AUVSI Xponential Remarks

Thank you, Miles O'Brien, for that.  Its great to be in New Orleans.  It’s great to be here in The BigEasy, and I sincerely thank you for inviting me to join you here today.

You know, a couple of weeks ago I was out in Daytona Beach, Florida to speak at our UAS Symposium that we co-hosted with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. I remarked at that time – I know many of you were there that we are getting to know so well – that Unmanned Aircraft System events are starting to feel a little bit like family reunions.

Well, we all know that hasn't always been the case. The last time I was on this stage, was back in 2012, and at that time I felt a little more like I was walking into a lion's den than into the warmth of a family reunion.

We’ve come a long way from where we were just a handful of years ago. If we think about it, in 2012, thousands – rather than hundreds of thousands – of drones were being sold annually. There were no UAS incidents that had been reported near any airports in the country. Nobody was shooting at a drone that had flown over their backyard, and nobody was flying a drone into trees at the White House.

Now,  fast forward to the present. A few weeks ago, we announced in our annual forecast, and you heard it from Miles,   that the combined sales of hobbyist and commercial drones could surge from 2.5 million aircraft this year to a staggering 7 million in 2020.

Drones, we all know, are changing the way countless jobs are done, from movie filming and real estate marketing to agricultural mapping and smokestack inspections.

And the innovation in this field is speeding forward at a breakneck pace. When you compare it to [manned] aviation, consider this: the development schedule for a new type of commercial airliner is every 15 to 20 years. If you’re an aerospace engineer, you’re considered extremely lucky if you have two new jets come out during the course of your career.

The drone development schedule, by contrast, is so compressed that new products are flying out of the design studio and into factories at the blink of an eye. Drone development is to manned aircraft development the same as Twitter is to traditional communications.

Yet there are some remarkable parallels between what’s going on today and what was going on a half a century ago.

Back then, the nation was captivated by the idea of sending a man to the moon, and many of the brightest kids coming out of college, their dream was to work at NASA. Today, many of the country’s bright young minds are captivated by the virtually limitless possibilities that the unmanned aircraft industry is offering, and are entering aviation through this exciting new field.

Now, dreaming up new uses for unmanned aircraft may not be to some as sexy or dramatic as locking men in a capsule and firing them off into space. And the jury is still out on whether the geniuses who incrementally conquer UAS integration roadblocks will attain the icon status of a Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin.

But, like the space exploration of the 1960s, the work we are doing today is transforming aviation – and its transforming society – in very profound ways.

You probably know by now that when I use the term "we," I'm not just talking about the FAA. I'm talking about all of us who are in this together. Our progress is the result of partnership and it’s the result of collaboration.

And this has occurred because we found that, despite our sometimes different viewpoints, the FAA and the industry come from essentially the same place: we all view safety as our top priority. And the safe integration of unmanned aircraft is a goal we’re committed to pursuing together.

Now, there are many building blocks in a collaborative relationship. A willingness to set aside ego. To sometimes disagree. To recognize other viewpoints are just as valid as the one you might have. And to put aside differences in the pursuit of a common goal. But the most important element in a collaborative relationship is trust.

The FAA and industry have come to understand that we both come from a safety-first perspective. And we recognize that we have to find the right balance to support safe integration without stifling innovation.

We realize that we need to be flexible. To be willing to look at challenges from different angles. And to evolve in our approach because the world around us is evolving at warp speed. And to stop moving at the speed of government.

Now, the list of our shared accomplishments is well documented by now. Robust UAS test sites, where groundbreaking research is being conducted.

The Pathfinder program, through which our partners are researching operations over people, beyond line of sight operations and technologies that can detect UAS around airports.

The Know Before You Fly educational campaign. The Section 333 program, through which we now have approved more than 5,100 commercial UAS operations.

And, of course, unmanned aircraft registration and the Micro UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee.

Registration was an ambitious goal for all of us, and some people were skeptical when we announced the undertaking last October. Two months later, because of the diligent and selfless work of a very diverse task force, we had a fully functional, easy to use, web-based registration system.

And today, more than 443,000 hobbyists have registered their drones, and that means we have reached that many people with our safety message. And we recently expanded the system so commercial operators can register online rather than use the legacy paper-based system.

The registration task force worked so well that we all said, “what else can we work on”. So we formed the Micro UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee to look at how certain drones could be safely flown over people.

In just three weeks, that committee put together a thoughtful and comprehensive report, which will help shape a new rule.

And by late spring, we plan to finalize Part 107, our small UAS rule, which will allow for routine commercial drone operations and eliminate the need for most Section 333 exemptions. This will make it a lot easier to operate in the National Airspace System.

Other milestones are occurring on a regular basis, too. Last month, for example, we authorized the first commercial drone flight at night. We granted that authorization to Industrial Skyworks USA, a company based in Ohio that uses drones for industrial inspections.

And earlier today, we took another important step forward in safely increasing drone operator access to the National Airspace System. We issued this morning a legal interpretation that allows students to operate unmanned aircraft as part of their coursework.

And what this means students won’t need a Section 333 exemption or any other authorization to fly. And their faculty will be able to use drones in connection with helping their students with their courses.

Schools and universities are incubators for tomorrow’s great ideas, and we think this is going to be a significant shot in the arm for innovation.

But as significant as these advances are, it's reasonable to think they will seem quaint in a couple of years, just like that first MAC computer seems quaint to us today.

As hard as we have worked to set the integration process in motion, realistically we all know that our work has just begun. And the reality is that we have been plucking the low-hanging fruit.

So now, the time has come for us to focus more of our energies on the bigger challenges.

Challenges such as command and control. Detect and avoid. Aircraft and operator certification. How spectrum will factor into integration, and how frequencies will be managed and allotted.

To tackle these challenges in a methodical and orderly manner, we have identified three high-level UAS strategic priorities.

Not surprisingly, the first of these is to safely enabling UAS operations in the National Airspace System.  The emphasis is safely.

Second is adaptability. We want to create an environment in which emerging technology can be safely and rapidly introduced.

And third is global leadership. We’re looking to shape the global standards and practices for unmanned aircraft through international collaboration.

These priorities form the backbone of a comprehensive strategic plan that we have developed for UAS integration, which we expect to unveil soon.

Now achieving these more challenging objectives requires us to embark on a new phase of the collaboration that has proven to be so successful. The way I see it, our recent UAS symposium really marked the start of that process.

Those of you who were there know that I made some requests of, and challenges to, our stakeholders.

I said that as we progress on integration, we're always going to tell you what we are thinking and where we are learning. But it's very important that we hear your raw and unedited perspectives on what we're doing.

After we authorized Industrial Skyworks to conduct night time drone operations, the company’s president, Michael Cohen, commented that “the FAA is trending in the right direction.”

That’s great to hear.  But while it's always nice to receive affirmation that we're on the right track, we don't expect – nor do we want you to always agree with us.

That’s because disagreement can be a source of strength, and the key thing is for everyone to hear what others are thinking. We have a lot of bright people who work at the FAA, but we know that we don't have all the answers.

We need to have a pipeline so the bright minds of our stakeholders can channel their ideas directly to us.

And it’s important that we hear not just from industry. We must all recognize there are other perspectives to integration, such as privacy and security.

The FAA is engaged with the Department of Homeland Security's interagency efforts to address the unique challenges that safe UAS integration present to the security community.

We are also part of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's multi-stakeholder process to make sure privacy concerns are addressed during integration.

And ultimately, the government as a whole must balance the different perspectives and interests on these important issues.

Now as I said a moment ago, we requested unvarnished feedback from all of our stakeholders at our symposium – and boy, did we receive it.

And sometimes that feedback identified areas of disagreement. For example:

We heard that we should fight attempts by local governments to pass laws that regulate drone use because a patchwork of laws is unsafe and unacceptable.

We also heard that we should allow local governments to make decisions that best serve the needs of their communities.

But we also heard we need to become ever more nimble – and not held back by traditional rigid approaches – when it comes to things like aircraft and pilot certification or airspace access issues.

And we were advised to consider that there may be more than one solution to a particular integration challenge.

We heard we need to move toward performance-based system of standards for unmanned aircraft, rather than one-size-fits-all, prescriptive standards.

We heard that we need to find better ways to collect and analyze operational and safety data that we get from industry, and that industry has to find better ways to get that data to us.

Now that kind of advice is incredibly valuable. In fact, it’s critical to our ability to achieve that perfect balance between integration and safety.

And so to that end, I have some news to announce: we are establishing a broad-based drone advisory committee that will advise us on key unmanned aircraft integration issues.

UAS innovation is moving at the speed of Silicon Valley. So it only makes sense that we asked a Silicon Valley leader to help us with this important step.

I have asked Intel CEO Brian Krzanich to chair this group.  Brian has a deep personal interest in unmanned aircraft and a passion for leveraging technology responsibly.

He is also a pilot and he understands the breadth and the variety of the users of our airspace.

Now, we’ve had excellent success with the speedy work done by the UAS registration task force and the MicroUAS aviation rulemaking committee.

But those were set up for a single purpose and for limited duration.

The drone advisory committee, by contrast, is intended to be a long-lasting group that will essentially serve the same purpose as the FAA’s NextGen Advisory Committee, or NAC as it’s better known.

The NAC has helped the FAA hone in on improvements that mean the most to the industry and has helped build broad support for our overall direction.

And we envision the drone advisory panel playing the same role on UAS integration, including helping us prioritize our work. Now, we know that our policies and overall regulation of this segment of aviation will be more successful if we have the backing of a strong, and a diverse coalition.

We’ve initiated discussions with RTCA to help us develop the drone advisory committee roster. RTCA will serve as the point of contact for would-be members and has been asked to support the drone advisory committee similar to their role with the NAC.

And we expect we’ll be able to talk in more detail about the panel in the coming weeks. And we also expect that we’ll have a formal name for it by then as well.

One suggestion was to call it the Advisory Committee for Drone Coordination, which would give it the acronym of "AC/DC." We checked. Apparently, there's a rock and roll band with that name. Who knew?

I fully expect the committee – regardless of what we end up calling it – will be a leap forward in our collaborative approach. But, as I said at our symposium, collaboration is something I see as a two-way street.

It’s not just about the FAA listening to your ideas about what we should or shouldn’t do – although that’s valuable.

Safety is a shared responsibility in which each one of us has a vital role. And as stakeholders, in addition to innovating, you must pour some of your energy toward developing safety solutions of your own.

Because innovation brings with it limitless possibilities, our work to safely integrate unmanned aircraft will, realistically, never be done.

But I have always believed that any problem can be solved by intelligent people working together in pursuit of a common goal.

I’m confident we’ll meet tomorrow’s challenges through cooperation, collaboration, through respect and through trust – and, above all else, a commitment to being creative in our thinking and flexible in our approaches.

So again, thank you for having me here today.

New Horizons

Thank you, Paula.  I’m glad to be here.  Let me also offer my personal congratulations to the award winners.  Their work is contributing to the kinds of innovations that are taking aviation to new heights, maybe even revolutionizing it altogether.  In doing so, they’re helping us go beyond our limits, which is the very idea expressed in this year’s AEA conference theme – New Horizons Await.

Speaking of innovation, I was attending the World Aviation Training Symposium last week.  In my speech, I talked about the old Link Trainer, an early generation flight simulator developed back in the 1930’s.

These things were kind of like soapbox derby racers, or maybe a trash can with stubby wings, a door and a control stick.  Of course, simulators have come a long way since then.

And so have aircraft electronics.  You remember the old radios that were so heavy and complicated that they needed a third person in the cockpit to work those things. 

Who would have thought back then that the radios would now be as light as 10-15 pounds, or that they would be touch screen? 

For the most part, the plane itself is the same as when the Wright Brothers started.  It has wings, propulsion, and a method to control it.  But the advances have been with the on-board instruments that augment the pilot’s ability – like TCAS, enhanced ground proximity warnings, Mode S transponders, and now ADS-B. 

Thanks to advances like these, and others in the electronics industry, airplanes are some of the most connected, information-driven pieces of equipment on the planet.

A pilot today can have as much, maybe even more, situational awareness as the controller on the ground.

We would like to see the industry equip with ADS-B Out as soon as possible.  Let me be clear that the deadline for the mandate is set at January 1, 2020.  It will not change.  That’s only 44 months away! 

The air carriers have all committed to being equipped on time, and we expect that the GA community will be as well.   

We know it's human nature for people to wait until they absolutely have to do something.  There’s a sense that if owners wait longer to equip, they’ll get better deals.  Or maybe owners still have a lot of questions about the kind of product they need. 

But on the flip side, if they don’t get their appointments scheduled, they might not get their installations in time, and they might be grounded.  We’re also concerned that you’ll end up with too much demand and not enough time to get the installations done.  

We encourage you to be creative marketers.  A great example is Custom Avionics in Bartow, Florida.  In December, they launched a new campaign called Early Register, where they guarantee ADS-B installations before the 2020 deadline. 

They will assign the customer a position and guarantee their spot.  And if owners register now, they lock in the price, even if costs go up as we approach the deadline.

Through Early Register, owners can also preorder equipment and pay for it over time, like a layaway program.

Custom Avionics is just one good example of marketing creativity.  I’m sure there are other good ones. 

We know prices on equipment have fallen considerably – some units can be found for as low as $1,500.  But we’re finding that a lot GA pilots are willing to pay more for a better product.  It’s not just about being compliant.  There’s value in getting things that make flying more fun and safe – things like ADS-B In.

So while it’s important for your customers to get their installations scheduled, it’s also very important that the installations be properly configured.  We’re seeing issues where people are getting their installations, but if it’s not configured correctly, it’s showing up as a problem.

As of April 15, we have about 9,800 good installations and about 1,900 bad installations.  Some of these bad ones indicate they are intended to be compliant installations, but something is wrong in the transmitted data.  The good news is that the “1,900” seems to be holding constant.  So the problem isn’t getting worse.  

We’ve made it easier for repair stations and pilots to check if their installation is correct.  They can go to the FAA website and click on the “Equip ADS-B” link on the homepage.  

Just as ADS-B is enabling us to see new horizons, so is the proliferation of unmanned aircraft.  Over the last several months, the FAA has worked to reach a new and different generation of aviators – in venues that are new and different to us, as well.

In early March, our senior advisor on UAS integration and I attended the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

During one panel, a man in the audience stood up and addressed a representative of one of the major drone manufacturers.  He said he had bought one of their early generation drones, but it was already obsolete.

He asked if they would give him a retrofit, and even hinted that they should slow down their innovation.  The manufacturer thanked the man for being an early adopter. He then assured the man that his company plans to keep innovating, making drones that are ever lighter and more capable. 

It reminds me of Moore’s law from the 1960’s.  You might remember this – the rule of thumb that computer memory doubles about every two years, and that’s when you come out with a new product.  With UAS, they’re thinking the product life cycle might be 4-6 months.  That’s how fast things are changing. 

In fact, we expect there to be as many as 7 million drones sold by 2020.  And we already have more than 430,000 registered drone users in the United States, more than the number of registered aircraft.   

We know that electronic components are becoming more miniaturized to fit on these drones.  Developers are coming up with algorithms and sensors that enable drones to fly in formation.  If they encounter trees, they can split and fly around the trees.  And they can count the peaches on the tree. 

Everything is happening so quickly.  We are only beginning to see some of the ingenious uses of new and miniaturized technologies developed for drones.  We look forward to seeing how these innovations might be applicable to traditional aircraft.  It’s certainly fun to be a part of it. 

Your companies have been at the forefront when it comes to turning electronics into life-saving, life-changing tools.

You’re constantly looking to the next horizon.  In this business, I think everyone ought to be paying attention to what’s happening with drones.

No doubt, industry is moving at the speed of imagination.  At the FAA, we can’t afford to move at the old speed of government.  We have to be willing to innovate the way we do our work, and we are.

For instance, we took steps to streamline the process of issuing exemptions for non-hobby UAS operations.  We recently raised the “blanket” altitude authorization for exemption holders and government operators from 200 feet to 400 feet.  This is another milestone in our effort to change the traditional speed of government. 

We’re also working to be more flexible in our rules by reviewing our small airplane certification standards.  And, based on months of collaboration with manufacturers and others in the industry, we released our proposed rule to rewrite Part 23 in March.

Instead of requiring certain design elements on specific technologies, the new Part 23 rule will enable manufacturers to develop aircraft and safety technologies according to performance-based standards that maintain the same level of safety.

This approach recognizes there’s more than one way to deliver on safety – and it provides room for flexibility and innovation in the marketplace.

We expect that this will reduce the time it takes to get safety-enhancing technologies for small airplanes into the marketplace while also reducing cost.

They might not be required by a rule, but these tools still provide a number of valuable safety benefits – and we want to make sure you can easily take advantage of them.      

Our Part 23 rewrite will overhaul how we certify aircraft in the future.  But we also recognize how important it is to modernize the existing general aviation fleet.

In 2014, we developed a streamlined process for installing angle of attack indicator systems.  Last year, we clarified the process for installing electronic attitude indicators.  We’re now building on this progress with a new policy that will make it easier to install other non-required safety-enhancing equipment in GA aircraft.

We think this approach will help us to drive down the GA fatality rate.  We’re starting to see it move down some, but this has been a stubborn number.

We want to see the kind of improvement that we’ve had in commercial passenger aviation.  There, we’ve reduced the fatal accident risk rate by 83% from 1998 to 2008.  And we’re aiming to reduce it another 50% by 2025.

Much of the reduction has come from designing planes that are stronger and smarter.

We now collect a wealth of safety data, and exchange safety data with industry so that we can identify potential hazards and address them before they can give rise to an accident.  We want to achieve similar results in General Aviation.

As FAA Administrator, I have to say one of the perks of the job is getting a chance to become a student of aviation history.  The walls in the corridor outside my office are lined with black-and-white photographs that capture moments in time.

Some of them are of the aviation heroes and heroines you might expect to see, but a great number of them are of airplanes from a bygone era.

As you look at them, it’s hard to imagine that only a few short decades ago, passengers would climb aboard Ford Tri-motor aircraft with corrugated aluminum skin.

They would sit in wicker seats for flights that sometimes reached the staggeringly high altitude of 10,000 feet.  At night, passengers could look out the window and see tongues of blue flames escaping from the un-muffled exhausts.

Today, our newest jetliners are made of materials these pioneers never would have imagined.  They fly above the weather at altitudes so high that details of the countryside fade away to hues of brown, green blue.

I recently visited Spirit Aerosystems’ facility in Wichita, Kansas, where sections of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were being built up by giant robots applying carbon-composite tape to a rotating jig.  Who would have thought there would someday be an aircraft factory where the sound of riveting was completely absent?

Similar advances have been made in the world of avionics, and the changes we’re seeing are awe-inspiring.

The FAA is committed to supporting these innovations, while ensuring that all safety needs are met.  As your conference them proclaims, we know that New Horizons Await, and I look forward to seeing how these changes will continue to transform aviation.

Safety Revolution

As Prepared for Delivery

Thank you, Chris (Lehman), for that introduction, and good morning to everyone. It’s great to be back in Orlando at WATS.

Today is April 19^th, and for those of you familiar with U.S. history, it’s the day the American Revolution began in Lexington and Concord, with the shot heard around the world. Our country began as a bold experiment, built on ideals and aspirations. We set out to change the old order and create something that previous generations could not imagine – a country based on equals.

Aviation too, has always been a bold experiment. Through trial and error, and an undying desire to do what no one had done before, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton created a revolution that brought us into the age of flight.

Over the years, as technology has improved, aviation continues to adapt and evolve. Sometimes it’s an evolution and sometimes things change so quickly you’re swept up in a revolution.

We are at the dawn of the age of unmanned aircraft, changing the basic formula of aviation from pilot in the cockpit to pilot on the ground.  We are moving from an air traffic system that relies on radar to one that uses satellites.

But the most crucial transformation may be one that's not as readily apparent: Weare in the age of Big Data, where more information is generated more quickly and from more sources than ever before. 

So how is the FAA dealing with this change? What does this mean for the future of training and for the future of aviation?  Simply put, using data to make decisions based on risk is the way of the future.

The FAA first delved into this kind of thinking when we created the Advanced Qualification Program, or AQP, a quarter century ago.  Some people say the letters stand for “Awesome Quantities of Paperwork.”

Although it might take more work to conduct tailored training, the airlines are given this flexibility because the results show it’s worth it. All major carriers in the United States have chosen to use this voluntary training program to focus their training where they need it most.

With this program, if airlines look at training data and see pilots are doing very well with certain scenarios, then they don’t have to spend as much time continually training for those scenarios.

But if the data show other areas where pilots are not doing as well, the airline may concentrate training there instead.

I’m sure many of you have been around long enough to remember the life insurance kiosks inside the terminals at most major airports. For five bucks, you could buy a policy in case you didn’t make it to your destination.

Well, data sharing, new technologies and much more realistic training helped us put those guys out of business. Today, the most sought-after location in the terminal – other than a Starbucks – is an outlet to plug your charger into.

But here’s the challenge: With so few accidents, we have no choice but to move past the forensic approach of studying what went wrong after the fact.

Today, we have achieved a remarkable level of safety. Working with industry and sharing data has played a role in eliminating the leading causes of commercial accidents like controlled flight into terrain and weather.

To keep up the momentum, we have to continue to identify risks and address them before incidents occur. This is the idea behind Safety Management Systems.

These systems give airlines a structure to look at data from every aspect of their operations. They are designed to identify hazards, assess risks and put measures in place to mitigate them.

Safety Management Systems also foster an environment where aviation professionals will voluntarily provide us and their company observations about problems they have seen or encountered.

The revolutionary part about Safety Management Systems is putting all these parts together over the entire enterprise. It’s about creating cultural change in the organization.

One of the more remarkable stories of cultural change in corporate America is the turnaround at Ford Motor Company under the leadership of Alan Mulally.  Some of you may remember Alan from his many years at Boeing.

At Ford Alan stepped into a culture where information was used against somebody if they volunteered that there was a problem in a particular program or area. There was no trust, and no way to have honest conversations that could lead to solutions.

Alan took some of the methods he developed at Boeing and demonstrated to this group of rivals that they were actually on the same team.

It worked. Ford’s new, collaborative culture helped it to become profitable again. It was the only major automaker to make it through the recession without a government bailout.

Creating an environment of trust where people can openly talk about safety problems is essential.  At the FAA we believe that establishing trust with our stakeholders and having honest conversations about what’s working and what’s not working – without fear of reprisal – will bring us to the next level of safety.

As a result, we have changed the lens we use to look at compliance with our regulations.

The FAA is still a regulatory agency, and we will still use enforcement as a tool for operators who are unwilling or unable to comply. But compliance philosophy focuses on working with the majority of operators – those who are willing and able to comply – in order to find and fix problems before they result in incidents or accidents.

That means changing the way we interact with operators.

We want to work with companies so they will be willing to share information about failings without undue concern about blame. This will help us address problems and mitigate hazards to enhance safety.

There is a lot of churn in aviation and we still rely on our 4,000 safety inspectors to make sure that people are doing things the right way. Sometimes a single error can cause a big problem.

Many times these can be caught at a more local level. So, it’s a balance between using big picture data to guide us on the one hand, and our regular system of checks on the other.

In that vein, we continue to learn lessons from accidents, and we take these lessons very seriously.

New pilot training requirements mandated by Congress go into effect in 2019. These requirements include academic and flight training for the prevention of and recovery from full stall and upset events.

To prepare for this, we just released a new rule for simulator qualification standards that will help make sure simulators are better representing the airplane so pilots can train how to react to these very rare, but serious events.   

This rule will allow everyone to get their simulators qualified and ready for 2019.

I mentioned earlier that we are in the age of Big Data. I’d like to circle back and acknowledge that the flight training industry was one of the first to recognize the potential power of data.

How many of you have ever had the opportunity to step inside an old Link Trainer?

During the early years in the 1930s, these little blue simulators were only slightly more sophisticated—when compared with today's models—than a soapbox derby racer, or a trash can with stubby wings, a door and a control stick.

But the industry kept searching for something better, and each successive generation of simulator became more and more realistic.

Then one day, some of the brightest minds in aviation began harnessing data from flight recorders.

Now, we not only simulate real situations, we duplicate them – in giant, articulating Star Wars-looking machines that are in many ways as complicated as the aircraft they mimic.

This remarkable use of data helped us to truly understand phenomena such as wind shear and microbursts.

 The training scenarios you developed have since saved dozens of flights that might otherwise have fallen victim to one of nature’s most powerful forces. That’s really something, when you think about it.

Today, we’re seeing similar data being used to do more mundane, but still important tasks.

It’s possible for a technician on the ground to receive streaming data from the engines of a speeding jetliner. Something as seemingly innocuous as a slightly high oil temperature reading could be a precursor to a much more serious problem.

With this capability, the technician can order a quick check of the engine at the next stop, well before the problem manifests itself in a way that causes a flight to turn back or be diverted.

Yet, nomatter how much data we collect and no matter how sophisticated our simulators become, technology is just a tool.  All the training in the world won’t matter if the people receiving it don’t retain what they’ve learned.

You may have heard the thoughts of Miracle on the Hudson Captain Chesley Sullenberger on this matter. 

He said, “One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training,” and one day, “the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.”

We could look at professionalism and consistent attention to training and behavior as another kind of Safety Management System that we practice individually. Do we follow procedures each time, even if no one is looking? Do our actions form the right habits?

You’ve heard the analogy that for an accident to happen it’s like lining up the holes in a block of Swiss cheese. A series of problems has to take place for the holes to align perfectly. If you change one factor, the accident won’t happen.

Our new Compliance Philosophy and more robust Safety Management Systems are our way of doing everything we can to prevent those holes from lining up.

If we put everything together – better training, better data, professionalism, and a renewed commitment to working together – the revolution we create in safety will be the legacy we leave for future generations of aviators.

Thank you for all the work that you do, and once again, thank you for being our partner in safety.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Some of us are getting to know each other so well that gatherings such as this are starting to feel kind of like family reunions.

But we’re also eager to expand our family to engage a broader community in the dialogue about unmanned aircraft. We know there are a lot of creative minds with great ideas out there.

We want to hear from you and invite you to meet the FAA team and learn more about our collaborative efforts to safely integrate unmanned aircraft into the National Airspace System.

It seems that at every UAS event I attend, I comment on how much we’ve accomplished since the last event, even if that last event was just a month or two ago. Maybe it’s getting to be a bit of a cliché, but it’s true.

I see it as an affirmation that our collaborative approach is working. Because every time I talk about our accomplishments, I am referring to what we have accomplished together, as partners.

Our success is not the result of government doing what government does and industry doing what industry does. It’s the result of us joining together and respecting that we sometimes have different viewpoints.

Ultimately, we find common ground so that we can continue our unparalleled progress toward safely accommodating innovation.

This approach is working because we’re all coming from essentially the same place: we all view safety as our top priority. The safe integration of unmanned aircraft is a goal we’re committed to pursuing together.

Before we get started, I want to take a moment to highlight a couple of incidents that were in the news over the past few days because I think they sum up both the potential – and the challenge – of what we are trying to address as a group.

Over the weekend, a Bell 206 helicopter made a hard landing on some railroad tracks outside Baltimore while conducting power line inspections. This is exactly the type of operation that a small unmanned aircraft could do with much less risk to both aircraft and people and property on the ground.

The other incident, which we’ve all heard about by now, was the apparent collision between a drone and a commercial jetliner that was on approach to London Heathrow. I know the British authorities are still investigating – and the plane landed safely – but it’s exactly this type of scenario that we all want to avoid.

As an agency, the FAA’s role is to set a framework of safety without unduly impeding innovation. We recognize that we cannot solve these types of challenges alone. We need the expertise and collaboration of key industry stakeholders.

Collaboration is something I see as a two-way street. It isn’t just about the FAA listening to your ideas about what we should or shouldn’t do – although that’s valuable.

The industry also has an obligation to focus some of the energy it’s pouring into innovative designs toward simultaneously developing safety solutions. Safety is a shared responsibility.

Back in the 1960s, the nation’s collective imagination was captivated by President Kennedy’s challenge to send a man to the moon. Many of the brightest kids coming out of college shot for jobs at NASA.

Today, many of those minds are captivated by the limitless possibilities that the drone industry offers, and they are shooting for jobs in this exciting new field.

Like the space exploration of the 1960s, the work we are doing today is transforming aviation – and society – in very profound ways.

Drones, we all know, are changing the way countless jobs are done, from movie filming and real estate marketing to agricultural mapping and smokestack inspections. They’re also changing the way that we as an agency are doing business.

Last month, I was at South-by-Southwest in Austin, Texas – which itself was quite remarkable. After all, who would have imagined just a couple of years ago that a diverse group of drone industry representatives – and the Federal Aviation Administration–would be gathering for a panel discussion at a trendy cultural gathering?

During my opening remarks before the panel discussion, I referenced that old 1980s ad with the tag line, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” I said we’re trying hard not to be your father’s FAA.

What does this mean? Well, for one thing it means the FAA is doing some self-reflecting.

We’re asking: are we fast enough? Are we flexible enough? Do the old rules work? If not, why? How do we get to solutions? How do we engage with stakeholders? Indeed, who are all the stakeholders?

We are growing and learning all the time. Clearly there is a middle road, where safety and innovation coexist on relatively equal planes, and we feel like we’re hitting a sweet spot lately.

Last fall, we assembled a diverse task force that helped create a robust drone registration system in record time. Today, more than 425,000 people have registered their drones.

That means our shared safety message has reached hundreds of thousands of people we might never have otherwise reached.

We’re helping a new group of aviators understand what it means to fly safely while welcoming them into the safety culture that has been embedded in traditional aviation for more than a century.

The registration task force was so successful that we decided to try this approach again. In March, we formed an aviation rulemaking committee to develop recommendations for how we could let certain unmanned aircraft operate over people.

Earlier this month, the committee delivered a comprehensive report that will help shape a new rule. They accomplished this task in just over three weeks.

We streamlined the Section 333 and UAS test site processes to make it easier to fly. And in late spring, we plan to finalize our small UAS rule, which will allow for routine commercial drone operations and eliminate the need for most Section 333 exemptions.

But not a day goes by that I don’t think of the magnitude of what we’re doing, and the remarkable impacts that drones have had on society in just the last couple of years.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say drones are helping create a whole new means of realizing the American dream.

The low cost for new entrants means entrepreneurs have the opportunity to make huge contributions–both economically and culturally–in a very short time.

Drones are opening up aviation to people who never would have thought about entering the field through the traditional route.

Today, young people are pursuing careers as engineers, computer scientists, pilots and even lawyers with the intent of applying their skills through drones.

This demand has led to the creation of new education programs at colleges throughout the country. Right here at Embry Riddle you can get a Bachelor of Science in Unmanned Aircraft Systems Science degree.

And speaking of Embry Riddle, I’d like to pause for a second and thank our gracious hosts for providing the venue and bearing the heavy logistical load for what I know is going to be an illuminating and productive symposium.

I also want to sincerely thank everyone for taking time out of your busy schedules to be part of this discussion. The fact that we all assembled on such short notice shows we all agree about the importance of pushing integration to the next level.

In a moment I’m going to talk about what I hope we’ll accomplish over the next couple of days. But first, I want to mention that today is an especially significant milestone for UAS research.

Today, all six FAA UAS test sites in Alaska, North Dakota, Nevada, New York, Texas and Virginia are testing NASA’s unmanned aircraft traffic management system, better known as UTM.

Through UTM, NASA is researching prototype technologies that could enable safe and efficient low-altitude UAS operations.

In today’s tests, the UTM system will check for conflicts, approve or deny flight plans and notify users of any constraints. NASA’s goal is to obtain information to further refine and develop the system.

These tests are a prime example of something I said a few minutes ago – the FAA and industry both have key roles to play in the integration process. Neither of us is going to solve all of the challenges flying solo.

Working together, we have already tackled a lot of the low-hanging fruit. The purpose of this symposium is to build on the momentum we have developed over the past several months.

We need to start thinking about bigger challenges, so I propose that we use this symposium to frame these challenges together.

I would like today to mark the beginning of a new phase of the collaboration that has proved to be so successful. Toward this end, we have identified three high-level UAS strategic priorities.

Not surprisingly, the first is safely enabling UAS operations in the National Airspace System.

Second is adaptability. We want to create an environment in which emerging technology can be safely and rapidly introduced.

And third is global leadership. We’re looking to shape the global standards and practices for UAS through international collaboration.

These priorities form the backbone of a comprehensive strategic plan for UAS integration that we expect to release soon.

Now I’m going to touch on what I hope we’ll accomplish over the next two days. I want to outline what the FAA team is going to do and what I expect of you as key stakeholders.

Every FAA speaker at this symposium has three goals.

First: to explain. These are FAA decision makers in their respective areas. They’re here to tell you where the agency is heading and how we’re going to get there, what challenges we’re facing and where we need help.

Second: to listen. While we’re going to do some talking, we’re absolutely going to be listening too. We’re going to tell you the direction we’re leaning, but that doesn’t mean you have to agree.

In fact, we know most of you won’t agree with everything that’s said on this stage this afternoon. Disagreement can be a source of strength, and the key thing is for everyone to hear what the other is thinking.

Which leads to the third goal: We’re really here to engage. I expect a robust dialogue in every single one of tomorrow’s breakout sessions.

We’ve set up a feedback system so that everyone gets a chance to provide input – not just the loudest voices in the room. (I want to be clear that I wasn’t looking at any particular person when I said that.)

Now, I need to point out here that the FAA plays an important role in regulating this new industry, but we must all recognize there are other perspectives, such as privacy and security.

The FAA is engaged in interagency discussions with the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to address the unique challenges safe integration of UAS present to the security community.

We are also part of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's multi-stakeholder process to make sure privacy concerns are addressed during integration. Ultimately, the government as a whole must balance the different equities and interests on these important issues.

What we’re really looking at today is starting to frame these issues into actionable problems that we can start addressing on the safety side of the equation.

I have the same expectation for all attendees – to listen, but also to engage. I want you to speak up when you agree but also when you disagree.

I promise your comments will not fall on deaf ears – in fact, we brought a team of note-takers to make sure we capture everyone’s viewpoints.

Tomorrow is going to be a very full day, and it’s going to give us the opportunity to hear all viewpoints.

The day will feature a dozen sessions including a keynote luncheon panel on integration that will reflect a wide range of opinions and viewpoints.

Working together, we have accomplished a truly incredible amount in the last couple of years. But we’re still really at the beginning of the process.

I like to say that safely integrating unmanned aircraft is never going to be a finite process where one day we’ll sit back and say, OK, our work is done.

Frankly, our work is never done. I made that point in a recent meeting where someone asked when we would be done integrating unmanned aircraft. I responded that we’re still not done integrating manned aircraft!

The point is that we have to constantly evolve in our approach. We’re going to succeed because we’re committed to evolving, to being flexible and to working with stakeholders each and every step of the way.

What comes out of this symposium may not reflect the position of every stakeholder, but it will be what we agree upon collectively as a group.

I am grateful to everyone that made this trip, and I hope you’re all ready to contribute to the constructive dialogue needed to keep us moving forward.

A Pilot’s Lifeline

Thank you, Paul.  I’m honored to be here.  I’d like to start out by reading a note from a pilot a few of you helped.  Here it goes: 

“I’ve started this email at least a dozen times.  It’s hard to put into words the emotions, relief and gratitude I feel from the St. Louis Approach Control personnel, but more specifically Air Traffic Controller Mark Schad. 

Hard IFR was what I was flying when I began losing my vacuum while west bound around the Indiana/Illinois border.  I announced to St. Louis Approach Control that I was losing vacuum pressure and would like to be diverted to the nearest airport.  The controller I spoke to directed me to a close airport with an instrument approach and when I pulled up the approach plates I learned the weather was below decision height … . Shortly thereafter I lost all vacuum pressure.

So you see where this is going.  He’s in trouble, and he’s alone.  This is where everything Archie League stood for comes in.  Let me continue reading: 

“When I next spoke to St. Louis Approach Control I spoke to Mark Shad who informed me he was taking all responsibilities from me and all he wanted me to do was fly the plane.  He gave me a heading to Alton, Illinois which had an ILS approach.  He made sure I made only standard rate turns or less and maintained my attitude and altitude.  When it came time to intercept the glide slope he monitored and talked me through interception, capture and descent… .

At the very least, I can honestly say that Mark was instrumental in my successful landing at Alton and more likely was instrumental in saving my life… .  

The pilot goes on to express his appreciation for the professional service we provide, and praises the skill and ability of all of you, as our controllers.

I’ve seen a handful of notes like this over the years, and they always bring into sharp focus what we do and why we do it.  There’s a Traffic Situation Display in my office, and it’s covered with dots that crawl across the screen.  Notes like this remind me that those blips are people.  But they also remind me that every one of those people is in very good hands – thanks to controllers like all of you. 

The truth of the matter is that sometimes a controller is the pilot’s only lifeline. 

When the plane fails, the controller is capable.

When the pilot struggles, the controller is calm.

When the weather is bad, the controller sees clearly. 

In moments like this, seconds count, and there’s no time to reach for a manual.  Controllers call upon their training, call upon their teammates, and do what they can to make sure pilots and passengers get home safely to their families. 

It’s been said that “Today’s preparation determines tomorrow's achievement.”  Because you are prepared, you’re able to deliver when the unexpected occurs.

Somebody was recently telling me about an airline pilot who was convinced that he had trained and flown his entire career for the 30 seconds that his aircraft encountered a microburst.  The pilot said, "All of the thousands of hours of experience culminated in a moment that determined whether we all went home that night safely or ended up as the lead story on the evening news."  Everybody in this room knows exactly what he's talking about. 

I want to thank the men and women receiving awards tonight.  And we all should recognize everyone who was nominated.  Just having your name mentioned in this conversation says a lot about you and it says a lot about how you get the job done.   

I also want to thank our entire controller workforce for everything you do to keep our system the safest in the world.

I think the Today Show’s Matt Lauer put it very well in a segment they aired after he visited JFK Tower a few weeks back.  Referring to the job you do, he said, “that’s one of those jobs that you only hear about when something goes wrong, but on a daily basis they do that job so well, day in and day out.”

The FAA and NATCA are proud of you.  I value the partnership our organizations have forged.  Together, we’ve raised the bar.  We’ve collaborated on many safety programs and campaigns including:

• The Air Traffic Safety Action Program
• Professional Standards
• Turn Off, Tune In, and
• Fully Charged

Since ATSAP started 8 years ago, you’ve submitted more than 110,000 safety reports.  The direct result is that we’ve been able to make more than 150 corrective actions.

We’ve just launched a new campaign called Take a Stand For Safety to address key safety topics like soliciting and sharing up-to-date weather information so pilots and controllers can make the best decision possible. 

And we’ve also put the Respect campaign in place, which focuses on ensuring a workplace with dignity, support and respect between all individuals that work together to maintain the safety of the National Airspace System.

Just as we work together on safety and workplace culture, we’ve also made great progress with NextGen modernization.

• Last year, we completed the deployment of En Route Automation Modernization at 20 en route centers. 
• We’re working together on Terminal Automation Modernization/Replacement, which is in full production mode. 
• Data Communication’s departure clearance service is now operational at 12 towers, and we’re 1 year ahead of schedule. 
• We’ve safely reduced wake separation standards at 14 locations.
• We’re using the Surface Visualization Tool at eight TRACONs, two en route centers, and the Command Center.    
• We also have 11 active or completed Metroplex initiatives across the country.

As we look to the future, we need to turn our attention and our partnership toward addressing the issues involved with the integration of unmanned aircraft, or drones, into the airspace.

Just last week, I was part of a panel at the South by Southwest Conferences and Festivals in Austin, Texas, to talk about the future of drones.  During my comments, I noted that aviation hasn’t seen such a rapid pace of innovation since the days after World War II, when jet engines ushered us into what we now call the Jet Age.

I told the audience that it’s not an option for the FAA to continue moving at the pace of government while the drone industry is moving at the speed of imagination.

Maybe some of you are old enough to remember the old ads with the slogan, “This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile?”  Well, this isn’t your father’s FAA.  Across all of our lines of business, we are working smarter and more efficiently.  If we are doing something “because we’ve always done it this way” it’s probably time to take another look.

Until now, with drones, we’ve been focused on the regulatory side.  We’re going to issue the rule for small Unmanned Aircraft Systems later this spring, and we’re working to develop detect and avoid technologies.  In the meantime, we have authorized more than 4,200 operations on a case-by-case basis for purposes like precision agriculture, power line and flare stack inspection, and movie and pro football practice filming.

But as we move toward true integration, we recognize the need for controllers to be more involved.  It needs be a joint effort between the FAA and NATCA. 

To that end, we’re making sure you’re a partner in our Pathfinder 4 initiative for unmanned aircraft.  It’s an effort to develop a technology to detect rogue drones around airports.  We need controllers to be involved with the testing and evaluation of any new technologies because ultimately, you’ll be the ones using the information to maintain safe operations.

Then, we have to consider how to add UAS as a component in our basic and recurrent controller training programs. 

The bottom line is, you’re critical to aviation safety and we want you to have all the tools you need, so we’re all prepared for any situation in the national airspace.  And as our award winners tonight have shown us, it’s preparation that makes the difference. 

Let me close by again thanking all of our controllers for the job you do.  I look forward with great anticipation as we continue to work together to mitigate safety risk, modernize the system, and address new challenges.  There’s no question in my mind that you’re equal to the task.  The proof of that is found in our unparalleled safety record. We all know it is a direct result of the dedication and professionalism our controller workforce shows every day.

Earlier I read the note by the pilot who was so thankful to a controller that got him home safely.  I rest a little easier at night knowing that controllers such as those in this room stand watch in our towers and radar rooms.

The same is true of the millions of passengers who board their flights with scarcely a bigger worry than whether they got stuck in a middle seat or if the on-board Internet service works.

Like all of you, I hope your shifts are not memorable. But if they are, I know we are in good hands.

Thank you.

South by Southwest Press Event

I’m honored to be here with such a broad group of stakeholders who share our interest in safely and efficiently integrating unmanned aircraft into our skies.

I want to thank the Small UAV Coalition and Google for leading the effort to organize this event, and I want to thank all the industry representatives who took time out of their busy schedules to join us. There are far too many folks to mention individually, but I’m delighted that we’re all gathered together here.

The fact that we’re all here is a testament to the enormous influence unmanned aircraft have had on our society in an incredibly short period of time. Think about it: who would have imagined a couple of years ago that a group this diverse would be gathering for a panel discussion about drones at South by Southwest, of all places? But here we are, and I’m looking forward to what I know will be a productive and illuminating conversation.

The theme of today’s panel is the future of small UAS. But before we get there, I want to talk a bit about where we are today, and how we got here.

We’re not even three months into 2016, but we have already made significant progress on several important initiatives: a robust registration system, a MicroUAS aviation rulemaking committee, and a successful No Drone Zone campaign for the Super Bowl, just to name a few. When I say we have made progress, I mean all of us, working together, in fruitful and productive partnerships.

You know the old saying that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts? That couldn’t be truer of the work that we’re engaged in. The wide array of industry representatives here today underscores that while we may sometimes have different opinions and ideas, we’re all coming from essentially the same place: we all view safety as our top priority, and the safe integration of unmanned aircraft is a goal that we’re committed to pursuing together.

A couple of months ago, I was doing an interview with a reporter about UAS registration, and I teased him for scoffing at our registration plan when we first announced it last fall. When I did that interview, in early January, about 182,000 hobbyists had registered their UAS. Today, that number has more than doubled, to nearly 400,000.

That’s really quite remarkable, and we are very encouraged by these numbers. I think we all see registration as an important educational tool. It is a way of letting operators know that as soon as they start flying outdoors, they are in effect pilots. So one way of looking at the registration numbers is that our shared safety message has reached hundreds of thousands of operators. We are helping them understand what it means to fly safely while welcoming them into the safety culture that has been embedded in traditional aviation for more than a century.

We have a successful registration system because we – the FAA – knew that we couldn’t, and shouldn’t, go it alone. We set up a diverse task force to develop recommendations for what the system should look like.

The task force members demonstrated the commitment, creativity, drive and humility that we expected as they tackled this daunting challenge. I say humility because with this kind of process, it’s rare that everyone gets exactly what they want. Yet the task force came out with consensus recommendations that reflected the members’ willingness to compromise in pursuit of a common goal. The end result is that hundreds of thousands of people have absorbed our safety message because we all worked together.

Some of our registration task force partners joined us in early January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for a press event to provide updates on the registration process and other initiatives. A few of us were chatting afterward and someone suggested that the registration task force was so effective that we should do something similar to develop rules for MicroUAS. This wasn’t the first time we had heard this suggestion; a number of people advocated a separate “micro” classification in comments they made on our proposed small UAS rule.

The idea was that we shouldn’t treat all UAS the same. Some–might be carved out and considered differently because they would pose less of a hazard due to their size, shape, weight or materials.

Well, we listened. Late last month, we announced that we are setting up an Aviation Rulemaking Committee to develop recommendations for how we can safely allow certain UAS to be operated with people below. Our goal is to create a performance-based regulatory framework that addresses potential hazards, rather than a classification that is based only on weight and speed.

This is a notable departure from how we have traditionally approached safety, and it reflects our firm belief that being flexible and open-minded is key to successfully integrating new technologies into the world’s busiest, most complex – and safest–aviation system.

The UAS registration task force was the model for this rulemaking committee, which now includes more than two-dozen aviation stakeholders.

Among them are UAS manufacturers, UAS operators, researchers, airline and general aviation pilot organizations, and many others. The committee began meeting last week and will issue its final report on April 1. After we review that report, we will draft a proposed rule that I’m confident will reflect the rich array of perspectives offered by the committee.

Speaking of new rules, we expect to have our small UAS rule finalized this spring. As most of you know, this rule will allow for routine commercial operations of small UAS within certain limitations. It will, for the most part, eliminate the need to issue Section 333 exemptions on a case-by-case basis, and it will open up access to the national airspace system while maintaining today’s high safety standards.

Our partners in industry, government and law enforcement also were instrumental in helping spread the word that the airspace around Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area was a No Drone Zone during the Super Bowl. Among them were UAS manufacturers, Know Before You Fly, local airports, the FBI, NORAD, Levi’s Stadium, the San Francisco 49ers, the NFL, tourism bureaus and others.

I can tell you that without exception, everyone we contacted enthusiastically pitched in to help get the word out, immediately asking, “what do you need from us?” I’m happy to say there was not a single instance of a drone violating the airspace restrictions around the stadium during game-time. (I wish I could say the same about manned aircraft – four pilots intruded into the restricted airspace and were intercepted by fighter jets, which I understand is not a particularly pleasant experience.)

We have a host of other initiatives under way or planned. And in that regard, I have some news to deliver.

You’re probably familiar with our free B4UFLY smart phone app, which lets pilots know whether it’s safe to fly in their current or planned locations. We introduced it for limited beta testing last August and in January made an updated iOS version of the app available for the general public.

Today, I am pleased to announce that the Android version of the app will also be publicly available later today, also free of charge. There are currently more than 35,000 people using B4UFLY, almost all of them iOS users, but now users of virtually all smart phones will have access to it, which we believe will help heighten public awareness about what it means to fly unmanned aircraft safely. The Android version includes a lot of updates based on feedback from beta testers, like a much more user-friendly flight-planning feature.

This app started as an effort by the FAA to help UAS users know, in real-time, about where it is and is not safe to fly. I’m proud that the FAA has taken this leadership role. The public and our stakeholders expect us to pave the way in aviation safety outreach and education, and we will continue to do so. But I also see B4UFLY as another opportunity for us to expand collaboration with industry.

So I’m committing today to create a framework for the app’s programming and logic to be available to the general public. We recognize that getting B4UFLY into the hands of people like you, to give you the opportunity to include it in your own operating systems or mobile platforms, is the right approach to ensure drone operators receive the best safety guidance available.

The fact is, safely integrating unmanned aircraft is never going to be a finite process where one day we’ll sit back and say, OK, our work is done. We have to constantly evolve in our approach so we can accommodate innovation while maintaining the highest levels of safety.

I have said more than once that innovation moves at the speed of imagination and that government has traditionally moved at, well, the speed of government. And when you’re a safety agency like the FAA, a methodical and deliberative approach is necessary.

But at the same time, we are working to change the traditional speed of government – when possible–by anticipating what’s coming next and maintaining a flexible regulatory approach. Remember that ad from the 1980s with the tag line, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile”? Well, we’re trying hard not to be your father’s FAA.

What does the future hold in terms of uses for UAS? Well, I’m pretty sure ideas are percolating in some of the amazingly creative minds in this room even as I speak. While I can’t predict what those ideas might be, I do know that there is a theme behind everything we have been doing to help translate ideas into reality.

That theme is that we have been finding our way forward through partnerships–with industry, with government and with law enforcement. I can say with certainty that the path in front of us will continue to be paved with the same kind of partnerships that have taken us to where we are today.

Integrating UAS has been a fascinating and energizing journey, and I am confident that by continuing to work closely together, we will benefit from the virtually limitless potential this segment of aviation brings to our increasingly connected society. And we will do so as safely and as expeditiously as possible.

Before the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development concerning FY 2016 Budget Hearing – Federal Aviation Administration

As prepared for delivery.

Good afternoon, Chairman Diaz-Balart, Ranking Member Price, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget request for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA’s 2017 budget request is for $15.9 billion to support the FAA’s mission to run the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world while continuing to transform our airspace through NextGen. These budget priorities are important to us, and they also play a larger role in the long-term health of our nation’s economy.

We continue to make strides deploying key elements of our NextGen air traffic system while also welcoming new users into the nation’s airspace. NextGen is no longer some nebulous and futuristic aspiration; it’s happening today.

When I spoke to you last year, I told you we were almost finished with the installation of our En Route Automation Modernization System, or ERAM. It is now complete and is delivering the promised results as the backbone of our NextGen technology transformation. Similarly, the ground infrastructure for ADS-B is finished, and ADS-B traffic and weather broadcasts are now available across the country.

As we complete this foundation, our engagement with industry is yielding real benefits. Last week, the NextGen Advisory Committee and the FAA met in Atlanta to discuss our accomplishments and to outline our next steps. We have made significant progress in four NextGen priorities areas, including Performance-Based Navigation and DataComm. We are replacing old flight paths with more efficient satellite-based procedures, and DataComm technology is giving pilots and controllers a new, more efficient way to communicate critical safety information.

For the Operations budget, the FAA is requesting $10 billion in 2017 for day-to-day operations of our nation’s aviation system. This represents a 1 percent increase above the FY 2016 enacted level and includes the costs of providing safe, secure, and cost-effective air traffic services to commercial and private aviation.

This budget will strengthen our safety and security programs, hiring 16 new safety critical staff for the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). We’ll also hire 13 new personnel in the Office of Commercial Space Transportation to support regulatory, safety, and airspace integration efforts. And we’ve boosted funding to improve the security of our most critical NAS facilities and protect the FAA from malicious insider activity.

For Facilities and Equipment – or F&E – the 2017 request of $2.8 billion maintains the capacity and safety of our nation’s airspace while we continue to modernize and transform it. The non-NextGen portion of our investment – representing almost $2 billion – will be to sustain current systems. This funding will be a down payment on our maintenance backlog, keeping systems operational and our employees safe. Further reducing the backlog will require continued commitment for several years.

Our Research, Engineering, and Development request of $167.5 million allows us to boost funding for the Continuous Low Energy, Emission and Noise (CLEEN) program to support the President’s plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It also includes $8.4 million to meet the growing demand for unmanned aircraft systems.

Our Airports budget request is for $2.9 billion. This reflects our ongoing priority of focusing federal resources on projects of highest priority and greatest benefit to aviation at smaller commercial and general aviation airports.

At the same time, the budget would allow commercial service airports to increase non-Federal Passenger Facility Charges (PFC) from the current maximum of $4.50 to $8. The PFC level has not been increased in more than 15 years. Our analysis shows that, due to inflation, this higher PFC level is needed just to provide an equivalent level of buying power. This means that large hub airports will benefit from more direct and local control over their funding and improvements.

Before we turn to questions, I’d like to take a moment to address the upcoming debate over FAA reauthorization. Last month, the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee unveiled a proposal for how air traffic control services could be provided in the future. We are open to having this discussion. We encourage Congress to work in a bipartisan way on FAA reauthorization, consistent with recent approaches on other transportation issues.

Civil aviation contributes $1.5 trillion annually to the national economy and constitutes 5.4 percent of the gross domestic product. Aviation also generates 12 million jobs. We share an enormous responsibility to protect this mode of travel and to shape and nurture its bright future.

Thank you. That concludes my opening remarks. I would be happy to answer your questions.

FAA Report

My remarks will be relatively brief this morning. I’ll begin with an overview of the agenda, and then provide brief updates on the 2017 budget, reauthorization, and some of our UAS efforts around UAS integration.

You’ll have noticed by now that there are multiple agenda items related to PBN. I want to spend a few moments putting these into context. 

It was exactly a year ago, in this same room, we started a discussion on a long-term PBN strategy that would provide a clear vision of GPS-based navigation as the basis for daily operations in our national airspace and how do we get to that point. As a result of that conversation, we took our internal work to the PARC, the Performance-based Operations Aviation Rulemaking Committee, and one year later we have that strategy. It lays out a consensus view of where the aviation community as a whole wants to go through 2030. I’ll yield time at the end of my remarks to Josh Gustin and Mark Bradley to walk us through that really excellent work that they have been leading. 

Out of that work came a NAC tasking on PBN Time, Speed, and Spacing, which is intended to inform a 15-year plan for the deployment of traffic flow tools that will complement the PBN Strategy. Importantly, this will explore where those capabilities should reside – on the ground or in the air. That task has just kicked off and we’ll hear from the leads how they are approaching that work.

We’ll look at our progress on some near-term PBN work when we review the status of our current NextGen Priorities plan, which continues to be a fruitful collaboration. Richard mentioned that we completed 29 commitments in our first year of execution. I’m happy to add that we’ve completed 13 more since October. DataComm is now in use in Salt Lake City, New Orleans, Louisville, Newark, Austin and the two Houston airports, and is coming soon to a tower near you, including right here in Atlanta. We implemented wake recategorization in Denver, and we’ve increased efficiency during instrument conditions at seven airports, by reducing the standard spacing for dependent parallel operations.

You’ll hear more from the focus area leads on these accomplishments, as well as on their preliminary efforts to roll the plan forward with new commitments for 2018 and 2019.

As we talked about this morning, the NAS operates pretty well on blue sky days. It’s in off-nominal conditions where NextGen provides opportunity for improvement. Bart Roberts of Jet Blue will tell us today how a PBN procedure, coupled with an agreement with the local facility, made all the difference for his operations during a JFK runway closure.

The final PBN item is an update from the Community Outreach task group. PBN changes, especially new routes, are among the few parts of NextGen that the general public can actually see, and these changes have caught the attention of underlying communities in various parts of the country. At the last NAC meeting, we talked about the need to more fully engage communities before we implement procedures, and the FAA is committed to being smart and thoughtful about educating, involving, and getting input from residents – building on good past practices and using new techniques. The NAC touched on this subject in earlier recommendations, and will amplify those thoughts through this new task. I look forward to hearing the update from that group today.

We also have a few non-PBN agenda items:

We remain focused on ensuring that NextGen is harmonized with modernization efforts across the globe and so it’s important for us to understand how other programs are progressing. Florian and Frank will talk to us about the European ATM Master Plan. We look forward to hearing from them on that.

We’ll hear from the Joint Analysis Team. The NextGen Priorities were chosen by industry and the FAA because they were deemed to be of high benefit.  We will be looking to the expertise of the Joint Analysis Team to assess their impact. The team’s work is intended to help us collectively understand the data and methodology that the FAA and industry use to examine changes in operational performance and to support a common approach. I understand that the team has had some insightful conversations and I look forward to hearing more about that today.

We’ve already heard some about that today. The Equip 2020 working group is continuing to work through equipage challenges in order to ensure that everyone meets the January 1, 2020 mandate, and Bruce DeCleene will walk us through the current state of affairs in that effort.

As Richard mentioned it is important to have visibility into fleet plans for ADS-B equipage in order to make sure that we are ahead of the mandate and that we can continue to make this transition as seamless as possible.

I would like to thank Delta and American Airlines for their commitment to provide this information. We look forward to receiving their data as well as the data from other carriers very soon.

Bruce will then be joined by Michele Merkle for our final presentation of the day, which you’ll see titled “the NextGen Vision.” Earlier I mentioned our PBN strategy, which outlines the way ahead for navigation through 2030. We have a complementary product that does the same for the full scope of NextGen. Consider this an update to the 2011 NextGen Mid-Term Concept of Operations. It reaffirms the FAA’s commitment to providing enhanced service delivery in decades to come. It also lays the groundwork for further discussions here at the NAC and is a suitable topic to conclude today’s meeting. The success we’ve had working on our near-term priorities gives me great hope for the possibility of making joint commitments that take us far into the future. 

Now I’d like to turn to a few other items of perennial interest and just give you a brief update:

The President released his budget earlier this month for Fiscal Year 2017. The budget calls for $15.9 billion dollars for FAA, including approximately $1 billion for NextGen. 

This budget, if enacted, would restore us to the funding levels needed to ensure that we are able to execute the NextGen Priorities as we have discussed. However, since this request is above the two-year budget agreement, we may continue to experience budget uncertainty. Given that, we must remain flexible as we execute our current plan and establish new priorities for 2018 and 2019, and align those plans with budgets as actually passed.

I also want to briefly, and I emphasize briefly, address the FAA reauthorization bill. As you are aware, earlier this month the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee unveiled a proposal for how air traffic control services could be provided in the future.

There is broad acknowledgment that FAA reauthorization offers an opportunity to ensure that the U.S. continues to lead the world in aviation safety and efficiency. FAA reauthorization will impact a broad and diverse array of stakeholders, and we want to make sure they are all heard throughout this process, which has just begun. We encourage Congress to work in a bipartisan way, consistent with recent approaches on transportation issues.

We continue to believe that any proposal should support our core reauthorization principles. These principles include maintaining the safest aerospace system in the world, modernizing the FAA’s air traffic control system—including stable funding for air traffic control operations, NextGen, and the efficient recapitalization of aging facilities—and enabling the integration of new users into the NAS. Other principles include allowing better alignment of resources with the needs of the NAS and securing appropriate funding for the nation’s airports. These principles are intended to guide reauthorization to improve safety, make our airspace more efficient, and improve service for air travelers and other stakeholders.  

Finally, on UAS, as many of you may know, the FAA has been working hard to safely and effectively integrate UAS into our airspace.  This remains a significant challenge.

But, in December, we made great strides toward this goal by creating a web-based registration process for owners of small drones.

We are requiring the owners of small unmanned aircraft, weighing more than half a pound to register their drones. To date more than 350,000 have done so, giving us the opportunity to work with a whole new group of aviators.  There are now more unmanned aircraft registered in the US than there are traditional aircraft.

We established a task force, wrote and implemented the interim rule for the registry, and stood up a registry website, all in two months.

The speed with which we were able to roll this out is a testament to the invaluable input we received from the diverse task force of stakeholders we brought together to work on this issue. And it’s further proof that when government and industry partner, we can innovate, cut through red tape, and use technology to tackle emerging risks.

This is essential with UAS because of how quickly this field is evolving. Almost on a daily basis, we’re seeing proposals from operators who’d like to use unmanned aircraft to do everything from package delivery and pipeline inspection to newsgathering and real estate photography.

Meanwhile, we are continuing to work on the final rule for small UAS and we plan to publish that in late spring.

This week we also announced that we are going to establish an aviation rulemaking committee to develop recommendations for operating micro unmanned aircraft.

The committee will begin its work in March and will make recommendations for how to safely operate drones over people who are not directly involved in the operation of the aircraft.

There has been widespread interest in creating a separate micro UAS category.  As part of the proposed rule for small UAS, we asked for comments on a “micro” classification.  Based on the comments, the FAA has decided to pursue flexible, performance-based requirements that address potential hazards, instead of a classification defined by weight and speed. We expect the ARC to issue its final report in April. 

The fast turnaround again demonstrates our commitment to being flexible in our regulatory approach so that we can accommodate innovation while maintaining our high level of safety.

We will start working on the rule once we receive the committee’s recommendations.

Before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee concerning Transportation and Public Assets Subcommittee Hearing

As prepared for delivery.

Chairman Mica, Ranking Member Duckworth, Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on the issue of oversight of aviation credentials. I know this issue is of significant interest to Chairman Mica because we’ve appeared before Congress on this issue under Mr. Mica’s leadership in 2013.

The mission of the FAA is ensuring the highest levels of safety for the millions of passengers traveling across our airspace system every day. The Agency is charged with the oversight of airlines and aircraft manufacturers, the safety of our nation’s airports and the training of our air traffic controllers. Taken together, we operate the safest and most efficient airspace system in the world.

The FAA issues 23 different types of airmen certificates, including those to pilots, mechanics, dispatchers, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers. There are more than 800,000 active pilot certificate holders alone. A pilot certificate is a credential, attesting to the training and competence of the pilot. It is the same as a lawyer who must have evidence of admission to the bar; a doctor who is board certified in a specialty; or even a beautician who must meet state or local licensing requirements. In all these cases, the credential is not used as identification media and it does not impart security access to court rooms, to operating rooms or to airports. A pilot never uses his or her pilot certificate to gain access to airport areas. Instead, he or she uses the security credential issued by the airport as required by TSA.

Since 2002, the FAA has taken actions to enhance the security of pilot certificates. We require pilots to carry a valid Government issued photo I.D., in addition to a pilot certificate, whenever they are flying. This allows an FAA inspector, or others to confirm both the pilot’s identity and his or her pilot qualifications.

The FAA phased out paper certificates by incorporating tamper- and counterfeit-resistant features including micro printing, a hologram, and a UV-sensitive layer. In 2010, the FAA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to require a photo on all pilot certificates and to improve the process for getting a student pilot certificate.

While we were preparing that Final rule, the FAA Modernization and Reform Act required that the pilot certificate accommodate fingerprints and iris, and comply with specific security standards. Unfortunately, our 2010 proposal did not include these security requirements. To allow pilots to comment on the full statutory mandates we needed to draft a new proposal.

However, the security and intelligence communities determined that allowing student pilots to operate an aircraft as pilot in command in the national airspace system prior to being vetted, was an unacceptable security risk.The Administration committed to closing that security gap andlast month the FAA published a final rule requiring student pilots to appear before an FAA inspector or other authorized designee to verify the student's identity. The student pilot certificate will be issued once TSA completes its vetting.

We recognize that the 2012 legislation included specific direction to improve the airman certificate and we regret that we are not further along in the rulemaking process to implement those provisions. But as our 2013 Report toCongress outlined, there are major challenges to implementing the Congressional direction. While the National Institute for Standards and Technology has issued standards for the collection of iris images, there are no GSA-approved products for the collection or use of iris biometrics. Before we require collection of biometrics, we need to understand where and how they would be used.  

There are no requirements that airports use iris or other biometric information for authorizing access at airports. Neither the FAA nor TSA has estimated the cost to develop and install such an infrastructure at the nearly 550 airports eligible for Federal grant funds, or the more than 5,000 airports that are open to the public. As part of our rule to require biometrics,we’ll have to estimate what the cost of that system will be to the airports and to the taxpayer.

In our Report to Congress and the preliminary work we have done on the rule, we estimated new certificates will cost more than $1 billion over 12 years. As Congress and this Administration are committed to minimizing the costs to the public of Federal actions, that cost estimate alone may be our biggest challenge.

The reality is that to include biometric information on pilot certificates drives cost and may not be the most effective way to meet our security objectives. I can assure you that pilots are properly trained. We rely on TSA and the intelligence community to address security risks.

The FAA has worked with TSA to develop options to accomplish the Congressional direction. We will work to get a proposal—although demonstrating benefits to justify a billion or more dollars in costs will be difficult. We will keep the Congress informed of our progress.

That concludes my prepared remarks and I will be happy to address your questions.

Ensuring Safety, Encouraging Innovation

Remarks as prepared for Delivery

Thank you, George.  I’m happy to be back here today.

I spoke at this conference two years ago.  At that time, I had barely been at the agency six months – I joined in June of 2013. 

It has been an extraordinary couple years since then – both in Commercial Space and at the FAA.

The year before I joined FAA, there were only three licensed launches in the U.S.  Since then, this industry has completed 50 operations. 

FAA has also driven a lot of change of the past few years.

When I joined, my primary responsibility – what I was hired for, principally – was NextGen.  NextGen, as many of you know, is a huge infrastructure project to modernize the nation’s airspace system.

• NextGen is what I spoke about when I was here two years ago.
• We’ve made a lot of progress on that in the last couple years, and I will talk a bit about that today.

But part of my role at FAA is to lead efforts to integrate new users into our airspace.  This includes commercial space operators.  President Obama strongly believes that commercial space transportation is vital to America’s future. 

Integrating new users also includes unmanned aircraft – what we refer to as UAS, and more commonly known as “drones.”  There has certainly been a lot of activity in this area over the past two years.  I will draw some parallels between Commercial Space and the integration of UAS.

So let me begin by talking about some important changes – or shifts in emphasis – that have taken place at the FAA over the last few years, and how that impacts our approach to integrating new users in the airspace.

There are really two shifts I want to talk about – and they are related. 

• One is the migration to a risk-based decision making approach to ensuring safety.  And how that approach leads us to look for performance-based standards rather than prescriptive regulations.
• The second is an increased focus on including stakeholders in the regulatory process – not through the traditional and sometimes long rulemaking process, but through more nimble means that better allow us to keep pace with innovation.

The theme with both of these shifts is that we want to apply the right amount of regulation to ensure public safety, but not unnecessarily interfere with innovation.  That is the balance we are trying to strike.

 First, risk-based Decision Making.  As you know, traditionally aviation regulations grew out of accident investigations.

• It was a forensic approach to regulation.
• An accident would happen – an investigation would ensue, and we would find the various causes of the accident.
• I say causes because invariably there would be a series of causes that lined up in an unfortunate but perfect way to result in an accident.
• Then we would issue regulations to mitigate safety risk – new training, changes of procedures, or equipment changes, or perhaps other changes based on insights into human factors.

And unfortunately, if you go back 20 years or so, there were plenty of commercial accidents to work with to find safety improvements.

As time passed, though – through technology improvements and a concerted effort between FAA and the airline industry – the commercial accident rate was reduced to a very low level.

So with that good news, and few or no commercial accidents to investigate in a given year, our approach to safety shifted to analyzing data.

• We have a huge amount of data in the airline industry. And we were able to create more data by encouraging voluntary disclosure of operational anomalies – without fear of reprisal in most cases.
• Now we rely on this data to find anomalies or unsafe conditions, and go to the root causes of potential accidents before they happen.

There are many manifestations of this new approach to improving safety.  The Safety Management Systems which are now mandated at airlines and airports are a good example.

Another example is the new compliance philosophy Administrator Huerta announced last fall in a speech to the Aero Club here in Washington.

• The new Compliance Philosophy is a significant change at FAA, and recognizes that punitive enforcement action against airmen or operators sometimes is not the right tool.  Sometimes it is!  But not always.
• Instead we are focused on the goal, which is to find problems in the National Airspace System, and find them before they result in an incident or accident.
• To accomplish this, we must maintain an open and transparent exchange of information and data between the FAA and industry. 
• This approach recognizes the importance of operators voluntarily complying with the regulations, but it also recognizes that sometimes even the best operators make honest mistakes.
• We still have to address these mistakes; unintentional errors also threaten safety. 
• But we want to use the most appropriate tool for the problem, and monitor the situation to ensure it doesn’t recur.

The new Compliance Philosophy makes it clear that compliance is the primary goal.  Enforcement is still available as a tool when necessary, but the focus is on compliance.

As I said, this is a big change for the agency.  But this approach is also critical to integrating new technologies into the system.

• New technologies inevitably generate challenges that we had not envisioned when the process began.
• We need data to understand that.  And we need a collaborative and open dialogue with industry to understand that.

The second shift you will see at the agency is a focus on stakeholder engagement, and here the example I will use is NextGen.  We have made quite a bit of progress with NextGen over the last few years.  We’ve reached a point where the foundational phase of NextGen is nearly complete.

• We have replaced the automation systems in our 20 high altitude air traffic control centers, as well as most of our approach facilities.
• We have completed the installation of the ADS-B ground stations, the network of satellite-based GPS that replaces radar for primary surveillance.
• And we have incorporated the ADS-B feed into the Air Traffic Control Centers.

But NextGen is a very complex project – often referred to as a system-of-systems – and as we deploy the capabilities of NextGen – as we move past the installation of the foundational technologies and into capabilities – we must have intensive input from the users of the system to ensure effective deployment.

• So in 2013, we formally reached out to the aviation industry through the NextGen Advisory Committee and asked them to help us prioritize NextGen improvements so we could deliver the greatest benefit in the near term.  We asked for their engagement in setting schedules and milestones to deploy these NextGen improvements.
• This  structured engagement does a number of things:
• It ensures the successful deployment of the new complex air traffic technologies and procedures, including getting the users to actually adopt these innovations.
• It provides assistance in resolving technical issues that arise in complex deployments.
• It helps get industry buy-in for the approach and the schedule for the deployment.
• And, it educates industry, which helps them articulate the benefits they receive.
  
• We have seen a lot of success with this approach.
• One example of that success is our outreach to industry to ensure that the users of the system will be fully equipped with ADS-B technology by 2020, in order to ensure NextGen stays on schedule.
• We now have confirmation from all the major airlines that their fleets will be equipped by 2020, and we are working closely with GA to ensure that fleet is equipped as well.
  
• The industry engagement model has been one of the keys to our success in moving NextGen forward.

So what does all this have to do with Commercial Space?

• This same philosophy of industry engagement drives our work in integrating new users into the airspace.
• That engagement happens at events like this, but also through the efforts of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee; the Commercial Space Industry Day held at the FAA’s Command Center; working through groups like the RTCA; and operational demos with companies like Space X, which I’ll talk about in a moment.
• In other words, if you have thoughts or ideas on how we can go about safely integrating Commercial Space operations into the airspace, we need to hear about them.

But of course Commercial Space is not the only new user we are working to integrate.  The proliferation of drones, both recreational and commercial, has exceeded anyone’s expectations.

• There are now nearly as many drone users registered in the United States as there are traditional civilian aircraft.
• It’s hard to think of any other industry that’s experienced the phenomenal growth of unmanned aircraft during the past couple of years.
• Safely integrating all unmanned aircraft operations – both commercial and hobbyist–into the national airspace system is one of our top priorities.
• But again we also want to encourage innovation.  Safe integration and fostering innovation must go hand in hand.

Here again, we are using these two tools – risk-based decision making and intense industry engagement – to achieve this integration.

For example, last year we put out a very elegant – elegant as far as rules go – proposed rule governing operations of small UAS – those under 55 lbs. 

• It is a simple rule that defines when and where the aircraft can be operated, and those rules of operation provide the safety envelope. 
• The rule does not specify how the aircraft must be equipped or designed, other than an ability to operate within certain parameters.

We received over 4500 comments on the rule, and the final rule should be out this spring.

Likewise, we have relied on intense industry engagement to allow this sector to continue innovating while reducing risk to people and property.

One of the risks we were seeing was drones operating near airports and aircraft.  The majority of those incidents we believe are the result of operators not realizing that they are part of our shared airspace.

When you open a gift box with a new drone, you have just become a pilot and part of a complex air system.  Thus, our focus has been on educating users. 

To accomplish that, we initiated a process to require registration.

• Registration gives us an excellent opportunity to educate new airspace users, who may have little or no experience with aviation.
• It also helps instill in them the safety culture traditional aviation has relied on for more than a century.

We did not accomplish this alone.  We convened a task force of diverse stakeholders – manufacturers, retailers, tech companies, as well as existing users of the system.

• That task force, in 30 days, developed a consensus recommendation.
• 30 days later, we issued a rule requiring registration, along with a website to accomplish that.
• In the next 30 days, we had over 300,000 UAS users registered.

This is a real shift in how the FAA does business.

The innovations we’re seeing in commercial space are equally breathtaking.

• I mentioned that in 2012 there were three licensed or permitted commercial space operations.
• This year, we expect there to be 38-50 launches and reentries.  Within several years, we could see an average of one launch daily in the U.S. alone.
• Already this year we witnessed Blue Origin make history, with a second successful launch and landing of their New Shepard rocket on January 22, marking the first time that the same rocket was reused.
• This is tremendous progress.  At the FAA, we want to see it continue.  We’re doing it through:
• A combination of risk-based decision making, and
• Greater collaboration between the FAA and the commercial space industry.

Let me talk about how we are approaching this.

The FAA currently “accommodates” space operations by blocking off, or “sterilizing,” a large amount of airspace.

• This approach works today because there are so few operations and most take place from only a couple of coastal locations. 
• But as space operations increase, this has the potential to create lengthy delays or reroutes for other aircraft. 

In this regard, we're partnering with Space X and using their launch data to conduct an operational demo for a tool called the Space Data Integrator, or SDI.

• SDI will help us to safely reduce the amount of airspace we block for commercial space operations and more efficiently release the blocked airspace so it's available for other users.
• This tool will help us automate the operational procedures air traffic controllers currently use for space operations.

We hope to conduct the operational demo in the next couple of months when the Space X's Dragon spacecraft comes in for its reentry mission.

• The demo's goal is to show us how much airspace we have to block off in advance to ensure a safe operation. The tool will enable us to adapt to contingencies. For instance, if we know that a reentry is coming in off course, we can block off new airspace and release the old airspace.
• When we have launch data in real time–and we can block off less airspace–it increases our ability to enable and approve more launch operations. And the more we know about an operator's capabilities and flexibilities, the better job we can do to meet the needs of all airspace users.
• It is an important step toward integration.

As with unmanned aircraft, we need to identify the right balance of regulation so that we ensure the safety of the airspace system while facilitating the growth of this industry.We’re going to 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.

As with any growing industry, we have faced significant challenges in this process.

• In 2015 there were three major accident investigations of missions slated to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Understandably, this generated congressional concern.
• Even though the FAA is not developing commercial space regulations during the legislatively-declared "learning period," we are conducting safety oversight, and we are doing a lot of internal prep work so we're not behind the curve when operations start to accelerate.

Industry engagement will be the key to successfully accomplishing this integration.

• We've set up a Commercial Space Integration Team. Through this team, we will seek engagement and input from the commercial space industry.
• We're looking at how we can incorporate the commercial space industry into the FAA's Collaborative Decision Making process–or CDM.
• Currently with CDM, we communicate several times a day with aviation stakeholders and take their interests into account as we manage the flow of daily air traffic.
• As commercial space operations increase, we see a need to have your industry involved in the CDM process.
• And we're developing a Commercial Space Integration Roadmap that will define changes in policy, regulation, procedures and automation capabilities. The Roadmap will also define the schedule by which these changes will be made.

That's an overview of some of the changes to the approach we are taking at FAA, as we use risk-based decision making and industry collaboration to encourage innovation to safely integrate new users in the airspace.

• I want to close by referring to Administrator Huerta's speech last year–about the need for us to consider together the appropriate transition to a framework that involves performance-based standards.
• We need to have a thoughtful discussion across government and across industry about safety risk, and about the balance between innovation and regulation.
• Thank you again for inviting me to speak today.