FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, we are out here talking about the FAA bill, a bill to improve the transportation system in America dealing with our airways. There are a lot of great things about this legislation, everything from the passengers' bill of rights to improvement in airport infrastructure that many of my colleagues have been out here on the floor talking about. Even the Acting President pro tempore articulated why it is so important to make improvements in our ground-based system.

Practically every elected official in America knows that airports are a cornerstone of economic development. No business is going to locate in a community without knowing what the air transportation system is. If it is falling behind, if it is dilapidated, people are going to go somewhere else for their economic development. So improving the ground transportation system as part of the airport infrastructure is critically important for improving jobs in America.

So I know my colleagues are out here offering amendments, and the pending amendment is the Paul amendment, which is a very concerning amendment from the prospects of what it would do to cut the innovation we are about to implement in this FAA bill--the longstanding improvements to the Federal aviation system that have to do with taking our airways from a 1950s technology to a 21st century technology that improves both the situation for the pilots in the sky and the efficiency of our system and it improves and coordinates the communication system on the ground.

All that also increases jobs in America, high-wage jobs. It puts America back in the driver's seat in the development of key technology. Those are the kinds of jobs in manufacturing we want to be creating in America.

So when my colleague from Kentucky comes out and offers a proposal to basically slow down the implementation by the FAA on key employees in these areas that are part of the technology and infrastructure, what you are going to do is slow down high-wage manufacturing jobs in the United States as well.

With this legislation--with both the improvements to the airport infrastructure and what is, with the NextGen system, going to take place with new technology--we are talking about thousands of new jobs in America. We certainly want those manufacturing jobs to be here in the United States and to get the benefits of this NextGen system.

So I wish to take a moment to talk about that NextGen transportation system and why it is so important to us in creating jobs. Because my colleague from Kentucky may not realize, when you actually cut people and you cut the number of programs that are geared toward this, such as in the NextGen system, you are talking about that the R&D programs could be reduced by as much as $25 million and then funding for areas such as how to do self-separation, weather technology in the cockpit, weight turbulence.

I do not know about the Acting President pro tempore, but I fly a lot, back and forth across the country almost every week. Some of the pilots I have been flying with have said this has been the most turbulent weather this winter

that they have seen. So I know personally. I want to know as much about this and the latest technology that can help us. But under this proposal, the estimated loss of jobs and cutbacks in grant programs and targeted areas again could mean the loss of expertise in R&D that is critical for us in our flying transportation system and safety.

So what are we talking about when we are talking about the NextGen system? We are talking about improvements in flight performance and improvements in the passenger experience and improvements in basically even how we use fuel.

What I like about the NextGen system most is that it reduces total flight delays by 21 percent. That is not the day we pass the bill or when the President signs it. But over time, the implementation of this system--which, again, we have a very old 1950s system, so it is basically radar. It is taking a picture in the sky and saying: Here is where planes are and having air traffic controllers talk to those planes and control, even in pass-off movements, where those flights are going.

In fact, I would say to the Acting President pro tempore, I do not know if she or anybody in her family has ever played Flight Simulator. There is probably more certainty and predictability in the movement in a flight simulator than in that radar system we have today. But we are going to change that.

What this does, by allowing for more accurate tracking and interface and information, is give us the ability to have flights fly on a more direct path, to be able to coordinate better with flights in transportation, and to have that system totally integrated on the ground.

So even those kinds of flight delays that happen on the ground at airports, where you are waiting and taxiing at the airport--oh, this flight is here and that flight is there--all that will be more improved. In fact, that improvement, estimates are, will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the air transportation system by 12 percent. So that is a very positive aspect of moving forward on Next Generation.

Obviously, if you are improving flight delays by 21 percent, I guarantee you, you are going to be improving the passenger experience. When they know we are trying to get them where they need to go on time, in a better coordinated fashion, with savings, it helps us.

But it also is going to improve the ground transportation system. If you think about that, our ground transportation system is always in need of coordination. We have actually had some accidents on runways. People have heard those in the news over the last several years.

So what this does--when you, again, have a GPS system, the GPS system is coordinating that, so you have better coordination of the taxiing of planes and airport vehicles and the entire ground transportation system. That should not be minimized. The fact that we can imagine how a GPS system can give us better data in the sky is important, but there is a lot that is lost on the ground with flights and the coordination of flights.

If you can imagine--just one of my personal pet peeves--you fly all the way across the country and you end up at your destination after 5 1/2 hours, and no one is there to meet the plane or it takes an extra 10 minutes because somehow somebody did not know the plane was actually at the gate.

All that changes with the system. You know exactly where the plane is, and you know when they are going to be at that gate after they have landed. You know exactly how long it is going to take for them to taxi and how long it is going to take to get there. So that is a great improvement in this system and something that should not be underestimated.

But the issue of safety is also of critical importance--the fact that safety, in any kind of improvement to our system, has to be the paramount issue. To me, that is what NextGen delivers. It delivers better air traffic controller information. It means there is no routing pass-offs, as we do now when you are flying in between cities. At some point in time, Seattle is tracking you. When you leave Seattle, at some point in time, it is handed over to another sector and then to another sector and then to another sector.

This situation is going to have accurate information all the way across, including no pass-offs or challenges with pass-offs, and it is going to give the pilots themselves better situational awareness. It is giving them more information about how they fly and about the information on the runway. So that is critically important for this system. We want safety. We want advancement.

In a lot of ways my colleague may be well intentioned in trying to reduce our budget, but when we look at these numbers and we look at what the Next Generation system is going to deliver, we don't want to cut that out of the government system. These are things that are going to give us efficiencies, they are going to help our economy, they are going to create jobs, and they are going to improve the safety of air transportation travel. I can tell my colleagues I certainly want to improve the safety and the situational awareness of pilots.

I mentioned fuel efficiency. I wish to talk about fuel efficiency for a second because I know fuel efficiency is an important issue. The flying public may think, Well, why do we want planes to be more efficient? The more the transportation system uses fuel, obviously, the more we have seen gas prices go up. It means our transportation tickets and travel costs are more expensive. With this Next Generation system, if we can start driving more fuel efficiency in our air flights by 5 or 6 percent, then we are going to help keep the efficiency in the transportation system.

A program with something like Next Generation was done by Southwest Airlines in a pilot project in Texas, and it actually demonstrated a 6-percent fuel savings for flights between Dallas and Houston. By that I mean it showed that by giving pilots more information, being allowed because of a satellite system-like approach to transportation instead of radar, they are able to fly a more direct route from takeoff to destination. That efficiency translates into savings in fuel costs. It alone is a very important aspect of the system.

The net-net of this is high-wage jobs for us in this particular sector. When we think about this, it means high-wage jobs in engineering, in software development, and for other high-tech workers who are part of developing this system, as well as jobs for the flight crews and maintenance and basically everybody who benefits from the fact that we have a traveling public and tourism in our economy.

I hope my colleagues will vote down the amendment by the Senator from Kentucky. All of these things are very positive aspects of the Next Generation system and the improvements to our air transportation. This amendment would cut the viability of many of these programs within the NextGen system and the jobs that can be created from this particular legislation. It is definitely long overdue and something the public is expecting from us.

I mentioned there is a passenger bill of rights here which in and of itself is a very positive aspect of the legislation in terms of access. Any time there is a delay on the runway, we have to make sure there is access to food and water and necessary medical treatment. Basically, the Department of Transportation can issue fines for noncompliance of airlines. I know many of the traveling public will love this particular aspect of this important FAA legislation.

I hope we can dispose of this amendment by my colleague from Kentucky and move on to passing this important legislation. It is about jobs. It is about safety. It is about fuel efficiency. It is about ontime arrival. It is about not gutting this legislation when it is needed most to be passed by this body.

I thank the Presiding Officer. I see my colleague from Washington is also here to speak so I will yield the floor for her.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I know my colleagues, the ranking member and the chairman of the committee, have been working diligently to try to resolve this issue. It certainly is a thorny one, given the history of the Commerce Committee and previous votes on this issue.

For me, the issue is that I certainly do want access to the West, and I certainly want to make sure the Nation's Capital is accessible to all parts of the country, but we also want to make sure there is a fair process, that a decision to open access to National Airport is run through the Department of Transportation in an FAA process, that we do not handpick here on the Senate floor any of the people who would be winners in this process but that we make the decision on how much access is available.

I would say to my colleagues that the whole issue here about airports is that anytime you have a limited footprint, you have had discussion about how to give access to that through a process of the FAA.

So I would say to my colleague, let's keep dialoguing and working on this issue. But a process and an amendment that includes conversion; that is to say, that a predominant carrier out of National Airport can continue to hold that dominance in the marketplace, I think is the wrong approach. I look at what is happening now with what the Department of Justice has said about the Delta-US Air swap between New York and DCA. It basically said they have too much market share and they ought to divest if they want to engage in that kind of swap behavior. So any kind of conversion process that would allow slots to be converted is like saying, if you own real estate around the Capitol, then you can buy more real estate around the Capitol.

So I hope we can come up with a process that puts the FAA in charge of this, opens up how much access, but not make the decision here on the Senate floor; allow the FAA and DOT to do their job, as they have on this issue in the past. So at this point in time, I object to the Senator's proposal.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source