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Speech

New Jersey Aviation Hall of Fame

Tim, thanks very much for that. I appreciate it. And thank you all for that warm welcome.

It’s great to be here with you this evening. Tim, thanks so much for showing me around.

The truth is, I never pass up an opportunity to visit aviation’s yesteryear, and I’m lucky. I’ve got the Air and Space Museum across the street from FAA headquarters. Here are the aircraft, the jets, and the spaceships that broke the records — that went farther and higher and stayed up longer than any before. They’re a living history of a century of progress and scientific achievement.

But you know, each one of those air and space ships needed a pilot to fly it to fame and glory.

And without the spirit of adventure that animated these heroes of aviation, the Lindberghs and the Earharts, these flying machines would’ve never have gotten off the ground.

Man would have remained forever a slave to gravity, a prisoner of two dimensions on the Earth’s surface. But tonight’s inductees — Ralph Cox, Kenneth Forester, Stephen Riethof, and the late George Mennen — they remind us all that aviation’s history is written by pioneers with the spirit of adventure. Gentlemen, we rightly salute you this evening.

But aviation’s history has also been a tale of brave sacrifice. Chuck Yeager would be the first to tell you his conquest of the sound barrier was made possible by the many fearless pilots before him, some of whom sacrificed their lives in the hazardous line of duty.

And it was only after we lost three Apollo astronauts in a fire on the launch pad that we landed on the Moon.

And yet even in our grief, we immediately set about our duty, finding the cause of the accident, doing everything humanly possible to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.

What America learned from all this is that we’re far from perfect. We make mistakes, but we will not hide from our errors.

The headlines of the last month or so especially bear that out. And yet, lost amid all the criticism is one very important event that routinely takes place every day that our controllers, technicians, engineers and inspectors don’t get credit for.

On a typical day, the FAA moves over 52,000 airplanes, and the millions of people in them, without a hitch.

Yes, the agency has its shortcomings, and we’re fixing them. It’s good that we keep a sharp focus on our mistakes. But let’s not forget to celebrate what we do safely and successfully each and every day.

Equally impressive, the airlines are posting the fewest accidents  since 1994, and nearly all of those were very minor.

On the GA side, which has historically been a problem area, they’ve had the fewest fatal accidents and fewest fatalities since World War II. A good story all around. And we must remain vigilant to keep it that way.

But as you all know, it wasn’t always like this. Those early days of aviation were dangerous. Flying conditions were difficult since most pilots only had magnetic compasses to get around. Back in the day, IFR meant “I follow roads.”

But along the way, there’ve been a number of safety improvements that have brought us to where we are today. If I had to pick two pillars on which the foundation of safety is built, they’d have to be the advent of the jet engine and radar.

I say jet engines because of their reliability. Back in 1953, piston-engine failure was a major issue. As a result, twin- and triple-engine airliners weren’t even allowed to fly routes that were more than an hour from the nearest airport.

Jet engines solved this problem.

In the same vein, the other pillar, long-range radar, significantly improved separation based on a plane’s actual position.

In the old days, pilots would wait around for complex computations done by hand. They were based on locations and headings that other pilots had reported some time earlier, making them yesterday’s news.

Radar changed the rules. It gave us greater airspace efficiency and improved safety. By being able to independently identify location and heading, you lower the odds of a mid-air collision as well as other risks, like getting lost, or flying to the wrong destination.

And then there are more recent improvements, like TCAS and EGPWS.

Looking back, the safety advancements over the last 50 years are nothing short of amazing. What about the next 50?

Well, I can think of a few that are in the works at this very minute. Satellite technology  is one. ADS-B — Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast. It’s the cornerstone of the Next Generation air traffic system. It puts pilots and controllers on the same page. For the first time, pilots see what the controller sees.

It also supports runway and airport surface safety by giving pilots an awareness of what’s around them. And that translates into a safer system for us all.

As we move to better technology, so too are the planes getting better. Fleet modernization. That’s another thing to look forward to in the years ahead. A new aircraft comes into the system, displacing an older, less capable one. For every decade, going all the way back to the 1930s, fleet modernization has reduced accidents by a third.

What we’re seeing today is fourth generation jets like the Boeing 737, and the triple seven, and Airbus’s A320 family, steadily increasing just as new-generation jets like the 787 and the A380 enter the mix.

Today’s operation and tomorrow’s challenges. That’s what’s occupying me and the 43,000 others who proudly wear the badge of the FAA. And I think it’s especially meaningful during our golden anniversary.

Yes, the FAA is 50 years old this year. It was on August 23, 1958, that Dwight Eisenhower gave the United States the world’s premier aviation safety agency.

We’re constantly looking for ways to do our jobs better, to make the airspace safer and more efficient today than it was yesterday.

In fact, you’ve got the busiest, most congested and most complex airspace in the world right here in the New York-New Jersey area. I guess this room might call it the New Jersey-New York area.

It was assembled in piecemeal fashion back in the 60s and designed for a whole different breed of aircraft — the prop planes, the Connies — all with totally different performance characteristics.

Back then, you had one international airport in JFK and one domestic in LaGuardia. When the airspace was put together, Newark wasn’t a major player in the commercial aviation business.

Looking back, the airspace wasn’t designed with three of the world’s busiest airports in mind, much less several GA airports in the same mix. Our challenge at the FAA was to redesign the airspace . Create more direct routings, unrestricted climbs, and higher arrival altitudes, to name a few.

Our redesign plans reflect the fact that the airspace is a finite resource. It’s just making more efficient use of that resource so that we can provide better service to you, the users. And thus far, our initial steps are showing promising results.

And as we look at the system nationally, we must consider runways as well as airspace. Over the last decade, we’ve poured concrete on 13 new runways at some of our busiest airports.

They include one at Logan that opened in November of ’06 and one at LAX that opened for business in March of ’07. By all accounts, they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to. But we can’t be satisfied with that.

We’re adding three more runways later this year at SeaTac, O’Hare and Dulles. They should be up and ready by November, resulting in even more capacity and efficiency enhancements.

Looking ahead, eight major airports have some kind of project in the works.

All told, these various projects will be commissioned through 2012, providing those eight airports with the potential to accommodate about 400,000 more annual operations, decrease average delay per operation by almost two minutes, and significantly reducing runway crossings.

That’s where we stand today. If we are to continue to improve our system, we cannot be complacent or satisfied with our safety record, our technologies, or our efforts to build new capacity and reduce delays. But it will take people, like the pioneers who got us to this point, to make it happen.

And I’m thankful that we’ve got some of them right here in this room tonight. Thanks very much for this opportunity, and congratulations to our inductees.