UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

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FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

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2^ND^ INTERNATIONAL AVIATION SAFETY FORUM

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THURSDAY

OCTOBER 20, 2005

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The forum came to order at 8:30 a.m. in the Washingtonian Rooms 1, 2 and
3 of the Westfields Marriott Conference Center, 14750 Conference Center
Drive, Chantilly, Virginia, Robert A. Sturgell, Deputy Administrator of
the FAA, presiding.

I N D E X

[AGENDA ITEM]{.underline} [PAGE]{.underline}

Welcome, Robert A. Sturgell, FAA 4

Opening Remarks, Norman Y. Mineta, 8

Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation

The Challenge, Marion C. Blakey, Administrator 16

Federal Aviation Administration

Keynote Address, YANG Yuanyuan, Minister, 36

General Administration of Civil Aviation, China

U.S.-China Bi-lateral Aviation Safety 49

Agreement Signing Ceremony

Administrator Blakey, Minister YANG Yuanyuan

Remarks: Secretary Norman Y. Mineta

PLENARY SESSION 1

Aviation Safety - How Safe is Safe Enough? 54

Moderator: Don Phillips, The International

Herald Tribune

Panel Members:

Kenneth M. Mead, U.S. Department of

Transportation

Dr. Graham R. Braithwaite, Cranfield University

David Ropeik, Harvard School of Public Health

Lisa Stark, ABC News

Michel Wachenheim, Director General,

Directorate of Civil Aviation of France

P R O C E E D I N G S

(8:56 a.m.)

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: Good morning, everybody. I think we\'ve
got most of our administrative things situated and squared away. I would
like to welcome everybody to the second annual FAA International
Aviation Safety Forum.

Welcome to those of you who are joining us for the first time this year.
It is a great crowd today, and we are privileged to have so many people
from so many places around the world with us today, and especially those
who are so committed to make air transportation even safer than it is.

It is a great pleasure for the FAA to host this second event, and it is
made possible by the hard work of our staff and the gracious support,
once again, of our co-sponsor, the Air Transport Association.

This International Forum would not be possible without the support we
have received from a number of sponsors, and here they are: Boeing,
Airbus, American Airlines, Bombardier, Embraer, FedEx Express, the
General Aviation Manufacturers Association, TIMCO Aviation Services,
Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasenberger, the Aeronautical Repair Stations
Association, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, G.E.
Transportation Aircraft Engines, Japan Airlines, JetBlue, and the
Airline Pilots Association. Thank you all, all of you, for your support
and for your commitment to safety.

(Applause)

You know, at our last forum we asked the conference attendees to
complete evaluations, and you will find them again in your brochures
this year, and we are asking you to do the same as well. We used what we
learned last year to shape this year\'s forum.

You told us you wanted to return to this location, and you liked the
format, and you also wanted to learn more about the international
aspects of aviation safety. So we have tried to tailor this forum to
those desires.

We have added more international topics, and we are delighted to have
more international attendees with us this year.

We have also added some demonstrations and displays, which should be an
informative addition. This afternoon you can see how we are addressing
the challenges of staying the safety course with aviation\'s growing
volume and complexity. Between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., you can see a
demonstration on required navigation performance, and you can talk to
our experts, John McGraw and Jeff Williams.

Also between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m., there is a demonstration on ADS-B, one
of the new technologies that we believe is very promising for air
traffic control. As you look through your brochure, you will find that
the locations as well as the locations of the various panels are in the
program as well.

Tomorrow we are going to have two other displays, one on the next
generation air transportation system, and another on all the work we do
at our Civil Aerospace Medical Institute. Again, this specific
information is in the back of your program.

We have a great array of international safety talent here today, and we
are looking forward to high level and provocative discussions. Now to
save time, we are introducing all of our panelists in print, and in your
registration packet you will find a booklet with the biographies of
today\'s speakers, and they are listed in their order of appearance in
the program.

In addition, we are documenting today\'s proceedings, and we will have
those available as well.

If you have any questions today, FAA staff members are on hand with the
blue staff ribbons around the rooms, and please just walk up to them and
have them help you out with whatever needs you have.

You know, this year, because of the greater international attendance and
representation, we are also providing simultaneous interpretation in
three languages, Chinese, French and Spanish, and the equipment is at
each individual seat location, and again in the brochure for each
session you will see the respective channels and the language associated
with that channel.

For presentations in any of these languages, you can hear it in English
by using the translation equipment also. Please remember, if you are
using the translation equipment, as you leave one room for another
session, please leave the equipment behind. There will be new
translation equipment in the next room.

Now just two more quick housekeeping items here. One, if you need
airport transfers, they are available at the front desk. The second one:
We will be taking questions from the audience during all of the
sessions, and you can do this in two ways. You can either stand and ask
your question \-- there will be people with microphones available \-- or
you can use one of the note cards again in the registration packet,
write the question down, hand it to a staff member, and we will get
those to the panel.

Now let\'s get to the real reason we are here, and that is to talk about
safety. Aviation is an incredibly safe way to travel, but we know we
can, and we must, make air travel safer. The public expects nothing less
than a declining accident rate, and the question is how do we make that
happen?

That is the idea behind this conference, bringing together the best
minds in aviation safety, putting together a provocative program, and
placing the key issues on the table.

I would like to now begin by introducing our first speaker. You know, in
this country, if you were to gather together the transportation experts
from the last two decades, virtually all of them would say that their
professional lives had been touched in one way or another by the
fourteenth Secretary of Transportation.

Our speaker started his public service career in California, elected
Mayor in 1971 of San Jose. As Mayor he said the tools that made the
biggest difference to his community was transportation. Our speaker
learned his lessons well. He began applying them at the national level
when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1975. In
Congress, our speaker served as Chairman of the House Public Works and
Transportation Committee. He has long been a champion for investing in
transportation infrastructure and, more important to this audience, our
speaker has long supported aviation.

After 10 terms representing California in Congress, Secretary Mineta
joined Lockheed Martin Corporation before being tapped to serve as
United States Secretary of Commerce. He was confirmed unanimously. That
unanimous show of support was repeated again in January of 2001 when he
was confirmed as the Secretary of Transportation.

It is my great privilege and pleasure to introduce the fourteenth United
States Secretary of Transportation, the Honorable Norman Y. Mineta.

(Applause.)

SECRETARY MINETA: Good morning, everyone. Bobby, thank you very much for
your wonderful introduction, but more importantly, thank you very, very
much for all that you do at the FAA. In fact, I was just asking Marion
how many years you had served in the military as a military pilot, but
again Bobby\'s background in aviation is deep and wide, and we thank him
for his great service at the FAA.

I also want to thank again Marion Blakey for the great job that she does
as the Administrator. I have been very blessed to have her by my side as
we have discussed all the issues that we have to face at the Department
of Transportation and at the Federal Aviation Administration.

Then I want to thank all of you for taking time from your own very busy
schedules and, in many cases, traveling long distances to participate in
this Aviation Safety Forum. It is encouraging to being able to look out
and see leaders from around the globe representing every facet of
aviation.

I want to extend a particular welcome to Minister Yang, China\'s
Minister of Civil Aviation, whose leadership and vision is a model for
the kind of commitment and cooperation that is necessary to make
aviation, and particularly international aviation, even safer, and
ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it, raising the safety bar
is imperative.

As proud as I am of the fact that this has been the safest period in the
history of commercial aviation in the United States, that record is
simply not good enough. Yes, we have driven the commercial fatality rate
in the United States to a record low of one for every 15 million
takeoffs, and it is encouraging to recognize the significant reduction,
300 percent, since the 1990s in the fatality rate on flights within
Asia, Africa and Latin America; and this commendable improvement among
developing nations helped to make 2004 a banner year worldwide for
commercial aviation safety; but a series of substantial crashes that
have occurred around the globe this year stand as a tragic reminder that
safety in the air cannot be placed on autopilot, and a weak link in
aviation safety anywhere reverberates throughout the international
aviation community and the global economy.

In the Twenty-first Century, a safe and seamless aviation network is
increasingly recognized as the underlying backbone of economic growth
and development. This is true nationally, and indeed it is true
internationally.

In this country, President Bush\'s commitment to strengthening relations
with our trading partners and opening markets has helped to make the
American economy one of the most prosperous and dynamic in the world,
but as our economic ties with international trading partners continues
to deepen, we grow more and more dependent on aviation links as a vital
conduit for moving people and goods, and this phenomenon is not unique
to the United States.

During my trip to Asia this spring, I had the opportunity to meet with
the national leaders and transport ministers of Japan and India, Hong
Kong, and Thailand; and every conversation seemed to return to a common
theme. That is, how to make sure that we have the transportation
infrastructure in place to support and stimulate broad economic growth.

The need to meet this challenge is one of the prime reasons why I
believe we are witnessing a significant shift toward liberalization of
aviation markets around the world. There is a growing understanding
around the globe that opening the skies to market forces allows air
transportation to realize its full potential as an engine for economic
growth.

Minister Yang and I signed a landmark aviation agreement in Beijing in
the spring of 2004. It provided for a fivefold increase in air cargo and
passenger services between the United States and China over a six-year
period, and the United States now enjoys full open skies relations with
71 partners, and these agreements are bringing the benefits of more
available, efficient and affordable air service to more than half of the
world\'s population, and maintaining a high level of safety is critical
to our ability to continue this move away from government regulation and
micro-management here at home and internationally.

Make no mistake. Safety is the bedrock upon which the entire global
aviation network rests. Weaken the foundation, and you compromise the
entire system.

We saw what happens when the public\'s faith that flying is safe is
shaken in the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001. We saw it again with the SARS outbreak and, while our efforts
to enhance safety and security have passengers returning to the skies in
record numbers, what the industry does not need is self-inflicted
wounds.

Also, it is important to remember that, to paraphrase John Donne, no
nation is an island when it comes to aviation safety. The more than
700,000 scheduled international flights into the United States every
year include passengers from virtually every country in the world on
airlines from more than 100 different nations.

Workers from countries as varied as Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and
Israel manufacture the components that make up our airplanes. Aviation
today is an inherently global enterprise, and so our safety regime
requires a global perspective.

The safety challenges in the Twenty-first Century cannot be met by
circling wagons and excluding the weak from an ever constricting ring.
The need for aviation safety knows neither geographic nor airspace
boundaries, and recognizes no distinctions between nations, rich or
poor. Neither do the consequences when safety breaks down.

That is why the United States\' approaches has been to reach out and
extend a helping hand to countries that have decided that they want to
develop their aviation systems, working with them to help their systems
meet international safety standards.

The Department\'s Safe Skies For Africa initiative is a good example,
and building on our success in helping to Cape Verde achieve the highest
rating, Category 1, on our international aviation safety assessment, we
are forging ahead with the East African Community states as they
formulated Africa\'s first ever regional safety oversight organization.

The United States is no fair weather partner when it comes to safety. We
have a 60-year history of working with countries around the globe and
through organizations like the International Civil Aviation
Organization, ICAO, and we are deepening our efforts

The Federal Aviation Administration has recently placed an international
liaison office in the Middle East and is preparing to open a Latin
American office so that we can work more readily with governments in
those regions to address safety concerns, and we have created aviation
cooperation programs in China and India which are bringing the United
States government and the American private sector together to help these
countries modernize their civil aviation systems and make them safer.

I said it last year, and it bears repeating this year. Cooperation
bilaterally and internationally, and among the public and private
sectors, is an initiative when it comes to making aviation safety
imperative and to take it to the next level.

In that regard, the International Air Transport Association deserves
special recognition for its Partnership for Safety, which targets the
airlines of developing nations for assistance, so that they can achieve
and sustain safety requirements.

Governments and manufacturers, airlines and workers, we all share a
common interest in firming up the safety backbone of our global aviation
network, and working together I am confident that we can bring the
highest standards of aviation safety to every corner of the globe.

So again, thank you for being here today, and for everything that you do
to keep America and the world traveling safely. Thank you very, very
much.

(Applause.)

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: Thank you, Secretary Mineta. We value
your leadership, and I certainly have enjoyed being part of your team at
the Department of Transportation.

Now to frame today\'s discussion about the safety challenges we face, it
is again my privilege to introduce our next speaker.

I have had the honor of working with Administrator Blakey for nearly
four years now, and I think this is the first time that I have formally
introduced her.

As the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the
National Transportation Safety Board, and the Federal Aviation
Administration, Administrator Blakey has spent her career focusing on
transportation safety. It is that very focus that brings us here today.

I will simply say with pride that it has been my honor and privilege to
serve as her Deputy. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming
Administrator Marion C. Blakey.

(Applause.)

ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: And didn\'t Bobby do a nice job of that
introduction? We\'ll let him do it again, I think. Yes, that was good,
Bobby. No, I just simply want to join with the Secretary and Bobby in
thanking you all for coming, 450 attendees from 45 countries. I\'ll tell
you, I think we should give a great round of applause to the Air
Transport Association and all of your organizations for pulling together
with us to make this possible. Thank you all for being here.

The size of the crowd shows us one thing for sure, I think. It is that
aviation safety is indeed a topic of worldwide interest. I can say
without question that everyone here is very serious about aviation and
about safety. If you are serious about aviation, you\'ve got to be
serious about safety. It is so very fundamental.

The room is full, because you want to talk about where we are, and not
just where we are or how we got here, but where we need to go. What are
the really tough questions that we face, the ones that in this room we
know we have to tackle? That is just what we are going to do the next
two days.

Mr. Secretary, thank you for your insights as well. We particularly
appreciate your desire to see aviation make the technological leap into
this second century of flight. With your assistance, I am confident we
are going to get there.

I am equally pleased to have the Honorable Taïeb Chérif, our Secretary
General of the International Civil Aviation Organization. Dr. Chérif
holds a PhD in air transport economics, which, I\'ll tell you, I have
had a chance to sit with him and talk about some of our thorny problems
there, and he is a wonderful expert and resource. So we are delighted to
have you here.

It is also a wonderful privilege to have Minister Yang with us from the
People\'s Republic of China. He is a Chief Pilot, a flight instructor,
and of course, the Minister of the CAAC, but again a hands-on guy who
knows aviation. And congratulations, particularly, on the launch of
Shenzhou. It is especially timely, in that we have included in this
exciting forum this week the new world of space and space safety in the
forum. Many of you are going to have a chance to hear firsthand from
some of the real movers and shakers in the world of commercial space,
about the challenges we face there.

Now let me shift gears a moment, if I could, and let me talk about
something that is a little more down to earth, a little more gritty, if
you will; because I would like to talk about broken windows, actually
just one window, one broken window.

I found it hard to believe, but the safety of aviation has an awful lot
in common with a broken window. This is the theory that Nick Sabatini
brought to my attention from the world of law enforcement. The more I
thought about it, the more I thought it is exactly what we need to be
talking about here today.

About 25 years ago anthropologists took a look to see why so many cities
in this country have a problem with crime. Picture the scene: Newark,
New Jersey, which for our foreign visitors, I can tell you, Newark, New
Jersey, is no vacation hot spot.

All kidding aside, these researchers looking particularly at Newark, New
Jersey, found that a building that has a single broken window that is
visible from the street left unrepaired for just one month is actually
going to be an invitation, an open window, for trouble; because what it
is, is it is a sign that oversight is lacking, that no one really cares
about the building.

Vandals are quick to pick up on a cue like this, and it is an invitation
for mischief. They think, let\'s break another window and see what
happens, and another one. Graffiti and spray paint follow. Squatters see
all these signals and they say, look, it is all right to move in, and
since there is broken glass, it is no trouble with throwing trash around
the neighborhood.

Cars on the street also become targets for vandalism, and now, of
course, the criminal element feels right at home. The good people in the
neighborhood \-- they don\'t feel safe anymore. So they move out, and
the slide \-- the slide continues.

So looking back, one broken window was a sign of something much larger.
That one broken window was, in fact, a sign of a breakdown in oversight
and in maintaining things the way they are supposed to be.

A New York City police official thought the anthropologists were right.
So he moved his police officers from the cars into the street on foot
patrols. They began to make sure that small details, the kind of details
that you only see when you are up close, when you are looking for them
\-- those details were addressed.

The police discovered that even one broken window left unrepaired could
start something big. They made sure that what mattered to the people,
public safety, was job number one for that police force. As a result,
crime went down. Civic pride went up. People knew that even small
details were important, not just to them but to the police as well, and
everyone pulled together to look for those small details, and things
turned around.

Now I think we should consider the broken window theory here in aviation
today, because we do know that in aviation the smallest details are
truly important. So my question is: Do we have broken windows?

As the years have passed, we have taken much of the low hanging fruit
off the aviation safety tree. The accidents that plagued aviation in the
early years \-- they don\'t happen nearly as often as they did even just
10 years ago. But a small detail left unattended could become the
symptom of our next major safety issue. So we need to identify these
details as soon as possible.

For example, let\'s consider a dirty airplane. I don\'t see many, but I
suspect, occasionally, every one of us remembers. I mean, just plain
dirty. It\'s a symptom of a loss of pride, like a broken window left
unrepaired, just the dirt an indication that someone is not paying
attention, a sign of a lack of oversight.

An airplane also with a dirty skin \-- you know, you don\'t get the same
fuel efficiency as a clean one. So what is that about? What about a
maintenance shop floor or an airline repair facility? It\'s just not
really very clean. If it\'s sloppy, is that a sign that the maintenance
workers are sloppy with their work?

The answer to these, at least we hope, is no, those are just little
things, everything is fine. But what we know of the broken window theory
tells us that big problems start out as very small details. The big
issues, a windowpane, start out so small, they are barely perceptible.

So I pose the question again: Where are our broken windows? Now
internationally, the Secretary gave us a good sense of how strong we
really are these days in safety. Internationally, real hull loss rate is
.73 accidents per million departures. That\'s western built transport
hull loss accidents from 1994 through 2004.

This rate is the product of tremendous improvements in safety around the
world. To put the worldwide improvement in some scale, consider the
number of fatal hull losses in passenger jet operations in recent
decades. The number of such accidents in the past 10 years has fallen by
one-third compared to the preceding decade, despite more than twice as
much traffic. Now, guys, that\'s impressive.

However, five recent international accidents have brought worldwide
attention again to the issue of aviation safety and, while we don\'t
have all the answers in these accidents, we know that Air France 358
crashed in a thunderstorm; Helios 522 never pressurized and crashed into
a mountain. TANS crashed in severe weather, and Mandala 91 occurred
right after takeoff. Morningstar happened just below freezing.

I am hopeful that this forum will help us raise awareness and advance
aviation safety and tackle some of these underlying issues. In broad
terms, I think that pilot error and CFIT continue to be two of our
biggest challenges.

The fact is that technology has taken us to a place where a weak link in
the fuselage is wearing a headset. The human-to-technology interface is
an issue, and that\'s it. Pilots are among the most diligent
professional employees in the workplace of the world, and do a very fine
job on safety. It\'s just that the human machine has certain flaws that
we all have to think about, how do we still compensate for them.

As we look across the globe, safety oversight also remains a concern
worldwide in a variety of ways. The average hull loss rate is telling.
In North America it is .4 accidents per million departures; China, .5;
Europe, .7; Africa \-- Africa is 11.7, and Latin America is 2.5.

So that tells us we\'ve got some long term challenges right in front of
us still, and the experts in this room know that the real long term
challenge for us to pull together, leverage our resources to improve
these rates; because I know all of you are saying, yes, but it\'s very
hard to do, and a lot of this, we are talking about resources.

I want to thank again a number of you who came in early yesterday to
join with us going over to the World Bank for a full day\'s session at
the World Bank, talking about how the needs of countries that are
developing can be best addressed in terms of their economic development
and in terms of the goal of eradicating poverty by addressing aviation
safety, because without a robust aviation system that you can count on,
you are not going to achieve in the world economy of the Twenty-first
Century.

So we talked with them about the need to make sure that aviation safety
is a term that applies worldwide. I was glad to see a lot of bankers
around the room. You could sort of see the light bulb going on. They get
it, and that\'s important.

I would also like to say that we\'ve got challenges ourselves that we
are going to address that don\'t go to the issue of resources so much as
they do policy decisions of our own.

I would like to point out right now that, from where we sit, we do not
see blacklists of carriers, banned carrier lists, as the answer.
Consistent operator commitment to safety standards and action by
government agencies with the wherewithal to certify and oversee
operations is the answer.

Likewise, I am pleased to announce that we have a new agreement in an
important new area for Europe and the United States, and this is an
agreement with our European colleagues on safety issues, the safety
structure as well as economic and security structure for fractional
ownership.

This has been something that has been important to us. And, last, I
can\'t tell you how pleased I am about the leadership that ECAC has
shown in this, and I am glad that we were able to join you in an
agreement with TSA just this week.

I am also pleased to tell you that we believe that there is a real sense
of optimism about aviation on the international scene. Consider ICAO\'s
look at the period of 1994 to 2004. The numbers are climbing all the way
around the globe. The forecast is even better.

During 2006 to 2007 passenger traffic is expected to grow at better than
six percent. It\'s good news for all of us, isn\'t it? Aviation is an
economic engine, and the future looks good, and with good reason.

So we\'ve got to be prepared to meet the challenges presented by this
growth with some mid-term initiatives. Plainly, I think we meet these
challenges by working together, both here and abroad. The Commercial
Aviation Safety Team is helping us do that. It continues to have a
profound and lasting effect on the United States and the global fatal
accident rates.

As many of you know, because I am looking around the room and I see a
number of people who are CAST members here, CAST represents government
and industry commitments to reduce the fatality risk of commercial air
travel in the United States by 80 percent by 2007. That was considered
to be a huge stretch goal when it was set, and yet we are on track to
meet that goal. But the work goes well beyond the U.S. air space, and
that\'s a great thing about the way this has all developed.

CAST is looking globally, sharing information with aviation experts in
Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada, South America. Right now, in fact, CAST is
working with three teams in Asia. It is under an ICAO program called
COSCAP, the Cooperative Development Operational Safety and Continuous
Airworthiness Program.

States in Asia have adopted 27 CAST safety enhancements. That\'s huge.
This is expected to result in a 60 percent reduction of risk of CFIT and
other types of accidents by 2007.

The story in South America with the Pan American Aviation Safety Team is
equally impressive. That\'s the kind of horsepower we can\'t afford to
overlook when we are talking about how do we get this done for these two
days in this room, because I am convinced those teams \-- they are
helping define the broken windows.

Now on the technology front, we are working together to meet the
challenge of deploying technology that would provide for seamless
operations. For example, ADS-B technology will enhance safety and,
obviously, improve capacity and efficiency. It enhances situational
awareness. It is an important part of the next generation of aviation in
this country and, we are convinced, around the globe.

In fact, Australia is out front, having made its implementation decision
last year. Europe\'s decision is yet to come, and we are developing
standards for ADS-B with ICAO, EUROCONTROL and EUROCAE.

We are also focusing our efforts to assist India in their evolution to
satellite based navigation systems. These help protect windows before
they ever become broken.

Later today, we are going to be signing a bilateral safety agreement
with the People\'s Republic of China, which I am very proud to do. These
agreements are an excellent means of solidifying our mutual resolve for
safety. I can\'t say enough about the robust growth of aviation in
China, and about how the People\'s Republic is handling it, how it is
preparing for the increases that are sure to come as well.

Now the FAA has a relatively long relationship with China. This BASA is
just one example of the joint commitment we share. We will be
establishing an office in China a well, if things go as I expect,
Minster Yang, and this is in addition to our Beijing office. Now we are
talking about Shanghai. So, you see, we want to be very strong partners
in all of this, and this office will be staffed by our aircraft
certification organization to make sure that China and we develop the
right expertise to make sure that aircraft are exactly as they should
be, moving into new aircraft in the Twenty-first Century.

Likewise, we are hopeful that by 2010 China will have launched a GPS
capability. In the not too far distant future, China will have the
second most complex aviation system in the world, and we have a great
sense of optimism, because China is taking the right steps to be ready.

Naturally, I am equally optimistic about domestic aviation as well. The
three-year rolling average for the fatal commercial accidents in the
United States is .017 per 100,000 flights. Let me put it a little more
clearly. If we consider just airline passenger operations, the rate
falls to just one fatal accident per 15 million flights. Again, this is
truly remarkable. We live in a remarkable age in aviation.

Let me tell you what makes this all so spectacular. With the economic
turbulence that is being experienced by U.S. carriers with bankruptcy,
price of oil on every page each day, it is a testament to the aviation
industry stakeholders and the U.S. government that we are reaching those
safety levels, despite enormous challenges in this country.

Aviation continues to evolve. The passenger numbers continue to set
records each year. The low cost fleet \-- they don\'t rely on the big
wide bodies, and we have very light jets coming on the scene.

Vern Rayburn is here at this conference talking about Eclipse, his new
small aircraft that will be certified, it sounds like, sometime in the
spring of the year. UAVs or UASs as some of us are now calling them \--
they are on the horizon as well. No pilot at all, and commercial space
isn\'t as far as away as it used to seem.

When Burt Rutan just a week or two donated Spaceship One to the
Smithsonian, I said it\'s not going to be too long before you can get an
aisle seat at 62 miles up. In retrospect, I don\'t think that was so
much hyperbole on my part. It\'s looking like it is getting closer and
closer, and we are going to hear more about commercial space today. But
the short point is that safety oversight has to keep pace as well,
because those safety issues are going to integrate right into the mass.
They are going to be a part of the world that we all work with on a day
to day basis.

All of this is not to say that we don\'t have challenges also right here
in the United States, despite the fatal accident rate I cited, because
we do. We have several near term initiatives also that address them, we
hope.

Runway incursions \-- they are up slightly right now. We are educating
pilots and controllers, and we are putting better surface detection
equipment in place to try to get those down. But even with the increase
in incursions, we made our annual goal this year for the FAA in terms of
the safety goals that we set, because those are hard metrics. They are
numbers that we as an agency and we as the professional staff have to
hit, but it\'s a red flag. It bears watching.

Operational errors, mistakes made while controlling traffic \-- they are
up as well this year, and we are working to bring them down. But this
year we missed our goal, and that\'s just plain not good. As the system
grows more and more complex, we are going to have to increase our
scrutiny on that front.

Now part of this involves better reporting in our towers and in our
facilities, and then better data analysis \-- what is really going on.
Pilot error is a concern as well when you get to these kinds of
mistakes, and training \-- of course, training is key.

We are constantly evaluating and reevaluating our procedures to see how
do we adjust it, how do we make it so these things don\'t happen;
because we\'ve got to be vigilant in raising situational awareness.

Reduced vertical separation venues are an example of what does happen
when we all work together, because the world grid is filling up, and we
still have a ways to go. As you know, the United States implemented RVSM
last January, and I will tell you candidly, we were a little worried
about the question of are we going to start seeing operational errors go
up? After all, planes are 1,000 miles closer \-- 1,000 feet closer
together than they were.

You know what? The system operated beautifully, and in fact, somehow the
precision that was required with RVSM \-- it turned out that we actually
saw errors in that additional stage after that go down.

So it was great, because the savings \-- the savings for our carriers
are in the millions, about one percent of overall fuel burn, and with
the price of a barrel being what it is, one percent is huge. Imagine,
one percent fuel burn savings internationally all across the globe. So
we really want to get there.

I have shared many conversations with the folks at IATA and, believe me,
fuel consumption is on their minds as they look for better routes and
more efficient ways of doing business.

Domestically, we look for ways to save any way we can. One of them is
required navigation performance, RNP. RNP is a set of navigation
improvements that allows pilots to fly more direct point to point routes
with much greater precision and much greater accuracy, and I tell you,
this means safety.

RNP improves safety at all stages of flight, departure, en route, and
arrival. It now only allows for more direct and efficient air space
management, but it also reduces fuel costs again. You hear me coming
back to this, but in the world economy we are working in, we\'ve got to
keep that front and center as well.

We just put in place an RNP approach at Reagan National Airport just
this week. Minister Yang and I were watching as the planes were coming
in over the Potomac, and I had to wonder if a couple of those might be
doing RNP. You watch the precision of some of them and you say, gee,
that\'s important. It\'s an idea that I think is catching on worldwide.
So I encourage all of you who are looking at RNP procedures to move
ahead.

In the larger context, the panels that you will be hearing today will be
exploring a number of these issues, and even larger ones, the biggest of
which will be the next generation aviation system. In this country, we
call it NGATS. In Europe it is SESAME.

All around the world, we are looking at the question of how do we to a
transformed aviation system. It\'s going to be able to handle two to
three times the traffic. You can\'t scale the system we have up from
here. So it is a really important discussion.

Jeff Shane\'s discussion of economic impacts is also going to cut
through a lot of the issues we are talking about.

One last thing: We believe the future depends on sharing and analyzing
safety information, but there are other issues like the cultural
dialectics of trying to effect data sharing. This turns out to be very
hard, and international law when it comes to data sharing \-- there are
legal questions that are not going to be resolved easily.

We as an aviation community need to pull together on this and go to
other parts of the community, other parts of government, and say,
listen, data sharing is critical to achieving the high levels of safety
we know we need. But if we are to increase our reliance on it and get in
front of accidents, it is an issue that\'s got to be resolved.

We all know that through all of this there is a broken window or two out
there. This forum will raise questions to help us find it. In truth, a
broken window seems kind of large, because it may be more like a needle
in a haystack that we are looking for, but we must look. When we look
together, we will find we are much more likely to find it. I am certain
that this group here in this room is equal to the task.

I have used the word safety throughout these comments, but I think it is
interchangeable with the word responsibility. They are one and the same.
Safety is our product. Our responsibility is to push the four corners of
safety out as far as we can and, when we do, as we do, we will not only
find that broken window; we will fix it.

Thank you for being here, for fixing broken windows.

(Applause.)

ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: And now it is my great pleasure to introduce
Minister Yang. I think you all know from some of the comments earlier
what high esteem we hold the work of Minister Yang in his long career in
aviation.

He has transformed the CAAC into a safety regulator. He oversaw the
successful mergers of nine state-owned Chinese airlines into three large
airline groups. Traffic is up, and with Minister Yang at the helm, China
is ready.

He is a good friend to us, to the FAA, a partner I have enjoyed working
with very, very much, and the United States and aviation sees him as
that good friend as well. And as I look around the room, I know he is
seen that way by the worldwide community.

So, please, let\'s give a warm welcome to Minister Yang.

(Applause.)

MINISTER YANG: (through translator) Secretary Mineta, Administrator
Blakey, Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen: First, please allow me on
behalf of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, to
extend my sincere congratulations on the successful convention of the
2^nd^ FAA International Aviation Safety Forum.

This forum is sure to play a very positive role in enhancing exchanges
and cooperation among the international aviation community, with a view
of safeguarding aviation safety and advancing global aviation safety
standards. It is a pleasure for me to take part in the forum and to take
the opportunity to brief you on the latest development of China\'s civil
aviation, particularly our efforts to meet the challenges in aviation
safety.

In the recent few years, China\'s national economy has maintained rapid
and sustainable growth. Open up has been further expanded. The per
capita income has witnessed major increase. China\'s tourism industry
has experience fast development.

In the meantime, China has taken major steps in its civil aviation
restructuring. A new industrial regulatory system has just been put in
place, and vitality of the aviation businesses has been further
enhanced. All of these factors have generated and boosted demand of the
aviation market. China\'s civil aviation has entered into a new round of
rapid growth.

In 2004, China\'s total air traffic turnover grew by 35.2 percent. If
the traffic turnover of 2002 were taken as the base, the annual air
traffic growth in 2003 and 2004 would average 18.3 percent after
allowing for the SARS effect, and such growth is the highest over the
past 10-plus years.

The growth of China\'s total air traffic turnover and passenger traffic
in 2004 alone amounts to the five years\' growth from 1996 to 2000. Six
airports in China handled more than 10 million passengers each in the
year of 2004. The Beijing Capital International Airport handled 35
million passengers last year, and provides services to close to 1000
flights per day.

From January to September this year, China\'s total air traffic
turnover, passenger traffic and cargo and mail traffic have grown by 11
percent, 12 percent, and 8 percent respectively over the same period of
last year.

In the next 10 to 15 years, the development of China\'s national economy
and continuous expansion of open up is bound to create enormous demand
for continuous growth in civil aviation. A bright prospect is
anticipated for China\'s civil aviation development.

Development and challenges exist side by side. The rapid growth of
China\'s civil aviation has generated ever increasing pressures on
aviation safety. We are facing, and will continue to face, enormous
challenges from various aspects.

The first challenge is that, due to rapid growth of air transport
demand, inadequacy in human resources, infrastructure and airspace
available gets more and more prominent. Currently, China has an air
fleet of 840 transport aircraft. According to preliminary estimate, 680
or so additional aircraft will have to be added to China\'s air fleet
between 2006 and 2010.

Eight thousand to 10,000 additional pilots should be expected, but only
1,000 or so pilot graduates could be turned out as far as the training
capacity of China\'s flight schools is concerned. More channels should
be found to solve the problem.

There are about 18,000 licensed maintenance engineers in China. With
further expansion of China\'s air fleet, inadequacy of maintenance
engineers would get more and more serious.

There are now 3,500 licensed air traffic controllers in China. It is
roughly estimated that another 3,600 licensed controllers should be
added by 2010. In additional, inadequacy of professionals is even more
serious with CAAC\'s regulatory departments.

In the area of infrastructure, it is estimated that 29 Chinese airports
will reach their saturation points by the end of 2010. China\'s air
traffic management system is generally less automated. Its various
subsystems are not well interfaced yet. Integration and sharing of
information resources is underdeveloped.

These problems have negatively affected safety and efficiency of air
traffic management. In the year of 2004, flight delays caused by air
traffic flow control have doubled. In some busy areas like Beijing and
Shenzhen, their actual flight numbers have bordered on maximum airspace
capacity, which has become a bottleneck constraining further flight
increases and added difficulties to safe operation.

Well, the second challenge is that, due to gradual relaxation of
economic regulation and continuous liberalization, competition on both
domestic and international aviation markets gets more and more intense.
How to ensure that safety would not be compromised in an ever
increasingly fierce competitive environment is an important subject that
we must watch closely and tackle.

In the recent few years, in accordance with the requirement of overall
national economy and social development, China has made efforts in
promoting market oriented reform and open up in civil aviation to follow
the general trend of international air transport liberalization.

Gradual relaxation of economic regulation on domestic aviation market
and progressive liberalization on international market access has helped
China\'s air transport development. While deregulation and
liberalization bring new challenges and new opportunities for
development, it also drives market competition to get ever increasingly
fierce. Airlines operators are faced with dual pressures of pursuing
profitability and ensuring safety.

An effective system or mechanism must be established to dispel the
conflicts between strengthening competition and ensuring safety, so as
to achieve harmonious and sound growth.

The third challenge is that, as China\'s civil aviation is in a
transitional period from the old regulatory structure to the new one,
that has become a pressing and arduous task to establish and perfect an
effective government safety supervision system as well as a corporate
safety self-monitoring system that would be well suited to the new
regulatory structure.

From the year of 2002, China\'s civil aviation has undergone a new round
of restructuring. Airlines and aviation support and service enterprises
have been consolidated. Airports have been handed over to the local
authorities.

The CAAC itself has also undertaken reorganization. A three-tier
regulatory system has been put in place. An air marshal contingent has
been established. However, it takes a gradual process to improve the new
structure, and it also requires a process to build an effective
operational mechanism that could be suited to the new structure.

As historical experiences have shown, it is easy to have flaws and
loopholes in aviation safety and security during the transitional period
from the old structure to the new one. Therefore, when the CAAC
undertakes to promote reform and development, one of the top priorities
is to establish and perfect a government safety supervision system as
well as a corporate safety self-monitoring system that is well suited to
the new regulatory structure.

The fourth challenge is that, due to various insecure elements, aviation
security is still under threat. In recent years, international terrorist
activities happened frequently. Civil aviation has become one of the
major targets for terrorist attacks.

Terrorist forces, both within China and from abroad, collude with each
other and stage sabotage activities, threatening China\'s aviation
security. Unstable elements in the Chinese society sometimes also lead
to unlawful interference with aircraft operation.

In face of the above-mentioned challenges, the CAAC has adopted a number
of measures to ensure that safety standards should not be compromised.
As far as safety is concerned, we are striving to achieve a transition
from traditional safety regulations supervision based on administrative
means and experiences to more scientific, rule-based safety
administration.

Since the CAAC and the FAA signed agreement for aviation safety
cooperation in the mid-1990s, both sides have had very effective
cooperation. China has made substantial progress and accumulated some
experiences in establishing its own aviation safety regulatory system,
in training its safety inspectors, in conducting airline operation
certification, and in monitoring and controlling airlines\' operation by
operational specifications.

We also come to understand that it takes a long process to achieve the
transition from the government by administrative means, which has been
practiced for many years in the past, to administration by rules and
regulations. In this transitional period, we have taken the following
measures.

The first is to advocate the concept of strict management. The CAAC
requires the whole industry to enforce strict management with a view of
ensuring safe production in five areas, namely, strict in organization
and leadership, in regulation and standard, in supervision and
oversight, in education and training, and finally in system perfection.

The second is to implement a safety responsibility mechanism. The
CAAC\'s oversight departments sign with enterprises \"letters of safety
responsibility\" to specify the annual target for safe operation and to
clarify that the chief executive of an enterprise should be the premier
bearer of safety responsibility. In doing so, we mean to furnish
effective motivation and restraint in pursuing safety.

The third is to monitor and control growth rates. The CAAC has
formulated some restrictive measures in accordance with airports\'
sustainability in terms of safe operation, enforcing limitations on
daily flight numbers at some saturated airports. Additional flights will
not be allowed until the airspace environment and the apron resources
get improved.

The fourth is to strengthen personnel training. Training syllabus must
be formulated in accordance with regulation. Various forms should be
taken to train pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and safety
inspectors.

The fifth is to conduct specific industrywide rectification in view of
problems that frequently happen. The CAAC must improve its regulation
and oversight, while enterprises must strengthen their self-supervision,
self-examination, and self-improvement.

The sixth is to improve means for oversight and management. With the
development and application of the safety evaluation system and the
safety information system, as well as the introduction of new
technology, means for safety oversight and management get further
enhanced.

The seventh is to strengthen security check measures on the ground.
Nationwide contests are frequently held to test professional skills of
the ground security officers. In the meantime, security on board
aircraft should also be tightened.

The eighth is to expand investment. Over the past few years, the CAAC
has invested over two billion RMB yuan improving airport security
monitoring equipment, de-icing equipment, and some airborne equipment
for safe operation. In doing so, the CAAC hopes to encourage enterprises
to invest more for safety.

In the first half of this year, the Standing Committee of China\'s
National People\'s Congress has empowered a law enforcement examination
task force to investigate how well the law on safe production is carried
out in view of the stern situation in safe production.

A report was finally submitted. According to its analysis, among various
factors, weakened industrial regulation and supervision and ineffective
safety oversight system are very important reasons for successive unsafe
events. It advises to conduct further study on industrial regulatory
system. This indicates that relatively independent and professional
industrial regulation is critical to ensure safe production. This is
also true of China\'s civil aviation.

In 2000, the CAAC submitted a ten-year safety plan to ICAO, proposing to
reduce China\'s aviation accident rate between 2001 and 2010 by 80
percent, compared to that in the previous ten-year period. Namely, major
accident rate per one million flight hours should be no more than 0.3.
The rate between 2001 and 2004 is 0.39. To realize that planned goal, we
must adhere to the existing effective measures and continue to make
unremitting efforts in the following areas.

One is to perfect the system of aviation safety regulations and
standards. A feedback and analysis system should be established on civil
aviation related law, regulations, rules and standards. Existing
regulations and standards must be revised in time as required.

The second is to perfect the safety regulatory and supervising system.
The procedures for administrative review and administrative lawsuit as
well as the public monitoring system should be further enhanced.

The third is to strengthen the safety technology support system. The
CAAC should pay more attention to study of such basic safety theories as
human factors and system safety. Importance should also be attached to
research on causes and preventive technologies of major aviation
accidents involving aircraft collision, CFIT and runway incursions.

The fourth is to strengthen air traffic system construction. In the
five-year period between 2006 and 2010, the CAAC will invest over 10
billion RMB yuan improving China\'s air traffic system.

The fifth is to continue to expand investment in airports and airlines\'
safety facilities. A government/business joint investment mechanism
should be established to enhance safety sustainability.

The sixth is to introduce the concept of safety management system and
promote SMS in airports\' and air traffic system\'s safety management.
The CAAC is planning to conduct an SMS pilot project with China\'s
Hainan Airlines to further develop relevant regulations before
popularizing the practice. It is expected that SMS would make safety
management more human and help enterprises build their own
self-improvement mechanism.

The seventh is to establish an advance alert system and risk evaluation
system as well as a unified and efficient aviation safety management
information system.

The eighth is to advance safety culture construction. We should
summarize and inherit the Chinese safety culture that has been developed
in our long-term practice, and endow it with new contents.

Distinguished colleagues, air transportation is a global undertaking. It
requires cooperation and joint efforts of various countries to ensure
aviation safety. The CAAC, on behalf of the Chinese government, always
attaches great importance to exchanges and cooperation with the ICAO,
the FAA, and other aviation authorities. We should also work with
aircraft manufacturers and other aviation industry players.

We believe that such exchanges and cooperation play a very important
role in helping improve China\'s aviation safety. In the future, we will
continue to be committed to build upon and expand such friendly
exchanges and cooperation. By working together with our colleagues, we
mean to make our air transportation even safer and more reliable. Thank
you.

(Applause.)

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: Thank you, Mr. Minister, for those
remarks. China\'s growth in the aviation industry is certainly
impressive, and your concerns about safety oversight, SMS, training,
technology \-- they mirror some of our very concerns as well as I am
sure they do other countries represented here. Thank you again for your
participation in this event.

It is now my pleasure to turn to our next item on the agenda, and that
is the signing of the United States-China Bi-Lateral Aviation Safety
Agreement. These agreements provide the framework to promote aviation
safety and environmental quality, and they enhance cooperation and
increase efficiency in matters related to civil aviation.

Mr. Secretary, I will turn the podium over to you.

SECRETARY MINETA: Thank you again, Bobby. It is not often that we get a
chance at a conference like this to do more than just talk about issues
that concern us, but today we have just such an opportunity.

Many of you know that Minister Yang and I met in Beijing in 2004 to
discuss the importance of cooperation in the area of aviation safety,
and our respective departments continue to have a very productive
dialogue on those issues.

Today the benefit of those joint efforts is realized again with the
signing of a bilateral aviation safety agreement that promises to usher
in a new chapter in the United States-China relationship. This agreement
will reduce regulatory burdens for the airlines. It will improve
coordination between our flight safety programs, leading to streamlined
procedures that raise safety standards, while making the best use of
both countries\' safety management resources.

Minister Yang and I know the importance of this coordination to the
continued growth of our respective aviation industries. Traffic by
Chinese air carriers has grown an average of 14 percent a year since
1978, and is expected to continue at this rate for many years to come.
In fact, if economists are correct, China will soon become one of the
world\'s largest aviation systems, second to that of the United States.

It is imperative that we do everything possible to facilitate this
growth, so that both economies can prosper at their own pace within the
burden of overlapping \-- without the burden of overlapping bureaucracy
getting in the way. That is why this moment that we are all about to
witness is so very, very special.

Before we sign the agreement, I would like to thank Minister Yang, FAA
Administrator Marion Blakey, and the members of their dedicated staffs
for their hard work. I would particularly like to recognize Mr. Han Jun.
He is a member of the Chinese delegation, head of their \-- I believe it
is called the Foreign Affairs Department, and our most capable
translator and interpreter.

I would also like to thank Michael Yan from our U.S. Department of
State, both of whom have been a vital part of the process from start to
finish.

So Minister Yang and Administrator Blakey, if you would please take your
seats here at the table, we can then begin the ceremony.

(Applause.)

SECRETARY MINETA: Administrator Blakey.

ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: This is a tremendous pleasure, obviously, from our
standpoint, because as the Secretary notes, this does represent the
culmination of many, many years of hard work.

Minister Yang, you should be very rightly proud of the hard work that
has been displayed in this by your countrymen, because there has been a
great deal of effort to get to this point.

We are very proud to stand with you and with the CAAC to meet the
challenges of the system that you just outlined, which will soon be the
earth\'s second largest. Today, we stand with you in safety, and we are
eager to stand with you in growth to meet the Twenty-first Century
needs. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

MINISTER YANG: (through the translator) First of all, please allow me to
extend my sincere thanks, personal sincere thanks, to Secretary Mineta
and Administrator Blakey for all your strong support over the past many
years between our two important organizations.

Well, personally I have been working with the civil aviation industry
for over 40 years, and I myself am a pilot, and I deeply understand the
importance of safety in aviation. Aviation safety, as I have often said,
is a very arduous task as well as a difficult task.

The arduous task will never end and will continue day by day, and its
difficulty lies in that aviation safety involves every aspect of the
aviation system, and a failure of each link could lead to destruction of
the whole chain. But aviation safety has to be tackled in a very proper
way, because it involves the lives and safety of over hundreds of
passengers.

I believe, apart from our own efforts, the technical advances and more
investment, the most important thing for aviation safety enhancement is
to enhance our cooperation. I would like to indicate clearly that the
CAAC will have better cooperation with the international aviation
community, the ICAO, the FAA and other aviation authorities of various
countries to enhance aviation safety. Thank you.

(Applause.)

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: Mr. Secretary, if I could invite you back
up here behind the table to join the Administrator and the Minister for
just a few more photographs, please. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: We are running just a few minutes behind
our normal program, but I would like to give everybody the opportunity
to take a break before we begin our general session. So if you would,
let\'s take about 15 minutes, and please start about 40 minutes after
the hour. Thanks very much.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record at 10:26 a.m. and
went back on the record at 10:52 a.m.)

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: Well, we are just about ready to begin
our first general session here. If I could ask everybody to please take
their seats, we\'ll get down to work.

I think I\'m beginning to understand a little bit why it is a little
tough to run an on-time airline, but I have been very much looking
forward to this discussion on the perception and the reality of aviation
safety and to hear from the distinguished panel. But I am also very
pleased to have our moderator here, who is recognized as one of the
deans of aviation reporters.

During his years with the Washington Post, I think everyone in aviation
knew, if the byline said Don Phillips, you could take the story to the
bank. It was accurate and well researched.

Last year our moderator took his considerable skills to the
International Herald Tribune where he now has a global platform. Don,
it\'s good to have you back, and I will turn it over to you.

MR. PHILLIPS: All right. I hope the microphone is working. Ah, it does
seem to be.

We are going to have sort of a free forum here. I want you all to be
thinking of questions as we go, but \-- Hang on one second. I\'m hearing
myself in another language. It\'s bad enough now that I\'m trying to
learn French. But I am going to throw out a couple of remarks here, and
then we are going to go into sort of brief form. I want everyone to say
a little something, and then I will have a few questions, and I want you
to be thinking of questions yourself.

First of all, one of the truisms, I think, about aviation safety is that
aviation safety is one of the most poorly covered issues by the press
and TV on earth. Every incident seems to bring out fear and loathing.

I mean, look at the JetBlue landing out in L.A., basically a non-event,
although there are stories to be done about why this gear goes sideways.
Sure. Those are interesting possible stories. It didn\'t deserve the
horrendous coverage it got.

Why do people feel this way? Why, when there is a crash, do the
demagogues come on and do what they do on TV? Why do otherwise normal
reporters believe and report things that don\'t make sense?

I must say that, roughly, in my view, two-sevenths or two-eighths or
maybe less now of the really good reporters in aviation are here, and I
am sorry, I don\'t mean to pat myself on the back, but basically it
doesn\'t take much to be one of the best in this field. That was some
mean laughter out there.

I have a theory, and that is it\'s a left brain/right brain thing.
Pilots, in particular, live in the left brain. Aviation is a left brain
thing. It is straightforward, to the point. I hope I\'m getting the
hemispheres right.

Most reporters and all editors live purely in the right brain. I\'ve
known some editors who \-- I thought they were kidding, but they quite
literally have no idea how planes fly, and don\'t want to know. That is
one of the reasons why things are so poorly covered.

I don\'t have a solution to this. I\'ve suggested a few in the past.
Nothing ever comes of them. One of them was, and I\'ve given up on it,
folks, when there is a crash, let the good people go out there and get
on TV, especially the 24-hour news. They would love to have you there,
and get training, if you have to, in how to handle the blow dried hair
crowd \-- I don\'t know if they blow dry their hair anymore, but anyway,
that\'s another one \-- and get on there and do something rather than
leaving it to some of the demagogues of the world, and you know who I\'m
talking about. That theory seems to have been rejected.

So I guess the question now is: What do we do? And this is not a problem
that is going to go away. If you all have decided as a group not to get
out and get your hands dirty and your feet dirty with this process when
there is a crash in the heat of battle. Some wondrous stuff has been
done of trying to teach reporters things in the quiet times. That\'s not
when it counts.

When it counts is in the heat. So perhaps we will get some answers to
that today.

Now at the end of this, we will go into some questions. Be thinking of
some. There may be some questions \-- in fact, I may have one \-- that
perhaps Marion or others might want to comment on. I\'m not saying that
it is necessary to do that, but if they seem offended, they might want
to come up.

So anyway, let\'s get on with this. The first \-- and I\'m not going to
go into a lot of introductions. You know who these people are, and if
you don\'t, you can read about them. But basically, Ken Mead is the
first to give a few brief remarks here.

I have known Ken for a long time, going back to when he was in the
Government Accounting Office, which somehow has become the Government
Accountability Office. Now as all you all know out there, he is one the
most loved people in aviation. So go ahead, buddy, and then we\'ll go
down the line.

MR. MEAD: Thank you. It\'s always an honor to sit here next to you. I
think Marion can\'t wait to ask you a couple of questions.

I\'d like to speak to three things, and they really are areas, I think,
we have to stay on top of. The first is keeping pace with what are truly
sea changes in this industry from an oversight standpoint, and that goes
for both the airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration or whoever
the civil regulatory authority is.

I am really pleased to see the comprehensiveness and international
flavor in this audience this year especially.

The second area is operational errors. FAA made incredible progress in
runway incursions over a half-decade, and operational errors is an area
that I would like to speak to for a couple of minutes.

Then third, I\'d like to speak to a couple of emerging issues that I see
that \-- I was going to say on the horizon, but they are really, I
think, right in front of us. Preface that by saying, though, I thought
Administrator Blakey gave an excellent speech.

She and I both know that what we are doing today is merely practice for
what is probably going to be a Congressional hearing on aviation safety
sometime in November, but I thought that broken windows talk was just
excellent.

We are here to talk about how safe is safe. I think that\'s the title of
the panel, and I think the answer is pretty obvious, intuitively
obvious. It is never safe enough. We always have to be pushing the
envelope. That is what makes aviation great.

I agree with Don. I don\'t think the public eye focuses on safety
enough. We need to reflect on why the safety record has been what it is
for the last several years. We don\'t focus on that enough. Maybe it is
because it is a knock on wood sort of thing. If you start talking about
that, you know, something will happen, and it will detract from it. But
I think that we need to pay a lot of attention to it, because we have
done a lot, the airlines, in proactive monitoring. The FAA is, I think,
overhauling its inspection program, and it\'s odd.

It goes against the conventional wisdom, in my view, that at a time that
the industry is in great crisis financially, you would think that there
would be lots of problems. So why haven\'t there been? I think we should
ask ourselves that question. What are we doing? What are the best
practices that we are doing that are right?

Now to go to the three things that I mentioned, first on sea changes:
I\'ve got some numbers here I would like to mention to you. Where is
maintenance performed on aircraft? That in this country has changed
dramatically just over the past decade from about 35 percent of the
maintenance being performed in-house \-- that is, by the carrier or the
operator \-- to we are now over 50 percent. My numbers are probably a
year out of date. I don\'t think we have the \-- we don\'t have the \'05
numbers yet. That\'s a sea change.

The issue here is to whether the maintenance being performed is being
performed in-house or is contracted out or where it is performed. The
issue is whether our oversight systems, those of the airlines and the
Federal Aviation Administration, are nimble enough, flexible enough, to
shift. We have done several reports on this, and in the Q & A period we
can get into it.

I think FAA is working hard to make their system more nimble, but they
are not at an end state yet.

Another number: 727, two percent of that airplane was built by
manufacturers in the United States, and I think 65 percent of the 787
will come from other places.

Forty percent of our industry is in financial crisis. That requires, I
think, the very nimble, flexible oversight program, and I know FAA is
working on that, and they do have a ways to go, in my judgment.

I want to make a point here about the inspection workforce. A lot of
attention focuses on the air traffic controllers in this country. They
take out ads. It\'s on network TV, the Roll Call Newspaper, the Hill
newspaper, you know, full page ads about the staffing requirements for
air traffic controllers.

FAA has a plan to deal with a workforce that roughly, I think, over
half, well over half of it they are expecting to lose over the next
decade. But there is this inspection workforce, too, and with these sea
changes it is important that we pay attention to the staffing and
training requirements of this less high profile workforce.

I\'m glad to see that both the House and Senate marks do give an
increase to the inspection workforce this year. I want to put that on a
map.

Operational errors: The Administrator mentioned this as an area that we
need to do better in. We do. We haven\'t turned the corner on this yet,
but operational errors are up. They also are up in the moderate to
serious categories, which is not good, but when I say up, put this in
context; because this past year we\'ve done investigations at
Dallas/Fort Worth, New York TRACON and some other places, and we don\'t
really have very good baseline information.

The reason for that is that your en route centers, it\'s largely
automatic reporting. But at your TRACONs and your towers, it is not
automatic. It has been self-reporting. In some places, it has been like
the honor system, and the honor system wasn\'t working.

So I caution against saying that there\'s been a sharp increase in
operational errors, because we don\'t have that baseline, a good
baseline. We have a better baseline in \'05, but it still won\'t be end
state. So that\'s an area we need to pay attention to, and again I think
we ought to look back on what happened in runway incursions. They were
going off the charts, and FAA developed an action plan, drilled down on
them, and I think they are under control. They are still too high, but
we are getting there.

Finally, some emerging issues I would like to point to: We have to make
the inspection programs at FAA nimble and flexible enough to deal with
all the sea changes that are already on our plate. I think there are
some other sea changes coming.

Microjets was mentioned earlier. It\'s a matter of some speculation as
to how many of these are going to be flying around, but they are going
to be sharing the same air space as your commercial jets. It is going to
raise a good number of regulatory issues, human factor issues.

Another one I heard, I was speaking at the Repair Station Association
just yesterday, and a question was asked about are we on top of the use,
the growing use, of experimental aircraft, and what experimental
aircraft can do.

I thought that was a good point. So microjets and experimental aircraft
are two areas that I would like to point to.

I also think we are going to see some other changes in this industry. We
have some carriers that are emerging from bankruptcy. We have some
carriers that have just gone in. I think you are going to see some
majors.

I also think that the cost structures of the legacy carriers are going
to begin to converge with your discount carriers, and that is a formula
that is going to inspire a mix that I can\'t predict. I think one thing
it is going to mean is some higher fares.

So we are going to have all these changes, and I think we need to look
at things proactively as much as we can.

I would like to close on the next generation air traffic control. We are
already back in terms of operations and enplanements to be where we were
in 2000, way beyond that, actually, and how are we going to accommodate
demand?

That\'s why FAA has this next generation air traffic control initiative.
Well, we need to know what it is. How are we going to make a transition
from a culture that is steeped in probably several decades to a new
paradigm that is both safe and efficient and, finally, how is it going
to be paid for? Thank you.

MR. PHILLIPS: Certainly. Next we have Dr. Graham Braithwaite, who I have
just met, and who I will say, I will be coming to visit you up in
England at some point. He is not British, however. I gather from talking
to him and from this bio, he is Australian.

DR. BRAITHWAITE: Off and on.

MR. PHILLIPS: An Aussie. But, well, anyway, he is now with the Cranfield
University Aircraft Accident Investigation and Safety, and he teaches
safety and management courses, and does various other things to make
things better in aviation safety out of the United Kingdom now. Over to
you.

DR. BRAITHWAITE: Thanks, Don. Sometimes I think we actually do a little
too well in this industry in reminding people how safe we are. Before
accidents after accidents, there\'s always someone there to remind
people just how much safer aviation is than any other form of transport,
and that may well be true. But what we have set ourselves up for there
is a situation where people have an awful lot of trust in us as an
industry, and I\'m not just talking about trust when people choose to
fly. I am talking about trust from industries like the rail industry,
the marine industry, and beyond.

Aviation has established itself as a leader. It deserves to be very
proud of that. In answer to one of the main questions of this forum,
\"How safe is safe enough?\" we don\'t just have to think of our own
industry, but I think we need to think of those other industries that
look toward us as well.

I want to ask people a question, to turn the tables a little here. How
many people actually flew here today or yesterday? Quite a few. I\'m
guessing that each one of you had such amazing trust in the air
transport system that, when you boarded the aircraft, not one of you
bothered to check whether the pilots were adequately licensed. Anybody
knock on the door and ask if they would show that their license was up
to date, that their medical was current, that they weren\'t feeling
fatigued or having marital problems that might affect their
concentration?

MR. PHILLIPS: Give them a breathalyzer test?

DR. BRAITHWAITE: Quite possibly. And yet these are all thing is that we
know do contribute. We only need to pick up any newspaper in the hours
after an accident, and the pilots are already being pointed at. And yet
for some reason, we\'ve got some amazing trust relationship.

It is that relationship where we see a registration on the side of an
aircraft that begins with N or begins with G, and it tells us something.
It tells us that somebody, whether it be a sensible adult or whatever
agency is keeping an eye on our system and making it safe for us.

So in the background of this great performance and so on, why is it
that, when an accident happens, of course, the media appear, and it
seems that there is suddenly total disaster. Our industry is about to
fall apart, and this the end of life as we know it.

Well, again I think we should take some responsibilities in industry.
One of the things I am very fortunate to get involved in is the training
of our accident investigators, and we take people who are usually very
experienced in flying aircraft, controlling aircraft, maintaining
aircraft and so on, and have a strong understanding of what safety
means, and we try and teach them to become investigators.

Their fellow investigators have many stories about just how terrifying
and how tricky the media can be to get their story. They will always get
their story, and some of the techniques that have been used in the past,
we all know, are pretty outrageous. But I think there needs to be some
balance in this.

Matter of fact, over the last couple of years we\'ve actually gone and
stared the lion in the mouth. We have been down and worked with the BBC
in London and said, tell us about it; tell us what exactly it is you are
trying to do, because what you are trying to do and what we are trying
to do doesn\'t seem to quite fit. So why is it?

The more you learn about it, the more you find out that, well, these
news investigators are almost trying to do the same thing. They are
after evidence. They are trying to deliver some results. They are trying
to tell people what happened here; only they can\'t take two years
before they submit their report. Their report needs to be on the next
news, and the next news is in \-- well, it\'s now, because it\'s 24
hours, and that\'s the news system we have created. The media needs to
get their message out there.

Whilst in the U.K., one of the things we have learned from is a certain
thing called the Hutton Commission, which looked at the media and
fairness and quality of reporting in the media. We still know that the
first story or the first broadcaster to break the story is the one who
will claim the credit.

We tried to understand why it is that they always ask us that same
question: What was the cause of this accident? The accident happened an
hour ago. We don\'t know the cause of the accident. But the thing we
started to understand in talking to the transport correspondents \--
they know that as well, and they will come back to you and say, what
exactly do you expect us to ask at this point? It\'s what the public are
expecting; it\'s what the people are expecting.

The responsibility for the investigator or the safety professional is to
know what to do with that question, and it is only when we talk to the
lawyers in expert witness training later on that we realize every
question is an opportunity.

So how well do we as an industry use the media as an opportunity to get
our message out there? For an investigator, the first message may be:
Help, we need some help. We need as much evidence, eye witness
statements as we possibly can, and the news media are getting an awful
lot of evidence very quickly.

In the U.K., we had some terrorist raids about a year ago, and a car was
stopped. People were taken out, and the police had them all lying on the
floor. Within seconds, a student had his camera, his video camera on his
phone, recorded the footage. It took four minutes for it to be at the
BBC in London. It took them five minutes to have it edited, and it was
on the news.

That\'s how quick the news is being delivered, and we just can\'t keep
pace with that, but these people have evidence that may actually help
us.

The other way in which the media help \-- and it seems a little
counterintuitive \-- is they keep people a little bit scared, a little
bit nervous about this aviation thing. Whilst we are doing a great job
of reassuring them that aviation is completely safe, we are doing a
really great job, we really don\'t need to spend any more money on
safety, do we? The media on the other hand is saying, there is an
accident, it\'s terrible, we need to do something about it.

Actually, that probably helps us sometimes. I\'m certainly not
suggesting that accidents are a good thing, but I think being wary of
this thing we called aviation and the risks that it carries is a very
important thing.

The third thing I quickly wanted to mention about the media: The other
way in which the media say they need some help is in publishing our
findings and understanding what we are doing about it, what we have
learned from an investigation and how things are going to change.

The media, and certainly the BBC, would admit that that is not something
they do well, because when our report comes out, they sometimes don\'t
know it is coming. They maybe get a bit of a warning, but they don\'t
really know what you have been doing for the last two years.

They have been busy reporting on other things, and suddenly a story
breaks about a report that has now suggested some safety
recommendations, and usually that is not a story they choose to pick up
and run with, possibly because we don\'t give them very much
information.

I just want to quickly mention a little experiment we did. When we train
investigators, one of the things we do to them is give them an
investigation. It lasts for a week. They are notified of an accident,
and very quickly they need to figure out where they are going to get the
evidence from, who they are going to talk to, when do the pilots come
out of hospital.

On Day One, the media turn up. Of course, that is what they do. In past
years we have just used an actor. Well, this year we thought we would do
it a bit differently. We hired a film crew, and we hired a journalist
and said, we are going to tell you nothing about what\'s happened here.
You are going to find out, and by the end of today we want you to have
put together a news broadcast, and we want all those investigators to
see what you came up with.

Okay. What happened? The investigators knew exactly what to say:
Nothing. We are saying nothing. It\'s too early to tell. You must leave
the accident site.

Now my camera crew and my journalist was a bit worried, because I had
hired him for the day. So they came to deliver. So they came back, and
they came back, and they filmed from a long distance, and they got
absolutely any snippet of information they possibly could, and at the
end of the day they put together a news broadcast.

The investigators sat down, and here comes the news. There\'s the
anchor. There\'s the story. What was their reaction? They got it wrong,
they said; that\'s not what happened. They are completely wrong. This is
all rubbish. Welcome to the real world.

Unless you actually share some of what is going on, the media are going
to have to make it up, and maybe some of that is going to help people
remain a little bit nervous about aviation. Maybe there is a good thing
to that, but maybe there is a downside as well. So I am going to put
some responsibility back on the people in this room. Thank you.

MR. PHILLIPS: Excellent points there. Our next speaker is David Ropeik.
Did I get that \--

MR. ROPEIK: Close enough. I\'m the only one who cares, and I don\'t
care.

MR. PHILLIPS: Oh, okay \-- who is an instructor of risk communications
at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. I already know from a brief
chat with him that this man has opinions. So we are going to turn it
over to him for a few minutes.

MR. ROPEIK: I\'m a former journalist. I\'m supposed to. I\'m not
supposed to? Let me add a couple of things about how I came to be here
so that you can decide how much stock to place in my observations.

I was for 25 years a television reporter in the city of Boston and a
science reporter syndicated by the New York Times and Boston Globe. I
have covered many plane crashes. I remember World 30. Does that ring a
bell with you guys? I think that was the name of it, the one that slid
off the runway in Boston, and the front of it broke off and two people
were lost.

I remember, while we were trying to cover the story, the National
Transportation Safety board taking us to court to try to ban us from
anywhere near the site on the grounds that reporters were stealing parts
of the wreckage for souvenirs.

Now that wasn\'t productive relationship building. I\'m not saying it
was or wasn\'t true. I think it was pretty scurrilous to even suggest
that it was true, but it is to your point. The more you treat the media
like the enemy, the more you are asking to be treated that way.

It is the media\'s job \-- Pardon me for launching in on this one,
because it is slightly off point on mine, but it is very important for
you to have a more productive relationship with the people who
communicate your worlds to the public.

You would want the journalist, who is investigating or reporting on a
story for you to be skeptical on your behalf and not accept the
Administrator\'s line or the company\'s line or the academic\'s line, to
ask a pointed question, to be adversarial, if you want to put it that
way.

You have every right in the world to demand that they be fair to the
facts, as good journalists are, and there is a large range of what
journalist means in this room and out there. They are not all the same,
but you must accept that you are in, to some degree, an adversarial
relationship, and the nature of their business is to be skeptical and
probing.

Now you, therefore, have something of a fire on your hands, to a smaller
or a greater degree, when you are interacting with the media. You can
throw water on it or you can throw jet fuel on it. Need I say more? The
more you treat them like the enemy, the more they will treat you like
that back.

Now let me circle back. As a reporter, I witnessed many, many times on
all sorts of stories a gap between people\'s fears and what the
scientific facts suggested the risk actually was, whether that was
environmental or plane crash or child abduction or terrorism or
whatever. Lisa, I\'m sure you have seen it. Don, I\'ve sure you\'ve seen
it. You see it as citizens. You probably feel it yourselves.

You are more afraid of some things than the facts seem to suggest you
need to be, and vice versa. There are many of things of which we are not
afraid enough. I currently weigh 20 pounds too much, and I know I
shouldn\'t, but I like the French fries.

Why does the perception gap exist, and how does it bear on aviation? It
exists because humans aren\'t just fact based, rational risk analyzers.

How many of you come from a science or engineering or technical
background, just by show of hands? Well, we \-- if I may, because I
don\'t \-- think of things differently. I was looking through the
acronyms, the bible by which we could tell what you were saying this
morning, Administrator, and there were a couple of examples that makes
the point.

First was the acronym for global aviation safety plan. If I got on a
plane this morning and the pilot told me don\'t worry about safety, we
have a GASP plan, I\'m not sure that I would gasp, although, by the way,
when my plane landed, the luggage rack shook so heavily that we all
ducked for fear that they may be falling and, if that wasn\'t a broken
window, I don\'t know what was; because if it\'s that, then it\'s what
else the next time. So there\'s your little apocryphal story.

The other one was, though \-- and this is a little bit more real, to the
point about \-- We are talking about the public\'s perception of fear:
Where does it come from? RVSM, reduce \-- I don\'t remember these,
reduced vertical separation minimum. Planes can be closer together.

I\'ve been noticing this. I was talking to a couple of the fellows from
the FAA at an earlier event asking about this, and they told me about
the RVSM, and all I can tell you is that when I\'m sitting in an
airplane and I look out the window and I can see faces in the windows of
people in another airplane going very quickly the other way, here\'s
what RVSM stands for to me: Really Very Scary, Marion.

Well, besides being funny and cute, what I am suggesting here is the way
you see the world is not the way people see your technical world, and it
is not the way you see the world outside your own technical expertise.

Risks, it turns out, have personality traits, affective or emotional or
intuitive or gut instinct characteristics that we use to make our
judgments one moment to the next what to be afraid of and how afraid to
be. We never have all the facts. We never have all the time to make a
completely rational judgment. Even if journalists had all the time in
the world to do their report, there would be these affective
characteristics that color whether it seems scary or less scary.

Let me mention five that accrue to people being more worried about
aviation and three that accrue to people being less worried, and in most
cases the three that tend to make people less worried win, and people
fly.

The five that make people more worried are \-- and this comes, by the
way, from what is called a literature of risk perception psychology, and
I am only here a teacher and a proselytizer of this, not the person who
figured this stuff out.

We are more afraid of any risk that is catastrophic. If it kills a lot
of us all at once, it\'s scarier than if it kills a lot of but not all
at once in one place at one time. So on the day when 100 or 200 or 300
people tragically die in a plane crash, 2200 Americans will die of heart
disease in the United States, but not all in one place at one time.

This makes sense, because we are tribal animals, and the better the
tribe is doing, the better our personal chances are. It\'s why we root
for the Red Sox or America or our religion or our politics. The better
our tribe is doing, the better our chances feel. So when something
whacks a bunch of the tribe all at once, it\'s more scary than if it is
spread out over time.

That, obviously, accrues to the fear of plane crash and, by the way,
strongly informs why the media consider that the story that it is, not
that it\'s not a story, but the catastrophic element of it is attractive
to the news media, and was for me for 25 years.

The second factor that accrues to greater fear: Let me ask you a quick
question, as long as we are trying to be interactive and, Nick, you\'ve
heard this one before. At the end of this exercise, you will die. Sorry.
You can either die being eaten alive by a shark or of heart disease.
Please raise your hand if you vote for death by shark.

Well, let me be real about this. You can either die in a fiery plane
crash or of heart disease. Please vote if you would rather die in a
plane crash. Well, now isn\'t that interesting, because you all know
about one in 15 million and all of these statistics, but I\'m not
framing it that way, am I?

That\'s how you try to frame it to people, but that\'s not how they feel
about GASP or RVSM or dying in a really nasty way. The more you suffer,
the more afraid of it you are going to be, the statistics
notwithstanding.

Third factor: Control. We are always looking for things that will give
us physical or mental control over things. It makes us feel safer. Here
are the sobering statistics that are directly relevant to aviation.

The University of Michigan\'s Transportation Research Institute
calculated that in October through December 2001 after the terrorist
attacks, 1,018 more Americans died in motor vehicle crashes than the
same three months the year before, and that firmly meshes with a host of
statistics showing that flying was down and driving was up.

If you don\'t believe their statistics, Cornell did a study, and they
tried to tease out everything that might not be what they called the
Post-911 Effect, and they estimate that 725 Americans were killed in
motor vehicle crashes in that period. I think it was slightly longer. I
think theirs was a six-month period after those crashes. Why? Pretty
surely because control over driving made it feel safer, the statistics
of the relative risks notwithstanding.

Let me sober you a little bit. If you take the Michigan numbers, that\'s
a third again as many people as were killed in the attacks themselves,
dead because their fear drove them to a modal shift that raised their
risk, but because of the sense of control. We don\'t have it in an
airplane, even if we do interview the pilot. We have it when we drive.

The last one that makes us more afraid: Is the risk personal or could it
happen to somebody else? This is why fear of flying goes up when
there\'s stories of plane crashes and isn\'t as high when it isn\'t. We
think of it as statistical or theoretical or an idea.

It\'s why it is harder to get covered in the paper, too, by the way,
because your editors are people, too, and the same bells that I\'m
talking about go off for fear. When the fear is higher, it\'s a better
story. When the fear is lower, it\'s harder to get the space.

When we think the thing could happen to us, we are more afraid of it
than when we think it is a risk out there, but to somebody else.

Spell the word homeland in your head, and take out the letters h-o, and
that, I would argue, is a profound reason why we are spending the money
we are spending reorganizing the government and changing things with
civil liberties and going to war, not that I\'m for or against either of
those things. I\'m just suggesting that the fear of terrorism went up
when now we think, oh, my God, the anthrax is in my mailbox, even though
that is a very statistically low risk.

Last three points: Here are three factors that explain why, despite all
these, people fly. Risks that are familiar are less scary than risks
that are new, and we are largely familiar with the fact that planes fly
around all the time and mostly don\'t crash.

This is why we are not particularly afraid of motor vehicle crashes,
which kill 40,000 Americans a year, one-fifth of whom aren\'t wearing
their seatbelts, but because it is familiar, it is less scary than when
it first comes along, like SARS or West Nile virus or avian flu.

Second factor: Trust. The reality is that people do largely trust all of
you to keep us safe, and you are doing it. Thank you. I will fly home
tonight and not worry. Thank you. But the fact that we trust you means
that we are more relaxed and less fearful about the risk, and that has
all sorts of implications, as Dr. Braithwaite alluded to.

Here\'s the third one that is probably the most important for flying of
all: We are constantly doing a mental economics of risk versus benefit.
Even those people who are really afraid to fly do, because they have to
get somewhere.

Now all of these things create gaps between what people perceive as the
risk and what it actually is that bear on how much funding you have, on
how you run your companies and your regulatory agencies, and I urge you
strongly to get outside your technical and regulatory and scientific
mindset and incorporate also the realities of how the public perceives
these things as you make your policies and your way in the aviation
world.

So that was a little long.

MR. PHILLIPS: That\'s fine. Interesting. Next we have \-- and I hope you
will help me with the pronunciation, if I get it wrong yet again \--
Michel Wachenheim. Michel is Director General of Civil Aviation in
France, and I went to see him for the first time only a few days ago.

I have one big regret, and that is I\'ve been there in France a year,
and I didn\'t go the first day. Very interesting man, but one of the
great advantages he has is the same one I do. We both live in the most
wonderful, beautiful city on earth.

So I\'ll turn it over to you, sir.

MR. WACHENHEIM: Thank you, Don. The topic this morning is very important
with respect to the future of our industry, air transportation. I
hadn\'t planned to talk very much about journalists and the press,
because in my opinion, this goes way beyond this issue of a press, which
has a difficult work to do, and they are mostly a carrier, a conveyor,
of information. Perhaps they do manufacture information, but there are
some much deeper problems, phenomena.

So the issue as to whether there is indeed a difference between the
perception of air transportation and the reality \-- well, of course,
the answer is yes.

We conducted a poll in France a few weeks ago, and the question that was
asked is: Are you afraid of going on an airplane, and the answer was
yes. Forty percent of men and 50 percent of women said yes. It seems to
me that this is a very deep phenomenon, and we have to think about this
problem.

I attempted to mention some of the reasons that may explain this
phenomenon. I do not know if this is an ad hoc or a situational
phenomenon, but at any rate we must mobilize ourselves, we as
governments, we administrations, in order to change this perception,
because without a positive perception of security, well, there is not a
good future for air transportation.

So why is there such a perception? Why is there such a gap between the
public perception, which is going down \-- it\'s getting worse. You must
say so, whereas statistics show, as we said this morning \-- Many people
have said so \-- the statistics demonstrate that air transportation
systems have never been safer.

Of course, there are disparities in the various regions of the world,
but overall, transportation has never been safer. And I will add,
furthermore, that it is even safer than other modes of transportation.

So when we say this, well, obviously, it is more dangerous to drive in
your car than to take an airplane, but that does not mean \-- that has
no impact on people. This type of rhetoric is no longer convincing. So
we must go beyond.

So what are the causes? I think they are historical. They are cultural,
and beyond the changes in society, there are various contextual elements
which explain why there is such a perception, which is going worse, at
least at the present time.

So with respect to history and to culture, I would say, well, let\'s
remember that commercial transportation started in just one generation,
and in one single generation human beings conquered the airs from the
commercial standpoint, and it is not impossible that this is a difficult
transition to integrate rapidly in our collective consciousness.

The passenger, the human being who goes on a plane, has absolutely no
control over the risks. Well, when you are driving the car, you are the
driver. You are the passenger. The passenger may intervene in some way.
You can stop the car. But in an airplane, it is not the case. So the
passenger has the feeling of being completely abandoned to the plane, to
the pilot, the airline company.

The third reason, deep reason, I believe, is the fact that the passenger
does not have any knowledge or has a very weak knowledge of the
processes that are implemented in order to control the risks. He
doesn\'t know the risks, and he doesn\'t even know what is being done to
control these risks.

So why is it so? Well, of course, it is the media component. The press
communicates more and more about these spectacular events and airline
crash. Obviously, it is a spectacular event with a worldwide impact;
whereas, when it comes to communicating about positive actions,
important daily actions, in this case there is much less interest.

I am telling you a story, an anecdote. After the Sharm el-Sheikh
accident in Egypt, which had a very strong impact in France, obviously,
I was called upon to speak in front of the cameras, to tell the
journalists everything that is being done. I was updating them on the
situation, and after that I told them, well, it would be good if you did
a report, a story, on the way we do our jobs.

The DGAC, our agency, does the same work as the FAA in the USA. We have
a monitoring of airline companies. We have maintenance. We have training
schools. We visit airports. We visit safety companies. Well, no, that
didn\'t interest the press at all. There were no features. There were no
stories written about that.

So all of these factors combine and maintain a feeling of vulnerability
on the part of the public. So to get an idea, well, the passenger, he
has no other choice but to yield to what he reads, because he has no
knowledge of the nature of the risks. He doesn\'t know what measures are
taken to control this risk. So for the passenger, it is still a
miraculous event, to a certain extent.

There are some contextual factors that go even deeper on the
explanations. These contextual factors, which even amplify these
concerns \-- it\'s the fact that airline transportation has become more
and more commonplace. There has been an expansion of the market, the
liberalization of the airspace which has had aspects; whereas, the
public has even greater and greater expectations, because there are more
and more people involved.

So there are great expectations, and the time when Edith Piaf lost her
boyfriend, Marcel Sidion, the boxer, in an airline crash between Paris
and New York \-- well, that era is well gone. At the time, airline
transportation was seen as a very extraordinary mode of transportation
with assumed, accepted risks. That is no longer the case.

The second fact which accentuates this concern is the major increase in
airline traffic. Once again, we talk. We tell about our parameters,
while accident rates per number of takeoffs and so on and so forth. So
we do see that all these indicators are going in the right direction.

In absolute numbers, they may go up in the future, and this accident
rate has no impact on the public. It doesn\'t mean anything to the
people. It doesn\'t have an impact on their unconscious, as is the case,
naturally, for automobiles, the number of automobiles in terms of the
number of traffic. So these numbers don\'t mean anything. So you have to
go further in terms of communication.

Third factor, complexity. We don\'t often talk about complexity, but
this is also an important factor that influences the processes of risk
control. Once again, this complexity involves various players. The
interfaces between all these players are also very complex in and of
themselves.

Well, the airplane \-- I won\'t remind you what goes on. There is not
just the airplane. There is not just the pilot. This is the entire
organization behind it, the airline, the operations, this whole slew of
issues, and all of this is not well known, and all of these unknown
factors may be causes for concern. Anything that is unknown becomes
concern, worrisome.

Number four: The technological changes. There is technological change
underway, and that is very major, of course. But this technological
evolution does not have the same positive impact everywhere. There are
some disparities.

We do, nonetheless, see some old airplanes, and the newspapers say
another garbage junk airplane has been stopped or another junk airplane
has crashed. Well, there are some brand spanking new airplanes. There
are some very high rent airlines which provide quality service, but
there are also other companies which do not provide good quality
service. So all of this worsens the situation.

Finally, I would say that this is perhaps one of the most important
facts. There is a misunderstanding with respect to the operations of the
international system. When we authorize an airline to fly in order to
come to France, for example, we base ourselves on various sets of
information which are provided to us by the company which regulates this
airline.

So we trust there is an international system which has worked for over
60 years which is based on mutual recognition between civil or aviation
authorities of various countries. So if we respond to the public and to
the families by telling them, well, we are sorry there was an accident,
well, it is a foreign airline; we don\'t control it; well, therefore, we
didn\'t know \-- that won\'t work.

The French public \-- but I believe, in all other countries \-- the
public feels that its own government is responsible for its own security
wherever you are in the world. So there is a discrepancy, to a certain
extent, because a government, an administration, cannot control in a
detailed manner all of the airline companies of the world.

So we clearly see that there is something that has to go deeper in this
regard, and here I would say that the Chicago principles are not clearly
understood by the public. This calls us to think about this issue. So I
will come back to this issue.

The system is extremely important. We must remain faithful to the
system, but perhaps we should change it somewhat.

So my observation is very clear. Airline transportation is perhaps the
victim of its success. We are effective. We do things quicker. We
provide the opportunity of getting more planes. We are organized at the
international level, and all of this together has a negative influence
ultimately.

So some work has to be done. So what can we do? What should we do? That
was the question. What is the strategy? That is the question that is
being asked of us.

It is not an easy question to answer. I would say that in Europe we are
thinking on various possibilities. Number one, we will take some
concerted action at the international level for transparency, for
greater transparency, both with respect to governments and with respect
to airlines. If we are not transparent, we are suspected of hiding
things, of hiding negative things to the public. So we have to tell the
truth.

We have the feeling that we are telling the truth, but not everything is
told, broadcast. In ICAO there are many informations that are collected
during the audits. Everybody is aware of those things, but ICAO should
\-- the member states of ICAO should \-- agree in order to provide
greater promotion, greater transparency, and we should have value
judgments over the authorities that we regulate, and these judgments
should be known.

There are some states which publish their own assessments, evaluations,
but we would like to see what ICAO\'s assessments are. If ICAO cannot do
that, well, governments in groups of states will do that task.

At the European level, we are also thinking about providing greater
transparency with respect to airlines, the quality of the airline
operators, and the EU, as you know, has decided or will soon decide to
publish a list, a joint list, a joint EU list of airline companies which
are accredited within the EU.

I didn\'t say this is a blacklist. Those are airline companies which are
prohibited. This means that there are maybe some of them which have
never requested to do so, but they would not be authorized. This is a
very complicated subject matter, because this list, as a matter of fact,
we must admit, do not actually answer the question, meet the issues,
meet the public\'s expectations.

What the public opinion wants, it is not only to know which are the
prohibited airlines. They want to know what these airlines, the ones
that are authorized, are really worth, the ones that are flying. Are
they safe or are they not safe, and here we have major problems.

So why are the European governments \-- Why can they not avoid this
question? It is because there are disparities. There have been some
information that has been broadcast, and there are some disparities
between countries. So at this point, we must find a way to agree amongst
ourselves and provide consistent information to the public.

If we want to go even further, it seems to me that we must also \-- When
it comes to the information about airlines that actually do fly, well,
perhaps we should provide information, as does the IATA, as part of
these audits. We must provide positive information, as it were,
regarding the safety level, not just about safety level but also about
quality also.

France has its own point of view on this subject matter. Namely, we must
associate along with safety, but also quality information. It is the
famous Blue Book which is being discussed. It is this broken window that
has to be detected, as Marion said, and that is not easily done.

Number two \-- I will conclude here \-- communication. The communication
must be positive and massive about actions taken in favor of safety in
the airline industry. Today, we always communicate defensively. We
defend ourselves, but we must also communicate about the positive
aspects. We must do it together internationally, and I will also say
that the profession must unite in order to do so.

I am always struck by the fact that governments communicate a lot,
necessarily. Of course, they have to under circumstances that we prefer
to avoid, but it seems to me that airline companies, everybody, must go
in the same direction; because when countries communicate and tell what
is going on \-- but in parallel, when professionals communicate in
another direction and they say, well, no, that\'s not the truth, that\'s
not what is going on, well, we are not convincing neither one nor the
other.

Finally, this probably is the main point, the main thrust of the issue.
If we want to maintain trust, confidence, we must be tireless in our
efforts to improve safety in all respects, improve monitoring. Here I
would say that, while maintaining the principles of ICAO which are the
only realistic principles in order to truly reach a worldwide safety
level, we must also as part of the authorization/certification processes
go even further than we are actually doing.

I am talking about ourselves here. We should request further guarantees;
go even further in terms of understanding of the true knowledge of the
situation throughout the world, and this is a very important thing that
we decided after the recent accident in Venezuela.

Of course, this is self-evident. There are some deep structural efforts
that have to be carried out in order to improve safety, deep actions
that have to be carried out toward countries, developing countries.
Developed countries must mobilize, and they can mobilize themselves, in
order to improve safety in developing countries.

Finally, amongst the technical actions we must emphasize greatly the
human factor and, as you said previously, most of the accidents have
human causes, and there is a lot of work to be done in this respect in
terms of the human factors.

So to conclude, there is one thing that is clear. Fear is a human
emotion, and we will never overcome that. Aerodynamics is still a
mysterious science for most of the population. Making a plane stay in
the sky for a long time \-- that does not seem to be natural. Therefore,
aviation will always suffer a handicap in terms of the image for safety
and what will improve, which means that we must have much tougher
standards of safety than other modes of transportation.

We will be able to do this by being ourselves transparent. We must not
fear to tell the truth, and here there is an international challenge for
ICAO.

Finally, all of the members of the profession must stand together and,
finally, must continue to work on the technical improvements of safety
in developed countries and developing countries. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. PHILLIPS: Thank you. Next we go to someone who comes into your
living room every night or many nights, Lisa Stark, and one of my great
friends.

MS. STARK: Thank you Don. I feel a little bit like a pincushion, but I
figured that was going to be my role today.

One thing I can guarantee is that you are never going to turn on the
news on World News Tonight and hear, \"Good evening, our top story
tonight, American Airlines flew without a hitch today.\" I mean, that\'s
not news. I know that it is fabulous that we have flights that take off
thousands \-- tens of thousands of flights that take off and land every
day safely, but that isn\'t news.

The unusual is news. It is when something goes wrong. It is when that
plane crashes. Unfortunately, as many people have talked about up here,
it is magnified, I think, these days by the whole 24-hour news cycle.

Don brought up the situation with the jetBlue plane in September. Here
was a situation where jetBlue had the fortune or the misfortune,
depending on how you want to look at it, of having this occur in the
skies above the number two media market in the country, Los Angeles.

It also had the fortune or the misfortune of happening when it was still
daylight out. That meant people could get pictures. That meant that the
24-hour news stations could stay on for an hour and a half for whatever
expert they could find at that very moment to come on the air to talk
about the fact that this plane was flying around with its landing gear
looking awfully funny.

I can guarantee you that people were glued to their television sets
watching this, wondering what was going to happen. It was high drama.
Now as it turned out, thankfully, the plane landed safely, had a little
bit of fire and sparks, and that made it a little exciting. Everyone got
off okay, but it got a lot of attention, not just that day but even into
the next day.

I had many, many people tell me as I was making calls on this story
that, without the television pictures, this story would never have
gotten the attention that it did. I think there is probably no doubt
about that, that because the pictures were there, the anchors were tired
of talking about Katrina, they needed something else to talk about, this
got a lot of attention.

I also think legitimately it got some attention, because it turned out
when everyone started looking at it that there were some problems with
this landing gear historically, and there had been other incidents.

So I think the fact that the plane landed safely didn\'t mean that it
should get no media attention, because I think there were safety issues
that came out of that incident.

Jump back to a month earlier in August, five major crashes, Toronto,
Italy, Greece, Venezuela, Peru. More than 300 people died that month on
airplane accidents worldwide.

There were a ton of stories. I actually did one myself: What\'s going
on? Are the skies getting less safe? People were convinced something was
amiss. Well, no, we told people, and people told us. It\'s just
fortuitous, just luck of the draw; this is just what happens. It
doesn\'t mean that the whole system is falling apart.

At times like that, though, people are going to raise these questions,
and I think they have a legitimate right to raise questions when you
have accidents, whether singularly or in a group, and it does \-- There
is no question, it raises people\'s fear level.

I had people come to me in August, people I work with, sane, rational
people for the most part, come to me and say is it safe to get on my
airplane; I don\'t know whether I should fly tomorrow, because all of a
sudden, they are seeing all these planes falling out of the sky. People
talked about the control issue. People have that fear. It may be buried
deep within them, but when we talk about all these accidents, that fear
resurfaces.

Now it is also, I think, our responsibility to put it in perspective.
When we did those stories on all those plane crashes, we said, this is
the safest period, one of the safest periods in aviation history; it
doesn\'t mean that things are suddenly less safe. But even though you
can say that in a story, I don\'t think the public necessarily hears
that, because at some level that is not what they believe.

I do think that relentless media coverage of an accident can raise the
level of fear, but I also think, and I believe you brought that up, that
it can also do some good in some instances, because it does, I think,
put a spotlight on legitimate safety issues, and it does perhaps, as
someone said here, make people a little bit afraid and make them keep
their eye on the ball a little more carefully than they might otherwise.

As you all know \-- I\'m not telling you anything you don\'t know \--
there\'s not been a major aviation accident in the United States since
November 2001, thank goodness. It is a remarkable record, especially
given the financial situation of the airlines. I think it is something
the industry should be very, very proud of.

We also know, and there is sort of a mentality in this business, that
that record is likely to end, and at some point there will be another
major airplane crash in the United States. You know, the odds are just
with that.

When that happens, I am going to be there. All my colleagues are going
to be there. The press is going to be there, and we are all going to be
asking five minutes after it happens, what went wrong. That\'s just the
way it is going to work, and it is something that is a fact of life, and
everyone in the industry is going to have to live with that.

Every day in this country you have the equivalent of an airplane
accident. A hundred people are dying on the roads every day in this
country, but it doesn\'t get any coverage; because as someone said, it
is not dramatic. It happens here and there, one at a time.

When you get these big accidents, it is going to be dramatic. You are
going to get the coverage, and at the same time probably you are going
to raise people\'s fear level. Unfortunately, I don\'t think there is a
lot you can do about that except, as someone said, be as transparent as
you can.

I think, if people feel that you are hiding something, if they feel
especially, wait a minute, they\'ve known about these problems for
years, they haven\'t fixed them, what\'s the regulatory agency\'s done,
what has the NTSB recommended, why haven\'t the airlines spent the money
to fix that \-- that is going to increase their fear level, because they
are going to think what else haven\'t they done? What else don\'t we
know about?

So I think you do have to be very transparent and, as everyone said, you
have to make the industry as safe as you possibly can, not just in the
United States but all over the world, because people are traveling all
over the world these days, and they want to know if they are flying in
Africa or Asia or South America that they are just as safe as they are
flying from Chicago to New York.

With that, I\'ll stop.

MR. PHILLIPS: All right. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. PHILLIPS: We are going to go to questions in just a moment. I hope
you all have some probing tough ones or whatever, but I am going to take
the prerogative to ask one or two first.

There\'s sort of an elephant in the room here. One of these questions,
incidentally, will be mainly a U.S. question, the next one mainly a
European question. But there\'s an elephant in the room.

U.S. airlines on average have all the world\'s airline losses \-- all of
them. Europe on average is breaking even. The Asians are perhaps a
billion dollars to the good, which is not that much, but \-- and
everybody congratulates the industry on still being safe and still doing
everything right.

That is one part of the elephant. The other part of the elephant is
there are labor problems in this country that are just seething out
there now with the controllers. I don\'t know what \-- I haven\'t been
following it that closely lately. So I don\'t know what exactly is going
on.

So we have here the elephant in the room. Is it possible that we are
approaching a period where aviation safety will perhaps, under the
strain, stumble over some of these issues, and we will not be
congratulating ourselves the way that some people have been here today?
Who wants to tackle that? Ken?

MR. MEAD: I\'ll take a shot at it. Lisa concluded with a comment that at
some point you are going to have a tragic accident in this country. That
is going to happen, and just like that this record will \-- People will
not be focusing on this record. All of a sudden, they will focus like a
laser on what happened.

A major point I was trying to make was that I think the airline as well
as the FAA or, if it\'s another country, that civil regulatory authority
needs to be nimble and flexible enough to change their oversight systems
to accommodate changes.

I am in the auditing and legal business, and I know that what gets
watched \-- you can improve it by watching it when people know they are
being watched. We have had serious problems on operational errors when
planes are coming much too close in the sky, because they were
underreported, and we have found situations where they were
intentionally underreported, not by negligence, not by accident.

When you look at the FAA, the heart of the FAA inspection program, it is
risk based. It is data based. You are never going to have enough
inspectors to inspect everything as often as you like. Therefore, you
have to target to the areas of risk. Therefore, you have to know the
risks.

That means your inspectors all have to be trained to enter into
computers the different risks, and then you have to be nimble enough to
be able to deploy change. So I think your counsel, Don, or the counsel
that is implicit in your question is well taken, but I think we can meet
the task, provided the airlines and FAA keep very strong oversight
systems.

MR. PHILLIPS: Anyone else want to have a go at that?

MR. ROPEIK: If I may, because it gets back to a concrete way that you
can apply what I was urging you to do earlier, which is think about the
feelings component of this perception gap.

I was thrilled to hear about the poll in France of public confidence
about getting on an airplane. I wonder \-- I\'ll just ask you directly.
Has the FAA or whoever the appropriate agency would be or corporations
or whoever polled the American public lately: What do you think about
the safety of flying on an airplane in the context of the financial
problems with the industry?

My guess is, though \-- I don\'t want to put you on the spot, but I am
going to suggest to you that that will answer to a large degree how much
people trust you more or less \-- you, you. Right? Everybody who makes
the planes and flies the planes and regulates them and so forth.

The strength of that foundation of trust, if it is shaken, will mean
that when \-- hopefully, it is an \"if,\" but when there is a next crash
in this country, the consequences will be more severe in terms of
perception, if they are already doubting that you can keep the plane
safe. I mean, I ducked when these luggage racks rattled this morning.
I\'m wondering what\'s up with that airline\'s maintenance program.

Then the next crash that happens means everybody else who flies goes,
wow, now I\'m more afraid that it could happen to me \-- remember that
personal factor? \-- because we are all flying on airlines that have
declared bankruptcy or on strike with their maintenance people and so
forth.

That\'s a way where the regulatory community at least can know where
they stand in terms of public attitudes toward flying, which can then
inform what you do next with policy and your aviation safety programs
and so forth.

So it\'s a wonderful thing that they did, that the French did in that
direction, and it is taking the perception part of the gap into account.

MR. PHILLIPS: Mr. Wachenheim, a lot of people here may not know the
tremendous arguments going on in Europe now over banned carrier lists,
and you brought that subject up.

When I was taking notes earlier on what Marion Blakey said \-- I hope
I\'ve got her exactly, but I do know I have the spirit: \"We do not see
banned carrier lists as the answer.\"

If I read you correctly \-- and please, correct me, if I do \-- you do
see some form of banned carrier lists as a portion of the answer, but
not the whole thing.

If you could straighten me out on what you really think about such
things, number one, and what do you say to the fears expressed by Mr.
Arslanian and others in France that the political establishment will
congratulate itself. We have done something about aviation safety, and
they just walk away and not do the other things that need to be done?

MR. WACHENHEIM: This is an issue that has to be placed in a historical
context. Remember all the Sharm el-Sheikh accident which I mentioned
previously. When this accident occurred, there was a major controversy
was mostly entertained, or at least relayed, by the press, and the
controversy was as follows.

France had authorized this airline in spite of \-- well, there were
various types of controls, random checks which are conducted, which
revealed some very serious problems. Switzerland, a very serious
neighbor, did the same thing, and they banned this airline. Other
countries had other positions.

So for the same airline, there were different positions amongst
neighboring countries, and all of this was unknown prior to the Sharm
el-Sheikh accident. The public was not aware that we had random checks
at stops. They did not know anything about the bans. This topic was
never mentioned.

So what appeared is that there is a disparity, a difference between
countries, because you can be for or against the publication of lists.
But in actuality, these lists do exist. In reality, everybody knows that
France, Switzerland, the U.K., other countries have banned at one point
in time some airline companies.

There are some banning interdiction codes. So the controversy that was
entertained was as follows: Well, why is it that you do not communicate
publicly this list of banned airlines, because a neighboring country
will ban this airline, whereas you authorize it? Well, the public has a
right to know. The public needs to know. People, when they buy a ticket
in country X, they have to know if this airline is banned in country Y,
and then they will draw their own consequences.

So everything started from there, and after that there were various
improvements that were made in the EU, and we attempted to harmonize all
of the decisions taken after this check that was done at a stop. So we
are in the process of establishing a joint, consistent regulation
process for this same airline company.

After the crashes of last summer, well, this issue came up once again.
So the political answer to this question that is asked by the public and
asked by the press, well, the decision was, okay, we will indeed publish
the list of airlines that have been prohibited, and the publication took
place.

Everybody was \-- huge disappointment. There were just four or five
airlines and not the ones that we expected. Well, in the U.K. nearby,
there are also various banned airlines, and the list was published at
some point in time, and then various countries here and there also
published their own lists, and we realized that we did not have the same
lists.

So once again, a new European initiative toward the creation of a joint
list of unauthorized airlines within the EU. So that is the improvement.
That\'s the progress. It is the pressure that is being applied, the need
for transparency, the need for information, which created the
establishing of these lists, but that is not the ultimate solution.

That is just not the answer to improved safety. It is just a response to
a need for information from the public. It is not by having lists that
you will improve safety, because these companies are already banned. So
the issue will not come up.

What people realized after the fact is that \-- and this was obvious \--
is that the passengers, what they want to know is then, when they have a
ticket, when they buy a ticket from a travel agency, they want to know
that this airline that will transport them \-- is it safe or is it not
safe? So we know that this goes even further than that.

It goes beyond that. There is somewhat of a demand, of a request for
rating of the airlines. What people want is to have some sort of quality
certification, safety certifications that are given to airlines, and if
this phenomenon is not kept under check, under control, it will
ultimately lead to classification of airlines into two categories, those
which have their certification, those that have the label, and those
that do not have the certification.

When you look at the catalogs of travel agencies, there will be a
mention whether they are certified or noncertified, and therefore, you
have the choice between a certified and a noncertified airline and,
obviously, the passenger will choose the certified airline, even if it
costs more.

So this is a very important subject that has to be debated at the
international level, but let\'s not be mistaken. There clearly is a
strong demand on behalf of the public to know the actuality of things:
What is truly going on within these airlines? We cannot compare major
international airline which is a member of an alliance of the great
airline companies and a local airline, a domestic airline, which appears
on the list of the tour operator.

MR. ROPEIK: And may I add one thing? Transparency, among others, is
twofold out of the risk psychology literature. One is I trust the people
who are supposed to protect me to not be hiding things from me and
deciding for me what I should know myself to keep safe.

The second is knowledge gives you a sense of control. You can decide
based on the information which airline to take or not take. Both of
those are going to feed psychologically into the feelings of the flying
public.

MR. PHILLIPS: Okay. I apologize for taking this long with the first part
of the program, but I was fascinated. I learned a lot. So I let it run a
little longer than we had planned.

So now we get to the questions from you folks. Wait for the microphone
in each case.

MR. HOLMES: Steve Holmes, British Airways. I have been with British
Airways for 35 years now, got 8,000 hours in the 747 and Concorde, been
a air safety investigator for 13 years.

First on exactly why we don\'t give the press too much information: I
can imagine the headline in the Washington Post tomorrow: Aircraft
landed at Dulles, luggage racks rattled.

First, in answer to the question, you are never safe enough. But if you
look at the Oxford English Dictionary, it says that safety is the
freedom from risk. Clearly, a 747 taking off at 400 tons \-- you are
never going to be free from risk. There\'s always going to be some risk.

So I think what we actually do in aircraft investigation or aircraft
safety is we actually reduce the risk to an acceptable level. So perhaps
that should say internationally, aviation risk management forum. I
don\'t know.

The thing that has come out and I have picked up today is that accidents
are no respecters of reputations. That\'s for sure, and it can happen to
anyone anytime, and it might be happening now, for all we know.

Are we getting safer? Well, I don\'t know. I think technology is
possibly making us a little bit luckier. I think everyone in this room
now could possibly think of an airline that we would only like our
mother-in-law to fly on. I mean, I can think of a few. But the important
thing about that is these airlines have never had a crash. So they could
be going through their career, absolutely have no safety management
system at all, but be blooming lucky.

The other thing to bear in mind is what British Airways and what I
consider safe, another airline might consider unsafe. I would like to
say that\'s vice versa as well. What other airlines do, British Airways
and myself in particular might consider unsafe.

So I put to everyone that safety is actually a state of mind. It\'s a
concept. It is an idea that we all have. I like to think, the more I
work in British Airways as an air safety investigator, as a risk
manager, whatever you want to call me, that\'s the reason that British
Airways has the finger on the pulse, and it\'s not the newspapers. What
does the panel think?

MR. PHILLIPS: All right. Did you \--

MR. ROPEIK: Yes, I got the heart of part of the question. I tend to hear
things this way, that safety is not for you to decide on my behalf. Your
acceptable risk is \-- My acceptable risk is none of your business.

Effectively, when I choose to risk my life, I\'m not going to count on
you to decide what level of risking my life is okay. That\'s how the
public is going to think about this.

Let me give you a very quick example. You all have some candy on your
table. Imagine a British company today announced that a disgruntled
worker sent in a letter that said that one piece of candy out of a
million pieces of candy from a production unit was possibly contaminated
and could kill somebody who eats the one piece of candy. That sounds
like an acceptable risk, doesn\'t it? One in a million?

Now let\'s say the story that you read about it also tells you that all
of that candy was delivered to the Westfield Marriott in Maryland \-- we
are in Maryland, Virginia? Where the hell are we? Okay, Virginia, the
Conference Center.

Now let me ask you. I didn\'t get your name. Do you have a bowl of candy
in front of you? All right. Does the risk sound a little bit different
now? It does to most people in research. If you think it could happen to
you, one in a million is way too high if you think you could be the one.

The problem with your supposition is, if I understood your question
correctly, you are deciding for me what risk I should find acceptable.
Until you bridge that with real openness and transparency and attitude
toward people\'s fears and concerns and build that into risk management,
I don\'t think you are all the way there.

MR. PHILLIPS: All right. Any other question? Francis had one.

MR. FRANCIS: I am Bob Francis. I am a pensioner, but I had a little time
at the FAA and the NTSB, and this is a question \-- Number one, this is
a terrific panel. Very, very good job by you folks.

I\'d like to sort of get your impression, and this is sort of following
up on Lisa. I am neither a believer in zero accidents. There is also
risk as long as human beings are involved in the equation.

How do we as an industry educate the public that that\'s the case, that
we are doing our very best to identify the risk, study it, allocate
resources based on that, that we are never going to be perfect, but it
seems to me that we don\'t get that point across very well. There is
always risk, and we are doing our best, and resources are limited. Is
there a way that we can do a better job of that? Has Lisa ever done an
evening program on it?

MR. PHILLIPS: I want Lisa to mainly comment on this, but this gets back
to something I said earlier. The only time to affect the press and TV on
aviation safety is when there\'s been a crash. In the meantime, they are
not going to be thinking about it all that much, and yet a lot of people
in the industry say I\'m not going to get my hands dirty with those
people.

Somebody someday is going to have to deal with that section of the
problem, and I don\'t see it happening, unfortunately.

MS. STARK: Well, I do think \-- You know, as Don said, in the heat of a
crash it is hard to get people to talk to you, for obvious reasons, but
that is the critical time. And if you don\'t \-- If you\'ve got a
24-hour \-- luckily, I don\'t really have a 24-hour news operation for
the most part, but we have even had to sort of go to that, because we
compete with the 24-hour news operations.

You know, they are going to turn to the easiest person they can put on
the air, and it may not be the person that you folks want to represent
the industry. It may be a demagogue. It may be someone who has that much
knowledge, and they are going to blow something out of proportion.

So I think that is important. The bottom line is my job, unfortunately,
and your jobs are different. My job isn\'t to be a cheerleader for the
industry, and my job also isn\'t to terrorize people and to scare them.
It is to tell them the facts, but my job isn\'t to go out there every
night and say it\'s safe, it\'s safe, it\'s safe, it\'s safe, it\'s
safe. That\'s not my job.

In fact, unfortunately, there is a lot less interest in a story when
it\'s safe. I\'ll take the example of the very scary \-- the separation
standards. When that came out, my editors called me like, oh, my gosh,
this is horrible, they are going to put these planes closer together,
and it\'s just not going to be safe, and we need to do a story on this.

So I did some reporting. I talked to a bunch of people. I called them
back, and I\'m like, you know, they\'ve got the equipment, it\'s all on
the planes, perfectly safe. No one is going to die. It\'s going to be
just fine. Isn\'t there anyone who thinks it\'s not safe? All right,
I\'ll go back again. Call all the people, talk to the FAA, talk to the
usual suspects, talk to the critics, go back to my editors.

You know, we can do a story: It\'s going to speed things up, all this;
it\'s a great idea, it\'s not going to be unsafe. It wasn\'t a story to
them anymore. They didn\'t want it.

You know, that\'s the reality that you deal with, because again we
expect \-- The media expects you to keep things safe. That\'s your job.
We expect you to keep things safe.

So when you do, why should we pay any attention to that? We are not
going to pay attention to that. We are only going to pay attention to it
when you don\'t, unfortunately.

I don\'t know if I answered you. Probably not, Bob, didn\'t answer the
question.

MR. MEAD: I think there is some tension, Mr. Francis, between what the
airlines want or feel comfortable telling the public or the media about
things that they have discovered that they have, in fact, corrected.

Just one anecdote: Sophisticated black boxes that measure thousands of
parameters of flight, that discover things that you will never discover
by kicking tires. I know of one situation where a particular model
aircraft at a particular airport repeatedly came within inches of a tail
strike on takeoff. It was a pattern.

The airline discovered this through analysis of the data that was coming
out of its black boxes, but I think there is a tension there between
letting the public know, but that made a big impression on me, because
that is something that we wouldn\'t have had five or six years ago.

I think I\'m referring to the FOQA program. I forget what the acronym
stands for.

MR. PHILLIPS: Okay. I try to stay away from acronyms myself. I\'m sorry,
go ahead.

DR. BRAITHWAITE: One thing that I\'m concerned about is that we are
consistent in our approach. We talk about commercial aviation, and we
all know what that means, don\'t we? And I\'m sure that we all agree a
standard definition across the board.

Well, of course, that is not the reality. You buy your ticket at one
side of the world and you change aircraft several times. You may be
flying a 777 and later on you fly in a Dash 8. There is some different
requirements that people will have to go through.

We have had a couple of accidents in the U.K. over the last couple of
years which might be interesting to you, both of them involving people
who had bought a gift certificate or been given a gift certificate.
These are certificates you can buy so someone can be a motor racing
driver for a day. They can go parachuting. They can go flying in a
ultralight and so on.

Some people think that\'s a good gift, but two accidents. One, an
accident involving a parachuting aircraft where someone had paid money
for a gift certificate to be strapped to someone else who was going to
jump out of that aircraft at 15,000 feet, and that single engine
aircraft suffered an engine failure, and they were at too low an
altitude, and they were killed.

In another accident, someone died in an ultralight aircraft where the
ultralight instructor became unwell, and the aircraft crashed.

What we are finding now is the families, the people who bought the
certificates \-- their expectations of it were crafted by this being a
commercial product, only this wasn\'t commercial aviation. It wasn\'t
being controlled or looked after as if it were commercial aviation. This
was an activity that somebody paid money for and expected a certain
level of safety, and that certain level of safety wasn\'t there.

So I think one of the things we should think about in communicating is
letting people know that there are different levels of safety for
different levels of activity, and they should be aware of that.

MR. PHILLIPS: We have time for one or two more. Okay.

MR. DARBO: My name is John Darbo. I\'m with CAVOK Group. I just retired
from 10 years of safety at the world\'s largest airline, and work in
certification \-- risk safety aspects of certification, system safety.

My view \-- and maybe there is room for a comment between what Lisa and
David said. David gave an example of candy. What you did is you added a
fact which helped us understand the probability aspect of that risk,
because you told us now it\'s here rather than there. That was good
information.

Lisa \-- I believe that was good, and what Lisa, I think \-- their
responsibility, and maybe she can address how they are addressing it, is
to tell us truth rather than supposition and invention.

I\'m an investigator for 10 years with this world\'s largest airline. I
won\'t take the time, but I can tell you a very sad story of fabrication
that affected a lot of people negatively.

MS. STARK: It\'s a little hard to hear \-- I\'m sorry \-- up here. So
I\'m not sure I heard it. I think he said the idea is to \-- you want to
hear the truth, not supposition. Right? Is that what you are talking
about? Okay.

There is no question that, especially right after an accident, a lot of
misinformation gets out, gets put on the air, and it is partly because
things are happening so quickly, because five minutes after an accident
everyone wants to know what was the cause.

Again, it\'s a control issue. Okay, that was the cause. All right, well,
if it was snow, I\'m getting on \-- you know, I\'m getting on the plane
in Florida today. So, okay, I\'m safe, because I\'m not going to be
flying in a snowstorm.

So you know, people want to know, because they want to take control and
make their own decisions. I do think \-- I don\'t think there is
fabrication. I mean, I\'ve never fabricated anything. I have put things
on the air that turned out to be wrong, unfortunately, sometimes with
well placed sources, but we won\'t go into that at this moment, and then
we have corrected them. But you know, people who are responsible
journalists don\'t make things up. They will get things wrong, and they
will partly get things wrong because of the little exercise that Graham
talked about, because news is a vacuum. We need to fill that vacuum. We
need to put something on the air.

If no one is going to give us good information, we are going to have to
talk to as many people as we could, make suppositions, draw on what we
know about other accidents, you know, things like that. So I think it is
incumbent on people who can steer us in the right direction.

I mean, I have covered aviation for 10 years, and I consider myself a
novice. I think it is incumbent upon people who are in the industry, who
really know things, to help people out, to help journalists out, to get
the correct information out after an accident, and to try to control the
information flow in that way.

MR. PHILLIPS: All right. We are almost out of time. One more \--

SECRETARY GENERAL CHERIF: Yes. Merci. Thank you. I just wanted to say
that, when it comes to the public\'s perception of risk and the true
level of risk \-- Mr. Chérif, the General Secretary of ICAO \-- I was
most grateful for Mr. Wachenheim\'s presentation, maybe not just because
he is a friend and we are from the same school, but what I wanted to
state was that his perception is the very essence of a human being.

Air transport is still a taboo in the imagination of the public at
large. Move by flying in the air is still not considered a natural way
to move. Second, there is this notion of vertigo, dizziness. A 17^th^
Century French philosopher said, let\'s put a philosopher in a cage in
the tower of Notre Dame in Paris. His reason is going to tell him he
can\'t fall, because the cables and the cage are solid, but he is still
dizzy. He still has vertigo. He\'s afraid of falling.

I went to the Toronto tower. I don\'t know if some of you have visited
the place, but at the very top of the Toronto tower there is a glass
enclosed area. The challenge is to walk on this glass floor, and you
have the entire city of Toronto right below your feet. Believe you me,
there weren\'t that many people doing it. Children mostly were okay with
it.

Air transport is still a taboo, and the passenger feels like he or she
is a prisoner. In your own car, you can go at a speed that sometimes is
way above the law. You can slow down. You can go faster. You are free.
That is not the case of a passenger in an airplane. The passenger is a
prisoner.

An airplane accident is what I would call an extraordinary accident.
Something falls from the sky. Clearly, one may say that in 2004 there
was one billion, 900 million passengers and the number of fatalities was
maybe, what, 368. But granted, one death is one death too many. But
looking at numbers, it is clear, saying that we are always saying over
and over again that air transport is the safest of all, much safer than
terrestrial or ground transport and so forth. This does not convince the
audience. It does not convince people.

ICAO is a government organization. It is a proactive, not just reactive,
institution. This month we are celebrating the tenth year where the
audit was started in ICAO. They started in 1995. In 1997 the Civil
Aviation General Directors Conference concluded with the USOAP, the
Universal Site Safety Program. This included the technical annexes this
year.

Then we went even further, trying to implement Article 54(j) of the
Chicago Convention, because we felt through this audits that there were
deficiencies, weak points that needed to be corrected. We suggested the
safety management system, the SMS, consider the fundamental element to
improve air transport safety, and in spite of all this, there are states
that remain below the threshold of what needs to be done.

Through Article 54(j) that we have implemented, we can say that some
progresses have been made, clearly. We want to go further. So as Mr.
Wachenheim said quite eloquently, ICAO, too, has some responsibility.

We have programmed a Civil Aviation General Director Conference in
Montreal for the beginning of next year in order to design a global
strategy for air safety that would streamline all program and activity
implemented today here and there.

The worst indeed would be for each region to implement its own
regulation system. This would be chaos. It is crucial for ICAO to take
the initiative. It is the leader in the field, and it must organize all
of this. It must harmonize and make everything consistent. I thank you.

MR. PHILLIPS: All right. Thank you. We have run out of time. I will
close with one quick observation here, which will be one of those truly
rare positive things that I will say.

That is there are two important anniversaries this year. This is the
tenth anniversary of the American Airlines crash at Calais \-- wasn\'t
it? \-- which led to proliferation of the enhanced ground proximity
warning system, which is one of the most important events in the history
of aviation safety. It has probably saved thousands of lives by now.

This is the twentieth anniversary of the wind shear crash at Dallas,
which led to a lot of wind shear detection devices being put everywhere.

So some of you, me and others, may be sitting in this room today after
flying that much to listen to this because of some great advances in
aviation safety, and those two alone were worth the price.

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: All right. Great. Don, panel members,
thank you very much.

(Applause.)

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR STURGELL: A couple of quick things. Let\'s
everybody plan on taking just about 10 minutes, and we will work our way
upstairs for lunch in the Grand Dominion Room where, Dr. Chérif, will be
looking forward to your comments as our speaker this afternoon.

When you come back, let\'s try and start the afternoon sessions as
scheduled. This room will be broken into two, and we will also be using
the Lincoln Room right next door. Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the foregoing proceeding went off the record at 12:33 p.m.)

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