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Speech

Meet the Administrator

Tom [Poberezny], thanks so much. And thank you, everybody, for being here. With all that there is to see and do at AirVenture, it’s hard to choose what to do next. But I’m glad that so many of you are able to break away for a minute to let me know where things stand from your perspective.

With that, I’d like to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves.

While we’re at it, I’d like to introduce another distinguished group. As many of you know, the General Aviation Awards Program and the FAA have recognized aviation professionals for their contributions to safety and education.

The nomination and selection process is tough. It begins at the FSDOs and then moves on to the nine regional FAA offices. Panels of aviation professionals within the various fields then select national winners from the pool of regional awardees.

And last night at Theater in the Woods, they formally received their just due.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give a hand to this year’s winners:

• CFI of the Year:  Max Trescott of Mountain View, California.
• FAAST team representative of the year:  John Teipen from University City, Missouri.
• Maintenance technician of the year:  Mike Busch from Arroyo Grande, California.
• And avionics technician of the year:  Tim Adkison from Benton, Kentucky.

It’s a pleasure to lead a round of applause. Congratulations, gentlemen.

Earlier this morning, I was over at AeroShell Square. There was a ceremony to honor a major milestone — the 30,000^th amateur-built airframe. That says a lot about EAA’s efforts to get everyone flying. Tom, it’s working.

How many home-builts are in the audience? Raise your hand. You ought to be proud. You’re part of one of the fastest growing segments in GA. While other areas are softening, amateur-builts are growing by 4 to 6 percent a year.

To put that in perspective, that amounts to almost ten percent of the entire U.S. fleet of registered aircraft. Even more impressive, it equates to more than ten percent of all active aircraft in the country.

While there’s good reason to be optimistic about those numbers, there’s another number that’s worth raising here. I’m talking about 51, as in the 51 percent rule.

As you know, we’ve got a proposed policy change for home-builts. It’s come to our attention that some companies may be skirting the letter of the law by selling a kit that requires nothing more than two turns of a screwdriver. For safety’s sake, we just can’t allow that. It’s not right, and it circumvents the very safeguards that are put in place to protect everyone in the system.

When we say that “51 percent of the plane has to be put together by the builder and not the kit maker,” we mean it. In my opinion, 51 percent is appropriate. The aim here of the policy change isn’t to punish. It’s for your safety and for the integrity of the system.

We’ve noticed a disturbing trend lately with amateur-builts. Accidents and fatal accidents are increasing, both in absolute numbers and in rates.

In fact, the fatal accident rate for this segment is three times as high as Personal Use GA.

We’ve got an active partnership with Tom and his staff to try and bring these numbers down.

The General Aviation Joint Steering Committee has formed a new subcommittee for amateur-built aircraft safety. Earl Lawrence from EAA is co-chairing it, along with John Duncan of Flight Standards.

The group also includes GAMA [General Aviation Manufacturers Association], LAMA [Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association], and the Air Safety Foundation. I’ve asked them to address the how and the why behind amateur-built safety trends, and they met for the first time yesterday afternoon.

On top of this, our own chief safety executive, Nick Sabatini over here, has commissioned a special work group to study the amateur segment’s flight characteristics to see what more can be done.

I respect those who may feel differently, so let me encourage you to weigh in with your concerns about the proposed policy change.

The public comment period closes at the end of September. This gives you a little less than two months to have your say. Please take advantage of this opportunity.

Likewise, we’re looking to make some changes to the light-sport aircraft rule.

Your feedback is vital to keeping the Light Sport rule on course. We want to hear from you before the comment period closes on August 13. So I encourage you to visit www.FAA.gov. Click on the Regulations and Policies tab, and then follow the link for “Recently Published Rulemaking Documents.”

Now I’d like to talk about safety, and in particular, runway safety, which is one of my main focus areas.

One of the enduring truths of aviation is that if you don’t learn something on every flight, you aren’t paying attention. It works the same way with safety. It’s a never-ending learning process.

The way things are trending now, GA accidents in fiscal ’08 will likely be about 30 percent lower than just five years ago. We’re seeing declining numbers of CFIT, loss of control, fuel exhaustion emergencies, and other deadly scenarios.

Some chalk all of this up to the price of fuel. They say it’s curbing discretionary flying. That may be true.

So not only are the number of accidents declining, so is the accident rate. What this means is that flying continues to get safer, even when activity is declining.

And for that we can thank programs like the Good Mentor program for helping to improve GA safety. They’re very pro-active and very much in front of the safety equation.

The one area where we need to do better is runway safety. GA pilot deviations are responsible for the bulk of the problem.

Quite often, an incursion happens after a correct read-back of the controller’s taxi instructions. Why this is so is something we’re trying to get to the bottom of.

In the meantime, please visit our runway safety booth at the FAA Safety Center. It has all sorts of materials on safe ground operations. Let me also put in a plug for the newly re-designed FAA Aviation News magazine. It’s got resources to help keep you safe. We’ve got free copies in the back of the room.

And on the web, there’s some training and information at http://www.faasafety.gov that you may find useful.

From one pilot to another, let me urge you all — stay focused, minimize the distractions. Familiarize yourself with the airport layout. Review safe taxiing procedures to, from, and on the runway. And pay attention to the signs and markings. A safe flight begins the moment you enter the cockpit. And it does not end until you step out of the cockpit. I need every one of you to be part of the solution to this problem.

A fit pilot is a healthy pilot, so let me raise the issue of medical waivers. After hearing from you, we’ve cut the backlog to almost zero. And we whittled down the average processing time from several months to 15 days.

We’ve also reduced the time and expenses for first-class and third-class airmen under 40 by allowing them to apply for medical certification less frequently. And we’re leveling the playing field for line pilots who are younger than 40.

Previously, you had to meet a six-month medical duration standard while your international counterparts flying into the U.S. had a one-year standard. We’re fixing that disparity as well.

I know I’ve covered a lot of ground this afternoon. But before we open it up for questions, a number of you have asked me about NextGen. Where are we on it? What’s going on? How’s it going to affect me?

I can say that we’re making solid progress. The foundational technologies are either already in place or will be soon enough. They include WAAS, which provides increased airport access in reduced visibility conditions.

We’ve published over 1,000 WAAS LPV procedures and we now have more of them than ILS procedures.

RNP/RNAV are also making a difference. Look at what’s going on at DeKalb Peachtree Airport in Atlanta. The new RNP procedure will support IMC operations to runway 2R to a 340-foot decision height. This mitigates obstacles on the approach path and de-conflicts traffic flows around Peachtree and Hartsfield.

And then there’s ADS-B. The GA community will be the first to see the benefits. It’ll mean free essential services, like weather and traffic in the cockpit.

Today, some of you are paying $30-$75 a month for some of the very services that you’ll soon be getting for no charge. And it will be completed next month in southern Florida.

We’re rolling out ADS-B at several GA airports there, including Boca Raton, Lakeland Linder, and Dade Collier. They can, for the first time, take advantage of these services that weren’t there before.

Take asset tracking and search and rescue. ADS-B takes the “search” out of search and rescue. All we have to do is look to Alaska as proof positive of this capability.

So as you can see, we’re moving confidently ahead with NextGen, and it’s with general aviation’s well-being in mind. Each and every one of you is a part of a remarkable history that’s being made at this very moment. If you want to know why it’s never been safer to fly, it’s because of pilots like you. There’s nothing but blue skies ahead. Thank you.