welcome the administrator, michael huerta. >> it is great to be back in san francisco. it was 105 degrees in washington and i can't tell you how great it was to land and hear that it was 55 degrees in san francisco. it is great to be back and i am happy to see job and my good friend, merely. i am so proud the faa is joining with this partnership on the construction of a new air traffic control tower. the faa is contributing $70 million to of effort that will create an estimated 600 jobs, including 400 construction jobs. while it creates needed jobs here today at the airport, it is also a down payment on the bay area's future. i want to affirm what you would just a second ago. this new tower is an extremely important economic investment in the structure of this region. we support 10 million jobs across the country and over 1 million of those jobs are right here in california. and 89 billion jobs of frayed trade moves through the state by air. when aviation succeeds, the economy succeeded in california succeeds. san francisco has always been america's gateway to asia. it

but eram in 2009 when randy babbitt took over and when secretary lahood was confirmed and went michael huerta got involved were not involved in eram at all. at the time it was already over budget and it was not deployed any facilities across the country. and it was in january 2010 we actually start to get involved in identifying those number of areas that we were getting on, on the positions as we are testing eram in the background that it was unacceptable and unsafe to run in air traffic control facilities to track airplanes. through hard work, through collaboration, through the passion of our controllers being involved in eram we are proud to say it is up and running continuously and five facilities across the country and hopefully we meet the goal in making 2014 and being deployed across all of our facilities. the important thing to note is eram started to be developed in 2003. and 2009 it was ready, supposedly ready to be deployed, spent 100% of its contract, and it wasn't even close to being finished. in two short years we have brought it from not being able to work any facilities to wor

our work, we've been very pleased with the knowledge and level of engagement with administrator michael huerta, first as official while serving as a deputy administrator, michael has become even more, not less active in our work since been elevated to the role of acting administrator. the disinterest of working closely with the aviation community, i am confident in our ability to overcome barriers to implementing nextgen. you commented about succession planning and i am pleased with my chairmanship sunset and i will remain on the committee, bill ayer, chairman of the alaska air group, bill has been formally leading the group as chairman and ceo, who is an experienced aviator will be taken over the chairmanship on a go forward basis as we pass the baton at the air force base here in october. and if i may, the greater skies initiative was eliminated upon by both the deputy secretary and the acting administrator of just tremendous success stories and though i won't go into details about that, this collaboration, and does work with alaska airlines, with the faa over several years, moving tracks ov