Subcommittee is holding an oversight hearing on the federal aviation administration. Joinedry pleased to be by senator jack reed, the subcommittee Ranking Member, and im is 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 6 6. Thiopian air flight 302 syrias questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the faas regulatory serious questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the faas regulatory framework. For the victims and their families, we need to make sure these accidents are thoroughly investigated, th