-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, my colleagues have already been out here today. It is a great day for aviation because we have a product before the U.S. Senate, and Members will be asked to vote to move forward on the consideration of this important aviation safety legislation.

As my colleagues have already said, this is a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the FAA reauthorization.

It is important to reauthorize both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board for another 5 years. We are not only giving them direction and resources to improve safety, but we are asking them to keep up to date on the implementation of the latest technologies that help us do just that.

I want to thank my colleague Senator Cruz, who was just on the Senate floor, for helping negotiate this through the Senate Commerce Committee.

I want to thank Chairman Graves and Ranking Member Larsen from my State for their participation and dedication to producing this bicameral, bipartisan legislation.

I certainly want to thank Senators Duckworth and Moran, who chair the subcommittee in the aviation area, for their important contributions to this legislation.

I also want to thank President Biden, Secretary Buttigieg, and Administrator Whitaker for helping us on all of the input as we move forward on this legislation.

I certainly want to thank Senators Schumer, Thune, Duckworth, and Sinema, who helped to negotiate key provisions of this as it relates to pilot safety and training.

I definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely want to thank the very hard work of our committee majority staff and the committee minority staff for working diligently on this important legislation.

I can't tell you how important it is at this point in time for us to show that we are paying attention to these issues. Over the last 12 months, several incidents--including a door plug blowout and a string of close calls at airports--have made the public question where we are with aviation safety. We need to show them that we are asking for, implementing, and holding accountable the FAA to a gold standard for safety.

These incidents underscore why we need a strong reauthorization bill, why we need to implement safety improvements, why we need to invest in a safety workforce at the FAA, and why we need strong consumer laws on the books that give consumers a right to a refund. The FAA reauthorization bill does all those things. It provides the direction. It provides the resources. It helps us build that aviation workforce. It helps us implement safety technologies that will be part of the next-gen system and improve aviation and airport infrastructure nationwide.

Some of my colleagues may think, well, FAA, OK--it is an aviation bill, but what is behind this?

Aviation contributes to 5 percent of our GDP. That is $1.9 trillion of economic activity and 11 million jobs. Getting this right is paramount.

I think some people look at what has happened during COVID and say: Everybody has workforce shortages. Everybody has problems with the workforce everywhere.

But when you have a workforce problem in aviation, it means you don't have the highest standards for safety. That is why we have to pass this legislation. Our bill gives the aviation workforce the tools and the platform they need. I am talking about machinists, about engineers, about mechanics, about pilots, about flight attendants, about baggage handlers, about maintenance workers--the people who really are the backbone of an aviation economy.

It is simple: This bipartisan bill puts safety first. It says we are authorizing over $100 billion so that the FAA does meet that gold standard.

We also are including a robust reauthorization of the National Transportation Safety Board so this organization has the resources it needs to hire more investigators, conduct thorough investigations, and produce the highest level of critical analysis as to why--why--we have had safety accidents.

The NTSB needs to have the critical funding to carry out its important mission, like investigating Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 and the train derailment in East Palestine. These are important missions that help inform us what is wrong with our systems and how they should be improved. Unless we have those inspectors at NTSB--and we have lost some of them lately, and some have retired. We need to continue to have these most critical investigators.

This bill also funds key safety improvements of our system. It requires current and newly manufactured commercial aircraft to be equipped, as my colleagues have mentioned, with a 25-hour cockpit voice recorder. The standard today is just 2 hours. What unfortunately happened in the Alaska Air door plug issue is that, in those short 2 hours--when people were in the aftermath of the confusion, that 2 hours was overridden. Now we are asking the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate without the most critical information that would have told us exactly what was happening in the cockpit at that time-- the voice recorder. This legislation is critical to have a mandate and never to have that overridden in this time period so we have enough time to investigate.

The NTSB also will strengthen its Board and its workforce. It investigates more than 2,600 accidents every year; however, it has had the same number of people as staff for decades. That is why those 33 more investigators would be better equipped and better able to understand emerging technologies.

I want to thank Senator Klobuchar for her leadership. She, in her provision on runway traffic and landing safety technology, is helping us to reduce collisions or near misses at airports. This bill invests in deploying this technology that NTSB accurately assessed has been saving lives at various airports and says it needs to be deployed more across the entire country. These critical airport technologies will be required at all medium and large hub airports--to implement this within the next few years.

Building on the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act--the bill that we passed in the aftermath of the two Boeing MAX crashes--this bill continues to make reforms in aircraft certification to ensure that the planes we fly meet the highest standards of the FAA.

To further the reform certification, we require the FAA to provide public notice and opportunity to comment on significant aviation product design changes. A lot of the confusion in the MAX incident, on the MCAS system, is people said they didn't know or didn't understand. This provision ensures transparency for proposed exemptions from current airworthiness standards. It puts the flying public--and, unfortunately, families have been impacted--more in the driver's seat of understanding what changes are being proposed to airplane certification.

It also requires recurrent training and stronger standards for manufacturer's representatives who act on behalf of the Federal Aviation Administration as unit members, to understand the manufacturing process. This includes strengthening the members' understanding of what are the international aviation standards from ICAO for safety management systems--which is the gold standard for safety--and procedures to report safety issues, a key recommendation from the Expert Review Panel's report.

To address safety concerns also, this legislation includes an analysis of what are called Service Difficulty Reports and regular updates to Congress. Service Difficulty Reports are information filed by pilots every day after a flight that tells somebody: This happened on our carrier. This incident happened.

We are strengthening the requirement for the FAA to analyze that information early and frequently and to give Congress updates on this-- again, something requested by the families of the MAX air crash incident.

Additionally, we authorize $66.7 billion to boost the FAA's staff and programs and resources to strengthen the oversight of the manufacturing process. This is critical in providing what are called safety inspectors by the FAA. These are people we hire and train at the FAA. They go to a community college and take a safety course, and they are required to understand what are the obligations of a manufacturer to implement the code that the FAA has. We need a more aggressive investment in these individuals from the FAA--their training, their skills, their ability to stay current on the latest and greatest technology.

To better support the FAA's oversight, the Agency is required to revise and implement an updated aviation safety inspector model to reflect their increased oversight responsibilities. In 2021, the Department of Transportation inspector highlighted critical staffing shortages by facility at the FAA's Flight Standards and Certification Management District Offices.

Mr. President, I want to take a moment to give my condolences to the family of Ian Won. Ian Won was one of these people who helped understand the certification process at what is called the Seattle BASOO office. That is the office of the FAA that oversees certification.

We need people to stand up like Ian Won did, who said that the certification is only good when the FAA says it is good. Those are the kind of people we need in the system. We recently lost Ian to cancer but will remember his dedication to getting aviation right.

The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, PASS, representing FAA safety employees, estimates that the FAA is currently experiencing a 20-percent shortage of safety inspectors. So implementing a revised model helps us better capture the inspector workload, what it takes to ensure the next generation of technology is fully understood, and to make sure that operators and manufacturers are complying with the law.

I also want to thank Senator Schatz for his helicopter tour safety provision. Many people know how many people travel to the State of Hawaii to travel on air tours in and around those beautiful islands, but that important safety responsibility has to be clear to those independent operators: that they are going to meet the highest standards when moving the public around.

Another safety provision that went in the bill by Senators Baldwin, Capito, and Welch, called the Global Aviation Maintenance Safety Improvement Act, will strengthen the FAA's oversight of foreign repair stations and create a more level playing field.

Unfortunately, as aircraft maintenance went overseas and the FAA didn't have enough inspectors, where did they not inspect the maintenance and repair of aircraft? In those overseas repair stations. But now we are taking away any incentive for someone to go do that overseas because the FAA will be there and will inspect and make sure that we are meeting the standard. So this will help us bring this back to the United States.

There are nearly 1,000 FAA-certified maintenance and repair stations operating outside the United States, and we have to make sure that they are properly regulated.

We are also, in this legislation, making sure that the FAA workforce is well trained and advised to help the FAA. It helps recruit skilled technical and expert staff to ensure that manufacturers don't take shortcuts. It helps the FAA do more direct hiring to quickly fill these positions.

And one of the most important aspects of the legislation is our most pressing workforce problem, and that is the shortage of over 3,000 air traffic controllers. Everyone knows that these air traffic controllers are what guide us every day to the safety of our destinations. This bill recognizes that we have shortchanged that investment, with air traffic controllers sometimes working as many as 6 days a week. We need a workforce that is going to continue to tackle these challenges, and this bill makes the investment so that happens.

We have seen the FAA fall short of goals before in workforce training, but this staffing model and the FAA staffing committed to in this bill will help us fill that gap.

I want to thank Senators Klobuchar, Duckworth, Warnock, Moran, Thune, Peters, and Kelly for their Aviation Workforce Development Grant Program in this legislation. It helps us grow pilots, mechanics, engineers, and technical workforce and streamline the job pathway for veterans who have real skill in the military and can more easily help us fill these aviation roles.

Our bill requires the GAO to also study airport worker standards, a step toward getting our baggage handlers, our ramp workers, and our aircraft cleaners the pay and benefits they deserve.

This bill also does something for the first time for consumers. It says that you deserve a refund after a 3-hour delay, even if you have a nonrefundable ticket. You also deserve a refund for an international flight if it has been delayed for 6 hours. And you can get that refund immediately by talking to the carrier or, if you decide you just don't even want to be on the delayed flight, you can get a refund.

I want to thank Senators Markey and Vance for a mandate in the bill that says families get to sit together, and you can't charge us more. If the airlines break these rules, guess what happens. The DOT Assistant Secretary is authorized to issue penalties up to $75,000 for fines and penalties to have a strong deterrent here.

I also want to thank Subcommittee Chair Duckworth for her leadership in making sure airlines better accommodate passengers with disabilities. It is because of her unbelievable advocacy here that we are going to reduce the damage that is done to wheelchairs and to the passengers who have to make these flights for their own needs, and I certainly thank Senator Duckworth, who is one of our national heroes and veterans, for her unbelievable pilot expertise in helping us.

Senators Tester, Fischer, and Sullivan are to be commended for their hard work to improve the Essential Air Service Program for small and rural communities that need important economic lifelines to have aviation in their community. We authorized a record $1.7 billion for that program.

And, overall, airport infrastructure is getting a big boost too. I thank Senators Peters, Baldwin, and Warnock for championing making sure that airports dispose of harmful chemicals that are harmful to all of us.

And I want to thank the Presiding Officer Senator Hickenlooper and Senators Rosen, Moran, Thune, Young, Warner, and Wicker, who helped usher in the next generation of technologies for aviation--not just drones and air mobility aircraft but also the research and development necessary to see the electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft industry take off in the future. Companies like ZeroAvia in my State and Universal Hydrogen are leading the way with the next generation of strategies that will help us make these technologies a reality.

I just will say, too, that this legislation gives the FAA the direction to provide safe operating standards for advanced air mobility and safety for the 2028 Olympics, coming soon, in Los Angeles.

And I also thank Senators Thune and Warner for their legislation creating a pathway for drones to operate beyond the visual line of sight, which we have also included in this bill. And I acknowledge Senator Rosen's hard work on the legislation for grants so that States are using the U.S.-manufactured drones to inspect, repair, and fix critical infrastructure.

So my colleagues can see that this legislation is full of safety improvements. It helps address a huge part of our U.S. economy. It helps make the aviation system today work better and guarantee that we are going to continue to focus on this for the future.

So I thank all my colleagues. I urge them to support the motion to move forward on this legislation that we will be taking shortly and get this to the House before the May 10 deadline. It is great bipartisan, bicameral work. But most importantly, it is safety improvements for our aviation system.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source