Calls For Quick Passage Of Long-Term Funding, Touches
On BARR, GPS, Pilots' Bill Of Rights
By Tom Patton
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt made his third appearance at
AirVenture as head of the regulatory agency, and in many ways gave
the same speech as he has the past two years.
Some of the issues have changed. The Administrator gave a brief
overview of the funding situation that has caused a partial
shutdown at the agency, a suspension of many airport projects, and
the furlough of some 4,000 FAA employees. Babbitt called on
Congress to "immediately pass a clean extension" of the continuing
resolution which has kept the agency open since 2007, and to pass a
long-term funding bill for the agency. "We are maintaining all of
our safety efforts, all across the nation. All air traffic control
efforts are completely manned. All of the inspections that we do,
including the things we do here at AirVenture will be completely
manned, and I'm proud to say we're going to maintain the safest
aviation system in the world."
But Babbitt acknowledged that there are issues. "It's not
business as usual at the FAA," he said. As an example, he said that
the FAA would normally certify about 200 products per month, and
that the lack of funding has caused that process to be slowed. He
also indicated that work has been halted on dozens of AIP-funded
construction projects at airports around the country, idling as
many as 70 thousand construction workers.
But much of Babbitt's speech was boilerplate. He touched on the
8 percent reduction in the GA accident rate, though he said July
had been a "particularly painful month" for accidents. He again
brought up professionalism in the cockpit, which he has said in the
past cannot be discussed often enough, and extolled the virtues of
NextGen.
Many of the questions that might have been asked ... and asked
much differently ... by people attending the forum were posed by
EAA president Rod Hightower, who shared the stage with Babbitt.
After a speech lasting about 20 minutes, Hightower spent about the
next 30 minutes essentially interviewing the administrator, leaving
only a short 15-20 minutes for questions from the audience.
Hightower did bring up many of the things which are important to
the membership. On the topic of a drop-in replacement for leaded
fuel, Babbitt said that being the only user of leaded fuel puts an
unwelcome focus on the aviation industry. "The goal is a drop-in
fuel," Babbitt said, "but that has proven to be a far more
complicated process. It's not just as simple as saying 'we've come
up with some new things'." But the "good news" is that the
EPA seems to be allowing some time for the formulation and
certification of an unleaded replacement to 100LL avgas. He also
said that such a replacement already exists ... "but I don't think
anybody's looking forward to paying $20 a gallon for it."
On the BARR program, Babbitt said that, while there has been a
great deal of discussion about privacy issues, only a few people
have actually asked to be blocked from the tracking system. Babbitt
said to his knowledge, no one who had asked to be
excluded from tracking had been refused, and that as long as pilots
or companies had a legitimate reason for being excluded from the
system, their requests were likely to be granted. He did say that
August 2nd was the deadline for application for exclusion.
Babbitt drew his biggest round of applause for stating that he
is committed to protecting the GPS system against interference from
LightSquared, the company proposing a nationwide wireless broadband
service on frequencies close to the GPS spectrum. Babbitt said when
the company first pitched the idea, the signals were coming from
space at very low power. Then, he said, LightSquared changed the
proposal to one for terrestrial transmitters at power levels orders
of magnitude above the initial request. But he stated firmly that
"we're going to protect the GPS signal."
In response to a question from Rod Hightower about the cost of
ADS-B, Babbitt said that he thinks that the costs will drop
dramatically when units are being mass produced, which he said is
not the case now. And, he said, "if you're not flying in controlled
airspace, you won't need one." Babbitt used the example of the home
computer market, which has seen dramatic price reductions over the
years. But the follow-up question which was not asked was how much
those prices for ADS-B might fall, given that the market for the
devices will likely never be the size of the market for home
computers.
When the audience got its turn to ask a few questions, the
subjects became more personal. Babbitt said he does not see
anything on the horizon that would allow pilots flying planes
heavier than a light-sport to do so without the benefit of a
third-class medical certificate. He said that the FAA would
"embrace" a Pilots Bill of Rights as proposed by U.S. Senator and
pilot James Inhofe (R-OK), should it become the law of the
land, but focused entirely on the issue of the distribution
of NOTAMS, and did not address some of the other important aspects
of the proposed legislation, such as information sharing and
suspension of flying privileges. And on the issue of user fees, the
Administrator said that the Obama administration "has not supported
user fees. Having said that, you've got a lot of people considering
a lot of things going forward, they're trying not to raise taxes
and so forth. But on the other hand, they're trying to solve a debt
and deficit crisis. And so I think there's dialog that puts a lot
of things on the table that wouldn't have been there before. We
think that the way the system is structured today provides the
revenue. Could you make tweaks within how we take it? Some
adjustments within there, I think, could certainly be understood.
Beyond that, that's going to be a congressional issue."
The speech was not as well attended as it was last year, which
was down from the attendance the year before. The first year that
Babbitt was administrator, he spoke to a standing-room crowd. This
year, fully a third of the seats in Honda Pavilion were empty.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had been scheduled to appear
with Administrator Babbitt, but cancelled his appearance at
AirVenture Wednesday night. EAA spokesman Dick Knapinski informed
the media at the morning briefing that Babbitt would be leaving
Oshkosh almost immediately after the speech ... and he did.