Securing America’s General Aviation Future – Together

Remarks As Prepared for Delivery

Hello, everyone. It’s great to see you all again.

AirVenture is always one of my favorite events. But I’ll admit – this year is a little bittersweet.

It’s my last trip to Oshkosh as FAA Administrator – one of many lasts I’m likely to experience in the next few months.

In the seven years I’ve been with the FAA, I’ve been lucky enough to see some truly extraordinary things.

I’ve seen drones go from being a niche and a hobby to a worldwide phenomenon with far-reaching potential for industries and consumers alike.

I attended a commercial space launch where a reusable rocket booster landed on a ship off the coast of Florida – a feat that dramatically changed the economics of the space business.

And I’ve witnessed NextGen air traffic modernization transform from an idea to a reality that’s delivering tangible benefits to airlines, businesses, and passengers across the country.

All of this has occurred despite some less than extraordinary things happening as well. Since joining the FAA, the government has been shut down, we’ve dealt with the sequester, and we’ve endured the uncertainty of 23 short-term reauthorization extensions.

That’s no way to run the best aviation system in the world.

As most of you know, a debate is raging in Washington right now about the future of American aviation.

In my opinion, this conversation is long overdue.

The very definition of what aviation is has changed dramatically in the last few years.

And we need to have a meaningful discussion about how we can improve the services we deliver today – while preparing for an increasingly complex and growing set of users in the future.

At the end of the day, the FAA wants to deliver the traveling public and all airspace users a safe and efficient air traffic system that is second to none.

Air traffic modernization is needed if we’re to meet the growing demand in our nation’s aviation system.

We look forward to a reauthorization that helps the FAA build on its safety record, modernize our nation’s air traffic control system, and ensure one of our nation’s most valuable assets – the air above our heads – remains available to all Americans.

We can’t talk about the future of American aviation without talking about the future of general aviation. They go hand-in-hand.

The fact is, you’re a large part of what makes our system so special. No other country in the world has a GA community as large and diverse as ours.

We all want that to continue. We want your ranks to grow. And we want the kids coming here to Oshkosh today to inherit a stronger, better aviation system.

So how do we get there?

I think it comes down to a simple idea: partnership.

The history of general aviation in America was shaped by courageous pilots, visionary manufacturers, and safety-minded regulators working together.

We all have a role to play in securing its future.

The FAA is committed to doing its part. We’re working to become a more efficient and nimble organization.

We want to be a better partner.

And when I look at our record from the last few years, there’s no question in my mind that we’ve improved the way we deal with pilots and the planes you fly.

That starts with how we think about medical certification.

We recently rolled out a new, common sense approach we’re calling BasicMed.

Instead of requiring you to see an Aviation Medical Examiner and obtain a third-class medical certificate, most of you can now get an exam with your doctor and take an online medical education course to get qualified.

Now, there are a few additional criteria you need to meet, so I’d encourage you to stop by the FAA’s booth or visit our website to find out if you qualify.

More than 14,000 people have already completed their online training and are now allowed to fly under BasicMed.

But even if you have a health issue, I’d encourage you to contact our Aerospace Medicine office.

There’s this misperception out there that dealing with our medical team is the first step toward losing your license.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, we approve the majority of the requests we receive for special issuance medical certificates.

We’re not adversaries. We want you to be able to keep flying. We just want to work with you to figure out a way to do it safely.

We have quite a few members of the Aerospace Medicine team at Oshkosh, and I hope you’ll take the time to meet with them. Our doctors are highly-trained aerospace medicine experts – and many are also pilots. And they’re a terrific resource for you to take advantage of while you’re here.

In addition to changing the way we certify pilots, we’ve also shifted our approach to aircraft and equipment certification.

New technologies have the potential to kick off a revolution in general aviation. All of the building blocks are there.

Just look around us. I’m always in awe of the innovation on display here at Oshkosh.

It’s a reminder that aviation manufacturers employ some of the most brilliant minds on the planet.

They need a regulator that’s equally invested in that spirit of innovation – and the FAA is committed to being that partner.

We recently overhauled how we certify small GA aircraft.

Instead of telling manufacturers how to build airplanes, we’re defining the safety goals we want to achieve and giving industry the freedom to come up with innovative solutions.

This approach will allow us to get safety technologies off the drawing board and into planes more quickly.

Manufacturers are already planning to bring experimental aircraft equipment to new small GA planes when our rule goes into effect next month.

But the potential benefits extend far beyond that.

Engineers are hard at work studying advanced concepts like electric propulsion systems and vertical takeoffs for aerial taxis.

And some of the technology being developed for drones could also have profound implications for GA aircraft design.

The FAA will be there to meet these game-changing ideas head on – and with a more flexible attitude.

We’ve been educating our certification specialists in the field about the new rule. Our message is simple: We’re not going to try to shoehorn new ideas into the same old box anymore.

Instead, we’ll be working hand-in-hand with manufacturers to help usher in general aviation’s next great era.

But we’re not going to let the existing fleet fall behind.

We’re applying this same collaborative attitude toward certifying equipment that will modernize older planes.

One of the stars of this year’s show is Doc – a vintage bomber that was painstakingly restored to its former glory by hundreds of volunteers in Wichita, Kansas.

On the outside, that B-29 looks as good as it did the day it rolled off the Boeing assembly line in 1944.

But on the flight deck, it’s a brand new machine – with cutting-edge avionics systems that couldn’t have even been imagined seventy years ago.

Technology can help breathe new life into an aircraft. And the FAA is streamlining its processes so that you can benefit from upgraded equipment, lower costs, and higher levels of safety.

For example, we approved the Trio and TruTrak low-cost autopilot equipment last week.

We worked with CiES to approve a more reliable fuel gauge that will accurately provide fuel levels – instead of just letting you know if the tank is full or empty.

And we hope to soon certify Dynon’s SkyView, which consolidates all of the information a pilot needs to know into a single display.

These certification policies represent a new way of thinking for our agency.

And as we collaborate with more manufacturers and open up new pathways to approval, it will only get easier and faster for us to continue doing so in the future.

It’s like we’re exercising a muscle – the more we use it, the stronger it gets.

I’ve stressed this point to my team at the FAA time and time again: improving the way we work isn’t just something we should do.

It’s something we must do.

The world around us is changing – fast.

And we owe it to everyone who counts on our services – including our partners in the GA community – to do our part to keep up.

But here’s the thing about partnership: it’s a two-way street.

The FAA can’t do everything on its own.

If we’re going to succeed in securing general aviation’s future, we all have to step up.

Every year that I come to Oshkosh, I have to talk about ADS-B. And every year, the story is pretty much the same.

All aircraft flying in controlled airspace are going to need to be equipped with this technology by January 1, 2020.

That deadline hasn’t – and won’t – change.

It’s been in place since President George W. Bush’s administration. And if you’re planning to fly your plane after 2019, you’re going to have to get on board with ADS-B – soon.

Repair stations around the country are already getting booked up with installation appointments. And it’s only going to get worse as the deadline approaches.

As many as 160,000 planes need to get equipped – and only about 26,000 are currently in compliance.

It’s time to call your repair shop, make installation plans, and pick out your equipment.

Manufacturers have produced a lot of great options that comply with the mandate, and units can be found for as little as $2,000.

The FAA is also trying to make this as painless as possible. Last year, we announced a $500 incentive to help eligible aircraft owners off-set the cost of installing ADS-B.

I didn’t think we’d have a problem giving away free money. But we still have 12,000 incentives available – and the program expires on September 18^th.

Please: Don’t leave this money on the table.

Manufacturers have done their part. The FAA has done its part.

Now it’s time to do yours.

ADS-B is essential to the future of American aviation.

By using satellites to pinpoint where aircraft are at any given moment, it gives us a much safer and more accurate picture of our airspace.

But it only works if everyone is using it.

The way I see it, we’re lucky to be flying at a time when we have this kind of technology available to us.

The only guidance tools America’s earliest pilots had to go by were their eyes. In fact, the first man-made air navigation aids were a transcontinental series of bonfires the U.S. Postal Service set up so mail could travel at night.

And the first air traffic control tower – if you can call it that – was operated out of a wheelbarrow by a guy named Archie League, who used two signal flags by the side of the runway to let airplanes know if they should hold or go in St. Louis.

It’s hard to imagine today, isn’t it? Although we definitely get a taste of it as we maneuver all of your planes in and out of Oshkosh every year.

But moving from bonfires and wheelbarrows to satellites and computers took less than the span of a single lifetime.

You know, visiting KidVenture is one of my favorite things to do when I’m here every year. And as I watch these young people build things and learn how flight works, it often makes me wonder:

What’s our aviation system going to look like when they’re my age?

No one can say for sure – but we’ve got a few ideas.

Some day in the not too distant future, your planes will still be sharing airspace with jumbo jets and helicopters – but also commercial space rockets, package delivery drones, aerial taxis, and other technologies that haven’t even been dreamed up yet.

One thing is for certain. The decisions we make today are going to shape that future.

And we need your help to take the next step forward to get there.

Let me close today by simply saying: thank you.

It’s been an honor to come to shows like this and meet all of you over the years.

There are folks out there who have said the FAA Administrator should always be a pilot.

I am not one – though I’m happy to say I’ve gotten to know quite a few.

But even without my own set of wings, you’ve always made me feel welcome.

And while this may be my last time here in an official capacity, I can guarantee you will see me back at some point in the future – as just another enthusiast for these gravity-defying flying machines.

Thank you.

The Aviation Club of the UK\t

Remarks As Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon.

It’s an honor and a privilege to visit with you here today at The Aviation Club. I want to especially thank (Chairman) Jane Johnston for the gracious invitation to speak to such a distinguished group of business leaders.

Before I begin, I would like to take a moment to express condolences for the losses and injuries suffered during the recent terror attacks in Manchester and London.

As your colleagues, and as citizens of the world, we share in your sorrow.  Let us all reaffirm and strengthen our joint commitment to eradicate senseless violence wherever it might occur. 

I think you’ll agree with me that we are all fortunate to be involved with aviation during what has become one of the most exciting periods in this industry’s development in decades.

Around the world, we are seeing a fundamental change in the definition of the term “aviation.”

For decades, aviation was defined as conventional aircraft flying from Point A to Point B as safely as possible.

The questions back then were, “Can we get there faster? Can we climb higher?”

A great example of the innovation that shaped our industry was Great Britain’s own Sir Frank Whittle. At the age of 23 – while still a junior pilot in the Royal Air Force – he conceived an idea that eventually became today’s modern turbojet engine.

He asked the right questions, he embraced the challenge, and he found the answer, even though the established “experts” initially wrote off his genius to naïve youthful exuberance.

In the process, Whittle triggered series of events that changed the face of aviation, shrunk the world and ushered us all into the Jet Age. As Bill Gates noted, “the airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas and values together.

Today, a host of new users is seeking to change the world again.

But instead of conventional aircraft, they are flying small unmanned aircraft. Or launching commercial space vehicles every couple of weeks.

Others are beginning to envision a day in the not-too-distant future when airborne taxis might whisk you to your next business meeting.

All of these new players are looking to government regulators to enable them to fly when and where they want, and to do so safely and efficiently.

As you might imagine, this is putting increasing pressure on agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority to keep pace with the rapid rate of change.

I am pleased to say that we are engaged in a number of cooperative efforts with the U.K. as we work on an international basis to include these new users into a well-established culture of safety and shared responsibility.

Every day, it seems, we face new challenges, whether it’s the new players I just mentioned or dealing with environmental issues or upheavals in the political landscape.

The good news is that aviation has always been characterized by change.

By its very nature, aviation has always been about posing new questions, challenging conventional wisdom, and relentlessly seeking answers.

We are seeing this play out at an unprecedented rate with small unmanned aircraft. A modern jetliner might take five or more years to go from concept to first flight.

With unmanned aircraft, that development schedule is measured in the scale of just a few months.

Instead of a handful of aircraft manufacturers, there are dozens of them, producing hundreds of thousands of aircraft.

In the U.S., the FAA moved swiftly to put into place an initial framework of performance based regulations.

We have collaborated extensively with the industry and other agencies to address emerging safety, security and technical challenges at a pace that ensures safety without unduly stifling innovation.

A few weeks ago, I took a tour of a convention hall in Dallas, where the leading manufacturers of small unmanned aircraft displayed their latest products.

As you might imagine, many of these companies have developed new innovative uses for these aircraft.

I saw a drone that could attach itself to the underside of a bridges or other infrastructure and then methodically inspect for corrosion and cracks.

Another was equipped with sensors that could count the number of apples on each tree as it flies through an orchard.

One thing they all included was an amazing array of miniaturized technology.

I fully expect that some of it will cross over into traditional aviation, where every ounce still counts, even on something as large as a modern jetliner.

I know some people in the aviation industry have been suspicious and even hostile toward the integration of unmanned aircraft into our predictable, clearly defined hierarchy.

But when I meet with some of these new, and often young, inventors and entrepreneurs, I’m reminded of a couple of bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio.

Wilbur and Orville Wright were aviation outsiders. They were bicycle mechanics, not engineers or scientists.

Yet they used meticulous scientific methods to test every leading theory on aeronautics.

They proved conventional wisdom wrong, and then they wrote the first chapter in the story that brings us here today.

I will be visiting the Paris Air Show next week. Every time I attend of these major gatherings, I marvel at how far we’ve come, not just since Wilbur and Orville, but even in the couple of years since I was last in Paris.

As stewards of this industry we share a responsibility to protect this mode of travel and to nurture its future. Every day, we ask ourselves, how can we make flying safer? How can we be more efficient? What lies over the horizon?

Since the beginning of manned flight, aviation has been the catalyst for international relationships. This has particularly been true of the bonds between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Across the globe, aviation has helped to foster an intellectual and economic prosperity that’s unparalleled in human history.

Today, we are able to fly longer distances in greater safety and comfort than ever before. Almost any two places on the planet are now reachable in a single flight.

And soon, it will not simply be two points on Earth, but how we manage passengers flying into space and back.

At the same time, the worldwide security environment and concerns about terrorism have added new concerns that extend far beyond questions about aerodynamics and fuel calculations.

Most recently, these concerns have been highlighted by security precautions that resulted in the prohibition of large portable electronic devices in the cabins of many international flights between the U.S., the U.K. and the Middle East and North Africa.

These decisions were taken with utmost consideration for the safety of the traveling public.

Rest assured, the security experts, in conjunction with safety regulators such as the FAA, are working to make sure we understand the evolving threats.

We are working in conjunction with our international partners and the industry to protect the traveling public.

As regulators, airline operators, aviators and business leaders, we are constantly called upon to make flying even safer. And we have achieved an amazing track record together.

I am pleased that airlines and governments around the world have collaborated through organizations such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

We all know that when one boards an aircraft, it’s with the purpose of going from one place to another.

An airline accountant might tell you that the company’s product is seats. The more of them you fill – and the higher the fare – the more money you make.

But at its core, I think you’d agree that this industry’s real product is safety.

This has been true since the very first days of aviation.

In the United States, here in the United Kingdom, and in the rest of Europe, some version of what we in the States called “barnstormers” crisscrossed the countryside.

They’d drop into a pasture, and for a day or two, they’d take the locals up in the air and show them their little piece of the world from the air.

While many people jumped at the chance to experience a death-defying adventure, the manufacturers and the pilots knew that aviation’s viability ultimately depended on convincing the public that it also was safe.

One of my favorite stories is that of an American named Clayton Scott. He was one of the early pioneers to fly into what was then the uncharted territory of Alaska.

Because there were no runways to speak of, the airline he worked for operated so-called flying boats with thin wooden hulls and fabric-covered wings.

The owner of the airline was willing to try anything to entice his pilots to be as cautious as possible.

He announced a contest: The first pilot to deliver 1,000 passengers across the Gulf Alaska without killing anyone would win a new car.

This wasn’t as simple as it might seem. Often, Scott would be required to land or take off from a cove or harbor that he’d never visited.

Scott was just a few flights away from the goal when he attempted to depart from a cove near Valdez.

Just before the plane reached takeoff speed, it struck a submerged rock that ripped a hole in the bottom of the mahogany fuselage.

By the time Scott nursed the plane back to shore, his three passengers were sitting up to their chests in water – safe, but wet.

Scott went on to win the car, and he was justifiably proud of it.

Later in life, Scott recalled those days. “A pilot back then had to be part aviator, part bushman, part mechanic – and part crazy,” he said.

They say that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.

Well, Scott was an exception. He remained an active airman for decades afterward, making his last flight as a pilot at age 100.

And the little upstart carrier he flew for in Alaska? The long-forgotten Pacific Air Transport became part of a company that most of you know today as United Airlines.

Now, if you are like me, I suspect that many of you spend quite a bit of time on airplanes as part of your business dealings.

Anytime I board an international flight, I take a moment to look around at the wide variety of passengers loading their luggage into the overhead bins and preparing for the long flight ahead.

To a person, each and every one of them expect one level of safety throughout their flight. For them, safety knows no borders.

For those of us in the safety business, we must do what is necessary to fulfill that expectation. We rely on agreements and treaties, conventions and protocols.

Many of them have been carefully developed over decades, incorporating lessons learned into a format that ensures that seamless transition from one jurisdiction to another that passengers expect.

The framework for some of these agreements has come into sharper focus as the United Kingdom has wrestled with the prospect of exiting from the European Union.

I know that many in the U.K. were surprised at the outcome of the most recent election, and the uncertainty it has brought about whatever the next steps might be. (I know that we in the U.S. can speak with a little bit of authority about surprise election results.)

From the standpoint of the U.S., I want to reaffirm the importance of the close relationship our two nations have enjoyed for decades. We are tied together by many common interests, and safe, seamless air travel has become a vital part of this.

Every few seconds, an aircraft built of components from suppliers across the globe takes off. On board are citizens from multiple countries – with business that also knows no borders – expecting us to do our jobs.

I can tell you that we in the safety regulatory business are not waiting for the politicians to resolve everything. I am here in London to demonstrate our high level of commitment to these important discussions.

As the U.K. continues along the path toward exiting from the E.U., there will be consequences that would require us to work collaboratively to manage. For example, upon exit from the EU, the U.K. will no longer have status under the US-EU Safety Agreement.

Why is this important? With limited exceptions, U.K. aviation products are currently certified by the European Safety Agency (EASA). And service providers, such as Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul facilities, are certified using EU regulation and EASA procedures.

If the U.K. does not maintain an associated or working arrangement with EASA upon exit from the EU, the UK will need to quickly re-establish competencies in specific areas, especially around the certification of new aviation products.

Additionally, the US-UK Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement, now largely dormant, may need to be updated and put into place upon the U.K.’s exit from the EU. This is manageable but it will take time and depend on the clarity of the U.K.’s relationship with EASA going forward.

As I mentioned, the FAA is engaged in technical discussions with the U.K. Department of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority about specific steps that must be taken under various scenarios related to the U.K.’s post-exit status with EASA and Single European Skies.

Now, clearly, discussions such as this are complicated and time-consuming by their very nature.

It is important to keep these time constraints in mind, and to not get sidetracked into a uncomfortable situation in which a missed deadline results in an interruption of service.

I am confident that regulators on both sides of the Pond are committed to “minding the gap” and ensuring uninterrupted, seamless safety oversight and certification of products and services, as well as continuous collaboration on air-traffic modernization.

I mentioned earlier that aviation has always been an unlikely story, an alchemy of seemingly outlandish dreams and a relentless devotion to exploring the boundaries of science and experimentation.

Aviation is also a shared story.

Throughout its comparatively short history, the aviation community has worked across borders and oceans to encourage advancement.

Now, it’s true that some of what drove aviation higher and farther was the spirit of competition. Charles Lindbergh made the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1927 to claim a prize that was sought after by many.

But that challenge was set into motion in 1919, when British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop trans-Atlantic crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland.

And as we have seen, so much can happen in a single lifetime.

When Frank Whittle invented the jet engine, he probably never imagined it would one day be packed into a machine as magnificent as the Concorde, but he lived to see it happen.

The same could be true about us today.

If you think about it, many of us in the room have witnessed some remarkable advances just during the space of our own lives.

As a child in the 1960s, I followed the U.S. Apollo program as it made good on President Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon by the end of that decade.

A decade from now, it’s entirely possible that privately owned space ventures and citizen astronauts will be making their own giant leaps for mankind.

Already, we’ve seen entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, just to name a few driving enormous changes in both the capabilities and the economics of the space launch industry.

And if you look closely at what has happened even during your career in the aviation industry, you might be surprised at how the landscape has changed.

I’m sure many of you remember during the 1980s and 1990s.

It became apparent back then that, with the increasing volume of commercial flights, the aviation community needed to make major progress in reducing the risk of fatal accidents.

In the U.S., we formed the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, which included members from the airline industry, manufacturers, academia and the government.

The team quickly put its finger on something that had been intrinsically true of this industry since the beginning: The true advancements in safety come through a willingness to identify weaknesses, correct them and then widely share those lessons.

So, beginning in 1997, the Commercial Aviation Safety Team took a systematic approach to identifying common accident causes and then addressing how to eliminate them.

Among other things, the team analyzed data from flight recorders.

Airlines around the world began adopting policies that encouraged flight crews to report – rather than hide – incidents and then identify ways to avoid them in the future.

New technologies were developed, including more realistic flight simulators that makes it possible to train crews to recognize and recover from simulated emergencies in a safe setting.

One by one, probable cause by probable cause, the industry made enormous strides in dramatically reducing accidents caused by factors such as wind shear, controlled flight into terrain and loss-of-control.

 By 2008, we had succeeded in reducing the commercial fatality risk by 83 percent from what it had been just a decade before.

It’s even more impressive when you consider that – had we done nothing – the experts predicted we’d be experiencing a serious incident or accident very two weeks by now.

Of course, we must never cease our quest to make air travel safer.

Just like that airline owner in Alaska during the 1920s, we recognize that safety is the underpinning of our continued success.

As an international community, we’ve done a great job on in the U.S. and Europe of ensuring that “one level of safety” that passengers expect. And likewise, large sections of Asia have embraced a similar approach to safety.

Our manufacturers are turning out airplanes that are increasingly more sophisticated and reliable, incorporating construction materials that would have amazed even the early dreamers.

But, as I said earlier, safety knows no borders.

Aviation accidents still garner worldwide media attention no matter where they occur.

It is incumbent on us as aviation leaders to continue to work through our international safety organizations to encourage the harmonization of standards and to relentlessly pursue the next level of safety.

It means, that like those who came before us, we must never become complacent and wrap ourselves in the comfortable cloak of conventional wisdom.

We can never stop asking if we can do this thing better.

And we must always keep our ears tuned for those voices from the sidelines, the voices of the outsiders and the innovators who just might be onto something.

As a British prime minister once said, “the finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them.”

May we all be eloquent as we chart the course of aviation in its second century.

Thank you.

Collaboration Is Woven Into Our Fabric

Remarks As Prepared For Delivery

Thank you, Margaret. I’m glad to be here. First off, I want to congratulate everyone who will be receiving awards this afternoon.

As an aviation community, we’re very fortunate to have people like you who volunteer their time.

Your efforts and your expertise contribute significantly to the FAA’s NextGen Advisory Committee, our Drone Advisory Committee, and other collaborative efforts that help ensure the safety and the success of aviation.

I know you had panel sessions on the NAC and the DAC this morning. It’s hard to fathom that just five or six years ago these two committees – which are so instrumental to our success now – didn’t even exist.

In the past, we tended to think of RTCA as a very technical organization.

We would turn to you for guidance on technical standards.

And that’s appropriate to the extent that aviation has always moved forward because of innovation. But aviation has also moved forward because of collaboration.  

What we’ve come to realize in recent years, and what we appreciate even more now, is that we have to focus on the business of aviation.

We have to determine the needs of the aviation community and forge a consensus on how to prioritize efforts that will produce the most benefits.

With that in mind, we’ve very much expanded the process of collaboration with industry. It’s now woven into the fabric of what we do. And I want to thank RTCA for helping us take that step.

One of the best illustrations of this approach is the NextGen Advisory Committee. Simply put, it has been a catalyst for NextGen.

With the help of aviation’s diverse community, we’ve been able to determine NextGen priority areas where we can deliver the greatest amount of benefit in the near term.

Through this forum, our stakeholders have a better understanding of our planning and decision-making, which bolsters trust and cooperation among everyone.

And as issues come up, we leverage this trust as well as the diverse set of expertise of the members of the NAC. 

Jim Crites, a NAC member, is being honored today with RTCA’s Achievement Award.  He recently retired as the executive vice president in charge of operations at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.

Last year, Jim, along with Brian Townsend, co-chaired a NAC task group to develop recommendations for better engagement with local communities on Performance Based Navigation routes.

As you know, these routes save time and money. And while they can reduce the overall amount of noise in a given community, the precise nature of some of these procedures concentrates that noise over a smaller geographical area. And that’s generated a significant amount of debate.

Jim’s task force included people from industry, airports, labor, government and other groups. They issued a report in June of last year, which offered a number of important contributions.

For instance, it highlighted the need to address community concerns beyond simply satisfying legal requirements. 

It highlighted the need to ensure “no surprises” for the community.

And it underscored the importance of airports and other stakeholders to the success of PBN implementation.  There were other recommendations as well.

Since that report, the FAA has greatly stepped up its community engagement activities.  We hired a community involvement manager, and we’re now in a better position to engage the public and address their concerns.

For instance, we try to place flight routes over less populated areas, where possible.

Collaboration isn’t a new concept for Jim.

For many years, he has been an outstanding partner for the FAA. He’s helped us do some of the initial testing on Runway Status Lights at DFW more than a decade ago. And more recently, he helped clear the way for testing drone detection technologies. 

A big part of Jim’s impressive track record is that he brings together people with different interests to help forge consensus and move aviation forward.

The key point here is that when we have the kind of collaborative culture taking place through the NAC and other groups, people like Jim Crites and so many of you can step up and play important roles.

PBN is just one of our near-term NextGen priority areas that we identified in the NAC. Another one is Data Communications. 

Last year, we completed the deployment of Data Communications departure clearance service at 55 airports.

The NAC asked us to accelerate our original schedule and we were able to do so. We completed the task two and a half years ahead of schedule—which resulted in deployment related savings. This made it possible for us to install DataComm at an additional seven airports.

So far, more than 28,000 air traffic operations per week are taking advantage of this capability. One of the benefits we’re seeing is less taxi time by aircraft than would otherwise result because of bad weather.

While that 28,000 represents a fraction of total operations, it does show a growth rate of 6,000% in 17 months. But I recognize that we need to focus on working with the airlines to increase DataComm utilization. The industry asked us to accelerate the timetable for deployment. Now everyone – the users and the FAA – need to do their part so that we can increase the use of this timesaving technology. 

And over the next 30 years, we expect that DataComm will save operators more than $10 billion along with savings to the FAA of about $1 billion.        

Working with the NAC, we’re now putting a focus on the Northeast corridor.

We continue to work toward making NextGen interoperable globally, so we can deliver benefits beyond our borders. Toward that effort, international standards work remains critical. 

Through NextGen, we’ve already delivered more than $2.7 billion in benefits to the aviation community. And we expect that number to climb to $160 billion by 2030.

To secure these benefits, we must sustain the momentum that we’ve attained through the NAC and other collaborative processes.

And when we consider how instrumental this process has been for NextGen, we knew we had to take the same approach to integrate unmanned aircraft.

The drone industry is moving at an incredible speed.

And it seeks greater access to the airspace. But there was a lot of talking past each other. We needed to get the drone industry to talk to the aviation industry.

So RTCA helped us set up the FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee.

Through the DAC, we’re determining how the industry can achieve greater access into the airspace system.

With the assistance of the local government and community members on the DAC, we’re talking about the roles that local and state governments should play.

We’re also teaming up with NASA to develop a concept for a UAS traffic management system.

And we’re working with industry and other U.S. government agencies on the UAS Detection Initiative. We’re testing technologies that would detect unauthorized drone operations near airports and other critical infrastructure, and in unauthorized airspace.

The FAA’s biggest challenge remains stable funding.

Over the past several years – government shutdowns, furloughs, sequestration – and the lack of a long-term reauthorization makes it more difficult to plan and execute our NextGen efforts.

While we’ve made progress despite these constraints, I support looking at new ways to help us provide stable and sufficient funding to more rapidly modernize our system while maintaining the highest level of safety. 

Last month, President Trump released the details on his first budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2018, which calls for $16.2 billion for the FAA.

This budget request will allow us to continue delivering on our mission, while keeping our operational costs below Fiscal Year 2016 levels.

And the Administration has begun looking at a long-term plan for restructuring how we provide air traffic control services.

This plan would shift air traffic control to an independent, non-governmental organization.

This is the start of a much needed conversation that needs to involve all users of the airspace system and deliver benefits to the system as a whole.

As we have these important discussions, let me stress that our people at the FAA have accomplished so much under extraordinary circumstances. There is no doubt that their skill and dedication to our mission is what enables us to ensure that we have the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.

As we have these important discussions, we have to continue to partner effectively as a community.

We must continue to forge consensus as we proceed with NextGen, integrate drones and other new users, and address other important questions of the day.

We have achieved valuable momentum with this approach, and we’re making a lot of progress.

I look forward to our continued journey together.

AUVSI Xponential

Remarks As Delivered

Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be joining you this morning here in the great city of Dallas. You know, I was looking back and thinking about the many years I’ve been attending this gathering. This is actually my fourth visit to AUVSI. Now it’s called Xponential, and it’s amazing how much has changed just in that short period of time.

I am starting to feel a little bit like that uncle, the one who shows up every Thanksgiving, talks about some of the same things over and over, talks about some stuff that is new.

But, the good news is this, the good news is that the story on unmanned aircraft is a story that bears a lot of repeating. It’s a story about collaboration, it’s a story about innovation, and I think most importantly, it’s a story of a shared commitment to safety.

I sincerely hope that when my term as FAA Administrator ends in January, that the word-cloud of my most-used terms will include those words: collaboration, innovation and safety.

I’ve begun to look at these gatherings here at Xponential as a microcosm, a microcosm of the world of all things unmanned aircraft.  I was able to walk around the convention hall yesterday and I visited with a number of you, and the types of aircraft that we’re all seeing, and the capabilities that they possess, it’s nothing short of amazing.

Each and every year, there are new players, and these new players emerge with innovative new uses for unmanned aircraft. While the–I won’t say the old players, I’ll say the more established players – add additional sophistication to what are incredibly popular products.

A few weeks ago, the FAA held what has become its annual Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Symposium.

We had 84 speakers and 22 different discussions. We held the first ever FAA Twitter Chat in conjunction with that event, and people engaged with our content online thousands and thousands of times.

More than 700 attendees from government, from academia, law enforcement, and the aviation and technology industries participated there in person.

Afterwards, I did an interview with someone, and I was asked what it felt like to be present at the birth of a whole new sector of aviation, a whole new industry.

I guess it’s human nature – I certainly didn’t think of that way, until the question came up – I guess it’s human nature to become so focused on the incremental stuff that we are doing day-to-day, that we forget to take stock of how far we’ve actually come in a very short period of time.

But it’s true: In just a few short years, the unmanned aircraft community has evolved into a vibrant industry. It’s an incubator for ideas that are changing the way the world thinks about flying.

It wasn’t that long ago that we were talking about how drones might be used for aerial photography or package delivery.

Now, we’re having very intense and very real conversations about a day in the not-that-distant future when a drone taxi might lift you above the rush-hour traffic in a dense metropolitan area and make sure you get to that meeting across town on time.

Now, clearly there’s a lot to be done between here and there. But it’s a “there” that has only come on to the horizon recently.

This pace of this development is something that we talk about a lot. It’s something that inspires a great deal of awe. In the traditional aircraft industry, new jetliners are introduced maybe once every 10 or 15 years. In the world of unmanned aircraft, 10 or 15 new products might be introduced every year.

It has been, certainly, a great honor to be the FAA Administrator during this whirlwind of imagination and progress.

I am thrilled that my colleagues at the FAA have embraced a new way of thinking about how the government should respond to an industry that doesn’t know how to slow down.

We’ve learned to move quicker than ever to identify and develop regulations that ensure safety without unduly stifling the economic potential.

Before joining the FAA in 2010, I was the president of a major division of a Fortune 500 company with experience inA fielding large technology and infrastructure platforms. So I understand the desire to move as quickly as we possibly can.

As you might imagine, I’ve had more than a few conversations with people who are frustrated that we aren’t moving faster. But, I’ve also talked to many who would like us to tap the brakes just a bit.

But, the good news is that we continue to make a lot of progress. But, the unprecedented rate at which unmanned aircraft are evolving means we have to grapple with new and complex questions that affect a broad spectrum of the many stakeholders that we have in this industry.

This is particularly apparent as we consider the roles of government, the roles of federal government, state and local governments, and how they should play in this space. How do we ensure that unmanned aircraft operations can occur with a minimum amount of disruption and interference, particularly when we are moving into densely populated areas?

In 2015, we issued some preliminary guidance, but it’s an issue that is getting a lot of attention from state legislatures and in city councils all across the country.

This subject was a major focus last week during a meeting of our Drone Advisory Committee.

Now, as FAA Administrator, I have a very clear sense of what the existing FAA authorities are, and our processes to ensure their compliance and to enforce the rules.

But I think you would all agree we need greater clarity as to what state and local governments would like to see, and the role that they would like to play.

It’s an important question, and I think it’s extremely important that we as a community get that right.

Now, we have a few ideas on a way to approach the subject. The Drone Advisory Committee is doing great work in this area, and I hope in the near future to be able to talk about a concept that we’re working with, about how we might learn more, that will enable us to answer this question.

But, this work on roles and responsibilities is only one of several key areas we’re looking at. For example, we are continuing our work on a rule for operations over people. I know that’s something of great interest to everyone in the room here.

The FAA’s Center of Excellence recently completed the first in a series of research projects looking at the potential safety ramifications of what might happen when a drone hits a person on the ground.

Although we can’t yet definitively answer every question, we are starting to understand the risks a little better.

The findings of this study are incredibly helpful. They help us as we continue to develop standards that ensure the level of safety that the public expects and deserves as drones become more ubiquitous in our daily lives.

The next phase of research is set to begin next month. It will verify the results of the most recent study, as well as develop tests that manufacturers can use to certify their aircraft for flights over people.

Later this summer, we expect to release the results of another study that looks at that question that we’ve seen in the news a lot, what happens if an unmanned aircraft collides with an aircraft.

The FAA is also collaborating with law enforcement and the military to examine security concerns, particularly security concerns that they have raised in the world of unmanned aircraft.

In late April, the FAA and our partners completed the fifth and final field evaluation of possible drone detection systems just down the road at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

This most recent evaluation used a combination of technologies, including radar, radio frequency and electro-optical systems.

We plan to use the information we’ve received from this test, the test in Denver, and elsewhere, and other information, to develop minimum performance standards for any unmanned aircraft detection technology that might be deployed around airports here in the United States.

We also announced that we are setting up a new Aviation Rulemaking Committee that will help us create standards for remotely identifying and tracking unmanned aircraft during operations.

I know there’s a lot of interest in this group, and it will be made up of a diverse group of stakeholders, and we hope the recommendations they produce will help pave the way in answering these questions about flights over people, beyond visual line of sight, and all of those things that are so important.

Later this month, we’ll also be hosting an Unmanned Aircraft Security roundtable with senior transportation and national security leaders and representatives from the drone industry.

This forum will give us an opportunity to create a mutual understanding about the government’s security concerns, and to discuss how we can collaborate with industry to address them.

There is no question in my mind that the significant milestones we have achieved so far are because stakeholders from across government and industry have come together. They have come together to focus their energy on solving some of our most important challenges.

A few minutes ago, I mentioned the Drone Advisory Committee.  I’d particularly like to thank Brian Krzanich, the CEO of Intel Corporation. As you know, Brian has accepted our invitation to serve as the chair for the Drone Advisory Committee, and with his expertise in Silicon Valley, Brian’s guidance and expertise have been absolutely indispensable to us.

I’m also grateful to a number of other people from across the aviation industry, drone industry, people who have agreed to help us as part of our DAC Subcommittee and our Task Groups. Many of those members are here today, and I’d like to thank them for their commitment and for their leadership in working collaboratively to address these issues.

It seems like only yesterday that we were scrambling to develop the UAS registry in anticipation of what indeed was a boom in the sales of consumer drones.

Today, more than 820,000 operators have registered their aircraft. More than 745,000 of those are hobbyists, leaving 60,000 or so that are commercial operators of unmanned aircraft.

We have issued more than 43,000 Remote Pilot Certificates under Part 107, in the short time that it’s been in effect.

At the same time, we are taking steps to make it easier and faster when it comes to processing requests for Part 107 authorizations and waivers for those of you who are seeking to capitalize on new business opportunities.

Last month, we published more than 200 facility maps to help streamline authorizations in the airspace around some of our busiest airports.

These maps are an important next step in order for the industry and the FAA to work together to automate what has so-far been a rather labor intensive and sometimes frustrating process.

These maps help drone operators improve the quality of the information in their Part 107 airspace authorization requests and they help the FAA to process them more quickly.

Now, to be clear, the maps are informational and do not give people permission to fly drones. You still need to submit an online airspace authorization application.

But for the first time, your request benefits from detailed grid maps that depict the distances above ground level that drones can safely fly.

In the critical areas around airports and hospital heliports, these maps help us with the needed data to conduct the safety analysis that must occur before flights can be approved. So, we’re shrinking the time to approve, and we will shrink it further.

I have mentioned the word “safety” several times in the last few minutes. And I think as FAA Administrator, it’s something that I talk about a lot, probably a couple of hundred times a day.

But, I’m happy to see that both the industry and individual operators have joined us in embracing a culture of safety around unmanned aircraft.

The vast majority of you recognize that, even though you might be standing on the ground, you are, in fact, aviators.

You have embraced the responsibility of operating in an environment that can be unforgiving of mistakes or reckless behavior.

Nevertheless, we do continue to receive reports on a daily basis from pilots who encountered drones in places where they should not be, sometimes at altitudes well above 400 feet.

In fact, not long ago, the pilot of a jetliner preparing to land right here at Dallas/Fort Worth reported encountering a drone at 10,000 feet just west of downtown Dallas.

The FAA is spreading the safety message. We continue to make updates to our B4UFLY smartphone app, which was created to let people know where it’s safe and where it’s legal to fly. That app has been downloaded some 220,000 times.

But all you have to do is go to YouTube and search for “night drone flight” or “drone footage,” put in any city, you’ll find dozens of videos that still reflect a sobering lack of understanding of guidelines and of basic safety regulations.

So far, we’ve been fortunate that none of these incidents has resulted in an injury or a collision with a manned aircraft.

But safety shouldn’t rely on luck. Safety needs to be intentional.

I am grateful that the members of the Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team have accepted the challenge of finding effective ways of promoting safety throughout this industry.

Now, I doubt that many people will disagree that education is an important part of the safety equation.

But, I firmly believe that the answers to many of this industry’s remaining challenges lie in the one trait that has defined it since the beginning: Your ingenuity.

Throughout our system – particularly in the last 30 years or so – the real advancements in safety have come through technology.

Wind shear detection is now available in the flight deck of every modern jetliner, as are collision-avoidance systems.

We have incredibly sophisticated radar systems that harness GPS databases to predict a plane’s flight path and to warn the pilot if the flight is descending toward terrain.

As a result, aviation is safer than it has ever been. And, new technologies continue to drive the risk out of the system on a daily basis.

I’d argue the same will eventually be true of commercially available unmanned aircraft.

Someday, one of you will invent an unmanned aircraft that will be incapable of colliding with anything, whether it’s a tree, a building, a person, or an aircraft moving at several hundred miles an hour.

This aircraft will know exactly how fast – and how high – it can go, no matter where the operator might want to fly it.

At the same time, it will broadcast its position to air traffic controllers and perhaps other operators, lending situational awareness that could clear the way for even more diverse operations.

How far away is that? Some might speculate we might be several years away. Some speculate, and I think we can just as easily say, it might be a lot less than that.

But if there’s one thing aviation has taught us, it’s that innovation has a way of compressing time.

In the meantime, our job is to capitalize on each incremental step, making sure that we build a framework of performance-based regulations that can easily accommodate change.

From its earliest beginnings, aviation has attracted a potent combination of dreamers and doers. And monumental achievements can occur in the space of one person’s lifetime.

Orville Wright, whose first flight at Kitty Hawk reached a breathtaking speed of 10 mph across the ground, lived to see Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier and usher in a new age in aviation.

In 1927, Charles Lindbergh proved it was possible to fly all the way from New York to Paris without stopping.

Forty-two years later, Charles Lindbergh was a guest at Cape Canaveral when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins climbed atop a Saturn V rocket and set out for the moon.

Innovation does, indeed, have a way of compressing time.

As I was walking through the convention hall yesterday, I recalled my childhood in Southern California.

Back then, I had a toy aircraft, and it was tethered to a control yoke, I stood in the center, and watched it fly around me, tethered there, while I moved it up and down.

I thought it was pretty amazing.

Today, the technology exists to allow us to make our own giant leaps. The descendants of these model aircraft are now poised to make the world a better place.

The only limitation seems to one thing: How quickly we – all of us, across the industry – can make it happen, safely.

I know that this industry will continue to rise to that challenge.

I thank you for what you’re doing each and every day to harness innovation and to make this a great and safe place to fly.

Have a great conference.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Symposium Opening Remarks

Remarks as prepared for delivery

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we kick off the second annual UAS Symposium. It’s great to have so many of you here today, and from so many different industries and areas of expertise.

America is rightly considered the gold standard in aviation, and there’s a simple reason for it: we don’t compete when it comes to safety.

There’s often a combative relationship between government and the industry it regulates. But not here.

For the FAA, the airlines and manufacturers, the pilots and passengers…Safety is our common goal, our shared principle, and our north star.

It’s not just good business – it’s the only business.

When you look at every important issue the FAA has tackled over the years – from decreasing the risk of commercial aviation crashes to modernizing our air traffic control system – our success has always depended on our close partnership with industry.

By working together, we’ve achieved more – faster – than we ever could on our own.

Now, we’re ushering in a new age of American aviation: the unmanned aircraft era. And it’s moving at a quicker pace than anything we’ve seen before.

Back in January, I attended CES in Las Vegas for the second time. And I was struck, not only by the creativity on display, but by how much had changed since my last visit.

If you can dream it, drone manufacturers are building it. Some of the latest models can sense and avoid obstacles in their paths. Others can fit in your pocket, or be used under water. A few have even automated the “selfie” game.

I understand that Helicopter Association International has even started a special drone membership.

Many in that industry have even begun looking at ways that drones can augment the tasks they do with helicopters, particularly in cases where drones can accomplish a task without putting human lives at risk.

Innovations throughout the small unmanned aircraft community have captured people’s imaginations. And I’m sure it’s what inspired many of you to attend this event.

I see quite a few familiar faces here today. But there are also a lot of new ones – and that’s good news for us.

Because as we continue to incorporate drones into our airspace, the people in this room and the organizations you represent are going to be more important than ever before.

I’m going to be leading a panel on the FAA’s unmanned aircraft integration efforts in a few minutes. We’ll be covering some of our greatest hits, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with.

We finalized a rule that allows people to fly unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes under specific conditions, and we’ve issued more than 37,000 Remote Pilot Certificates to date.

We set up an online drone registry that’s received 770,000 registrations and counting in a little over 15 months.

The B4UFLY app, which we created to let people know where it’s safe and legal to fly a drone, has been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

And our “No Drone Zone” public education campaign has helped keep events like the Inauguration and Super Bowl safe.

I’m proud of this record, and how quickly we achieved it.

But I’m going to say something that’s likely to give my colleagues heartburn: This was the easy stuff.

As we move toward fully integrating unmanned aircraft into our airspace, the questions we need to answer are only getting more complicated.

There’s tremendous interest in expanding operations so that unmanned aircraft can be flown over people, and beyond visual line of sight.

It’s not hard to see why: drones could provide a whole new perspective on both our cities and some of the most remote areas of the country.

But introducing these operations into our airspace also introduces a unique set of challenges.

There are obvious safety questions. What happens to people on the ground if a drone flying overhead fails?

Then there are security concerns. How can we make sure unmanned aircraft don’t gain access to sensitive sites? And after seeing how drones can be used for ill-intent overseas, how can we ensure similar incidents don’t happen here?

These aren’t questions the FAA can or should answer alone.

All of those greatest hits I mentioned earlier were only possible because of the work we did with the people in this room.

And as we tackle these new safety and security challenges, we’re turning to you once again.

In the coming weeks, we will begin bringing the industry and national security leadership together to address these issues.

We hope to create a mutual understanding about the government’s security concerns, and discuss how we can collaborate to address them. Look for more details on this in the near future.

We’re also launching a new Aviation Rulemaking Committee made up of a diverse group of aviation, technology, law enforcement, and safety stakeholders that will help us create standards for remotely identifying and tracking unmanned aircraft during operations.

This is one of the law enforcement community’s top concerns, and we hope the recommendations we receive will pave the way for expanded drone operations over people and beyond visual line of sight.

These initiatives are just the most recent example of how the FAA is working with stakeholders on all aspects of integration.

Later today, you’ll hear about two other industry-led groups we’ve formed – the Drone Advisory Committee, and the Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team.

This is a very deliberate approach we’re taking, and I see it as having two primary benefits.

First, we’re providing venues for some of the smartest people in technology and aviation to work together on the issues we all care about.

And second, it gives us an opportunity to create a shared vision of what we’re trying to accomplish and how we’re going to get there.

Here’s the thing with having a seat at the table: it comes with a certain level of responsibility.

We all need to have skin in the game, and be invested in producing the best possible outcomes for all parties.

It’s easy to focus on all of the bells and whistles that come with unmanned aircraft. This drone is the lightest and the smallest. This one can fly farther and faster.

But technology can also solve some of the safety and security challenges we’re facing.

For example, we’re already working with industry to test tools that can detect unauthorized drone operations near airports and other critical infrastructure.

The way I see it, the more problems industry can solve itself using technology, the better.

You’re going to do it more quickly and efficiently than the FAA ever could through regulations.

It may surprise a few of you to hear me say that. But this isn’t a new idea at our agency.

Late last year, we completely overhauled how we certify small general aviation aircraft.

For a long time, the FAA told manufacturers how to build a safe airplane by requiring specific technologies.

But as companies came up with new and better ideas, our certification processes struggled to keep up.

So we threw out the old rule book.

Instead of prescribing certain technologies and designs, we’re now defining the performance objectives we want to achieve. This lets industry figure out the best and safest ways to meet them.

We want to work with the unmanned aircraft industry in the same way.

We know how fast you’re churning out new drone designs and capabilities. And we don’t want bureaucratic red tape to hamper your progress.

On the contrary: we want to support it.

When we all work in good faith… when we all share the same safety goals… we can accomplish some truly impressive things.

That’s what this Symposium is about. It’s being hosted by the FAA and AUVSI, but we have no intention of dominating the conversation.

Instead, our goal is to provide a productive framework that allows you to engage with each other and share ideas about the future of the unmanned aircraft industry in America.

We’ve been calling this work “integration,” but another word for it is “inclusion.”

Each of you has a unique perspective to share, and I hope you’ll take the opportunity to do so early and often.

We’re all going to need to roll up our sleeves. We have a lot of work to do.

But when we get this right, we’ll know we’ve helped define the next great era of aviation – together.

Thank you.

***

Now I’d like to welcome our first panel to the stage.

As I said before, the FAA has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments on unmanned aircraft that wouldn’t have been possible without our partnerships with industry.

But they also required close collaboration inside the FAA – between offices, and across lines of business.

Today, I’m joined by some of our senior executives, who will share how we’re coordinating our drone integration efforts across the agency.

Please help me welcome:

• Peggy Gilligan, Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety;
• Teri Bristol, Chief Operating Officer of the Air Traffic Organization;
• Winsome Lenfert, Deputy Associate Administrator for the Office of Airports; and
• Jim Eck, Assistant Administrator for NextGen.

NATCA CFS–Archie League Banquet

Remarks As Prepared For Delivery

Thank you, Paul. I’m honored to be here. I also want to thank you, Trish, and NATCA for hosting another great safety conference.

It’s always an honor and a privilege to join you at the Archie League Awards and share in your recognition of the fine work the FAA does on a daily basis.

This is particularly true in times of crisis, when you have to solve a problem and you have to get it right the first time.

I’m particularly pleased to be joining you tonight because this is the first speech I have given since the Administration released its proposed fiscal year 2018 proposed budget last week.

I’m sure your attention – like that of many in this industry – is focused on a recommendation by the Administration that we develop a long-term plan for restructuring how we provide air traffic control services. 

We’ve seen a number of the alphabet groups come forward with their positions on this proposal, and I know that NATCA has registered its thoughts and concerns.

I am encouraged that we are beginning what I expect will be a serious, thoughtful dialogue on the long-term needs of the FAA.

These conversations are extremely important as we look ahead to ensure that we provide a safe and efficient organization – one that will meet the needs of the traveling public, and considers the future needs of our nation’s airspace.

The job you do as controllers has changed exponentially since the days when Archie League first waved signal flags at airplanes at the edge of a runway in St. Louis.

Throughout my tenure at the FAA, you have heard me say that we need to focus on the how. We all know what our mission is, but I have stressed that we need to change how we do business.

Without a doubt, the path we have traveled together over the last five years has made all of us at the FAA much smarter and more nimble.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that we’d all like to move faster.  We have had to deal with shutdowns, short term extensions of our authorizations and appropriations, and the daily challenges of ensuring the safety of the aviation system. 

I firmly believe that any fair review of the past few years makes clear that we have accomplished a great deal.

ERAM is now in place throughout the system, and new technologies such as ADS-B and Data Comm are helping you do your jobs in ways that were never possible before.

At the same time, we continue to harness the precision of satellite navigation through our Metroplex airspace projects and other efforts to replace outdated procedures with more efficient PBN routes.

This progress is due to the collaborative approach we have taken with industry and with you, our labor partners.

I expect we’ll hear many points of view in the coming weeks about what happens next as we engage in these discussions.

No matter where you are in the debate, I think we all want the same thing – an air traffic system that is second to none.

We expect to have more details when the President submits his full 2018 budget to Congress in May. In the meantime, we will continue to work with Congress on our current funding for 2017.

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a group of aviation industry leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Aviation Summit in Washington.

I told the group the same thing that I now share with you. This public policy conversation we are undertaking will only yield the best results if we keep the American people at the forefront.

All you have to do is pick up an aerospace magazine or look at the latest technology blog to see that the fundamental definition of aviation has changed dramatically just in the last few years.

True, the commercial airlines and general aviation community still make up the vast majority of what we do today, and maybe they always will.

But we’ve got a whole new cast waiting in the wings. They range from small unmanned aircraft to commercial space launches and even space tourism.

The day isn’t that far off when the skies around major metropolitan cities will include a steady stream of drones delivering packages. We’ve even seen a few early proposals for pilotless airborne versions of Uber or Lyft.

And I haven’t even mentioned the various research projects into reducing or eliminating sonic booms that could make it possible for supersonic civilian flights across the U.S.

One thing I am certain of is that all of these users will expect to use the National Airspace System to their benefit. We’ve been calling our efforts to do this “integration,” but another word for that is “inclusion.”

Somebody is going have to decide how to allocate this extremely valuable asset – the public’s airspace – in an equitable and fair manner.

If we are to succeed, none of us can be in a place where our strategy is to protect what we’ve already got.

Everybody’s got a valid point to make, but we aren’t talking about building the air traffic system of today. We’re also building the air traffic system for tomorrow.

Regardless of the structure that might take, we can’t let safety take a back seat.

Over the decades, the FAA’s dedicated workforce has taken its stewardship of the nation’s airspace seriously. America’s unparalleled safety record is proof of both your vision and your professionalism.

On issue after issue, NATCA has worked with us to make this happen. Together, we’ve addressed issues like electronic distractions, fatigue, and runway incursions, among others.

We’ve collaborated on many safety programs like ATSAP, the ATO’s Top 5 Hazard List, Recurrent Training, Take a Stand for Safety, and others.

I encourage controllers to continue to share safety information and insights with us.

Through the non-punitive culture fostered by ATSAP, controllers have submitted more than 127,000 safety reports since the program started nine years ago.

Those reports enabled us to more accurately identify areas of risk, and we’ve issued 176 corrective actions as a result.

Risk-based safety efforts like these, and many others, reflect an understanding that everyone here can agree with—that while today’s system is safe, we have to continually adapt to address emerging safety concerns.

Your expertise makes you uniquely qualified in the upcoming debates over the future of what you do, and I look forward to seeing where the conversations take us.

Before I close, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the reason we’re here tonight – and that’s because some of our colleagues performed their work particularly well when it counted most.

I’d like to briefly highlight the story of one of tonight’s award recipients.

This past July, a Navy F-18 fighter experienced an equipment malfunction while on the way to Asia for a training exercise.

The pilot was forced to shut down one engine and declare an emergency. To make matters worse, the weather around the Aleutian Islands was deteriorating, with visibility down to only a quarter mile.

To say this is a forbidding area is putting it mildly. As you may know, it’s the same area where they film that show “The Deadliest Catch.”

The pilot needed a lifeline and he got it from Jessica Earp, a controller in our Alaska En Route Center.

Jessica’s knowledge of the Alaskan airspace and her quick thinking got this pilot safely to a runway on a tiny island in the Bering Sea.

We are going to hear other compelling stories a little later, and I want to be the first to congratulate the winners and all of those who were nominated.

Whether it was mechanical problems, lack of experience, inattention, or some combination of those, all of these situations led to moments in which controllers were the last line of defense between a pilot and a potentially unpleasant ending.

These controllers would be the first to tell you that what they did was NOT heroic.

They simply came to work that day and were presented with a situation in which they had to think quickly and make the right call.

They’ll tell you something you already know: Every time a controller puts on that headset, he or she is one event away from getting this award next year.

It’s the nature of what you do.

I know I speak for myself and the rest of the traveling public when I say to all of you: I’m grateful you’re there.

Thank you.

Before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation concerning Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Innovation, Integration, Successes, and Challenges

Chairman Thune, Senator Nelson, Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Earl Lawrence, Director of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Office. In this role, I am responsible for the facilitation of all regulations, policies, and procedures required to support the FAA's UAS integration efforts. I also represent the FAA on the Senior Steering Group of the UAS Executive Committee focusing on coordination and alignment of efforts among key federal government agencies, and I oversee the Subcommittee of the Drone Advisory Committee.

The Department of Transportation's (USDOT) and FAA's vision for fully integrating UAS into the National Airspace System (NAS) entails UAS operating harmoniously, side-by-side with manned aircraft in a safe and secure manner. This vision goes beyond the accommodation practices in use today, which largely rely on operational segregation to maintain systemic safety. As we work to realize this vision, the FAA intends to work incrementally to introduce UAS into the NAS after careful consideration of the safety of people and property both in the air and on the ground.

Two years ago, the FAA appeared before this committee to discuss the status of the safe, incremental integration of UAS—more commonly referred to as drones—into the NAS, and also into the FAA. In that time, we have made significant progress toward our goal of fully integrating this new class of aircraft and their operators. This progress is the result of significant coordination efforts across the FAA. While my office serves as the focal point for external stakeholders, almost every policy and support office within the Agency has dedicated staff and resources to supporting these integration activities. Today, the United States is clearly a global leader in UAS integration, and I would like to highlight for you some examples of our accomplishments, our challenges, and our ongoing work to build upon our successes as we move forward with the next phase of UAS integration.

Small UAS Registration
Aircraft registration is a foundational statutory requirement that applies to all civil aircraft and promotes a culture of accountability. At the time of our last discussion, we were experiencing a huge influx of new, casual UAS users—people who fly UAS for personal entertainment or recreation. Many of these operators do not have the basic aviation knowledge, training, or experience required for pilots of traditional manned aircraft. Growing concern about reports of UAS flying near airports and manned aircraft highlighted the need to educate these users about how to operate UAS safely as soon as possible, preferably before they began operating small UAS in the NAS.

We knew at the outset that we would need to work with industry stakeholders in order to develop a registration process for small UAS. The Secretary of Transportation and the FAA Administrator announced the creation of a UAS Registration Task Force on October 19, 2015. This Task Force was comprised of industry representatives with a range of stakeholder viewpoints, interests, and knowledge. The group met for three days in November 2015 to develop recommendations for a small UAS registration process.

After evaluating the Task Force's recommendations and public comments, the FAA published an Interim Final Rule on Registration and Marking Requirements for Small Unmanned Aircraft on December 14, 2015. This rule established a new web-based process for small UAS registration, relieving operators of the need to use the legacy paper-based process, and took effect on December 21, 2015. The requirements stipulate that owners must register their UAS online if the combined weight of the vehicle and anything it carries is more than 0.55 lbs. and less than 55 lbs., and is flown outdoors for either recreational or non-recreational purposes, consistent with the statutory requirement for aircraft registration. Within the first two weeks of online registration opening, over 160,000 UAS owners had registered their UAS.

The registration process serves two critical functions that will help foster a culture of safety, security, and accountability in the emerging UAS community. First, it provides a means to associate an unmanned aircraft with its owner. This helps law enforcement and regulators identify an operator more quickly in the event of an incident and ensures operators are aware that they are responsible for the safe operation of their vehicle. Secondly, and equally important, the registration process provides an opportunity to educate users about how to safely operate UAS in the NAS, including instructions to not fly near manned aircraft and always fly within visual line-of-sight, as well as an acknowledgement that flying in the nation's airspace comes with certain responsibilities and expectations. To date, over 750,000 small UAS owners have registered, including more than 40,000 in the last two weeks of December 2016. The FAA has used the registration database on three occasions to provide registrants with important, time-sensitive safety information about flying their UAS–during Hurricane Matthew, wildfire season, and the Iditarod Great Sled Race.

Small UAS Rule (Part 107)
Building on the successful launch of the online registration system, the FAA adopted a similar approach of engagement and collaboration with industry stakeholders in the development of the first set of operating rules for small UAS, which forms the bedrock of the regulatory framework for full UAS integration. Because UAS technology is evolving at a rapid pace, a flexible regulatory framework is imperative. Our goal is to provide the basic rules for operators, not identify specific technological safety solutions that could quickly become outdated. We've achieved this goal with the final small UAS rule (14 CFR part 107), which was issued on June 21, 2016 and went into effect on August 29, 2016.

Part 107 introduces a brand new pilot certificate that is specific for UAS operations—the Remote Pilot Certificate. Unlike a part 61 airman certificate (certification for manned aircraft), which necessarily has more stringent requirements, an individual can obtain a Remote Pilot Certificate by passing an aeronautical knowledge test at an FAA-approved testing center. Alternatively, if the individual holds a current non-student part 61 airman certificate, the individual may complete an online UAS training course in lieu of the knowledge test. Approximately 24,000 applicants have taken the Remote Pilot Knowledge Exam, and over 91% have passed.

The small UAS rule has also greatly reduced the number of, and the need for, Section 333 exemptions, which the FAA used to grant case-by-case approval for certain unmanned aircraft to conduct commercial operations. Before part 107, the primary way to operate a drone for non-hobby purposes was to obtain a Section 333 exemption and an accompanying Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA). The FAA issued 5,551 exemptions under Section 333.

The provisions of part 107 are designed to minimize risks to other aircraft and people and property on the ground, as well as provide the UAS industry and operator community with the flexibility to innovate. Among other operational limits such as speed and altitude, the regulations require pilots to keep an unmanned aircraft within visual line-of-sight, fly during daylight hours, and prohibit flights over unprotected people on the ground who are not directly involved in the UAS operation.

In keeping with our goal of a flexible framework, part 107 also allows operators to apply online for waivers and airspace authorizations to fly outside the rule's requirements, provided that they demonstrate their proposed operation may be conducted safely. This process has been used successfully to issue over 400 waivers and 2,200 airspace authorizations for UAS operations in controlled airspace, including the drone show featured during halftime at this year's Super Bowl. Part 107 allows for operations in Class G airspace without prior air traffic control authorization; operations in Class B, C, D, and E airspace (i.e. controlled airspace) may be permitted with authorization from the FAA Air Traffic Organization (ATO).

The small UAS rule provides UAS operators with unprecedented access to the NAS while also ensuring the safety of the skies, and was largely well received by the UAS industry. However, it is only the first step in the FAA's plan to integrate UAS into the NAS. Consistent with our incremental integration strategy, we intend to use a risk-based approach to facilitate expanded UAS operations, including operations over people, operations beyond visual line-of-sight, and transportation of persons and property.

Next Steps and Challenges Ahead
The FAA's commitment to further expanding permissible UAS operations and enabling this emerging technology to safely achieve its full potential requires resolving several key challenges. Congress recognized a number of these challenges in the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016. Before operations beyond visual line-of-sight can become routine, FAA must address risks posed by drones to other manned aircraft, as well as risks posed by
drones during a loss-of-operator-control event. Additionally, preemption, privacy, enforcement, and security–both physical and cyber–remain key issues as UAS integration progresses.

Technical Challenges
One way the FAA is working to address the technical challenges presented by increasingly complex UAS operations is to support its UAS test sites in conducting critical research. One of the primary goals of the test site program is to help the FAA determine technical and operational trends that could support safety-related decision making for UAS-NAS integration. In 2016, the test sites continued to conduct research to validate key operational requirements for UAS integration, including research and testing into technology that enables UAS to detect and avoid other aircraft and obstacles, investigation of lost link causes and resolutions, and evaluation of the adequacy of ATC and communications procedures with UAS. Test site activities have also explored industry applications of UAS, such as emergency response, utility company infrastructure inspection, wildlife census, and precision agriculture.

To complement the work being done at and by the UAS test sites, in May 2015 the FAA selected a UAS Center of Excellence (COE), led by Mississippi State University and the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE). The goal of the UAS COE is to create a cost-sharing relationship between academia, industry, and government that will focus on research areas of primary interest to the FAA and the UAS community. The FAA has received initial research results for several research topics, including airborne and ground-based collision testing, which are currently being peer reviewed by both internal and external research teams. This work fits into the FAA's overall UAS research and development portfolio, which is primarily focused on applied research to support the development of rules, policies, and procedures.

To keep pace with the rapid increase in the number of UAS operations, and to pave the way for the full implementation of beyond visual line-of-sight operations, FAA is working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and industry to develop and eventually deploy a UAS Traffic Management (UTM) System. NASA's research concept specifically considers small UAS operations below 400 feet, in airspace that contains low-density manned aircraft operations. NASA has developed a phased approach for their UTM concept, building from rural to urban and from low to high-density airspace. In April 2016, NASA coordinated with the six FAA-selected test sites to perform phase one testing of the UTM research platform. A Research Transition Team (RTT) has been established between the FAA and NASA to coordinate the UTM initiative, as the concept introduces policy, regulatory, and infrastructure implications that must be fully understood and addressed before moving forward with technology deployment. Additionally, the UTM work with NASA will inform our efforts with respect to UAS operating in proximity to airports. A second RTT has also been established with NASA, which is focused on UAS operating in higher altitude and controlled airspace, as opposed to the UTM initiative, which focuses on operations in low altitude managed airspace.

Security and Enforcement
As Congress recognized in the 2016 FAA Extension, the security challenges presented by UAS technology require a whole-of-government response. The FAA is working with several departments and agencies–including the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and others–to identify and evaluate technologies that detect and track unmanned aircraft movement through the NAS. However, technologies to detect and track unmanned aircraft movement through the NAS are only one part of the equation to address the security challenges presented by evolving UAS technologies. To adequately secure and protect the airspace we must continue to educate the public on the safe operation of UAS and work with our law enforcement partners at every level of government in responding to incidents involving threats from UAS.

We also continue to work closely with our industry partners to evaluate these promising drone-detection technologies. As directed in Section 2206 of the 2016 FAA Extension, the FAA has established a pilot program to evaluate some of these technologies, which have been tested in airport environments at New York's JFK Airport, Atlantic City International Airport, and Denver International Airport. Further testing will take place at Dallas-Fort Worth later this year. In addition, the FAA is working with interagency partners to develop policies and procedures for restricting UAS operations over fixed site facilities, as directed by Section 2209 of the 2016 FAA Extension.

The potential for conflicts between manned and unmanned aircraft has become a very real challenge in integrating these new technologies into the NAS. We are seeing an increased number of drone-sighting reports from pilots of manned aircraft, with approximately 1,800 reports of sightings in 2016, compared to 1,200 reports the year before. As the Federal agency responsible for the safety of the flying community, the FAA remains concerned about the increasing number of these reports. To begin addressing this issue, we are actively engaging in public education and outreach efforts, such as "Know Before You Fly" and the small UAS registration process.

Sometimes, however, education is not enough. If an unauthorized UAS operation is intentional, creates an unacceptable risk to safety, or is intended to cause harm, strong and swift enforcement action will be taken. Recently, we announced a comprehensive settlement agreement with a UAS operator that violated airspace regulations and aircraft operating rules by flying drones in congested airspace over New York City and Chicago. However, one of the enforcement challenges we often face is identifying the operator of a UAS flying where it shouldn't. This Committee has recognized that challenge with Section 2202 of the 2016 FAA Extension, which directs the FAA to convene industry stakeholders to develop consensus standards for remotely identifying UAS operators. We plan to begin convening stakeholders this spring.

Continued engagement with the law enforcement community is paramount to ensuring public safety. In January 2015, the FAA published guidance for the law enforcement community on its UAS Web site, and has been actively engaging with law enforcement agencies at local, State, and Federal levels to reduce confusion about how to respond to UAS events. The FAA encourages citizens to call local law enforcement if they feel someone is endangering people or property on the ground or in the sky. Local law enforcement should then work with local FAA field offices to ensure these safety issues are addressed.

Continued Engagement with Industry
As the FAA moves forward with UAS integration, we will continue to involve all stakeholders in framing challenges, prioritizing activities, and developing consensus solutions. By leveraging this expertise, we ensure that the FAA maintains its position as the global leader in aviation safety. Last summer, we formed the Drone Advisory Committee (DAC). Its members include representatives from industry, government, labor, and academia. The DAC will allow us to look at drone use from every angle, while considering the different viewpoints and needs of the diverse UAS community.

The first DAC meeting was held in September 2016 and its members have already started to work on assisting us in two key areas: identifying the roles and responsibilities of drone operators, manufacturers, and Federal, state, and local officials related to drone use in populated areas; and determining what the highest-priority UAS operations are and how we can enable access to the airspace needed to conduct these operations. The FAA recently created a new tasking concerning a third key area: how to fund the full complement of services required to safely integrate UAS operations into the NAS in the long-term. We look forward to receiving and reviewing the DAC's recommendations.

In October 2016, we also began working with industry to form an Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team (UAST), modeled after the very successful Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST). This group's mission is to collect and use UAS operational data to identify safety risks, and then develop and voluntarily implement mitigation strategies to address those risks. The group is currently working on several projects, including helping the FAA develop a survey to the UAS operator community.

Apart from our work with the DAC and the UAST, the FAA held its first UAS symposium in Daytona Beach, Florida in April last year. The symposium provided a forum for UAS stakeholders to provide feedback directly to FAA decision-makers on topics related to UAS integration. Nearly 500 attendees heard keynote remarks from the FAA Administrator and Deputy Administrator, and participated in discussions on topics ranging from aircraft and pilot certification to legal and policy issues related to UAS operations and integration.

Our second UAS symposium will be held in the Washington D.C. area on March 27-29, 2017. Conversations will touch on the more significant challenges that integration presents, including the intersection of privacy and preemption, the importance of harmonizing international regulations, and the array of new safety and security risks associated with increased UAS operations. The symposium will also have a Resource Center to provide attendees with one-on-one technical support on authorizations, waivers, Part 107 requirements, and other policies and regulations.

Building on Our Success
Moving forward, we intend to build on the progress that we have made this past year with two notable initiatives currently underway. We are developing a Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) to automate the process for UAS operators to notify Air Traffic Control of flights within five miles of an airport center or to get authorization to fly in certain classes of airspace. This initiative will be the first step toward implementing UTM. As part of LAANC, the FAA will publish UAS facility maps that indicate likely safe altitudes for UAS flight and distances around airports. Industry applications will facilitate interaction with the maps and may provide automatic notification to the FAA and operational authorization to UAS operators through data exchange. Data received by the FAA may be used by Air Traffic Control to contact the operator in the event of an emergency. On February 1, 2017, the FAA held the first in a series of industry workshops to discuss this initiative in greater detail, and recently released a sample of 10 facility maps to the industry partners involved in LAANC.

The second initiative is to develop an integrated gateway—a common web portal and associated API—that will serve as a one-stop-shop for all UAS interactions with the FAA. It will allow UAS owners and operators to register their aircraft, apply for an airspace authorization or waiver, file an accident report, and keep abreast of the latest FAA news and announcements concerning UAS. This gateway will be designed for desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones, and will serve as the platform for future communications with the FAA as UAS rules and regulations evolve.

Conclusion
The progress that we have made, in particular during the past year, might have seemed unimaginable not long ago. From the beginning, we knew that we had to engage our stakeholders, and it paid off with the creation of a UAS registry and the successful implementation of a flexible regulatory framework to enable routine small UAS operations. Our collaborative working relationships with the DAC and UAST will help inform and prioritize integration activities, ensure we remain engaged with industry trends, and maintain clear channels of communication to convey expectations and solicit feedback. We know, however, that these accomplishments are only the first step. As reinforced in the 2016 FAA Extension, there are many important issues yet to be addressed and we will continue to work with our stakeholders as we move forward.

This concludes my statement. I will be happy to answer your questions at this time.

NASAO Legislative Conference

Remarks as prepared for delivery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nowhere are we seeing this more than in commercial space.

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

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

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

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

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

We’re also examining how we should classify spaceports.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope you’ll make your voices heard.

Thank you.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Aviation Summit

Good morning.

It’s an honor to be joining you today at the 16^th annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce Aviation Summit.

And I would like to recognize Carol Hallett who thought a couple of decades ago that the business community should sponsor an aviation summit.  Carol, may I say that you have succeeded beyond what anyone could have imagined.  Congratulations and thank you for bringing us all together at this can’t miss forum. 

A couple of my predecessors are here today – Allan McArtor and Marion Blakey.

Now, I’m sure they’d both agree that on the good days, being FAA Administrator is one of the best jobs in aviation.

On the rare bad day, it’s probably more like being the CEO of an airline – during the 1990s.

In all seriousness, it’s always a pleasure to speak to a group that shares an abiding passion for aviation.

You recognize that a safe and vibrant transportation system is the lifeblood of our nation’s economy, and aviation ties us closer together than ever.

Each day, more than 50,000 commercial airliners and general aviation airplanes take off and land safely in the U.S., connecting people – and ideas.

The people in this room make that happen.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the workplace signs that say “Safety is No Accident.” As you all know, when it comes to aviation, safety is intentional.

Every day, thousands of professionals across the nation come to work knowing that their primary responsibility is to make sure everything goes smoothly on their watch.

Today, because of the work we have done together we can all take a certain amount of pride in saying that aviation has never been safer.

In fact, during the span of most of our careers, flying in the United States has become exponentially safer – in part because of your willingness to tackle some very tough challenges.

As an agency – and as an industry – we’ve made significant strides because we’ve collaborated as a community.

This is of course most evident in the safety record we have achieved as a result of the work of the Commercial Aviation Safety Team.  And we have now expanded those collaborative efforts to look at a broad range of operational challenges. 

Early in my tenure, it became clear to me that modernizing the nation’s air traffic management system was much more than deploying a new technology platform.  It requires fundamental changes in how all of us do business and a constant focus on how we deliver benefits.

We formed the NextGen Advisory Committee to enable us to set priorities and to deliver real benefits. Then, last year when we needed collaboration with traditional aviation leaders and new entrants to our community, we created the Drone Advisory Committee to help us tackle complex challenges.

Without a doubt, the path we have traveled together makes all of us at the FAA much smarter and more nimble. 

My focus is to ensure the FAA fulfills its safety and oversight responsibilities within a framework that recognizes that innovation never stops.

At every turn, I’ve emphasized that we at the FAA share a common goal with those we regulate. We all want to leave our children a legacy that ensures the U.S. aerospace system is second to none.

Which brings me to the thoughts I wanted to share with you today.

It’s certainly the case that virtually everyone in this room recognizes that today we are operating the largest, most complex and safest air transportation system in the world.

I suspect it is also true that many in this room have engaged in debates during the past decades about just how our air traffic management system could best be structured.

From my perspective, discussing alternative approaches when our aviation community is strong and our system is being safely and effectively modernized through our NextGen initiatives represents the right time to be asking critical questions.

Along with my FAA colleagues, I am eager to engage in a full and honest review of the path we have traveled with many of you in this room to modernize the air traffic management system.

While I’ll be the first to acknowledge that we’d all like to move faster, I also firmly believe that any fair review of the past few years makes clear that our work together has been critical to the success of the tremendous progress we have made to revamp our air traffic system with the latest technologies.

We are ready today to move away from ground-based radars and make the transition to our GPS-based ADS-B network.

And we look forward to the January 1, 2020, deadline when all of our customers will have the necessary ADS-B equipment installed in their airplanes.

Meanwhile, the core computer systems in all our enroute centers have been replaced with modern hardware and software.

 This new backbone is capable of incorporating every planned aspect of our ongoing modernization for decades to come.

Notice that I said ongoing.

The FAA can demonstrate that it has already delivered more than $2.72 billion in benefits under the NextGen modernization umbrella.

We expect that number to climb to $160 billion by 2030.

And for programs already underway, we expect to achieve $13 billion in benefits by 2020, at which time the benefits will exceed the projected investment in NextGen.

One of the reasons – actually, a key reason we’ve been successful – rests with a group I mentioned earlier.

Through our NextGen Advisory Committee – or the NAC, as we call it – the FAA and the industry have worked closely to identify and deliver the capabilities that matter most to the customers.

From its inception, the NAC has been led by senior airline executives with an intimate understanding of our shared challenges and opportunities.

In fact, our newest NAC chairman, David Bronczek, of FedEx, is here today. Dave, thank you for your willingness to put in the enormous amount of effort it takes to keep up with the broad range of improvements in the pipeline.

For those of you who don’t follow NextGen on a daily basis, I’d like to bring you up to speed on one unqualified success story.

Last year – at the request of the NAC – we focused a tremendous amount of effort on getting a technology called Data Comm into as many control towers as possible.

Data Comm allows air traffic controllers and pilots to communicate electronically, rather than by voice over busy air traffic frequencies.

At the beginning of 2016, Data Comm was operational at five airports. Today, it’s up and running at 55 towers nationwide.

For those of you keeping score at home, we are now 29 months ahead of schedule and under budget. We are planning to use those savings to install Data Comm in an additional seven towers.

So, we’ve come a long way from those years when our aviation agenda was defined by a fundamental challenge: How do we persuade the public that flying is safe?

In fact, by 2008, we had succeeded in reducing the commercial fatality risk by 84 percent from what it had been just a decade before.

Now, that’s a big number.

It’s even more impressive when you consider that – had we done nothing – the experts predicted we’d be experiencing a serious incident or accident every two weeks by now.

But, we know that this doesn’t mean we can all slap each other on the backs and go play some golf. We can never let our guard down when it comes to safety.

The moment safety takes a back seat – or even scoots over to let some other factor into the driver’s seat – we’ve lost the battle.

So where do we go from here?

Before I was asked to become the FAA’s Deputy Administrator in 2010, I was the president of a major division of a Fortune 500 company with experience in successfully fielding large, technology and infrastructure projects.

I want to put that hat back on for just a minute and report what I’ve found during my expedition into this wilderness of government bureaucracy and politics.

During the past three years, the FAA has been undergoing a noticeable cultural change as it has embraced what has truly been a fundamental redefinition of the term “aviation.”

For decades, aviation was defined as conventional aircraft doing what they’ve always done: Flying from Point A to Point B as seamlessly as possible.

Today, a host of new users want to do the same thing, but with small unmanned aircraft or commercial rocket launches.

All of our constituents are looking to the FAA to allow them to fly when and where they want, and to do so safely and efficiently.

As the steward of the National Airspace System, the FAA must find a way to balance these often-competing priorities. We must make sure that one of our nation’s most valuable assets – the air over our heads – remains safe and available to all Americans.

This balancing act has raised important questions about how our air traffic control system should be operated and who should pay for it.

And, this “balancing act” is further complicated when you realize that our success in some areas has impacts on our funding structure.

We have been spending a lot of time and money in developing efficient performance based navigation procedures.  Better, quiet, more efficient engines reduce costs and emissions.  But while PBN and better engine technology also greatly reduce fuel burn – a good thing – they also reduce fuel taxes which are an important contributor to the aviation trust fund that supports the FAA. 

New users of the airspace with aircraft that are unmanned do not pay fees today.

Those who carry freight versus people pay varying charges. And, business aircraft pay widely varying charges while flying many of the same routes to the same destinations as commercial aircraft.

I think it’s fair to say that everybody has a point here. The question is: how do we have this conversation in a way that achieves a solution that works for all of us?

What will the airspace system look like in 10 years when those operators might also include an airborne version of Uber or Lyft?

Or when space tourists are taking suborbital flights on a daily basis from spaceports scattered across the country – some of them along heavily traveled transcontinental commercial routes?

These are public policy matters that must be addressed by all of our stakeholders.

I can tell you what most interests me and will be needed by future Administrators….

• A steady and reliable funding source;
• Access to capital for infrastructure projects
• Flexibility to utilize the funds in our accounts where needed most; And,
• the freedom to make major purchasing decisions without all of the current impediments. 

There is no business that would invest in major infrastructure projects without some ability to borrow.  No business would invest in new facilities without at least exploring third party financing or innovative development approaches.  

So here’s my challenge to you: Let’s find a way to collaboratively solve these questions.

Let’s find a solution that reflects the best interests of the American people and protects the safety and flexibility of this extremely valuable public asset.

Like our predecessors who came together six decades ago to make sure the world’s most glamorous and exciting form of transportation was also safe, we are at a decision point.

Obviously, we have myriad challenges. But we also have choices. We can each focus our energy on trying to protect what we’ve got – which frankly, is a shortsighted approach.

This industry was founded on the principle that we have the intellectual depth and strength of character to accomplish the impossible.

Today, tens of thousands of commercial flights, operating from a vast network of airports spanning 3.8 million square miles in the U.S. alone, will take off and land safely.

The vast majority will leave their gates on time and they’ll arrive on time. They’ll operate throughout their journeys under the watchful eyes of professional air traffic controllers in an air transportation system that is second to none.

And, as anyone who has ever tried to load up the family minivan and back out of the driveway even close to being on time will remind you:

Doing what we are doing today in aviation is pretty darn close to already doing the impossible.

Thank you for inviting me to be with you today. More importantly, thank you for working with me and my 46,000 colleagues to build and support the largest and most complex and the safest air transportation systems in the world! 

Have a great conference. 

FAA Commercial Space Conference

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon, everyone. And George, thank you very much. It’s great to be here for this 20^th anniversary conference.

It’s rather intimidating, as well – to be in a room full of rocket scientists. Because, as you all know, I am not a scientist myself.   

But like many of you, when I was growing up, seeing the early Apollo missions in the 1960’s and the 1970’s, I remember the feeling I had when Apollo 11 land on the moon.

You know, those of us who were around then, if you’re as old as I am, you remember Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin taking those first steps. And hearing that crackling sound, but nonetheless the clear voices, as they reported every moment of what they were seeing.

And after seeing that, I think many of us all shared the same ambition. And that was to grow up and to be an astronaut. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

Some of us remember the first time we saw the Space Shuttle. And maybe you saw the live shot of an intrepid pioneer – someone named Sally Ride – to become the first American woman who flew in space.

Today is an important anniversary. February 7^th marks the anniversary during Space Shuttle Challenger’s fourth flight. Astronaut Bruce McCandless untethered himself from a lifeline and became the first human to fly alone in space.

Now he used a gas-operated jet-pack to power himself more than 300 feet away from the Shuttle and back again. But he did that while they were both streaking in tandem at about 17,500 miles per hour above the blue Earth below.

Now it’s moments like these that make many of us dream about what the next giant leap is going to look like. It’s made us wonder what we could do, and how far we might be able to go.

Now of course, I, like a lot of people, grew up and realized – came to grips with the realization, that not everyone can be an astronaut. But that doesn’t mean that all of us can’t play a meaningful role.

And that’s what I think unites everyone in the room here today. In your own way, each person in this room is building on the legacy of those early space missions.

Democratization of Space
Space transportation, as you all know, is no longer the exclusive domain of the government. The industry is accomplishing something truly remarkable. It’s what George Whitesides of Virgin Galactic, calls the “democratization of space.”

And we’re seeing more launches. And we’re seeing more types of vehicles, carrying more types of payloads, from more launch sites than we have ever had before.

And just look at the history-making feats that you in this industry have accomplished just in the last year:

• Blue Origin demonstrated the reusability of its launch vehicle by launching and landing the same rocket multiple times.
• SpaceX has shown repeatedly that it can successfully launch and land its Falcon 9 rocket booster on a barge off of both coasts in a variety of conditions.
• Virgin Galactic was issued its first launch license for the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to begin testing for human suborbital spaceflight.
• The FAA is working with NASA commercial crew partners to begin the licensing process for the first commercial human orbital launches to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. And last year, both Boeing and SpaceX made fantastic headway toward this effort.
• The FAA also issued a positive payload review of Moon Express’s lunar lander, the first payload review of its kind. And this review enables Moon Express to take another step in their effort to compete for the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize. The prize will be awarded to the first privately funded team that can land a robot on the moon and make it travel 500 meters or more.

Today, what we’re seeing at the FAA is a 55% increase in the number of applications compared to this time last year.

Now these applications include some innovative launch concepts. They include small payload launch vehicles, balloons, and carrier aircraft.  

But the enormously high cost that we have traditionally faced in getting into orbit and ensuring safety remain big issues that we need to continue to work on. And the companies that can continue to make space transportation the safest and the most cost-effective will help us to achieve those next giant steps.

And in many ways, we’re seeing it happen already. A few years ago we weren’t talking a whole lot about reusable rockets. And now, they’ve become almost routine.

A New Space Economy
Now, through feats like these, people who dare to dream, innovate and invent are establishing a new space economy.

As the commercial space industry continues to push the boundaries of what might be possible, we will see the growth of industries that are now only in their infancy.

Industries such as asteroid mining, commercial space stations, point-to-point suborbital transportation – all of these are on the horizon.

And one day, the commercial space industry may even be part of our national goal to deliver humans to another planet – to Mars.

Now I heard something the other day that, at least for me, put that goal in perspective. If you use our history with the Apollo program as a guide, Neil Armstrong was 38 years old when he walked on the moon. Now based on current estimates, that would mean that the first person to walk on Mars is somewhere out there – maybe in middle school, maybe a little older. And they’re thinking about and beginning to dream what that might be like.

Now the industry is becoming more complex as it grows. And this makes it more challenging for all of us at the FAA to regulate and to integrate these operations into our national airspace system.

For example, we’re seeing how this complexity affects our policy on how space ports might be classified.

As you might imagine and you well know, a wide range of commercial space launch vehicles could potentially operate from a commercial launch site.

These run the gamut from the large, classic vertically launched rockets to the more modern winged vehicles that could take off like an airplane.

We’ve seen countless variations and combinations in between, including balloons that can carry capsule gondolas to the very edge of space.

Now because of this range, it’s time to look at how we at the FAA designate launch sites. The simple fact is, not every commercial space launch site, or “spaceport,” can safely accommodate all of these types of launches.

So we need to work with you in industry to discuss how to develop a system for categorizing the various types of spaceports that are out there being talked about and being considered.

We are examining several possibilities for the best way to incorporate a categorization scheme into the decision-making process so that we all have greater clarity on the availability and the use of various sites.

And this will also be helpful to potential spaceport operators and other stakeholders – to understand the factors for safely conducting commercial space launches.

And as launches ramp up, we’re looking at how we integrate commercial space operations into our national airspace system.

Now up until now, our airspace and our procedures have been built for traditional aircraft – aircraft that fly horizontally from Point A to Point B.

Every time we license a commercial space launch, it’s effectively an exception to the rules of operating in the airspace.

Now thinking ahead, what does that system look like when we have more and more operations that can climb vertically to 100,000 feet in a matter of seconds and descend almost as quickly?

Well until now, we’ve tended to think of them as rare events, and we block off huge swaths of airspace each time a launch occurs.

We know this is not sustainable. And we want to develop a more sustainable traffic management system that will enable this industry to thrive as a regular player in a larger air traffic system.

You may be aware that the FAA has been prototyping a tool called the Space Data Integrator. This tool – we call it SDI – receives time-accurate data directly from the launch or reentry vehicle, formats it, and routes it to the FAA’s air traffic systems and is used by air traffic controllers.

This data could help us determine in advance of a launch, or a reentry operation, how much airspace to block off to ensure that the operation is safe, without imposing too much of a burden on the other users of the system. And it could also help us to release blocked airspace more quickly so it’s available to the other users of the system.

In December, we tested SDI during the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V launch of the Echostar-19 from Cape Canaveral.

The comments from air traffic controllers on the initial run were extremely positive.

They see the benefits of this capability, and we’re going to continue to conduct these exercises at all of the upcoming launches at Cape Canaveral.

Now we’re also exploring the feasibility of providing space situational awareness data to commercial space operators. This data includes things like the location of space debris and how that might conflict with a space operation.

As you know, this is a service that is currently provided by the Department of Defense.  

The FAA and the Defense Department are now working through a number of technical and legal issues to see if it makes sense to create a Civil Space Situational Awareness system.

Now there are still many, many factors that we need to consider, and I expect that we’ll be having a lot of thoughtful discussions before we can determine whether this is a mission that the FAA should take on. But it is something that it’s important that we get right. And we want to work with you in doing this.

Inspiring a New Generation
As I look out in the room, I’m thinking a bit more about the successes that you have had in the commercial space industry. And the accomplishments that you’ve achieved – not only in the last year, but in the last several years.

And it dawns on me that while you followed in the footsteps of the men and women who inspired you… the industry collectively, all of you individually, are inspiring yet another generation of dreamers in the young people of this country.

Just imagine the kids that are sitting at home and what their reaction will be to seeing a robot – privately developed – roll across the surface of the moon.

Or when they hear the first commercial space tourists come back and talk about seeing the curvature of the earth with their own eyes.

Or watching that first person when they set foot on Mars.

It’s the private sector that is taking the lead in helping us to accomplish all of these goals.

And at the FAA, we look forward to working with you for that next giant leap – whatever it might be.

So I thank you very much for joining us today. And I hope you have a great conference. Best of luck to you.