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FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION
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INTERNATIONAL AVIATION SAFETY FORUM
“SAFETY FROM TOP TO BOTTOM”
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GENERAL SESSION
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2006
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Westfields Marriott
17450 Conference Center Drive
Chantilly, Virginia 20151
ROBERT A. STURGELL Deputy Administrator, Federation
Aviation Administration
MARY E. PETERS Secretary, Department of
Transportation
MARION C. BLAKEY Administrator, Federal Aviation
Administration
ROBERTO KOBEH GONZALEZ President of the Council,
International Civil Aviation
Organization
GIOVANNI BISIGNANI Director General and Chief
Executive Officer,
International Air
Transportation Association
JOSEPH H. BOGOSIAN Assistant Administrator for
International Aviation, Federal
Aviation Administration
C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S
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AGENDA ITEM PAGE
Welcome
Robert A. Sturgell 3
Mary Peters 8
The Challenge
Marion C. Blakey 16
Keynote Address
Roberto Kobeh Gonzalez 28
The Global Perspective on Aviation Safety
Giovanni Bisignani 42
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
2 8:53 a.m.
3 MR. STURGELL: Great, good morning,
4 everybody. If I could ask you to take your seats,
5 we'll get started here. Thanks. I'd like to welcome
6 everybody to the third annual FAA International
7 Aviation Safety Forum. For those of you joining us
8 for the first time, it's a pleasure to have you here,
9 and for our repeat performers, thanks for coming back.
10 We've got a great program lined up.
11 It's a privilege to have so many people
12 here from so many parts of the world who are committed
13 to making air travel even safer than it is today. And
14 this International Form would certainly not be
15 possible without the support from the Air Transport
16 Association, and the International Air Transport
17 Association. And I'd also like to thank our generous
18 corporate sponsors as well, Boeing, Airbus, the
19 National Business Aircraft Association, American
20 Airlines, Bombardier, FedEx, General Electric,
21 Honeywell, Southwest Airlines, UPS, Zuchert Scout &
22 Rasenberger, the Aeronautical Repair Station
23 Association, JetBlue, SAE International, TDG Aerospace
24 and the Airline Pilots Association. Thanks very much
25 to all of you for your continued support and for your
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1 commitment to aviation safety. Thanks.
2 (Applause)
3 This morning, we are very privileged to
4 have the President of ICAO, Roberto Kobeh Gonzalez, to
5 deliver the keynote address and also Mr. Giovanni
6 Bisignani of IATA will provide a global perspective on
7 aviation safety. This afternoon, I think we've got a
8 real treat at the luncheon. Elon Musk will be here
9 and he's going to talk about the rapidly evolving
10 space tourism industry. After that concurrent panel
11 sessions start at 2:30 and we've got a great group of
12 panelists on hand to talk about such subjects as the
13 safety management system, emerging risks in airport
14 safety, globalized nature of manufacturing and
15 maintenance and an issue that we get asked about a lot
16 here in the United States which is safety and the
17 privatization of air traffic control services.
18 And also, please don't forget to check out
19 the exhibits over the next two days that right out
20 here to my right. You'll see what's on the horizon in
21 terms of research and development, new technologies,
22 procedures, and safety practices. And I think that
23 you'll find them most informative. All of the
24 information you need on the exhibits is right in your
25 program so please reference that. I think what is
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1 different this year is we've included some more
2 sessions on general aviation and I think that's an
3 area that's growing worldwide. It's certainly a huge
4 population here in the United States and I hope that
5 discussion will be of interest to everybody as well.
6 We've got a very impressive array of
7 international safety talent here today and we're
8 looking forward to high level and provocative
9 discussions during both the plenary and breakout panel
10 sessions. Now, to save time, we're introducing our
11 panelists in print. So in your registration packet,
12 you'll find a booklet with the biographies of today's
13 speakers and they're all listed in order of their
14 appearance on today's program. In addition, we are
15 documenting today's proceedings and will be making
16 them available on line.
17 Now, if you have any questions, we've got
18 FAA staff members on hand who are going to be happy to
19 help you. And if you look for the people that are
20 wearing the staff ribbons, that's where you need to
21 take your questions. Most important are the
22 evaluation forms that are in your registration packet.
23 We've done this for the last two years and what we
24 rely on are your comments in those evaluations forms
25 to make this conference suitable to your desires and
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1 the things you want to get out of it.
2 So please take the time to fill those out
3 for us and drop them in the box just outside of this
4 room. This year, again, because of the great number
5 of international attendance and representation, we're
6 providing simultaneous interpretation in five
7 languages; Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and
8 Spanish. And also for presentations in any of these
9 languages, you can hear it in English by using the
10 translation equipment. Again, for more information,
11 please reference your program or ask one of the staff
12 members for assistance.
13 If you are using the translation
14 equipment, please leave it in the room as you leave
15 the room. We have that in every one of the rooms
16 where we're going to have sessions over the next
17 couple of days. So please leave the equipment behind.
18 And the last thing I'll say is if you have cell phones
19 or pagers, please turn then off during the sessions or
20 put them in the silent mode. We'd appreciate that.
21 Two more housekeeping items here. If you need airport
22 transfers, just check with the hotel desk and we will
23 also be taking questions from the audience during all
24 the sessions over the next two days. We'll have
25 microphones on hand so everyone can hear your question
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1 and please don't be shy.
2 So now, let's get to the real reason why
3 we're here and that is to talk about safety. Aviation
4 is really an incredible way to travel. But we know we
5 can and we must continue to make air travel safer and
6 that's the whole idea behind this conference,
7 assembling the best minds in aviation safety, putting
8 together a provocative program, placing key issues on
9 the table and building safety partnerships. So I'm
10 very pleased to kick things off by introducing our
11 first speaker who may be new to many of you but she's
12 certainly no newcomer to transportation.
13 Mary Peters brings a lifetime of
14 experience to transportation issues from both the
15 private and public sectors. From 2001 to 2005, she
16 served as the head of the Federal Highway
17 Administration where she led efforts to improve safety
18 and security, reduce traffic congestion, and modernize
19 America's roads and bridges. She encouraged the use
20 of new technologies that reduced construction time and
21 expense, resulting in safer, longer-lasting highways.
22 On the state level, Mary Peters previously served as
23 the top executive at the Arizona Department of
24 Transportation from 1998 to 2001 where her duties
25 included not just surface transportation, but also
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1 responsibility for the state's airports, including one
2 of the fastest growing in the region.
3 When President Bush nominated her to
4 become Secretary of Transportation he had this to say,
5 "She's an innovative thinker, she knows how to set
6 priorities and solve problems. Mary will work closely
7 with state and local leaders to insure that America
8 has a state of the art transportation system that
9 meets the needs of our growing economy. So ladies and
10 gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the 15th U.S.
11 Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters.
12 SECRETARY PETERS: Bobby, thanks so much
13 for that kind introduction and I certainly am very
14 pleased to have the opportunity to be here with you
15 today. I wanted to stress that my one-month
16 anniversary as Secretary is tomorrow, so coming to
17 this event to be with you here today was so important
18 to me that I wanted to make sure it happened in my
19 first month.
20 On behalf of President Bush and on behalf
21 of the United States of America, and of course, the
22 U.S. Department of Transportation, it is my great
23 pleasure to welcome you here today to the third annual
24 International Safety Forum. As we gather here today,
25 news of Sunday's tragic crash in Abuja, Nigeria is
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1 fresh in our thoughts. This, and other incidents,
2 including the jet that went down in Lexington,
3 Kentucky in August, are reminders of why we must
4 always keep safety clearly on all of our radar
5 screens. So many precious lives can be lost in a
6 single moment and our hearts certain ache for the
7 victims of these tragedies and for their families.
8 I had an opportunity to visit with Senator
9 McConnell shortly after the airline crash in Lexington
10 and he mentioned how the whole community was grieving
11 because so many of those aboard the plane that day
12 were folks well-known throughout the Lexington area.
13 At the same time our resolve to become stronger than
14 ever to make sure that we build safety considerations
15 into every transportation decision, all of us, all of
16 the time.
17 So it's an honor to be here with so many
18 leaders from the world aviation community and I would
19 like to especially welcome our distinguished
20 international guests to the United States. I want to
21 also thank Administrator Blakey for all that she and
22 her team, including Deputy Administrator Bobby
23 Sturgell, have done to make sure that this conference
24 is a great success. Congratulations and thank you to
25 both of you as well. As many of you know, as the head
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1 of Federal Aviation Administration, Marion Blakey was
2 a driving force in establishing this safety forum.
3 Her background, both at the National Highway Traffic
4 Safety Administration and the National Transportation
5 Safety Board, make Marion uniquely qualified to lead
6 this effort and someone who knew how important it was
7 to have this safety forum.
8 When the idea was proposed, three years
9 ago, some asked whether we needed such a forum and
10 whether or not it would add value. Well, today that
11 answer is clear. Looking across this room it is
12 evident that there is a strong interest in all aspects
13 of global aviation in the aviation community coming
14 together to advance safety. In fact, Marion told me
15 that this conference was over-subscribed, more people
16 wanted to come than there was room for even in this
17 great hall here today. Nearly 500 top leaders are
18 attending this conference, representing 50 nations and
19 the breadth of the aviation and aerospace community.
20 As Bobby said, our proceedings are being
21 translated from English into five languages,
22 demonstrating the importance of this conference
23 worldwide. But most important the numbers speak for
24 themselves and the benefit of coordinated industry and
25 government efforts to improve safety. The rate of
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1 major aviation accidents has decreased across the
2 globe by 25 percent during the period of 2001 to 2005
3 as compared to the previous five-year period and even
4 with the recent crashes that I mentioned, 2006 is
5 shaping up to be the safest year ever in aviation
6 around the globe. Here in the United States aviation
7 today has enjoyed an unparalleled safety record.
8 Prior to the Lexington crash a record, 2.7 billion
9 passengers flew without a single onboard fatality on
10 American commercial flights. I owe thanks to all of
11 you for that incredible safety record.
12 But we must continue to raise the bar.
13 When I was honored to become Secretary of
14 Transportation last month, I let our employees know
15 that safety is the top of my list of priorities. We
16 are also committed to improving the performance and
17 the reliability of our nation's transportation system
18 and to apply 21st Century solutions for 21st Century
19 transportation challenges, including new approaches to
20 funding to deal with our aging infrastructure across
21 the broad spectrum here in the United States. But I
22 feel that we must always, always put safety first when
23 it comes to transportation priorities. That goes for
24 our roadways, our pipelines, most certainly our
25 runways and our skies as well.
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1 Just yesterday I returned from the Midwest
2 where I had the opportunity to sit down with some
3 veteran air traffic controllers and to join some of
4 our newest recruits in training exercises. I came
5 away from that visit with a very deep appreciation for
6 the work that they do. It's intense, it's complex,
7 and it is absolutely vital to keeping tens of
8 thousands of flights moving through US air space daily
9 without incident. And that job promises to become
10 even more complex and challenging in the future.
11 Passenger volumes in this country are
12 racing to the one billion mark within this decade.
13 Meanwhile companies like Cessna, whose assembly line I
14 also visited in Kansas, are preparing for delivery of
15 thousands of new very light jets, which will usher the
16 largest increase in air traffic since the 1960s.
17 Many of the planes will be operating
18 outside of the United States, as the global demand for
19 aviation continues to climb. So it's no coincidence
20 that we have a significant general aviation presence
21 in this forum here today, from participation on panels
22 to tomorrow's guest speaker, Phil Boyer, President of
23 the Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association. When
24 President Bush swore me in, he noted that our nation
25 is fast outgrowing our aviation capacity. He charged
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1 me with modernizing our airports and our air traffic
2 control system to meet that growing demand and we're
3 certainly making steady progress in doing so. The
4 United States Government has plans to hire almost
5 12,000 new controllers over the next 10 years to keep
6 up with the growing air traffic demand. And we're
7 working on equipping these incoming controllers with
8 the best modern technology to help them safely handle
9 the volumes of traffic that they will be charged with.
10 Aviation safety, however, is not a charge
11 that can be answered by any one manufacturer or for
12 that matter, any one airline, or even any single
13 country. Aviation is the most international form of
14 transportation. Countless flights across our borders
15 link nations every day. And the passengers on board
16 on any given flight may have a variety of passports,
17 speak a multitude of languages and of course, the
18 airplanes themselves and many of the parts that go
19 into them have diverse origins as well, and when
20 something goes wrong, the implications effect all of
21 us.
22 So safety is a responsibility that we all
23 must share. Fortunately, because of organizations
24 like ICAO, we have a international standard for safety
25 that is unmatched across transportation modes. ICAO
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1 facilitates communication, cooperation, and puts the
2 entire aviation community on the same page, so to
3 speak. I had an opportunity to meet with President
4 Kobeh just yesterday in my office and I'm excited
5 about the plans for this organization. Both of us are
6 very enthusiastic about the opportunity we have to
7 build upon ICAO's strong foundation. Roberto, again,
8 congratulations on your new position and I look
9 forward to working with you and thank you for being
10 here today.
11 The same challenges that we're facing in
12 the United States, however, are being mirrored on a
13 global basis. As other nations build their aviation
14 infrastructure and markets, particularly in many parts
15 of Asia, the number of passengers traveling is growing
16 expedentially while air cargo is increasingly a vital
17 part of our domestic and international freight
18 movement. International air travel continues to
19 expand strongly, fueled by the growing liberalization
20 of the aviation markets, a trend that is both
21 desirable and inevitable.
22 In the first eight months of this year
23 alone, traffic among international passenger carriers
24 grew by 6.1 percent compared to the same period last
25 year. The bottom line is this; the modern global
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1 economy cannot function without aviation and aviation
2 cannot function without an underlying commitment to
3 safety. Each of you has demonstrated by your presence
4 here today your commitment to safety. The next day
5 and a half you will receive in-depth in the substance
6 and the policies of today's safety challenges.
7 I want to close by thanking you all for
8 being here and I look forward to working with all of
9 you as a find ways to work with you to build on
10 aviation's tremendous safety record and to advance the
11 safety agenda not only in your country but throughout
12 the world. Thank you again, for your attendance.
13 Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this
14 morning. I do regret that I'm not able to stay.
15 Bobby, some of the sessions sound very exciting and I
16 wish I could stay a little longer and spend more time
17 with you today, but alas, I cannot. However,
18 I will look very much forward to speaking with
19 Administrator Blakey about the success of this
20 conference and I wish you all well. Thank you.
21 (Applause)
22 MR. STURGELL: Thank you, Madam Secretary.
23 We appreciate very much those remarks. It's now my
24 pleasure to introduce our next speaker, the
25 Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.
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1 As Secretary Peters said, Marion Blakey's passion for
2 aviation transportation safety led her to conceive
3 this conference three years ago, with a vision of
4 creating a forum that provided the international
5 aviation community a venue to address today's cutting
6 edge issues with straight talk, head on. I think that
7 vision is now a reality. Ladies and gentlemen, the
8 Administrator Marion Blakey.
9 (Applause)
10 ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: Thank you, Bobby.
11 And I want to reiterate Bobby's comments, that we are
12 so very grateful that Secretary Peters took time out
13 of what is really an incredible schedule for her right
14 now to join us here, so that really kicked things off
15 with, I think, setting a picture for us of the
16 challenge ahead. And I do want to thank all of you
17 for being here. You know, I looked it up and
18 apparently as best they can count it, there are 194
19 countries on this planet and we've got more than 50 of
20 them represented here, 50 very farsighted countries
21 when it comes to aviation. So I want to thank those
22 of you who are new to this forum for coming and
23 joining us and for those of you who have been here
24 before, it's great to see you.
25 Now, I've been asked to start things with
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1 a safety challenge this morning. And I think as those
2 of us in this business know, safety is just that, it's
3 a challenge. The task of moving people and goods
4 safely, efficiently and securely, that's tough. Point
5 A to Point B, day in and day out, it's a true
6 challenge. And what makes it even more so is that we
7 have been doing it very well. We've been able to
8 amass a safety record that is absolutely unparalleled.
9 So the safety challenge in a nutshell, how do you
10 take it to the next level? What will not only maintain
11 this unparalleled record but what will position us to
12 improve as the operations grow, just as Secretary
13 Peters laid out? I think the answer to that is safety
14 management systems, a topic for us over the next two
15 days, because they allow us to dig deep. They help us
16 uncover things and in so doing, they change the way we
17 look at our own operation.
18 Now, I'll tell you a little story because
19 I think it's a case in point, and that is about
20 Battery Park in New York City, one of the oldest
21 public spaces in all of Manhattan. Some of you in
22 fact, may have been there at one point or another on
23 your visits because the Battery has been around for
24 centuries. And it's an area of about two dozen acres
25 that stretches right there along the shoreline of the
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1 Hudson, a really beautiful spot. But recently, the
2 City of New York decided that they were going to have
3 to take steps to replace the subway, creating quite a
4 mess. Now, that subway also has been around for about
5 100 years. So enter the construction crews, this was
6 December of last year, 2005 and they were digging away
7 in the cold and ice, and they hit a wall, literally a
8 wall that was buried 10 feet below the surface, a wall
9 that unfortunately was perpendicular to the path they
10 needed to go for the subway.
11 So guess what, as you'd expect, everything
12 stopped. The burning question was, what the heck was
13 this? And needless to say for the crews that were out
14 there in the snow and ice, they put it a little more
15 pointedly than that. The "it" turned out to be a wall
16 that the archeologists said was 240 years old.
17 Perhaps it have been built by the British, maybe by
18 the colonists, who took a backseat to what. The
19 answer was they had uncovered a subterranean wall that
20 was three feet high but get this, eight feel thick and
21 40 feel long. So of course enter the conservationists
22 and rightly so. But while they were making plans for
23 the identification, dismantling, relocation, a second
24 wall was discovered, longer, taller, except that this
25 one was built on logs at its base. Now hitting the
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1 wall is an American phrase that comes from marathon
2 runners in the 1970s. You don't think of it in terms
3 of construction sites. But in this case, you can
4 imagine how they felt when they hit wall number 3,
5 more than 100 feet long and nine feet thick.
6 So the question remained, why was this
7 wall put there. Considerable conjecture was all
8 around but honestly no one knew. Now, I'm going to
9 keep that mystery to the end but my point in telling
10 you this story is that the deeper you dig, the more
11 you discover about what's going on, about what you're
12 doing. You won't learn how you operate until you get
13 below the surface, and when you do, you find precious
14 pieces of data. You learn about how things have been
15 done and you learn about the mistakes that were
16 covered over.
17 There's a handful of issues that popped up
18 at Battery Park. What was it? How do you preserve
19 it? Where do you put it? How do you dismantle it?
20 Should you dismantle it? Who owns it? Will this
21 jeopardize our funding? Will this information
22 jeopardize our schedule? Maybe we should cover it
23 back up. Let's just look the other way. There's not
24 one of us here that doesn't see parallels in this
25 situation to aviation. We need to be sure we're not
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1 looking the other way. We need a rigorous and
2 formalized approach to identifying hazards, assessing
3 the related risks and identifying and prioritizing the
4 best way to then intervene. Then, we measure the
5 effectiveness of the actions we're taking. It's a
6 continuous loop that's to a basic safety management
7 systems. And make no mistake about this one; safety
8 management systems are the way to surmount the
9 inevitable walls that seem impenetrable at the time,
10 the walls that just come out of nowhere, some below
11 the surface, just waiting to be discovered.
12 Now, look, I know this is tough to do.
13 When we talk about S and S everybody says, "Ooh, this
14 it going to be hard", and that's true. But frankly, I
15 don't think we have a choice. Right now, the
16 commercial fatal accident rate in the United States is
17 about two fatal accidents for every 10 million
18 takeoffs, and forecasts anticipate that we should
19 expect a doubling or tripling of traffic in the next
20 10 to 20 years. The question is pretty elementary,
21 isn't it? Is it acceptable to us or to the flying
22 public to have a doubling or tripling of accidents? I
23 don't think so. We know that the passenger numbers
24 are going to continue to climb. We're expecting a
25 billion by 2015. We know, for example, that there may
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1 very well be 5,000 very light jets in the system by
2 that year. NetJets, one of the United States' very
3 successful fractional ownership operations, has a
4 larger fleet now than some US airlines. And we know
5 we're going to anticipate the emergence of the
6 unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned aerial systems,
7 pretty soon up there in the airspace as well. Just
8 last week I attended really an amazing event, a
9 commercial space conference for the X Price Cup out in
10 New Mexico. You know, those are the folks who brought
11 you Spaceship 1, the first private astronauts in space
12 just two years ago. And the guys with rockets, I'm
13 telling you, they are rapidly seeing their own come
14 into fruition as well. So it's another wrinkle to the
15 ever-expanding national and international airspace,
16 aerospace system.
17 So with all that on the table, with a
18 system that's growing rapidly, more complex day after
19 day we can no long rely on forensic studies of
20 accidents to determine our next steps. Forensics is a
21 straightforward approach. Accident occurs, we analyze
22 it. Then we take steps to prevent its recurrence.
23 The forensic approach, I think it's fair to say got us
24 largely where we are today. And that's the world
25 standards for safety. The best of the best. But to
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1 get to the next level, we need to move beyond
2 forensics to data analysis, from the analysis of what
3 has happened, to an analysis of what the data show
4 might happened with a high degree of probability.
5 It comes down to managing risk. And you
6 have to know the hazards, the consequences of what can
7 hurt us and then you have to analyze the likelihood
8 that it will happen, the risk, and then, of course,
9 the severity. The purpose of Safety Management
10 Systems is to provide a systematic way to eliminate,
11 mitigate or manage risk and to provide assurance that
12 those actions are going to be effective once we take
13 them. The key to the future of aviation safety, I
14 believe, hinges on data that become information and
15 that information, this is key, it must be shared. We
16 need to remove impediments that would prohibit
17 sharing. ICAO calls this something that I think is a
18 very telling phrase. It's a just culture. I think
19 they're absolutely right.
20 ICAO reports, and I'm quoting here, "The
21 lack of full and open reporting continues to pose a
22 considerable barrier to further safety progress in so
23 many areas". Let's face it, there's no place for fear
24 in safety. A safety culture is a just culture. We
25 need to instill a mind set, a mind set that revolved
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1 around a safety culture. Continuous efforts on safety
2 improvements have to come from lessons learned from
3 all of us. It's the byproduct of a conducive
4 reporting environment, that things are brought to the
5 forefront and often to all of us to learn. That's a
6 just culture.
7 With that as context, the information we
8 gather and share is going to require a lot of hard
9 study and analysis as well. It will require that we
10 take a disciplined, a methodical approach, and that
11 we're all united against what I think is a part of
12 that fear that some time is lurking over here. The
13 quick, snap judgments or those who would
14 sensationalize the data, we have to stand united
15 against that. It will require a long, hard,
16 continuous look at what's happening every day. And
17 I'm not just talking about airline and airport
18 operations but what happens in our operations as
19 safety oversight authorities, as the regulators,
20 that's if we want to take safety to the next level.
21 I'm proud to say at the FAA, we're making
22 that move. In fact, on October 16, just a few days
23 ago, the FAA's Aviation Safety Organization was
24 determined by an independent outside auditor to meet
25 the ISO 9001 Standards. We're the first government
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1 agency of the United States of our size and complexity
2 to achieve certification to this prestigious
3 international standard. That means we've established
4 a system that covers multiple services, includes
5 national and international sites. In this case we're
6 talking about 6,462 employees that Mr. Sabatini here
7 supervises. No small thing. As many of you know, ISO
8 is the world's largest developer of voluntary
9 international standards and our certification covers
10 areas that are very familiar to all of you; flight
11 standards, aircraft certification, aerospace medicine,
12 rulemaking, accident investigation, air traffic safety
13 and suspected unapproved parts and our quality
14 integration. So I am very proud and Nick, tip of the
15 hat to all of you on your team, that we have taken the
16 next step up.
17 We're applying the same rigorous standards
18 to ourselves that we expect business to meet. The
19 regulator and the regulated must toe the same line.
20 And let me say, as hard as that will be going forward,
21 because it's not just a question of getting there,
22 you've got to stay there, but that's exactly as it
23 should be. I'm telling you this because data sharing
24 is an important part of our safety message. Sharing
25 safety data is essential to achieving a stronger
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1 future for aviation safety. You know, I think as
2 we're talking about this the next two days, I think we
3 might as well be honest about a few of the challenges
4 here. We don't even know how much safety information
5 there is out there and what's truly important and
6 relevant for us to collect; operators, manufacturers,
7 repair stations, suppliers, all the way across the
8 aviation community. Nick tells me he thinks at this
9 point, we're probably collecting barely five percent
10 of the available data.
11 Okay, so what about that other 95 percent?
12 We're the folks that are going to have to figure out
13 what do we do about that? What's relevant and how do
14 we deal with it? But if we're going to continue to
15 put downward pressure on the accident rate, we need
16 far more information about emerging trends,
17 precursors. We need to know more about what's going
18 on every day in operating, maintenance, manufacturing
19 environments. When we share the information, we move
20 ourselves from the point where diagnostics becomes
21 prognostics. Remember the low hanging fruit is gone
22 and sharing information of what we see, what we find,
23 has got to be the wave of the future.
24 So here's where we are. The system is
25 growing in the United States and everywhere you all
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1 are. The vehicles are changing. Technology is
2 changing. And from a safety standpoint, we cannot
3 tolerate any increase in accidents despite all this
4 increase. In fact, we have to drive the rate down.
5 Now, let me say in closing that the answer to the
6 safety challenge is not only technology, technology is
7 important and you'll see those technologies here on
8 exhibit. As Bobby mentioned a few minutes ago, we do
9 have a great exhibit out there. From NEXGEN to RNF,
10 to RNP, ADS-B and ATOP, a sea of alphabets is out
11 there, but we're also going to be looking these two
12 days at international safety policies, the backbone of
13 any global aviation system.
14 So you're going to hear about emerging
15 risk of airports, in global manufacturing and
16 maintenance and a performance based air traffic
17 control, the rule of safety certification,
18 recertification and regulation and a privatized ATC.
19 Look, I've covered quite a bit of ground but the story
20 I raised right at the beginning is something we need
21 to keep in the forefront of this conference. The wall
22 that I talked about, archeologists now believe that it
23 came from the original gun fortifications, the battery
24 that gave Battery Park its name. So the deeper you
25 dig, the more you learn. For aviation, the deeper you
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1 dig, the more you learn, the safer you get. We can't
2 afford to be content with the status quo. For the
3 safest of all time, and as the runners say, "We can't
4 afford to hit the wall". Thank you very much.
5 (Applause)
6 SECRETARY PETERS: Thank you very much.
7 Now, of course, we are here because safety is
8 paramount around the globe and the desire of each and
9 every one of us in this room to seek cooperation at
10 every level is in the forefront. What I've just
11 described is the vision of our keynote speaker this
12 morning because when it comes to going the extra step,
13 when it comes to making aviation safety the export for
14 everyone to share, his name is mentioned every time.
15 He's now the president of the Council of the
16 International Civil Aviation Organization since this
17 August and Roberto, I'm very proud that your first
18 official visit out of Montreal is to this prestigious
19 gathering of safety folks from around the globe. We
20 want to thank you for that.
21 He's held a variety of positions over many
22 years including as the Director General of Air
23 Navigation Services for Mexico, a career in aviation
24 that spans five decades, so when it comes to having a
25 historical view, the big context, it doesn't get any
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1 better. We've very fortunate to have him today and
2 we're all eager to share his insights. Please join me
3 in welcoming Mr. Roberto Kobeh Gonzalez, President of
4 ICAO.
5 (Applause)
6 MR. KOBEH GONZALEZ: Thank you very much,
7 Marion for such a warm introduction. It's always a
8 pleasure to see you and especially today. As you
9 mentioned, yes, this is my first public presentation
10 since I am taking office as President of the Council
11 of ICAO and I am delighted that this takes place
12 before such a distinguished audience and on a subject
13 of critical importance to global air transport, namely
14 aviation safety.
15 By way of opening remarks, I would like to
16 pay tribute to my dear friend and colleague, Dr.
17 Assad Kotalte, for retired on 31 July of this year
18 after serving for 30 years as President of the Council
19 of ICAO. It is an honor and privilege to succeed such
20 a pillar of the international civilian aviation for
21 whom the promotion of aviation safety was a lifelong
22 issue. I would also like to notice your remarkable
23 contribution of the United States to the cause of
24 aviation safety over the years. Right from the
25 creation of ICAO in 1944, the United States has been
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1 one of the most ardent supporters of the organization.
2 When we speak of aviation safety, members
3 of the aviation community may have different
4 perspectives on the subject, yet for all of us this is
5 one common concern, that of saving and protecting the
6 lives of passengers, crews and persons on the ground.
7 Without the excellent safety record that we have
8 worked together so hard to achieve over the past half
9 century and more, we would not enjoy the enormous
10 economic, social and cultural benefits of our vibrant
11 air transport industry. The theme of this symposium,
12 "Safety from Top to Bottom," captures the essence of
13 how to maintain and improve in our remarkable
14 performance, in a few words, what is required is a
15 firm commitment for senior management of airlines,
16 airports, service providers, manufacturers,
17 regulators, and all other stakeholders no matter how
18 small for aircraft operation to be as safe as humanly
19 possible.
20 The commitment to safety must flow down
21 from the top like a waterfall and permeate every part
22 of the organization. Everyone must be focused on
23 safety in the cockpit or behind the traffic control
24 screen, on the assembly line of manufacturers and in
25 the maintenance hangar, on board the aircraft or on
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1 the tarmac, in a government office or chief landing
2 body (phonetic) because safety begins in the mind. It
3 is a mind set, an attitude and must be an integral
4 element of the organization's culture. In ICAO safety
5 has always been and will remain our top priority. It
6 is enshrined in the Convention of International and
7 Civil Aviation. Fifteen of the 18 annexes deal with
8 safety and efficiency in air navigation. And the
9 annex of security is also related to safety since a
10 flight that is not secure is not safe.
11 Safety is the focus of the first of six
12 objectives contained in our business plan and it calls
13 upon the organization to enhance global civil aviation
14 safety through a number of specific measures based on
15 prevention, cooperation, and the consistent
16 implementation of ICAO Standards and Recommended
17 Practices, SARPs. After more than 40 years in
18 national and international civil aviation, I am
19 convinced that many accidents would not have occurred
20 if ICAO SARPs contained in the annexes would have been
21 implemented uniformly and consistently. I am happy to
22 say that there is now within ICAO, a clear shift in
23 focus toward implementation of the standards. Of
24 course, existing standards will continue to be updated
25 where necessary to keep pace with the evolving
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1 aviation industry. And new standards will reflect
2 high level requirements with a clear benefit for
3 safety. Yet, implementation will prevail as a
4 previous part to improve safety.
5 The ICAO Universal Safety Oversight Audit
6 Program, USOAP, will play an integral role in this
7 global effort following the conference of Director
8 General of Civil Aviation in March of this year. In a
9 landmark decision, DCAGs from 153 participating states
10 agree to allow the ICAO to post results from USOAP on
11 the organization's public website as soon as possible
12 and no later than March 2008.
13 At present, some 80 states have authorized
14 ICAO to publish the information without its target out
15 in the territories and so many reports can now be
16 consulted online. I am sure that many others will
17 respond positively in the months to come. It is an
18 unprecedented development in terms of increasing
19 transparency and sharing of information among the
20 estates as well as with industry and the traveling
21 public. It should encourage the states to correct
22 more quickly the safety deficiencies and remain in the
23 -- that remain in the aviation systems and make it
24 easier for estates and donors to provide more rapid
25 and more effective assistance to those that require
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1 much needed financial and human resources.
2 Transparency and sharing of information
3 are also at the heart of the unified strategy to solve
4 safety-related deficiencies adopted by the 35th
5 session of the ICAO assembly in 2004. The strategy
6 emphasized that free flow of safety related
7 information must be embraced by everyone involved in
8 air transport at every level and across every
9 discipline. This is essential condition to create or
10 strengthening partnership to resolve deficiencies,
11 essentially in the form of regional or sub-regional
12 safety organizations. ICAO, National Civil Aviation
13 Authorities, industry and the founding institutions
14 must cooperate in the provisional aviation technical
15 and financial assistance and guidance.
16 A good example of the potential of
17 transparency for improving safety is Article 21 of the
18 Chicago Convention. Article 21 prescribes that each
19 contracting state should undertake to supply to any
20 other contraction state or to ICAO, on demand,
21 information regarding registration and ownership of
22 registered aircraft. When this registration data is
23 shared, it can provide a clear picture of the status
24 of any given aircraft. The states can then make more
25 informed decisions regarding operations by the
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1 aircraft within the air space. ICAO will help to
2 process along with a proposal to facilitate the
3 exchange of data concerning aircraft registrations and
4 some has already been posted in the ICAO website. At
5 the same time that we are moving in the direction of
6 more openness, the air transport industry is growing
7 consistently, in large part the result of
8 hybridization and exploding markets, most notably in
9 Asia. The International Air Transport Association,
10 IATA, reported earlier that 2006 international
11 passengers traffic for the first half of this year
12 grew 6.7, 6.7 percent over the same period in 2005,
13 and by the year 2015, ICAO expects that passenger
14 traffic will have grown to some 2.8 billion passengers
15 annually and 30 million aircraft movements.
16 Concurrently, the privatization of airlines, airports
17 and air navigation services by making inspections of
18 operations more complex and more labor intensive.
19 It is increasingly difficult to obtain the
20 requisite resources in terms of qualified people to
21 insure proper application of safety oversight
22 practices as the regulatory and industry levels. The
23 answer, of course, lies in safety management system or
24 SMS, the most effective way to respond to the need for
25 effective supervision with relatively smaller force
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1 work. Many ICAO member states are implementing or
2 exploring safety management system to compliment the
3 existing regulatory structure. We encourage them to
4 do so and ICAO offers concrete assistance in the form
5 of standards, related guidance material for
6 establishing safety management system including a set
7 of aligned safety management provisions for aircraft
8 operations, air traffic services and air dromes
9 (phonetic) as well as model legislation to make it
10 easier to implement SMS.
11 In all of our communications on the
12 subject, we insist on the fact that safety management
13 is not a matter of individual states alone. It must
14 be carried out in a coordinated and cooperative manner
15 based on the ICAO framework. All practicing both in
16 civil aviation have responsibilities for safety
17 oversight and compliance. I know that there are
18 translation in several languages. Then I am going to
19 shift to Spanish now.
20 La cooperación mundial es
21 esencial para enfrentar, con éxito, los
22 tremendos desafíos del futuro. Yo soy,
23 particularmente, sensible a la tenida
24 escasez de pilotos calificados, y
25 experimentados, que podría sobrevenir,
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1 como resultado, del continuo aumento de
2 las operaciones de las líneas aeras,
3 suscitado por el continuo incremento del
4 trafico de pasajeros.
5 A si mismo el
6 cumplimiento de los requisitos relativos a
7 la competencia lingüística que serán
8 aplicables en Marzo del 2008, exigirá
9 esfuerzos intensos para asegurar la
10 instrucción apropria, y la certificación,
11 tanto de los pilotos, como de los
12 controladores de transito aéreo.
13 Cada uno de ustedes
14 enfrentara una amplia rama de desafíos
15 propios de su industria, o de su
16 responsabilidad. A fin de liderar la
17 comunidad aeronáutica mundial en un
18 esfuerzo de cooperación, colaboración, y
19 coordinación, para enfrentar estos
20 desafíos, la WASE, viene desde hace ya
21 algún tiempo, implantando su primer plan
22 de actividades diseñado para modernizar la
23 organización y a aumentar su eficiencia y
24 eficacia.
25 Nos concentraremos en
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1 programas e iniciativas basados en el
2 rendimiento. Aquellos que den mayores
3 beneficios por la inversión del recurso
4 humano, de recursos humanos y financieros
5 limitados, mediante métodos de trabajo y
6 practicas de gestión, que lleven a la
7 obtención de resultados identificables.
8 La WASE será mas dinámica
9 en responder a las necesidades y
10 expectativas de su 189 estados
11 contratantes. En pocas palabras, nos
12 centraremos en cumplir con las
13 responsabilidades que nos incumbe, como
14 organización mundial, en los siguientes
15 ámbitos clave.
16 La implementación, a
17 nivel mundial, de los sistemas de gestión
18 de la seguridad operacional, destinados a
19 lograr resultados mesurables, en el ámbito
20 de la seguridad de la aviación.
21 La elaboración, entre los
22 estados, de medidas globales de seguridad
23 de aviación, basadas en el rendimiento.
24 La búsqueda de medidas unificadas y
25 coordinadas para reducir los efectos
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1 perjudiciales de la aviación civil en el
2 medio ambiente, y la implantación de
3 sistemas de gestión de transito aérea,
4 armonizados, y de mejoras en la eficiencia
5 basada en el rendimiento.
6 Muchos de estos temas serán objeto de
7 debate en el próximo periodo de sesiones
8 ordinario de la Asamblea de la WASE, en 2007. Sé
9 que muchos de ustedes estarán ahí, y les invito a
10 empezar a reflexionar sobre su contribución a lo
11 que espero será una asamblea muy constructiva, y
12 con visión de futuro.
13 Damas y caballeros, el
14 segundo foro anual de Seguridad
15 Operacional de la Aviación de la FAA,
16 celebrado el año pasado, por esta época,
17 contribuyo, significativamente, al debate
18 en torno a la seguridad operacional de la
19 aviación. Espero, con interés, seguir el
20 desarrollo de esta tercera edición, que
21 nos ofrecerá formas igualmente
22 estimulantes, e innovadoras, de promover
23 la causa de cielos operacionalmente mas
24 seguros en todo el mundo.
25 La comunidad de la
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1 aviación depende de reuniones como esta
2 para encontrar soluciones realistas, y
3 practicas, ante el reto global de la
4 seguridad operacional. Y estoy convencido
5 de que ustedes sabrán satisfacer sus
6 expectativas para bien de todos nosotros.
7 Les agradezco, de nuevo, su gentileza, y
8 la invitación, y la oportunidad que me
9 brindan, de participar en lo que confió
10 será un foro muy productivo. Muchas
11 gracias.
12
13 (English translation of Spanish portion
14 immediately above.) Global cooperation is
15 essential to confront, with success, future
16 challenges. I am particularly sensitive to the
17 scarcity of qualified, experienced pilots that could
18 come about with the increased operations, by the
19 airlines, brought about by the increased increment in
20 passenger traffic.
21 I am also aware of the requirements
22 related to linguistic competency that will be
23 applicable in March of 2008, which will require
24 intensive efforts to ensure proper instruction, and
25 the certification of both the pilots and traffic
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1 controllers.
2 Each of you will face numerous challenges
3 in your industry, or in your area of responsibilities,
4 in order to lead the global airline industry to
5 cooperate, collaborate, and coordinate the facing of
6 these challenges. WASE has been, since some time
7 back, implementing the first activity plan designed to
8 modernize the organization and to increase efficiency
9 and efficacy.
10 We will concentrate on programs and
11 initiatives based on the rendition of mayor benefits
12 from human resources, and limited financial resources,
13 based on work methods and management practice, which
14 will give us identifiable results.
15 WASE will be more dynamic in responding to
16 the needs and expectations of its 189 contract states.
17 In other words, we will concentrate on fulfilling
18 the responsibilities that are incumbent upon us, as a
19 worldwide organization, in the following key fields.
20 The implementation, on a world-wide basis,
21 of operational security management, destined to result
22 in measurable results, in the aviation security field;
23 the elaboration, between states, of global security
24 aviation measures, based on the findings; The search
25 to reduce the prejudicial effects on the environment
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1 by civil aviation, and the implementation of
2 management transit systems, harmonized, and the
3 betterment of efficiencies based on the findings.
4 Many of these themes will be subject to
5 debate in the next period of ordinary sessions of the
6 WASE, in 2007. I know many of you will be there and I
7 invite you to start reflecting on your contribution so
8 that this will be a very productive meeting, and with
9 vision towards the future.
10 Ladies and gentlemen, the second annual
11 forum on Operational Security of the FAA, which took
12 place last year around this time, significantly
13 contributed to the debate on the operational security
14 of aviation. I wait, with interest, to follow the
15 development of the third edition, that will offer us
16 stimulating and innovative ways to promote worldwide
17 safety in our skies.
18 The aviation community depends on meetings
19 such as this to find realistic and practical solutions
20 in the global challenge of operational security. And
21 I am convinced that you will satisfy these
22 expectations for the well being of all of us.
23 I thank you, once again, for giving me the
24 opportunity to participate in what I hope will be a
25 very productive forum. Thank you very much.
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1 (Applause)
2 ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: What an excellent
3 challenge, what an excellent opportunity we will have
4 in the next assembly. I think we're all getting
5 revved up for this. And it's, again and indeed a
6 great honor to have with us today the Director General
7 and CEO of the International Air Transport
8 Association. I think many of you know that Giovanni
9 Bisignani brings extensive business experience to
10 IATA. Before being named to his current post in 2002,
11 he launched and directed the first European airline
12 owned online travel agency breaking truly new ground.
13 Let me tell you, he's a may with an eye for the next
14 big thing and I have a feeling he can challenge us to
15 that in safety as well, because, of course he knows it
16 long and strong.
17 He was previously the CEO and Managing
18 Director of Air Italia, no small feat itself. In
19 short, our next guest has the broad experience you
20 need to cast the wide net of safety. He also have the
21 drive, the insight and I have to say the creativity to
22 make it happen. Please join me in welcoming our next
23 distinguished guest, the Director and Chief Executive
24 Officer of the International Air Transport
25 Association, Giovanni Bisignani.
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1 (Applause.)
2 MR. BISIGNANI: Thank you, Marion, for
3 your kind invitation and for your very kind words.
4 And it's a pleasure to be again here with all of you,
5 among great friends in discussing our number 1
6 priority, safety. IATA, as you know, represents 260
7 airlines, 94 percent of the scheduled international
8 traffic and our mission is we represent and serve air
9 transport. Safety is at the core of our mission and
10 our industry can be proud on our achievements.
11 Our industry has been in crisis, you all
12 know since 2001. We are bleeding red ink. Between
13 2001 and 2005 airline lost $40 billion. The crisis
14 was a catalyst to improve efficiency because since
15 2001, labor productivity increased 33 percent, sales
16 and distribution dropped 10 percent and non-fuel unit
17 costs reduced by 13 percent. In 2001, the industry
18 fuel bill was 443 billion and it represented 13
19 percent of our total operating costs. Now, our bill
20 is $115 billion accounting for 26 percent of our total
21 operating cost. Just in one year we had to increase -
22 - the bill increased of $24 billion. But remarkably,
23 airlines will still improve their bottom line from a
24 $3.2 billion loss last year to a $1.7 billion loss
25 this year, with US carriers posting operating profits.
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1 Next year, we expect a small profit of $1.9 billion.
2 That's just a .4 percent return on $450 billion, so
3 there's no reason to open champagne, but we are moving
4 in the right direction. The crisis in those
5 numbers have not distracted the airlines from safety
6 because numbers tell a great story. The industry hull
7 lost rate for western built jets was cut in half in
8 the last 10 years, .76 hull lost rate per million
9 flights in 2005. IATA carriers benefiting from our
10 program did significantly better, .35 hull losses per
11 millions sectors. In the industry target for 2005, is
12 .65 and we are on track achieving a .62 by the end of
13 September. But these figures are important but ask
14 also some key realities that we have to face and
15 discuss.
16 If we all look -- if we look at all
17 aircraft types and all accident, the figure is three
18 times higher, 2.1 per million sectors. Later we'll
19 discuss the situation in three areas; Africa, Russia
20 and Latin America. My message is clear, we have to do
21 more. We can be proud of our results, but we'll have
22 to look ahead and do more and we need a businesslike
23 approach to safety. For IATA, that means first
24 setting achievable tough targets with deadlines. Our
25 target for 2008, that was given us from abroad is to
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1 reduce a hull loss rate by a further 25 percent over
2 2006 and we also have similar targets for all aircraft
3 and for all the regions where we operate. As with any
4 other business, you need a plan to achieve
5 challenging targets.
6 Our plan is a six-point IATA strategy.
7 The first point is to use data effectively to guide
8 our efforts and Marion was very clear in underlining
9 the importance of accurate data and sharing those
10 data. The next three are to take action in areas of
11 infrastructure including ground handling, cargo
12 operation and flying operation. The last two points
13 are to implement the right processes; Safety
14 Management Systems. Marion clearly underlined the
15 importance of this and auditing. Finally, we must
16 focus on the basic principle, global standards and
17 harmonization. These are the three themes for my
18 discussion.
19 Let me start with two success stories, the
20 global aviation safety roadmap and the IATA operation
21 safety audit and then I will address the other two
22 points. Global aviation roadmap; next month the
23 industry will deliver the final part of the global
24 aviation safety roadmap to ICAO. This is a clear
25 vision for an efficient and consistent global approach
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1 to safety. It is the heart -- in it's heard a global
2 standard and harmonization. What the role in the
3 commitment of the industry? Eliminating these
4 inconsistencies in safety management systems and
5 strategies, regulatory compliances, and use of best
6 practices. Closing gaps in the use of technology,
7 removing impediments to effective data analysis and
8 insuring the adequate supply of qualified personnel.
9 States must eliminate inconsistencies in
10 application of international standards and oversight
11 practices and implement more effective reporting and
12 investigation of accidents and incidents. Many of you
13 helped in the roadmap and this is a great opportunity
14 to say to all of you, thank you very much but words on
15 paper do not always deliver results and the roadmap is
16 useless if it's not followed carefully. I signed the
17 roadmap along with the CEO of Airbus, Boeing, ACI,
18 CANSO, FALPA and the Flight Safety Foundation and
19 IACA's acceptance is a commitment by the state. So
20 there is no excuse for anyone to get lost in
21 uncoordinated plans.
22 Airlines are committed and moving forward
23 and we must have no patience for anyone who is not on
24 board. The IATA operational safety audit, IOSA, is an
25 example of an action. IATA developed IOSA working
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1 closely with ICAO in individual states, US, Canada,
2 Australia. We appreciate very much your support in
3 the initial stage and many of the players around this
4 table. And it is the first global standard for
5 airline audits and includes safety management systems,
6 a component of the roadmap. By the end of next year
7 we plan to five million in IOSA. And IOSA is at the
8 core of our efforts to raise the bar on safety in
9 rationalized audits. For those less familiar, IOSA
10 was launched in 2003 at our AGM. It measures a
11 collection of industry best practices complying ICAO
12 standards. IOSA standards are offered free of charge
13 for any commercial airline in the world, IATA or not
14 IATA.
15 Audits are conducted by a competitive
16 market of eight independent commercial audit
17 organizations and IATA managed quality to IOSA 9,000
18 processes. Registration lasts two years and a list of
19 airlines on the registry can be seen on IATA's website
20 open, transparent for everybody. And government and
21 airlines can access the entire IOSA audit
22 documentation through a controlled process. In our
23 2006 annual general meeting, the airlines voted
24 unanimously to make IOSA a condition for IATA
25 membership in 2008.
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1 And for our association with 260 members,
2 it is a strong mark of commitment to quality. And
3 IOSA is core to achieving our targets to further
4 improve safety. Already we have 121 airlines on the
5 registry, a quarter of those are non-IATA members and
6 now over 2002 member airlines are on the IOSA
7 process. Alliances around the world are using IOSA as
8 a safety standard for membership and code sharing.
9 The register of audit results has already avoided
10 nearly 400 audits and IOSA compliments ICAO's
11 universal safety oversight audit program.
12 And many individual governments are
13 incorporating IOSA in their oversight activities. The
14 FAA accepts IOSA data for US carriers code shares.
15 France includes IOSA in their label horizon program.
16 Switzerland expedites air rights to IOSA registered
17 carriers. In countries as Egypt, Chile, Lebanon,
18 Madagascar and many others have made IOSA a condition
19 for AOC. And AOC made it a criteria for operations
20 two and from the Arab region so I encourage the
21 governments to use IOSA effectively. There is no
22 cost, it's open, transparent. It is at your service.
23 And Gunther Mather (phonetic) and his team are eager
24 to explore ways to work together.
25 Another area in which we have started to
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1 tackle is ground damage and I'm pleased to report that
2 we are tackling now the ground damage. That
3 represents $4 billion for airlines in a similar manner
4 to IOSA. There is no global standard for oversight in
5 auditing of ground handling companies, so IATA is
6 developing one using the IOSA approach. Last week we
7 started developing standards with key stakeholders
8 including logically our great cousins ICAO and the
9 ground handlers, and Boeing AirBus Flight Safety
10 Foundation have provided all the basic data to guide
11 our initial efforts. The target is to start to
12 conduct an audit in 2008.
13 And I'm sure that I can count on your
14 support to contribute to this development of this
15 initial stage of this audit criteria, and incorporate
16 this valuable tool into oversight programs. That's
17 all good news and I want to thank you for your support
18 and I think as an industry we can be proud of the
19 results on safety, but let's open, look clearly and
20 frankly to the many challenges that we have,
21 specifically regional differences, foreign operator
22 specification and air traffic management.
23 Let's start with regional differences,
24 because in regional differences numbers tell very
25 powerful stories. While the global average for all
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1 aircraft accident is 2.1 per million flights, Latin
2 America is 3.4. Russia is 5.9 and Africa is off the
3 chart at 10.2. This is not acceptable. So the first
4 step to a solution is honestly recognizing that we
5 have a big problem in certain important areas of the
6 world. And I applaud to ICAO to the adopting
7 (phonetic) of the IOSA and publication of the
8 results. Roberto mentioned it but it was a great,
9 great step. Europeans recently have implemented black
10 lists as part of their safety programs. To be frank,
11 black lists do not improve safety. In more
12 transparent criteria and efforts as such an example
13 are needed to backup naming decision, but I welcome
14 the strong statement made on the performance of some
15 government, Swaziland, Sierra Leone, Djibouti Congo,
16 their safety record is an embarrassment for this
17 industry. And flags of convenience have no place in a
18 safe industry and we have taken action and I think
19 that everybody has to take action.
20 IATA supports the Safe Skies for Africa
21 Program. But we must see better results from Africa.
22 Our action is to help our members. IATA has taken an
23 action with the limited resources that we have with a
24 Partnership for Safety Program. It prepares all
25 carriers for IOSA by identifying and filling gaps.
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1 Our first targets are Africa and Latin America because
2 you saw the figures. In Africa Partnership for Safety
3 has already trained 175 professionals, from 17 civil
4 aviation organizations and 46 airlines and we will
5 have a completed gap analysis on 26 IOTA members by
6 this year. In Latin America, 110 representatives from
7 governments and airlines have been trained and five
8 gap analysis are complete with 13 more scheduled in
9 the following months.
10 I've written to the Minister -- Russian
11 Minister Levitin and a second time to the President of
12 Nigeria, offering all IATA's assistance. IOSA
13 standard includes consideration from Eastern-built
14 aircraft. And we are examining actions under the
15 partnership's program. Out budget for partnership for
16 this specific program is limited, 3 million in this
17 last six months but support from partners have been
18 quite frankly disappointing. But I appreciate the
19 support received from Pratt and Whitney and Boeing
20 contributing financially to those efforts.
21 On another point, our industry's meek
22 response to the French Government's United for Aid
23 proposals is also very disappointing. Why?
24 Alternative funding for drug purchase is a noble
25 action but taxing aviation is counter-productive and
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1 contravenes ICAO principles. Aviation taxes must be
2 invested in aviation. We need those funds and
3 regional safety needs are more serious funding
4 commitment for government could be a great opportunity
5 to improve.
6 Another area in which we are a bit
7 disappointed is the proliferating of foreign operator
8 specifications. In addition to long-standing US
9 requirements, China, Russia, Trinidad, Tobago, United
10 Arab Emeritus and other have recently announced their
11 own programs and Europe, Australia and Canada are
12 expected to follow. If we continue to go down this
13 road, we will spend a lot of our budget managing
14 bureaucracy with little positive impact on safety. It
15 makes no sense to add complexity to regulation.
16 Safety is better served by consistency and it is
17 misguided at a time when we have all committed to
18 global standard. As an interim measure, I challenge
19 those countries with specific foreign carriers
20 operation to harmonize. I look forward to seeing
21 results from either the ICAO group comprising of
22 Europe, US, Canada and Australia in this specific
23 area.
24 And ultimately if governments are
25 concerned about safety oversight capabilities of their
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1 peers in specific areas, they can use IOSA for
2 specific needs and they can strengthen ICAO's role
3 putting even more teeth into the USOAP great program.
4
5 Air traffic management; safe air traffic
6 management is also critical to this industry. That
7 means standard rules, procedures and technology.
8 Every variation in procedure, every change in unit of
9 measurement and every difference in required equipment
10 is an opportunity for a problem or a disaster. We are
11 working with governments across the globe on
12 implementing RNAV and other ATM enhancements but we
13 need to have a great big picture. The IATA one sky
14 global ATM roadmap initiative highlighted the need for
15 a grand plan and ICAO's global air navigation plan
16 reflects this results and we are congratulate ICAO.
17 But I would like to move faster in the
18 direction of a common approach. The US Joint Planning
19 and Development Office is focused on next generation
20 air transport system based on US technology and the
21 Single European Sky ATM Roadmap says, SESAR, is
22 focused on European technology and solutions. And in
23 parallel we have Boeing and AirBus have their own
24 initiative. If we don't harmonize the result will be
25 not positive. We must build a future of air
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1 navigation where national egos and personal limit and
2 national support to local technology have no place in
3 a global picture.
4 In July a memorandum of understanding was
5 signed by FAA and EUROCONTROL to cooperate. This is a
6 great story and I'm sure that we'll be working in the
7 same -- they will be working in order to achieve those
8 results. But before concluding just a few comments on
9 security. The way forward is exactly the same as of
10 safety, global standard and harmonization. Security
11 improved tremendously after 2001 but we missed at that
12 time the opportunity to harmonize. The recent
13 agreement on sharing PNR data access between the
14 United States and Europe was an important step in the
15 right direction with the right approach. Similarly,
16 harmonization of rules for hand luggage across Europe
17 is a step in the right direction.
18 But one must certainly question why we
19 cannot agree to a common hand luggage requirement
20 everywhere and why we cannot have a common standard
21 for whole baggage screening so that we can eliminate
22 the need for rescreening at least with a country that
23 had the same kind of attention and equipment. This is
24 a waste of 100 million that could be meaningfully used
25 in other areas, safety for example. As a first step
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1 we could have an agreement among countries with
2 similar standards. I realize that the purpose of this
3 conference is safety but let's not miss the
4 opportunity to remind our security colleagues of the
5 success of global standards in data driven approach
6 and safety and encourage them to learn from the
7 excellent example that you are setting because safety
8 is a great story to tell.
9 In conclusion, I would like to thank
10 Marion and the FAA for organizing this third
11 International Safety Forum. Marion, with your
12 passion, your commitment, and your great vision, have
13 brought an international approach to the FAA that has
14 made and old and great partner even better. We want
15 to also recognize and support President Roberto Kobeh
16 Gonzalez and Dr. Cherif and ICAO for their great,
17 great efforts. We call them cousins because we work
18 really close to close and I have to compliment and
19 congratulate for how effectively they handled the
20 recent August London crisis.
21 No one entity can delivery success in
22 safety, it must be a team effort. And the team is in
23 this room; industry, airports, air navigation server
24 providers, airlines, manufacturers of aircraft,
25 pilots, governments, ICAO and suppliers. Each of us
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1 has a role to play and a responsibility to learn and
2 to share. A common goal must be to achieve and
3 implement a harmonized set of global standards that
4 will make the safest form of transport even safer.
5 Thank you very much for your attention.
6 (Applause)
7 MR. STURGELL: I think you can see now why
8 we're so pleased to have Giovanni with us today. He's
9 certainly somebody who knows how to stir the pot a
10 little bit and that's what this forum is all about.
11 So Giovanni, thank you very much and President Kobeh,
12 we are again very pleased that you're able to join us
13 here today.
14 Before we take our first break, I just
15 want to remind everybody that 6:00 p.m. tonight on the
16 sunset terrace in the lower level, we will be having a
17 reception featuring American cuisine and we're also
18 going to liven it up a little bit with some Blue Grass
19 and Big Band music as well. So please join us for
20 that. I do want to once again thank the Air Transport
21 Association and the International Air Transport
22 Association for being our sponsors this year and I'd
23 also like to point out from my team, Virginia Krohn,
24 (phonetic) I don't see her standing around yet, but
25 Virginia, the Offices of Aviation Safety, Nick's group
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1 and Joe's group at the Office of International
2 Aviation for their assistance in putting this
3 together. And finally, we do have a number of FAA
4 international reps in the room today. If I can
5 quickly ask you folks to stand for us. We have people
6 come in from Brussels, Singapore, London as well as
7 some new folks going out to the field. So the FAA
8 international reps, please stand and everybody, please
9 introduce yourself, get to know your FAA partners
10 internationally. I know we're running just a little
11 bit behind, but I do want to give people a break. So
12 how about 10 minutes and we'll pick it back up right
13 here at 10:25. Thanks very much.
14 (Whereupon, at 10:15 a.m. a brief recess
15 was taken.)
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