Bolen Calls For Continued Recognition Of Aviation’s Importance | Aero-News Network
Aero-News Network
RSS icon RSS feed
podcast icon MP3 podcast
Subscribe Aero-News e-mail Newsletter Subscribe

Airborne Unlimited -- Most Recent Daily Episodes

Episode Date

Airborne-Monday

Airborne-Tuesday

Airborne-Wednesday Airborne-Thursday

Airborne-Friday

Airborne On YouTube

Airborne-Unlimited-09.29.25

AirborneNextGen-
09.30.25

Airborne-Unlimited-10.01.25

Airborne-Affordable Flyers-10.02.25

AirborneUnlimited-10.03.25

Tue, Mar 18, 2014

Bolen Calls For Continued Recognition Of Aviation’s Importance

Remarks Come During A Washington Forum With Other Aviation Advocates

Representing the business aviation community on a panel with fellow aviation advocates, NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen on March 13 repeated his call for federal policies that support the industry as a primary source for America’s competitive leadership in the world. “Ours is a great industry,” Bolen told the audience of aviation-policy leaders. “We create jobs, we are the world’s leader in aerospace technology; we contribute exports; and we move people and cargo around the world.”

Bolen’s comments came during a panel at the Federal Aerospace Forecast Conference focused on the next FAA reauthorization. The conference was held in Washington, DC, and hosted by the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE). “We have the world’s safest and most efficient air transportation system,” Bolen continued. “We should support it and defend it. We should reject policies that burden the industry with unnecessary costs, like the $100 per-flight user fee in President Obama’s most recent budget proposal.

“We frankly think the Administration’s user fee proposal is bad policy, and would negatively impact an industry that provides over a million good jobs, serves communities nationwide, and enables thousands of small to mid-size companies to be successful in a tough economy.”

Bolen, and leaders from the aerospace, airports and the airline sectors, agreed that funding uncertainty, driven in part by 23 budget extensions over five years before Congress finally completed an FAA reauthorization in 2012, has only added to the challenge of funding FAA programs.

“Last year’s budget battles, which led to sequestration and furloughs for air traffic controllers, created even more disruptions and distractions,” Bolen pointed out. “Hopefully, having been through all of this is an incentive for getting to a longer-term FAA reauthorization this time.”

Joining Bolen on the panel were Todd Hauptli, president and CEO of AAAE; Marion Blakey, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association and Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president for legislative and regulatory policy, Airlines for America.

Bolen reiterated several points he made in an earlier House Aviation Subcommittee hearing on the state of U.S. aviation, held in December 2013. He said that as lawmakers look to what should follow the current FAA-enabling legislation, which expires in September 2015, they should continue stable and consistent general fund support for the national aviation system, preserve general aviation’s contribution to the system using the efficient fuel tax, and maintain congressional oversight of funding the system.

“The FAA needs to perform its mission effectively in a time of budget constraint, which means continuing to work on finding efficiencies, streamlining the certification process, and prioritizing NextGen air traffic control (ATC) management improvements,” he said.

Bolen noted there is “unanimity that simply maintaining the status quo is not a good long-term plan,” but that ideas such as following a Canadian model are not scalable, and may not work for an aviation system as large and complex as the one in the U.S. “Canada’s system is one-tenth the size of the U.S., and considerably less complex,” he said.

By way of illustration, he said, “It is unlikely that a large aerospace corporation would scrap its policies and procedures and replace them with those followed by a relatively small machine shop.” The same challenges, he said, are found when comparing the U.S. system with those in New Zealand, Australia, or the U.K.

“Ours is the largest, safest, most effective and diverse aviation system in the world,” Bolen said. “Our challenge as we look toward FAA reauthorization is to figure out what we can do differently to stay the world’s leader in aviation.”

(Image provided by NBAA)

FMI: www.nbaa.org

Advertisement

More News

Airborne 10.03.25: Phantom 3500 Buy, ‘Chinese Military Company’, NOTAM Redesign

Also: Lufthansa Chops 4000, FlyNow eCopter, Pilatus PC-12 PRO, USMC Buys 99 CH-53Ks Otto Aerospace announced that Flexjet will be its first fleet customer and its launch customer f>[...]

ANN's Daily Aero-Term (10.05.25): Terrain/Obstruction Alert

Terrain/Obstruction Alert A safety alert issued by ATC to aircraft under their control if ATC is aware the aircraft is at an altitude which, in the controller's judgment, places th>[...]

Airborne Affordable Flyers 10.02.25: MOSAIC Start Date, AFE25 Tickets, ePulitzer

Also: Bristell Receives Part 23, Sonex Highwing Webinar, AV-30-C Update, MOSAIC Consultancy The GA community is eagerly anticipating the date that marks the beginning of a new era >[...]

NTSB Final Report: Zodiac CH 650B

The Airplane Ballooned About 10 Ft Above The Runway When It Encountered A Wind Gust Analysis: The pilot was conducting takeoffs and landings in the airplane at the time of the acci>[...]

Classic Aero-TV: RDD Enterprises' LX-7 - Taking The Lancair to a Whole New Level

From 2019 (YouTube Edition): Company Updates Its Program For Highly Modifying Lancair IV-P Airframes RDD Enterprises, a company that was created to modify Lancair IV-P airplanes in>[...]

blog comments powered by Disqus



Advertisement

Advertisement

Podcasts

Advertisement

© 2007 - 2025 Web Development & Design by Pauli Systems, LC