unmanned aircraft detection and mitigation systems to introduce safety risks for manned aircraft.

One important consideration with these efforts is that current law may impose barriers to the evaluation and deployment of certain unmanned aircraft threat detection and mitigation systems by most federal agencies, as well as state and local entities and private individuals.

There are a number of federal laws to consider, including those that:

• Prohibit destruction or endangerment of aircraft;
• And prohibit electronic surveillance or recording of electronic signals and regulate electronic communications.

The Department of Justice is leading a federal interagency group that is analyzing how these and other laws apply to the evaluation and deployment of certain unmanned aircraft detection and mitigation technologies. 

Further complicating the issue is the desire of some state and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure owners, to take action on their own to mitigate unmanned aircraft safety, security, and privacy risks.

Here are a few factors to consider:

• Unmanned aircraft are “aircraft” subject to regulation by the FAA to ensure safety of flight and safety of people and property on the ground.
• Congress has vested the FAA with exclusive authority to regulate areas including airspace use, management and efficiency, air traffic control, safety and navigational facilities. This requires a delicate balance between safety and efficiency, and the protection of people on the ground. 
• Substantial air safety issues are raised when state or local governments attempt to regulate the operation or flight of aircraft.

In December 2015, the FAA issued important guidance to states and municipalities that are considering their own unmanned aircraft laws or regulations. Our guidance explains that any local laws should be consistent with the extensive federal regulatory framework for aircraft and airspace use. It also explains that a consistent regulatory system ensures the highest level of safety for all aviation operations.

Several federal agencies, along with state and local governments and private sector infrastructure and venue owners, have asked or are considering asking the FAA for additional airspace restrictions or prohibitions in and around high-value facilities and assets. Currently, there are only 12 Prohibited Areas, which were established in the interest of national security and welfare.

In evaluating requests for additional prohibited areas, the FAA must also consider impacts to other users’ access to the National Airspace System, the system’s operational safety and efficiency, and our statutory mandates.

Congress addressed the intense interest in this issue in our Reauthorization legislation. The legislation, which became law on July 15, directs the FAA to establish a process by which government and private entities can request airspace restrictions over fixed sites.

We are analyzing that language and evaluating how best to proceed. In the interim, we have issued a Notice to Airmen that strongly advises pilots and unmanned aircraft operators to avoid the airspace above or in close proximity to military facilities, power plants, and other critical infrastructure or sensitive locations unless specifically authorized.

A number of federal, state, and local government and private sector entities are also thinking about the broad range of mitigation techniques that could be used to address risks posed by unmanned aircraft. 

We encourage government entities concerned about unmanned aircraft safety and security issues to review your existing authorities to see how they could be used to develop appropriate regulations, guidance, and concepts of operations.  Once you have that developed, please contact us, and we will be happy to review and coordinate with you.  We can work collaboratively to discuss the operational and airspace safety considerations as you’re developing those plans.

Some have called the birth of the unmanned aircraft industry the “Wright Brothers moment” of our time – and that may be so.

Safely and securely integrating drones into our airspace is one of the FAA’s top priorities, and we’re determined to get it right. It’s essential for our economy, and our role as a global aviation leader.

I’m confident that we will do so by working closely and collaboratively with our public and private sector stakeholders, like many of you in the room today.

Again, I want to thank you for inviting me to this forum, and I look forward to the rest of today's program and panel discussion.  Thank you.