Remarks to ICAO

I always welcome the opportunity to speak to ICAO, but it’s a particular pleasure to do so in New Orleans, a city that has made a remarkable recovery from the tragedy that devastated it 10 years ago.

After Hurricane Katrina hit this city in 2005, most of the city was under water or cut off by floodwaters, including much of the central business district where we’re meeting.  The airport itself was closed to commercial traffic for more than two weeks, and it took a long time for airline flight schedules to return to their pre-Katrina levels.  In fact, it wasn’t until last year that passenger numbers surpassed the 2004 totals.

But New Orleans is back and vibrant and proud.  I might add, it is also a gateway to a number of Caribbean cruises and flights.  So it’s very appropriate that we meet in this city to discuss how we can improve aviation safety and efficiency throughout the region, particularly the eastern Caribbean.

While we're talking about the tragedy and recovery in New Orleans, I want to acknowledge that this group has not been without its trials.  Nearly six years ago, Rosemond James and Gregory McAlpin of the ECCAA lost their lives during the earthquake in Haiti.  We honor them and their legacy by continuing in their footsteps to increase aviation safety in the Eastern Caribbean." 

There’s no question that the Caribbean is enjoying remarkable growth in flights and passengers, particularly from the United States.  Last year, more than 7 million passengers who began their trips in the U.S. flew to the Caribbean. That’s more than any other international destination from the U.S. except for Europe – more than to Mexico, and about twice as many as go to Canada.

When Americans are looking to get away for a tropical escape, they look to Antigua, Barbados, the Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico, among others.  You may not have thought of “The Pirates of the Caribbean” movie as a travelogue, but it certainly showcased the beautiful islands, beaches and waters of the Caribbean.

Many Americans know that the last battle of our War of 1812 was fought only a few miles from here.  But few Americans know that the last battle of our Revolutionary War was fought on St. Kitts.  I know it, because I worked on a USAID project on St. Kitts and Nevis earlier in my career.  The people there make sure you know that fact. They also want you to know that one of our founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, was born on Nevis.  I remember those facts.  I also remember that it’s a wonderful place.

While we think of the Caribbean as a major destination for vacationers, the region is also a major trading partner for the United States.  Having spent that time in the Eastern Caribbean, I can vouch for the strength of those economic ties.  We expect the amount of business conducted between the U.S. and the Caribbean nations to keep increasing.

For good reason, we think that passenger traffic between the United States and this region will outstrip growth in most other areas.  We expect air traffic in the Caribbean to grow 5 to 6 percent over the next two decades, second only to the Middle East in rate of growth among the various regions of the world.

All those passengers require a lot of airplanes to carry them.  We have more than 900,000 flights a year crisscrossing the seven adjacent flight information regions in the Central American and Caribbean region. Again, we can only expect that number to go up.

You may have seen Boeing’s prediction last month that airlines serving the Caribbean and Latin America will need to buy 3,050 new airplanes at a cost of $350 billion over the next 20 years.  While Airbus’ most recent projections are slightly less optimistic, the manufacturers agree that the Caribbean and Latin American will show healthy growth.  Many of these aircraft will be replacement airplanes, but maybe two thirds of those airplanes will be for growth.

For the manufacturers, of course, it means that the region will need a lot more airplanes.  For those in charge of handling all those flights like you and me, it means that we have to stay ahead of the growth to make sure we can safely and efficiently manage the additional air traffic.

We can probably agree that we’ve done a good job to this point, but we can always do better.  We are concerned about congestion and bottlenecks.  We are concerned about elevating safety.  It’s in the FAA’s interest as well as yours to resolve these issues.

That’s why we’re working together throughout the region to improve such areas as air traffic control, aerodrome safety and the other elements of aviation safety and efficiency.

In 2013, all of the members of ICAO’s North American, Central American and Caribbean (NACC) Region signed the Port of Spain Declaration in Trinidad.  The document set priorities for regional implementation of ICAO standards.  We’ve set the bar high; now we need to work together to push that implementation along.

Last month during a meeting of NACC Region directors general in Jamaica, the United States presented a working paper encouraging NACC states to take a fresh look at the regional performance targets in the Declaration and take actions to meet those goals.

We all should ask ourselves: What can we do by next year to make real progress on the goals?

That paper strongly encouraged the ICAO Council, through application of its “No Country Left Behind” initiative, to do what it can to help the region’s members.

In particular, it puts a priority on goals for aerodrome certification and air navigation improvements.  Those should be a major focus for us.

We’re focusing on aerodrome safety matters as we seek a safe airfield environment for aircraft.  Certificated airports have higher levels of oversight and thus higher levels of safety.  As part of that, we have to reduce the potential for runway excursions, for example.

The Port of Spain Declaration included a performance target to increase the number of certified aerodromes in the region to nearly half of the airports by the end of next year. We need to make more progress on reaching that goal, and the FAA is ready to assist.

In addition, the implementation of Aviation System Block Upgrade-related technologies and concepts has been slow in many areas.  The FAA manages a large portion of Caribbean airspace and we have had our own challenges implementing all the improvements that we and our air carrier stakeholders would like us to put into place.

But the key will be to ensure we are working together, coordinating across airspace boundaries and assisting each other where possible to provide users with a safe, seamless, and sustainable airspace in the Caribbean.

I spoke earlier about the effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The nations of the Caribbean are well aware of the impact of hurricanes. Airports there deal every year with hurricanes, as well as tropical storms and other highly variable weather that add to schedule uncertainties and delays.

The more we can work together, the better we can handle all the challenges that are thrown our way.  The FAA remains a strong advocate for the global implementation of Collaborative Decision-Making within an integrated Air Traffic Flow Management system.  The development of a regional network in collaboration with ICAO and industry partners would contribute to greater operational efficiency in the Caribbean Region.

If we can meet those goals, it will improve aviation on a system-wide basis throughout the region and, ultimately, contribute to a more effective global aviation system.

On all these matters, we look forward to our conversations about how we can move this process along.  From our standpoint, the status quo is not acceptable.  It is in none of our interests to say that we’ve done enough.  We owe it to the millions of people traveling to, from and within the Caribbean region to do what we can to make sure they get there safely and efficiently.

I want you to know that we at FAA are fully committed to work together with you to improve air traffic flow management and enhance safety throughout this important and growing region.  We want to partner with governments, authorities, and industry in the region to achieve these twin goals of raising safety levels and efficiency performance to the next level.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to welcome you to this Eastern Caribbean meeting.  We look forward to making progress on our common goals.  I hope you enjoy your time here.  However, most of all, I hope you leave with a shared commitment to work with us to make the Caribbean region an example in the aviation world of how partnership can raise the bar in safety and efficiency to the benefit of all our citizens.

Remarks to NBAA 2015

One of the best parts of my job is getting to travel the country and visit people like all of you. You may say you’re here because it’s your business. But I suspect for many of you, this is your business because flying is your passion.

Think about it: When you were a kid, did you ever imagine that you’d be where you are today, getting paid to be around airplanes and people who love them? We are truly fortunate, and I don’t think we can remind ourselves of this too often.

Like many of you, my fascination with flying started with my nose pressed against a chain link fence. My newspaper delivery route in my hometown in Southern California took me past the local airport, and I loved to stop and watch the takeoffs and landings.

Now, I always meant to get the paper delivered on time, but more than a few times my customers on the other side of the airport were wondering where the paper boy was. I had airplanes to watch.

It occurs to me as I look out on the audience that if anyone has any doubts about the strength of Business Aviation, all they would have to do is come to Las Vegas. You’ve filled all three halls of the convention center, and so many beautiful jets are on the ramp at Henderson that the locals must be wondering whether there’s a title bout this weekend.

It’s encouraging to see this segment of the aviation industry recovering economically after some rough years. A few months ago, I had a chance to visit a couple of manufacturers in Wichita, Kansas, where some amazing techniques and materials are being used to build the next generation of airplanes. It’s a testament to ingenuity and dedication that manufacturers have continued to innovate, making their aircraft not only more functional and comfortable, but safer as well.

While safety might be the FAA’s mandate, it is far from unilateral. The responsibility for our record of safety and consistency is shared by everyone who works in aviation – from manufacturer to mechanic, and from pilot to executive.

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t talk about collaboration, between the FAA and other agencies, with industry, with other countries – and perhaps most important of all, with the people here in this room who make aviation a daily part of their lives and livelihoods.

I recently spoke at the Aero Club of Washington, where I said that part of this industry’s DNA is a willingness to consider and embrace new ideas. We owe our present to those who came before us. They took a dream as old as humanity – of defying gravity, if only temporarily – and made it a daily reality.

They bestowed on us a responsibility to keep moving forward, to use aviation as a tool to make the world a better place – and to never let up in our quest to make flying safer and more efficient. I think our record speaks for itself. Aviation has never been safer.

But rather than congratulating ourselves, I have challenged the men and women of the FAA to reach into that same DNA to embrace new ways of thinking. I believe this is something that will be required as we continue to participate in the rapid changes occurring across the aviation landscape.

You are going to see this more nimble approach from the FAA in virtually every aspect of your dealings with us. We understand that in an industry where our customers have the ability to zip across the country at speeds of 500 knots or more, the FAA must respond in a timely manner while always keeping safety as our No. 1 priority.

As you know, the FAA is well into the rollout of NextGen, the wholesale modernization of the air traffic control system. Our critics – and, in some cases, our partners – have criticized the agency for moving too slowly. To some degree, this has been true in the past. But we’ve also been very intentional about getting it right.

I am happy to report to that we’ve made more progress than you might realize. Modern, GPS-based procedures now outnumber the old ground-based procedures. In major metropolitan areas around the country – including North Texas, Houston, and the Washington, D.C., area, just to name a few – we flipped the switch on hundreds of performance-based arrivals and departures.

System-wide, we’ve measured $1.6 billion in benefits to airlines and the traveling public from the NextGen capabilities we have already enabled. In the next 15 years, we estimate these changes alone will produce an additional $11.4 billion in benefits.

I’ll give you an example of how NextGen is affecting Business Aviation. When the FAA was looking for a partner to explore the potential benefits of data sharing and the future possibilities of NextGen, we were pleased when NetJets came to us with the idea of mining our NextGen data and taking on the analysis to help adjust their operations for greater efficiency.

In return, we get the results of those adjustments, plus feedback from the company’s fleet of 600-plus aircraft as they operate in the airspace every day. We have used some of this congestion data to mitigate traffic jams at smaller fields that cater to NBAA members.

Very soon, you will see additional improvements, such as takeoff and taxi clearances being delivered to the cockpit via text messaging. We’re calling it Data Comm, and it promises to ease congestion on our frequencies and reduce the potential for misunderstanding critical safety information. We have already deployed Data Comm in Newark, Memphis, Houston and Salt Lake City.

We’re on track to deliver Data Comm to more than 50 air traffic control towers and TRACONs in 2016, and we expect it will be in our large en route centers in 2019. It’s exciting stuff, and it’s going to make us all safer and more efficient.

It’s difficult to go more than five minutes inside the FAA anymore without somebody mentioning small, unmanned aircraft.

In fact, I think I just proved that point. It’s a subject that’s been on my mind lately.

Even a casual observer could look at the headlines in recent months and conclude that unmanned aircraft have become almost the definition of “disruptive technology.”  It’s our mission to make sure the disruption is the desirable type – in the sense that these small aircraft have tremendous potential for improving the way whole segments of the country do business.

Already, we are working with companies such as BNSF Railway in our Pathfinder research project to explore how unmanned aircraft can be used for such tasks as conducting aerial safety surveys of miles of railway lines through the most remote parts of the country. Meanwhile, insurance companies, real estate companies and local governments are putting unmanned aircraft to work in ways that previously were barely imaginable.

At the same time, we have seen a significant increase in reports from pilots who have reported unmanned aircraft flying in their vicinity. A number of these sightings have occurred on final approach to major airports, so close that controllers have been able to see the smaller aircraft from the airport control tower.

But we’ve also had a surprising number of sightings at altitudes of 5,000 and even 10,000 feet. In some cases, unmanned aircraft have interfered with emergency operations such as fighting wildfires or rescuing flood victims.

This is a troubling trend for us, for you and for the unmanned aircraft industry, particularly when one considers an estimated 700,000 new unmanned aircraft will be sold during the coming holiday season. Operators with little or no aviation experience will be at the controls of many of these aircraft. Many of these new aviators may not even be aware that their activities could be dangerous to other aircraft – or that they should even be considered aviators at all.

We are aggressively addressing this issue through a combination of education, outreach and, when necessary, enforcement.

We also are busy working on an unmanned aircraft registration system. A task force met two weeks ago to help determine what this system will look like. I expect the group to deliver its recommendations to me later this week.

In addition to promoting a sense of accountability among operators, we hope registration will instill a sense of responsibility and prompt owners to become more educated about safe flying. We believe a streamlined and easy registration process will also make it easier to find people who ignore the rules and operate unsafely.

I look forward to sharing more information with you and the public as we continue this important task of safely and quickly integrating these aircraft into our airspace.

I mentioned a couple of minutes ago about my experiences as a youngster and when I caught the aviation bug. I think these stories are important, and we should all share them as often as possible. We must continue to inspire young people – and young women, in particular – to pursue careers in aviation.

I want to leave you with a story about a girl named Katie, whose father is a pilot. She loved aviation as a child. She was one of the kids with her nose pressed to the chain link fence. All she could talk about was becoming a pilot.

But, as it happens so often to all of us, the realities and pressures of life intervened, and she took what she thought was the safe path. She decided to become a teacher, which is a noble calling. But it wasn’t her dream.

I’m happy to say the story doesn’t end there. At age 28, she listened to her heart and left the classroom to become a different kind of example to the third-graders she was teaching. She applied to the U.S. Air Force Academy and was accepted.

Over the next couple of years, friends and relatives rejoiced with her as she posted photos on her Facebook page, marking each milestone as she progressed from initial flight training to more and more complex aircraft.

One of her most recent photos is of her standing with a crewmate in front of her new ride, A KC-135 tanker. Her smile is something to behold.

It’s something that should be replicated in as many communities as possible across this great nation. I urge you to share your stories, to take the time to foster our young people’s dreams.

This is Las Vegas, and very few things that can ever be called a truly safe bet. But, from what I see here in the halls today, and the fleet of aircraft on display at the airport, I am certain that aviation continues to have a bright future.

Once again, thanks to the NBAA – and to all of you – for all you do for aviation. I wish you all the best of success at this year’s convention.

Safety and Security in the Air Cargo Industry

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

It’s always a pleasure to address ALPA, and I want to commend you for hosting a symposium on such an important topic.

Freight movement is essential to the health of the American economy, and aviation plays an essential role. U.S. airlines moved more than 23 million tons of freight around the world last year.

Today’s conference is tackling a number of pressing issues for the air cargo industry – from mitigating operational risks and human performance factors, to assessing infrastructure needs and safely transporting hazardous materials.

These are issues we obviously spend a lot of time thinking about at the Federal Aviation Administration as well. So today, I’d like to update you on some of the work we’re doing, and then I’ll be happy to answer a few questions.

First, I’d like to provide a brief update on NextGen.

As you know, NextGen is using innovative technologies and procedures to make flying safer, greener, and more efficient.

The air cargo industry has always been an important partner to the FAA as we’ve introduced NextGen capabilities, which makes sense –in businesses like yours, minutes count when customers are relying on your service.

I’m happy to report that the FAA has made tremendous progress in building the infrastructure that supports NextGen this year. NextGen is now delivering measurable benefits to consumers and aviation stakeholders across the country.

En Route Automation Modernization, or ERAM, is now installed and operational at all 20 of our planned en route control centers. ERAM is a faster computer platform that replaces our legacy system, which had its roots in the 1960s. It gives us a much bigger, richer picture of our nation’s air traffic –and allows controllers to better manage flights from gate to gate.

ERAM is also extremely reliable. It has been available more than 99.99 percent of the time since we completed the nationwide installation. On the very rare occasion equipment is unexpectedly out of service, we're able to quickly respond using backup systems and procedures.

The benefits of ERAM can’t be understated – particularly since it enables many other critical NextGen systems. ERAM links seamlessly with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, to provide more accurate, satellite-based aircraft positions.

Last year, we finished the coast-to-coast installation of ADS-B, and ADS-B is now integrated at all of our en route centers.

ADS-B provides real safety benefits for pilots. It allows air traffic controllers to pinpoint aircraft with far greater accuracy – which is especially important in areas where radar coverage is limited. ADS-B also provides free weather and traffic updates that help pilots make better-informed decisions in the cockpit.

The full benefits of ADS-B require 100 percent equipage for aircraft flying in the designated airspace, and the FAA is committed to working with our stakeholders to ensure all aircraft are equipped with ADS-B out the January 1, 2020 deadline. Since our Call to Action last year, the number of equipped aircraft has more than doubled. Thanks to falling equipment costs, we expect to see equipage rates continue to rise.

Data Communications is another technology the FAA is using to modernize our airspace and make every phase of flight more efficient. It gives air traffic controllers and pilots the ability to transmit flight plans and other essential messages more efficiently than with today’s voice communications capabilities.

This switch from voice to text increases safety by reducing the chance of a read-back error while relaying information. It also allows controllers to send text instructions to several aircraft at once – a much more accurate and efficient process than having a number of serial conversations.

It’s not hard to see the benefits of this technology and in many aspects it sells itself. Carriers stay on schedule, planes get into the air and to their destinations more quickly, and packages get delivered on time.

In September, we started using Data Comm at three key site towers: Salt Lake City, and the major airports located in Houston. These sites are in addition to the highly successful trials we rolled out in Newark and Memphis. These trials wouldn’t have been possible without our partners in the cargo industry, including UPS and FedEx, and we are grateful for their support because we learned a lot pre-departure capabilities to save time and learn whether the system was doing what it was designed to do.

In 2016, we’re aiming to build on this momentum with an accelerated schedule that will deliver Data Comm services to more than 50 additional air traffic control towers.

Data Comm is just one example of the FAA’s larger shift toward reducing risk in our national aviation system.

Aviation has long been on the forefront of this kind of thinking in transportation – how we identify and mitigate risk –it’s unquestionably the future of our industry.

The FAA is embedding risk-based decision-making into every level of our business. When I became Administrator, I made this one of our top priorities. Risk management is critical to our mission of providing the safest and the most efficient aerospace system in the world. 

Twenty years ago, we and the industry operated under the philosophy that 100 percent compliance with safety regulations equaled 100 percent safety. What we all realized, however, this didn’t go far enough.  Not all safety issues are regulated, and several incidents in the 1990s led us as in industry to rethink this approach.

We knew that, as aviation became safer, we’d have less accident data to guide our efforts. We needed to focus in a forward thinking way of identifying areas of risk – and mitigating them before an incident occurred.

Thanks to our collaboration with airlines, manufacturers, labor, and others under the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, we reduced the risk of fatal commercial accidents by 83 percent between 1998 and 2008 –a stunning success – and since then we’ve continued to build on that accomplishment.

An important factor contributing to our ongoing improvement is the widespread adoption of Safety Management Systems.

The FAA finalized a rule this year requiring most U.S. commercial carriers to have Safety Management Systems in place by 2018. What this does is codifies the risk-based decision-making process that we’ve developed cooperatively with industry over the last decade-and-a half. It also puts us in line with internationally recognized safety best practices to ensure the highest levels of safety.

Additionally, this rule strengthens the safety partnership between industry and the FAA. We wanted to formalize what many carriers are already doing voluntarily basis, and bring those who aren’t already involved on board. 

When I talk about this evolution to using Safety Management Systems, what I want to emphasize is: this isn’t about the FAA stepping back from its regulatory role. It’s about creating a stronger, voluntary safety culture across the industry that will help us get us collectively to the next level of safety.

This is particularly important for cargo carriers, which have to contend with unique risks that aren’t as prevalent in passenger operations. Cargo operators are often flying at night, and may be transporting hazardous materials.

These types of operations require greater risk mitigations that sometimes go above and beyond what may be required in regulation.

For example, ALPA has joined the FAA in encouraging cargo operators to voluntarily adopt our Part 117 regulations for flight and duty rules. We hope to see carriers voluntarily put these standards in place to ensure pilots are well-rested for flight.

Partnership between government and industry is also important as we look to tackle emerging safety risks, like the transportation of lithium batteries.

We know what an incredibly complicated issue this is. Battery manufacturers around the world have products they need to get to market. It’s our job to work together and find ways to make sure that happens safely.

At the FAA, our actions are always grounded in data. Our Technical Center, under the leadership of Gus Sarkos, has done extensive research and testing that’s demonstrated the dangers associated with transporting lithium batteries.

Based on these findings, we recently recommended that ICAO adopt international standards that would ban the shipment of lithium ion batteries as cargo on passenger airliners until safe transport conditions can be developed and implemented.

While we were unable to come to an agreement on a ban in this round of talks, we continue to look for ways to mitigate the risks of battery fires in both passenger and cargo operations.

The ICAO Dangerous Goods Panel was able to reach consensus on implementing several key measures that will improve safety, including shipping batteries with a reduced state of charge. We’re very committed to working with our global partners to set transport standards that could reduce the risk of fires, such as improving packaging standards for air transportation. We also support better hazard communication so that pilots know what they’re carrying on board and can make better decisions in case of an incident.

As part of this overall shift to risk-based decision-making, our approach to compliance is evolving as well.

I recently announced the FAA’s new Compliance Philosophy, which cements what much of the agency has been doing for quite some time.

The goal is to find problems before they result in an incident, use the most appropriate tools to fix those problems, and monitor the situation to ensure they stay fixed.

This approach is based on an open and transparent exchange of information and data between the FAA and industry. We want to have safe operators, not operators who make an inadvertent mistake and choose to hide it because they're afraid of some retaliation.

If there is a failing, whether human or mechanical, we want to know about it, learn from it, and we need to make the changes necessary to prevent it from happening again.

This doesn't mean we’re going to go easy on compliance with important safety standards, or ignore minor issues, or let anyone believe they have a free pass. We'll have to continue to have zero tolerance for intentionally reckless behavior, repeat failures, or deviation from regulatory standards. We will vigorously pursue enforcement action in these circumstances and others as required by law.

In cases where we find flawed procedures, simple mistakes, a lack of understanding, or diminished skills, we will use tools like training or documented improvements to attain compliance.

There’s an important difference between accountability –which accepts responsibility and looks forward – and blame, which focuses on punishment for what’s already happened. The Compliance Philosophy is about accountability. It recognizes that all aviation stakeholders have a vested interest in the safety of our system.

I’d also like to briefly update you today on the actions the FAA is taking in one of the fastest changing areas of the aviation industry: unmanned aircraft.

The popularity of unmanned aircraft has increased dramatically in recent years. With this popularity has come, for all of us, growing concerns about the safe operations of these aircraft in our nation’s airspace.

In recent months, we’ve seen an increase in reports of unmanned aircraft coming too close to manned aircraft and airports. We've all read the stories about how they interfered with wildfire fighting in California, and one crashed into a stadium during a U.S. Open tennis match.

These incidents make it clear we must work harder to make sure a strong culture of safety and responsibility exists. There’s no single solution to how we do this. The integration of unmanned aircraft is multi-faceted, and our approach must be as nimble as the technology is itself.

One tool we’re using is registration. Transportation Secretary Foxx and I recently announced that the FAA is going to require operators to register their unmanned aircraft. The details are being worked out by a task force of government and industry stakeholders who will deliver their recommendations to us by November 20^th.

Registration will give us an opportunity to educate operators about airspace rules so they can use their unmanned aircraft and use it safely. It will also help us more easily identify and take enforcement actions against people who don’t obey the rules or choose not to operate safely.

Registration is an important step forward, but it's not the whole solution. Education also plays an extremely important role. The FAA, with its government and industry partners, continues to conduct outreach through the Know Before You Fly and No Drone Zone campaigns, making users aware of where they can and cannot fly.

For those who don’t follow the rules, we need to continue our enforcement efforts.

Last month, the FAA proposed a $1.9 million civil penalty against a company that knowingly conducted dozens of unauthorized flights over Chicago and New York despite warnings that this was not permitted.

This sends a clear message to others who might pose a safety risk: Operate within the law or we will take action.

As registration, education, and enforcement focus on enhancing safety around commercial and recreational use of unmanned aircraft, we’re also working to put in place a regulatory framework that keeps pace with commercial uses.

Earlier this year, we proposed a rule that would allow small unmanned aircraft operations we know to be safe, and we plan to finalize it by late spring.

While that work is ongoing, we’re using our authority to accommodate requests for commercial operations. To date, we’ve approved more than 2,200 exemptions that allow unmanned aircraft to be used for a variety of purposes, from inspecting aging infrastructure to monitoring crops and wildlife.

Finally, I want to address a topic on everyone’s mind and that's reauthorization of the FAA.

As you all know, Congress passed a six-month extension of the FAA’s authority last month. This buys Congress some time to enact a longer-term bill.

Discussions are likely to continue about the structure of the FAA and our air traffic operations. We’re open to having those conversations, but we must ensure that any potential changes provide long-term, stable funding for our air traffic operations and help us to maintain the safest airspace system in the world.

I am hopeful we will avoid returning to the days before our 2012 reauthorization, when we had 23 short-term extensions. We need a long-term bill that will provide stable, reliable funding for the critical projects we’re supporting and help us maintain America’s role as a global aviation leader.

We are going to continue to push for a long-term reauthorization bill, and we hope you will join us.

Before I conclude my remarks, let me leave you with this.

Today's symposium is covering a lot of different topics. But one idea is at the heart of all of them: how do we ensure the highest levels of safety.

I believe there’s never going to be a day when our aviation system is safe “enough.”  There’s always more we can do. In fact, the Commercial Aviation Safety Team has set another ambitious goal –to further reduce the risk of fatal accidents by an additional 50 percent by 2025.

If we’re going to accomplish this goal, government and industry must continue to work together.

That’s the value of meetings like this one. It gives the opportunity to come together so we can have spirited debates and find new and better ways to support the safest aviation system in the world.

Thank you for inviting me to be here today. I’m happy to take some of your questions.

Remarks to Redbird Migration

There are many ways people find their careers. Accident, choice or luck often plays a part, but in aviation, especially in the pilot community, passion is often the most significant initial factor.

The FAA shares that passion. With us today is Lynn Lunsford, one of our public affairs managers. He offered to fly me down here from Washington in his vintage 1938 Piper Cub, but I didn’t have two weeks to make the trip.

It’s fairly obvious where it all begins. I’ve heard stories of a kid at an air show, or simply standing outside an active airfield, face pressed against the boundary fence. They could be watching anything from the Thunderbirds to a Cessna doing touch- and-goes, but they all catch the same bug, a lifelong fever that’s incurable.

Once they show all the symptoms – such as continually looking up toward the sound of an engine, annoying disinterested people by explaining the differences between props and jets, and talking with their hands to describe their last adventure – the people in this room represent their next stop. Can anyone here even count the times they’ve heard the phrase, “I’ve always wanted to do this…”You are their true introduction to aviation

The job of an instructor with new pilots is to get their head out of the clouds, so they can fly safely in the clouds. While this goal hasn’t changed since the early days, the standards have dramatically improved.

An early pilot who transitioned from tactical ballooning to fixed wing in 1909 was U.S. Army Col. Frank Lahm. His instructor was a pilot with relatively few hours by the name of Wilbur Wright. Lahm described his instruction in detail: it was three hours of dual, followed by a solo, and soon after that, he was allowed to carry passengers.

Education has become a little more comprehensive since then, but the flight instructor is still the most important person in a pilot’s career. You nurse, encourage–sometimes cajole the best from your students–and they will never see you wince if their first solo landing bounces enough times to also count as their second and third.

You are page one of their flight logs, and however many pages and books they go through, you will always be judged by how well they do.

Times have changed since Col. Lahm completed his first solo. Pilots are better trained, airplanes are infinitely improved over the wing-warping biplanes of 1909, and the sky is a safer place to be…and yes, there are perhaps one or two more regulations.  

Not only is it safer, the aerospace industry is a critical national asset that contributes between 12 and 13 million jobs and $1.5 trillion to the economy. Aviation products constitute this country’s largest form of export.

Closer to home, although the number of pilots with active certification has slightly declined, you might be pleased to know that there are more qualified flight instructors than ever: more than 100,000 of you as of 2014. On the ground, non-pilot professions have also seen steady growth.

Our commercial air carriers move close to 750 million people a year, in a system that is safer than ever before.

But, there are still far too many incidents and fatalities in the General Aviation community, and we must continue to look for ways to reduce the numbers. Rarely does a week go by that we don’t have at least one fatal GA accident somewhere in the United States. We’re working with every aspect of the aviation industry to reduce risk in GA flights.

As flight instructors and flight school operators, you believe there is always room for improvement. It’s never too late to sharpen skills and learn new techniques. Although we have improved safety in the National Airspace System, we are always looking for new ways to reduce risk.

Toward this end, the FAA is moving away from the perception that we are solely a reactive regulatory enforcement agency. With industry partners, we have already started following the concept of Safety Based Systems as part of our Risk-Based Decision Making Initiative.

Although there will always be a place for the lessons learned following an incident, we want to find ways to prevent the first domino from falling. Risk-Based Decision Making is designed to identify, assess, and mitigate risk before the problem becomes an incident.

We find ourselves in a golden age of commercial aviation safety. Luck didn’t get us here; it was effort, determination and cooperation between every facet of aviation. We’ve eliminated most of the traditional causes of accidents, such as wind shear and controlled flight into terrain, and what’s left are those minor flaws or omissions that weren’t noticed or reported, and finally snowball into a tragic event.

While it is natural to assume that mistakes will happen in today’s complex aviation environment, the FAA’s Compliance Philosophy is designed to shine a light on these problems before they result in an incident. Our goal is first, to find and fix the problem, then learn from it and share the information to prevent a repeat occurrence.

To do this, we need trust and open communication between all aspects of the industry. Both companies and individuals must be willing to describe their honest mistakes, failures and procedural errors.

Both regulators and operators must understand the difference between accountability – which accepts responsibility and looks forward – and blame, which focuses on punishment for what’s already happened.  In such cases we use tools like training or documented improvements to procedures to remediate the problem.

Furthermore, employers must foster an environment that educates and expects employees to be proactive. With the creation of better procedures, employees feel more accountable and are better able to recognize and report potential problems.

The FAA is practicing what we preach. We’ve started the Compliance Philosophy education of all FAA employees with detailed “how-do-I-implement-it?” training for each Line of Business. For example, we want inspectors to use their judgment, experience, expertise and qualifications to identify risk, to work with the individual or operator, and to identify the most appropriate tools needed to permanently fix the problems.  

Additionally, inspections will continue, though now they are data driven and not date driven. Safety depends on compliance, so we do not tolerate people who intentionally ignore, deceive, or fail to comply with regulatory standards. We will deal with them as needed and apply enforcement as needed.

There is an adage that we all learn from our mistakes. I want us to learn from small mistakes to avoid having to learn from larger ones. We believe Compliance Philosophy is the evolutionary thinking we need to make flying even safer. 

While compliance is intended to prevent future incidents and foster trust, there are other ways to ensure safety. For example, we are rewriting our Part 23 regulations, which form the basis for certifying small aircraft.

We want to increase safety, certify more efficiently, and help industry reach the market with innovative techniques and products. In the past, we regulated the design of the product. In the future, we will define the safety parameters we wish to achieve, leaving industry free to approach product design to the best of their abilities

The rule change will be a major shift in regulatory philosophy, and the team is working overtime to get it done right.

Flight school has traditionally been the take off point for entering the NAS.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for the increasing number of new operators flying unmanned aircraft. The vast majority of these users have no concept of the NAS or how to safely operate within it, and this is becoming an ever-increasing safety problem. Despite this, we believe most incidents are a result of ignorance rather than malice.

Although the present regulation state drones should not be flown within 5 miles of an airport, we are seeing reports of UAS on short final to major airports, or at altitudes of thousands of feet – far higher than the 400 feet we currently advise.

Many UAS operators may be unaware of how common and how close airports can be. For example, apart from the airport we find ourselves at today, there are 11 other airstrips scattered around Hays County.

Two weeks ago, Secretary Foxx and I announced that the FAA is going to require operators to register their unmanned aircraft. Registration will instill a sense of accountability and responsibility in the operator. It gives us an opportunity to educate operators about airspace rules so they can use their UAS safely. And it will help us identify and take enforcement actions against people who don’t obey the rules or operate safely.

While we finalize our small UAS rule, we’re using our existing authority to accommodate requests for commercial operations. To date, we’ve approved more than 2,000 exemptions that allow unmanned aircraft to be used for things such as power line inspections and agriculture.

Under our Pathfinder program, we are working with industry to determine how to safely expand unmanned aircraft operations beyond the parameters of our proposed rule.

Education also plays a critical role. The FAA and its partners continue to conduct outreach through the Know Before You Fly and No Drone Zone campaigns, making users aware of where they can and cannot fly. And we’ve partnered with the San Francisco 49ers football team to produce a public service announcement that runs on the team’s scoreboard during home games. We are also beta testing a new smartphone app, “B4UFLY,” which will allow UAS operators to conveniently compare their location in relation to restricted airspace.

However, we realize that education and outreach are not always effective. Enforcement is always an option.

Last month, the FAA proposed a $1.9 million civil penalty against a company we allege knowingly conducted dozens of unauthorized flights over Chicago and New York. The message is clear: Operate within the law or we will take action.

We do not want to stifle innovation, but we are never going to compromise on safety. Working together with all interests, we’re confident we can balance both and ensure our airspace stays safe.

It’s often said one should never stop learning, and for those of you out there who are more seasoned instructors, change is just part of the industry. I’m sure some remember Loran, still enjoy VORs and are wondering when iPads became a mission-critical instrument. The students you are teaching will, of course, learn charts and dead reckoning, but they will also be the first NextGen generation.

Today we are seeing the results of NextGen. Last March we completed the En Route Automation Modernization, or ERAM, which is running in all 20 continental en route control centers.

With ADS-B, airmen have better situational awareness, a clear picture of the weather and other traffic. In 2014 we installed the last of 634 ground transceivers that are the foundation of ADS-B, and the technology has been installed in all but two en-route centers nationwide.

By 2019 your students going to commercial carriers should be enjoying the nationwide benefits of Data Comm systems for high-flying traffic. While here in 2015 we’ve already completed the first two phases in the upgrades of computers and displays used by TRACONs and control towers. Our Metroplex air traffic initiative is providing the benefits of scores of new satellite-based air traffic procedures that are helping to reduce fuel costs and CO2 emissions, by billions of dollars.

Despite generating future savings, these infrastructure investments come with a significant initial cost. The FAA is currently funded through March 2016, and has managed to weather short-term extensions, shut downs and sequestration. These actions make it difficult to calculate agency needs with the consistency and stability needed to serve this vital industry.

There has also been discussion about restructuring the FAA as part of the reauthorization. We are, of course, open to discussing the issue. But in our view, the most important problems reauthorization should fix are the unpredictability of the budget, and the lack of flexibility to execute our priorities.

Think how far aviation has come in a century. In 1929 an organ builder in New York designed and built the first flight simulator, the Link Trainer.  They put two stubby wings on it and it looked like the ride outside a supermarket… but it got the job done. Today we have full motion simulators and ridiculously realistic graphics, but I am sure Craig will agree there is always room for improvement, room for innovation.

We’re in an industry that always wants to do more, be better, faster, more efficient and more reliable. The FAA’s part in the equation is to keep the airspace system safe, but it is also a shared responsibility with everyone in this room and everyone in the industry. Working together, I believe the sky’s the limit.

Before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Subcommittee, concerning Unmanned Aircraft Systems

As prepared for delivery.

Chairman Collins, Ranking Member Reed and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify today.

The FAA supports the growth of unmanned aircraft, but they must be operated in a safe and responsible manner.

Unmanned aircraft are already performing a number of important tasks, from inspecting aging infrastructure to monitoring crops and wildlife.

The number of recreational unmanned aircraft continues to grow. Many retailers already have large stocks of UAS on their shelves for this holiday season. This boom gives us the opportunity to bring the spirit of aviation to an entirely new class of users. This opportunity, however, also poses a great challenge.

Many UAS users may not be aware that they are operating in shared, and potentially busy, airspace. A pilot in the cockpit knows it. A UAS operator on the ground looking up may not.

In recent months we’ve seen an increase in reports of unmanned aircraft coming too close to airplanes and airports, from interfering with wildfire fighting in California to crashing into a stadium during a U.S. Open tennis match.

These incidents make it clear we must work harder to ensure a strong culture of safety and responsibility. There is no single solution to the question of how we do that. The safe integration of unmanned aircraft is multi-faceted, and our approach must be as nimble as the technology itself. 

Registration will be one tool we use to meet this critical goal.  Last week, Secretary Foxx and I announced that the FAA is going to require operators to register their aircraft. 

The details will be developed by a Task Force of government and industry stakeholders.  The Secretary set a deadline of November 20 for the group to complete its recommendations and work is already underway. The Task Force will make recommendations on:

• The registration process, and
• The minimum requirements for UAS that need to be registered.

We published these and other questions facing the Task Force members in a Federal Register notice. We want feedback from anyone who has solid, practical ideas on how we can make this a success. 

The benefits of registration are two-fold. First, it gives us an opportunity to educate operators about airspace rules so they can use their UAS safely. Second, registration will help us more easily identify and take enforcement actions against people who don’t obey the rules or operate safely. We believe we’ve taken an important step forward by clarifying that federal law requires the registration of all aircraft – including unmanned aircraft. But it’s not the whole solution.

Education also plays an important role. The FAA and its partners continue to conduct outreach through the Know Before You Fly and No Drone Zone campaigns, making users aware of where they can and cannot fly. And we’ve partnered with the San Francisco 49ers football team to produce a public service announcement that runs on the team’s scoreboard during home games.

We are pursuing similar efforts with the National Football League itself, in hopes that we can reach an even wider audience. We also have some public engagement efforts in markets nationwide to amplify this message.

For those who do not follow the rules, we need to continue our enforcement efforts. Earlier this month, the FAA proposed a $1.9 million civil penalty against a company that knowingly conducted dozens of unauthorized flights over Chicago and New York. It sends a clear message to others who might pose a safety risk: Operate within the law or we will take action.

As registration, education and enforcement focus on enhancing safety around recreational users, we recognize the need to put in place a regulatory framework that keeps pace with commercial uses. This past year we proposed a rule that would allow small unmanned aircraft operations that we know are safe and we plan to finalize the rule by late spring.

While that work is ongoing, we’re using our authority to accommodate requests for commercial operations. To date, we’ve approved more than 2,000 exemptions that allow unmanned aircraft to be used for a variety of purposes.  Under our Pathfinder program, we are working with industry to determine how to safely expand unmanned aircraft operations beyond the parameters of our proposed rule. This past Sunday, BNSF Railway used an unmanned aircraft to inspect miles of its tracks in New Mexico, demonstrating beyond visual-line of sight capabilities. The flight marked the first of what we hope will be many successful Pathfinder tests and flights.

While the FAA is showing the flexibility needed to handle this exciting new arrival to aviation, we remain committed to our number one priority – a safe airspace. We do not want to stifle innovation, but we are never going to compromise on safety. Working together with all interests, we’re confident we can balance safety and innovation.

Thank you and I’m happy to answer your questions.

Embracing New Thinking

Good afternoon,

Today is a very special day.  It is October 21, 2015 – Back to the Future Day.  When in 1989, Hollywood predicted:

• the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series – not looking good right now
• drones would be photographing major news events – check
• and they would be walking your dog – not in my neighborhood! 

I am happy to be with you once again. Speaking before the Aero Club of Washington is always a privilege.

From the beginnings of aviation in America, the Aero Club has been the place where we have marked great milestones in aviation and aerospace. This forum has played host to people responsible for amazing accomplishments: Wilbur Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong, to name just a few.

These pioneers gave us firsthand accounts of the evolution of aviation—from the advent of controlled flight, to the first solo flight from New York to Paris, to the first steps on the moon. At each step they applied the highest scientific principles of their time, added in heaping doses of imagination and courage, and took the human race to places it had never been before.

We are fortunate at the FAA to have a tangible reminder of our nation’s aviation history just down the street. Each time I walk through the doors of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, I have to pause and take it in.

The Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, “Glamorous Glennis,” the X-15 space plane. Apollo 11. These are aviation’s mileposts.

Today, I want to share with you some thoughts about where aviation is headed. We find ourselves looking over a horizon that presents new challenges that require us all to think and act differently.

Not so long ago, a trip aboard an airplane was an experience of a lifetime – something you’d likely never forget.

But how many of you remember something unusual about your most recent plane trip? How about three trips ago?

Aviation has become so routine it’s often boring.  That’s something the safety community can be proud of.  It has never been safer to step aboard an aircraft and know with certainty that you’ll reach your destination safely.

The question now is how we take safety to the next level. How do we achieve zero accidents? That’s something we are thinking about very hard at the FAA.

From the beginning, aviation has been about evolution and open-mindedness. At each milepost, progress depended on an individual – or a group of individuals – unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom.

Leonardo DaVinci dreamed of flying. His journals were filled with innovative sketches of flying machines, yet he never knew what it was like to see the earth from the vantage point of an eagle.

As author David McCullough shared with us last month here at Aero Club, Wilbur and Orville Wright applied the centuries of learning since DaVinci. And then they discovered that some of that knowledge was based on flawed assumptions. What did they do? They challenged conventional wisdom and built the first wind tunnel to prove their own theories.

Using much the same approach, Charles Lindbergh proved that something as simple as a single-engine airplane could shrink the world.

This willingness to consider and embrace new ideas defines us, probably even more today than ever.

For decades, our traditional approach in aviation safety was to analyze accidents after they occurred to determine what went wrong and to try to prevent the problem from causing the same type of accident again. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the FAA set a goal of reducing accidents by 80 percent.

You’ve heard before from my colleague Peggy Gilligan that, when that goal was announced, our critics doubted we could do it.

But, together with the aviation industry, we formed the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, or CAST to focus on intense data analysis to detect risk and prevent accidents or incidents from happening in the first place. We adopted a wide array of programs that encouraged aviation professionals–be they pilots, flight attendants, mechanics or air traffic controllers–to voluntarily report safety events without jeopardizing their careers.

Today, we can all take credit for an amazing accomplishment: We have all but eliminated the traditional common causes of commercial accidents – controlled flight into terrain, weather, wind shear, failure to complete checklists. All told, the Commercial Aviation Safety Team reduced the risk of fatalities in U.S. commercial aviation—not by 80 percent—but by 83 percent over 10 years.

But we know we can never be satisfied with the status quo. We know we must constantly and continually evolve to meet the safety challenges of tomorrow.

So the FAA and industry together developed Safety Management Systems, which are designed to identify hazards, to assess the risks from those hazards, and to put measures in place to mitigate those risks. This is the core of what we call our Risk-Based Decision Making Initiative.

Now we’re taking this to the next level through what we are calling the Compliance Philosophy.

The Compliance Philosophy focuses on the most fundamental goal: find problems in the National Airspace System before they result in an incident or accident, use the most appropriate tools to fix those problems, and monitor the situation to ensure they stay fixed.

This approach recognizes that most operators voluntarily comply with both the rules and the core principles of a Safety Management System. It also recognizes that, in today’s complex environment, even the best operators sometimes make honest mistakes. But even unintentional errors threaten safety, so we have to fix them. 

To accomplish this, we must maintain an open and transparent exchange of information and data between the FAA and industry. We don’t want operators who might inadvertently make a mistake to hide it because they have a fear of being punished. If there is a failing, whether human or mechanical, we need to know about it. We will learn from it and make the changes necessary to prevent it from happening again.

Now this type of cooperation and trust can be extremely challenging to achieve in the traditional, enforcement-focused approach.

So, in cases where a deviation results from factors such as flawed procedures, simple mistakes, lack of understanding, or diminished skills, we use tools like training or documented improvements to procedures in order to ensure compliance with the standard. 

This doesn’t mean we’re going to go easy on compliance, or that we’re ignoring minor issues. Enforcement is, and always will be, one of our tools to ensure compliance. We use the enforcement tool in the case of willful or flagrant violations, or for refusal to cooperate in corrective action.

On the FAA side, we are using data, not calendar dates, to determine when and where to conduct surveillance and inspections. We are emphasizing that we expect our employees to use critical thinking, which is essential to the success of the Compliance Philosophy.

The FAA expects certificate holders to develop and implement risk controls that are appropriate to their operational environment.

Both regulators and operators must understand the difference between accountability – which accepts responsibility and looks forward – and blame, which focuses on punishment for what’s already happened. With accountability, the idea is to look at the operator’s compliance attitude.

A common analogy in aviation safety is to compare the occurrence of accidents to the holes lining up in a block of Swiss cheese. Change one factor, and the holes don’t line up; the accident doesn’t happen. Our goal here – the goal we must set if we are to move toward a zero accident rate – is to stop even two holes from lining up.

We believe Compliance Philosophy is the type of evolutionary thinking that will help us continue our quest to make aviation even safer.

Perhaps one of the greatest evolutions in our thinking is occurring today. After 112 years of focusing on carrying humans safely aloft, we face a different kind of challenge. It has become apparent to all of us that we are at the dawn of a time when unmanned aircraft are playing a growing role in world aviation.

Somebody called the birth of the unmanned aircraft industry the Wright Brothers moment of our time. Maybe so. Maybe not.

But, there’s no question that innovation in this new segment is taking place at the speed of imagination. And—as we all know too well—government usually moves at the speed of … government.

Sometimes this is a good and necessary thing. Our responsibilities as the aviation safety regulator demand we take a thoughtful approach when developing and implementing new rules. At the same time, we are mindful that we need to move quickly to ensure these aircraft are integrated into the National Airspace System in the safest manner possible. 

Let me give you a small peek at the next few months. Major retailers such as Wal-Mart have indicated that they plan to sell unmanned aircraft in their retail stores this holiday season. And it’s not just retail stores. Just last week, in addition to the usual booths hawking amazing floor-cleaners and knives that can cut through tin cans, a vendor at the Texas State Fair in Dallas was selling drones of varying sizes.  And a major computer supplier is offering a free drone if you buy a new computer – as long as you act before November 2. 

By some estimates, 700,000 new unmanned aircraft could be in the homes of consumers by the end of the year. Think about it: By the end of the holiday season, drones could far outnumber manned aircraft operating in the nation’s airspace.

There is no question that the interest in this segment of aviation is intense. The FAA is reviewing more than 4,600 comments we received on the proposed small UAS rule. The final rule is on track to be issued by Spring 2016. In the interim, we’ve granted more than 2,000 exemptions to commercial operators.

These new aircraft are bringing an entirely new type of users into the airspace – most with little or no experience with our regulations.

Many of them don’t even consider themselves to be pilots. Yet hundreds of times over the last year, unmanned aircraft have come uncomfortably close to manned aircraft, at altitudes of thousands of feet – well above the 400 feet or so that our current rules spell out.

Groups such as AUVSI, the Academy of Model Aeronautics and the Small UAV Coalition share a common goal with the FAA. We all want to safely integrate unmanned aircraft. We’ve seen proposed uses ranging from the headline grabbers such as Amazon’s desire to use them to someday drop a package at your door, to ones that can be used to safely conduct dangerous tasks that are now done by manned aircraft.

Nobody wants this promising segment to be overshadowed by an incident or accident that could easily be avoided with proper training and awareness of safety principles that are now second nature in manned aviation.

Until recently, the FAA focused on education as our chief tool in helping these new pilots learn the rules of the sky, particularly as our formal rulemaking makes its way through the necessary approvals. In some cases, however, we’ve seen egregious behavior in which individuals who should know better have repeatedly flouted the rules. Most recently, we announced a proposed civil penalty of $1.9 million against a company that demonstrated reckless disregard for safety on numerous occasions.

That’s not to say we have stopped stressing education. We recently updated our guidance to the model aircraft community. We’re giving these flyers the tools and knowledge they need to operate safely. We’ve released the beta version of a new smartphone application called “B4UFLY,” which alerts operators to restrictions or requirements in effect at their current or planned flight location.

The FAA and its partners continue to conduct outreach through the Know Before You Fly and No Drone Zone campaigns, most notably during the recent visit by the pope. We’ve partnered with the San Francisco 49ers football team to produce public service announcements that run on the team’s scoreboard during home games.

We are pursuing similar efforts with the National Football League itself, in hopes that we can reach an even wider audience. We also have some efforts underway in local markets, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Earlier this week, Transportation Secretary Foxx and I announced that we are going require unmanned aircraft to be registered, in much the same way as larger manned aircraft have been for decades. We are creating a task force comprised of a variety of stakeholders to help us develop an effective way to do this.  By bringing together the best minds in this exciting new segment, we can arrive at a workable process that will encourage responsible flying and help maintain our record as the safest aviation system in the world.

We are publishing a notice in the Federal Register asking for ideas that could help the task force to do its work. We what to hear from anyone with solid, practical ideas on how to make this a success.

The task force will begin its work during the first week in November. We expect them to report back by Nov. 20 with recommendations for a streamlined registration process that takes advantage of available technology.

Someday, maybe we will look back and say this truly was our Wright Brothers moment. If we do our job correctly, we will marvel at how far we have come in such a short time.

It’s hard to think of any part of the FAA that isn’t changing and evolving in some way. In some cases, the need to change is imposed on us externally, as with unmanned aircraft and cyber security threats. In others, we are initiating change from within, as with compliance philosophy and our nationwide deployment of NextGen.

NextGen is arguably the most ambitious project we have taken on as an agency. As you all know, it is an all-encompassing, multi-decade, multi-billion dollar makeover of the world’s largest and most complex air traffic control system.

It’s a commitment that the entire agency has embraced with energy and with enthusiasm.

In March, we achieved one of our most significant NextGen milestones to date: Completing the deployment of the En Route Automation Modernization, or ERAM, at our en route air traffic control centers here in the continental United States.

ERAM is a key element in the NextGen foundation, and it gives us the technological horsepower to support other key pieces.

Last year, we completed the installation of 634 ground transceivers that comprise the infrastructure of ADS-B, the core technology that moves us from a radar-based air traffic system to a satellite-based system. 

Meanwhile, trials of Data Communications between pilots and controllers are delivering great results in Newark and Memphis.  More recently, we have deployed DataComm in Houston and Salt Lake City. Operating much like text messaging, Data Comm promises to ease congestion on our frequencies and to reduce the potential for misunderstanding critical safety information.

We’re on track to deliver Data Comm to more than 50 air traffic control towers and TRACONs in 2016, and we expect it will be in our large en route centers in 2019.

But even as we’re building the foundation for the future, we’re delivering powerful NextGen benefits in real time every day. Through the Metroplex initiative, we’ve implemented scores of new satellite-based air traffic procedures in Houston, North Texas, Washington DC metro and Northern California.

In fact, we now have more satellite-based procedures in our skies nationwide than radar-based procedures. These procedures, along with efforts such as Wake Turbulence Re-categorization—or Wake RECAT—are resulting in millions of dollars in fuel savings for the airlines, with corresponding reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. Just this month, FedEx shared with the NextGen Advisory Committee that Wake RECAT has saved the cargo carrier over 10 million gallons of fuel.

That would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

The changes that we’re making to our aircraft certification process also would have been hard to imagine.

When we first started certificating aircraft, it was a pretty simple process. We laid out airworthiness standards for small airplanes, and manufacturers met them. Over the years, this process became much more complicated. 

We knew we needed to find a better way to increase safety, to certify more efficiently, and help bring more products to market. Instead of requiring certain design elements on specific technologies, we knew we needed to define the safety outcomes we wanted to achieve. This approach recognizes there’s more than one way to deliver on safety – and it provides room for flexibility and innovation in the marketplace.

Today, we’re in the process of codifying this change into a rewrite of our Part 23 aviation regulations.  I’ve asked my team to shorten timeframes wherever possible so we can get this rule completed.

It’s a big undertaking. The new rule will touch many different aspects of aviation, so we have to make sure it’s fair, can be measured and doesn’t have an adverse effect on safety or airworthiness.

Now, there are two ways of looking at change: you can shrink from it, or you can embrace it. Here at the FAA, I believe our workforce should embrace every opportunity to be smarter, more efficient or safer.

But enacting change requires more than a committed and flexible workforce. It requires a stable operating environment as well.

As all of you know, Congress recently approved a short-term extension that keeps the FAA authorized through March of 2016. While this will keep us running for a few more months, I think we all know that short-term extensions are far from ideal. We are hopeful Congress will act soon to provide us with a long-term reauthorization that will provide the FAA with the tools necessary to meet the demands of the future and to minimize disruption to the progress we’ve already made.

There has been talk about restructuring the FAA as part of this reauthorization.  As I have said before, we are certainly open to having this discussion. But in our view, the most important problems reauthorization should fix are budget instability and the lack of predictability and flexibility to execute our priorities.

When I began, I mentioned the occasional visit to the Air and Space Museum and how it prompts us to ponder our accomplishments.  And I sometimes wonder what will be hanging from the rafters of America’s Attic fifty years from now. What mileposts will we add?

I think we have a glimpse from a couple of recent additions. Burt Rutan and Paul Allen showed us with Spaceship One that it doesn’t take a government to send a man or woman safely to space.

Sixty-five years to the day that Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1, Felix Baumgartner jumped from a capsule – one that carried an FAA N-number, I might add – from more than 24 miles into the atmosphere.

In a pressure suit, he reached speeds of 843 mph before parachuting safely to earth, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier without being surrounded by an aircraft. Imagine what DaVinci would think. Or Wilbur and Orville, for that matter.

What about unmanned aircraft? What will those milestones look like?

One thing remains constant, and it is what makes my job fun: Across the aviation industry, technology marches on, and bright young minds are turning the full force of their imagination toward the skies.

We are in a fundamentally different place in aviation than even a couple of years ago. And we know that this pace is only going to accelerate. This is both challenging and exciting.

Like you, I feel fortunate to play even a small role in building on the successes of those who came before us. And like you, I’m looking forward to what the future will bring.

Thank you very much for having me here today.

Before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Aviation Subcommittee Hearing concerning Ensuring Aviation Safety in the Era of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Chairman LoBiondo, Ranking Member Larsen, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the safe operation of unmanned aircraft.

The popularity and variety of unmanned aircraft have increased dramatically in recent years.  Many commercial uses are becoming commonplace today, including:

• infrastructure inspection,
• surveying agriculture, and
• evaluating damage caused by natural disasters.  

UAS play an increasingly important role in

• law enforcement,
• firefighting, and
• border protection.

At the same time, the demand for recreational drones has exceeded anyone’s expectations.  This demand is driven in large part by individuals who are completely new to the aviation experience.  They are not necessarily the traditional model airplane operators – members of local clubs who follow safety guidelines and rules. 

These new entrants are often unaware that they are operating in shared airspace. The proliferation of small and relatively inexpensive UAS presents a real challenge: to successfully integrate unmanned aircraft into our airspace, we must integrate these new operators into our aviation safety culture.

We want people to enjoy this new technology – but we want to make sure they do it safely.  This requires education as well as creative and collaborative public outreach.

That is why we joined with our industry partners – including several seated at this table today – to launch the “Know Before You Fly” campaign. This effort provides UAS operators with the guidance they need to fly safely, and is raising awareness of where they can and cannot fly.

We also have an ongoing “No Drone Zone” campaign.  This campaign reminds people to leave their unmanned aircraft at home during public events, such as football games, and most recently, the Pope’s visit to several major US cities.

However, we firmly believe that education and enforcement must go hand-in-hand. Our preference is for people to voluntarily comply with regulations, but we won’t hesitate to take strong enforcement actions against anyone who flies an unmanned aircraft in an unsafe or illegal manner. When we identify an operator who endangers other aircraft – or people and property on the ground – we will work with our local law enforcement partners to prosecute these activities.

To date, the FAA has investigated several hundred incidents of UAS operating outside of existing regulations. Earlier this week, the FAA proposed a $1.9 million civil penalty against a company that knowingly conducted dozens of unauthorized flights over Chicago and New York.  This sends a clear message to others who might pose a safety risk: operate within the law or we will take action.

We recognize that the technology associated with unmanned aircraft is continuing to evolve.  This is also true for the many technologies that could further enhance the safety and capabilities of these aircraft.  Earlier today, we announced a research agreement to evaluate technology that identifies unmanned aircraft near airports.  Working with our government and industry partners, we will assess this capability in an operational environment without compromising safety. 

We recognize too that our regulatory framework needs to keep pace with technology. The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 laid out a framework for the safe integration of unmanned aircraft into our airspace. The FAA has taken a number of concrete steps toward accomplishing this goal.

A key component to these efforts is finalizing regulations for the use of small unmanned aircraft. Earlier this year, we proposed a rule that would allow small UAS operations that we know are safe. The rule also meets the majority of current commercial demand. The FAA received more than 4,500 public comments on this proposal, and we’re working to address those as we finalize the rule.

The rulemaking approach we are using seeks to find a balance that allows manufacturers to innovate while mitigating safety risks. We also recognize the need to be flexible and nimble in how we respond to the emerging UAS community. As technologies develop, and as operations like beyond line-of-sight are researched, we want to be able to move quickly to safely integrate these capabilities.

While we’ve made substantial progress on UAS in recent months, we still have more work to do. Recently, the FAA elevated the importance of unmanned aircraft issues within the agency by selecting two seasoned executives to oversee our internal and external integration efforts: Major General Marke Gibson, US Air Force, retired, and Earl Lawrence, who most recently served as Manager of the FAA Small Airplane Directorate. Both of these gentlemen are seated behind me here today.

The FAA has a long history of integrating new users and capabilities into our airspace, and we’re well equipped to apply this experience in the area of unmanned aircraft. I’m proud of the team we’ve brought together to accomplish this, and of the approach we’re taking to ensure America’s aviation system remains the safest in the world.

Thank you and I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.

Another First in Our Safety Evolution

Final As Delivered

I’m delighted to be here today to speak to the Flight Safety Foundation in person for the first time–and to have the opportunity to acknowledge the incredible work that this organization has done to improve aviation safety worldwide for almost seven decades.

When the Flight Safety Foundation formed in 1947, we were just two years removed from the end of World War II. That year, Chuck Yeager became the first pilot to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, in a rocket-propelled Bell X-1 research aircraft. The prototype of the 100-passenger Boeing 377 Stratocaster first flew. And the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Authority first began testing radar precision landing equipment at airports in Washington and Chicago.[1]

Amid these changes, commercial aviation was rapidly growing.  It barely resembled the industry it is today. Airplanes were powered by propeller-driven engines.  The cabins were loud, often filled with cigarette smoke, and subject to uncomfortable vibrations. And, sadly, deadly accidents were very, very common.

The Flight Safety Foundation set out to change that record, and, over the years, has compiled an impressive list of “firsts” in its pursuit of safety improvements.[2] The Foundation organized the first civil aviation accident investigation workshop. It sponsored the first international air safety seminar. It conducted the first collection and distribution of aircraft mechanical malfunction reports. And it conducted the first computer modeling of accident forces, which led to the improvement of passenger restraint systems.

Improving safety is an endless series of “firsts,” because improving safety is an endless evolution. Today, because the FAA and our aviation partners have embraced this evolutionary approach, airline passengers in the U.S. take safety for granted. Our aviation system has achieved a level of safety that really has no historical precedent in any mode of transportation – and there is an assumption that we will continue to set the gold standard when it comes to safety.

A key element in our approach is to constantly strive to be better. That means we have to question whether we can do things differently, to work smarter, or to work more efficiently.

Many of us know that our traditional approach to safety was to look backwards and analyze accidents after they occurred.  We determined what went wrong and tried to prevent the problem from causing the same type of accident again.

But after a troubling string of accidents in the late 1980s and 1990s, the FAA and the airline industry knew that more needed to be done.  We set an ambitious goal of reducing accidents by 80 percent. When that goal was announced, our critics questioned whether we could meet that number.

The critics had a point: The way we had been approaching the problem, it was highly unlikely that we would succeed. But it was the agency’s position that we – and by “we,” I mean the FAA and our industry partners– needed to change our thinking. We needed to evolve.

What if we started trying to identify safety problems long before they led to accidents, or even incidents? What if we started looking for hidden trends, which we all knew could be precursors to accidents? To do this, we knew we’d have to start taking advantage of information sources.

Together with the aviation industry, we formed the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, or CAST. CAST focuses on intense data analysis to detect risk and works to prevent accidents or serious incidents from happening in the first place. To be successful, we knew we would need to collect a lot of data as possible to look for trends that wouldn’t otherwise be obvious. We adopted a wide array of programs that encouraged aviation industry professionals – whether they are pilots, flight attendants, mechanics or air traffic controllers–we asked everyone to voluntarily report all safety events. The idea is that people are more likely to report events—and provide us with critical safety information—if they know that doing so will not have repercussions or jeopardize careers.

Today, we can all take credit for an amazing accomplishment: We have all but eliminated the traditional common causes of commercial accidents – controlled flight into terrain, weather, wind shear, failure to complete checklists. All told, the Commercial Aviation Safety Team reduced the risk of fatalities in U.S. commercial aviation, not by 80 percent but by 83 percent over 10 years.

But we can never be satisfied with the status quo. We know that we need to constantly and continually evolve to meet the safety challenges of tomorrow. And we recognize that the aviation environment has reached a level of complexity where we can’t achieve further safety improvements by following a purely rule-based approach.

So the FAA and industry began implementing Safety Management Systems, which are designed to identify hazards, assess the risks from those hazards, and put measures in place to mitigate those risks. This is the core of what we call our Risk-Based Decision Making Initiative.

Now we’re taking our Risk-Based Decision Making initiative to the next level through what we are calling the Compliance Philosophy.

The Compliance Philosophy is the latest  step in the evolution of how we work with those we regulate. It focuses on the most fundamental goal: find problems in the National Airspace System before they result in an incident or accident, use the most appropriate tools to fix those problems, and monitor the situation to ensure that they stay fixed.

The Compliance Philosophy recognizes that what we all want is that everyone complies with aviation’s high safety standards.  It recognizes that most operators voluntarily comply with both the rules and the core principles of a Safety Management System. It also recognizes that in today’s complex aviation environment, even the best operators make honest mistakes. But even unintentional errors can have a serious adverse impact on aviation safety, so we have to fix the problem. 

So, in cases where a deviation results from factors such as flawed procedures, simple mistakes, lack of understanding, or diminished skills, we use tools like training or documented improvements to procedures to ensure compliance.

That doesn’t mean we’re going to go easy on compliance, or that we’re ignoring minor issues, or making anyone feel they have a free pass. We still have zero tolerance for intentional reckless behavior or inappropriate risk taking. Enforcement is, and always will be, one of our tools that we will use to ensure compliance. We use the enforcement tool in the case of willful or flagrant violations, or for refusal to cooperate in corrective action.

So, the success of our Risk-Based Decision Making initiative, which includes Safety Management Systems and now the Compliance Philosophy, requires both the FAA and the aviation community to evolve in how we do business and how we interact with one another.

To find and fix safety problems, there has to be an open and transparent exchange of information and data between the FAA and industry. We don’t want operators who might inadvertently make a mistake to hide it because they have a fear of being punished. If there is a failing, whether human or mechanical, we need to know about it, to learn from it and make the changes necessary to prevent it from happening again. Again, it’s about finding the problem, fixing the problem, and making sure it stays fixed.

That open and transparent exchange of information requires mutual cooperation and trust, which can be challenging to achieve  in the traditional, enforcement-focused regulatory model.

So what specifically are we doing on the FAA side?

• We have started training for all FAA employees on the new Compliance Philosophy, with detailed “how-do-I-implement-it” training for each Line of Business.
• We are using data, not calendar dates, to determine when and where to conduct surveillance and inspections.
• We are emphasizing that we expect our employees to use critical thinking, which is essential to successful implementation of the Compliance Philosophy. We want inspectors to use their judgment, experience, expertise and qualifications to identify risk, to work with the individual or operator, and to identify the most appropriate tools needed to permanently fix the problems.  

On the industry side, success requires understanding that compliance requires going above and beyond. The FAA expects certificate holders to develop and implement risk controls that are appropriate to their operational environment. That means thinking about outcomes and performance, identifying hazards, and mitigating associated risks, and implementing practices and procedures that encourage reporting.

To get useful reporting, both regulators and operators have to understand the difference between accountability – which accepts responsibility and looks forward – and blame, which focuses on punishment for what’s already happened. With accountability, the idea is to look at the operator’s compliance attitude.

And that’s where the Compliance Philosophy is a critical part of the Risk-Based Decision Making approach.  The Compliance Philosophy recognizes that the greatest systemic safety risk arises not from a specific operational event or its outcome, but rather from the operator’s willingness and ability to comply with safety standards and to operate in accordance with the core principles of a Safety Management System.

So, we use tools like training or documented improvements to procedures to ensure compliance in cases where a deviation results from factors such as flawed procedures, simple mistakes, lack of understanding, or diminished skills. And we use the enforcement tool in the case of willful or flagrant violations, or for refusal to cooperate in corrective action.

In our continuing work to maintain the U.S. system as the gold standard for aviation safety, we start with the fundamental idea compliance is the foremost factor in safety. In all cases, the goal is to achieve rapid return to compliance, to mitigate the risk, and to ensure positive and permanent changes that benefits the aviation industry. That’s what Compliance Philosophy is all about.

As I said at the beginning, we can never relent when it comes to our pursuit of even safer skies. It is our collective responsibility to find new ways to improve, to evolve, to identify new “firsts” while making flying even safer.

Once again, I would like to thank the Flight Safety Foundation for your longstanding  commitment to continuous safety improvement. You are and will continue to be a key partner as we make flying ever safer both here and throughout the world.

Challenges and Opportunities in America’s 21st Century Aviation System

Thank you, everyone, for being here today. It’s great to be back at the NASAO Annual Convention.

At the FAA, our mission is to provide the safest, most efficient airspace system in the world.  That goal has never changed, but the way we’ve gone about accomplishing it certainly has changed.

It’s not news to anyone in this room that the aviation industry is constantly evolving. We’re operating in an uncertain funding environment that can at times make it difficult to invest in the infrastructure projects we need. New technologies are allowing us to manage air traffic more efficiently than ever – while also introducing new challenges for the airspace we manage.

Today, I’m going to tell you about how the FAA is tackling some of these challenges and opportunities as we support America’s 21^st century aviation system. Then, I look forward to answering your questions and hearing about your experiences at the state and local level.

First, I have to address one of the foremost topics on everyone’s mind: reauthorization. As you all know, the FAA’s current authorization is set to expire on September 30^th.

We’re committed to working closely with Congress to pass a long-term bill that embraces a few key principles.

Reauthorization must help us maintain our exceptional safety record by providing more opportunities to use risk-based decision-making. It should strengthen America's global leadership on aviation, while helping us integrate new users and realign our airspace system with current demands.

Reauthorization must provide further support for the modernization of our air traffic control system with stable funding for our core operations and NextGen investments. And we need to secure appropriate funding for our nation's airports.

I know each of you has a wish list of great projects you’d like to tackle at your airports, and we want to make it easier for you to get them done.

In Atlanta, for example, AIP funds are improving runway safety at DeKalb [Deh-CAB]-Peachtree Airport by constructing an Engineered Material Arresting System that can stop an aircraft if it overruns the runway. I know this is a project Carol is familiar with, and it’s a fantastic example of the type of investments we need to make more of.

We also need more flexibility in how we can draw from various funding sources. This would ensure both large and small airports have the resources they need to maintain their vital infrastructure.

Now, as Congress has gotten to work on our reauthorization bill, there’s been a lot of talk about hot topics like privatization and user fees.

We’re open to having these conversations about the structure of the FAA and our air traffic operations, as well as the best way to fund them. However, we must ensure that any potential changes provide long-term stable funding for our air traffic operation and help us maintain the safest airspace system in the world.

It’s also important to be aware of unintended consequences. For example, our ability to roll out NextGen relies on interdependencies and relationships within the agency. NextGen is more than installing technology on aircraft – it involves the close participation of our safety organization to ensure the technology is safe, and that controllers and pilots know how to use it safely.

We believe that any decision about governance must take these big-picture issues into account. As Secretary Foxx recently said, “the test will be whether we can get better outcomes under a different model than we have today – but we’re not starting from a point of disadvantage on that question.”

We’re also likely to see a debate about whether a long-term bill is possible, or if a short-term extension makes more sense.  Our position on this is clear.

Our first priority must be to avoid furloughs and interruptions in funding – because that’s no way to run the best and most complex aviation system in the world.

However, we also don’t want a return to the days before our 2012 authorization, when we had 23 short-term extensions. We need a long-term bill that lets us plan for the future and provides stable, reliable funding for the critical projects we’re supporting.

Now is the time we should be building on our momentum – not slowing it down.

Speaking of momentum, the FAA is focused on putting the Next Generation Air Transportation System in place, and we’ve made substantial progress that is delivering measurable benefits to consumers and aviation stakeholders across the country.

This spring, we delivered on a critical foundational element of NextGen by completing the installation of En Route Automation Modernization, or ERAM, in all of the 20 planned en route control centers. ERAM is a faster computer platform that replaces our legacy system, which had its roots in the 1960s. It gives us a much bigger, richer picture of our nation’s air traffic – and allows controllers to better manage flights from gate to gate.

ERAM is also extremely reliable. It has been available more than 99.99 percent of the time since we completed the nationwide rollout. On the very rare occasion that equipment is unexpectedly out of service, we're able to quickly respond to a situation using backup systems and procedures.

The benefits of ERAM can’t be understated – particularly since it enables many other critical NextGen systems. ERAM links seamlessly with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, technologies to provide more accurate, satellite-based aircraft positions. Last year, we finished the coast-to-coast installation of the ADS-B network, and ADS-B is now integrated at all of our en route centers.

ADS-B helps controllers determine aircraft locations with far greater accuracy. For pilots operating in remote areas where radar coverage is limited, this technology will make flying safer by taking the “search” out of search-and-rescue – a potentially life-saving benefit. ADS-B also brings free weather and traffic updates to the cockpit.

The full benefits of ADS-B require 100 percent equipage for aircraft flying in the designated airspace, and the FAA is committed to working with our stakeholders to ensure all aircraft are equipped by the January 1, 2020 deadline.

Fortunately, one of the most common barriers to equipage – cost – is becoming less of an issue.

A number of manufacturers are bringing to market equipment that complies with the ADS-B Out mandate, and this competition is driving prices down. Some units are now priced as low as $1,500. We hope this means we’ll see equipage rates continue to rise.

Data Communications is another technology the FAA is using to modernize the NAS and make every phase of flight more efficient. Data Comm gives air traffic controllers and pilots the ability to transmit flight plans and other essential messages with the touch of a button instead of multiple verbal communications. 

This switch from voice to text doesn’t just speed things up.  It also increases safety by reducing the chance of a read-back error while relaying information. 

Data Comm is currently being used in Newark, Memphis, Salt Lake City, and Houston.  In 2016, we’re aiming to have Data Comm in more than 50 of our air traffic control towers.

Data Comm is just one example of the FAA’s larger shift toward eliminating risk in our aviation system.

America is rightly considered the gold standard in aviation because we continually push ourselves to do more and be better.

So as aviation has become safer and less accident data is available to guide our efforts, we’ve been focusing on identifying areas of risk and mitigating them before an incident occurs.

The work we’re doing on runway safety is a great example. In June, I hosted a Call to Action on this important issue that brought together a wide range of aviation partners to discuss ways to cut down on runway incursions.

In the last decade, we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in the number of serious runway incursions, but we still haven’t entirely eliminated the problem. Even one incursion shows us that something in our system isn’t working – and that needs to be addressed.

We heard a lot of great ideas at our Runway Safety Call to Action, and we’ve identified some areas where we can make improvements to procedures, visual cues, and communications protocols. We’ll soon be distributing information throughout the FAA and to our external stakeholders so that we can develop action items that will address these issues.

We’re also partnering directly with airports through our Runway Incursion Mitigation Program to develop custom solutions for runway and taxiway intersections where the risk for an incursion is high.

As part of this shift toward risk-based decision-making, we’re also shifting our thinking on enforcement.

In our current system, safety inspectors approach every airline with the same checklist – no matter what kind of safety record it has.  Moving forward, we’ll be looking even more at data to target our inspection and surveillance on the areas of highest risk.

This doesn't mean we're letting enforcement take a back seat. We're not going to ignore safety issues, or let anyone believe they have a free pass.

Enforcement will remain an important tool for us when we find unwillingness to comply with corrections, inappropriate risk-taking, or intentional non-compliance. But we’re going to be starting from the presumption that everyone believes safety is good business and we can all unite around this common cause. Our fundamental goal is to find and fix problems before they can cause an incident.

Finally, I’d like to update you today on the actions the FAA is taking in one of the fastest changing areas of the aviation industry: unmanned aircraft.

Integrating unmanned aircraft into our airspace is a big job, and it’s one the FAA is determined to get right. In fact, we recently filled two executive-level positions that are going to build on our momentum and help us accomplish this goal.

Earlier this year, we took an important step forward by releasing a proposed rule that laid out a flexible framework for allowing the routine use of small unmanned aircraft. It included a number of common sense provisions, like not flying in restricted airspace, not flying at night, and not flying more than 500 feet off the ground. It also recommended requiring the operator to be able to see the unmanned vehicle at all times.

The FAA received more than 4,500 public comments on the proposal, and we’re working to address them before finalizing the rule. This, however, is a lengthy process – so we’re actively looking for other ways to expand the use of unmanned aircraft in the meantime. 

We continue to receive valuable information from our six national test sites, and we recently selected the Mississippi State University team as the FAA’s Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

We’re also accommodating requests for some commercial operations under our Section 333 exemption process.

To date, the FAA has granted more than 1,500 exemptions that allow unmanned aircraft to be used for a variety of purposes, including aerial filming, precision agriculture, and power line and flame stack inspection.

Additionally, we announced an initiative earlier this year called the Pathfinder Program. This is a public-private partnership that will help us determine how we might be able to safely expand unmanned aircraft operations beyond the parameters of our proposed rule.

Three leading U.S. companies have already signed up to be part of this program, and they have plans to explore three key types of unmanned operations.

• CNN will research how visual line-of-sight operations might be used for newsgathering in urban areas.
• PrecisionHawk, a manufacturer, is interested in surveying crops in rural areas using unmanned aircraft that are flying outside of the pilot’s direct vision.
• BNSF Railroad plans to explore the challenges of using unmanned aircraft to inspect their rail infrastructure beyond visual line-of-sight in isolated areas.

These companies are bringing their own resources to the table, and we’re open to working with more partners who are willing to invest in this type of research. We anticipate receiving valuable data from each of these trials that could result in FAA-approved operations in the next few years. 

Finally, as unmanned aircraft have become more popular, the FAA is stepping up to educate the public on how to safely and responsibly operate these devices.

Earlier this summer, we unveiled a new smartphone app called “B4UFLY.” It’s designed to be a simple, easy-to-use app that will answer a very basic safety question: is it safe and legal to fly an unmanned aircraft at a particular location? Nearly 1,000 public users are beta-testing the app now, and we hope to have an operational version ready by the end of the year.

We’ve also partnered with industry stakeholders on the “Know Before You Fly” campaign, which provides unmanned aircraft users with the ongoing, up-to-date information and guidance they need to fly safely. As part of this effort, we recently joined the National Interagency Fire Center here in Boise to remind users not to fly unmanned aircraft near wildfires, since this activity can endanger pilots and possibly delay firefighting missions.

Most recently, we partnered with the San Francisco 49ers football team to create a Public Service Announcement that is airing on the team’s scoreboard. We’re actively working to create more opportunities like this.

Additionally, we have an ongoing, nationwide “No Drone Zone” campaign. This month, we have been focusing our efforts in the cities hosting the Papal visit – Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, D.C. We’re informing the public that they should leave their drones at home while the Pope is in town, and we’re grateful to our local law enforcement partners for their support in this effort.

All of these efforts are part of our commitment to the safety of our airspace as the unmanned aircraft industry continues to grow and evolve.

Before I wrap up and we get to your questions, I want to once again thank Carol, Greg, and everyone at NASAO for the opportunity to be here today.

I’m proud of the long history of cooperation that exists between the FAA and NASAO. Many of our efforts at the national level simply wouldn’t be possible without the help and partnership from all of you at the local level.

In a few minutes, I’ll be signing a Memorandum of Understanding that affirms NASAO’s support for the runway safety initiatives I mentioned earlier.

As we look to the future of our ever-changing industry, this type of collaboration will be more important than ever.

That’s the value of meetings like this one. They give us an opportunity to speak, to listen, and to find new and better ways to reaffirm America’s role as a global aviation leader.

Thank you. I’m happy to take a few questions.

Remarks to the Royal Aeronautical Society

The FAA is, by its very nature, an optimistic organization, always taking care of the present while always thinking of the future. We used to think we were among the very best at these things. Then I found out a little more about the history of the Royal Aeronautical Society, an organization so optimistic and forward thinking, that they were created almost 40 years prior to the advent of powered, heavier than air flight.

This begs the question: What were you talking about for all those years?

Obviously we know that the story of aviation would have been delayed if not for extensive research, both theoretical and practical, by organizations such as this society. It might have taken many more years before a couple of Ohio bicycle mechanics applied and adapted the lessons of their predecessors, and then through their own diligent research, finally took to the air.

The Wright Brothers had a tenacious, if fairly odd partnership. I say odd because they devoted themselves to their work, never marrying and only once flying together to ensure the work would always continue. I mention this because to this day, partnerships, agreements and cooperation are how we ensure continued success in the smooth and safe operation of airspace around the world.

These partnerships take many forms, between the FAA and other Governments, and between the FAA and the various facets of the aviation industry. I note we have representatives from Airbus and Boeing in the audience today, as well as executives from industries representing everything from avionics to petroleum.

Bilateral agreements made across the Atlantic between the FAA and European Union – and its individual member states – have become the bedrock of aviation policy for other regions around the world. They are made with the advice and oversight of the International Civil Aviation Authority, and have ensured smooth and unfettered transition of flights between the airspace of various nations.

In fact, our trans-Atlantic partnership can be safely said to lead the way in regulatory affairs, in issues of certification and in aviation standards. Across the board, agreements with the EU and its member states have not only paid dividends to the countries directly involved, but also with air transport and traffic systems worldwide.

Our cooperative efforts have made all of our systems better. This is very significant because we all have a stake in safety. The importance of the NAT – the North Atlantic Tracks – can be seen in just two numbers. Each day, some 2,000 aircraft traverse the North Atlantic between our two continents.  By comparison, only 1,300 or so flights that fly coast-to-coast across the United States each day – as if you could even use a word like “only” when talking about that magnitude of activity.

We are in an unparalleled period of aviation safety. The United States has experienced zero commercial fatalities this decade due to aircraft failures. That’s while moving 750 million passengers a year. It would be impossible to fairly distribute the credit for these results in an equitable fashion, but on the grand scale these results are the ongoing process of government and industry working together to use data to identify and mitigate risk.

Although those are excellent results, they are laurels that should never be rested on. Like all of you, the FAA is always looking to improve the safety of our National Airspace System. Our significant success in completing key components of our NextGen air traffic modernization, including new automation systems like ERAM and a new surveillance system we call ADS-B, are making the future of flying safer, more efficient and more ecologically sound than ever.

NextGen is the transition from ground based air traffic control to a satellite-based system in which information previously restricted to ground controllers will now be shared with flight crews as well.

The list of advantages this system offers is extensive. Imagine being able to reduce congestion while simultaneously increasing the number of airplanes in the air. I know the thought of unraveling traffic congestion is exciting for anyone who lives in or near London – or Washington, D.C., for that matter. I think this applies to traffic on the streets or in the air.

The implementation of NextGen is another example of the benefits from our close relationship with Europe. The program is not only designed to increase the efficiency of the U.S. airspace, but also to dovetail neatly with Europe’s air traffic modernization program, SESAR.

NextGen is the foundation of the FAA’s foreseeable future. ERAM, or the En Route Automation Modernization system, is the computer system that makes it work. This program to replace a 40-year-old computer system was, to say the least, challenging, complex and rife with issues.

Nevertheless, we are proud of the capabilities of ERAM, and in those of TAMR, its low-altitude equivalent. The flexibility to reroute airplanes – and handle more flights simultaneously – is essential. I know our British partners at UKNATS are equally proud of their accomplishments in ensuring the safety and efficiency of the UK’s busy airspace.

For the FAA, an interesting challenge is the transition between old and new systems without slowing or stopping operations. In other words, we are changing the walls and foundations of a building while keeping the roof in the air at all times.

While we take pride in these advances, the FAA takes care to avoid over-regulation. We understand the essential need to balance legislation with voluntary efforts. The goal is to maintain an unfettered market place without compromising safety.

An example of this is ADS-B – an essential piece of GPS-based equipment essential for all aircraft operating in controlled airspace, no matter whether it’s a Boeing or a Piper or Cessna. When this equipment was initially mandated by the FAA, it is fair to say opinions became heated in the General Aviation community, mostly because about the expense of buying and installing the technology in individual planes.

As time has gone by, however, demand has increased, more manufacturers have come online and prices have dropped significantly to under $2,000. We are encouraging pilots to install this equipment now, to take advantage of its capabilities well before the 2020 deadline.

As we all know, running a safe aviation system means more than controlling air traffic. Regulators and operators alike must continually look for ways to improve safety, even when your current state is something you dreamed about only a few short years ago.

At the FAA, we recently embarked on an evolution in the way we work with those we regulate. Our goal is to strengthen the bonds between agency and operators, to encourage the voluntary compliance with the highest safety and regulatory standards. If there is a failing, whether human or mechanical, we want to know about it, to learn from it and make the changes necessary to prevent it from happening again.

We know this approach works. The Commercial Aviation Safety Team successfully reduced the risk of fatalities in U.S. commercial aviation by 80 percent over 10 years by using voluntarily reported data. Today, we are all moving toward Safety Management Systems.

In exchange for this knowledge, and in the absence of repeat failures or deviation from regulatory standards, the FAA under a new Compliance Philosophy is willing to use remedial solutions rather than enforcement. The FAA wants to learn from mistakes, not have people too afraid to inform us of them in the first place. 

The concept of self-examination is not restricted to manufacturers or airlines. The FAA took the opportunity to look at itself and its certification process. We were concerned that our complex regulations might potentially stifle innovation. Airworthiness certification is still an essential part of our job, and we are looking forward to the advent of what many in the industry believe will be an improvement in the way we certify smaller aircraft.

Over the years the original certification process became complicated and cumbersome. It arguably restricted the possibility of finding innovative ways for manufacturers to improve their products. With extensive feedback from industry and stakeholders, we are drafting a rule incorporating safety innovation flexibility.

The FAA will define safety and airworthiness parameters, thus giving designers a goal without telling them how to get there. As long as results meet the new requirements, industry can make extensive use of the latest designs, materials, and technology. 

Systems such as NextGen and the modernization of commercial fleets have brought significant advantages to air travel.  But with every step forward we sometimes encounter a new crack in the sidewalk.

Before our latest en route computer system was installed, airplanes were further apart and were fanned out over a larger area due to the lack of precision with the previous technology. Under NextGen, these flights are now following very precise tracks that can concentrate traffic over confined areas. The FAA is committed to working with local communities to minimize negative effects, even as we continue to believe in the safety and economic benefits of moving ahead.

We also face the issues brought on by population density. While it is rational to wish to increase airport infrastructure closest to areas where the most people live, it is difficult to build in these communities precisely because they are high population areas. This is a classic Catch 22 that has caused the “more runways or more airports” argument to be complicated on both sides of the Atlantic.

While the growth and modernization of infrastructure on both sides of the Atlantic is important for both our corporate partners and national partners such as the United Kingdom, money and funding have an important part to play in the equation.

In the United States, some have proposed privatizing air traffic control as a way to alleviate the uncertainties caused by the lack of reliable funding. Regardless of the outcome of these discussions, we all agree that consistent funding is vital if we are to stay on schedule with our much-needed modernization program. 

Another challenge facing the FAA is the safe integration of Unmanned Aircraft. This is the first time in aviation history so many operators have suddenly appeared in our National Airspace System. While we welcome them, and are working to integrate them, we realize most of them have little knowledge of aviation or our rules and regulations.

Pilot reports of encounters on both sides of the Atlantic, of drones over crowded environments, and being unsafely flown at altitudes as high as 10,000 feet, have lately become a staple of the media. In the United States, reports of drones interfering with forest fire fighting, crashing at the U.S. Open Tennis tournament, or being seen by pilots in the vicinity of other aircraft and airports, have become headline news.

We want people to enjoy their hobby, but we want to make sure they fly safely. Education has been our preferred method for successfully integrating unmanned aircraft operators. How we educate becomes the next question, and we have found solutions by using all available avenues to reach potential operators. We are using traditional and social media, as well as working with local, state and Federal agencies. We have partnered with several manufacturers, all of whom have chosen to include safety literature in their packaging.

Campaigns such as “Know Before You Fly” and the setting up of “No Drone Zones” – most obviously over Washington, D.C., and over professional sporting events – have all paid dividends. This week, (Sept. 14) we began reaching a new and broader audience after working with the San Francisco 49ers NFL football team to air a drone safety public service announcement on their scoreboard during games. We hope to expand this type of outreach in the coming months.

Although we prefer voluntary compliance, enforcement has to go hand-in-hand with education. We have given law enforcement agencies information about regulations governing unsafe flights, in the hope they can prevent the unintended consequences of a careless or negligent operator. 

I believe we are entering a new Golden Age in aviation, this time based on efficiency, economy and with an acknowledgement to follow increasingly ecological balanced decisions. On one hand, manufacturers have created incredibly safe products and are always looking to find advances in everything from materials technology to software. On the other, the airspace is capable of safely and efficiently moving more of those planes faster, along shorter routes.

Although we can take a moment to enjoy where we are, we should never stop asking ourselves, “what’s next?” and considering new ways to continually improve.

We began today talking about partnerships, and I should have mentioned the Aeronautical Society. You have branches in 100 countries. Your members are from every possible discipline in aviation. For close to a century and a half, you have been a clearinghouse of information and innovation. This is the very definition of cooperative behavior, working together with common purpose for common goals.

This has been one of the great pleasures of working at the FAA. The goal of the FAA is safety, and all our partners – whether in manufacturing, in the airline business or in our European counterparts – have the same goals in mind.

How we do things will constantly change; why we do them will never change. And when we succeed, it will be together.

Thank you, and now I would be pleased to take any questions.