Tim Sheehy Asks FAA Officials How To 'Leverage Private Industry' To Address Issues Within Agency

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During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) spoke about how the FAA can increase cooperation with private industry.

Transcript

00:00senators will have until the close of business on Wednesday, May 21st, to submit questions for

00:05the record. And actually, I'm not going to close it out. I'm going to hand it over to Senator Sheehy

00:10to ask as many questions as he likes and then to close it out. But I'm going to run and go vote. So

00:16congratulations, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're both junior senators from our

00:23state. So, you know, when we're chairman, it's a special event. Thanks, witnesses, for being here

00:27today. Thank you for the work you're doing at the FAA. I'm a lifelong pilot, aviation business owner,

00:32commercial pilot, instructor. And, you know, I've long told folks that the FAA is one of the

00:38beacons of light in the federal government. Sometimes dealing with the federal government

00:41can be highly frustrating. But I've always felt the FAA was a very competent organization and also

00:47very customer friendly for the most part. But we all know that, frankly, largely through no fault of

00:53your own, largely through the fault of this great legislative body for decades on end, we haven't

00:59really addressed these sclerotic issues that we've been talking about for decades, as many of you

01:05alluded to in your statements. So, unfortunately, events like the Colgan crash in 2009 and our D.C.

01:12disaster just a couple of months ago, you know, that's what the public sees and that's what the

01:16public feels. But most of us know those events, although the final seconds are caused by something,

01:23a mechanical failure or human error. Normally, it's organizational failures that have built up over

01:29years and years that start that accident chain in the beginning. And no one knows that better than

01:33CUR-FA folks like yourself and, of course, our friends at the NTSB. But many of these stressors that

01:40we're all feeling every day, whether it's outdated air traffic control systems, whether it's not enough

01:44controllers, not enough pilots, not enough maintainers, not enough FAA-designated pilot

01:49examiners or airworthiness representatives, you name it, there's basically a shortage in every key

01:53manpower category that we need to stay innovative in aviation. And one of my biggest concerns is as

02:01the mother and father for aviation, as America's the birthplace for aviation aerospace, these challenges

02:08that we're facing across the board are driving aviation innovation to other parts of the world.

02:13Part 23, for example, which I understand doesn't fall necessarily under your purview

02:18directly. But, you know, Part 23 has been a challenge to certify a new clean sheet aircraft

02:23for so long that we're seeing places like Brazil and Asia and Europe actually become now the hotbeds

02:30for next generation aviation development. And that's a concern us all, because if we're not the leaders

02:35of aviation anymore, that means somebody else is. And that's bad for all of us. But specifically here,

02:41I don't have a whole lot of local questions, although I do have a couple of Montana-specific

02:45questions. But every time there's been the attempt to kind of do the vast reorientation of the FAA,

02:52which of course does involve some private sector partnership, the term privatization is plastered

02:58over every billboard and in every hearing. And the effort is very quickly mobbed and killed by various

03:04different constituencies who do not want privatization to ever happen. And of course, there's a role for the government

03:10to always play in this. But how can we leverage private industry to hasten our ATC upgrades,

03:16which we've known have been coming for decades? That should have happened years ago. How do we use

03:20private industry to make sure our local airports, be they regional or large commercial facilities,

03:26are being upgraded and managed properly? And how do we leverage private partners to fix our dire

03:32staffing shortages, like taking the controller population we have in the military and helping

03:37them more quickly transition to civilian controllers? So no particular individual, but I'd like to hear

03:43your idea specifically on how we can leverage private industry to help us hasten the solutions

03:48to those problems.

03:50I will speak to partnering with our military partners and having air traffic controllers is something

03:57that we 100% agree with and it's something we've already signed up to do. Senator, I was a former military

04:03controller and I was actually a benefit, a benefactor of being hired directly by the FAA. I did not have

04:08to go to the FAA Academy based on my credentials and I was able to go straight to an FAA facility. We are

04:13partnering with the military as well as looking at possibly using some of their simulations over at

04:17Kiesler Air Force Base to kind of improve some of our throughput at the Academy. That's one of the

04:21things that we're looking at to help increase some of those staffing shortages and get people through. I

04:26definitely feel partnering with some of our DOD partners is something that we can leverage.

04:31And likewise in aviation safety, we definitely have relationships with military and try to

04:37facilitate paths to bring military folks who have learned their skills in the military over to

04:41commercial aviation, whether it's through a restricted ATP with the military credit, whether

04:47it's through programs we're exploring right now about how do we transition military mechanics to get

04:53into the civilian system more easily. So there's definitely a role there. I think around private

04:59partnerships, the fact that there is so much innovation happening in aviation, the opportunity

05:06for us to partner with the aviation innovators on training. We do what we call aviation skills

05:12enhancement with our engineering where our engineers can go and go to these new manufacturers and new

05:18aircraft designers so we can see and learn from them what they're doing and how they're doing it.

05:23I think that's a great opportunity for us. And also as we're developing the new regulatory structure,

05:29new standards, new guidance, working with the industry via either formalized structure like aviation

05:36rulemaking committees or informal structure like industry days helps us learn more rapidly and helps us

05:41understand both where the system is going and how to manage the risks that are presenting themselves in the system.

05:46So I think there's a great role for partnership with the industry.

05:48Well, and safety always has to be paramount, but safety has to work hand-in-hand with the ability to

05:54operate effectively. You can safety anything to death. You can find a reason not to fly. If you want to be safe,

06:00you just don't fly. Don't fly. Exactly. So ultimately we're always told safety will always rule the day,

06:05but ultimately we have to get to where we're going. We have to move the cargo, have to complete the mission. So if we want to be

06:10ultimately safe, then we don't fly and we have to fly. That's the point of our national airspace system, which I'll add is the most

06:16advanced, safest in the history of the world. We should be very, very proud of what we have. I don't

06:20want to pile on and speak ill of what we've built because it is an incredible system, but it is

06:24straining under itself. We have to make sure we're evolving it. And to that end, you know, after the

06:29Colgan crash in 2009, you know, this body, I wasn't a part of it then of course, but, you know, passed a law

06:35for the 1500 hour pilot rule. And any of you know what the pilot hours were for both the pilots in the cockpit

06:41that day of that terrible event? It was about 3,000 and 2,500. I don't remember. I knew it

06:47wasn't 1500. So 1500 had nothing to do with that accident, nothing to do with those pilots and their

06:52experience. The fact that they had in one case over double the amount of hours that the new law

06:57instituted really had nothing to do with that accident. So I think it's very important

07:01for you all to make very clear, candid responses to us. So we don't make new laws that actually don't

07:07help the problem. It makes it worse. And I think within the agency, for example,

07:12recently, you know, the ability to do experimental aircraft

07:18operations, you know, used to be delegated to DARs. And recently that was changed to where now

07:23a FISDO has to directly sign off on an experimental certificate being hung on an aircraft.

07:28You know, on the surface, that seems logical. We're adding another safety barrier. But the truth is,

07:32that's just adding more bureaucracy to a process that that that's a perfect example of why folks

07:39want to innovate elsewhere now is because we're making that that application process to experiment

07:44with new aviation technologies harder to do here. And that's a small example, but I think it's it's a

07:50indicator of of at times the bureaucracy getting in the way of some common sense.

07:55I'm specifically for ATC systems, you know, we hear a lot about radars and copper wire.

08:02How do we quickly evaluate and implement the more advanced and modern, in many cases, more accurate

08:09satellite based ADSB capability, automated flight following, where we can open our for flight apps

08:15and see aircraft moving in real time with pretty great precision, and start injecting that technology,

08:21in addition to real time data sharing with the aircraft. So we see that a lot in Europe now,

08:26where instead of voice communications, which as we saw with DCA can be stepped on,

08:30they can be garbled, they can be misheard, they can be misread back.

08:33When the data is actually sent to the aircraft with their flight path instructions, it's much harder

08:38to have an error based on that. How do we start adopting those things quickly in American airspace?

08:43And is more private sector involvement the answer for that?

08:46In regards to issuing a command to an aircraft versus a pilot, and accepting that, we call that data

08:53com, part of the next gen technology, and that has been implemented in all of our 20 centers that

09:00are within the CONUS. And we're expecting full IOC, meaning full operations capability here within the

09:09year, and that's a very conservative estimate. I expect it to be much more aggressive than that.

09:13So the good news is that has been used, and we are getting some very good

09:16feedback on how that is used. We also have our ability to upload clearances to aircraft at the

09:22gates without having to do a verbal transmission. We call that CPDLC. We're getting very positive

09:26feedback on that as well. So I do believe a lot of these technologies that you're seeing,

09:30while it's taken a long time to actually get it implemented, it's actually coming to fruition now.

09:34Great. Any other comments on those? Points or questions? And then finally, what I'd say is,

09:41is some of our rural airports, which you hear a lot about here, obviously Senator Soule from Alaska

09:46has a very unique position. But it's true also in places like Montana, where I'm from, where we do have

09:50airports where the most critical service they provide to some of these rural and tribal communities

09:55is medevac, where they could be in multiple hours drive from a hospital. Our ability to get aircraft in

10:01there and get them to a facility quickly is dependent on their access to air. And implementing

10:07some of our newer GPS approaches to some of these airfields that aren't going to be able to afford

10:11an ILS system, but also that also depends on radar capability and ADC capability from some of our

10:17regional airports like Helena, which is only one of two regional airports in the country that does not

10:21have radar service. So as part of this modernization effort, I agree we have to prioritize incredibly

10:29congested areas like DCA, and of course, Newark, and others. But for many of our rural communities,

10:35this is key. So it asks for your commitment to look into that. And it also asks just for a general

10:39open mindedness, sometimes open mindedness and non conventional thinking don't go hand in hand with

10:46safety in the traditional sense. But the truth is, we have to start reimagining how the FAA can operate

10:52in the 21st century. And that means looking at our FARs, thinking how they fit better around the more

11:00broader envelope of aviation we're seeing now from UAS to now new types of aerial vehicles that are going

11:05to start challenging our existing systems in different ways. So thanks for your testimony today.

11:10I appreciate you taking the time to speak to us and thanks for all the work you're doing.

11:14Thank you, Senator.

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