REMARKS FOR
THE HONORABLE MARY PETERS
SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

AERO CLUB OF WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON, D.C.

JANUARY 14, 2009
12:30 PM

Thank you, Jim (Bennett), for that kind introduction. I would also like to recognize key members of the Department of Transportation’s leadership team who are here: General Counsel D.J. Gribbin and Acting FAA Administrator Bobby Sturgell.

And I want to thank you all for that very warm welcome and for inviting me back to speak at the Aero Club one last time.

The first time I addressed you, we were just getting to know each other. I spoke then of the priorities I established when President Bush gave me the privilege of serving as the nation’s Secretary of Transportation: improving safety; helping our transportation systems perform more efficiently; and finding and applying 21st century solutions to today’s transportation challenges.

Today, I look around this room and see many wonderful friends and associates with whom I have forged a deep and lasting working relationship over the past two-and-a-half years as we have pursued these priorities. And I want to thank the transportation community at large – and the aviation community in particular – for the opportunity to work with you and for the many, many things we have accomplished together.

The best way I can think to describe where we stand is with a football analogy. We have made significant progress moving the ball down the field, but there is still more work to do to cross the goal line. Okay, it’s playoff time, and I confess that I’m enjoying watching the Cardinals surprise everyone.

The Bush Administration has built a remarkable record in aviation, especially when it comes to safety.

Think about it. Aviation in America is safer today than at any period since that first flight took off at Kitty Hawk – even with record numbers of passengers and cargo filling our skies.

Not only is the system safer than ever before, but the pace of improvement has accelerated sharply, making flying safer today than even the most optimistic aviation professional would have predicted just a decade ago.

U.S. airlines have gone from 500 fatalities per 100 million people on board in 1959, the FAA’s first full year of operation, to 45 fatalities per 100 million by the late 1990s. That is a 90 percent reduction.

Many aviation professionals believed the system had essentially reached its maximum safety level, and that fatalities would begin increasing as a function of volume. We proved them wrong.

Over the past five years, the rate has fallen to two fatalities per 100 million people on board. And in the past two years, the U.S. air carrier system has moved more than 1.6 billion passengers and crew with just one on-board fatality – and that was on a cargo flight.

In fact, Alan Levin’s USA Today piece on Monday reported that, “For the first time since the dawn of the jet age, two consecutive years have passed without a single airline passenger death in a U.S. carrier crash.” In fact, the story noted that it is more likely for a young child to be elected President in his or her lifetime than to die on a single jet flight in the U.S.

These results are clear evidence that the FAA's fundamental approach to safety is keeping our skies safe. And I do not think it is a coincidence that these two years coincided with Bobby Sturgell’s oversight of the FAA.

Bobby won’t need history to judge his tenure running the FAA, because we have the results right here in front of us — results that can never be refuted by those who opposed Bobby’s nomination for their own political purposes. I will always believe that it was short-sighted of the Senate to deny our nation the full five-year term that President Bush offered this outstanding public servant.

Voluntary reporting lies at the core of the approach to safety that has produced these impressive results, and I believe very strongly that it would be a serious mistake to abandon it. We can, and we are, improving the system to prevent abuses. But voluntary disclosure is the backbone of a modern safety system.

This is especially true for aviation, where thankfully we have few crashes and thus little actual forensic information to tell us how to improve safety. So the information from these voluntary reports – along with actual flight data – is doubly valuable to identify trends and prevent future accidents.

And yes, there is still work to be done. As good as our record is, the accident in Denver just before Christmas reminds us that risks remain. But Denver also provides testimony to the value of the safety standards and technologies that government and industry have implemented.

When all 115 occupants escaped the burning airplane with no fatalities, many commentators described it as a “miracle.” Similar comments were made in 2005 when all 311 occupants escaped a burning A340 in Canada.

Had those two accidents occurred 25 years ago, it is likely that several hundred people would have died. Instead, there were no fatalities. Zero.

That happy outcome was not just random luck or the product of repeated “miracles.” It was the product of many years of hard work by many people in the aviation community to improve survivability.

That work included closing 73 recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board over the last three years. I am especially proud that three major items were removed from the NTSB’s “most wanted” list in an acceptable manner.

One of those was the fuel tank safety rule, which will help prevent the kind of catastrophic explosion that killed 230 people on TWA flight 800. Two images from the announcement of that rule will forever remain with me – the jigsaw pieces of the reassembled plane and the tears of gratitude on the faces of the relatives of the victims.

While improving safety, we also have acted aggressively to clear congestion and improve the air travel experience. We have added consumer protections for passengers whose flights are delayed, and increased compensation for lost luggage and denied boardings.

And we have taken more than 30 different actions over the past year to break the bottleneck in New York that is causing delays to ripple throughout the entire system.
These include airspace redesign and operational improvements as well as new caps on hourly operations at JFK and Newark.

Things are better – not as good as they should be, but better. Planes are taking off and arriving on time more often, and passengers are spending less time sitting at the gates or on runways.

Even in New York, where all three area airports had more flights this summer than last summer, delays – especially those long taxi-out delays – were down. Delays of more than an hour fell by 17 percent, and the worst delays – those over two hours – are down by 35 percent.

Still, LaGuardia, remains the worst of the worst among major airports for on-time arrivals, and in the bottom five for arrivals. So we have been working with carriers to find additional ways to improve things at this delay-prone airport. Analysis shows that if we can cut out just four flights an hour during peak periods, we could reduce delays by up to 41 percent, saving $178 million a year in delay-related costs.

So today, I am announcing a final order that will allow airlines to voluntarily reduce their scheduled operations at LaGuardia to assist with reducing the hourly cap from 75 to 71 operations per hour. Airlines will need to identify returned capacity by February 2, 2009, and stop using those slots by May 31, 2009.

In my opinion, the best way to deal with delays is to provide incentives for airlines to make more efficient use of airports and airspace. So we initiated a serious discussion of ways the market can help spread flights out during the day and move them away from times and airports that lack the capacity to handle them.

To increase capacity, we have invested almost $50 billion in airports, runways, and aviation technology. On a single day last month, I helped open new runways at Dulles, at Chicago O’Hare, and at Seattle-Tacoma International. Combined, these runways will allow for an additional 330,000 take offs and landings every year. All told, since 2000, the Bush Administration has added 14 runways at America’s busiest airports.

Modernizing our airports and air traffic control has been a priority for the President, and the NextGen system should be an important part of his legacy.

It was here at the Aero Club in 2004 that Secretary Mineta launched the ground-breaking effort to modernize air-traffic control from radars and radios to satellite-based navigation and communication.

Although it will fall to those who follow to take NextGen over the goal line, it already is beginning to transform the way Americans fly. Component technologies and procedures are being deployed, while the Florida test bed is ready to show how the technologies work together to save time and fuel and increase safety on flights along the East Coast.

Which brings me to the challenges ahead. In many ways, where we stand on the aviation side with NextGen today is very much like where the surface side stood with the Interstate Highway System before the Clay Commission report.

We have a fairly clear vision of what a modern, satellite-based system should look like. We know we must deploy a new air traffic control system from shore to shore and plane to plane. What we lack is a funding plan to get it deployed. And coming up with that plan is all the more difficult because there are so many players involved.

As an industry, aviation can claim some impressive successes – recovering from 9-11, surviving the oil price spike, and producing an unparalleled safety record.

But the failure to put differences aside and come together has stalled a new authorization and threatens the future of NextGen.

This will be my last major speech as Secretary of Transportation. By this time next week, America will have a new President. My top staff and I have been working very closely with the transition staff to ensure a smooth hand-off to the new team.

Secretary-designate LaHood will face a somewhat historic opportunity to reshape transportation policy and fix fundamental problems on his watch – through the stimulus package and through reauthorization of both the aviation and surface transportation programs. He will be challenged to find a way to make the world’s safest aviation system safer still and to find an effective long-term funding mechanism for aviation.

It is likely the next Secretary – and I believe President-elect Obama has made an excellent choice – is going to suggest things that make everyone uncomfortable.

That is the nature of change. Even when the problems with the status quo are as obvious as they are with aviation today, the natural instinct is to stick with the devil you know.

The status quo may be comfortable, but it is not capable of supporting the modern aviation system. It will not solve congestion. And it will not allow NextGen to take off.

Change must indeed be the watchword in transportation if we are going to move forward. So I am asking that you help the new Secretary understand your business but also understand that he has to respond to a broader constituency.

I have every confidence in American aviation. I have since I was a little girl, spending my birthday at Sky Harbor airport watching the planes taking off. There is just something magical about seeing something that big, something that heavy, become airborne.

Now, the time has come for the industry that unlocked the secret of powered flight… that came back from the brink after 9-11… the industry that drove safety numbers below anything the experts believed possible and produced the leanest airline network in the world… it is time for you to combine forces to produce the most advanced air traffic control system in the world and keep America first in flight.

I will be rooting for your success. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for welcoming me into this magical industry during my time as Secretary of Transportation. It has truly been the experience of a lifetime.

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