tool to deal with them, if you have congress on the record and giving our air carriers some relief of what is something that is unfair and a violation of the law in the united states. >> the fact that there's widespread opposition in our government is significant. we are committed to working with congress on how best to respond to it. >> all right. well let me one other question quickly. there's a recent report that he said that the faa has not set a baseline for the six next next-gen programs? when will they do this since we will not have information on how they will be delivered and how much they will cost the american people until it is delivered. >> it's critical to get it right, as we deploy the aviation

system of the future. my own background as leader of a large technology company, i think has served me well as i got into the faa, one of the first things that i did when i arrived at the faa was establishing a management office with the responsibility of delivering next-gen programs as their major area of focus and to strengthen our next-gen organization to make sure they had the resources and tools that they needed to ensure that the agency is meeting the commitments. of the six programs, three have been baseline and we have -- and we are on track for meeting the commitments in those baselines, but we are trying to find the appropriate balance and how we mitigate risk based on developing the appropriate levels of information so that we know what we are getting into before we establish the base looirns. we are very focused on

delivering benefit and hitting our targets and i think we are making good progress. >> do you have schedule for the last three? you mentioned three that you are -- >> i'm sorry. >> the other three of the six that you said have not -- that are not baselined, when do you expect? with regard to those -- >> we would be happy to meet with your staff to go over each of the programs and where they are. >> thank you, my time is expired, thank you. >> senator? >> thank you very much, mr. huerta, let me ask you a couple of questions. generally the aviation committee from my state, it's important, the rural aspect of it, the ep has inched an nprm on av gas, we have heard a lot of comments as i'm sure faa has heard a lot of comments. fa is responsible for certifying

the gas that goes in the planes. we are hopeful that there are no moves by epa or faa to phase out the gas until there's truly an appropriate and economical drop in fuel. can you comment? >> we share your concern, it's the remaining leaded fuel, but it meets the requirements that exist in aviation. and the faa completely understands the importance of having reasonable alternatives before any effort is made to phase out av gas. i'm committed to working with epa so as to ensure that it does not happen. >> when you say reasonable, economical is part of that? >> certainly. >> okay. good. because for us, in alaska it's truly the highway in the sky, it's critical that we have the right ability and when we converted, a much higher level of leaded gas to unleaded which was our vehicles, it took, many,

many, many years to do that and it was not overnight and i'm worried that epa has a different view of life here, that they can flip the switch and make it all magic. i'm glad you make the statement that you just said, because you understand the faa component of this and the economic component of this. can you keep us informed if there are milestones occurring that we need to be aware of? i guarantee we will hear quickly in alaska and we want to make sure we are on top of this issue? >> absolutely, we would be happy to. >> thank you. and the other one is, we have this battle on a fairly regular bases the administration in the 13 budget had the $100 user fee on ga, gentle aviation users and i honestly think it's -- you know, it's creating another system that does not need to be created. we have a per gallon tax asse assessed that the aviation community is supportive of, it's existing and works well.

to create another system, where now it's $100 user fee for certain ga users, i think it's just going to be burden some and will create another program. can you comment on that? i know it's a budget issue, and i'm sure you have your views on it, from a practical thing of how to put it in place, it creates another system. and the other system has been supported by the users. >> the president put forward a proposal with the intent of finding better ways to share the costs of the operation of the aviation system with the users of the system. and that was why it was included in his proposal for the fiscal 2013 budget. the appropriators have not seen fit to act on that.

and we understand that how we look at the long-term financing questions of the faa is something that we need to do in talks with congress. >> we would be happy to engage with you on that, and i think the general aviation folks, we are happy to, in general, if there's a process and they know the value comes back to the users, in this case, they are always willing to sit down and work it out. i look forward to that. do you -- and i want to follow-up on what senator thune talked about on next-gen and that is quickly, you talked about the baselines and three more to go. if you were to say -- if you could give a percentage of where do you think you're at with full implementation, where would you say we are at?

10%, 20%, 30%, do you have a fair -- in all the pieces, i know there's multiple pieces, if you can take a 30,000 view looking down, where do you think we are at? >> i think it's important to look at it in the context of there having -- being both a geographic component to it as we move it out across the country and then there are varying levels of capables. and we are making progress in both areas. we made a commitment to employ one of the technologies, it's known as automatic dependent surveillance broadcast. that it would be deployed by 2013 and we are on track. this as you know is a technology that we first deployed in alaska. >> that is right. >> and what it gives the pilot is much greater situational awareness, it gives us a precise of what is happening in the air space system. so we are well on track to

delivery there. this year, we are giving a focus on performance based negotiation. more precise routes that shows track miles flown and reduces cost on few. we are trying to reduce deployment time from procedures from five to ten years down to three and sometimes two years and we are doing it in metropolitan areas across the country. later this summer, we will take a first step in deploying our data-com program, it's a great technology, what it addresses head on is one of our principal challenges for efficiency as well as for maintaining safety and that is to ensure that communications between controllers and pilots are accurate, precise and delivering in a timely fashion. so we are on track for the beginning of that program later on this year. we are making progress, but it's

a long-term delivery program that we have. we have milestones that go all the way out to 2025 for the delivery of next-gen, and it's important to us that we hit those and deliver the benefits to the users of the system. >> thank you very much, thank you for your testimony, i look forward to supporting you in the final, thank you very much for coming here and spending time with me yesterday on all the issues we talked about. thank you. >> thank you, senator? >> thank you, chairman. mr. huerta, my recommendation to you would have been when senator boxer finished her introduction that you say, i plead my case and let it go at that. because you are getting some pressures here for things that i really don't think are justified. we have been fiddling around with next-gen technology before the turn of the century. and company after company, the

best names in technology, aviation technology were included. and i was in the computer business before i came here. and the fact of the matter is that there was failure after failure after failure with billions of dollars spent and so while we want you to push along and hurry it up as much as you can, i think on balance, it has to be recognized that you're not responsible for the delay but you'll be responsible for the management of where we go and we look forward to that. i think that we are fortunate that you are here, willing to serve at this job because you are not going to get a lot of pats on the back no matter what you do. the air traffic control tower at new york liberty airport is critical to the entire aviation system, to the flying public, but the tower is constantly

under staffed. i have received many assure answers from the faa over the years that this issue would be remedied, but the problem per assists, we are still short a significant number of fully trained controllers. when might the newark tower be fully staffed. >> senator, as you and i spoke about, the staffing range for newark liberty airport is estimated to be somewhere 2032 and 38 controllers that would be appropriate to operate the facility and we have below that number in the high 20s of certified controllers in the facility. we have an effort under way this year to transfer a number of additional controllers into the facility and plans for 2013. the other thing that we have done for newark liberty has been to in recognition of the unique complex air space that we have in northern new jersey and great new york, we have placed a tour

simulator in that facility to provide the ability to do more on the ground training for controllers in that particular facility and with the unique air space requirements that it has. that went into place earlier in year, in march and i think that we are seeing some benefit associated with that, but we have to continue to focus on that. the new york area is critical for us, and newark liberty is part of that. most of the delays in the air traffic system have as their starting point the new york area. and so, focusing on ensuring that we have the appropriate technology, the appropriately trained staff in place is something that we have to continue to focus on. >> you were asked a question some minutes ago about what you are -- what performance we might expect if there's less funding. can things get better with less funding? >> clearly, funding is essential

in our ability to deliver the next generation air transportation system, and this committee and the congress have been very supportive of those efforts. but we in the agency bare the responsibility to do it as efficiently as possible and to ensure that we are priorityizing those things that deliver the with benefits for the users of the system. that is a conversation that we will continue to have. we are all in government, we all understand the fiscal challenges that we as a country face and the faa needs to be part of that conversation. >> the fa authorization that was signed into law this year. exempts some projects from environmental review, i think perhaps, senator thune was raising that question. the exemptation has been raising concern in my area that there

will be more noise. how is faa going to provide communities with an opportunity for public input? that is critical and that is a complaint that we hear about regularly and really in some instances very angrily as you can imagine. what can we do there? >> this specific provision that you are referring to deals with environmental reviews related to the development of navigation procedures. and we are working to figure out how best to implement a process that we need to do as efficiently as possible. having said that, why do these things take so long to develop? there's great environmental benefit in getting navigation procedures out as quickly as possible. and the benefit is that you

reduce fuel burn and track miles and noise. so, getting them into the system, as quickly as possible is generally a good thing. what is legislation suggested is find ways to cut down that time. and so we are looking at the full scope of what needs to be done there. everything from the development of the procedure, to how it is designed, the environmental process, how it is deployed, operationalized and how do we evaluate whether it's doing what it was intended to do. that is the process that we are trying to cut from 5-10 years to 2-3. so, you know, clearly the direction we received from congressnd the environmental area is an important factor that we are focused on, but we are looking at the full scope of what is needed to be done here so that we can cut this time down. >> madam chairman, i close with this, if i might, and that is to -- i would like your commitment that you are going to devote the time and energy to

solving the newark air traffic control problem that we wrestle with constantly. >> absolutely. >> thank you very much. >> senator blount? >> thank you for the good job you are doing, as you and i talked about -- as i said when we visited the other day, you know, there are probably hard to find a group of 535 people that fly more or think they are more experts in air traffic air traffic than members of congress, so it makes your job harder than a lot of the other regulatory jobs. but i've been impressed by the way you have been doing it and hope that we can maybe, moving permanently into the position allows you to finalize things in a better way. i have two or three things i want to ask about. on the pilot flight rule, at one point it looked like to me that the faa was moving toward having

the same flight rules for passenger pilots as cargo pilots which i did not think was necessary and eventually you decided that wasn't necessary either, is that what you'll continue to stand on, that you are moving the passenger pilots to other rules? is that the status? >> when we finalized the rule at the end of last year, we exempted the cargo industry from the provisions of the rule as it was final enacted, hour at that time, secretary lahoud and i encouraged the cargo industry to opt into the program and to do the same things that are required in the rule to manage fatigue in the system. we met with the cargo industry and we continue to urge them to

abide by the provisions of the rule. >> but you are not requiring them -- you are requiring them to provide -- to abide by the provisions of the previous rules, correct? >> correct. >> on the cost of that, i guess there was a wide range of, i think your -- the faa thought that cargo companies complying with the rule would cost about $30 million and they thought $600 million. have you looked more carefully at that cost benefit, how they can have that big a number and how that numbers could be that widely divergent? >> we are evaluating the cost benefits of the cargo portion of the analysis that we did, and we brought a third party in to advise us in doing that and we expect to complete that review in the up coming weeks. >> would you send me a copy of that review what it's available? >> certainly. >> i think there will be more and more pressures on

cost/benefit generally as regulation is becoming a bigger and bigger concern at all levels and maybe you all can figure out how to help set the standard for how to make that work. on the faa training and conference center, there's language in the senator appropriations bill that directs the faa to continue to pursue new leased space for that center, you were a long way down that path last year, and didn't get there at the end, what is your ongoing plan for how to look at that -- the future of how you are going to conduct those training facilities, moving people in and out of one training facility to get their training? >> senator, as we talked about when we met, the faa, when we were evaluating our training needs, we had developed an approach which included two

components, one was to enter into some sort of arrangement or lease for a facility and then the development of the training itself. in light of the fiscal challenges we were facing, as we were doing our work in that project, one of the things that we had some concern about was entering into a long-term lease, given the fiscal challenges that we knew we were going to face in the future. at the same time however, we -- we were hearing that there were alternative models to conduct training where we would contract for services from entities that would provide the training and facility. so it was in that -- it was in that spirit that we suspended work on the -- in looking at a training facility. all of our options are on the table as we look at the review going forward of what is the best way to conduct training for the faa's needs. we are a very technical organization so training is

critical to our mission. and as i mentioned, the proposals that we had received on the training facility were very good proposals, and none of the bidders did anything that represented a problem, it really is a question of is it prudent to enter into a long-term lease when we might have an alternative to on contract for services? >> well, i don't know about all of the bidders, i do know in kansas city's bid for this, they had invested lots of money in the bid, which is also something that the faa needs to think about, when you go out forbid and you have competitive bidders making substantial investments to try to make it work and just decide well maybe that is not what we needed to do, you probably ought to pull that trigger when you are a little more sure where you are headed. though, economic circumstances are clearly different than they may have been a handful of years ago when that discussion could

have started. will you make a decision on -- whether to go forbids that include training or whether to go forbids that only include facilities at some point, do you think? >> at some point we have to decide whether we want to contract for training as a service where the trainer would provide everything, the facility, the materials, the actually instruction, or whether we would want to use the model we used in the past, which is to first have a facility and then bring trainers into it with the faa having the responsibility for development of materials. and that is exactly the analysis that we are in the middle of. >> and are the trainers right now, faa full-time employs -- or are they contracted empl eed em now and in a sense, depending on who contracts for them?

>> they are always contract employees. and it be any number of models. >> yes? >> i hate to be -- >> am i out of time. >> we do votes to do. chairman, let me go ahead and -- >> is that all right? okay. okay, thank you for your courtesy, senator? >> thank you, mr. chairman. we appreciate you being here and we do appreciate your service, i know you have worked really hard in the past. let me ask you about faa's certification. you know, certainly this is so important, you know we have to be effective, it has to be sufficient, we produce a lot of aviation products we are a global marketplace and it's important that it's done in a timely fashion. unfortunately, sometimes that is not the case. you know, it's not done very timely. can you comment a little bit on perhaps some ideas that you have, how we can do a better job

of that in the future. and you know, any proposals that you have got in solving that problem? >> senator, i think there are two parts to it. the first is to ensure that we are establishing a -- the right priorities and that we are doing our -- carrying out our certification responsibilities as efficiently as we possibly can. and we have put in place, in recent years, mechanisms that enable us to establish those priorities and to do things in parallel so that we are not taking just a lot of time to certify these things. now, as you well know, the certification process is important. because that is how we ensure safety of aviation equipment, aircraft, and everything that goes into the operation of our system. the second thing is though, w k working with industries for the technical aspects of certification, where we can rely

on the industry to perform some of the technical work while the -- leaving for the faa, the analysis and ultimately the determinations as to air-worthiness, that has given us greater band width, more ability to move more things, to move more things through the process. we have been successful working down the backlog, and we are not where we need to be. to me, what that means is we have to give renewed emphasis, as to what we can do for the technical aspects and continue to find ways to make the process more efficient. some of it is just doing things in parallel, as opposed to waiting for one aspect of the analysis to be done before moving on to the next one. but, i have met with many, many interests in the general aviation industry and the aircraft manufacturing industry and we have learned a lot and i think it's something that

requires a very high level of my focus to stay the course there. >> i appreciate that, we talk about jobs a lot and the economy and we cannot talk too much about it. and again, these are the things that play into that. in relation to that, i understand that we are moving more towards a risk based safety oversig oversight. would certification be one of those things that either is going to be done in that way more or something to be considered in that regard? >> by moving to, it's a bit of a different animal. the risk based approach is how we ely evaluate where there may be operational issues in the system. and in the past, years ago, we tended to use more of a forensic approach, which was a problem emerged and an accident happened, you reviewed what caused it and the focus was on how to prevent it from happening in the future. through data driven approaches what we are trying to develop

more information about where there may be the potential, what does the data tell us in terms of patterns that might be developing where if not addressed, there might be a problem that would emerge down the road. and this is definitely where we are focused. how can we use risk management techniques to identify areas of risk, to address them before there's a problem? and that is what i referred to in my opening statement, how do you take the safest system in the world and make it safer? you do it by making it smarter. we have to rely on data and use the data in ways that we can develop a better understanding of where there may be risk and take actions to mitigate it. >> fine. and again, it does seem like, and i think we are really saying the same thing, that with the certification process, that you know, some things people need to devote more time to than other

things. and, again, hopefully working together we can make that rule more effective. thank you mr. chairman. very much. >> thank you, senator. senator? >> thank you very much, mr. chairman and thank you so much, acting minister for being here today and answering our questions in a straight forward manner. the airport improvement program is important to many communities rural and and urban and additionally smaller airports that are central to rural commerce often struggle to get the funds needed for infrastructure updates. the projects cost doubled from 5% to 10%. i'm concerned on the effect that the new requirement could force small airports which in the scheme of things are not as small as some like we have in deluth to delay completion of

infrastructure projects that were in delay before the higher local match went into effect. i do not think it's fair to change the rules mid stream and i hope you work with the airports to complete their projects, it's obviously just important, you cannot change the rules mid stream and expect everything to keep going on as planned. i'm going to be in deluth tomorrow, and was wondering what i can tell them about that. >> the small airports play a very important role in our national system of airports. as you know, i had the pleasure of joining you a couple of years ago in an airport in minnesota that i think serves an important need in the community. this question of the local match is something that was included in faa authorization and we certainly recognize the burden that it represents for some of our smaller airport