FAA Reauthorization, Cockpit Automation Among The Main Topics

Two Washington notables were the keynote speakers at the opening general session of the NBAA Convention in Orlando, FL Tuesday morning.

Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Bill Shuster (pictured) is the chair of the House Transportation Committee which has jurisdiction over many aviation issues, including authorizing the FAA.

Shuster said that the conversation for the next FAA reauthorization bill is well underway, but he hopes to make this next reauthorization bill 'transformational.'

"We need to think bigger than a simple FAA Reauthorization bill," Shuster said. "This is not about protectionism. This is about getting the government out of the way of you folks, of the manufacturers of this country, of the airlines, of the people who move business people around and move passengers around and move cargo around."

Shuster said that the regulatory burden is a major impediment to the industry moving forward, and that puts the U.S. at a disadvantage. "Our competitors are able to move faster, and the regulatory burdens cut across all the aviation community." He also said that the tax burden should be eased. "Europe has double the taxes on their aviation that the U.S. has, and we just can't go down that road if we expect aviation, and general aviation, to continue to grow and prosper."

Shuster said he has heard from many who say the FAA does not have the ability to complete NextGen. "The GAO recently reported that they spoke to 72 stakeholders about the FAA's progress to implement NextGen, and only five of them said they thought the FAA could do it. That's only 15 percent. That begs the question, 'Is the FAA properly organized to finish NextGen?'."

NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher Hart used his time at the podium to raise concerns about professionalism in the cockpit, and how the increasing reliance on automation might be a factor in a loss of professionalism among pilots.

Hart (pictured) cited two high-profile accidents involving airliners to make his point. In the case of Asiana Flight 214, which landed short of the runway during an approach to San Francisco, Hart said that the pilot admitted he was uncomfortable making a visual approach on a clear day with the glideslope at the airport inoperative. He also said that reliance on automation was apparently a major contributor to the accident in which Air France Flight 447 went down in the Atlantic Ocean. When the crew lost its reference to airspeed, which caused other systems to fail, he said that they had not been trained on how to fly the airplane at altitude, and had never seen such a scenario even in training. "The automation was so complicated that these two pilots didn't really understand it, and not only that, they had never seen a failure of airspeed in cruise even in training."

Hart did not offer any specific solutions to the problem. Nor did he say that automation is inherently bad in airplanes. But he did seem to suggest that pilots might rely too heavily on such systems, which might affect the way they approach their jobs.

The general opening session ended with a ribbon cutting for the exhibit floor, and the NBAA 2014 convention was officially underway.

FMI: www.nbaa.org