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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will require a secondary barrier on the flight deck of new commercial airplanes to ensure the safety of aircraft, flight crew and air passengers. The final rule mandating the additional barrier will protect flight decks from intrusion when the flight...
WASHINGTON— The FAA is seeking public input on four requests to conduct beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone operations at or below 400 feet. If granted, Phoenix Air Unmanned, uAvionix, Zipline, and...
Thank you, George [Novak]. I’m happy to be here, and see so many long-time friends and colleagues.
In the position of Acting FAA Administrator, I certainly see things from a different lens – a wider lens – than when I was a member of industry.
And, it really underscores the notion that to make aviation safe, efficient and sustainable, we need to be looking at things from multiple angles—from all points of view.
That’s why, it’s important to be here, have a good exchange of ideas, and collaborate as effectively as we can.
It’s great to see air travel come back the way it has, both safely and efficiently. There are always challenges to address – some immediate and some longer term. On the bright side, there are opportunities in most challenges if we look at them through the right lens.
Let me start with the 5G issue. The FAA firmly believes 5G C-band – as deployed in the U.S. – and our aviation system can safely co-exist.
We are in close contact with the wireless companies, and our technical teams are meeting multiple times per day to work through information and find collaborative, safe solutions.
And we are working closely and expeditiously with radio altimeter manufacturers and industry stakeholders to ensure that modifications, such as radio frequency filters, can be incorporated as soon as possible.
We continue to use the information and lessons learned from the 5G discussions to be better prepared for spectrum and aircraft equipage policies in the future. And we are also working across government to identify opportunities to collaborate earlier rather than later on any issues that impact aviation safety.
The long-term solution is to establish a new performance standard for altimeters in the presence of 5G C-band.
The FAA’s work to establish that standard is ongoing but it’ll take time for manufacturers to produce these new altimeters and for carriers to equip. We are working as quickly as we can toward a long-term solution, but at all times, we prioritize the safety of our National Airspace System.
Over the past few months, the congestion in Florida’s airspace has been a big issue. This has resulted from a combination of factors:
Separately, any of those conditions can be stressors, but taken together they have produced significant bottlenecks.
Through daily calls with industry, we’re providing a five-day look ahead on any staffing issues at Florida facilities. If there are projected staffing shortages, then we’re implementing mitigations like airspace flow programs and reroutes.
And for commercial space operations, we’re providing a three-week look ahead of launch dates, whereas previously it had been only a few days notice. This gives the aviation industry more awareness to improve their planning.
We’re also working with the Navy to improve airspace coordination of their flight-training exercises, and making them more aware of the operational impacts on civilian air travel.
As part of longer-term solutions, we’ve brought the pace of our controller training back up to pre-pandemic levels. And we’ve been filling more controller vacancies. For instance, we have 10 new controllers coming to Jacksonville Center, although it takes time for them to be fully trained and certified.
We continue to work these issues through our monthly NAS Collaboration Forum meetings. We know some of you participate in this forum, and we welcome your continued engagement to develop solutions to air traffic challenges.
So all in all, we’re striving to do a better job sharing information and mitigating challenges around Florida air travel, and we’ll continue to look for ways to do even better.
On a wider scale, we know that the pilot and maintenance personnel shortage is an important concern for industry.
At the FAA, we believe it is critical to create and maintain a robust, diverse pipeline of future aerospace professionals.
Later this year, the agency intends to award a second round of workforce grants – totaling $10 million – to develop the next generation of pilots and aviation maintenance technicians. This builds on the $10 million grants we awarded for this purpose, this past January.
The aviation community must work together – industry, government, non-profits, and academia – to develop creative pathways so that we can recruit a highly skilled and diverse future workforce.
For example, United Airlines found an innovative way to recruit, train, and develop the next generation of pilots — through their United Aviate Academy.
United is partnering with JP Morgan Chase, and several aviation organizations, to provide scholarships for more young people from diverse backgrounds to become commercial airline pilots. We’d love to see more of these kinds of innovative partnerships.
Over the long run, the FAA continues to conduct a robust STEM, and aviation and space education, outreach program.
This includes our Adopt-A-School program, where we’ve teamed up with several schools from underserved and underrepresented communities across the country, introducing 4th graders to aerospace topics and concepts. This includes lessons on pilot and aviation maintenance technician careers.
And in April, we held an FAA Aviation Safety STEM Career Symposium, a virtual event designed to introduce middle school, high school, and college students nationwide to aviation careers as aerospace engineers, medical officers, pilots, aviation safety inspectors, and mathematicians.
Of course, safety is and will always be our top priority. The FAA continues to think strategically, and build on the outstanding record we have.
We’ve maintained a proactive safety approach. Now our goal is to become predictive.
We’ve seen the benefits of Safety Management Systems in driving down safety risk for commercial aviation, which is why we are working to expand SMS requirements to manufacturers, airports, and aviation service providers.
We’re also actively expanding our portfolio of data collection and analytics tools. And evolving toward using predictive analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to yield cleaner, consistent streams of safety data.
Through these tools, we’ll be able to more effectively share safety data with industry stakeholders and international partners. In fact, one of the FAA’s strategic priorities is to develop a global safety information exchange.
And while SMS and safety reporting are essential programs to have in place, it’s important to stress that a mature safety culture is what makes these programs successful. Safety culture is about the attitudes, values, and behaviors that our people have. In a mature safety culture, aviation professionals feel empowered to speak up, courageously, in tough situations.
Last October, we partnered with an air carrier to test an FAA-sponsored safety culture assessment methodology. The results of this test have encouraged us to further pursue methods to measure and interpret the impact of airline and maintenance provider culture on safety outcomes. These FAA-industry collaborations create excellent opportunities for on-going safety improvements.
We also continue our work to certify and integrate innovation – including new and emerging vehicles – into the airspace system.
The FAA is currently reviewing recommendations from an aviation rulemaking committee on how to enable safe, routine, drone operations beyond visual line of sight, or BVLOS, as we call it.
We’re developing a phased rulemaking plan for BVLOS operations – with initial phases focusing on flights at low altitudes and creating drone-specific airworthiness requirements. Follow-on phases will clear the way for more tailored approval paths for package delivery.
And we’re looking ahead to Advanced Air Mobility, and expect to certify the first of these aircraft around the 2024 timeframe, provided safety allows.
While our current regulations were not established with many of the new Advanced Air Mobility vehicles in mind, our regulatory framework has the flexibility necessary to certify new technologies, including these vehicles and their operations.
We’re taking steps to improve the sustainability of aviation.
The Biden-Harris administration announced a national goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Through the U.S. Aviation Climate Action Plan released last fall, we have identified a path for the U.S. aviation sector to get there.
This plan provides actions the entire U.S. government is taking on air traffic operations and infrastructure, airframe and engine technology, sustainable aviation fuels, and other policy measures.
At 27 hub airports, we’re deploying new software that calculates the best time for aircraft to push back from the gate, so they can roll right to the runway. As you know, less time waiting to taxi means less fuel cost and emissions.
Through the FAA’s Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise, or CLEEN, we’re working with industry to develop aircraft technologies that will reduce noise, emissions, and fuel burn; and expedite integration of these technologies into current and future aircraft.
Technologies developed under the first two phases of CLEEN over the past 10 years are entering the fleet in new aircraft and engines – and they are making a difference.
These technologies are estimated to save the aviation industry more than 34 billion gallons of fuel by 2050, and lower CO2 emissions by more than 400 million metric tons.
We’re also working with other government agencies and industry to scale up the production of sustainable aviation fuels, which will offer significant life-cycle greenhouse gas emission reductions.
So let’s open it up for discussion and I’m eager hear your views on any topics you’d like to address…
Thank you, Brian [Wynne], and good morning, everyone.
Thanks to AUVSI for helping set the vision, and chart the course, for advanced aviation. You’re helping usher in the next era for this industry.
Suddenly, we can do things that once only existed in the minds of science fiction writers.
Aviation is home to many of these breakthroughs. Things like flight itself. Or breaking the sound barrier. Think about this: We broke through the speed of sound in 1947, and just a couple of decades later, we were on the way to the moon at faster than Mach 20.
The story didn’t end there. This generation saw space and commerce together. The area of upper atmosphere is within the reach of people like you and me. Believe me when I tell you, I want to fly one of those spacecraft real, real bad. But that’s a story for another day.
I’m here today because the reality of drones and AAM are much closer than we thought.
But before this vision can be fully realized, a lot of work must be done.
Last week, the FAA announced a new Blueprint to make AAM a reality. It outlines how we are going to integrate air taxis into the airspace.
And later this month, we expect to release the FAA’s AAM Implementation Plan. This robust plan will show how all the pieces come together, allowing industry to scale safely.
If you’re looking for the code to the front door of the next generation of aviation, here it is. These documents are a hard look at what it’s going to take to have an air taxi safely take you where you need to go.
For both drones and AAM, we have to make progress on several — what I call — “key enablers.” And we have to integrate these enablers in a holistic way, on a global basis.
Let’s start with the need to ensure safety. The public expects nothing less than the highest levels of safety in aviation, no matter where in the world they fly. And they will expect the exact same thing for drones and AAM operations.
All it takes is one major accident — or even some close calls — to erode public confidence.
The FAA is working diligently to tailor safety regulations and standards for advanced aviation. And we’re committed to doing it in a way that won’t stifle the rapid advances this industry continues to make.
With drones, we’ve made good progress over the past few years. We’ve enacted the Remote ID rule, and the Operations over People rule.
But to unleash the full potential of drones, we need to enable routine operations beyond the pilot's visual line of sight.
We know that some in industry think we’re not moving fast enough on BVLOS.
During my year leading the FAA, we have started to fix this. Last year, we issued the first type certificate for Matternet.
But our pace is dictated by the need to ensure safety. We won’t compromise safety, no matter what the technology is.
Completing BVLOS is a top priority for all of us, and we’re in the early stages of developing the rule. We’ve received a lot of input from stakeholders, and the public, over the past year.
Our initial focus is on normalizing standard operations for BVLOS flights at low altitudes. This will enable drone use for functions like infrastructure inspections and agricultural operations.
Then we need to clear the way for more tailored approval paths for package delivery, and figure out the best approach to integrate operations into more complex airspace.
We don’t yet have a date for when we will issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. But once that happens, we look forward to receiving more feedback from the public.
As industry and the FAA continue to better understand the capabilities of drones, and the safety risk mitigations necessary to fly them, we expect waiver requests to increase.
And that’s good news. These waivered operations will provide us with more valuable information to ultimately shape our safety rules and integration efforts.
And when it comes to Advanced Air Mobility, we expect to see great demand for these operations by the time the Los Angeles Olympics take place in 2028.
The FAA has issued the certification basis for two eVTOL aircraft by companies, Joby and Archer. And we expect to issue the first eVTOL airworthiness certificate by the 3rd quarter of 2024, as long as safety permits.
And by that time, the FAA expects to complete the standards that pilots must meet to operate the first generation of AAM aircraft.
Of course, these are complex vehicles – with characteristics of both a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft.
Personally, I have thousands of hours flying both helicopters and commercial jet liners. So, I have a keen understanding of the various piloting skills needed to operate aircraft with these characteristics.
I was also an airline training captain, and I can tell you that the training must be rigorous to master the skills necessary to safely operate these aircraft.
But establishing safety rules and pilot standards are just the beginning of a longer journey. Another key enabler is going to be developing the infrastructure, and changes to airspace, both in the U.S. and around the world.
The Blueprint we released last week outlines the next steps toward initial and long-term airspace integration. We expect that initial AAM vehicles will use existing infrastructure such as helipads, routes, and air traffic control services where possible.
As operations increase, these vehicles could fly in corridors where operators could be responsible for keeping aircraft safely separated using industry-developed, FAA-approved rules.
We know that, ultimately, industry wants to get to a place where these vehicles can operate autonomously. NASA is doing some great work with their Data and Reasoning Fabric – a model for enabling data connectivity. DRF would build logic into decision-making tools to enable safe flight operations for autonomous drones.
Of course, advanced aviation companies seek to operate across the globe. So, the next key enabler involves establishing a common regulatory framework around the world.
The FAA is working with our European counterparts through our existing agreements. And we’re working with the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Japan and South Korea, on ways to align our certification processes and standards for AAM aircraft.
In everything we do – safety rulemaking, airspace integration – it’s essential that we think of advanced aviation in a holistic way, and engage each other proactively.
So, the FAA is hosting a Drone Symposium, in concert with an AAM Summit, during the first week of August.
These forums will give us a chance to identify challenges early, and develop solutions together. This will help us ensure safety, while giving maximum thrust to the great progress industry is making.
I know it will be a productive set of meetings, even though by that time, I will no longer be serving as the FAA’s acting Administrator. As some of you may know, I’ve announced my departure from the agency over the summer.
I can’t help but think back to the early days of my career, when I stepped into a small helicopter in the Army, to seeing where we are today, with the excitement and challenge of a new era in aviation.
I’m honored to have helped lead the safety and integration efforts for this new era. And to have been a part of bringing about the resulting benefits to the public.
And I’m looking forward to seeing how things come together over the next few years and beyond.
Thank you, and I hope you have a fun and productive XPONENTIAL.