proposed rule making before this became an issue. we sought to raise the minimum number of hours. >> representative karnhan. >> thank you m chairman. thank you again, administrator babbitt for being here. i wanted to ask about the safety management systems, proposed rule making for part 139 airport areas, and while it's critical, i agree, to have these industry wide safety standardles, have specific concerns that the proposed rule does not propose to protect safety data that is gathered, this seems to stand in conflict to data protections that are in place for air traffic and airline safety. what steps is the faa taking to ensure this data is protected so we get to that goal of a strong industry wide safety standard?

>> that's an excellent question and we've had issues with that in the past as i think you're aware. one of the areas and specifically talking to this often times we put out a regulation for comment, a proposed notice of rule making and i would acknowledge sometimes we're not perfect and sometimes we'll get feedback, very positively constructed feedback, that says i think you overlooked something. we take those into very serious consideration when we write the final rule. and while this is in that process and i'm not really at liberty to talk too much about it, one of the things we do is go back and see how we could mitigate that issue. now as you're aware when data comes to the faa, then it's subject to discovery. and so sometimes we would -- we would approach you with finding ways to help us protect that data and do so with legislation which you have done in the past. if that's the case, there's two ways to solve that problem. one is don't let us be the

holder of the data which is what most of our programs do at the carriers. so when a mechanic turns over something, he turns it over to the carrier, it's not in our hands. a safety committee looks at it, decides what's appropriate action, what's the safety improvement, that's one solution. we could possibly rewrite the guidance to say that look, it's okay that you have the data, we don't need it because it would be discoverable and, therefore, not protected. the other alternative, we would come to you and say, you know, if we need this data, you need to make certain that the people that turn it over, have immunity in their reporting because these voluntary reporting programs are wonderful sources of data. the reason that i think we have achieved the safety record we have achieved is programs like this spanning all of aviation for mechanics, dispatchers, pilots, aircraft controllers, everyone can put their hand up when they see something wrong and report these things so we can then take corrective action.

it's really important that these people be immune. otherwise they'll go back to the way things were in the '50s and hide them and won't tell us and we'll never know. >> it's critical that we have a free, nonpunitive sharing of this safety data and i think we look forward to really creating a mechanism that works, but also to be sure that as in my prior comments, that airports are not being left out of that process as well. >> yes, sir. >> thank you. i yield back. >> representative reed. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. babbitt, i have a question concerning safety and i come from a rural direct in western new york, adjacent to the district which the tragedy happened over a year ago. can you tell me exactly what the faa is doing to achieve a one-level safety standard for regional airline safety,

especially in the area of pilot experience and qualifications >> as you're aware, you know, the standards of part 12 1 are equal for all carriers and the standard itself is uniform. what we found, the accident in buffalo, was that we had people performing and performing better than and so then the question became why doesn't everyone perform to that? we had a series of safety stand downs around the nation, the secretary and i went around to ten different cities, interviewed literally thousands of pilots and aircraft operators, people from air carriers including regional and major airlines. we requested that major airlines take every one of their cochair partners and have meetings and safety share programs. we had wonderful compliance and i'm happy to sit here and tell you today that as a result of those meetings, that every

carrier, every code sharing partner today, has a program which is a flight operations quality asharns which means they stream data from their airplanes so it can be read so we can see the overall performance of that. we had less than 70% compliance prior to these meetings. the aviation safety reporting programs, the asaps, again, every code sharing regional carrier today has or is in the process of being approved one of those programs which went from about 50% to where it is today. these are dramatic improvements. the carriers themselves, the major carriers, again to their credit have stepped up and taken a very active role in making certain that they export as mentors of the larger carriers their good safety programs and we ask them to demand the same safety standards at the regional carrier they demand of themselves and the compliance has been excellent. you know, one of the things that

we say from time to time, we didn't -- this safety record we've achieved was not accidental. i hear people refer to all the time the miracle on the hudson. it wasn't a miracle. the airplane that landed in the hudson landed in the hudson safely because it had a superbly trained crew until cabin and cockpit, first class air traffic control, everybody was in coordination, they were flying an airplane well made and built to certain standards. obviously not enough to ingest, you know, half a flock of canadian geese, but nonetheless that airplane landed safely because we have a system that over the years built every safety component that was utilized in that 30 seconds when the airplane hit the water. >> excellent. so the regional airline carriers, they're bringing their standards up in your opinion. >> yes, sir. everything we've seen we have done in addition to what i mentioned to you, we sent --

every team had the equivalent of white glove inspections of those regional carriers, spot check on their training programs, today every carrier to my knowledge, every carrier requests all of the pilot training data. you may recall or may not, but one of the areas we have had to work around was when you ask for a pilot's training records from the faa, in other words their history of taking flight checks from the faa, when you turn that information over it's yours. for someone else to request it they have to get your approval. we suggested to the carriers if you have an applicant who won't release their training records to you, that in it itself ought to tell you something. >> thank you very much. i appreciate that. >> yes, sir. >> thank you. >> thank you m chairman. i was particularly interested in your testimony section on the airport's improvement programs

because aviation is in a global competitive environment. you see all these countries or places like singapore, china, where just wonderful, you know, state-of-the-art airports are being built and we come to our airports and i know that certainly the-na lulu international airport mimics a lot of other airports in our country where we are falling behind in our program. you cite the real impact of the extension process that we've been using for reauthorization and i would hope that with this congress that we'll be able to come up with a reasonable, fair and forward looking faa reauthorization. however, short of that, is there something we can do to save money in this program? because you have shown us that we're losing money, be we're not being very smart about how we're proceeding with our aip program in this environment of wanting to make sure we get the best bang for the buck.

want to ask you short of a reauthorization what can we do to address aip issue that you have flagged out for us? >> well, i think one of the important points that i made in the testimony to answer the question, was the fact that 17 consecutive extensions and continuing resolutions have led to a lot of stopping and starting. when equipment has to come to a halt, taken off the field, it's expensive to bring it back. people will give you a much better bid if i know that i get the entire project, if something, a runway extension costs $100 million to build you a thousand feet of runway, as we both know it's going to cost a lot more to build it 100 feet at a time ten times and that's what we're running into with these constant short extensions. >> you certainly made that case so my question is, short of a long-term reauthorization, i'm hopeful we will get to that, this something we can do to

address the concern you raise? which i share, by the way. >> well short of reauthorization i'm afraid we're going to have to live with the fact that we can't authorize people to do things with money we don't have access to. therein lies the problem. we certainly have tried and under the stimulus act, we did i think a wonderful job, we had close to or slightly over a billion dollars and we got our money out the door. the advantage that we had, we had projects in the cue, they have been environmentally approved and we were able to go right to the bidders and actually got a lot more leverage out of that. it was a tough time in the economy and people were very aggressive with their bidding which led us let more contracts. we were prudent with that money and any scrutiny says these were handled very efficiently and the taxpayers got a lot of benefit, airports better served, projects

completed on time and many cases under budget. i think we do a pretty good job. the choke on us, the short-term process. >> so we know that we are a trillion -- at least a trillion dollars behind in infrastructure projects all across our country, talking about harbors, highways, airports, so if we just were to hone in on the aviation part, would you support another infrastructure stimulus kind of bill? >> could i give you an answer that if secretary lahood were sitting here he would give you? i could say yes, i would support it but they would fire me. no. the administration has a budget that they're going to put forward and i think it's going -- you'll see when that budget comes forward that there are a variety of infrastructure improvements i think i certainly share this administration's view that infrastructure is one of the areas that we absolutely

have to put resources into and nothing highlights it more in my opinion than aviation. we can do all the improvements, we can land them with closer spacing, do everything in the world, but at the end of the day at laguardia airport when it's a one runway operation you can still only land them once every 54 seconds. >> i think i'm on the same page with you. thank you. i yield back. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman. administrator babbitt, thank you so much. i want to thank the faa and the pilot and the crew and the flight folks that all helped all of us get here safely this week. i felt it today with a windy day up there. i was thankful for the well trained pilot and a difficult airport maybe it to land in, reagan airport there, but glad to be here safely and thankful for the hard work you're doing. i do recognize as others, that this coming saturday is the two-year anniversary of the crash of 3407.

independent of having passed safety legislation, do you personally feel it's safer today to get on a regional airline than it would have been two years ago when the crash of 3407 crashed? >> well, we certainly have implemented and got an lot of response. we've implemented a number of safety changes, put out bulletins, advisory and got a lot of compliance. those were areas that i think needed addressing and i'm appreciative of the compliance we got from those. so if those safety programs -- and, you know, themselves, brought us to a higher level the answer is question. we certainly have a lot of people, we have raised the awareness, we have got self-reporting now which helps us to understand where shortcomings are happening. even in the best of intentions, procedures move and technology changes and you to find out where things are not working well and get people to report it so you can change it.

with those changes that we have in the system today, not only in the regional world but elsewhere, air traffic control, large carriers, a lot of procedures have changed and a constant strive to be ever safer. >> thank you. one other quick question here. there are people here who -- family members were victim of the crash obviously are passionate about continuing that safety and making sure we do all we can as a subcommittee and as a congress with the faa to make air traffic as safe as possible. what do you see or what would you suggest to them, ways that they could be helpful to the faa? how could they provide input? what are things that they could come alongside? they've shown their commitment by being here today. what would you suggest to them to help us in this process, again to make sure we continue to have at least another two years or many, many more years beyond that without a fatality? >> sure. well i have applauded them publicly and privately. i've probably -- you can confirm

this with them had the opportunity to meet with them a number of times and what i am extremely appreciative of is the positive attitude that they suffered a horrible tragedy. i've lost crewmembers, i flew professionally, people i've known, friends i worked with, people i learned to fly with i've lost them and i understand but never will i understand like the loss of a family member. i have to say that the positive attitude that they have carried, that they want to do something -- we'll never do anything to bring their loved ones back, but what they will enjoy is the legacy of saying, the contributions that we made the positive positions that we took, the positive steps and the focus that they kept on all of us, has been and will bring changes to the aviation system of improvement and safety that will be felt forever. so i applaud them for that and i think they have made an enormous impact. and they've done so in a positive, constructive fashion.

>> thank you. and we all thank you as well for the work you've done and ask for your continued input. one last thing and i'll be done. i mentioned my district is adjacent to o'hare, very busy airport. how quickly shifting gears to next gen, how quickly you see some of the beneficial impact of the work that's being done and what the plan is to have it impact some of the busiest airports, say the 35 busiest airports, what your plan is to have that, so we start seeing that impact? >> we have -- and i would love to come back and perhaps have a meeting with you -- >> that would be great. >> or staff and other members to lay out more clarity but we have an expansive plan. let me use o'hare as a specific. we're already seeing some benefits there. you have two airports that we consider a metroplex up there, midway on one side, o'hare on the other. five years ago that was one massive air space. if midway were landing 20

airports an hour of its capability of 45 but o'hare was saturated midway suffered because those two airports and that air space is interlinked. today using rnp technology we can navigate into midway with aircraft and never touch o'hare's air space. we make them independent of each other. think of a lot of areas, the new york metropolitan area, we have to sometimes, unfortunately, ga sometimes suffers. we have to close teeter borrow so the three airports of newark, laguardia and kennedy can operate with large volumes of traffic. using again rnp procedures we can delink those airports so it doesn't matter to someone going into teterboro what's going on at newark and doing that today so we're seeing that type of delinkage in a number of airports around the country. and, you know, that's just one example. some of the optimized profile, the sense we are using today,

dramatic savings in fuel. alaska airlines cites 60 gallons of kerosene every time they land coming down from alaska their high altitude approaches. they glide in. there's a tremendous savings, savings in fuel, emissions, noise, the noise footprint of people doing optimized profile descents, we can show you what goes on in louisville, kentucky, it's dramatic. so as we roll these out, it's not just a schematic anymore. these are real life operations and we deploy them as people get equipped and we get the procedures and training in place and as someone mentioned the momentum and pace is there and it will continue to accelerate. >> thank you very much. i look forward to the time we can talk more directly and thank the chairman and yield back. >> mr. kapuano. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. administrator. i think you're doing the right

job, right priorities and right man for this job. i want to talk specifically about what you can do. correct me if i'm wrong, but my math indicates that if you'll roll back to 2008 levels from today's operating levels it's a little over a billion dollars worth of cuts, is that a rough ballpark figure that sounds right? >> yes, sir, that's accurate. >> with a billion dollars left you will not be able to do less, you will clearly not be able to do what you are doing right this very minute, is that fair? >> yes, sir. >> have you made the decisions as to what specific programs would be cut out if you lose a billion dollars? >> no, sir. we certainly would want to step back and reprioritize. we would have to, you know, protect the safety of the system as we know it today. so then we would look at now what's left. we would have to move some of the assets over to protect the safety integrity of our system today. then we would look back and then prioritize and certainly work with constituents to say well, we're going to have slow this down, that down.

>> that's why i appreciate it. your priority is 100% correct. we agree then that after safety is taken care of, you would still have some discretionary funds within which you would have to make tough decisions. i would strongly suggest, mr. administrator, you're the first person i've talked to since the new congress, i would suggest you have those cuts prepared now. i think it's only fair. i represent logan as you know, i fly into dca all the time. if one of those airports is getting cut and can't do whatever it might be, my constituents or the constituents that fly into both airports know what is not going to be done. what if it's o'hare or somebody else. they should know what this means, as opposed to a billion dollar cut which is a nice round number, i can't count that high. i'm not sure exactly how many zeros there are. if you tell me that the taxi way at logan is not being done i have a better idea what that means. it means something specific to me and my constituents and i would suggest you and the entire

administration go through this. this is not a new number. 2008 magic candle item has been talked about now for months. it's coming. you know it's coming. and i think it's only fair to be putting faces and names and specific projects to thoughtful, not political, thoughtful decisions as to what would be done with a billion dollars less so when i go to the well and defend the faa and other agencies, that i know specifically what i'm talking about. otherwise it's just a number. plus i think it's important for the people that want to advocate these cuts to look to their constituents and say my constituents have to take a cut, whatever it might be. we're not going to be getting next gen as quickly as we hoped or whatever it might be. so i would strongly suggest to put real names, real items, on this list, thoughtfully, independently as you would do if these cuts come through so we in congress and our constituents will know what we're talking

about. i would finally just to say as you do, some of that money is discretionary, which noise abatement plans get done next. i would suggest you remember who was with you when the time comes to make those discretionary commentary. it has always bothered me and you said i believe the faa got close to $2 billion in the stimulus funds. of that $2 billion i'm willing to bet a fair amount went to people who voted against that money. i respect their vote. i do not respect their hypocrisy and do not respect the administration for not noticing that. so i would say the same thing here. when the time comes after safety, safety is safety off the table, when it comes to nondiscretionary items like noise abatement, which one goes first? cut out the ones of the people that aren't willing to pay for it. and be honest about it. not trying to play games. be honest and open about it. there is a cost to an effective

faa. and for that don't want to pay for it i respect that position, but you can't have it both ways. so again, i think you've done a great job, i hope you don't have to with you go through these cuts, because i think next gen and other items are important. if you do, hope that you help us make the case to the american people, what they're actually suffering through these cuts. thank you very much. i yield back. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i had to smile when you were talking about going across the gulf as a new nugget pilot with old aircraft following a weak adf signal we lost halfway across the pond and we lost our navigation he says, take a look up 2:00 high do you see contrails i said yes, we do, follow him. that was our navigation. your safety record oobly is to be applauded. thank you very much for that. as you know this year the

reauthorization bill could authorize the spending of billion of american taxpayer dollars to operate the faa and related programs. after reviewing several department of transportation inspector general reports, i am troubled by the faa's failure to provide basic contract oversight and management. today i would specifically like to focus on the 2008 contract, the faa awarded to raken for air traffic controller training in the 2007 contract awarded to itt to deploy the adsb infrastructure system. in regards to raytheon, in the first year this contract exceeded baseline cost estimates by 35% or 28 million. in the second year the contract exceeded a plan expense business 20% or $18 million. during the first year of the contract, separate invoices raytheon billed the faa for $45 million but the faa did not have the controls or metrics in place to verify the government

received the services it was being billed for. most troubling is the faa allowed raytheon to determine the performance measures and the data used in drpg how the contractor could earn award fees. inspector general said the proper award and incentive fee alone could have prevented the misuse of $22.6 million taxpayer dollars. inspector general dickson on october 12th, 2010, i understand that contract for itt was not on your watch but the report was. the report of the faa's contract with itt inspector general dickson stated the faa did not conduct a dpree henesive financial analysis before deciding that a service based contract would have saved the government more than that the traditional method of opening and operating the system. the faa's data showed if the agency owned the system through the first phase of adbs the government could have saved over $600 million in the contract's initial phase alone. that's $600 million.

i realize this contract again was not awarded under your tenure as the administrator. faa employees failed to conduct proper oversight and perform due diligence that fits into an established pattern of faa irresponsibility and administering federal contracts. i ask you provide my staff with the names of the presently employed faa personnel that were charged with this management of this oversight and the 2007 itt contract and the 2008 raytheon contract. was inspector general dickson wrong in his assessment that the government could have saved $600 million by not entering in the service based contract for the initial phase of the adbs infrastructure? >> you've touched a number of things there. first, i appreciate and should acknowledge it's super to have someone of your background on the committee. i know as a professional airline pilot and military pilot as

well, you've got a lot of understanding. i appreciate and the focus that you have. one of the things -- let me sort of get to the answer here through a couple of steps. often times the ig, based on a report will go out and make a series of statements in a report which we are allowed to then respond to and i find i have sat here in this very seat and testified to things that have been repaired or we objected to but it doesn't change what the initial report said. we have said to them, by the way, you didn't realize we did this and they go you're right we didn't. that's the second half of the page. there's a number of things you cited in initial reports we simply did not conquer with and have supporting evidence of why we didn't and that's the other side of the story. you know, i want to have the opportunity to share with you some of those instances. we did have certainly an increase in the training costs,

but at that same period of time that wasn't a static time in the environment. the controller worked for us, had an enormous spike, like four times what was predicted in normal retirements spiked and we had to undertake one of the most massive trangs in that period of time and yes, it did, in fact, lead to -- these were the people in charge of training and so they had to respond with additional and were authorized to. you make a good point on some of our oversight capability. i would welcome the opportunity to spend a little more time and show you what we are doing to sort of upgrade ourselves to what corporate america would expect of a well-run company in terms of project oversight, acquisitions from the beginning, there were acquisitions that i have now on my watch that were made that i would never enter under the same rules and circumstances. we know better today and we would manage the acquisition itself better today.

with regard to the itt that's a subject that we're under discussion, but one of the things i think people should appreciate, the difference between -- this would be a corporate decision. if you and i were sitting on the board of, you know, an airline, and someone said should we lease the airplane or should we buy it? and we can lease it for $300,000 a month or we can buy it if we have the $50 million it would take, we don't have the $50 million, therein lies the itt contract. it would be operationally less expensive to have bought all that equipment but what wasn't noticed was how many billions of dollars it would have cost to acquire the equipment to avoid it. in a company you would make that decision, you would decide to you want to borrow that money, put it in place and save the costs over time or do you go ahead and lease. i mean it's the classic argument, buy versus lease. and so we have to make those decisions an we're having an ongoing discussion with the ig on some of those.

>> have you done a cost analysis from the traditional method versus the fee for service? have you completed it? >> we haven't in the sense that appreciate we don't get to depreciate equipment like private sector does. there's no depreciation allowance and no recapture for us. we try in our acquisitions and certainly going forward we'll do a better job of laying out the differences. >> i yield back sir. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, administrator babbitt for being here today. there's been a lot of talk about next gen and there will be in the future. i'm more concerned about today's gen and want to go back to the chairman's original question to you about the dramatic rise in near midair collisions and air traffic controllers operational errors up nationally and here in the washington, d.c., area. and i believe if i understood your answer because of this new

voluntarily reporting system. however, in "the washington post" there was an article december 31 about five weeks ago, and the faa and the controller union have admitted that the self-reported errors from this new nonpunitive error system are not included in the official account, therefore, i don't see how that could be the reason for the rise in the official published errors. is that a correct statement? >> it's correct in the sense remember we're changing the overall environment. we're also asking people in this partnership for safety, to admit things that might not be an infraction. they don't need immunity. they're just telling them about it. we have an open culture that we did five years ago or four or two. th they are free to report anything. the he will if they think voluntary reporting might indicate their he exposure to something and they're looking to

have some not immunity, but certainly coverage of disclosing this publicly, then they'll file it under the program. but we are getting a lot more reports from all corners, simply because we have a partnership for safety we've engaged in. we have a better electronic observations and places where we deploy adsb, remember it reports full time all the time. we can more accurately track operational errors. >> so you think it's more due to the increased reporting wherever it comes from than actual issues that we're having? >> it's our belief, we actually expected as each comes on-line, each of these enhanced capabilityin capabilityin capabili capabilities, we expect to get more reports. maybe not a good analogy but the one i use often is the difference between we have an intersection and, you know, for years we've been writing one or two red light tickets a week,

someone is running the red light. we put a camera up we have 40, 40 people run the light that week, no, we caught all the ones that did. and remember that we have operational errors do not necessarily mean we had a dangerous lapse in safety. what it means is we have an established safety margin that we want to see respected. an airplane, for example, in the terminal area, we like to keep them three miles apart. that airplane in front of you slows down a little bit, unbeknownst to anyone else and the following aircraft moves into 2.9 miles that's an operational error. all of a sudden the controller realizes he has a 2.9 mile separation instead of three because somebody slowed down and didn't tell him. he has to -- he'll slow the airplane down or give a turn or something, that's an operational error. those are the things we want to understand how happen, how to train so they don't happen again. >> one other question just curious what your reaction is in

today's revelation about the unprofessional behavior in new york and do you plan disciplinary action for them? >> first we're going to get the facts. we have sent a team up there. people make allegations from time to time and like everybody in the country, you know, we want to look into this and get the actual facts of what's going on up there. that's a very complex series of air space. we won't move traffic through it in a day than some countries move. it's an intense traffic area. i've read some of the allegations, but the bottom line is we've got a team up there and the controllers have been open, they'll work with us as well and we'll get to the bottom of this. and if, in fact, some of those allegations are correct, obviously we'll take discipli disciplinary action. >> i thank you for being here and i got routed through dallas dfw after the super bowl and normally on a monday they have 19,000 passengers and yesterday they had 50 and moved fluidly. so thank you for your work and i

yield back. >> thank you, sir. >> thank you. >> thank you plshgsz chairman. thank you mr. babbitt for your appearance here before us today. i have some specific questions and i'm glad that you opened the door to the issue of new york being a very sort of intense air space region. i'm just below that representing a district that includes the philadelphia airport. my county, and you may be familiar with some of the issues with regard to that. >> sure. >> but one of the -- i just finished a gao study that looked at congested areas and their conclusion was that regional airport planning could help address congestion if the plans were integrated with faa and airport decision making. realizing not just a class b like philadelphia but there are lee high valley, atlantic city, other airports that may be able to handle overflow from the main hub. what is your opinion with regard

to the importance or the essential nature of regional planning as we deal with the issue of congestion? >> i think there's certainly a place for regional planning especially in the metropolitan areas. one of the things that we certainly take into consideration reliever airports near major airports if they can help unburden some of the traffic going into a metropolitan airport that's a good thing. the other side of that coin, of course, is the commercial reality, of the carriers operating in those big airports and the connectivity of their traffic, you know, someone who wants to go through, for example, newark, land in newark and go somewhere else, isn't going to be well served by going through atlantic city or, you know, an airport not too close by. so the connectivity plays into that. but to the extent they -- these airports add to the overall improvement of the national air space system we consider that and it's not unique that you

have regional planning authorities that do take into consideration and we certainly consider them when we talk about adding airport improvement funds. >> i was in reviewing this study, i was concerned about some of the language if i can -- it was that the airport officials in philadelphia international stated that the airport does its own planning without input from regional planners. this is the language of the gao study. airport officials in philadelphia stated that regional airport planning has little influence on the decisions made by the city of philadelphia or philadelphia international airport. and then i see a concluding paragraph, a major hinderance is the differing interests of airports in the region. their language, airport officials in philadelphia told us they do not want to support federal efforts including regional airport planning, that could -- because the city of philadelphia which owns philadelphia international does not want to lose revenue

generateded at its airports to other airports. is it a revenue question or is it an efficiency question? >> those -- the decision that is made by the federal government whether or not to support a request by an airport authority, an airport sponsor, remember that most of the airports in this country are owned by the cities, the counties, some cases the state, and they have -- they make their own independent decisions, they would then request improvements using forecasts and, of course, we do the same thing. if those forecasts indicate to us that we would improve the overall transportation flow we grant those requests. they're on a very solid foundation of a very thoughtful overall contribution to the national air space system. but what an individual airport does, whether the wants to build a hangar on the north or south side those are airport local decisions. >> thank you with the idea the

airport local decision but i'm concerned about one issue that respects the philadelphia situation. because they do have great autonomy and they have proposed extending an airstrip to accommodate congestion. are you aware in the context of that, 78 homes are going to be taken by purported eminent domain. >> i am aware of that. >> the power of eminent domain does not come from them locally. it is your power they are stepping into. they're making their own independent decisions, they're not using any kind of regional association because they choose not to, by their words not ours, because of revenue streams, and yet your power of eminent domain is what they are using to take these homes. is that fair to those homeowners that they are not looking at what the gao suggests may well be an alternative to dealing with congestion? >> i think the gap in what you

and i are discussing is captured in our ability to force them to join in any type of regional planning authority. we simply don't have that authority nor we could compel or restrict them from that. we went through a record of decision process, they made their plan which did, in fact, include capturing some land and in the interest of expanding the overall flow and contribution to the system, it's a reasonable plan. it met our criteria, federally established criteria and the decision based on that. >> it only looked at two things. it only looked at two separate entrances and the status quo. it did not consider the opportunity it perhaps lay off flights into other airports including its own northeast philadelphia airport in the city less than ten miles away from philadelphia international. >> well again, the amount of one of the things that you would look at in that case if you were philadelphia, is how much originating and departing

traffic is yours and yours uniquely as opposed to connecting traffic. if an airport has a high volume of connecting traffic, realize this is a commercial discussion outside of the authority of the faa. but having -- >> they're using your authority it take the properties and i'm sorry, may i just ask one quick question. >> sure. >> the chair one last issue is in addition to this, there has been noise abatement that has been used for some of the properties, i'm sure you may be aware, there's 78 properties potentially affected yet at the same time, the airport and the faa have done noise abatement on some 27 of those properties which are slated to be taken at a cost of, i understand, it's close to $1.2 million. who's making that decision? >> well that would be part of the record of decision as i understand the process, that the overall airport plan goes

through a very, you know, high intensity, robust review which includes environmental protection, certainly the noise levels forecast, all of those come into play. in some cases you can mitigate the noise levels. when traffic picks up up at an airport we have criteria and the epa, has a baseline criteria and when that's exceeded we have an obligation and do often go outs and provide mitigation by soundproofing homes, giving them money to, you know, because the situation has changed, but in this case the record of decision obviously was a little stronger than that and said if you're going to make this extension we need this land and, you know, therefore, you take this next step. >> but they're mitigating homes they're going to take. may i ask you to answer these questions. >> no. i'm afraid -- you could ask someone next to you to yield time. >> i will submit a question to mr. babbitt and ask -- >> thank you. >> we would be more than happy

to come over with a team and meet with you and your staff. more than happy to do that and discuss that at length. >> thank you m chairman. >> yes. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. and thanks for coming over and spending time with us today. let me run through a a couple quick questions. is there a ballpark figure for what has cost to date to implement and what you anticipate it will cost to complete the projects. next gen is this next large broad term and a lot of other random pieces. give us a round figure what it's cost to date and what you think it will cost to complete. >> there's a number, that's a different question to answer. i could probably give you a more accurate and better answer, you know, by pulling all these figures together. it's in the multiple billions. >> that's -- it's a figure i've been looking for and not able to find. i'm asking if there's a way to pull those figures together to give us a number to say here's what it's cost to date, what it

will cost to complete that would be helpful. the numbers seem to be all over the board. >> then, too, what complicates it, congressman, is the fact that some of these components are next gen itself, in other words if we define next gen as the ability to communicate with the aircraft, navigate the aircraft, surveil the aircraft, and the technologies that surrounds that, does it also include training for the, for example, the controllers? how about the communication, the facilities we may have to build, en route modernization and so forth? so all of these things support next gen. we can break that down for you and say this is direct next gen, supportive of next gen, this would be desirable to accelerate next gen. >> that would be terrific. tell me about the interaction between us and europe? we've got the two most frequently used air spaces in the worl and i know they're implementing their process. how is that communication going relating to their process which is different than our process?

>> they're looking to have their own next gen systems, which is the single european skies initiative. they are far more on the drawing board stages. we use it today. they don't. it's simply a discussion i it tem with them. but we are very close communication with them. for that matter, we're working with all of our international partners. it would be foolish for us to have a system not interoperable. we want an airplane to go from anywhere in the world owned by anyone in the world to any other place in the world and use the technology to the fullest extent. >> you feel confident once we're implementing next gen it is going to be operable with whatever is constructed in europe and the relationship there. what i don't want is our commercial aircraft to have to have two different systems to cross. >> no. nor do they. we've had good dialog with them. i would say we're, you know, very, very far ahead of them. i mean we actually have, as i've

noted a number of cities, areas, the area on the east coast of florida, in the melbourne area, completely equipped all the training aircraft, use next gen today. it's a wonderful system. we have it deployed a lot of places. >> to my relationship again, not to get off the european consideration here, i'm hearing lots of conversation about taxation cap and trade type implementation in the commercial airline bases and increase the tax possibly coming to fly into european space. are you aware of that and can you bring the dispute of what's happening with that? >> we like to address those as a country. we have used iko as the vehicle to address these. we don't think it's appropriate for any individual country to stake out on their own and say we have our standards and anyone coming in here would, you know, have to live by our standards. so we have very much been active participants in iko, very

supporti supportive. as the faa, this administration and this country in coming up with a uniform worldwide trade or i'm sorry system that would acknowledge what we want to do for the environment and work on something that if you comply, you'll be invited to participate and fly into any air space anywhere in the world. we think that's wait to go. >> a couple more quick questions. one is dealing with the alternative fuels. there's, again, chatter to moving to alternative fuels, research projects put into previous versions that did not pass through at this point. what are alternative fuels that you would look at and say in this authorization i like to see this in there or are there any? >> we have -- you should be aware of a couple initiatives we have, a clean program, continuous low energy emissions and noise which we have a great partnership with people in the community. we have five different engine manufacturers involved. the air frame manufacturers

working together with other parts of the industry to develop technologies that burn less fuel. we're ahead of our goal of reducing fuel consumption 2% annually thanks to the partnership we have. alternative fuels fall in that area. a couple kinds of considerations. one is the quest for renewable fuels so, you know, biofuels, areas like that. we have the problems of existing fuels that are going to be phased out. the epa wants to eliminate lead from all fuels. 100 low lead octane we burn in a number of general aviation aircraft. i signed an aviation rule making committee to put an arc together, this committee, to find a suitable drop in replaceable fuel as quickly as possible so we can move to this fuel. the issue is that we don't want to have lead additives outlieued before we have an alternative fuel to replace it. i'm comfortable working with the industry we'll find it.

we have a number of fuels today, one of the problems without getting too technical, lead in and of itself is a lubricant and you can replace it with nickel and get the same octane. the trouble is the engine life is cut in half. nobody wants that. also we need these fuels to be drop in. you need to put it in the same tank, pump it through the same hose, carburetors and not have some unsbenchdsed consequence come from corrosion or leaguage or things like that. >> thank you. my time has expired. if i could get a formula from the if, aa for how they make decisions on consolidation. if that's in print to review some metric to say this is how we decide whatever it may be, this is our plan how we make that strategy. >> yes, sir. we have a pretty thoughtful analysis we use and we look in the geography. if we find an area where it seems -- think about it in simple terms. if we have within say a 200 mile

range, four or five traycons each one has backup facilities, backup generators, backup it, could we consolidate that into one area? and one of the things that i'm real pleased we've been able to do is get with our colleagues, whether it's the members of pass or natca and say this is the business case. we want to sit down does this make sense to you. i'm pleased to say we've enjoyed from etty good success. we consolidated eight facilities to achieve savings and did it with agreement. it's working. >> thank you. my time has expired. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. babbitt, thank you very much for coming today. i was here, my plane came in a little later and i wasn't able to be here for the whole time. >> i hope it wasn't our fault. >> actually it was -- everything was on time. i couldn't get one out of panama city earlier. i wanted to -- i was reading through your comments that you

had shared earlier and some very impressive numbers and i want to commend you. it talks about approximately 750 million people through the system on an annual basis. and 50,000 flights are operated on any given day. that's an enormous success. i commend you and your staff for working to create that record. i want to ask, i was born and raised in a home where mom always taught us that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. and that saying sticks with me the older i get. i want to ask some questions regarding as far as your controllers and really in light of what i've seen and just the general public, so the questions i ask are questions just my own curiosity. i do not come from an aviation background. i just want to ask some questions. how many -- how many air traffic controllers does the faa employ

throughout your entire system? >> right now we employ in round numbers about 15,500 air traffic controllers. >> the -- so, obviously, they in order to do the numbers that you stated in your comments, i'm sure the majority of them are blowing and going and doing a great job. in light of what we saw in the papers, again you made reference to sending a team up to new york and i commend you, you're going to do your due diligence and gather all the factses as any t facts as anyone in your position would do. i'm just wondering under what kind of scenario, as far as the disciplinary action, if your findings are that what we read about is true, that people were away from their stations, that they had responsibilities, one person was carrying on the work load of three, what are you -- i mean under what condition is there a zero tolerance? i mean, we've got to be ahead of

the curve to make sure that wonderful success ratio continues going forward. i mean, is there a zero tolerance? because their position is so critical to the safety record. >> yes, sir. we have taken some pretty severe actions in cases where the people have not performed what they should have been doing. and the relationship we enjoy today more often than not, they agree. they are no more tolerant of unprofessional behavior than we are. they have their own professional standards and that's an improving area for them. i applaud them for it. professional airline pilots have a similar type program. we've seen that coming out in mechanics where you' discipline with your peers. we can't watch everything. they can. >> you know, everyone seems to be talking about the need to get a dollar out of a dime. i mean, obviously the fiscal mess that we are in as a country, it's going to take

everyone rowing and everyone doing their part. as far as going forward, our air-traffic controllers, are they subject to the president's pay freeze that is in place for all federal employees? >> well, they're subject in the sense that if we had an open agreement with them, yes, we'd have to live by it. what the controllers have in place was a contract that was negotiated several years ago and, you know, by obligation, by both contract law and statutory requirement, we were obliged to live up to that agreement. >> are there any other employees in your agency that are under current labor contracts, that the pay freeze stated by the president would not apply to? >> well, we entered a new agreement with another section, the noncontroller section, but because the pay freeze was in effect, we limited them to no more than anybody under the pay freeze would get, and they've

agreed to that. that's difference. this was negotiated in an earlier time prior to and therefore is, you know, immune from. interestingly, the actual -- you know, without getting into details, what was proposed for them in terms of a series of step raises was somewhere in the ballpark of what government employees would be getting anyway. so it wasn't like it was dramatically different than what a standard person under the gs scale would have gotten. >> no, and again, i know it's going to take everyone to row to get us out of this mess we're in, okay, because we are in a mess, and financially. so i guess my question is not to pick on them or -- i'm just saying, you know, going forward i would say that someone in your position, you want to make sure that it's fair and equitable and that everyone is doing their part, so that was really the angle i was coming at. >> and i appreciate it. i mean, we looked -- we have billions of dollars of contracts with contractors, too. i'd love to go back to them and say have you heard about the

president's pay freeze. >> right. >> but i don't think they'd be any more receptive, you know, than the rest of the world. >> okay. mr. chairman, i yield the balance of my time. thank you, sir. >> thank you. thank you all. been a good hearing and appreciate the participation of all the members of the subcommittee. and just one quick question before -- i'd be remiss basically if i didn't ask if you could comment briefly on any of the opportunities and challenges for general aviation committee of the next gen deployment. >> sure. well, i think that's one of the areas that i think we have to do a better job of explaining the advantages. but one of the things that we really look forward to is the opportunity for people in general aviation to absorb information on board the aircraft that would otherwise never be available to them. we broadcast weather information that we give them and a depiction of weather that's

better than you'd get with airborne weather radar, textual information that they simply could not achieve. but the most important, we have tens -- well say not tens of but thousands of airports around the country where general aviation operations go in and out every day. those airplanes don't have a volume of traffic that could justify putting in an instrument landing system of eor approach or anything like that. we'd have to maintain the ground equipment to do it. but with next gen, all we need to do is design the approach once. there's nothing to maintain. and we can give literally thousands of airports guidance, vertical and horizontal guidance, to make safer approaches for a very, very minimum cost. so we're talking about the smallest airports. we're talking about airports that are just below the size that could command that where someone with a business jet who won't keep their airplane there or might have to go there to deliver parts or something now

has the han approach to that airport, they can provide services to that town they otherwise couldn't and they'll get that with next gen. the ability -- the helicopter example is a great one. they can fly and see the other helicopters out over the gulf. they had no ability to do that before. and so they can sequence themselves visually, you know, with digital help. so all of these things are great aids for general aviation. a good example is what goes down at emery riddle. all of those aircraft safety trainings are very complicated for us in general aviation where you have students literally sometimes 30 and 40 aircraft into a training area and they're maintaining separation visually and they're doing maneuvers. that's very complicated. but next gen, they have on board. they can see where the other airplanes are. tremendous improvement in safety for them. and that's just the tip of the iceberg. there's a lot of safety enhancements that come from general aviation and i think, you know, it as time goes on

they're seeing more and more of the benefits. our obligation is to explain it to them better and i think once they appreciate all the benefits they're going to appreciate the acceleration a lot more. >> well, again, thank you very much. and i will be holding another hearing tomorrow. this hearing is adjourned. >> thank you, sir.