UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

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FEDERAL AVIATION AUTHORITY

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1ST ANNUAL FAA INTERNATIONAL AVIATION

SAFETY FORUM

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JEFFERSONIAN

**CLOSING SESSION**

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THURSDAY

SEPTEMBER 23, 2004

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CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA

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The session was held at the Westfields

Marriott Conference Center, 14750 Conference Center

Drive, Chantilly, Virginia at 3:15 p.m.

[MODERATOR]{.underline}

AMR ELSAWY,

Senior Vice President and General Manager for Aviation Programs, The
MITRE Corporation

[SPEAKER]{.underline}

MARION C. BLAKEY,

Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration

[PANEL MEMBERS]{.underline}

R. JOHN HANSMAN,

Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Head, Humans and Automation
Division; and Director, International Center for Air Transportation,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

CHARLES KEEGAN,

Director, Joint Planning and Development Office, Federal Aviation
Administration

JOHN LANGFORD,

Chairman and President, Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation

NICOLE PIASECKI,

Vice President, Business Strategies and Marketing, Boeing Commercial
Airplanes

VERN RABURN,

President and CEO, Eclipse Aviation Corporation

I-N-D-E-X

[Agenda]{.underline} [Page]{.underline}

Panelist Comments

John Langford 7

Vern Raburn 12

Nicole Piasecki 17

R. John Hansman 23

Charles Keegan 26

Panel Questions 29

Audience Questions 51

Panel Concluding Remarks 62

Administrator Concluding Remarks 68

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

3:18 p.m.

PARTICIPANT: Thank you all for joining us back here for the final
plenary session. We appreciate that you\'ve been so participatory. The
three panels went quite well. We really appreciate everybody\'s
participation.

Now we\'re going to try to focus a little bit on the future, and we\'re
going to ask some of our visionaries here to tell us what they think is
next. And to moderate that panel, we\'ve got Amr Elsawy, Senior Vice
President and General Manager for Aviation Programs at the MITRE
Corporation.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Thank you and good afternoon. It\'s a pleasure to be
here. Our panel\'s going to be focused on the idea that we don\'t know
what we don\'t know, meaning that there will be surprises, and the
question is how do we make progress in light of the fact that there is
uncertainty.

And we have with us a terrific panel. It\'s really an honor to have such
a distinguished panel. We have Vern Raburn, who\'s President and Chief
Executive Officer of Eclipse Aviation Corporation; Nicole Piasecki, who
is Vice President of Business Strategies and Marketing for Boeing
Commercial Airplanes; John Hansman, Professor of Aeronautics and
Astronautics and head of Humans and Automation Division and Director of
International Center for Air Transportation at MIT. We have Charlie
Keegan, who\'s the Director of the Joint Planning and Development
Office; and, finally, John Langford, who\'s Chairman and President of
Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation.

The panel had a plan. I sent them e-mails and asked them for inputs and
things like that, but because this is all about uncertainty, we\'ve got
to make sure that they\'re on their toes. So what I\'d like to do is to
ask the panel members to take a couple of minutes each, this is just the
warm-up part of this discussion, and start a sentence with the
following: Imagine. John?

(Laughter.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: John Langford, please. How would you finish this
sentence? From your perspective, what would the sentence sound like when
you start with, \"Imagine a future that\"?

PANELIST LANGFORD: I would imagine a future that had the technologies of
manned and unmanned aircraft operating together in a unified air traffic
control system.

PANELIST RAYBURN: Is this basically a softball question?

(Laughter.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: For you, Vern, sure.

PANELIST RAYBURN: Imagine an aircraft that can take you where you want
to go, when you want to go, to exactly where you want to go for the cost
of a ticket on jetBlue.

(Laughter.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Okay, Nicole.

PANELIST PIASECKI: I\'ll second that. Imagine if you could get on that
airplane and you had a higher level of comfort of humidity, of cabin
altitude pressure was not as though you\'re on the top of Mt. Ranier but
you\'re in Denver so you have less fatigue at the end of the trip.
Imagine if you could have a view sitting in the middle of the airplane
that allows you to look out at the horizon and that got you, no stops
and hubs, directly to where you want to go, when you want to go.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: John?

PANELIST HANSMAN: Imagine that you had a system that didn\'t have the
constraints we face today so that you could air transportation enable
both quality of life and economic growth, both in the U.S. and in the
developing parts of the world.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Charlie?

PANELIST KEEGAN: Imagine that you have twice as many of those airplanes
as you do any other kinds of airplanes, all operating in the system
safely, getting to their destinations when they chose to get to their
destinations.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: And my imagine is imagine if you could pay for it.

(Laughter.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: But, seriously, I think the bottom line is that there
are all kinds of new opportunities that are emerging. And what I\'d like
to do is to, again, start with John Langford and have him tell you a
little about the kinds of systems that they\'re building and the kinds
of airplanes that they\'re building and the kinds of applications that
they see and the kind of uncertainty that he sees in the business that
he\'s doing. So, John, let\'s start with you, and then we\'ll go down to
Vern and Nicole, and then we\'ll give John Hansman a surprise test just
to get him focused on this discussion. John?

PANELIST LANGFORD: Sure. Thank you. Yes, I think each of us is here
representing a certain constituency or phase of the technological
future, and so my remarks are oriented towards sort of that view that
I\'m here as the representative of the robotic aircraft or the
uninhabited aircraft side of the vehicle.

And so a lot of what my interests in this symposium tend to center
around is the question of why should the FAA care about unmanned
airplanes? And I think the answer is not because the skies are just
about to be darkened by thousands of these aircraft coming out of the
combat environment they\'re being used in today and being used in the
civil environment, and it\'s not because today\'s regulatory structure
is holding back the development of an emerging industry, but rather
it\'s because all of the ‑‑ or most of the technologies, as you look
forward to the next 100 years of aviation, look at how far we\'ve come
in the first 100 years, you ask what are we going to be doing in the
next 100 years, and almost all of those technologies are going to be
coming out of the area today that we call the UAV \[Unmanned Aviation
Vehicle\] sector.

That\'s for a number of reasons, but I think this is sort of the
starting point, and my approach to this is the UAV sector is sort of the
technology incubator for all of the key areas in aviation.

In terms of what are some examples of that in terms of how that might
fit in, very high reliability control systems ‑‑ obviously, something
that we\'re all interested in. We have high reliability controls today,
but the question is how do you get them down to maintain the statistical
levels of safety but you dramatically reduce the cost.

There are technological approaches that can do that. They don\'t involve
today\'s approaches, which are primarily based around hardware
redundancy where you have multiple levels of the same types of hardware
integrated in such a way that they have voting schemes or if one fails,
you can go to a backup system.

The kinds of systems that we\'re going to be having in the future
involve much more concepts of analytic redundancy, of things where
there\'s much more computational power involved in the systems and where
the answers aren\'t always determinant in different situations. How do
you certify a system like that? How do you develop the certification
standards to test and develop and certify systems like that?

Another example is in collision avoidance. Another is in the air traffic
control situation where today it may be sometimes difficult to fit a
robotic airplane in today\'s legacy air traffic control system, but if
you invert the problem and you say, well, what if you had an air traffic
control system designed from the beginning around the kinds of concepts
and architectures and go into the robotic side, it would be very easy to
fit manned aircraft into such a system. And I think you build from that.

There are many issues, and one of the fundamental ones is that in the
robotic systems, in an important way, you capture all of the lessons of
all the previous mistakes and incidents that have gone before you. On
any given day, on a flight, in a manned aircraft, the reliability, the
safety of that system is strongly dependent on both the equipment and on
the pilot up front, in terms of their training, their readiness for that
operation.

In the UAV sector, obviously, the paradigm is shifted as you\'re trying
to get higher reliability, longer lifetimes on the systems and lower
training costs. There is no human immediately in the front of the
aircraft. The systems today that are used in robotic planes are much
less reliable than their counterparts that we see in the national air
space system today, but that is a transient, that\'s changing very
quickly.

And as you move forward, what you have in each of these robotic ‑‑ if
you look at the Global Hawk, for example, every time Global Hawk takes
off, it has on board the full lessons of every flight of a Global Hawk
that\'s ever been taken. So as the flight hours build,, and today we\'re
talking about a few tens of thousands of hours as the total flight time
for robotic airplanes, I mean the high-time system has maybe 30,000
hours.

As you extrapolate that forward and you begin to look at, well, what are
the implications of that for the rest of the manned aircraft system? I
mean there\'s chances here to really raise the bar in terms of vehicle
capability and that leads to a number of I think very exciting issues.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: John, one of the questions that I had, as I looked at
your web site, and for those of you who haven\'t visited John\'s web
site, one of the things that struck me was there\'s this product he has
that\'s called an optionally piloted aircraft. What in the hell is that?

(Laughter.)

PANELIST LANGFORD: It\'s a ‑‑

MODERATOR ELSAWY: I could just imagine booking a flight, getting on the
flight, and the announcer says, \"Ladies and gentlemen, this is an
optionally piloted aircraft.\"

PARTICIPANT: It depends on how much you paid for your ticket.

PANELIST LANGFORD: What we use that aircraft for is the development test
bed, and so it actually has the standard ‑‑ it\'s a modified Cessna 02,
actually, that\'s been fitted out with a UAV flight control system so
that you can operate it out of ‑‑ within the national air space system
for take off and landings, and then you can go into a designated work
area and convert it into a robotic aircraft today for developmental
purposes. So that\'s what it\'s there for. It\'s technically an
experimental aircraft, and where that might lead in the future is hard
to say.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Okay. Vern, from your perspective.

PANELIST RAYBURN: Well, I found it fascinating at lunch today to listen
to Alan\'s comments, because I felt almost he was making my speech for
me with one exception of scaling. Clearly, Eclipse\'s mission, if we
were to state it in such fashion, is to allow people to go where they
want to go, when they want to go, but at a price that doesn\'t command
the type of premium that you typically see today in those vehicles that
allow you to achieve just that mission.

Alan talked about 450 new city pairs; I talk about 5,000 new city pairs.
Alan talked about 400 people; I talk about four people. So there\'s some
really interesting scaling effects that go on here.

But I think it really comes down to what Eclipse is trying to do is
build a new aircraft that can allow for the first time, in I would
argue, probably about 50 years right-size, on-demand transportation.

If you look at what\'s happening today, and there\'s been a lot of
discussion throughout the day about changing business models and
changing technology, the simple fact of the matter is that scheduled
airline service in our nation today and particularly when you look out
in some of the developing nations, like China and South America and some
other parts of the world, Russia, you see that airline service is
actually decreasing rather than increasing. And in fact it\'s decreasing
so fast that we are now measuring the number of cities losing service,
in other words the number of cities per month, not even per quarter or
per year.

And this is really driving some fundamental changes in society today,
because at the same time, we\'re in an era of mass customization. We\'re
in an era of personalization, we\'re in an era of products that really
go to the individual, not to the group, not to the masses.

A perfect example of this, we are seeing today for the very first time
since World War II the beginning of an out-migration from urban centers
into ex-urban, into rural areas. This is being abled by things like the
broadband Internet access, the state highway system being completed,
finally, to overnight package delivery. So people are now choosing where
they want to live, not because they have to live there but because they
want to live there. And yet as this nation has moved since deregulation
of 1978 from a nation that travels on the ground to a nation that
travels by the air, ironically, the service is going down.

So what we\'re trying to do is build an aircraft that can, if you will,
put another layer of the national transportation system in place, that
will, if you will, offer an alternative. Because today we find, as we
study origin and destinations, as we look at travel patterns, as we look
at the way people use airlines, there\'s a significant component of
driving, and we\'ve heard about the example of the Atlanta to Savannah
type of thing. Most of our customers are now starting to talk about not
taking customers, and this is change from where we were five years ago,
not taking customers out of airlines but taking customers off of
highways. Exactly what Herb talked about at Southwest Airlines 25 years
ago.

How are we doing this? Well, there\'s a lot of different ways, but it
fundamentally revolves around one basic concept, and that concept is to
change the value proposition. And what do I mean by value proposition?
My background is out of the technology business. Although I majored in
aeronautical engineering and I graduated from college the year that
billboard went up in Seattle that said, \"Last one up turn out the
lights.\" So I decided this is what we\'d call a CLM, a career limiting
move, to go into aviation. So here I am back 30 years later doing
aviation but with the intent of saying, \"Let\'s take some of the
lessons from the technology world and particularly in terms of how we
measure value.\"

The world I came out of obeys Moore\'s Law. The world I came out of
obeys the backside of Moore\'s Law, which is the third and fourth
generations are ever cheaper than even the leading edge of Moore\'s Law.
In the world I came out, you improve the product and you decrease the
price. That is the exact antithesis of particularly what general
aviation has done for the last 40 years in the United States. There has
been constant and steady product improvement in many cases, but those
product improvements have come with a commensurate increase in cost.

So really what general aviation has become in the United States and
throughout the world today is the prototypical textbook case of price
inelasticity: Raise the price, sell the same number.

So Eclipse is based on the concept that if we can change the value
proposition, we can make a better airplane at a cheaper price, something
will occur which hasn\'t occurred, again, in the GA sector for years,
which is market expansion and even more fundamental, market creation.

So that\'s really how I would describe Eclipse is it\'s a company trying
to use technology, trying to use disruptive technologies, trying to use
innovation to change the value proposition so that, in turn, we can grow
the market so that, in turn, we can find new applications and, in turn,
ultimately we can deliver on the promise of letting people where they
want to go, when they want to go, at a price that\'s commensurate with
scheduled airlines.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Thank you. Nicole? One of the things that you do and
Boeing does on an annual basis is the annual forecast. Can you give us
kind of your sense of what you see and the uncertainties and the demand
and what some of the issues are that you\'re facing and are worried
about as you look ahead?

PANELIST PIASECKI: There was a nice gentleman here this morning from Fed
Ex and he was complaining about the fact that his boss sent him here in
his stead. I\'d like to complain about the fact that my boss came here
and said what, in a more condoling way than I think anyone could, what
Boeing believes and what we see out in the future and some of those
uncertainties. But let me, for emphasis, talk about what we see out over
the next 20 years and the CMO \[Certificate Management Office\] that was
referred to as our current market outlook, which does just that.

There is no question that the market, the traffic is back to all-time
levels, and, as Alan said at lunch, we forecast over the next 20 years.
In fact, the FAA, Boeing and AirBus are all very consistent in how we
see traffic growth multiplying by three times over the next 20 years.
That is not going to be a smooth growth, unfortunately. We will have
cycles because of the interdependency between the economy and air
travel. They\'re mutually dependent and stimulate each other. And there
will also be political events. In fact, over the past 30 years the only
really downturns in air travel were a result of political events, which
is why when we talk about our forecast the fundamental assumptions
around the growth that we see is based on a global, safe and secure and
efficient air transportation system.

When we start talking about how that traffic will be served in terms of
size of airplane and the networks that our customers will develop, we
believe that ‑‑ we have a very different picture than our competitor. We
believe that airlines, competitive airlines will want to apply
technologies that address passengers\' desires to fly in safe, reliable
flight, at the shortest trip times. And that\'s really a key belief of
Boeing, the fragmentation, the frequency, the desire for frequency in
non-stop flight, which for 30 years has been growing at five and two and
a half percent for straight 30 years. And the size of airplane, by the
way, during that time frame has not increased one bit. We see passengers
driving competitive airlines to actually meet their needs of frequencies
and non-stops going forward in a comfortable and economic environment.
And that\'s of course where we have invested our monies in the middle of
the market with an airplane like the 77 Dreamliner and of course the 777
story Alan shared with all of us at lunch.

There are other challenges, as we look out over the next 20 years. Lots
of dynamics that we\'ve talked about all day long in terms of our
customers base. A lot of our customers are telling us, \"Listen, will
you let us focus on running our business and our core competency of
getting our passengers from A to B, and can you take more responsibility
and oversight of managing the assets?\" And, of course, for all
customers, and Boeing believes that all business models are viable,
although there\'s been a huge share shift into low-cost carriers
recently, we believe the legacy carriers, the networks are very
fundamental to the future of air travel and all will shift into growth
modes as we get out of this downturn.

But the needs of our customers are to keep those expenses, assets flying
as much as possible, and that drives the whole notion of the safety and
security are absolutely, but it has to be done in the context of keeping
an efficient system in place and getting passengers through quickly.

As we look out over our product line over the next even five, ten years,
we proactively prioritize safety across all of our products, but I will
tell you on an annual basis we have what every other business and
organization goes through, the tension between investment decisions and
limited resources.

And I guess my final point is that we all really need to work together
in this system, because so much of the decisions we make about
prioritizing things like RNP \[Required Navigation Performance\], RNAV
\[Area Navigation\], VSD \[Vertical Situation Display\], HUD \[Head Up
Display\], which is now invested in the technology ‑‑ 7 for 7 Technology
demonstrator took a lot of our customers through it to show them the
capability, the safety. We had lots of good conversations about can the
industry afford this, can they pay for this, do they get the value back?
And at Boeing we made the decision that we have to keep working, as Alan
said, working down and improving safety across the system and we need to
continue to invest in these things. But, of course, as we put that
equipment on aircraft, we have to make sure that the infrastructure and
the system is there that enables that type of capability.

So on the 77 platform, we\'ve actually gone basic. And what that means
to those of you that aren\'t buying airplanes or haven\'t bought
recently, although I\'m always taking orders, is that it will be
fundamental to that platform. It is not something that you can remove.
It\'s what you get with the airplane. That capability is going to be
built in.

And that\'s really an investment on our part, because the price of the
airplane is set by the market, it\'s not set by Boeing, so the cost, of
course, is based on the decisions we make and how we build and what we
put in and the capabilities in that aircraft.

So you can see us continuing to try to influence the industry going
forward to improve the safety and the capability. And when I talk about
safety, I shouldn\'t forego the whole issue of capacity in the system,
because, again, that forecast that we have on our CMO for growth is
fundamentally based on unconstrained demand, the belief that around the
world, globally, we will continue to invest in what it takes to
stimulate air travel, because it is so fundamental to the economy.

I look at the 77 and how we\'re designing and building that airplane,
and we\'re doing it with partners around the world. It\'s a 24-hour
design process with data sets being sent between Russia, Seattle, Japan,
Russia, all around the world between our design team. And if we
couldn\'t travel, if we didn\'t have the mobility that air travel gave
us, we couldn\'t run our business effectively. Because although the data
sets take a lot of the burden off of the day to day, there\'s
fundamental movement of our people around the world to meet our global
design and manufacturing systems. It\'s actually key to running our
business.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Thank you. John, we\'ve heard three different models
of emerging futures. They\'re probably all going to coexist in some way,
but what\'s your take on the challenges that that poses?

PANELIST HANSMAN: Okay. I\'ll talk a little bit about the question which
is what don\'t we know. In an aircraft design ‑‑ the guy that taught me
aircraft design used to talk about unknown unknowns, so we have to
design a system for your unknown unknowns. So let me just go through a
list of some things I think we don\'t know.

I think we don\'t actually know what the structure of the air
transportation system will be in the future, that I think if you look at
it as an unintended consequence of deregulation, we are now in an
unstable economic cycle, and it\'s not clear where that will go. So
number one is we actually don\'t know what the structure of the industry
will be. Plus we have some interesting vehicles coming in in
competitors, so we don\'t know what will happen there.

I think we do know that there will be pressure on the capacity of the
system, and there will be an expectation to maintain and improve a level
of the safety in the system. So that will require that we go through
some sort of change in operating paradigm. And another thing we don\'t
know is we don\'t know how to do system transition. Historically, the
system has transitioned based on some crisis. So will there be crisis
that will cause a system transition or can we manage a transition? I
don\'t know that.

From a sort of more ‑‑ on another view of it, the system is getting both
the vehicles, the pressure in the system to operate and whatever ‑‑ the
system is getting more complex with time. And one thing that happens in
complex systems is what we call emergent behavior. So you get behaviors
you didn\'t expect out of the system. A classic example of this is
software, but you can see it through the system, so you\'re getting
interactions in the system, and we don\'t know where that will go.

Another interesting thing, and I was sort of struck by this this
morning, is that we also don\'t know how to do safety analysis in an era
of very high levels of safety, okay? So you actually get to a point
where you now have to work with statistics of small numbers. And so when
you had a lot of accidents of a certain type, it was pretty easy to
focus on those and fix those. When you get everything down to the noise
level, it becomes hard to figure out where to put your resources.

There\'s a lot of people collecting data, a lot of these efforts on FOQA
and whatever. From an intellectual or academic perspective, we actually
don\'t know how to analyze that data. We know how to check for things
that we know about, but we actually don\'t know how to discover emergent
behavior early so that we can find it before it becomes a problem.

I guess the last that we don\'t know is we don\'t actually know where
the work force will come from in the future. I think that we\'re in a
period of change, a period of globalization of the industry, in general,
in an operation, so it\'s unclear where these people will come from and
how they will be trained and what the expectations will be to operate in
this more complex and dynamic system.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Thank you. Charlie, from your perspective in the JPDO
\[Joint Planning Development Office\], there\'s certainly an expectation
that you will build a system, you will design a system, develop a system
that meets all of those requirements. That\'s the good news. The bad
news is there\'s so much uncertainty that you could be stuck not acting
until everybody made up their mind, which is kind of a safe place to be.
What do you think are your challenges, and how do we move forward?

PANELIST KEEGAN: Well, actually, John made me really nervous, and so I
think kind of walking through I went, \"Uh-oh.\"

(Laughter.)

PANELIST KEEGAN: No. I think that ‑‑ well, several points. One, clearly
that, and we\'ve heard a number of these on some panels here, that it\'s
not a singular piece about government, one element of government being
able to do this job. And looking at the variety of operational concepts
that are proposed, I mean it\'s a variety of government agencies that
have to pull together. But also, with that, it\'s a variety of
industrial suppliers and customers that actually will have to come
together to solve the issue.

So I think from a construct perspective, the JPDO is sort of the
beginning of that molding of what will be necessary to actually drive to
that inevitable future.

And I think the key is it is about enabling and servicing unconstrained
demand safely. And through that perspective, if we keep that perspective
in mind, I think we have clearly the ability to accommodate the vision
of several of the operational concepts.

I really don\'t think it is incredibly important to the end design that
what airplanes sell the most and what operational concepts actually
work. In the whole systems of systems perspective, they have to work in
large scale, and we expect it to work on a global scale. And it boils
down to sort of a customization, personalization issue. Each individual
aircraft ‑‑ and this is part of where we think our focus of research
needs to be ‑‑ each individual aircraft has to be able to see and avoid,
each individual aircraft has to have full capability, regardless of
size, number of passengers, regardless of whether there\'s a pilot in
the front, two pilots or no pilots.

And so from that technological perspective, the management really stems
from the piece of the asset that is within the system itself, and it\'s
very much like a software design where the line of code has to stand
itself, has to be protected and has to understand its own safety
components and then relate itself to the rest of the system. It becomes
very, very complicated, and we do this on a number of software
applications, but it requires hydrogen-cooled computers to do that.

So we have to break some code, we have to break some technology barriers
in order to get there, but I think from the team that we have together,
between NASA \[National Aeronautics and Space Administration\],
Department of Defense and the FAA and others, I think we have a really
good stimulus about how we\'re going to actually achieve that to be able
to bottle the unknowns that John sort of articulated there.

It\'s sort of scary on the surface, but we have a little bit of time,
and we actually have demonstrated this in small pockets. In several
cases, in this country and around the globe, in military venues, within
the aircraft itself, we\'ve demonstrated this capability. And in other
industries we\'ve demonstrated this capability. So I think sort of
American fortitude and capitalism will prevail here and we\'ll be able
to drive this forward, because all the right people are in the room, and
I think that\'s a great start.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Speaking of fortitude and capitalism, Vern you\'ve put
in a lot of money into the ventures that you started, and as you think
about some of the challenges that you\'ve faced in terms of the
different way of manufacturing, the different way of designing the
avionics, the different look and feel for the cockpit, a different
training strategy for the pilots, what would John have to do, John
Langford have to do to convince you to put one of his optionally piloted
systems on your aircraft so you get two more seats added to your
passenger load?

PANELIST RAYBURN: Well, you\'d be amazed how many discussions are going
on. As you may know, Kent Kresa, who\'s just retired as Chairman of
Northrop Grumman with Global Hawk, et al., on our board, we\'ve had a
lot of discussions with a lot of airplane companies about the concept of
particularly backup for single-pilot operations. I mean I think that the
one thing about our aircraft is that single-pilot operations are very
economically compelling as opposed to two-pilot operations.

And I think there is a certain level of consensus, but certainly not 100
percent, that the real challenge in single-pilot operations is aircraft
recovery if there\'s pilot incapacitation. We actually see this problem
significantly more in GA \[General Aviation\] than we do in 121, and as
one of my buddies at NASA puts it, it\'s the bad breedles and barsville
that typically causes the problem.

So you need to be able to recover the aircraft. I think that\'s where
you\'re going to see a natural and probably a productive intersection
between the UAV world and the next tier of scheduled or non-scheduled,
as in the case we\'ve been talking about, non-scheduled air service. And
so we\'re very excited about the potential about technology, plus it
ultimately acts as kind of a backup.

Alan\'s comment about the question about Airbus, the sort of we\'re not
going to let you kill yourself versus the Boeing we\'ll let you kill
yourself approach to life.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST RAYBURN: It\'s probably not the way people like to say it but
it\'s really what it boils down to is that attitude of the computer
knows better than the pilot. We fall very much in the Boeing view of the
world. We fall very, very much in the view that says there\'s things
that happen and there\'s things that the pilot can take care of, but a
backup system that can ultimately recover the aircraft, and when you
have a fully digital aircraft that\'s sort of self-aware, not only from
the standpoint of its condition and its configuration, but where it is
in XYZ space, even in the 4-D space, then you can get that airplane back
on the ground and have that safety record that we\'re all talking about.

Nicole, I think it\'s only fair to let you respond.

PANELIST PIASECKI: You know, we\'ve done so much research on this, and I
think Alan articulated it perfectly at lunch. We think it is absolutely
critical to have situational awareness and to give the pilot the
capability to use everything that airplane has, and it has been
validated. And that\'s our belief system.

MODERATOR ElSawy: So you don\'t see a transition to machine-to-machine
interaction?

PANELIST PIASECKI: I have to be careful because I have very smart Boeing
people in this room who are in charge of operations, so I will say
personally I think that we believe technically it is possible, it is
absolutely possible. I think some of the issues that we have are more
social, both with the passengers and with the airlines themselves,
eventually, one day.

PANELIST RAYBURN: Let me add that I think there\'s another law that
comes out of the technology business that doesn\'t get quoted a whole
lot. It\'s Noyce\'s Law, Bob Noyce, who was the co-founder of Intel long
before ‑‑ which states that the more complex the system is on the
inside, the simpler it is on the outside. In other words, if you look at
a lot of the technology that we deploy today via a cell phone or a
blackberry or whatever the case may be, we have phenomenally complex
technology embodied in those devices. And yet the operation of those
devices becomes ever simpler all the time. The other phrase we use in
the business is the Flashing 1200 Syndrome, referring to VCRs \[Video
Cassette Recorder\]. Most VCRs now set themselves.

So this is an example of where I think there will be more and more
automation, whether it comes out of the UAV world or whether it comes
out of design studies at Boeing or whether it comes out of Charlie\'s
work, but it\'s not going to be sort of a binary black and white,
overnight, all a sudden computers fly airplanes and nobody sits in back
‑‑ or nobody sits up front, everybody just sits in back. It\'s going to
be a continual, gradual evolution of implementation of technology as
technology comes down in cost and increases the capability to improve
the safety of the aircraft and improve reliability of operations.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Charlie?

PANELIST RAYBURN: Yes. I just want to add to that that the human
interaction piece is going to be certainly a growing concern. Part of
the discussion was sort of the belief system versus what speed you have
to actually calculate and respond to. And, certainly, from a computer
situation, software can process things, very complex situations very
quickly and deal with that. And since we don\'t quite understand the
interactions between the autonomous vehicles and how that would play
with ground control systems or satellite control systems, the speed of
the decision making process is going to come into play and sort of weigh
in on the role and capabilities of both ground controllers, space
controllers and pilots.

So that\'s part of the things that we have to seriously take a look at
and challenge those belief systems in both sides. Both belief systems
will be challenged significantly in that process.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: John?

PANELIST HANSMAN: I think the question of distribution of authority
between humans and automation, which will be a fundamental issue, has to
do with two things: Fundamentally, how good can the automation be and
how good does it have to be? The challenge is being able to deal with
all of the things that can present in the world.

And so if you believe that you understand the world that you\'re going
to be in well enough that you can automate everything and deal with all
the potential environments, then you can often automate because the
automation will, in theory, be more reliable than humans.

On the other hand, if you don\'t have confidence that you can automate
everything or that you know everything in the world, generally, society
wants the human to be there, because the presumption is that the human
who has gone through billions of years of evolution will, in the last
analysis, take the action that has the highest probability of survival.

So until we get to the point where we think that the automation is that
good or where in pieces where the automation is that good we\'ll keep
the humans in there. So it\'s both how much do you know and also how
good is your implementation.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Going back to John Langford for a second, John, as you
look at the range of products, inhabited, uninhabited robotic vehicles,
one can imagine a scenario where this stuff kind of automatically
scheduled, it\'s on a production line, it launches itself, it comes
back, it tells you when it crashed. You could see this emergent
behavior. What kind of a control system are you thinking about in terms
of that kind of environment? Is a control system necessary?

PANELIST LANGFORD: Well, clearly, it goes to the issues I think
everybody up here has been talking about. It\'s not a binary kind of
decision. It\'s not that one day the operators are just removed. We\'re
talking about levels of supervision in this, and it\'s sort of at what
level is the human in the loop providing the supervisory and sort of
authority and oversight of what the system is doing?

And it raises issues not only the technological side but on the
regulatory side and the whole certification and training side, because
as you\'re raising the bar on the vehicle\'s capability, you\'re
changing the standards of what it takes to operate the system, the kind
of interfaces that Apple is famous for and what it\'s done in terms of
making the system easy where you could hand somebody an iPod and it\'s
so intuitive they can use it. Eventually the airplanes will be that way
too.

Does that mean that you want people with no training to get into an
airplane and be able to fly it? I think those are very interesting
questions about how you do the training, the standardization, the
certification. This all comes down to an issue of levels of supervision
and what do you have to do to be approved to perform certain supervisory
tasks?

MODERATOR ELSAWY: As you translate that to the international
marketplace, what\'s your sense of how that\'s going to happen
internationally? Because, clearly, there\'s great diversity in terms of
capabilities across nations, across suppliers, across products?

PANELIST LANGFORD: Well, yes. I think the international question is a
very interesting one, because often the most innovation comes from the
people who are least enfranchised in the current system. And I think the
robotic technology is certainly one where there\'s a potential for
parties outside the United States to make significant advances simply by
virtue of being less bought into the status quo.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Vern, any thoughts on that?

PANELIST RAYBURN: Oh, absolutely. I think we\'ve seen lots of examples
of this, and it does come back to the societal value system. I mean look
at the debate that\'s still ongoing in Europe over single-engine IFR
\[Instrument Flight Rule\]. In Canada, it was like, \"Eh? We\'ve been
doing this for years, so what\'s the big deal?\" They went from flying
behind Pratt & Whitneys that went chugga, chugga, chugga, to flying
behind Pratt & Whitneys that whirred. And they were happy.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST RAYBURN: And so it wasn\'t a debate, it wasn\'t a big deal. And
I think we\'re going to see this as we move into each region of the
world where there\'s a fundamentally different value set within the
society. And whether you call perception or whether you call it values,
or whatever you want to phrase it, each area of the region ‑‑ each
region of the world, each area of the world is going to be differently
challenged to what it will accept.

I have no doubt in my mind if we could go to China today and say,
\"Here\'s an airplane. It doesn\'t require any pilots. You don\'t have
to train anybody. Just punch this button it goes,\" they\'d adopt them
in the tens of thousands right now. But if we tried to do that here in
the United States, there would be such a hue and cry that we wouldn\'t
even hear the end of it.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Nicole, just shifting gears for a minute, you talked
about your kind of strategy, the global strategy for building products
and the importance of having that interconnection around the world. One
of the areas that\'s really been prevalent in the news over the last
couple of months is this whole area of security, and everybody is
talking about the insider threat as being the key issue in security. And
as we talk about highly sophisticated, software-intensive systems that
are safety-critical, how are you dealing in the environment that you\'re
dealing with with the security threat, especially for complicated
software, as you build new products that are more and more sophisticated
around the world?

PANELIST PIASECKI: Well, just to frame the impact that we estimated of
9/11 on our 20-year forecast, we actually believe it took over 1,500 ‑‑
the cost associated with security, this is the elasticity of demand, and
some panels spoke about this morning, but the cost, both of implementing
the infrastructure but also of the hassle that is associated with flying
the system today, has taken over 1,500 aircraft out of our 20-year
forecast, so a very significant impact to the system overall.

I think around security ‑‑ well, what I\'d first like to say is Boeing
was very involved early on in the cockpit door installation, working
closely with the FAA. And I hope there\'s airport people in the audience
because they\'ll throw tomatoes at me, but we were involved in the
installation of the explosion detection system in airports for the
luggage, which was an amazing feat, but it was done in a very short
period of time and was very, very painful for all of us.

Where we believe we need to focus on in security is much like we\'ve
done with CASS \[Continuing Analysis and Surveillance System\], use a
data-driven approach to define where we should be focused, where the
largest impact is. And a lot of the interests of the Congress and others
has been on the threat of manpads, which is one threat, but I think what
we believe is that we really need to understand all the potential
threats instead of just focusing all the resources on manpads, which, by
the way, we have a lot of experience in installing these systems on
military aircraft, and we have a lot of experience on commercial
aircraft, and the current systems and technology today do not meet the
mean time between failure and the imposition of the cost and the
commercial system would be absolutely disastrous financially and there
are other implications.

So where we\'ve really focused our efforts today with the government,
with the TSA \[Transportation Security Administration\], is in
developing a modeling capability so that we can understand once we
prioritize the threats, what is the impact of the threat on the system?
And so I would emphasize again use the same CASS approach in terms of
driving out the priorities of risk and use the data to define where it
is we need to do it, and we need to not only work on the security but
also the efficiency of that security so we don\'t bring down the whole
system overall in implementing the right infrastructure.

In terms of what we\'re doing to our airplanes, the advantage of
developing the new platform like we\'re currently doing with the 77 is
that we are able to build things, embed things into that airplane that
we currently don\'t have on our design. So the whole notion of security
now will be embedded into the design criteria of the 77.

Again, it gets back to connectivity of the airplane being part of a node
so that you have broadband with capability of getting data off that
airplane, knowing where it is all the time, being able to have
predictive understanding of what\'s going on in the airplane\'s systems
and then adjusting accordingly. So we are very much starting to embed
that thought process in our designs.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Maybe, Vern, if you could talk a little bit about your
software development activities and how you\'re dealing with security
threats and protection of software and things like that in your
platforms.

PANELIST RAYBURN: Well, the security issue for our platform is radically
different than it is for Part 25 and the 121 world in that two things.
One is it\'s typically a known identity of who you\'re carrying, and the
second is just the disruptive capability. If we have to start regulating
the sixth place airplanes, we better start regulating for the Ford
Econoline vans; they get loaded up with fertilizer. Because just the
simple reality, the physics of it are that the disruptive capability is
just not there, and so you have to do some prioritization, if you will,
of what the real capability of destruction is.

So it\'s not ever going to be at the same level but from a pure software
standpoint, we do have the ability in the airplane to put into the
system, to put into the architecture biometric identification devices so
we can have a secured ID of the pilot at least. But from there I think
there\'s a debate that still has to be had as to what is really
appropriate level of security within the Part 23 and the 135 and the 91
world.

PANELIST LANGFORD: I would just comment that 500 kilograms is the export
control regulation for UAVs now. If you can carry more than 500
kilograms, you\'re deemed to be a first-order threat because it\'s what
they call a Category 1 system.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: You know, we have everybody in the room who could
lower that if you\'d like.

(Laughter.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Okay. Let\'s shift gears a little bit and look towards
the process of getting the air traffic management system to transition
and to be able to handle the kind of evolving models and businesses that
you all talked about.

Charlie, if we could start with you. In a prior panel, people talked
about the way you insert technology is you either push it, pull it, and
I\'d like to add a third option which is to force it, to mandate it.
Where would you draw the line? What things do you think are going to be
absolutely essentially to help us transition to the future that would
meet those business models as we go forward?

PANELIST KEEGAN: Well, a couple things. I think the FAA has a real
strong modernization program today that sets the foundation for an
infrastructure that would exist that is necessary for sort of a data
management situation, being able to shift information around to the
right places, it\'s well connected. But it has to stay stable, and it\'s
a decade away from being done, and it is constantly at risk year by
year, and that pressure just adds risk to the future of what could be
available. So one is to keep that stable.

There\'s another piece about whether the necessary sort of near-term
pieces and we have pockets of that, which is automatic dependent
surveillance and things like that that we know are fundamental to being
able to have the appropriate surveillance mechanisms that are around and
are already partially in place. And those things I think we just need to
push. There\'s a tremendous amount of value of that, and the return on
investment is clear to a set of customers, so there\'s lowest push.

But I think that the main issues is that there are some fundamental
pieces that require data, such as controller pilot data link and those
pieces, and I think they need to be forced.

The things that will connect us like we have in e-mail and PDAs
\[Personal Digital Assistant\] and our cell phones are actually things
that we actually need to force into the airplane and force on the ground
that are force issues. The return on investment is unclear. The vision
is unlimited, it is absolutely unlimited. This panel represents that
unlimited vision, but you cannot get a return on investment in 18
months, and I think it\'s sort of government\'s responsibility to do the
things that are necessary that are sort of rulemaking things that
identify that this is what it takes, this is the total cost and this is
the return on investment to society in order to make those things
happen.

I sort of see that as sort of our offices sort of roll in order to sort
of facilitate on what that would look like, because those are the
fundamental pieces. And data link is a key issue. The ability to have
cell phone, broadband technology that is safe, secure and actually gives
the information to the right government or industrial agency to be able
to use it in a timely manner to be able to facilitate efficiency,
security issues or actually just make sure cars are available when
passengers are available are important pieces that are just not going to
naturally get into the system or we\'re going to do things redundantly.
We\'re going to build three or four of them and they\'ll all compete,
sort of a waste of government\'s and industrial money. And so we don\'t
need to do that. We just need to cooperate in what that means on how to
do that. But I do think it will require a forcing function, at least to
get started.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: John, could you comment on your take on data link and
its impact on safety, especially in ‑‑

PANELIST HANSMAN: Yes. Well, let me ‑‑ there are a lot of applications
for data link and let me not talk about safety for a minute. Let me talk
about ‑‑ follow-up on this forcing idea. If you look at modes of
transition that require airborne equipage, it\'s almost impossible to do
the equipage on a return on investment criteria, because any system
design that\'s good for one unit of population won\'t be good for
somebody. So it\'s very hard to get this sort of consensus view. So
somehow we have to get to a point where we decide what the right thing
to do is and force the issue.

From a research standpoint, we actually haven\'t done the research to
build the case to support the argument that would defend that decision.
So we end up doing a lot of technology demonstrations, and it will be
cool to do this, and it will be cool to do that, but the fundamental
problem is we\'re so slow on this transition modernization that the
technology will change before you can implement it.

So you get into this Catch-22 where we should have done data link but
the data link could buy today is better than the data link that we would
have done so we\'ve got to go back and redo an analysis and whatever.

So somehow we have to figure out a mechanism to do fast transitions, and
I think you\'re going to have to mandate it in places where access to
some resource, be it the airport, the air space or something, is so
compelling that the business case from an operator perspective is a
no-brainer.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Nicole, your thoughts on this whole topic of what do
you push, what do you pull and what do you force?

PANELIST PIASECKI: I\'m not a specialist in this area. Boeing is a huge
advocate and has invested millions of dollars in trying to understand
how we can create a transformational future for our traffic system,
because it\'s absolutely necessary, so we\'ve got to do it. I think
it\'s about leadership, and I think we need ‑‑ again, it gets back to
working together, wanting to set the standards, wanting the U.S., the
FAA, all of us to be leaders around the world in setting the standards
for a safe and more efficient system.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Vern, your thoughts.

PANELIST RAYBURN: I think John has touched on a super, super important
point. It\'s one of the ones that I wanted to talk about. It\'s sort of
the elephants in the room that have been ignored today.

I\'d even translate the theme of this panel from not what we don\'t know
but from what we know but we don\'t want to talk about.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST RAYBURN: And there\'s a couple of issues here that strike me
after having sat through things today that relate directly back to this.
One is the capacity issue. I think the thing that I haven\'t heard today
is the real capacity in the system today by the primary users of the
system, which are the airlines, is runway capacity. It\'s not air space,
it\'s not en route management, it\'s not even terminal management. It\'s
just plain, flat physics of how many big airplanes can you put on a
patch of concrete in a given period of time. And that is already, once
again, constraining the capacity of the system three years after 9/11.
It\'s happened already, and we\'ve all seen the results of this.

I don\'t believe that\'s a problem that\'s going to get solved
overnight, because I don\'t think we can solve the problem by simply
going out and saying, \"Let\'s pave more runways.\" We can\'t even keep
rogue mayors from coming in with bulldozers at three in the morning
ripping up runways. And so ‑‑

PARTICIPANT: Do you have any examples in mind?

(Laughter.)

PANELIST RAYBURN: Let\'s see ‑‑ never mind. And so I think this is one
of the basic issues that we have to resolve is how do we increase
capacity in terms of allocation of resources as to where the real best
results are going to occur. Obviously, our strategy as a manufacturer is
to go use the runways that aren\'t being used today at the capacity that
they need to be used at.

The second point, and I think this is the really fascinating one given
my background, is I\'ve never adopted a technology, be it a process or
be it a memory, be it display technology, a rotating memory technology,
that the manufacturer wasn\'t able to say to me, \"Here\'s our
end-of-life plan. Here\'s when we\'re going to obsolete this technology.
Here\'s what\'s going to be the next generation after this technology.\"

And this industry has a legacy issue that I am just flabbergasted by. It
sort of seems to be that if you buy an airplane, there\'s a God-given
right that says you get to fly this thing for 50 years and nobody can
change anything that makes it so you can\'t fly this airplane for 50
years. And we\'re in this period of intense, immense, accelerated
technology development, which will solve many, many, many, many of the
problems that have been talked about it, and yet it\'s like we give this
right, we give this entitlement that says if you have something old, you
get to keep it. And some of my compatriots like Phil Boyer and Jim Kline
and some of the guys that represent the world that I come out of are
some of the worst offenders of this, by the way, far from the only
offenders on this point.

So I wonder why we can\'t have an end-of-life plan? Why can\'t we have a
technology obsolescence plan? Why can\'t we have a road map that says,
\"If you do this, in 12 years, you\'re going to throw it away because
there\'s going to be something better\"? Because otherwise we fall into
exactly the dilemma that Marion pointed out earlier today, which is the
enemy of good is the perfect.

And so that seems to me to be one of the core issues that has to be
solved if we\'re going to answer this what don\'t we know problem. Give
people a clear cut road map that says, \"We\'re going to do this, even
though it\'s not the best, and then when there\'s something really
better we\'re going to do that.\" Because otherwise we\'re going to get
stuck in this mode that we seem to be stuck in as an industry, which is
everything has to be backward compatible. There\'s a company called
Microsoft that really fell victim to that for a long, long time. Apple
didn\'t. Apple is the company that\'s prepared to say, \"You\'re running
OS3? Screw you. OS4 is out now.\" You\'ve got to upgrade.

(Laughter.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: I just saw the Administrator really laugh at that one,
because I can see a bunch of letters going out. So watch out.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST RAYBURN: Maybe I don\'t say things politically the way I
should.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Thank you, Vern. Let\'s transition and get some
audience questions so that we can stay on time. Let me open up the
floor. Questions for the panel. There are no questions for this panel?

MR. MATTHEWS: Stuart Matthews, Flight Safety Foundation. I\'m
fascinated, of course, by this whole argument or discussion on the
pilots or machines to run the aircraft. Let\'s imagine for a moment we
have an aircraft that is totally perfect, technically perfect, and it\'s
not going to crash because of any failing the structure or anything like
that, or the engines. Now, we have a pilot in charge or we have
computers in charge, talking in the future, and we have the very, very
best pilots that we could ever have in charge of this aircraft.

But one of these fine days, because all humans are fallible, he\'s going
to make a mistake, do something wrong, and that\'s the limit that we can
go to with pilots. So we say, \"Fine,\" and we get black boxes and we
get that to run and they\'re perfect. But my point is that black boxes
are designed and built and installed by people, the very best person you
could ever find will do those jobs in that perfect regime, but he too is
fallible and at some stage, therefore, we have a situation where
basically the black box perfect man or the ‑‑ sorry, the pilot perfect
man are reaching the limit of their capabilities.

So my question is do you think we\'ll ever get below a level where in
fact black boxes will be better than pilots or pilots will be better
than black boxes? There\'s a limit to where we can go in perfection and
human failings, human error.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: That feels like an MIT question.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, I was looking at John Hansman.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: You\'re on, John.

PANELIST HANSMAN: Well, you\'re absolutely correct that even if you do
something, if you create automation, the automation, until we get to
iRobot, was created by humans. So you\'ve basically taken the problem
and shifted it to the person specifying the software or writing the
software or whatever. In the level of skill in the art right now is such
that we\'re not as good, in general, as a human unless we really
understand the past and it\'s relatively simple.

But things are improving quickly, and there\'s some expectation that a
machine can be better at some tasks than a human. There\'s some areas
where we know machines are better. They can be faster. If you look at
flight control systems, they can stabilize non-linear flight control
systems better than some humans can do. So it\'s really now a matter of
where do you want the human in the system, where does the human kind of
add value and confidence, and there\'s this issue of who\'s going to be
in charge?

So you can think of ‑‑ and this is actually the Boeing-Airbus debate. In
traditional human supervisory control, the human commands the control
system, and you have decision support systems where a decision support
system, which may be a warning system, will warn the human, okay? You
can create systems where you think that the problem is so bad that you
have to take over.

And the example I\'ll use, actually, last night everybody stood behind
the SR-71. When I teach the class, this is the classic example. The
first two SR-71s crashed because of an on-start problem on the engines
which would create loss of control. So they actually implemented an
automatic control system that would detect that engine quitting, okay,
and shut down the other engine before the pilot ‑‑ before you\'d lose
control.

Now, I told people this last night, the story is that when this happens
to you, the way you know it happens is first your head hits one side of
the cockpit and then your head hits the other side of the cockpit, you
glide down and restart the engines. But it\'s a clear case of a clear
decision that the automation can do it better than a human.

As we get to more amorphous decisions, it becomes much tougher. So I
think that this will be a debate that goes on for the next decade or
two.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: If I may, John Lauber is here. John, could I call on
you to address that question?

PANELIST LAUBER: What a wonderful opportunity. Thank you.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST LAUBER: I noted with some interest several references to the
Boeing-Airbus debate, and I think most of those have really missed the
point. I don\'t think that is the central issue in Boeing versus Airbus
with regard to I think the specific references to the way we do flight
envelope protection.

The issue isn\'t whether ‑‑ the issue is how we can use the automation
to augment what the people do. That\'s what it\'s all about. It\'s about
augmenting human performance, complementing human performance. Humans
are very good at some things, not so very good at others, and it\'s just
that we have different approaches with regard to one specific issue that
has to do with loss of control, aerodynamic stall, and that I think is
at the heart of the issue, and it\'s very different from the general ‑‑
some of the general comments that have been made.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Charlie?

PANELIST KEEGAN: Yes. Just the black box versus the human debate, I
don\'t think that we should today limit our thinking and limit the
vision because of what our concerns are on the automation. We really
need to do the research to see how far we can stretch that envelope, and
that would be the determination of progress. And if we don\'t achieve ‑‑
if the vision is to replace the pilots and then we don\'t get there,
well, that\'s okay because we probably have made the system safer.

And that\'s of course assuming that we do take the safety culture and
bring it from the very beginning, which is sort of what we need to do
today to get to that 20, 25-year window and make sure that we think
about that on the way to that so that it\'s understood on what kind of
progress we\'re making and the value of that progress and then see how
we can actually transition that into the operational system.

So I think we should not limit our visions in any of those aspects
because we\'re worried about the competition between human and machine.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Good point. Questions? There\'s another question. Ron?

PANELIST STURGELL: I wanted to follow-up on your opening question. I
think that was an excellent way to start. All of you expressed what you
imagined, and I wondered if you might now tell us what you think is the
major roadblock to that coming true or maybe a bump in the road if it\'s
not a roadblock? Does everybody remember what they said?

MODERATOR ELSAWY: John, why don\'t we start with you and then ‑‑

PANELIST HANSMAN: Start at the other end.

(Laughter.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Go ahead. Do you want to start or do you want Charlie
to start?

PANELIST LANGFORD: Oh, I think we\'re all going to say money.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Is that true? Everybody agree on that?

PANELIST HANSMAN: No. I think it\'s an ability ‑‑ I think that there are
many barriers to improving the performance of the system. I actually
think money people talk about is the biggest barrier, but I think the
other ones are more important. I think making a clear case and
justification for the money is more important than money, and really
understanding the barriers of transition and building trust from the
people who you\'re asking for the money that you\'ll deliver is a key
part of it.

PANELIST RAYBURN: I think money is always going to be a factor. It\'s
just ‑‑ jet fuel may make airplanes go but money builds them and money
operates them. And every time you want to try to do something that\'s a
little bit out of the box or a little bit not within the normal realm,
you run into this phenomena of people saying, \"But will it work?\" And,
unfortunately, in many cases, there\'s no empirical way to demonstrate
that it will work. There\'s only analytical ways, and there\'s only
forecast ways.

So money will always be a challenge, but is it the ultimate barriers, is
it the ultimate inhibitor? No, I wouldn\'t say that it is. I think it\'s
the kind of decisions that we\'ve been talking about up here that really
is the ultimate issue.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Nicole?

PANELIST PIASECKI: My dream or what I was imagining was the 77, and that
will come true, and it does require lots of resources and working
together. But I think on the larger point of why we\'re here today where
we see the challenges in the system is really ‑‑ I think it\'s all about
leadership and focus. Yes, it will all take resources, but we have the
vision. It\'s deciding that we\'re going to do it and getting rid of the
political agendas and the competitive agendas.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Charlie?

PANELIST KEEGAN: Yes. I think sort of it\'s the money question, but I
think it\'s whether a national imperative or not. So I think from our
data and from what the panel would indicate are their data is that in 20
years we have a crisis and it\'s one of the opportunities to actually
resolve the crisis before it actually shows up or we wait for the crisis
and then respond to it, and that would be a function of actually putting
the resources, whether they be new or refocused, to actually solve the
problem.

And so from a national perspective and for what\'s good for the country
is whether we\'re actually going to step up to the plate and do that or
we\'re going to talk about it. And I think it\'s time for that action to
make sure that we\'re in advance of a crisis.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Other questions?

MR. FINNIGAN: Good afternoon. My name is Brian Finnigan with the
Professional Aviation Maintenance Association. First of all, I\'d like
you to know that anybody who flew here through a major hub airport flew
on an uninhabited train or tram through one of the major hubs and it
didn\'t crash into the wall at the other end. In fact, my son and I
always like to sit up in the front there just in case we get really
close. So the technology that kind of automation that we\'ve already
gotten very comfortable with, we don\'t even think about anymore, is
already there.

Also, I\'d like to mention that with regard to UAVs, unmanned aerial
vehicles, it doesn\'t stand for unmaintained aerial vehicles, and
there\'s a tremendous workforce that\'s going to have to be trained to
take care of that, including an awful lot of avionics, awful lot of new
materials that are not being taught in the schools right now. Currently,
the training programs are not in place to equip modern technicians with
the rising technology that is already obsolete as we implement it.

And, lastly, I\'d just like to make a comment that I give a lot of
presentations around the country. I speak to many, many technicians,
hundreds and hundreds at a time, and at the end of my presentation I
always ask how many people would recommend aviation maintenance, this
profession, to their children or to other young people? And,
startlingly, I rarely get a hand up. One or two, perhaps.

And it\'s not because they\'re shy, because when finally somebody
realizes this is the story, one person says, \"I\'ll tell you why,\" and
they stand up and they give one reason, and the next thing you know
there\'s a hue and cry about why aviation maintenance technicians are so
unhappy in this industry. And I suggest to you that one of the items
here in our unknown unknowns is where are we going to get these
technicians in the future and how will they be trained, what will be
their expectations?

And, lastly, is this only going to be solved through crisis, because I
think we\'re headed for that crisis, and I challenge the industry to
focus heavily on it. I was tremendously encouraged this morning by all
the great discussions about maintenance and on training and I think that
we are beginning to address this issue, this important issue, and I\'m
proud of this group for bringing it up, but I just wanted to make sure
that I kind of put an exclamation point on it as we get toward the end
of our day. Thank you.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Thank you very much.

PANELIST HANSMAN: Yes. I just want to say that that was one of the
groups specifically I was talking about in that concern.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: So to close out the panel, one of the things that Nick
asked me to do when we were talking about this panel, he says, \"If I
could get really the five top priorities to help us move into the future
from a safety perspective, what would that be,\" and he said, \"Please
make sure that the panel addresses that question,\" didn\'t you, Nick?
You did.

So, John, let\'s start with John Langford. If you were able to give Nick
Sabatini one assignment ‑‑

(Laughter.)

‑‑ what would it be? To fundamentally help your business grow, prosper
and move forward, what would that be? Start thinking, Vern.

PANELIST LANGFORD: I think it would have to be to develop a
collaborative approach with industry on how we address some of these new
concepts to high reliability flight controls that I think are
fundamental to progress over the next 20 years and which there are very
open issues on how we do that.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Okay. Vern?

PANELIST RAYBURN: This is a hard choice. Let me start by saying ‑‑

MODERATOR ELSAWY: You can direct it to Peggy if you want.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST RAYBURN: Let me start by saying that I think Nick and his team
have done an amazing job, and of course our interaction with the FAA
today is primarily in airplane certification. We don\'t have an
operating aircraft today and so we\'re not on that side of the agency
today. And I have to say that as a newcomer to the industry all the
stories I had heard about how terrible it is to work with the FAA have
just proven to be not true. They simply have not proven to be the case
in Nick\'s organization. Their willingness to innovate, their
willingness to listen to alternatives, their willingness to engage in a
true, honest debate has been phenomenally refreshing. It\'s not that
this is all kissy-kissy. We\'ve had our disagreements, and we\'ve lost a
few and we\'ve won a few, but the fact is that we\'ve managed to go
through this process. So I feel very strongly compelled to say that
there\'s not big changes.

I think there is an interesting possibility, though, which falls into
two different areas. One is more of an outsourcing from the FAA of some
of the tasks that it does today. I\'m thinking particularly of some of
the stuff that was discussed this morning about procedures, about
charting. We have the technology in place but we can\'t get the stuff
out fast enough. And so I would suggest that Nick and his team look more
towards how to increase the velocity of change coming through the
agency.

And the second is I\'d like to have some more discussion about maybe
inverting the process or the concept that has always happened,
especially in this nation and a to a great extent through the world,
where all innovation is introduced at the air transport-air carrier
level, and then it ultimately filters down into a small aircraft, that
we invert that equation, we actually start some of the innovation with
the smaller aircraft, then push up the chain.

Because our cost to do that, our cost to deploy across the fleet, our
benefit ratio is probably going to be a much better ratio and going to
be much easier to do than if we try to introduce it across the board at
the fleet level and the air transport, the Part 25, the air carrier
world. And so I think we can help ‑‑ we, meaning collectively ‑‑ the 91,
the 23 world, however you want to phrase it, can help push some
innovation up rather than always being the recipient of it coming down.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Nicole?

PANELIST PIASECKI: Well, I think of course our biggest effort with Nick
over the next five years is going to be launching and bringing to market
the first 21st century large commercial aircraft, and we\'re using a lot
of new technology on that airplane. We\'re trying to centralize data to
support the whole FOQA and the CASS process, and it\'s going to take a
lot of collaboration and working together to go there and help bring the
industry to the place that we need to be.

Back to my original point, we really need to do joint investment
together, because we can equip an airplane and put a lot of technology
on there. We have to have the investment and the infrastructure and the
system capability to get any value out of that. And so our ongoing
partnership.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: John?

PANELIST HANSMAN: It\'s all about the data. I think he knows this, but I
think that the real challenge, both from the air traffic control and the
safety standpoint, is to really understand the system, understand
what\'s going on and understanding the precursors in the system for
problems. And it\'s a real challenge, both to deal with all of the
protections you have to put in the data, but also you have this massive
amount of data just to figure out, have a look at it. So I think it\'s
about the data.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Charlie?

PANELIST KEEGAN: It\'s sort of unfair since we work together, but I
think ‑‑

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Well, he gets to give you an assignment too.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST KEEGAN: You should dedicate significant resources to
reconfigurable flight controls.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST KEEGAN: That\'s got to be stricken from whoever\'s taking
notes, because that\'s just a personal thing.

(Laughter.)

PANELIST KEEGAN: But, no. Actually, what\'s been said, but I really
think one of the things that would be important for the 20-, 25-year
futures is to find a way that we can drive the safety culture that you
expect in sort of today\'s world into the research think tank
organizations as well as academia. That\'s a place where the ideas stem
from but that the thought process that\'s necessary for those ideas to
come to fruition there\'s a huge piece missing, and that\'s sort of
safety in the relationship component that just isn\'t thought about.

And it\'s sort of part of where those groups come from in that, but if
we can do that, then our expectation is that model 1 coming off the line
would just ‑‑ it would be easy. We don\'t really have a certification
process, and it would just be automatic. And I think it has to start
from where the ideas stem from instead of when they start to go into
production, which is a little late. And then all of a sudden you have to
resolve issues rather than it\'s already accommodated in the thought
process. And so that would be my ‑‑ other than the reconfigurable flight
controls.

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Okay. It\'s almost 4:45. We\'re at the end of the
session. Please join me in thanking the panelists for their tremendous
comments.

(Applause.)

MODERATOR ELSAWY: Thank you. Peggy, over to you.

ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: Well, I was going to say wasn\'t this a great
panel to close out the day?

(Applause.)

ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: Tremendously stimulating to all of us, and I
simply want to close by not only thanking this panel but thanking all of
our panelists and speakers today who I thought did an absolutely
wonderful job. I had the privilege of hearing many of you. I wish I
could have heard every single one. But it really was a great group that
really was pulling together on a variety of important issues.

So I want to thank all of them. I want to thank the Air Transport
Association and our cosponsors, and I do want to list them again because
we\'re very grateful to you all for this: Airbus, AirTran, APCO,
Bombardier, ALPA, Embraer, General Electric, jetBlue and NBAA. They were
terrific to do this, and we all want to thank you.

(Applause.)

ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: And, you know, it would be impossible to sort of
recap a conference like this right off the top, but I was very struck by
a number of the really great comments we had, and I think you tend to
leave a conference like this with as many questions as you have answers.
John Hansman here talking about the unknown unknowns will probably stick
with us for a long time. Gilberto Mayer talking about the challenges and
the international system we\'re running and the international audit and
how you try to really bring countries around the globe up to a standard.
Ed Bolen, he made a comment that really struck with me, and that was
that we miss as regulators things that we often know as human beings.

And there were some wonderful moments too, I have to tell you. Richard
Anderson in talking about data sharing with Duane Woerth, the question
of, of course, liability came up, and Richard was saying, \"Listen, as
decision makers, you can\'t make your decisions based on the
plaintiff\'s bar,\" and of course I\'m flashing back to here\'s Richard,
the lawyer, the old prosecutor telling us this. It was a great moment.

As it was, I have to say, Vern, you know, as I\'m thinking about you
here making the recommendation that he wants to see an end-of-life plan
for all our old aircraft. What struck me, Vern, is if you and I go down
that road together, there\'s going to an end-of-life plan for us from
some of the folks out here.

(Laughter.)

ADMINISTRATOR BLAKEY: I\'m not sure we\'re going to win any popularity
contests on that idea.

But, more seriously, I also think his comment about what do we know that
we don\'t want to talk about?

And I mention that to you all because I think so much surfaced today,
but we sort of stuck our neck out by making this, as we declared right
up front, the first annual safety forum, international safety forum that
we\'ll sponsor. We are committed to sponsoring another one next year,
and so we\'d like to know from you all what is it that we haven\'t
talked about? What are the issues that you see as a result of this where
we really ought to dig in and probe next year? What are things that
actually deserve a lot more attention, perhaps a lot more debate?

So I could count on you all, please, to fill out the evaluation forms,
your comments, but most importantly let us know what topics you want to
address, what issues you think we ought to engender a lot more
discussion on. Because that\'s the way something like this will be
productive.

I also have to tell you that we\'re very committed to giving you good
feedback from this session. You may have noticed that we\'ve had court
reporters in every session. The idea is to pull these proceedings
together, put those out on the web. So for all of you who have given
your e-mail addresses, we will be e-mailing you when that comes up. So
if you want to go and check the proceedings or look into a particular
panel of something you may have missed, it will be there for you.

I think I\'d simply like to close by echoing Alan\'s call. And what Alan
said today at lunch is that we need to recommit ourselves to the safety
mission. So with that in mind, let\'s all go and look for the
opportunity all year long to recap what we\'ve done from now till next
year and then talk more about what we\'re going to do to recommit to our
safety mission.

Thank you all very much for taking time to be here.

(Applause.)

(Whereupon, at 4:48 p.m., the Safety Forum was concluded.)