Hearings to examine the Evaluation of FAA Safety Measures from the DCA Crash.

If I read my script verbatim, I'd say good morning. Uh, but instead I'll say good a- good afternoon. Subcommittee will come to order. Today's hearing will examine the Federal Aviation Administration's response to the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendations following the tragic the mid-air collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on January the twenty-ninth a year ago. We will examine the lessons learned and what challenges still remain to prevent future collisions in our aerospace in our airspace system. Loss of sixty seven lives in the DC crash that originated, the flight originated from Wichita, Kansas was a devastating tragedy for our state and for our country. And I appreciate the advocacy of the families of flight fifty three forty two and Rachel Ferris and Audrey Keen attending today. Families uh in in Kansas and communities across the country continue to grieve the loss of loved ones who boarded a routine flight and never came home. United States maintains the safest aviation system in the world, but that record relies on constant vigilance, accountability and willingness to act before warning signs become tragedies. The NTSB investigation following the DCA crash raised serious concerns regarding helicopter routes, airspace design, situational awareness and the FAA's ability to identify and respond to risk. in one of the nation's most complex and busiest aviation environments. At the conclusion of the investigation, the board found that this accident was preventable. The purpose of today's hearing is not to relitigate the accident. Instead, we are here to examine whether the FAA has responded with sufficient urgency to the systematic safety concerns identified by the NTSB and whether additional reforms are still needed. i hope that we will examine i and plan and plan to examine several key questions including whether the faa has fully implemented the ntsb s recommendations how the faa is identifying dangerous trends before they result in accidents the steps being taken to modernize rotor craft operations and expand collision avoidance technology and whether similar risks exist elsewhere in the nation's aerospace system we will also discuss broader aviation modernization efforts including how technologies such as adsb N can improve real-time cockpit traffic awareness and how legislation such as the Roeder Act could strengthen aviation safety improve tracking capabilities, and help reduce the risk of future mid-air collisions. We cannot ignore the condition of air traffic control system itself, staffing shortages mandatory over time and persistent controller fatigue continue to be a concern, particularly in complex airspace like Washington DC region. Congress has made significant investments in aviation modernization. including a twelve point five billion dollars for air traffic control uh and avi uh excuse me modernization and infrastructure improvements through last year's reconciliation bill. While this is a good step, funding alone is not enough, modernization must be implemented effectively, identified, risks must be acted on in timely in a timely manner, and there must be accountability accountability when warning signs are seen. The loved ones of those who died on January the twenty ninth twenty twenty five deserve to know that every step is being taken to make certain a tragedy like this never happens again. That responsibility belongs to all of us, regulators, industry, Congress, and the aviation community. I very much appreciate Admin- Administrator Bedford's appearing before the subcommittee today, and I look forward to his testimony on the FAA's progress in implementing NTSB recommendations and strengthening aviation safety nationwide. With that,

That was my timing.

Perfect. With that, I recognize Ranking Member Duckworth.

Thank you, Chairman Moran, and thank you for your continued partnership on aviation safety issues. It's truly a pleasure to work with you. Um, I want to extend my condolences to the family members of the victims, some of whom are here with us today. Um, I also want to thank the National Transportation Safety Board for their tireless work it took to complete a thorough investigation of the DCA mid-air collision. On January twenty ninth, twenty twenty five, sixty seven people, mothers, fathers, children, service members lost their lives over the Potomac River, when a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines flight fifty three forty two. And we remember them today. It was a horrifying tragedy, but because it was entirely preventable, I said that again, it was entirely preventable, it was not just a tragedy, but a travesty. The NTSB final report on the incident There is no room for interpretation. The FAA's failure to act on prior safety recommendations led to this catastrophe. What we have seen over the past year is deeply troubling. A continued culture of complacency at the FAA, and an institutional belief that the FAA can continue to do the bare minimum, work to address a few of the NTSB recommendations and call it progress. Well, I call it bullshit. Several of the wins highlighted timeline of actions since DCA were required by previous work groups or legislation. The FAA lists a continued rollout of the tower simulation system in the timeline, a project that was identified in twenty twenty three and mandated in the twenty twenty four FAA reauthorization act. Likewise, the surface awareness initiative, which improves controller situational awareness of aircraft and vehicles, was launched in twenty twenty four, following close calls in twenty twenty three. This leads me to question, is the FAA actually combining existing commitments with post-incident actions in a way to obscure actual progress? Close calls continue and the system that allowed this travesty to happen remains unchanged. Supervisory controllers are still working marathon shifts without the time-on-position limits that the NTSB has urged. Controller staffing levels remain dangerously thin. Aircrafts do lack the advanced alerting system, ADSB N. acas x that n ts b said would prevent precisely the kind of conflict that occurred that night over the potomac and the communication failures between the faa and the department of defense failures that directly contributed to the crash continue the faa was handed a road map it was given a road map from the n ts b on what is necessary and they have once again failed to act with urgency to address the recommendations we are here today to demand answers and accountability Last week I met with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, and he committed to me to providing the families of the victims with the full findings from any army investigation into the collision without any administrative hurdle, such as requiring an FOIA request. Administrator Bedford, we need your commitment to faithfully implement all of NTSB's recommendations with a sense of urgency without trying to obscure what is actually not happening by folding in previous recommendations. We owe it to the victims. We owe it to every pilot, every controller, every military crew member, and every passenger who boards an aircraft, expecting the FAA to keep our airspace safe. The FAA does not need more time, it needs resolve, it needs leadership. Sixty seven souls are no longer here because the FAA failed to act when it had the chance. The agency cannot undo that travesty, but it can at long last do its part to prevent the next one. And that is what we are here to discuss. Are you back, Mr. Chairman?

Senator Duckworth, uh, thank you very much, thank you for your leadership and cooperation on this hearing and, uh, the work of the subcommittee. Uh, Administrator Bedford, you are now recognized for your testimony. Thank you.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon and good afternoon, Ranking Member Duckworth and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the response of the Federal Aviation Administration to the NTSB's final report on the DCA accident. I too would like to begin by recognize the families of those who are with us today, who lost loved ones on flight fifty three forty two and the US army black hawk helicopter. Their heartbreaking loss is a constant reminder to me of the consequences of our aviation system when it falls short. And I promise to you, it drives the urgency behind the actions that the agency is taking. The NTSB final report confirms that our airspace system was providing warning signals prior to the accident. The issue was not a lack of data. it was a failure to translate data into action. That's a gap we are urgently closing. We are doing it through strategic and sweeping reorganization of the FAA, streamlining leadership roles, eliminating silos that hinder transparency and information sharing, and developing a clear flight plan to guide the agency-wide accountability initiatives. We've established an integrated safety management office, launched a comprehensive modernization of our aging air traffic control system, including boosting controller staffing, replacing obsolete equipment, and redesigning outdated airspace operations. Of course, as you know, immediately following the accident, the FAA immediately restricted helico- op- operations in the national capital region, eliminated high-risk mixed traffic procedures and closed helicopter routes that introduced unnecessary operational complexity. We increased support and staffing for our DCA tower, reduced the arrival rates and total daily operations levels, And with the full support of the Department of War, eliminated all non-essential military helicopter operations in the DCA airspace. Further, using advanced data analysis and AI-enabled tools, our new safety office continued to evaluate airports where helicopters routinely intersect arrival and departure paths, in high-density airspace. That analysis revealed a structural reliance on visual separation in environments where it's simply insufficient, to fully mitigate airborne risk. As a result, this March, we issued a general notice suspending the use of visual separation procedures between helicopters and aircraft in all airports in class B, C and terminal radar controlled airspace. Controllers are now required to use radar-based positive separation standards with defined lateral and vertical distances between aircraft. This is not merely a procedural adjustment, it's a fundamental change in how we manage traffic separation and complex airspace. Regarding controller staffing, last year Secretary Duffy announced a controller hiring surge. In twenty twenty five, we placed more than two thousand qualified candidates into our academy, a record, I would say. This year we'll place another twenty two hundred qualified candidates into our aca- academy and yet another twenty three hundred next year. We've also expanded our collegiate training partnerships from three schools last year to over eleven this year, and I expect we'll add more in twenty twenty six. At the same time, we are aligning staffing with operational demand, because safety is not simply about headcount levels. It's about ensuring that our facilities have the capacity to safely manage traffic. We applied this same logic most recently with a thorough demand reduction analysis and measures at Chicago Air's airport. We are also changing how we manage the national Historically, the system has been managed tactically, responding to constraints on a day-to-day basis as they occur. But we can do better. We must move to a strategic management of the national airspace system, balancing demand and capacity in a coordinated and forward-looking way. Last month at the Modern Sky Summit, I outlined our vision for a smart national airspace system. Strategic management of airspace routings and trajectories, combined with a common automation platform, will reduce congestion and provide our controllers the tools they need to safely increase capacity by strategically strategically balancing and de-conflicting mass demands before flights ever leave the ground. With the twelve point five billion Congress has already provided, we are transitioning from an analog to a fully digital national airspace system. And we're doing it on an accelerated timeline in order to meet President Trump vision for a brand new air traffic control system. But let me be clear. Simply replacing obsolete equipment and restoring staffing alone will not produce a world-class aviation system. For that, we must continue the work to redesign airspace operations and urgently address our automation deficiencies and function as a unified whole. We must urgently address the FAA's underlying data architecture limitations while implementing a common automation platform because without it, controllers will continue to operate fragmented, non-interoperable systems that increase their workload and reduce their effectiveness. Today, the FAA manages more than eighteen million flights and over one billion passenger movements annually. At the same time, we face growing demands from drones, advanced air mobility, supersonic operations, and a near daily cadence of space launches. I urge Congress to provide the investment funding necessary to maintain our momentum and complete the modernization of our nation's skies by twenty twenty eight. Let me thank Chairman Hamidiab and the NTSB team for their work on the final report, and especially for the families of flight fifty-three forty-two for their tireless advocacy. I assure you that Secretary Dufanella and I are committed to working with Congress to implement the report's recommendations and strengthen the national airspace system for the future. The American public deserves a system that is safe, efficient, reliable, and capable of supporting the demands of our growing innovation economy. With this committee's leadership and support, the men and women of the FAA are committed to delivering a brand new air traffic control system at unprecedented speed. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

Administrator, thank you for your testimony. Uh, we have a vote going on. I'm going to uh pa- I'm not gonna pause the hearing, but I'm gonna go vote. I'll be back. And uh Senator Budd will continue to chair the meeting and we'll have questions back and forth and um Senator Duckworth you can decide if you wanna go first or second.

Okay. Alright. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, the DCA mid-air collision was well actually I'm gonna start off by saying that um I'd like to submit this record this letter for record from Citizens of Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that outlines public distress over administrator bedford's handling of his financials. Are there any objections? No objections. It will be submitted for the record. Um, the DCA mid-air collision was the delhi's US civil aviation crash in more than two decades. An NTSB investigation found that systematic systemic failures at the FAA contributed to the crash. Then um, administrator Bedford, will you commit to the American people, especially to the families of the victims of the DCA collision, that the faa concurs with the ntsp recommendations and will implement each one fully faithfully and with urgency

uh well yes i do concur with the findings of the report and we will continue to implement and evaluate uh all of the recommendations from the ntsp

ok um can you remind our subcommittee how many recommendations ntsp issued to faa

thirty five

just to confirm faa believes possesses all necessary authority to fully implement all thirty all of the thirty five NTSB recommendations. Correct?

Uh, well, yes, I believe we have the ability to implement them, yes.

And the authority, yes. Correct?

I believe so.

OK. Um. So we agree that you have the authority to implement the recommendations. I do feel though that FAA needs a resolve to do so. And for me that's the most troubling issue right now. Um, I feel like there's a culture of complacency and I don't feel urgency from you to implement all thirty five recommendations. You were confirmed as administrator three hundred and fourteen days ago. When did you first meet with NTSB Chair Hamidi to discuss the DCA mid-air collision?

I actually believe I met with Chair Hamidi before I was even confirmed.

Uh, but after you were confirmed.

I don't recall. I've met with her many times.

You sure?

I am sure, yes, we meet for coffee.

my it's my understanding that you first met with her in your capacity as fa administrator earlier this month

that's

well past the three hundred day mark

that's inaccurate

is being confirmed in yeah i'm sorry

that's inaccurate

that's inaccurate well i will follow up on that because my understanding is that it has been that your first meeting with her was just earlier this month and you've waited almost a year to meet with the lead investigator of the of the crash. On Friday, um, the FAA released its um, its controversial, bold new air traffic controller workforce plan. Administrator Bedford, air traffic controllers are the backbone of our aviation safety system. They already work long, high-stressed hours, and they make split-second decisions that keep millions of passengers safe every day. Yet, this FAA's bold new air traffic controller workforce plan, um, in this plan, you reduce the target for fully staffed controller workforce by more than two thousand positions two thousand controllers to be clear this means the agency has somehow concluded that a brand new atc system um what it really needs is fewer air traffic controllers working longer hours and performing the highest stress tasks and the faa cooked this plan without consulting with natca the very group that represents air traffic controllers in april secretary duffy claimed and i quote am i gonna replace a controller and have ai manage the air the answer to that is hell no, that's not gonna happen, his words. And then in May, you issued a press release that justified slashing controller staffing targets by more than two thousand positions, by citing unidentified and I quote "new technologies" end quote, also "optimization tools", including the mention of the use of AI. In direct contradiction to what your secretary said he would not do. And look, increasing time on position is not efficiency. it's a safety hazard, especially when the underlying software is unproven and controllers have not been trained to use it. The NTSB has been clear. Recommendation A dash two six dash eight directs to FAA to develop and implement time on position limitations for supervisory air traffic control personnel. Redundancy is what keeps the system safe, and achieving it requires more controllers, not stretching fewer controllers thinner and relying on AI. And Mister Breitbart, will you commit to revisiting and revising the atc workforce plan to account for the ntsb's findings and revise the staffing targets to increase the number of air traffic controllers, as opposed to cutting them by three two thousand positions.

well thank you for that question chairman duckworth the ntsb uh i'm sorry the uh faa workforce development plan for controllers specifically is a function of a twenty twenty four reauthorization requirement to engage the transportation research board to do a study to try to resolve the decades-long argument between the FAA and the NATCA controllers union on what is the appropriate staffing target. That was done uh between twenty twenty-four and june of twenty twenty five. We received the study and we have enacted all of the recommendations from the transportation research board. Both the and uh the NATCA controller union as well as the FAA participated deeply in the the research board's evaluation of the models. So NACA,

Mm-hmm.

while they might say they're not involved in the research project, they absolutely were involved in the project. Now, this occurred prior to my coming on board with the FAA, but we have in fact implemented all of the Transportation Research Board's recommendations for retooling the model and the result is twelve thousand six hundred. The reason I think this conversation, though, is a bit of a red herring is, even over the next three years with surging staffing, we are not going to get to the level of controller staffing that we deem as appropriate. So, we need to work together to make sure that we're getting the controllers on board through training and deployed to facilities and through that that will require engagement between the FAA and NACA to make sure we are most efficiently utilizing the resources that we have and using technology to reduce the strain and the workload on our controllers so that they can safely manage traffic demands.

Senator, time expired. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for that answer. Uh, Thank you for being here, Administrator, and uh I thank the families for being here as well. Um, Administrator, uh you mentioned the idea of treating the national airspace system as a single complex organism and shifting toward a more optimized airspace. Uh, would you talk a little bit about FAA's SMART program and how FAA is considering the use of AI systems, not to replace controllers, but to increase their situational awareness and reduce their workload and to make the airspace safer and more efficient.

Yes, well uh you have some handouts that uh are on your desk. If you would go to page two, what you'd see is a a depiction of what will be the June twenty F- June fourth twenty twenty six schedule for the uh DCA airport. Uh, you see that today that the the hourly staffing limits for DCA airport are thirty, arrivals and departures. And if we look at the bar chart on the left, on the hour-to-hour-by-hour basis, we would think that the amount of capacity and the amount of demand are in balance with the FAA's limitations for arrivals and departures at the Capital Region Airport We move to the quarter hour on the right, what we see are several peaks, a dozen different peaks where the traffic management demands in the Capital Region are well in excess of what the authorized limits are. This is a flaw. And now if we wait until day of departure in order to correct it, we uh lose the ability to take half of the solution set with us, meaning the ability to actually fill in the gaps, moving things to the left.

Mm-hmm.

So we can use a smart system that will uh analyze flights six months into the future, three months into the future, three days into the future, and we can analyze all the flight trajectories using advanced machine learning and AI we can strategically de-conflict those flight trajectories and balance demand with our ability to satisfy that capacity. We can do that all by reducing controller workload.

Thank you. It's a great example. Um, the NTSB report uh points to airborne collision avoidance system X or ACAS-X, including variants designed to enhance safety while on approach and a rotorcraft-specific variant as crucial technology for preventing future mid-air collisions. Can you give us an update on FAA's efforts to accelerate the completion of ACAS X in the technical standards?

Well, so, eh, thank you for the question, Senator. Uh, ACAS X was a development project, um, over a decade ago. Um, and one of my first experiences at the FAA was actually going into the office of uh next gen, because we had a statutory requirement to sunset it by the end of the year, and transfer those operations to our uh, new AMO organization. So working with the uh the team at NextGen just to see what was there, what went wrong, why wasn't it working, ACAS X was certainly one of those issues which the the uh career officials uh running that operation told me that they had missed the demand signal, they had not issued a demand signal to the market to implement ACAS X and so the market went to TCAS two from TCAS one. Um do I believe ACAS X would have been a better tool than TCAS two? Absolutely. The algorithms are more sophisticated, which allows us to have greater um attenu- attenuate it to the traffic needs around the aircraft in question. Um, but we're probably, even if we finalize the MOPS, which we're ready to do, but we have to go through a rule making process, we and then rule making will be three to four years long and then ultimately we're talking about a decade-long implementation. Yes, we can do that, and and I don't object that we should try. But we can actually take commercially available off the shelf resources today, and we can bring ADS-B in through electronic flight bag and through, um, uh, high-speed data connectivity, which we're now rolling out into the commercial fleet. We can do that in the next two years. So, yes, we can do all of these things to answer Senator Duckworth's question, but what should our priority be in terms of re- creating creating better situational awareness in the cockpit, there are great solutions that we can we can attack quickly.

Thank you. Since January twenty twenty, the FAA has required that most aircraft operating in the national air sca- airspace, that they broadcast ADS-B out to increase situational awareness and safety. Would you agree that ADS-B in is the most effective when all aircraft are consistently broadcasting ADS-B out?

I have said consistently that greater pilot situational awareness is always better than less. But, again, I would hate to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are good solutions that we can integrate quickly. Uh, again, a rulemaking around ADSBN and the equipment adoption of an integrated flight deck solution, easily a decade.

Thank you. My time has expired, and while we take a short recess, uh, for other members to arrive, Um, we are, the committee stands in recess, subject to the call of the chairman. Thank you.

The committee will come to order. Administrator, I think it's uh, I'm gonna take my opportunity to ask uh, questions in the five minutes that I have and then I'll turn to my colleagues. I understand Senator Cantwell is on her way as well. Administrator, following the FAA's uh, March eighteenth, twenty-sixth decision to suspend the usual visual separation between helicopters and airliners near major airports after the DCA mid-air collision. There was a reported close call on March the twenty-fourth, twenty-six in Southern California, involving United Airlines, Boeing seven thirty-seven, and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter. Can the FAA explain whether the new restrictions on visual separation were in effect and properly enforced during that incident? And if so, how did that loss of a safe separation occur?

Uh, I can't say specifically to that case. I can tell you that we spent um about a week putting the Gnaught together and training the uh the folks out in the field, how we expected them to manage from prior operations to the new uh s- positive separation standards that we have. Um, again, getting the continuity and the consistency and the implementation is every bit as important as getting the data to to suggest how we need to change. So, that's gonna be a process of just continued vigilance when we see uh application errors, if you will, in the NAS in terms of remedial training for the controllers involved.

Is there a reason, what's the reason you can't tell me is because you don't know or there's some other reason that you can't tell me what the status of that implementation was?

Well, no, in that I'm just saying in that particular instance the united aircraft and the black hawk i haven't received a conclusion on what our whether we believe that was a a pilot error or a controller error

um i'm gonna turn to to other senators senator sheehy next but i wanna ask a broad question so our request of you this subcommittee's request of you was to testify in regard to the list of ntsb uh recommendations made to the FAA and whether what was the status of complying with them. And it it does, and I heard Senator Duckworth say this in at least in passing. Uh, much of your testimony deals with other things, I think, than the NTSB rec- recommendations. And so just broadly, in the list of NTSB, I I assume that there is a list of NTSB recommendations.

You have it. I've given you page one in your handouts has a list of all thirty-five recommendations and what the progress is on.

And so, what would be the answer to the question, which ones have you complied with, which ones are you attempting to comply with? Can I see that by looking at that chart?

Yes, you sure can. If you wanna if you wanna pull up that page.

Alright, then let's let me turn to that.

This page.

This page.

Was that a blue blue folder?

Perfect. I have that page in front of me, sir.

Perfect. So, uh, of the thirty-five recommendation, you'll see nineteen that are categorized as in progress. Now, I wanna be clear, if you look at the annotation, uh, technically nothing is considered complete until the NTSB comes in and does a evaluation and a concurrence. So, while the FAA may think it's complete, the NTSB may have a different definition of complete. So that's for full visibility. Uh, but, for example, develop new helicopter routes, we've done that prohibit helicopter operations en route four done develop risk assessment tools for supervisors done implement tbfm at the potomac tracon done revise you know and the list goes on and on and on and on and so some of the things you'll see are uh completed by the end of this year some are by the end of next year uh because these involve much bigger safety review panels that need to be you know there's just a process and those things take time so those evaluations are you know in progress and will continue. You'll see a set of things that we call have external dependencies. Um, there are a number of recommendations on technology. Um, many of them, I think we need to make a decision and we're sort of sitting here waiting to see how Alert and Rotor ultimately get reconciled because I don't think we want to spend time going down one pathway and find out legislatively something's going to be different, but whichever way the legislation works itself out. we're prepared to move forward. Uh, and then there's uh, several things that still uh, frankly are going to require time. Implement anti-blocking technology. You'll see we have that listed as Bnats today. We can't do anti-blocking technology on copper wire. So we need to move to a an all-new voice switch, uh, digital voice switching technology and digital radios before we can

Which is currently part of the well, twelve point five billion dollar plan or not?

That's correct, it is. So, we believe we've got the software procured and we believe we've got the infrastructure ready to go but it's gonna be a three year deployment.

Are there recommendations by NTSB that you disagree with or don't intend to comply with?

So, I I don't think it's so much again a disagreement or a don't intend um I I do think the move to change the process uh that we issued in the general notice to eliminate visual separation as a procedural option for controllers uh in the approach and departure corridors supersedes the need i would call it an alternative means of compliance to charting and things of that nature

you're accomplishing the same goal in your mind or your intentions are to accomplish the same goal in a different manner

honestly i think we're going well beyond the intent of what the safety recommendation was

ok uh senator shee oh sorry sir i didn't look to my left uh senator senator kip

i'm here um thank you um thank you for coming on out here i i wanted to have an opportunity i i wanted to just get a sense i mean i know you were saying some of these have external dependencies but just getting a so i'm trying to get a sense of just implementation timetables you know what we can expect in terms of the the full course of this you know if we're able to be able to move forward on the legislative front on the rulemaking front what's our expectation where you know these changes will have been fully enacted i mean do you have a a rough estimate are we talking about years or longer

it depends um uh earlier we were talking about um perfection being the enemy of the good um if we want to get to acas x that's probably a decade long implementation it's not it's not in the system today mops aren't ready can get ready uh if that's the direction statutorily the the uh congress decides to go um meanwhile we have the ability to bring adsb into the cockpit through electronic flight bags flight deck connectivity uh and a transceiver that would be less than five thousand dollars an aircraft so i think we can we can get a lot of good situational awareness capabilities deployed quickly uh but if we're looking for things like acas-x i think that's a much much longer time line.

but in terms of how we're trying to operate i mean we will certainly want to have implementation right away i mean i understand the longer term vision here and you know you came out to the faa uh tech center in new jersey where you know a lot of this can and and has been happening especially on acas x etcetera but i guess i'm just trying to get a sense from you as someone who's you know deep in this you know i don't see how there needs to be a trade-off necessarily between you know to have some fixes in the short term while still be able to have that longer term vision am i missing something here

well rule making is time consuming and there's no even with statutory regulation we're still going to have to go through rule making and that process is anywhere between three and four years in duration from rule making we'll then have to go into uh building out the the uh the infrastructure to actually apply it you know so that's a retrofit process and then a obviously a new build spec uh and again that just that's gonna take time i'm not gonna sugar coat it for you it just takes time

yeah as we're kind of thinking through what comes next on that front as i mentioned you know this tech center the fa tech center in in my state uh fa recently selected uh qcon to receive a seven year two hundred and ninety five million dollar contract to provide engineering support services i wanted to ask how will this additional tech support help the fa achieve or exceed the ntsb dca crash findings recommendations in particular for the integration of ak s x technology in new and existing aircraft i'm just trying to think through you know how do we try to make sure we're doing this and and and try to think through this from a technical standpoint in a way that can smooth out how that transition might be able to occur

yeah so uh again early in my my tenure aside from going to the tech center i sat with our next gen office, specifically to talk about acas-x uh what what it can do for us and how we would ultimately implement that into the next build spec for next generation aircraft uh the official who runs that office essentially said that in his opinion, we failed to deliver a demand signal to the market uh and so the market moved away from tcast-one to tcast-two and as tcast-two was adopted um there became very little interest you know in the or the aviation community and the manufacturing community to replace that investment with yet another technology so quickly don't get me wrong i think we're ready for it i think it's time to move forward with it i just don't want to oversell the ease with which which we would start to see adoption within the nas

ok uh last question here is just you know certainly we've been very focused in on on dca and and just the uh learning the lessons after the the horrific tragedy uh and absolutely that needs to remain our priority i would like to kinda get a sense from you just how does that in your mind affect how you're approaching other highly congested areas you know my state very much in the new york metro area you have a lot of uh different airports you have a lot of vertical lift there's a lot of talk about just where that goes next yeah how are you kinda grappling with these types of recommendations uh when we're looking at things more broadly and especially in other congested areas

well so you may recall during the uh forty three day government lapse uh and you know over the progression of that lapse um naturally controllers weren't paid and as they continued to go without pay we saw a much higher call off rate or sick call rate and therefore staffing triggers uh uh proliferating through the nass And in that time, uh, we saw safety recommendations come up from our AVS team, uh, to, uh, essentially telling us that they're seeing worrisome signs of, uh, potential, uh, um, let's call it safety concerns, in terms of how we were managing the NAS with fewer controllers in position. And so we implemented, uh, secretary Duff and I moved forward with a plan to do a traffic capacity reduction. Uh, you may recall, you know, we rolled that out at four percent, grew it to six, and we would have gotten to ten were it not for the the termination of the uh the uh funding lapse. That said, it did still raise concerns with me. It took a lot of effort for our team to actually get data from ASIAS and from our third party um um Data Manager, Maider. Uh, we need to do better in terms of delivering timely information to the safety professionals. What we did is we obviously created now a new safety office that's focused solely on this it's no longer siloed between the fourteen different business units and we have given them advanced analytic tools those tools have been used now to inform that there are in fact uh other hot spots in the country that we needed to take these mitigations with and have done that through our general notice uh prohibiting the use of visual separation procedures between helicopters and aircraft in all airports within class b c and terminal radar space

ok thank you now you're back

Thank you, Senator Kim. Senator Sheehy.

Uh, thanks, Administrator, for being here today. Despite, uh, terrible accidents like we had last year, uh, we still have the safest airspace in the world. We still have the safest aviation operations and the most complex. So I think it's important we remember that. But, in your estimation, and this is not an official outcome, but in your estimation, I mean, was the DC crash a result of failed standards that were not properly Drafted or the lack of adherence to standards that existed in simply human error and not following those standards is what led to this this disaster.

I think I I think the NTSB recommendations, or sorry, the the probable cause findings of the accident investigation I concur with. You know, we had I think a bad plan in the capital region. It was a bad design. Uh, there were absolutely data telling us it was a bad design and we should have done something with it. So, Again, we concur.

Yeah.

Having said that, as you look at additional findings in there, yes, to your question, there were poor decision making. We combined that desk, we didn't have to. We combined that desk in order to allow a controller to go do less valuable tasks, paperwork tasks. There was no reason that that needed to happen at that point in time. That's a decision making error. Then, obviously there were controller errors in terms of providing visual separation, context, to the black hawk helicopter but not sharing those with the psa captain um so again

now now speaking of the helicopter obviously the adsb has been a huge issue there uh as a pilot who's flown a lot of low level fixed wing rotor wing mixed and that adsb can be the difference between life and death quite literally um you know what what is the core purpose of the adsb ecosystem

well as you may be familiar normal radar sweeps happen about every six seconds and over the course of six seconds traveling down, you know, uh, on your, uh, base leg, you're moving at a quarter of a mile per second, basically. So, you can - or, sorry, quarter mile in that six second sweep. So there is a big jumping movement between what the controller can see without ADS B. What we do in the - in - in the - is we fuse data between ADS B, which is coming in every second with the radar sweep data to give us much better attenuation of what's actually in the airspace. And of course, even with that, that's telling us where the traffic was,

Right.

not where the traffic is. So, ADSB I think is critical, uh, to building better situational awareness, but as you know and the committee knows, that without the ADSBN uh option, it it robs the pilots of uh of uh I think necessary

Is anywhere on the ADSB ecosystem,

uh

uh, was that intended to be a fee collecting, tax collecting device?

No, sir. It was intended to be a safety and situational awareness tool.

Right. So, if there if there's a magical sensor in your seat belt buckle of your car, that when you plug in your seat belt, you get charged every mile you drive on the road. Would more people or less people put their seat belt on?

I would think human nature would say less people.

Yes, behavior falls incentive. So, right now ADSB is used to collect landing fees, to collect taxes, to track where people go for domicile purposes and I'm not gonna argue the advocacy of state tax policy or landing fees for a local airport that that's on them but when they are using a safety tool designed for safety and that is being perverted into a fee collecting, tax collecting revenue source, that creates a perverse incentive. That creates an incentive for pilots, companies, or any organization that owns and operates an aircraft to say, I don't want to be emitting my signal, I'm gonna find mechanical excuses, I'm gonna find regulatory excuses, or I'm just straight up not gonna turn it on. And I think that bears examination by the FAA and by our legislative body to say, uh, perhaps we need to make it illegal for a safety tool that is specifically designed to prevent two aircraft from running into each other. Uh, and as we unfortunately reminded a year and a half ago how real a possibility it is, especially in congested areas, that we have a safety tool being used as a revenue collection tool.

Well, I've spoken at the triple-A uh annual conference most recently, talking about this issue that we frown on the concept of using ADSB information for revenue collection at airports. And and if we need to step up that in terms of how aggressively we dissuade that, we will.

Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

Sir Catwell, thank you for joining us.