[gavel] the committee will come to order. Today, our subcommittee is holding an oversight hearing on the federal aviation administration. Im very pleased to be joined by senator jack reed, the subcommittees Ranking Member, senator caputo is here right from the start, and im sure we will be joined by others. The faa is a 17 billion agency with 44,000 employees who are responsible for virtually every aspect of aviation in our country, including the safety of commercial airlines, general aviation, and cargo aircraft. Every day, faas air Traffic Controllers are responsible for more than 44,000 flights and 2. 7 Million Airline passengers across more than 29 million square miles of airspace. Over the last year, muchneeded attention has been focused on the crashes of lion air flight 610 and Ethiopian Air flight 302. Serious questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the faas regulatory framework. For the sake of the 346 victims and their families, we need to ensure that these accidents are thoroughly investigated, their causes identified, and their solutions implemented. Unfortunately, at this point, we do not yet have the conclusive results of the two crash investigations and cannot say definitively why these terrible accidents occurred. For these types of catastrophic events, however, there is rarely just one cause, there is almost always a cascade of errors or failures that lead to an airplane crash. Nevertheless, since the second crash in march, we continued to hear of more problems with faas certification of the 737 max aircraft. A New York Times article over the weekend shed additional light on some of the problems with faas organizational, designation, authorization, or oda program. In particular, the press story details instances in which faa managers appeared to be more concerned with boeings production timeline rather than the safety recommendations of its own engineers. These stories are particularly damaging for the leadership of faas safety oversight. The ongoing investigations by the Inspector General and the National Transportation safety board are looking at all aspects of the max aircraft, including the certification of the mcas, the installation of the angleofattack sensors, the Pilot Training, the level of automation in the aircraft, and the Human Factors related to the design of the cockpit. While the max aircraft accidents deserve much of our attention this year, it is critical that the faa continues to make progress in improving air travel in our nations congested airspace. Our nations airspace continues to become more complex with new players in the Aviation Industry, such as commercial Space Operators and Unmanned Aircraft systems, or drones. During the last two years, this subcommittee has provided substantial funding to improve safety, increase the efficiency of air travel, and modernize the infrastructure at our nations airports, and i look forward to hearing from our witnesses on how these investments have improved air travel for the public. The nextgen programs, like performancebased navigation and timebased flow management, will improve air travel by reducing flight times. Planes are burning less fuel, emitting fewer emissions, and creating less noise through other nextgen improvements. By january 1st of next year, all commercial aircraft and most general aviation will be equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance broadcast, or adsb, allowing us to transition away from groundbased radar to more precise gps tracking. With adsb, pilots can see other aircraft in the sky, pinpoint hazardous weather, and terrain and receive important flight information. Adsb will also improve the efficiency of our skies by allowing planes to fly safely with reduced separation and also enhanced safety on the tarmac by reducing the risk of runway incursions. Turning to our nations airports, i would point to the 1. 5 billion in additional funding that this subcommittee has provided for our nations airports over the last two years. This funding has been particularly in beneficial for small, rural airports, such as those in such as the one in rangeley, maine, which was awarded an 11 million grant for a runway extension project with a longer runway life flight of maine an air ambulance system will be able to bring its twin turboprop aircraft to provide air medical services for communities in an area that has access to a few medical providers. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on all of these key issues this morning, but particularly the issues of safety. Let me now turn to senator reid for his opening remarks. Sen. Reid thank you, chairman collins. This is a timely hearing giving the unresolved safety issues that have led to two Fatal Airline crashes and the grounding of the boeing 737 max. Every possible measure must be taken to enter the aircraft is safe before it returns to the skies. It is critical that boeing and the faa get this right in order to restore the confidence in both the aircraft and the certification oversight process. Failure to do so will jeopardize continued us leadership in the aviation sector and faa standing as the Gold Standard for safety. As the chairman indicated a New York Times investigative report released last week describes, in their words, a broken regulatory process that effectively nuded the Oversight Authority of the faa. You can see the deference granite industry reflected plainly in a joint industry faa product certification guide published in 2017, which highlights how an applicant and the faa can begin a transition to a state where theres progressively less direct involvement in the faa in the compliance activities of the applicant. The times goes on to say that the agency operated in the background, monitoring boeings progress and checking reports. The faa engineers found they had little power even when they raise concerns. These allegations are grave and speak to a need of a culture change that rebalances the relationship between regulator and industry. It extends beyond the faas certification program. The dod Inspector General is raising alarms on the faa oversight of the air carrier program, specifically the ig raised concerns that the faa has shifted its Safety Strategy from emphasizing Enforcement Actions to a more relaxed compliance assistance model to help carriers address the root causes for noncompliance of safety regulations. In doing so, the faas current guidance allows inspectors to close compliance actions for validating. Faa also lacks a centralized database. This leaves a huge gap in oversight. To add to the many challenges, there are very few technologies that are developed as rapidly as unmanned Aviation Systems, or drones. Drones are changing the way we do business in helping farmers monitor crops and improving railroads and revolutionizing the delivery of goods in this country. These are exciting developments, but there is growing concern about the incidents being reported in the news. Whether it is a drone flying dangerous a close to a passenger airplane or a camera flying over someones private property. The faa needs to establish clear rules of the air to safely integrate the technology into our airspace. Uas technology is evolving so quickly and we need to know that the faa is keeping up and responding strategically. I look forward to hearing about your progress in this issue. I know the Blueribbon Panel on uas mitigation and airports internal report was just released and im interested to hear your reactions. The faa is facing many challenges. I am hopeful with your leadership we will sustain the leadership with the u. S. And the safest, most efficient Aviation System in the world. Sen. Collins thank you, senator reid. I know want to turn to our panel of witnesses, all of whom are senior career officials of the faa. We are joined today by carl burlison, the acting deputy administrator of the faa. Ally bahrami, the associate administrator for aviation safety. The deputy associate administrator for airports, and angela stubblefield, the deputy administrator for security and hazardous materials. Mr. Burlison, we will start with you. Mr. Burlison thank you, chairman collins. Thank you for inviting us all to speak with you today to update you on the federal aviation administrations work to fulfill its mission to provide the safest airspace in the world. We are committed to advancing the infrastructure and maintaining American Leadership and innovation while ensuring safety and access for all users in the National Airspace system. The chairman just noted innovation is reshaping the nass. It is nothing short of amazing considering we have approximately 1. 4 million drums drones registered in less than four years. Flying taxis are in an experiment of design or testing phases with Major Aerospace companies. We have proposed a new rules to remove the red tape and streamline the Testing Process for a new generation of civil supersonic aircraft, and civilian space pioneers getting ready to take suborbital excursions offered by start up space companies. That is a challenge. And one we welcome. These whiletroduce monitoring airspace and maintaining safety and access for all users . Congress provided us a Reliable Foundation to do this through the faa reconsolidation and we are working to accomplish the directives set forth in these bills. The safe integration of ua us and commercial Space Operations are a key priority. We are adjusting processes and practices to accommodate more of these operations. We are taking concrete steps to fulfill this mission. We have deployed the prototype low altitude authorization capability at nearly 300 air traffic facilities covering about 500 airports. Lance allows operators to gain airspace authorization in a matter of seconds, compared to weeks previously. Lance is a good first step as we progressed towards automated air Traffic Management for drones. We took another concrete step for commercial space integration by opening the challenger room inside the air Traffic Control system command center, where joint Space Operations group assess proposed launch and Reentry Operations that have an impact on the nations airspace. This operational visibility coupled with space data integrators we are developing will allow us to safely reduce the amount of airspace that must be closed to other users during launch and reentry. In addition, we are also operationalizing nextgen technologies including adsb. It will be required for aircraft operating in u. S. Airspace and provides surveillance information that is more accurate than radar and more costeffective, especially in remote areas. Roughly 80 of the u. S. Airline fleet and more than 60,000 journal aviation aircraft have been equipped. We expect to start Operational Testing this summer. This will allow us to build a virtual departure queue at airports. Flights can wait at the gate with their engines off until they have a direct route to the runway. By moving electronic data exchange, it will also save time for our controllers in a tower by eliminating certain manual processes. We are also working to make sure new generations of americans are ready to enter the aerospace workforce. One of the highest priorities is to bring welltrained women and men into the Aviation System. We have established a committee to broaden the pipeline of young people interested in aviation careers, enhancing the proficiency of training and targeting skills we need in the future, and partnering with academia to achieve these outcomes. The men and women of the faa are committed to ensuring the United States is the Gold Standard in aviation safety. We will be the first to acknowledge we are not perfect, but the safety inspector helping to educate the next generation of pilots in florida or a controller working traffic in chicago, the employees are not complacent about their mission. They work every day to ensure the safety of the american traveling public. That is why we are confident with the support of this committee and the robust engagement of our stakeholders that we can safely achieve innovation necessary to continue americas global leadership. Thank you. Sen. Collins mr. Bahrami. Mr. Bahrami i appreciate the opportunity to address the faas top priority safety. The European Airlines flight 302 and lion air flight 610 accidents were tragic events that seared the safety conscience of the entire aviation community. Learning from and recovering from these accidents is our primary focus within the Aviation Safety Organization along with maintaining the continued operational safety of the National Airspace system. With respect to returning the 737 max to service, the faa is following a thorough process, not a prescribed timeline. We continue to evaluate boeings software modification to the mcas. In addition, we are developing necessary training requirements to support various investigations and audits on the way. We are working through the joint authorities, technical review, to conduct apprehensive review of the 737 maxs Flight Control system certification. We have also initiated multi Agency TechnicalAdvisory Board reviews of boeings mcas Software Update and system Safety Assessment. Let me emphasize that despite the strong spotlight, that we are under, we welcome this scrutiny, as it will make a stronger. Our data driven riskbased approach to oversight oversight forms the backbone of the proven quantifiable Safety Record that we have come to expect in commercial aviation. In the past 10 years, u. S. Carriers have transported more than 7 billion passengers with one fatality, but one fatality is far too many. We know a healthy Safety Culture requires commitment to continuous improvement. Your new strategic plan, we are aligning our Safety Culture to be responsive to the new challenges we face, including new entrance, the fastest of which is Unmanned Aircraft systems, or uas. We have sharpened our focus on the safety of all Aircraft Operations and we worked on a number of initiatives to support integration. We are using existing rules to enable operations where we can and focusing on safety enabling and an everexpanding universe of operations and capabilities. I would like to emphasize that in our quest for continuous safety improvement, we welcome external review of our systems and processes, and we remain committed to making commercial and general aviation even safer. Thank you. Sen. Collins thank you. Ms. Linford. Ms. Lenfert chairman collins, Ranking Member and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. The office of airports works with more than 5000 airports across the country and more specifically, 3300 airports that are part of the National Plan of integrated airport systems. We also work closely with the airline general aviation pilots, state aviation professionals, neighboring communities, local governments, and any other stakeholders. Our top priority is always the safety of the traveling public while optimizing capacity, efficiency, and the security of our nations airports. We also ensure environmental we also ensure environmental responsibility and financial accountability. We are deeply grateful to the United States congress and particularly this committee for the trust that you place in us. The needs far exceed the available resources, but the funds that you provide are crucial to keeping our nations airports as safe as the airways that connect them. The nationwide system of airports that we help maintain represents a critical safety net which is part of why the United States has the safest air Transportation System in the world. They are also crucial to our national, regional, and local economies. Understanding the importance of infrastructure to our nations economic wellbeing, we work closely with Airport Operators and their planning and development programs. In 2018, we issued a total of 3. 46 billion in airport improvement funding, including a portion of the fiscal year 2018 supplemental funds. In fiscal 2019, so far, we have processed more than 2. 4 billion in grants, including additional funds from the fiscal year 2018 supplemental program. We also continue to improve safety through inspections of certificated airports through site visits and through our latest initiative, the runway incursion mitigation program. Through construction, procedures, and signage and marking changes, we are able to reduce runway incursions at 39 locations by 93 , but we could knock on work without our highly skilled professional workforce. They to