NEWS
Untitled Remarks To the Employees of BFGoodrich Aerospace July 15, 1999
Remarks of Carol B. Hallett President & CEO, Air Transport Association To the Employees of BFGoodrich Aerospace July 15, 1999
Thank you Harry. It is quite an honor to address this monthly employee meeting -- especially in such a beautiful setting.
Today, I’d like to tell you a little bit about ATA, the Air Transport Association of America, which is the nation’s oldest and largest airline trade association. ATA has represented all the major passenger and cargo airlines in the United States since 1936. Our Board of Directors includes all of the CEOs of our U.S. member airlines. We also represent foreign associate members including Air Canada, Canadian, Aeromexico, Mexicana and KLM.
Now with this as background, all of these facts raise the logical question: What is it that an airline trade association does?
Well, I’m glad you asked me that question!
A trade association is one of the few places where the chief executives of major corporations working in the same line of business can meet to discuss common business problems. There are a few areas, such as pricing, which we are legally prohibited from discussing, but our association provides an outstanding forum for sharing knowledge to improve airline safety, service and efficiency.
ATA’s 135 employees work in four operating divisions. They are Aviation Safety & Operations; Industry Policy; Legislative & International Affairs; and finally, Regulatory & Legal Affairs. We have almost every kind of department an airline has – we just don’t have any airplanes.
We work closely with our member airlines through a vast structure of committees and councils. These committees develop and promote industry-wide positions on issues from the environment, to airline safety procedures, to the assessment of airport fees and charges and on and on.
Some of the biggest issues, and most critical challenges facing the industry relate to the government’s upkeep and operation of the nation’s air traffic control infrastructure; the government’s efforts to impose new environmental regulations on the industry; and the government’s attempts to police competition within the industry.
Actually, government involvement in our business goes much deeper than just regulation. Airlines cannot put a single airplane into the air, or even taxi to or from an active runway, without the government’s approval by way of FAA clearance.
So, to really understand the implications of that fact, try and imagine what trucking or rail service would be like if every train or every truck on the highway was, not only dispatched, but also controlled for every mile of its trip by the federal government.
Our flights may be planned in airline scheduling departments, but -- believe me -- they run on the government’s schedule. What’s more, needed upgrades to the air traffic control equipment, on which the airlines depend, is basically out of the airlines’ control. The system desperately needs modernization. For example, changing from vacuum-tube-driven equipment to solid-state electronics is a giant step that the FAA has yet to complete.
Still, airlines must continue to attempt to operate under the strain of air traffic control delays. On an average day, we encounter almost 1,000 ATC delays of 15 minutes or more -- some running into hours. In fact, the most current data shows that delays have doubled over two years ago. It is estimated that ATC delays currently cost this country over $4 billion annually. Most of that added cost is paid by the airlines in excess fuel costs, crew costs, and inefficient utilization of assets.
Now without ATC modernization, we face gridlock. And gridlock is coming, by most “industry estimates” around the year 2005. That is the year in which our current projections show air-traffic-control-caused flight delays will make running a scheduled airline impossible without ATC modernization. Traffic at many busy airports will partially or even completely come to a halt by mid-day, because airline hub-and-spoke operations will not be able to come even close to coordinating connecting flights on a scheduled basis. One of ATA’s many jobs is to make sure that doesn’t happen. And that means we must get sufficient funding allocated for modernization of the ATC system.
The airline industry is, of course, trying to do its part to relieve congestion, for environmental, as well as operational reasons. The industry is concentrating on working with the government to secure more efficient routing of aircraft across the country. These efforts go hand in hand with our efforts to improve operational efficiency and save fuel in the process. This new approach to the FAA’s management of air traffic, uses more direct routing of aircraft and allows for more user-preferred routes. It has shown great promise in reducing aircraft emissions.
The best way to assure adequate funding is available for both operational and environmental improvements in the existing system is by “unlocking” the surplus funds in the Aviation Trust Fund . . . it’s our industry’s number-one priority.
This means making sure the money collected from passengers, through the tax on airline tickets, is used only for the operation of the FAA and the ATC system, and not used for non-aviation purposes, as occurs within the current process.
We must focus our efforts on operational improvements in the system with the same degree of intensity that we have focused on safety. The airline industry and the aerospace companies on which we depend have achieved a remarkable safety record through meticulous attention to detail. For example, the aviation industry, not the government, put together technical task forces to analyze the 747 center fuel tanks after the Flight 800 accident off Long Island, as well as the issue of smoke detection and fire suppression in cargo compartments following the ValuJet disaster.
Considering the number of passengers airlines carry every year, the safety record of the airline industry is phenomenal. Earlier this month, even the Wall Street Journal felt compelled to comment about the safety record of airlines when they wrote that air safety is improving much faster than other modes of transportation. I’ll have more to say about our safety record later. For now, I’ll just say airlines regularly work closely with the aerospace community to solve problems when high profile disasters occur.
On a less dramatic note, we work closely with BFGoodrich Aerospace, from utilization of the Part 145 repair station operation you folks direct from Seattle, to the brakes and wheels you produce for our landing gear in Ohio.
Another area in which we currently work closely with the manufacturing community is in educating the press about the remarkable attention to safety that is a part of every airline operation. BFGoodrich Aerospace has joined companies like Boeing, Airbus and our ATA-member airline companies to form the Aviation Safety Alliance. The Alliance’s primary goal is to get the industry’s safety story out to the press and the public.
Through the Aviation Safety Alliance, professional seminars are conducted for the press; aviation safety experts are made available to the media to counter irresponsible charges when they are made by “pseudo-experts”; and a new Web site, www.aviationsafetyalliance.org -- provides background safety information for reporters, as well as the public.
Our first event, presented in conjunction with the National Press Foundation earlier this year, was a three and one-half day seminar for the press.
We worked very hard to provide “just the facts” because we know first, that those facts tell an incredibly positive story about this industry and second, that it is the facts, not spin that are the keys to our success in media education.
It appears we were successful in that effort if you look at the individual comments of the participating reporters. Journalists said they rated our presenters highly because of their depth of knowledge and “incredible candor.” In fact, one reporter commented the program was “the best piece of continuing education he had attended in a decade.” We were told informally by the Press Foundation that, given the natural skepticism of the reporters, we had scored – if not a “ten” – then a “nine point five.”
One thing the press is always surprised to learn is that the safety practices of major U.S. airlines far exceed government standards. The reason our industry is safe is not because it is regulated by the government; it is safe because safety is the linchpin to our economic viability. Does anybody here really think that millions of passengers would fly on U.S. airlines every year if airline-related disasters were a common occurrence? Of course not. The airline industry would not exist if it were not safe.
On the issue of safety, today the government issues, what are known as airworthiness directives or A/Ds on safety matters, rather than using the slower rulemaking process, when there is an urgent change to be made.
Using this A/D process -- to which there is no appeal -- the FAA has been issuing an ever-increasing number of airworthiness directives. ATA’s Engineering Department has been studying the almost 100% increase in A/Ds issued in the past two years, trying to determine how many of those A/Ds are really driven by safety.
Unfortunately, sometimes when the industry attempts to be proactive on safety, that course of action can prove to be counterproductive. For example, Southwest Airlines hopes that won’t happen to them. Southwest moved decisively a few years ago to install new flight data recorders to significantly increase the number of flight parameters they monitor. This happened before the FAA issued their final mandate to do so before August 20, 2001. Southwest retrofit upgraded new flight data recording systems with the understanding they would be “grandfathered” into the system by the FAA. However, the FAA could rule that Southwest must replace all the equipment previously installed, at a substantial cost. The result would be a clear signal that proactive safety efforts by airlines can often be reversed - - - providing a strong disincentive for airlines to be proactive. Southwest hopes it will be as simple as adding two new chips – but that remains a big question mark right now.
Well, let’s take a few minutes to talk about another government proposal -- attempting to regulate the airline industry economically. Twenty years ago, the administration and Congress decided to deregulate airlines and let them compete freely, like all other businesses, and succeed or fail on their merits.
Deregulation has been an unqualified success. Airfares have fallen 36 percent in real dollars since that day in 1978, while the number of passengers has risen dramatically from 275 million then to 614 million last year.
Today, government intervention in airline pricing is being advocated by DOT through proposed guidelines that would prohibit established airlines from competing on service and price with new entrant airlines. This proposal would surely end many of the economic and social benefits of deregulation which passengers and shippers enjoy today.
Adding to that, Congress and the Administration developed a series of “airline passenger protection” bills this year, better known as the Passenger Bill of Rights.
The airline industry takes passenger service very seriously and always has. . . . Does that mean we are perfect? Absolutely not!
So, working with various legislators we have developed a voluntary “passenger bill of rights” to improve service for our customers and ensure the appropriate level of attention and responsiveness is given to all customer complaints.
Whether working on environmental issues, safety matters, or passenger concerns, the airline industry and the aerospace industry have a lot in common. But the one thing in which we should all take exceptional pride is how safe we have actually made the system. In fact statistically, a passenger would have to take one flight a day for 19,000 years before being killed in an airline accident. Think about that for a second – one flight a day for 19,000 years. Recorded history only goes back about 5,000 years. So, if King Tut were a frequent flyer he would still have 14,000 years of safe flights to go.
Well, working together, we have made this the safest form of transportation the world has ever known. It also happens to be the most efficient, and has set the standard for all who may follow. We take our jobs, our responsibilities, and our commitments to the public seriously. And as long as we continue to do that, our industry will continue to prosper and grow. Thank you.
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7/15/1999