starts but it's my intention to try to wrap up as close to noon as we can. i've heard a lot of phrases to describe what went on just in the last few minutes, disinformation campaign, misinformation campaign, societal chaos campaign. dr. howard, i think he used one that struck me earlier, confrontational propaganda. and my suggestion is that we not come up with a single oneea because we did it with a generational issue at a fake somebody alluded to it earlier that it's much easier to take a generation that grew up with these devices and accomplished some type of change that is for somebody that has struggled like me to learn how to use the device speeded you can watch this entire hearing on our website, c-span.org. we will leave it at this point as daniel elwell, the federal aviation administration acting administrator speaks at an annual aviation safety forum

hosted by the air line pilots association labor union. >> one that manages 50,000 flights per day and staffs more than 7000 employees and overseas a $16.4 billion budget. as a second measure of the fedel aviation administration, dan elwell also supervises the nextgen program, transition air-traffic control infrastructure from ground-based radar to state of the art satellite-based technology. mr. elwell is twice has held a wide range of posts that have prepared him for his current set of responsibilities. in addition to deputy administrator he served as a senior advisor for aviation to secretary transportation elaine chao. mr. elwell was the faa assistant administrator for policy, planning and environment, and also served as legislative

fellow for the late senator ted stephens from alaska. however, his aviation experience extends far beyond the halls of government. mr. elwell is a retired lieutenant colonel in the united states air force but what i find most impressive about him is he also spent 16 years as an airline pilot. it's fair to say that he understands the importance of having to well-trained properly rested airline pilots in the cockpit and it is a true privilege to have been with us today. ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to acting administrator dan elwell. [applause] >> they told me -- there i go.

so thanks, tim. i see you consulted my mom for those introductory marks. and if i can return the favor, let me just say to all you folks that i've had the chance now to work with kim for the last 18 months since i've been back to dot, and there's no question in my mind that alpa has been very well served from his leadership. so you guys have been lucky during his tenure. so good afternoon, everyone. i'm going to start also with a thank you. this annual air safety forum is a big reason we are as safe as we are. i cannot overstate our contribution to racing the safety bar. even though at american, apa we were not part of alpa, i felt that way about alpa's safety

leadership for the whole 16 years that i was at american. pickup if you're that way now. you are heavy lifters, always have been. we are counting on that. everybody in the system counts on that. by and large, when the average joe is talk about how safe the system is, they are talking about you. now i'm back for round two back at the faa, which is a real honor and very humbling. i'm not sure if many of you know this but we're getting a big milestone this month. the faa is turning 60 -- hard to believe, especially since over half of the time i've been flying around, and it has me reflecting on how far we've come. come. not only as an agency but as a community. aviation had a rough start.

it certainly didn't start out as anything close to the safest form of transportation in the world, but barnstorming has given way to the gold standard. trial and error, tragedy and sacrifice, those are the watchwords of a pioneering era passed into the night a long, long time ago. over the last 20 years commercial aviation facilities in the u.s. have decreased by 95%. and i'm not going to stand here and claim that everything good that happened in aviation safety over the last few decades is thanks to the regulator, thanks to faa, as it's not true. but how did we do it? now, my colleague, skip elliott, set yesterday. i think he put it pretty well. regulation alone cannot achieve the kind of results we demand from aviation. we are as safe as we are today

because we collaborate. airlines, pilots, manufactures, mechanics, and yes, the faa, it's old news to everybody here, this is the culture that we came up in. in a lot of ways it's all we know. but every decade or so this catches the attention of folks who are not in the aviation business, congress, the press, your cranky uncle. they scratch their heads. what do you mean the government is working with the airline? aren't they supposed to regulate and those guys? i get it. i i get the thinking, that thout process. but the relationship that exists between the faa, alpa and the rest of the industry that we regulate is the driving force

behind our unprecedented safety record. and i'm sure some of you have been following the developments in the automated vehicles world, it's hard not to, and just about every week there's a new story about which company will be the first to market or who's got the best tech or the safest systems. and we don't do that in aviation because we don't compete on safety. when incident occurs in the system, , it doesn't just happen to one airline. it happens to all of us. it shakes the public's confidence in the entire industry. so we all know safety isn't just good for business. it's our only business here that's why we have worked together to create a safety culture that is built on three key ideas. the first is voluntary

reporting. in order to keep improving our procedures, we need good data, and the best way to get it is directly from you, the people working and flying in the system. we have set up programs that allow aviation professionals to share critical safety data without fear of punishment, and information we received has been absolutely invaluable. that leads me to the second pillar of our safety culture. risk management. once we have collected all this data we analyze it and look for trends that emerge. we identify areas of risk that can be addressed before incidents occur. and that leads us of course to the third piece of the puzzle, effective mitigation. once we find an issue, the question becomes, how do we deal with it? inadvertent mistakes can often be traced back to flawed procedures or a simple lack of

understanding. and in those circumstances we work with you and the rest of the commercial aviation safety team, in most cases, to develop safety enhancements that will mitigate the risk. we monitor the situation and make sure that the solution works. and this has become the most effective way to allow for an open exchange of information while still ensuring compliance. now, this doesn't mean that strong enforcement is not still a tool available to the faa. it absolutely is. voluntary reporting as you all know isn't some kind of get out of jail free card. when we find intentionally reckless behavior, flagrant violations, or simply a refusal to comply with corrective actions, we levy fines and would take legal action. and even revoke a companies the

ability to operate. but, of course, that is extremely rare. in most cases the industry adopts our safety measures voluntarily. for the simple reason that everybody operating within the aviation industry shares the same goal, making our system as safe as possible. and that's allowed us to build an environment of mutual trust. so let me give you an example. some of you may know this example of what a safety culture looks like in action. last year a commercial airline crew landed on a taxiway instead of a runway at an airport without a control tower. the crew voluntarily reported the incident to the faa, since they knew they could speak freely without fear of reprisal. they were comfortable discussing exactly what happened. it turns out the only lights that they saw that night were

coming from the taxiway. thanks to the crews report, we found that a flooded electrical box had extinguished the runway lights. the problem was fixed before another flight crew could make the same mistake. voluntary reporting, risk management, effective mitigation. now, it's important to know the system, of course only works if each one of those three prongs is functioning properly. remove any one of them, the whole thing falls apart. so i think it's pretty clear, working with industry doesn't lower the bar on safety. it's what allows us to raise it even higher. and we we're going to need thee partnerships more than ever, if we're going to tackle the challenges heading our way in the future. we have entirely new classes of users asking for airspace

access. drones, commercial space vehicles are here and they are not going away. but a lot of these companies don't have experience working in the aviation business. they don't understand the culture we build and how important it is. so it's incumbent upon all of us to welcome them into the fold and to share the lessons we have learned. especially the lessons written in blood. we also need to make sure we are ready for the dramatic increase in air traffic we're going to see in the coming decades. last year i had a forecast the number of air passengers traveling will nearly double by 2036. that's 7.8 billion passengers worldwide. i know how well to say this, but we're going to need a heck of a lot of pilots to fly all those

people around. and i know there's some skepticism at the about whether there is a real problem with the pilot supply pipeline. what we can see the trends, and they don't look promising. in the last ten years the number of private pilots holding active airman certificates has decreased by 27%. 27%. and i was just at oshkosh last week and that was a big topic of discussion. a number of commercial pilots in the same time has decreased by 21%. the military, which used to be one of our best source for new hires is not turning out as many pilots as it used to, and the airport airports claimed to be 10% below the figures that they need. college aviation programs, they don't have enough instructors to teach new students because they are taking jobs with the

airlines as soon as they have enough hours. and only about 40% of commercial airline pilots are under the age of 45. and a huge bubble of the hires in the '80s of which i was one e of create tsunami of retirements in the next five to ten years. it's going to further deplete the ranks. so some of your employers are already starting to take some action on this with in-house training programs and increase salaries, but this is something we all need to pay attention to. you know, ensuring an adequate pilot supply, that doesn't fall under faa's jurisdiction. but it is our responsibility to ensure that the pilots who do have in the system received the best training and are held to the highest standard. and we're not going to compromise on that.

so if there are not enough qualified pilots to meet the demand that we know is coming, it's going to reduce potential growth and ultimately impact the system nationwide and because it's a global shortage, globally. and nobody wants that. we also do not assume the way pilots learn and gain experience should remain static. we don't rest on our laurels, and just like all the rest of safety, our work here is never really finished. we have to look at data. we have to address american risks, and we have to consider how advancements in technology should be factored in to how we measure a pilots qualification. the faa has been improving our training standards across all categories for a number of years, and we're going to

continue looking at the tools and options available to us so that america's pilots remain the best in the world. and i was just telling joe, i really like this, and steve, this training for life slogan. i think that's a great way to talk about what we go through as pilots, what you guys go through. it's a lifelong commitment to be as straight as you are and as qualified. but we know that this is a shared responsibility. that's why the faa is holding an aviation workforce symposium at reagan national airport september 13 and we're going to be bringing together a wide variety of stakeholders to discuss how we can attract more young people to the aviation industry. improve the quality and efficiency of training and build better partnerships to support our next generation of pilots and aviation technicians.

now, i know this this is a topt a lot of people care about, and i'm sure it is going to be a lot of passionate discussion, and i welcome it. this is the conversation we need to have as a community. it will not be a unilateral discussion. because the imports of pilot qualifications and training cannot be overstated, we all prepare for the worst case scenario while praying it never comes. and for most of us, thankfully, it doesn't. when it does, good training to make the difference between life and death. and look what happened with southwest 1380. if any of us got a situation like that, we would call it dial a disaster. catastrophic engine failure, explosive depressurization, passenger medical emergency. but it was real life.

the captain and first officer and the crew exemplified great grace under pressure. they got the plane back on the ground. it was a near perfect application of excellent training by an experienced team. excuse me. and it probably saved a lot of lives. and they can't thank them enough for their professionalism and heroism that day. and that's the real reason for aviation safety records. it's all of you. you're the pointy end of the spear. pilots, , controllers, mechanic, manufacturers, all professional professionals. we went more than nine years without a commercial aviation facility in the united states. think about that. that's about 90 million flights,

and then a single life lost. a lot of people look at that record and say, wow, that's incredible. and it is. but it's not good enough. it's not good enough for me, and i know it's not good enough for you either. it can't be. jennifer reardon, 43, a wife, a mom on her way back home to her family. i think about her a lot. i think we all do. aviation is the only form of transportation on the planet where the idea of perfection actually seems within reach. we always have the opportunity to do better, to be better, and we can't, we won't stop

reaching. thank you very much. [applause] >> dan, map of the 60,000 lives of of air line pilots association, we appreciate your public service and all the work on behalf of of our membership to keep our skies safe. thank you very much. okay, we'll take a break. please be back in your seats exactly a few minutes before 1:30. we will begin with our next event. thanks very much. [inaudible conversations] >> this conference on air safety re-airs re-airs tonight at eight fancy

bear including a speech but faa acting administrator. senator bob casey who is working on a bill regarding in-flight sexual assault led off the conference this morning. we were not able to show you earlier due to the length of another live event but here are his remarks as we wait for the white house briefing which is coming up shortly live here on c-span2. >> captain, think you very much. i know i might be among the first speakers of the day and i'm cognizant of that as a difficult assignment sometimes. the only more difficult assignment is to be the speaker right before lunch. so i won't abuse my privilege of speaking to this morning. i know you are here at a time when normally if your here on a thursday you have congress full of activity. the house and the senate. at least on the senate side. i'm n