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FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

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4TH ANNUAL FAA INTERNATIONAL AVIATION SAFETY

FORUM

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SAFETY WITHOUT BORDERS-MEETING GLOBAL CHALLENGES

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FRIDAY,

NOVEMBER 30, 2007

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The Forum convened at 8:00 a.m. at

the Westfields Marriott Hotel, 14750 Conference

Center Drive, Chantilly, Virginia.

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C O N T E N T S

PAGE

Global Green Skies Panel 4

Question and Answer Session 73

Next Generation of Aviation Professionals 95

Question and Answer Session 151

Closing Comments 166

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

2 8:10 a.m.

3 MR. FILIPPATOS: Good morning and

4 welcome to the second and final day of the

5 conference. We have this morning our Global

6 Green Skies Panel.

7 And before kicking that off and

8 introducing the moderator, I wanted to just ask

9 you for one thing, which is to remind you about

10 the evaluation forms, which are in your packets.

11 And we\'d be very grateful if you could

12 fill those out and just drop them off in the

13 back. Again, they\'re in your packets. If you

14 don\'t have one, you can get one from the back.

15 So, we have a little bit of a

16 different topic this morning. Not, perhaps

17 directly related to safety, although I think some

18 of the panelists will get into just how all of

19 this ties in.

20 But obviously, it\'s up to the

21 industry, so it\'s a pleasure to introduce Steve

22 Alterman, the President of the Cargo Airline

23 Association who will go ahead and moderate the

24 panel and introduce the other participants who

25 are grateful for you being here. Thank you.

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1 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Thank you very

2 much. I\'m delighted to be here and on behalf of

3 the panel, I think we\'re all delighted to be

4 here.

5 Let me just put some things in context

6 on what you\'re going to hear and how we\'re going

7 to do it this afternoon, so that if there\'s part

8 of it you don\'t want hear, you can leave.

9 Although, names will be taken at the

10 back if you. Except for a short presentation

11 that I\'m going to be making at the beginning,

12 just to set the stage, we are not going to be

13 making formal presentations on this panel.

14 We\'re going to be responding to

15 questions and hopefully interacting among

16 ourselves. The goal is to identify the major

17 issues and to find the issues in the

18 environmental area and how they relate to the

19 aviation industry.

20 When we get through with defining the

21 issues, we\'re going to talk about potential

22 solutions sets or management sets, how do we deal

23 with the problems.

24 And we are going to leave at least 20

25 minutes at the end for question and answer

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1 because this is a topic that invariably engenders

2 questions from the audience, things we haven\'t

3 touched on, things we\'ve said that may be

4 controversial, we want to give the audience an

5 opportunity to participate in this panel.

6 So we\'re going to leave at least 20

7 minutes at the end for question and answers, and

8 my understanding is that there will be

9 microphones in the audience, so if you have a

10 question, flag down someone with a microphone.

11 What I\'d like to do to start is just

12 to give some context to the issue and to

13 introduce the panel.

14 So, the slide that\'s up there now, if

15 you\'re not supposed to be at the Fourth Annual

16 FAA International Aviation Safety Forum, leave.

17 I\'d like to introduce the panelists,

18 and it may not be in the order that we\'re sitting

19 up here. I\'ve discovered that in doing panels,

20 if I don\'t do it in alphabetical order, I get in

21 trouble.

22 So, I\'m Steve Alterman, I'm the

23 President of the Cargo Airline Association. For

24 those of you who don\'t know the Cargo Airline

25 Association, very briefly we represent United

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1 States carriers who only carry freight.

2 We represent the FedEx\'s, UPS\', DHL\'s

3 those type of carriers. Our members are also

4 members of other trade organizations who are also

5 represented on the panel.

6 In terms of the alphabet, first is

7 Billy Glover from Boeing. Billy\'s the managing

8 director of environmental strategy.

9 We work with Billy for a long time

10 now, he\'s been very involved in both

11 international and domestic environmental matters.

12 And we\'re delighted to have Billy here.

13 And I guess a counterpart is Renee

14 Martin-Nagle from Airbus. So we have the

15 European manufacturer perspective, actually

16 Airbus Americas so that \-- to be precise.

17 And Renee is the vice president and

18 general counsel. We have more lawyers on this

19 panel then we probably know what to do with. But

20 Renee is the Vice President and General Counsel

21 for Airbus Americas.

22 John Keenan is a big shot at the Air

23 Transport Association in the United States. He -

24 - his actual title is the executive vice

25 president and the chief operating officer.

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1 You will notice what he does most of

2 the time he is very tan, he\'s been out for the

3 last two weeks, we haven\'t been able to find him,

4 he\'s been trying to discover the new world

5 sailing from Europe to Barbados as I understand

6 it. But he did make it back in time for the

7 conference and we really appreciate that.

8 We really appreciate Dr. Robert

9 Porteous. Rob is from Air Services Australia and

10 he is the Manager for Strategic Planning for Air

11 Services Australia and he has clearly come the

12 longest way to be with us on the panel.

13 And those of us involved in this thank

14 you immensely. We really appreciate it.

15 Bob Shuter from Transport Canada, Bob

16 is the director of international aviation and

17 technician programs and again, from our

18 perspective, thanks for coming down from Canada.

19 He had a choice I think of going to

20 Zurich or coming here and he came here, which

21 doesn\'t say much for his thought process. But

22 anyway, we really do appreciate your being here.

23 And finally, Jessica Steinhilber from

24 the Airports Counsel International in the United

25 States in North America is a director of

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1 environmental affairs.

2 And Jessica has been very involved

3 both in the international arena and the domestic

4 arena in representing the airports in

5 environmental matters.

6 So that\'s the panel and seeing who we

7 have here, I think you\'ll get a broad cross

8 section of what the issues are and how to deal

9 with those issues.

10 So, on behalf of all of us, thank you

11 all for coming, we do appreciate it.

12 What are the environmental challenges?

13 And you know, I put this up because someone said

14 oh you\'re doing a panel on global warming, well

15 yes and no.

16 There are a whole host of

17 environmental issue, one of which is global

18 warming but some of which are not.

19 We have local issues, we have noise,

20 we have local air qualities, which \-- issues,

21 which are emissions issues, we have water

22 qualities issues at airports with de-icing.

23 And we have the global issues, we have

24 global climate change, global warming and the

25 hard thing in this area is their

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1 interdependencies among all the issues.

2 So how do you arrive at the right

3 balance. We deal with one issue, we may be fix

4 it, we maybe become worse in another area. So we

5 are going to discuss how we \-- what the

6 interdependencies are between those issues.

7 And the forums that usually these are

8 played out in, local communities have \-- are

9 concerned, state governments, national

10 governments, regional alliances, international

11 organizations, such as ICAO and other United

12 Nations forums.

13 These are the forums that all this

14 plays out in. In terms of noise, the historical

15 perspective is, at least in the United States

16 that there\'s been over a 90% decrease in

17 population exposed to the 65 dB noise level since

18 1975.

19 That\'s the good news and that decrease

20 in the people effected by noise as defined by the

21 Federal Aviation Administration happened in spite

22 of a doubling of enplanements over the same

23 period.

24 Real good news, but this downtrend has

25 clearly leveled off and it\'s likely that those

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1 effected by aircraft noise will increase slightly

2 in the coming years as operations grow and as

3 we\'ll hear later on, probably from Jessica,

4 initially where the noise complaints are coming

5 from has morphed slightly away from the airport.

6 Local air quality, we\'re dealing with

7 a whole host of pollutants. NOx has been the one

8 that\'s been the most difficult to constrain. We

9 don\'t contribute very much, but we contribute.

10 So it\'s an issue for the aviation industry.

11 Water quality is becoming an emerging

12 issue with the EPA getting involved in it and

13 it\'s becoming an issue mainly for the airport

14 community in the de-icing realm.

15 And then we get to the 800 pound

16 gorilla, climate changes, global warming. These

17 are numbers everyone knows.

18 The aviation industry contributes

19 perhaps less than 3%, but it\'s expected to expand

20 and it\'s a political matter, it doesn\'t much

21 matter what the facts are, the politics of global

22 warming demand that we deal with it in addition

23 to the actual scientific issues.

24 You\'re not going to be able to read

25 this probably, but I \-- this is unfair. I

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1 decided to take the extremes in the global

2 warming issue, this is not mainstream, I hope.

3 But, we have a lot of rhetoric coming

4 out of Europe, if you can read it, okay, if not

5 basically it \-- the first one says that flying

6 kills people and we shouldn\'t do it.

7 The second one is there are people in

8 Europe, at least one Conservative MP says that

9 within 10 years, there should be virtually no

10 domestic flights in Europe.

11 And the last one that says that

12 everybody \-- somebody dies as a result of floods

13 in Bangladesh and an airline executive should be

14 dragged out of his office and drowned.

15 I\'m sort of hoping that\'s the extreme

16 rhetoric. And in the United States I don\'t have

17 the rhetoric, but it\'s obvious that it\'s becoming

18 an issue.

19 It\'s becoming a major element in the -

20 - what the United States Congress is doing, we

21 have a bill that\'s been introduced in the United

22 States Congress, a bill to address climate change

23 across the board.

24 It doesn\'t deal directly with

25 aviation, but indirectly it does because if

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1 enacted, this legislation will clearly increase

2 the price of fuel to aviation interests. We\'ll

3 get into that a little bit I think through John.

4 This is the other side of the issue,

5 there\'s a book called \"The Politically Incorrect

6 Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism,\"

7 which \-- who\'s premise basically is, we don\'t

8 have a global warming problem it\'s all cyclical

9 and it\'s a bunch of environmentalists trying to

10 take over the world.

11 And the last quote there, if you can

12 read it, it says, \"Green lunacy has run so amuck

13 that respectable political figures say that

14 modern energy use poses a greater threat than

15 terrorism.\"

16 Well, the book, the whole premise of

17 the book is the environmentalists have been taken

18 over by the new communists and they\'re out to

19 take over the world. So that\'s the other side of

20 the rhetoric.

21 Now hopefully when we get through with

22 this panel, you\'ll see the truth, if there is a

23 truth and some \-- is in between these two

24 extremes because if we have these two extremes

25 I\'d be surprised.

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1 Now, what does this all mean? It\'s

2 clear that there are strongly held beliefs.

3 Environmental issues promise to be a major

4 inhibition on aviation growth and these issues

5 must be seriously addressed by the entire

6 aviation community at both the local and

7 international level.

8 In attacking the issues, we\'ll talk

9 about reducing fuel burn, operational

10 opportunities, infrastructure improvements, new

11 technologies and then what the European model is,

12 is limiting aviation operations, market based

13 options may involve taxes, emissions trading

14 scheme that we\'ve seen in Europe, carbon taxes

15 and offsets.

16 And that\'s a basic overview of where

17 we are in the environmental piece of the picture.

18 I\'d like to stop talking and you\'d like me to

19 stop talking. So, what I\'d like to do is just

20 open the panel.

21 Because there are so many issues

22 involved in the environmental debate, I\'d like to

23 ask everybody and we\'ll start with Renee because

24 you\'re down there, we can work back toward me,

25 from your perspective, from the perspective of

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1 your company, what is the major environmental

2 issue facing aviation today, is it climate

3 change, is it something more local, if it\'s local

4 what is it?

5 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: I hate to cop out

6 but I think it\'s both. I think it\'s both local

7 and it\'s global. And so we\'re working on

8 addressing climate change along with the rest of

9 the industry.

10 But also we recently got certified for

11 ISO 14,001, which is sort of a local issue, which

12 is a blessing of all of our production plants in

13 Europe according to environmental standards, so

14 we\'re approaching both.

15 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Bob?

16 DR. PORTEOUS: Unfortunately Steve,

17 I\'m going to answer quite similarly. From the

18 government point of view, we recognize that when

19 you try to solve one problem, you make another

20 one worse. We have to achieve a balance and

21 that\'s the biggest in level we have right now.

22 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Rob?

23 MR. SHUTER: Same answer, we \--

24 Australia\'s very sensitive to noise, perhaps a

25 little more so now, we just had a new minister

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1 for transport that\'s like a transport secretary

2 appointed in the last couple of days.

3 His electorate is immediately

4 underneath the flight the path of the biggest

5 airport in the country. He\'s a noise campaigner,

6 so we\'re sure that noise is going to be an issue

7 for us.

8 And a lot of the things that we\'d like

9 to do to make, for instance, emissions, while it

10 may make aviation emissions less of an issue to

11 make flight approaches more fuel efficient have a

12 detrimental effect on noise.

13 And we know that, that compromise is

14 going to be right up their in our minds when

15 we\'re working out approaches.

16 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Billy?

17 MR. GLOVER: Well, I\'m not going to

18 disagree with that, but I think the balance

19 shifts over to the global, the climate change

20 kind of issue because it could be really a cap on

21 what\'s possible and there is a lot more unknowns

22 about how to solve it.

23 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Jessica?

24 MS. STEINHILBER: From an airport

25 perspective I think the issue that we continue to

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1 deal with most is noise in spite of the fact that

2 planes are becoming quieter, the number of people

3 exposed to 65 and greater has decreased, we still

4 continue to face significant or rev noise

5 complaints even outside of the 65.

6 I would also say that we\'re starting

7 to see, at least in the U.S., growing attention

8 to local air quality and particularly some of the

9 health effects associated with local air quality.

10 I think the global issue is from the

11 airport perspective where we\'re starting to see

12 them from the U.S. is when they start becoming

13 local issues.

14 So when you have, for example, a mayor

15 who starts getting concerned about climate change

16 and that gets tied into the airport.

17 MODERATOR ALTMAN: From the airline

18 perspective, John?

19 MR. MEENAN: I think, I mean this is

20 really a set of economic issues. All of these

21 facts interrelate. I mean, water issues, noise

22 issues, air issues, climate change issues are all

23 things that the airline industry has a tremendous

24 track record of dealing with very effectively.

25 The way we deal with them is by

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1 spending money prudently to address the issues in

2 an orderly, well thought out sort of way.

3 I mean, if you look back over the last

4 50 years whether it\'s on the climates changes

5 issues in the last 25 or noise issues in the last

6 50, we\'ve made tremendous progress because the

7 industry has been able to invest and make the

8 changes necessary to address public concerns.

9 My concern right now is that

10 particularly from the perspective of the U.S.

11 carriers, we\'re in a lot of economic trouble and

12 that isn\'t going to get any better any time soon.

13 And in order to make the investments

14 that the public wants, we\'ve got to figure out a

15 way to make that airline industry as economically

16 vibrant as it possibly can be because that\'s how

17 at the end of the day, we make the investments

18 the public wants.

19 We don\'t make them by paying money to

20 tax coffers or to transferring money to other

21 industries, which is what a lot of the climate

22 change debate is about at this point.

23 MODERATOR ALTMAN: So you\'ll have

24 something to say about that when we get to global

25 warming?

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1 MR. MEENAN: Yes. Yes.

2 MODERATOR ALTMAN: I figured. Okay.

3 I\'d like to go back and start with Jessica on the

4 local issues. You mentioned that noise is the

5 driving force in a lot of what \-- of your

6 concerns.

7 In view of the facts that over 90%

8 gain or loss in people within the 65 LDN from

9 1965 to the present, or 1975 to the present, and

10 the footprints, the noise footprints around

11 airports are shrinking.

12 Where is the noise issue today? Is it

13 \-- are the complaints the airports are getting

14 from within the 65 LDN or has that morphed out

15 where you mentioned that some of them are coming

16 from out. What is the driving force for airports

17 in the noise debate?

18 MS. STEINHILBER: Well, I think that\'s

19 exactly right. The noise complaints, I mean,

20 we\'re obviously going to get them in the 65, but

21 we\'re starting to see more and more outside of

22 the 65.

23 And I think part of it is we don\'t

24 exactly understand why the noise complaints are

25 moving out. I think there needs to be a little

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1 more research into what\'s causing that.

2 Some people think it\'s just a direct

3 relation to affluence. It can also be related to

4 perception, if people are used to particular

5 flight paths and that changes, there\'s going to

6 be more complaints in response to that.

7 MODERATOR ALTMAN: So the bottom line

8 is that the complaints are coming from different

9 areas, you\'re not sure exactly why. We don\'t

10 have anyone from the FAA on the panel, but

11 they\'re involved in airspace redesign a lot.

12 I don\'t know, Rob, whether, you know,

13 you\'re familiar with that. In Australia, what is

14 the Australian experience with noise and to the

15 extent, other than the fact that you\'ve got a new

16 minister who\'s getting planes flying at 10 feet

17 over his house.

18 What are the issues that you see from

19 an Australian perspective in terms of noises? Is

20 it the same as Jessica, is it people away from

21 airports or is it people at the airports?

22 DR. PORTEOUS: In the capital city,

23 people are very noise sensitive. So that one of

24 the most important effects that has is that it\'s

25 difficult to implement change.

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1 Even if you want to redistribute noise

2 more, perhaps equally across the adjoining

3 residential areas, any change that you make,

4 which is even perceived to have an increased

5 noise impact is very strongly resisted.

6 It\'s also a \-- noise is much more than

7 \-- you talk about the decibels that are being

8 measured, it\'s much more than that. It\'s an

9 issue of perceived noise too.

10 You can show that the noise per plan

11 has decreased and other things like continuous

12 descent, approaches can decrease the measured

13 noise more.

14 But very often, the perception of

15 noise has to do with how often you see planes

16 above you and not just the amount that the

17 crockery rattles.

18 So it can be \-- all that brings back

19 to the fact that it\'s politically sensitive, it\'s

20 hard to make any changes.

21 That even means that sometimes there

22 is such suspicion that when we do things, which

23 are positive like reducing noise through CDA, the

24 first response is, all right, you\'re doing that

25 in order that you can push more planes through

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1 and the net impact on me is going to be negative.

2 So we don\'t even like the fact that

3 you\'re doing things which are intrinsically

4 better for noise, but you\'re somehow going to

5 twist that to make it worse for us.

6 So it makes the whole area much more

7 difficult to manage, you said rationally,

8 economically before, John. It takes it out of

9 that arena and leaves it as a very emotional area

10 of debate.

11 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Billy?

12 MR. GLOVER: Just a little story here

13 to build on that. A few years ago we were doing

14 a demonstration of a new aircraft into John Wayne

15 Orange County Airport which has a very strict

16 noise regime and a very sensitive community.

17 And the demonstration was scheduled

18 for a particular day at a particular time. At

19 that time, the complaints started rolling in.

20 They received lots of phone calls complaining

21 about the noise.

22 However, the plan was about 300 miles

23 away because it had been delayed and the

24 demonstration was postponed until the following

25 day.

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1 The next day, the demonstration was

2 carried out without notification of the revision

3 and they received one phone call. The phone call

4 was from someone in the community that said there

5 was a different kind of a plane that flew over my

6 house today and I don\'t know what it was, but I

7 liked it.

8 (Laughter)

9 All right, it\'s a very complex issue,

10 you\'re dealing about public perception, personal

11 issues, you know, just a lot mixed up in this.

12 And approaching it logically is only part of the

13 answer.

14 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Renee, any comments

15 from the Airbus perspective?

16 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: Well I just wanted

17 to ask a question, do you think part of the

18 problem is that people are encroaching closer and

19 closer into airport areas and building houses

20 there?

21 And so where \-- like Dulles, if you

22 look at Dulles, it started out being way out in

23 the country, you know, and now, you know, you

24 have businesses, you have homes and airplanes are

25 flying over homes where before they\'re flying

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1 over countryside.

2 And so I\'m wondering if that\'s why \--

3 and John Wayne Airport, of course is different

4 because it\'s so concentrated in Southern

5 California, but I\'m wondering if that\'s part of

6 the problem where people are just living closer

7 to airports?

8 MODERATOR ALTMAN: So land use and

9 local zoning becomes a component of the aircraft

10 noise debate.

11 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: I would think so.

12 And NEXTGEN, let\'s hope that we get, I think may

13 help with the continuous descent. Whereas right

14 now you have the, sort of stepped descents, and

15 so there are more people who are living under the

16 noise pattern.

17 But, I think that land use and

18 planning is something that you have to look at

19 with noise. I don\'t know, Jessica is that true?

20 MS. STEINHILBER: Oh, yes. Defiantly.

21 Defiantly.

22 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Bob, from a

23 Canadian perspective?

24 MR. SHUTER: We start with the basic

25 assumption that we will always have noise

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1 problems at airports. We may not really have a

2 genuine problem, but people are going to

3 complain.

4 When people start to complain, people

5 feel they have to do something about it. And the

6 immediate reaction is to say we need quieter

7 aircraft, get rid of the noisy ones, bring in the

8 quieter ones.

9 The best way to approach it is look at

10 the balanced approach. There are many ways you

11 can reduce the noise impact.

12 But, if you change a procedure so that

13 aircraft fly through a route where they actually

14 make less noise, the people who are effected by

15 noise aren\'t going to thank you, but the ones who

16 are increased noise aren\'t going to take that

17 very lightly.

18 So it\'s a very delicate situation when

19 we start talking about abatement procedures and

20 we start talking about quieter aircraft, that\'s a

21 very expensive proposition. But they are getting

22 a lot quieter.

23 Over time, the engines got quieter and

24 quieter to the point where there\'s not much that

25 we can see coming out in the next couple of

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1 years. So now the focus is on the airplane

2 themselves and we\'re seeing a lot quiet aircraft.

3 But the problem won\'t go away, people

4 will always complain.

5 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Now just to follow

6 on with Billy said, in terms of stories, I got

7 called to the principal\'s office up on the hill

8 one time recently in the last six months to a

9 senator from Delaware who wanted to complain

10 about the bad cargo planes flying over the

11 Delaware from the Philadelphia airport, which

12 they\'ve never had before because they\'re a new

13 flight routes.

14 We discovered after discussing that it

15 wasn\'t really the cargo guys that nighttime

16 flying wasn\'t the issue, it was the barbeque hour

17 that was the issue.

18 People didn\'t like planes suddenly

19 flying over their house at seven o\'clock when

20 they\'re out barbequing at night, this was the

21 summer obviously.

22 So, it\'s all in the eyes of the

23 beholder of where the problem is. If you build a

24 house next to an airport and then complain about

25 the noise, I\'m not sure I have much sympathy, but

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1 we\'re still getting the noise complaints.

2 John, from an airline perspective, you

3 guys have done pretty well in terms of reducing

4 noise probably with the catalyst in the united

5 states being the airport noise and capacity act,

6 phasing out of certain aircraft.

7 Where \-- you know, that\'s good, where

8 do you go from here?

9 MR. MEENAN: I think that was our

10 mistake. I think we should have some stage two

11 and stage one airplanes we kept around and just

12 flew them into airports from time to time \--

13 (Laughter)

14 \-- to remind people of what they used

15 to hear. Yes, we had fellow who used to work

16 with ATA who said that any airplane is infinitely

17 noisier than no airplane at all.

18 So it\'s not like you\'re ever going to

19 beat this problem, but the reality is, I mean if

20 \-- a lot of the folks have been in this room have

21 been in this business for quite some time.

22 You think back 20, 25 years and we

23 were engaged in wholesale, knock down, drag them

24 out battles at virtually every airport in the

25 country of any significance over noise.

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1 Today, the issues are there when we go

2 to expand an airport, when we go to change flight

3 patterns, when we go \-- and it\'s something that

4 is never going to go away, but it\'s something I

5 thing we can manage by explaining to people

6 what\'s going on, communicating well.

7 I mean, it\'s true that there are some

8 airports where there are fairly significant noise

9 issues, we get no complaints at all.

10 And other airports where there are

11 virtually no meaningful noise issues, at least

12 from a, you know, an empirical standpoint where

13 we get tremendous complaints.

14 And so it really comes down to, you

15 know, how do you relate to the local community,

16 what can we do to try to, you know, alleviate

17 pressure, recognizing at the end of the day,

18 we\'re never going to satisfy everybody.

19 I mean, there\'s always going to be

20 that four or 5% of the population who complain

21 about noise no matter what we do about it. And

22 that goes back to I think research in the \`50s

23 and \`60s.

24 And, we just have to accept the fact

25 that those people are going to be there, we have

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1 to try to deal with them to a degree, but it\'s at

2 some point you just have to say, you know, the

3 national economy, the local economy, the state

4 economy requires a certain level of adult

5 decision making and this is the way we\'re going

6 to run the airport, this is the way we\'re going

7 to run our businesses.

8 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Renee?

9 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: We designed the

10 A-380 to be super quiet and the thing I hear is

11 that it\'s very quiet. But what\'s interesting to

12 me is that, years ago when you mentioned

13 environmental issues and aviation it was always

14 noise. That\'s all anyone cared about was noise.

15 And now, you know, what we\'re being

16 lambasted for is emissions. And so noise remains

17 an issue, but it\'s very much a local issue. And

18 I know the theme of this panel is local versus

19 global or, you know, can we handle both at the

20 same time.

21 But, the perception in the global

22 community is that we are a problem because of

23 emissions not because of noise.

24 MODERATOR ALTMAN: What a great segue,

25 because my next question, we\'ll start with

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1 Jessica again, because she mentioned local air

2 quality, and in the United States we got the

3 Clean Air Act and a need to comply with the Clean

4 Air Act.

5 The same engine that makes noise has

6 emissions coming out of that engine, we don\'t

7 have an engine manufacturer here, but there\'s

8 enough expertise on the panel to talk about those

9 emissions.

10 Jessica, you mentioned noise is the

11 number one problem, but you also mentioned local

12 air quality as an issue. Renee, just brought it

13 up again. Where are we in terms of the local air

14 quality problems at airports.

15 MS. STEINHILBER: I\'ve heard people

16 say local quality is the new noise, that it\'s

17 becoming the new noise. That it\'s going to be

18 the issue that we have to deal with all the time.

19 And we\'re starting to hear that from

20 the communities. Like I said, they\'re talking

21 about local air quality, they\'re wondering about

22 the health effects associated with the emissions

23 that are coming from the airport and associated

24 activities.

25 There\'s a lit of players involved with

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1 the local air quality at the airport. There\'s

2 things the airport owns and operates, there\'s the

3 aircraft, there\'s people driving to the airport.

4 There\'s, you know, all kinds of contributing

5 factors even just outside of the aircraft.

6 So there\'s a lot of opportunities, I

7 guess, to help address that problem as well

8 though, I think.

9 MODERATOR ALTMAN: That raises an

10 interesting point. We\'re all airline or aviation

11 centric and airports are aviation assets, and yet

12 much of the emissions issues may come from cars

13 coming to the airport, ground service equipment

14 at the airport that has nothing to do with things

15 taking off and flying.

16 How do those fit in? What are the

17 airports doing to address those issues?

18 MS. STEINHILBER: Well, there\'s a lot

19 of things that airports are doing. They\'re

20 converting ground support equipment and other

21 similar vehicles to a lower emission type engines

22 and fuels, hydrogen, clean natural gas, things

23 like that.

24 Even things like encouraging public

25 transportation access to the airport,

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1 consolidated rental car facilities, there\'s just

2 numerous things that they\'re doing.

3 Whether it\'s something that the

4 airport itself owns like some ground support

5 equipment or the parking shuttles or it\'s a

6 program to encourage others to decrease their

7 emissions.

8 So even things like providing pay on

9 foot parking in the parking garages, that

10 decreases emissions from the car that\'s sitting

11 there to pay at the \-- with the attendant when

12 they\'re leaving the parking garage.

13 Even things like that. But there\'s

14 also between the airport and the aircraft there

15 are things that can be done, things like

16 providing power at the gates and preconditioned

17 air so the aircraft doesn\'t have to use its

18 auxiliary power units or ground power units. So,

19 things like that.

20 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Rob and Bob, air

21 quality, local air quality issues in Australia

22 and Canada?

23 DR. PORTEOUS: Not a strong issue in

24 Australia. I think the \-- it dominated \-- the

25 air quality is much more an issue of surface

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1 transport, not \-- certainly not in public

2 perception that the key issue for airport citing

3 or airport air quality. I think it\'s more about

4 the ground transport.

5 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Canada, Bob?

6 MR. SHUTER: It\'s quite a big issue at

7 the major airports because people smell the

8 pollution, right away they figure this is bad we

9 have to do something about it.

10 The jet engine standards are very

11 strict, they\'re very, very efficient engines.

12 But when they start up there\'s that little bit of

13 unburned fuel that has vaporized and that\'s what

14 people are noticing.

15 But I agree with Jessica, a lot of the

16 problem isn\'t from the aircraft, it\'s from the

17 vehicles supporting the aircraft.

18 If you look at the busses that are

19 picking up people at the airport, they have old

20 technology and they\'re belting up far more fumes

21 than the aircraft are.

22 And that\'s often overlooked because

23 people always focus on the aircraft because

24 that\'s the toy of the rich. But it\'s a very

25 delicate balance when you start talking about

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1 making the aircraft more efficient from the point

2 of view of local air quality because you\'re

3 talking about NOx, oxides and Nitrogen.

4 And if you start clamping down the

5 standards on NOx, there\'s an inverse relationship

6 in the design of an engine combustor, you end up

7 with worse CO2. So what do you want? Local air

8 quality or climate change? That\'s a very

9 delicate balance right now.

10 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Yes, I\'d like to

11 switch the tone of this just slightly for a

12 minute. We talked about local issues and the

13 question I have is, how do national governments

14 deal with local issues or should they deal with

15 local issues at all?

16 And in framing this, in other words,

17 what does the national government with respect to

18 noise on a national level when it may be a local

19 issue or when an airport wants to impose

20 restrictions because of noise or air quality.

21 What should the relationship between

22 the national government be with the local people

23 and obviously I\'d like to turn it over to Bob and

24 to Rob for their perspectives on that.

25 No offense Bobby, I\'m going to make

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1 Meenan the administrator de facto of the FAA for a

2 moment since we have no FAA people on the

3 panel \--

4 (Laughter)

5 MODERATOR ALTMAN: From the United

6 States perspective since you\'ve been involved in

7 this. How \-- and anybody else just pop in.

8 How should the national governments

9 deal with these local issues or are they purely

10 local and there\'s no national interest at all?

11 And just take it and run with it, however you

12 want to do it.

13 MR. SHUTER: Well, if you\'re talking

14 about noise it is a local issue but it has

15 international implications. For example, a lot

16 of countries right now are very concerned about

17 curfews, but they can take off in their country,

18 but they can\'t land at the other one.

19 Or they can\'t refuel on route because

20 of noise curfews late at night. So noise is

21 having a tremendous impact on the system itself.

22 If you start talking about cutting

23 down the number of hours of flights in the

24 evening, you can normally accommodate to a

25 certain extent, but then you talk about the cargo

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1 operators, they like to fly at night, that\'s when

2 they want to deliver the cargo.

3 So, a noise restriction, although it\'s

4 local, has a tremendous impact on the entire

5 system. Wherever possible, we try to solve the

6 problem at the local level, but sometimes you

7 just can\'t solve it.

8 You\'ve got different views from the

9 cargo operators who want to fly at night, the

10 airlines want to be able to get that last flight

11 out to Europe late at night, or come in from a

12 foreign country.

13 And the restrictions that are placed

14 on them, make it almost impossible to run the

15 business. So that\'s where the whole

16 infrastructure issue is raised to the federal

17 government.

18 To try to find the balance between the

19 needs of the people who want the quiet around

20 their airports and the public who need the hours

21 of access to the airports.

22 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Now Rob, I know

23 you\'re sitting in perhaps uncomfortable position

24 having a recent election in Australia and perhaps

25 a change in philosophy coming in, so we

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1 understand that.

2 But, nevertheless, how do you feel or

3 if you can divorce yourself from your job, in

4 terms of how the government of Australia or that

5 whole region feels about national versus local

6 and how is it handled?

7 DR. PORTEOUS: Well, I\'ll speak

8 carefully so that I don\'t get divorced from my

9 job.

10 (Laughter).

11 DR. PORTEOUS: I shall handle it very

12 safely by taking a step back. I think this is

13 fundamentally the role of government to balance

14 the needs of the many against the needs of the

15 few.

16 And particularly with the environment,

17 I mean this panel is an example, it\'s very easy

18 for us to think about this entirely from an

19 aviation centric view, but really, and this is

20 perhaps clearer for us in Australia where

21 aviation we\'re a very big country, we\'re a low

22 population density in a lot of areas.

23 The role of aviation in sustaining,

24 supporting the economy and the society out in

25 regional Australia is very important and there

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1 are very few viable alternatives.

2 We can\'t use rail and a number of the

3 options you may might have in Europe or here.

4 So, aviation is part of what makes Australia

5 tick, it\'s fundamental to our society to our

6 economy.

7 So when we\'re talking about issues

8 about how to manage, for instance, noise or

9 emissions, it\'s an issue that needs to be thought

10 about within in the context of the whole society,

11 it\'s appetite for growth versus being

12 environmentally sensitive.

13 The \-- how the benefits of aviation

14 are weighed up against the costs, the and

15 remember that those costs are all quite fungible,

16 they\'re \-- in other words, it doesn\'t matter

17 whereabouts in the economy you generate CO2, it

18 all has the same impact on the environment.

19 So that, society needs to be in a

20 place, the government needs to moderate this to

21 be able to make the call that if you want to

22 have, perhaps even more, aviation CO2, but trade

23 off against savings in CO2 somewhere else, that

24 you can make that judgment.

25 That\'s the role of government, it\'s

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1 not always an easy one and there will be winners

2 and losers, but that\'s their job.

3 And then within one of frame it comes

4 out of that, aviation can then try and do its job

5 and to be most efficient and reduce the impact

6 within the trade offs, the values that society

7 has given us through the environment.

8 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Administrator

9 Meenan?

10 MR. MEENAN: I agree completely with

11 what Rob just said. I mean when you think back

12 in the United States to the, again, to the noise

13 era.

14 We had huge battles going, the system

15 was reaching a point of gridlock where you

16 couldn\'t schedule an airplane to fly from Boston

17 to Chicago at certain times because you had one

18 set of noise regulations in one city and a

19 different one in another and, you know, you

20 couldn\'t operate very effectively.

21 And finally, the Federal Government,

22 with the consent of the local governments and the

23 airports to a degree, stepped in and helped

24 rationalize the system.

25 I think the same thing is going to go

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1 on, on the climate change, global warming from

2 where issues like aviation in Australia is very

3 important to the domestic economy of Australia,

4 the national government will have to step in and

5 do what it has to do to protect those interests

6 working with its local governments.

7 I think the same thing is true in the

8 United States. The role of aviation in the

9 United States is vastly different than the role

10 of aviation is in domestic Europe.

11 And so the idea is, I think, that, you

12 know, at some level you will have local control,

13 at some level you\'re going to have to have

14 national governments in control or at least

15 influencing the policies.

16 And at some level you\'ll have to have

17 international regimes that impact it in some way,

18 but you can\'t I don\'t think have one global set

19 of requirements that applies to everybody,

20 particularly when it comes to things like

21 emissions and that\'s why we think, you know, some

22 of the ideas on emissions trading right now may

23 make paramount of sense in some parts of the

24 world. They don\'t necessarily make sense

25 everywhere.

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1 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Rob?

2 DR. PORTEOUS: Just one extra comment

3 I should have made perhaps before. Once an issue

4 becomes political, enters into the political

5 sphere for decision, then it\'s actually very

6 important that the debate is well informed.

7 And to some degree, I think some \--

8 the early reactions of governments have been

9 driven without necessarily a balanced

10 understanding of the issues and the options and

11 the consequences in the public debate.

12 The environment\'s a very new issue.

13 I think you reflected that in your opening, but,

14 we weren\'t even talking about this a few years

15 ago.

16 And now, in some senses it\'s the

17 defining issue for survival of the aviation

18 industry suddenly I think that the \-- one of the

19 ways in which we, perhaps, should contribute to

20 the debate is to contribute an informed

21 understanding of the issues and the alternatives

22 and the consequences.

23 So that the government\'s policy, when

24 that finally arrives, well as it evolves rather,

25 will be framed with that good understanding of

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1 how the impact will play out.

2 MODERATOR ALTMAN: In other words, put

3 some facts behind the political rhetoric?

4 DR. PORTEOUS: Yes.

5 MODERATOR ALTMAN: What a shock. Bob

6 mentioned something in terms of what do you want

7 when we\'re trying to deal with these problems,

8 pick your poison type things.

9 And it raises the whole issue of

10 interdependencies among things. And again,

11 that\'s an engine issue, but we do have aircraft

12 manufacturers here, which we\'re probably \-- you

13 have trouble flying the planes without engines.

14 And so, I thought maybe Billy might

15 have some perspective on the interdependency

16 issue and put it in some context of the problems

17 we\'re really facing in that area.

18 MR. GLOVER: Absolutely. If you\'re

19 trying to shoot for targets that are

20 diametrically opposed you can\'t provide a

21 rational solution, a viable solution.

22 It goes back to what John and others

23 have said, we need a rationalization of the needs

24 of people in local situations, national

25 situations and globally on all these things.

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1 And we need to get to them as quickly

2 as possible because we\'re actually just, you

3 know, going the wrong direction. The more that

4 we have these local and regional solutions that

5 are not well thought out in terms of the global

6 consequences.

7 We can\'t design an engine and an

8 airframe that operate efficiently that have

9 lowest emissions, lowest noise, lowest CO2 all at

10 the same time.

11 It has to be a balance among all the

12 requirements. And if you let one constituency

13 drive all the others you\'re bound to come out

14 with a bad answer.

15 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Renee, any thoughts

16 from the Airbus perspective?

17 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: Yes. I\'d like to

18 follow up on that because the issue right now is,

19 you know, what is suitable for global regulation

20 and what is suitable for local regulation.

21 And it could be that curfews should be

22 local, I don\'t know \--

23 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Actually, curfews

24 should be illegal.

25 (Laughter)

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1 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: Noise, yes, maybe

2 that should be national, maybe it should. But

3 emissions, you know, should that be global and

4 ICAO I think is trying to take the lead on

5 emissions.

6 But, you know, you\'re right, without

7 engines, we\'re gliders. And so we have to work

8 hand-in-hand with the engine manufacturers. But

9 also, we need some guidance.

10 And so, what do we design to? And

11 will the bar keep moving? It probably will, you

12 know, and the engine manufacturers are now trying

13 to design to what they think will be the next set

14 of requirement, but, you know, who knows what

15 they will be.

16 And so, for, you know, emissions, I

17 really think there should be a global solution.

18 MR. GLOVER: I also want to comment on

19 the bit about having an informed parties in this.

20 Not too long ago there was a poll taken in London

21 where people were asked to respond to the

22 statement with do you agree, do you disagree, or

23 you don\'t know.

24 And the statement was aviation is the

25 primary cause of climate change. Now, this is

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1 not true, but more people agreed with that than

2 disagreed and of those that agreed, the more

3 highly educated you were, the more likely you

4 were to agree.

5 This shows not only uninformed, but

6 misinformed public and I presume public officials

7 would fall in that category as well. And so

8 aviation bares some responsibility to help

9 correct that.

10 We have to bring the facts out and

11 inform people of what is possible, reasonable,

12 and work together on options.

13 We need to do that on a stage that is

14 larger than our own self interest and considering

15 that there are parties, this has been pointed out

16 here with different needs in different situations

17 have different alternatives.

18 So, all that has to be grouped

19 together, it\'s not an easy process and that\'s why

20 it takes ICAO, which is the right place to do

21 this, a long time to work through these things,

22 but it has to be done.

23 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Another good segue.

24 I\'d like to talk \-- we\'ve been trying to stay

25 local, but it\'s impossible so we\'ve talked

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1 globally too. And obviously one of the big

2 global issues is climate change and global

3 warming.

4 It\'s, you know, it\'s either a fact or

5 not depending on which of the quotes that I put

6 up originally you want to believe. It is a fact

7 of life that we are dealing with climate change.

8 And I guess one question, just for the

9 panel generically, and you can expand on this if

10 you want, does anybody think that climate change

11 is not a major issue for the aviation industry?

12 (No response)

13 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Good. Okay, so

14 we\'re \-- Rob?

15 DR. PORTEOUS: Just one spin on

16 climate change, there\'s a closely related issue

17 of finite oil and although it\'s almost never

18 mentioned, there are probably challenges as big

19 for us in the \-- that sort of 20, 30 year time

20 horizon in terms of the availability and the cost

21 of kerosene, our fuel stock.

22 Now, very close link because of the

23 interest in alternate fuels anyway through the

24 climate change debate. But that\'s \-- I think if

25 we didn\'t have climate change on the agenda, we\'d

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1 be having this panel today to talk about finite

2 kerosene.

3 MODERATOR ALTMAN: We\'d be talking

4 about our energy dependence.

5 DR. PORTEOUS: Yes, yes.

6 MODERATOR ALTMAN: And energy issues

7 and that\'s one issue that we\'ll get into sort of

8 tangentially, but I think everybody should

9 understand that the issues of the environment and

10 energy are inextricably linked.

11 And there, you know, the environmental

12 impacts of burning fuel is one issue, there are

13 significant security issues in terms of

14 dependence on foreign oil for the United States

15 or dependence on oil from certain areas of the

16 world.

17 And where that\'s coming from and the

18 price and everything, those are all intertwined.

19 We may touch tangentially on that, it\'s a very

20 difficult issue and a very scary issue.

21 So one of the issues we\'ll talk about

22 in a little while is how do you get away from

23 that as one of the solution sets perhaps.

24 So, if climate change is a major issue

25 in all its aspects, what should be the goals of

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1 aviation? Renee, you want to say something? You

2 can either pop in on the other one or \--

3 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: Yes, I wanted to

4 pop in.

5 MODERATOR ALTMAN: \-- we\'ll start with

6 this one.

7 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: I don\'t know \--

8 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Or you just keep

9 moving your hands, one of the two. But in terms

10 of aviation sort of generically whether we be

11 airports or airlines or national governments,

12 what should be the goal in the global warming

13 area? Sort of, that \-- on the overall high

14 levels.

15 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: Well the goal has

16 to be to reduce our footprint. I mean, that\'s

17 got to be the goal. And the question is how do

18 we get there.

19 And I wanted to follow up on something

20 you said, I think that aviation, at least in

21 Europe and I think it\'s coming across the

22 Atlantic, has a huge perception problem.

23 People believe, you know, as Billy

24 just said that aviation is a huge contributor to

25 global warming and, you know, you get the 2%

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1 carbon emissions that we\'re responsible for.

2 And I just saw yesterday in the lead

3 up to the Bali discussions coming up in the next

4 couple of weeks for the replacement for Kyoto,

5 Europe announced that they\'re going to meet their

6 goals.

7 And so they were supposed to be 8%

8 below 1990 levels, they\'re already a two, they

9 plan to be at four by 2008 and the last half a

10 percent by 2012 will come from aviation.

11 And guess how they plan to get there?

12 The emissions trading scheme. And so, once

13 again, we\'re getting into a hodgepodge and the

14 Europeans believe that, that\'s the way to go.

15 But that\'s their solution for reducing

16 the footprint. And if we\'re not seen to be

17 reducing our footprint, then, you know, our

18 perception problem is just going to grow.

19 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Bob, any thoughts?

20 MR. SHUTER: Well the biggest problem

21 we start talking about the climate change issue,

22 aviation contributes 32 million jobs worldwide,

23 8% of GDP and around 2% of the pollution. That\'s

24 a pretty good ratio when you start looking around

25 society and where can you make changes that are

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1 more cost effective.

2 And it really depends on how important

3 is aviation to your country? If you\'re an island

4 state, you don\'t have much choice but to go back

5 and forth by air. If you\'re a tourist based

6 economy, you have no choice.

7 An island that\'s a tourist based

8 economy, if you start talking about reducing the

9 number of flights, increasing the cost to the

10 point that people can\'t travel, those economies

11 will really suffer to the point where after 9/11

12 a number of hotels had to close in island

13 communities, which relied on tourism.

14 And a lot of the things that are being

15 discussed right now will have a tremendous impact

16 on their industries and particularly in third

17 world countries.

18 So the way around it is we have to be

19 very proactive in our approach and really get the

20 message out that we\'re doing something. It may

21 not necessarily be with aviation.

22 For example, a country may decide that

23 we have to have aviation as it is today, but

24 there are better ways of addressing the climate

25 change issue.

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1 For example, on an island country that

2 produces sugar cane, used to burn it after they

3 harvested. They realized that if they burn it,

4 they would save enough CO2 that they could run

5 their airlines without any penalty.

6 And I think that was their big concern

7 when they started to the climate change that

8 there\'s the perception of doing nothing, but they

9 are, they\'re doing it somewhere else.

10 So really have to look at the trading

11 as probably the savior of aviation, but how it\'s

12 done is very delicate within countries.

13 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Rob?

14 DR. PORTEOUS: Well, obviously I agree

15 with everything that\'s been said so far. I think

16 there are \-- it\'s useful to think about this in

17 the context of different time frames.

18 I think in the short term there are a

19 whole bunch of things that we have to do, which

20 are about visibly improving our efficiency and

21 making the easy changes and in forming the

22 debate.

23 In the mid-term I think we should

24 explore as a society the ways in which we can

25 basically use offsets and manage our whole

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1 economies whilst allowing aviation a leaner, more

2 efficient aviation to continue to make its

3 contribution to society.

4 By the time you reach the long term,

5 probably the only sustainable outcomes for

6 aviation are to move to much lower footprints

7 through things like alternate fuels and probably

8 \-- I can\'t think of a clever way of doing it.

9 But there may be other innovations

10 which can\'t \-- we can\'t imagine today, ways of

11 transporting people quickly and with lower net

12 impact on the environment.

13 And that so, think about things that

14 we can do today, do those, but look for a more

15 balanced debate, which is not so cataclysmic for

16 aviation in the mid years by a more balanced

17 approached across the whole aviation.

18 And that will give us our hope, the 20

19 years that it will take to actually transform our

20 technical basis for aviation to something which

21 will be much more environmentally sustainable.

22 MODERATOR ALTMAN: And one of the

23 things that occurs to me as both you and Bob talk

24 and Administrator Meenan can probably pop in on

25 this too is that we\'re talking about the

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1 interrelationship of aviation with other segments

2 of the society when we\'re dealing with the

3 environmental problem.

4 And yet, the entities that deal with

5 these are stove piped and may not talk to each

6 other. How do you get over that problem?

7 I mean, just in the United States

8 we\'ve got the EPA doing things, we\'ve got the FAA

9 doing things, we\'ve got all kinds of different

10 entities who may or may not talk to each other.

11 So how do you get to the point that

12 you want to get to in terms of having society

13 deal with the problem rather than different stove

14 pipes taking on their own individual interests?

15 DR. PORTEOUS: Well I think cape \--

16 manner of opportunity is right now when the

17 policy approaches to things like emissions

18 trading and being established.

19 If we have emissions trading that is

20 industry specific or \-- but that\'s not emissions

21 trading, that could be aviation taxes that we\'ve

22 seen deployed in Europe and other places, which

23 are limited to the sector.

24 Those are things which don\'t promote

25 a \-- treating the problem holistically. If you

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1 have emissions trading that goes across the whole

2 of the economy, that should be encouraged and we

3 should try and be part of that, I think gives us,

4 of course I\'m speaking here as an individual not

5 as a representative of my government because we

6 don\'t know what the emissions trading in

7 Australia would look like.

8 But to the extent that it\'s holistic,

9 you have a better chance that those \-- that you

10 won\'t get undue distortions, that you\'ll get a

11 better outcome for the whole.

12 MODERATOR ALTMAN: John, any thoughts

13 on that?

14 MR. MEENAN: You know, there\'s a real

15 dilemma sort of playing out here. I mean, Rob is

16 absolutely right in one approach to the question.

17 But at the same time, that spreading

18 emissions trading across the entire economy also

19 necessarily implies money coming out of aviation

20 and going into other sectors of national

21 economies of the world economy that really don\'t

22 have the great need that we do to make the

23 investments that are necessary to improve

24 environmental performance.

25 I mean, I would go back again to the

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1 fact that, you know, in our business, CO2 equals

2 money. I mean, it is \-- there\'s no question that

3 fuel is our biggest expense, burning fuel is what

4 produces CO2, there\'s a direct correlation, we

5 have every incentive to reduce that to the lowest

6 possible level.

7 As we \-- as an industry in the United

8 States particularly, if we don\'t have the

9 economic wherewithal to replace technology to

10 invest in new infrastructure, whether it be air

11 traffic management or airport infrastructure, the

12 fact is the environmental implications of that

13 are very negative.

14 And if you look at the history of the

15 airline industry, we have a tremendous track

16 record. We improved our fuel efficiency

17 performance by 103% between 1978 and today with

18 virtually no significant regulatory thrust behind

19 that.

20 There\'s every reason to believe, I

21 mean, our members have committed to another 30%

22 improvement by 2025. There\'s every reason to

23 believe we will continue to make those kinds of

24 improvements without government regulations

25 stepping in, without declaring winners and losers

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1 and without distorting the economic forces that

2 are at work in our business.

3 And what worries us is this push to

4 emissions trading that will simply drain

5 resources from the industry, will shrink the

6 airline business as a result.

7 And when you stop to think that 8% of

8 GDP is attributable to aviation, which only

9 drives about two to 3% of climate change, CO2 at

10 this point, what are we going to do to the world

11 economy in the process?

12 And I think it\'s something that, it

13 gets back to informing the debate, having the

14 debate as \-- on as fair and rational set of terms

15 as we possibly can.

16 And today, I mean, there\'s no question

17 that we are not communicating as effectively as

18 we need to. I think that, you know, that\'s

19 always going to be difficult for us because the

20 reality is that it\'s very easy to paint aviation

21 as a villain and we have seen that go on for

22 quite some time.

23 MODERATOR ALTMAN: There\'s been a lot

24 of talk about burning fuel and the potential for

25 alternative fuels. From an airplane manufacturer

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1 perspective, without divulging anything that you

2 probably shouldn\'t divulge in a public meeting,

3 what\'s going on in the alt-fuels area in terms of

4 the way you build your airplanes and what you\'re

5 planning for in the future?

6 Where are we in that debate? And I\'ll

7 start with Billy and Renee just because you build

8 airplanes.

9 MR. GLOVER: I think it\'s one of those

10 unexplored areas. We have been going along here

11 for the whole history of aviation, we accept

12 petroleum, kerosene and we use it and that\'s it.

13 It\'s that simple, and somebody else

14 controls the price and John could probably say a

15 lot about that. And, so, we have through the

16 environmental concerns kind of raised the scope

17 of, you know, is that acceptable, is that all we

18 can do.

19 And so the questions are being asked

20 now and explored, do we have some alternate forms

21 of fuel, alternate forms of fuels that decrease

22 the environmental impact.

23 So I\'m talking about CO2 life cycle

24 where you have a bio fuel that absorbs CO2, it

25 puts you ahead before you use the fuel.

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1 And the progress that\'s being made

2 there is remarkable. Two years ago, I confess to

3 being a total skeptic, it won\'t work, it\'s

4 impossible, there\'s just no energy content, it\'s

5 not going to meet the freeze requirements, so on

6 and so forth.

7 And then it started changing. And I

8 became enough of a believer to say, well let\'s

9 try some things and so, some things have gotten

10 started and really progressed quickly because of

11 the focus that was put on it over the last year.

12 So, now there is \-- we\'re in what I

13 term a feasibility phase, we\'ll find out and it\'s

14 looking very good at the moment, we have a long

15 way to go.

16 So, we proved technical feasibility,

17 then you have to prove can you scale up and meet

18 all the requirements so that you can drop this

19 into the existing fleet and intermix it with

20 existing fuels.

21 And then finally, can you make a

22 viable business out of it and get the volume at a

23 price that is affordable to the user and

24 profitable for the producers and distribution.

25 So that\'s all we have to do.

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1 Easy, but I think we\'re making a

2 really good start and it\'s one of those areas of

3 great potential value that the industry\'s

4 exploring.

5 MODERATOR ALTMAN: And I think what\'s

6 interesting too, if I can jump in, if that\'s

7 legal, is that this is a great thing that\'s

8 happened between private industry and the

9 government.

10 To its credit, the FAA has a

11 tremendous effort in trying to promote alternate

12 fuels in the research and development area and in

13 a pinch if we could ever get money bills out of

14 the United States Congress and a re-authorization

15 bill that authorizes these new programs, I think

16 the government could even make more progress in

17 the area.

18 There are things in bills in congress

19 that really enhance the money going in to the

20 alternate fuels area from the government and the

21 public private partnership that could develop out

22 of that.

23 You\'re right. If five years ago

24 someone had talked about making aviation fuel

25 from algae, they would have been committed to

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1 some insane asylum. And yet, they\'re talking

2 about growing algae in the desert to provide

3 aviation fuels.

4 I have no clue whether that is, but I

5 mean, that\'s the talk we\'ve been hearing now.

6 Renee from Airbus\' perspective, anything

7 different from what Billy said?

8 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: Pretty much in line

9 with what Billy said. We\'re working together

10 with Boeing and the engine manufacturers and a

11 group called ATAG.

12 And then we\'re also working separately

13 on teams and you folks are working with GE and

14 Virgin and we\'re working with Rolls and Dubai.

15 And each of us plans to fly an aircraft using

16 alternate fuels.

17 So, you know, what are those alternate

18 fuels. There are, you know, several things that

19 people are looking at. But, you know, one of the

20 leaders in this is the air force, U.S. Air Force.

21 And it\'s from a security perspective

22 because they don\'t want to be so dependent on

23 foreign sources of fuel.

24 And I think, somebody correct me if

25 I\'m wrong, one of the things that they\'re looking

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1 at is a synth fuel derived from coal. Is that

2 right, it\'s a mixture derived from coal and jet

3 fuel.

4 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Correct.

5 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: And so, you know,

6 you still have the carbon issues, maybe not as

7 low, but you still have the carbon issues.

8 MODERATOR ALTMAN: That\'s an

9 interesting issue because one of the things that

10 was mentioned before is, does energy independence

11 and the need for energy independence sometimes

12 fight the environmental issues. They may not

13 always be on the same wavelength.

14 If the most important priority is to

15 get away from foreign oil and to find alternate

16 things, one of the maybe liquid made from coal,

17 which may not help the environment.

18 They\'re fighting each other. Has

19 anyone else seen that tension between the two

20 issues? Bill?

21 MR. GLOVER: Yes. Absolutely, there\'s

22 a tension there. The coal to liquid has a higher

23 environmental impact with the technology for the

24 foreseeable future compared then to standard

25 petroleum.

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1 But \-- and the bio fuel has the

2 environmental benefit potentially. But, you

3 know, the tension\'s okay. We\'re in the

4 feasibility, explore it, figure it out mode.

5 And as it\'s come up here before,

6 society\'s going to have to find a way to

7 rationalize these competing interests. And it\'s

8 our job as manufacturers and in the industry to

9 drive the opportunities, provide the options.

10 MODERATOR ALTMAN: John?

11 MR. MEENAN: And I mean that same

12 tension exists in the ethanol front. I mean, we

13 are continuing \-- although ethanol is further

14 advanced than certainly coal to liquids at this

15 point.

16 The debate continues as to whether or

17 not that\'s the right environmental choice to

18 make. Are we using more energy to produce corn,

19 thereby, you know, offsetting whatever

20 environmental benefits we\'re getting.

21 So, I think it\'s going to be a long

22 time sorting out and I think that\'s another

23 reason to be fairly cautious about making

24 decisions that can have very serious worldwide

25 economic implications that are going to make it

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1 more difficult to deal with these issues by

2 making the wrong choice.

3 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Okay, go ahead.

4 DR. PORTEOUS: Just one quick comment.

5 I think the switching over to alternate fuels,

6 particularly where it\'s expensive or has a net

7 negative impact on the environment in the short

8 term is missing the point.

9 Only a tiny proportion of the worlds

10 kerosene production ends up in planes. Most of

11 it ends up being used for cooking, for heating,

12 for lighting, particularly in the third world

13 because of that historical use.

14 If we \-- and those are uses where

15 there are many much more cost effective

16 alternates, including you can burn wood for

17 heating.

18 So, but in the \-- probably for that

19 five, 10, 20 year time frame, using the kerosene

20 we have now for the places, like aviation, where

21 the alternatives are difficult would make a lot

22 more sense on a global economic basis.

23 But use that time, so that when we

24 drop out at the end of the 15, 20 years that we

25 have new fuel and engine pairings that are as

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1 effective as what we have today and hopefully by

2 then, with effective say bio fuel sources, that

3 will be viable then.

4 So perhaps, not to run to quickly to

5 alternate fuels today, but continue the work, but

6 think about managing our fuel stock more

7 intelligently on a global basis.

8 MODERATOR ALTMAN: Bob?

9 MR. SHUTER: Steve, earlier today you

10 asked the question, why are we talking about

11 environmental issues at a safety conference?

12 This is a perfect example, when you

13 start talking about alternate fuels, there\'s a

14 tremendous safety link.

15 And that implies right across the

16 board and you start doing NOx standards or engine

17 standards or even noise abatement procedures,

18 there are a lot of safety implications of

19 environmental programs.

20 Alternate fuels probably the best

21 example, if you\'re talking about hydrogen it\'s

22 been demonstrated that you can fly aircraft on

23 hydrogen, but you got a pressurized cylinder,

24 what happens at high altitudes.

25 If you\'re talking about bio fuels,

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1 they tend to become very molasses like at cold

2 temperatures, algae forms if you don\'t put

3 algaecides in it.

4 What\'s the impact of that, because you

5 put something in to stop that and you end up

6 producing fumes which are worse than what you

7 started out with.

8 Huge safety environmental issues and

9 trade-offs, so we\'re going to have to watch this

10 very carefully. ICAO\'s been working on this for

11 years, we\'re optimistic, but guardedly optimistic.

12 We think we can do it in the end, but

13 I agree with the point made earlier, at the end

14 of the day, we\'ll probably decide that there are

15 better ways to use bio fuels.

16 And we also have to look at the

17 spin off, right now we\'re using corn based

18 ethanol, which is doubling the cost of corn,

19 which has a tremendous impact on the economies

20 where people live on corn.

21 Ethanol has been demonstrated to work

22 in piston-powered aircraft quite effectively,

23 good octane rating, good low level performance,

24 but high altitude you get vapor lock.

25 There are always these tradeoffs in

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1 safety we have to consider before we go forward

2 in these issues.

3 MODERATOR ALTMAN: I\'d like to follow

4 up on that because one of the things we haven\'t

5 touched on yet, and Bob, you\'re intimately

6 involved in this is sort of the international

7 overlay through ICAO.

8 You mentioned ICAO and what they\'re

9 doing in alternate fuels. Could you spend a

10 couple of minutes talking \-- and anyone else can

11 just pop in too, I\'m picking on Bob because I

12 know he\'s been involved in it, the role of the

13 International Civil Aviation Organization and

14 maybe other international bodies in this whole

15 debate.

16 We\'ve talked about local, we\'ve talked

17 about national to the extent we\'ve talked about

18 the EU, we\'ve talked about regional.

19 What is the role of the international

20 body and where is ICAO going on all these issues

21 and how \-- now, one of the things I know is Bob

22 is not in Zurich today where there\'s a big ICAO

23 meeting and he\'s here with us, which I really

24 appreciate, but where is the ICAO process moving

25 us?

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1 MR. SHUTER: Well, first of all on

2 noise, ICAO sets the standards, the chapter 2, 3,

3 4. In fact, today they\'re talking about the next

4 noise chapter, the international standard that

5 everyone will have to meet.

6 They\'re talking about standards for

7 NOx. Again, they\'re going to change \-- we\'ve

8 changed it three times in the last, I guess, what

9 16 years, we\'re looking at changing it again.

10 But here\'s that delicate balance

11 between do you want to have very efficient

12 engines, low CO2, which the airlines want or do

13 you want low NOx, which the airports want.

14 And we\'re trying to achieve that

15 balance. And you can\'t just focus on the

16 aircraft standards, so ICAO now is saying, let\'s

17 look at the big picture, there are better ways of

18 doing this, let\'s look at operational procedures,

19 voluntary measures and are packaged that people

20 can use.

21 In noise, we call it the balanced

22 approach, in emissions we call it the toolbox of

23 options. At the ICAO assembly recently, there\'s

24 a lot of discussion on the fact there\'s

25 disagreement.

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1 That was a very small issue, there was

2 tremendous agreement on a long list of issues

3 produced by ICAO, guides material local air

4 quality charges, guides material on emissions

5 trading, circular 303 on operational measures for

6 use and emissions.

7 ICAO ran a series of workshops

8 worldwide to explain to airlines how they can

9 reduce the amount of fuel they burn.

10 So the role is setting standards and

11 providing guidance material to improve the

12 environment.

13 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Okay. The one

14 thing I want to \-- one more issue and then we\'ll

15 turn it to the audience for questions is, we

16 talked about local issues, we\'ve talked about

17 national issues, we\'ve talked about long term

18 solutions, we\'ve touched on what can be done

19 today.

20 I\'d like to concentrate on what can be

21 done in the short term. All fuels are probably

22 not a short term solution, but we\'ve talked about

23 controlled descent arrivals in terms of

24 operational procedures that may not \-- may or may

25 not be done for environmental reasons, but have

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1 environmental spin offs, on the airport community

2 things that can be done.

3 And Jessica\'s already mentioned them

4 in terms of, you know, converting GSE to electric

5 or whatever we\'re doing.

6 On the short term, in the short term,

7 does someone want to talk about what can be done,

8 and the reason I ask this, is I told everybody

9 before hand we were going to finish this thing

10 saying if this were next year, what would you

11 like to be able to say in terms of improvements.

12 And I have a funny feeling when we\'re

13 talking about short term in the next year, what

14 can we do? What are the things we can do now

15 that we understand are not solutions to the

16 problems, but at least address the problems on

17 the short term while we develop the long term

18 solutions. John?

19 MR. MEENAN: Why don\'t I start. I

20 mean, there are a number of things that we can do

21 and are doing. I mean, on the technology front,

22 I mean we\'ve all seen the addition of winglets

23 over the last several years.

24 There\'s engine work going on, on the

25 ops front, we\'ve got CDA, we\'ve got RNP, RNAV all

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1 those things that can be introduced into the

2 system that cause us to operate more efficiently.

3 We\'ve got the other infrastructure

4 issues. Certainly in the United States, Steve

5 alluded to where is the congress going to go with

6 re-authorization.

7 I mean there\'s no question that next

8 gen air traffic management, same thing in Europe,

9 is going to contribute significantly to climate

10 change improvements from the perspective of the

11 entire industry.

12 It\'s again, about making the kind of

13 wise investments that have a long term pay off

14 rather than draining resources for poorly thought

15 through solutions in the short term.

16 I think, what we really would like to

17 see by next year is a clear decision from our

18 congress and the administration as to where

19 they\'re going to go with all of that and how

20 we\'re going to pay for it.

21 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Anyone else want

22 to jump in? You all \-- some of you have

23 mentioned controlled descent arrivals and they\'ve

24 been tested \-- Rob?

25 DR. PORTEOUS: There\'s a whole bunch

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1 of things, I represent air traffic management, so

2 there\'s a whole bunch of things that we\'re

3 already doing, everything from pre-tactical

4 management, we aircraft if we\'re expecting a

5 delay at the end.

6 We have flex tracks, UPRs on route.

7 RNAV and RNP to improve the navigational

8 accuracy. That turns into reduced separation, if

9 we can get the regs right, which can reduce

10 congestion and improve the utilization of

11 airports.

12 Controlled decent approaches as you

13 said. So those are all things that we can do now

14 and we\'re \-- have almost all those things either

15 in operation or in trial.

16 But, if you wanted to say, well, what

17 I\'d like to see in a years time, which is

18 different than that and which is \-- really gives

19 us a platform to go on for the future.

20 Most interesting thing that we\'re

21 working on now, and hopefully will arrive within

22 early in the new year, is we hope to have an

23 industry \-- a formal industry wide approach to

24 managing these issues.

25 We are hoping to bring together and we

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1 have a lot of interest. All their airports, all

2 their airlines, the air traffic manager, probably

3 also governor and the regulator to come together

4 to start managing this as an industry on a whole.

5 That\'s a platform where we can start

6 to understand the ways in which air traffic

7 control and aviation can work together where we

8 can work with airports to start getting

9 collaborative decision making a reality as

10 opposed to just rhetoric.

11 A place where we can start to share

12 the information that will eventually become our

13 swim.

14 And that concrete group, driven

15 together I must say by the adversity of climate

16 change, that\'s actually what unites us all,

17 actually gives us a great opportunity to work

18 together and not just talk about, but implement,

19 make concrete steps towards improving our

20 performance.

21 It\'s also the place from where \-- from

22 which you can start educating the debate as well,

23 I think, if you have that joint approach.

24 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Renee?

25 MS. MARTIN-NAGLE: I couldn\'t agree

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1 more with what Rob just said. In the next year,

2 I really believe that as an industry we need to

3 come up with a plan for addressing these issues.

4 Because the tsunami of public opinion

5 is coming and unless we get out in front of it,

6 we\'re going to be swallowed by it.

7 And, you know, I think \-- and this is

8 no slant on ICAO, but the most recent meeting in

9 September was almost a food fight.

10 And, you know, we need to get to the

11 point where we\'re not fighting over issues, but

12 rather we\'re collaborating to address a problem.

13 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: And for the last

14 word on this issue, Jessica, in terms of the

15 airport community, the issues are slightly

16 different as we\'ve heard.

17 In the next year, what can the airport

18 community do other than cooperating with

19 everybody else to try to solve the problem?

20 MS. STEINHILBER: Right. I mean, I

21 think cooperating with everyone is a big piece of

22 it. I also think there\'s, at least domestically,

23 there\'s a lot of provisions and some of the draft

24 re-authorization bills that I think would do a

25 lot to help encourage green initiatives at

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1 airports and other places within the industry.

2 And I would hope that many of those

3 provisions stay in some of those bills and will

4 provide some tools that would help the industry

5 greatly, I think.

6 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Okay. What I\'d

7 like to do now is I\'d like to really open this up

8 to the audience and to the extent we have lulls,

9 I have some more questions, but I\'d rather have

10 you ask the questions right now.

11 So I think there are some people

12 wandering around the audience with microphones if

13 \-- I think I\'m going to sneak over here just so I

14 can get this light out of my eyes so I can see

15 it.

16 Questions from the audience to anyone

17 on the panel, I\'ll become a panel member for this

18 if you want to ask \-- I see some hands up, so if

19 we can get microphones to the people.

20 Okay. We\'ve gone one. Over here.

21 And if you could just \-- if you\'re asking it

22 generically, cool, if you want to ask a specific

23 person, that\'s good too.

24 MR. CULBERTSON: Frank Culbertson with

25 SAIC. My question is actually for the FAA, but

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1 since they\'re not up there I\'ll see if we can \--

2 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: That would be

3 administered to Meenan.

4 (Laughter)

5 MR. CULBERTSON: Okay. The

6 administrator\'s right here. But before I ask I

7 do want to say that this is great. I think this

8 is an excellent use of the time at this

9 conference to talk about this, because these

10 issues will effect safety.

11 When noise became a factor, pilots had

12 to start dealing with a change in procedures,

13 lots of things happened and safety was one of

14 issues.

15 And when you change procedures to

16 effect emissions or you change technology and we

17 don\'t totally understand it, you\'re going to

18 effect safety.

19 I agree with Rob that we have to have

20 the facts out there, the politicians have to have

21 the facts in order to deal with it, the

22 regulators as well as the public.

23 And it concerns me greatly what Billy

24 said about the perception of aviation\'s

25 contribution to global warming or climate change.

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1 And that\'s something every person in here, every

2 organization represented here needs to address

3 quickly.

4 Because, if the public thinks that,

5 you know, they\'ll shut us down in many places and

6 we have got to change that perception

7 aggressively I believe. And so information and

8 communication are extremely important.

9 But my question really is, with all

10 the \-- given all of this, and the fact that

11 aviation already does a really good job of

12 improving the way we operate, our efficiency, our

13 emissions, noise there\'s still a need for

14 regulations.

15 It\'s not clear who in the government

16 really is in charge in terms of addressing

17 climate change, at least in the U.S., but I am

18 curious, what is the FAA\'s role and what do you

19 all think the FAA\'s role in other governing

20 bodies and other countries should be in this

21 particular area in terms of how we address it and

22 how we make the improvements that are necessary?

23 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: At the risk of

24 having everybody hate me, Bob do you want to take

25 a shot at it?

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1 We have the FAA administrator here,

2 why don\'t we just ask \--

3 MR. CULBERTSON: You want me to toss

4 him the microphone?

5 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: I mean there\'s

6 not much more he can do to me than if I make him

7 answer the question.

8 MR. CULBERTSON: Oh yes there is.

9 (Laughter)

10 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: You instead,

11 okay.

12 MR. ELWELL: You get me. Sorry, Dan

13 Elwell, policy and environment at the FAA. I

14 think the role of governments was put rather

15 strongly by Giovanni the other day in his speech.

16 But we\'re in the process of trying to

17 set a course, the U.S. course post Kyoto. And,

18 we\'re doing a lot of work talking with

19 government\'s across the globe on how best to do

20 that.

21 One thing for sure, and we\'ve been

22 talking about this almost endlessly, whatever we

23 do, it\'s got to be mutual consent, that\'s first

24 and foremost.

25 And it\'s got to be, as we\'ve always

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1 said it should be, under the ICAO mandate and

2 framework. And, you know, that\'s the simplest

3 answer and really the only answer we can give

4 right now.

5 But I\'d like to throw a question back

6 at the panel and you Steve, and somebody touched

7 upon it earlier, but in aviation, worldwide

8 aviation is growing.

9 There seems to be two radically

10 different approaches to what to do about that.

11 One is to suppress the growth, reduce activity to

12 achieve environmental goals, and the other is to

13 aggressively pursue alternative, sort of a

14 balanced approach methods to allow growth while

15 keeping the footprint either static or eventually

16 reaching the technological advancements we need

17 to reduce the footprint.

18 And how do we \[balance\] those two or

19 bring those to very divergent ideas together?

20 MR. STURGELL: I\'m just going to add

21 a little bit Steve. There are several government

22 agencies involved in this whole area. And I\'d

23 just say that\'s probably an evolving process at

24 the moment.

25 But just specifically with the respect

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1 to the FAA, you know, I think our role is most

2 important, probably in helping the industry find

3 ways.

4 So to the extent that we can support

5 research efforts of our own with the air force

6 and other branches in the \-- or rather agencies

7 in the Federal branch, and to the extent that we

8 can assist in certification and research on the

9 industry side, that we should be supporting those

10 types of efforts.

11 On the operational side, you know,

12 it\'s also incumbent on us to design the system

13 and to run the system as efficiently as possible,

14 and that\'s something that we\'re going to continue

15 to push forward.

16 And finally, with respect to Dan\'s

17 comments about ICAO, I mean, I think it\'s

18 extremely important for this working group coming

19 out at ICAO to get to a solution.

20 If that effort as seen as just

21 continuing on and not going anywhere, then

22 Renee\'s right, we\'re going to be overcome by

23 events and, you know, bad things are going to

24 happen.

25 So, everybody involved in that group

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1 has got to find a solution in the end here.

2 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Yes, just the

3 working group I assume that Bobby is referring to

4 is the new working group that came out of the

5 last ICAO session.

6 And Dan Elwell, who you just heard

7 from, is the U.S. representative on that working

8 group. So I guess we\'re in pretty good hand, huh

9 Dan? Okay.

10 Anyone on the panel want to make any

11 comments on that and then we\'ll get to more

12 questions over here? Billy?

13 MR. GLOVER: Spectrum of comments.

14 First of all, I agree wholeheartedly on the ICAO

15 front and what I\'d like to see there is that FAA,

16 U.S. and Canada and Australia lead the way in

17 coming up with a framework that recognizes the

18 diversity.

19 Something that, you know, has by

20 mutual consent options for ways to address

21 climate change in aviation in a way that meets

22 the needs of each of the parties and drives

23 towards the goal of reducing emissions, but not

24 in an irrational manner.

25 So that\'s kind of the big picture

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1 thing that I\'d like to see. In the next year, I

2 think ICAO could have a draft of something like

3 that.

4 Down on the more specific end of the

5 spectrum, we talked a little about alternate

6 fuels. FAA has played a very tremendous role in

7 terms of hosting, administrating something called

8 the commercial aviation alternate fuel

9 initiative, which is just a little over a year

10 old now.

11 And that\'s very much welcomed and

12 tremendous effort. To get really specific, if we

13 can show feasibility of these bio fuels, we\'re

14 going to need help in changing the specifications

15 to allow their use.

16 The specification currently states

17 that the fuel must be from petroleum source and

18 then it gives a whole bunch of technical

19 criteria.

20 If we can meet all of the technical

21 criteria and show by reasonable methods that it

22 is a suitable fuel, then we should have that

23 accepted by spec, I think FAA can help with that.

24 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: I think we had a

25 question over here?

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1 MR. HUETTNER: Yes, hello. Charlie

2 Huettner, I represent Naverus here today and I

3 wanted to switch to the short term for a moment.

4 We\'ve been working in Canada and

5 Australia and the Brisbane Study and so forth and

6 the FAA has done a tremendous job here in the

7 United States to begin to really foster and

8 promote RNP as a solution both for noise, being

9 able to avoid noise sensitive issues and also for

10 emissions in cutting down the amount of fuel.

11 Just like to hear your thoughts on the

12 value of government support of a system wide use

13 of RNP and that sort of thing as a short term

14 solution, it doesn\'t really take a lot of

15 technology to solve.

16 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Well, anyone?

17 John?

18 MR. MEENAN: As we say, we agree

19 completely Charlie. I mean, and in fact that is

20 going on, it\'s going on certainly here in the

21 United States and it\'s going on elsewhere in the

22 world.

23 It\'s one of the few things that we

24 think we can really do in the short term that

25 will \-- there are a number of others as well, but

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1 that\'s certainly one of the primary ones that

2 will significantly address the problem.

3 I think it\'s also incumbent on us to

4 explain to the public why they\'re advantages in

5 doing that kind of thing. It\'s often perceived

6 that we do these things simply because it\'s in

7 our own best interest, which to an extent it is,

8 but the fact is they\'re also environmental

9 benefits from it as well.

10 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Things that are

11 maybe in the airlines best interest are not

12 necessarily anti-environment. You know, that \--

13 MR. MEENAN: They have a hard time

14 convincing the public of that sometimes.

15 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Well that \-- but

16 that goes back to the perception issue which we

17 dealt with before. Anyone else want to comment

18 on that? I figured you would Rob.

19 DR. PORTEOUS: I would think this is

20 a no-brainer and that\'s because even before the

21 environmental issues, things which improve fuel

22 efficiency make great economic sense and we\'re

23 very strongly interested in RNP across the whole

24 of Australia.

25 The \-- just to broaden this question

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1 out a little bit, John, earlier I think you were

2 skeptical about the value of things like

3 emissions trading because they might, here I see

4 it, and not promote innovation.

5 You\'re looking for ways in which

6 government can perhaps foster that more actively.

7 But there are some schemes, including things that

8 have been canvassed in Australia where within an

9 emissions trading scheme, action \-- activities

10 which are proactive research can be used to

11 generate carbon credits which you can then trade

12 off elsewhere.

13 So you can actually have schemes which

14 still foster innovation within same which looks

15 like some which is more static. So I think you

16 can have some novel ways of making this \--

17 providing some incentives for us to innovate.

18 MR. MEENAN: And I may have been short

19 handing my answer a little bit too much there.

20 DR. PORTEOUS: Yes.

21 MR. MEENAN: But, no there are \-- and

22 that\'s why it\'s important in all of this to

23 understand. I mean, there are infinite levels of

24 detail that need to be analyzed and understood.

25 It\'s one of the reasons it takes a

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1 long time to address these concerns and it\'s one

2 of our concerns with folks in some other parts of

3 the world who are just rushing to a single

4 conclusion here which we think is not necessarily

5 going to help address the problem in the long

6 run.

7 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Bob?

8 MR. SHUTER: This is a perfect example

9 of a win-win situation. RNP gives you greater

10 safety, greater capacity and better fuel

11 efficiency.

12 The problem is, the public isn\'t

13 getting that message. We talked about RVSM a few

14 minutes ago and how that\'s going to have a

15 tremendous improvement in fuel economy because

16 aircraft can fly at their optimal altitude for

17 fuel efficiency.

18 For example, it was announced last

19 week that it\'s now in effect in China. It\'s

20 going to have a tremendous impact on fuel

21 efficiency but you don\'t see people cheering, you

22 don\'t see headlines in the press, yes, we\'ve done

23 something for the environment.

24 On the ICAO assembly there were two

25 really good announcements which I\'d like to see.

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1 One is from ATA, which said ICAO approves a long

2 list of items that states can use to improve the

3 environment. A very positive statement.

4 IATA put out a similar statement.

5 These are the type of information statements that

6 we need to see more often because they tell the

7 public we are doing something about it.

8 We\'re not just sitting back and

9 ignoring their complaints, we\'re doing something

10 about it, on the efficiency side, on the aircraft

11 side.

12 Airbus has done a good job of

13 advertising how efficient the airbus is and

14 Boeing with the 787. We\'re making tremendous

15 progress, but it\'s just not getting to the

16 public.

17 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Yes, and I think

18 that in the U.S. side, the FAA to its credit a

19 couple years ago now in December I think it was

20 \`05 announced that we\'re actually going to a

21 satellite based system using ADS-B technology.

22 That clearly was not for environmental

23 reasons, it was to switch over the system and for

24 efficiencies and to get into the next generation

25 of air traffic.

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1 But the bottom line is that too will

2 have significant environmental benefits that

3 aren\'t understood and maybe are not being talked

4 about as much.

5 We must have some other questions

6 because I know who\'s managing this, but whoever

7 wants to talk just yell at us.

8 MR. GOHAIN: Thank you Mr. Moderator.

9 My name is Gohain from India. My question to

10 this distinguished panel is with regard to the

11 issue of night curfew being imposed and continues

12 to be imposed in some of the western countries.

13 Does the panel recognize that night

14 curfew selectively used in some of the western

15 countries, with the guilt of aviation in this

16 world, has created congestion in some other

17 airports, both for the departures and arrivals.

18 And with this congestions, there is

19 increased pollution, both noise as well as

20 gaseous emissions.

21 We have heard from the panel and we

22 know a lot of things have been done with regard

23 to engine manufacturing designs including

24 retrofits to the type of engines having low noise

25 emissions.

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1 We have also heard about and we know

2 about the improved operational techniques. So if

3 that be so, what is the panel\'s view on the

4 continued imposition of night curfew in some

5 parts of the globe. Thank you Mr. Moderator.

6 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: I could answer

7 that, but I won\'t. Bob, you want to take this?

8 MR. SHUTER: Well I thought Steve

9 might want to answer it because the people \--

10 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Well I\'ll get

11 there.

12 MR. SHUTER: It\'s the cargo operators

13 that are really being hit by this and flights

14 from one region to another.

15 When you calculate the time that it\'s

16 going to take to get there and realize you can\'t

17 land because of curfews, it has been recognized

18 by ICAO and in fact it\'s on the agenda, I think

19 tomorrow or no today for the CAPE steering

20 committee meeting.

21 There is a working paper that I read

22 recently on it, and it acknowledges that they\'re

23 actually making the whole infrastructure starting

24 to collapse because you can\'t get to where you

25 want to go.

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1 Or you have to go somewhere else, land

2 and then go to your destination, which means a

3 second landing, which means more noise, another

4 take off which means more noise and increased

5 fuel consumption.

6 You\'re absolutely right, it is a big

7 issue because people only look at their own

8 region. They don\'t look at the global picture.

9 And we talked earlier about issues on

10 emissions and noise, what\'s the government\'s

11 role? To look at the big picture. What\'s ICAO\'s

12 role? To look at the international picture. So

13 it is being addressed by ICAO.

14 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Anybody else?

15 Rob?

16 DR. PORTEOUS: I really take your

17 point to heart, but it \-- just to remind

18 ourselves the challenge here, we\'re not managing

19 our flights domestically on a gate to gate basis,

20 we\'d like to.

21 And just within Australia we\'re

22 thinking now about how we can better manage

23 flights gate to gate, which means understanding

24 the impact on the airports at each end as well as

25 on the airline that links the two within

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1 Australia.

2 But we\'re very keen to as soon as we

3 make progress on that, and perhaps even before we

4 \-- a two-way far down the road, to start working

5 on our important city pairs internationally in

6 just the same way.

7 To help manage flights, with an

8 understanding the issues at each end to achieve

9 overall improvements on how the industry works.

10 This is a global industry, but the \--

11 I can\'t overstate the challenges here when we\'re

12 still trying to get governments and industry to

13 work cohesively within our domestic environment

14 to take the step and say we also need to work so

15 effectively internationally as really enough to

16 another level.

17 An important issue that we\'re starting

18 to think about in terms of how we might balance

19 some of those differing concerns, but not an easy

20 one.

21 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: We must have a

22 couple more questions. I think there was, over

23 here somewhere. I\'m blinded by the light, so

24 someone\'s going to have to help me.

25 MR. BEUREGARD: Mark Beuregard, Pratt

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1 & Whitney Canada. I have a question for the \--

2 two questions actually.

3 First question is for the airports

4 representatives and the airlines. From a public

5 perception point of view, at least myself as a

6 traveling passenger, one of the worst things that

7 I see is landing at an airport without a gate

8 available and going into a holding area.

9 And on takeoff, you\'re number 15 for

10 departure with usually one engine running not

11 necessarily two.

12 To me if there\'s anything that we can

13 do to improve the public perception of air travel

14 is to immediately address that issue.

15 Now whether it\'s done by some kind of

16 gentleman\'s agreement as to how you manage

17 departures and arrivals, I don\'t know, but I\'d

18 like to address that to the airports folks.

19 The second question I have is a more

20 general one and that has to do with whether there

21 has been any thought to \-- in the United States,

22 Western Europe, Canada to tax incentives of some

23 sort to improve \-- to incentives folks to upgrade

24 their equipment.

25 In Canada, we have that on cars. It\'s

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1 not exactly a tax incentive, but it\'s a

2 government grants for more efficient vehicles.

3 So the question is whether that\'s being

4 considered anywhere.

5 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Jessica, you want

6 to start that?

7 MS. STEINHILBER: Sure. Well, to

8 address your first question, I think a lot of

9 that is a reflection of improvements that need to

10 be made in capacity and in the overall airspace

11 system.

12 Another thing that we\'ve talked about,

13 just with our staff is that, from my

14 understanding the way that the DOT reports

15 delays, airlines are incentivized to get off at

16 the gate, even if they don\'t have \-- even if

17 they\'re not ready to take off yet, if they don\'t

18 have a time to take off yet.

19 And maybe that needs to be reviewed so

20 that those planes aren\'t going and sitting out

21 there and taxiing when they could be sitting

22 somewhere with their engines off at the gate.

23 To address \-- I forget the second

24 question.

25 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: The question is

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1 incentives, it\'s the same issue. John you want

2 to ?

3 MR. MEENAN: I mean, Rob mentioned

4 this earlier. There are procedures under

5 consideration today to take a look at, you know,

6 when do you release the airplane from the gate,

7 when is it going to be able to move right in to

8 line, how are you going to be able to take it \--

9 get it to take off without having to

10 unnecessarily delay in a taxi line.

11 And the fact is, that all depends on

12 the deployment of new technologies and new

13 systems and that\'s what we\'re talking about when

14 we\'re talking about next generation air

15 transportation management in the United States,

16 what the Europeans are talking about as well.

17 And I think that\'s the solution to a

18 lot of the problems that we see out there today.

19 There is no good short term fix other than

20 schedule adjustments, which at least from our

21 members perspectives, they are constantly

22 assessing the best way to address these things.

23 But the, you know, the unfortunate

24 reality is that on a good weather day, most of

25 the airports in the United States anyway work

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1 pretty efficiently and you don\'t see that kind of

2 queuing, you don\'t see gate delays.

3 When you see it, is when the weather

4 goes down, again, new air traffic management

5 systems will better enable us to deal with the

6 weather, it\'s one of the few areas where you can

7 actually do something about the weather.

8 And it\'s why it\'s so important to move

9 forward with re-authorization and the funding

10 that\'s necessary to get that done.

11 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: Okay. The mother

12 superior has told me we\'re finished. And so \--

13 as the moderator, I want to \-- and I\'m willing to

14 sick around, I\'m sure some of the panel would too

15 in the back after we finish this.

16 Moderator\'s prerogative, I\'d just like

17 to follow on, on that and it\'s plea to Dan and

18 Bobby and everybody. As we move toward a

19 modernized next gen system and we move toward an

20 ADS-B based system, I think one of the things

21 that\'s been overlooked is the value of ADS-B on

22 the ground as well as in the air.

23 And we haven\'t really focused on that.

24 I mean, I could make a lot of stuff about ADS-B,

25 but as long as that question has been asked, I

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1 think we really need to tell the office that\'s

2 handling with ADS-B and the FAA really has to go

3 after the use of that type of technology on the

4 ground to avoid some of the situations.

5 That becomes a real safety issue too

6 because ground encouragements are a major issue.

7 And so that\'s the moderator\'s pitch for the

8 morning.

9 I would like to thank the panel. I\'ve

10 moderated a lot of stuff in my life, and these

11 guys make it easy. And I\'d like to especially

12 thank our international guests, I mean Rob flew

13 in from Australia and we just \-- I discovered in

14 trying to set up conference calls is 14 hours

15 away.

16 Bob\'s here from Canada, I really

17 appreciate it. And the manufacturers and even

18 Meenan. So, I really do appreciate the panel.

19 You noticed, for those of you in the

20 United States, Meenan went through a whole panel

21 without blaming global warming on the National

22 Business Aviation Association.

23 (Laughter)

24 MODERATOR ALTERMAN: I thought that

25 was quite significant. And I want to thank the

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1 audience for participating and listening to us.

2 So thank you very much, we appreciate it.

3 MR. FILIPPATOS: I guess we should

4 also give Steve a hand for moderating such a

5 great panel, really informative. So thank you

6 Steve.

7 And we have a 20 minute break

8 downstairs, coffee is there and everything else

9 and an opportunity to see the exhibitors and then

10 we\'ll come back to this room for the third and

11 final plenary. Thank you very much.

12 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went

13 off the record at 9:46 a.m. and went

14 back on the record at 10:11 a.m.)

15 MR. SABATINI: If you could take your

16 seats please, we\'d like to get the next panel

17 underway. Let me take this opportunity to add my

18 welcome again today.

19 Good morning and I hope you had a

20 delightful evening at our Evening of Cuisine and

21 Music of the Americas. I know many of you were

22 out there dancing and I hope you had a good time

23 and enjoyed yourself.

24 Yesterday, the Director General of

25 IATA, Giovanni Bisignani, mentioned that within

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1 the next decade, we will have about 16,000 more

2 airplanes entering into the system.

3 And he also mentioned that in order to

4 serve that capability, that air frames bring,

5 we\'re going to need 17,000 pilots per year. That

6 is one tall order.

7 And I think that is the perfect segue

8 to the next plenary session, which is on the Next

9 Generation of Aviation Professionals.

10 And I will tell you, it\'s not just

11 pilots that will be in great need, it will be

12 people to come into the aerospace industry across

13 the board or across all the disciplines.

14 So, we\'re very fortunate to have this

15 distinguished panel here. It will be moderated

16 by John Douglass, who is the President and Chief

17 Executive Officer of the Aerospace Industries

18 Association, who will also introduce his panel

19 members. Thank you John.

20 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Thank you. Well,

21 good morning everybody and it\'s a pleasure to be

22 here with this community and, you know, any

23 discussion of safety has to start with a comment

24 about how remarkable our safety record has been

25 here in the United States, especially in our

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1 civil aviation community.

2 A couple of years ago, I pushed to

3 nominate the FAA and the CAST program for the

4 Collier Trophy because I felt that the remarkable

5 achievement that we had made in safety during a

6 time in which our industry was under a huge

7 amount of financial stress and a huge amount of

8 security stress because of the events of 9/11,

9 was just an extraordinary aviation achievement.

10 It didn\'t win the year that I

11 nominated them, but we\'re going to nominate them

12 again, and I do think that, that is one of the

13 sort of unrecognized great achievements that our

14 industry has made in the last 10 or 15 years.

15 But today, we\'re here to talk about

16 the human element in safety and the human element

17 in aviation and the manufacturer of aviation

18 products.

19 And it\'s an issue that cuts pretty

20 cleanly across the entire industry here in the

21 United States. And we have some distinguished

22 panelists from Europe and from Latin America, who

23 help us understand whether they \-- these issues

24 extend into the global economy as well.

25 But, in the manufacturing area that

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1 I\'ve represented, we know that about one-fifth of

2 our workforce can leave in the next four or five

3 years. The average age is in the mid-50\'s for

4 engineers and in the low 50\'s for blue collar

5 workers.

6 When we look at the long term needs of

7 the nation, and we look at our educational

8 institutions, we can see that we\'re not

9 generating the kind of people that we need to

10 replicate the workforce that we have today.

11 And I know that, that extends straight

12 across the industry. It\'s a problem in the FAA,

13 their workforce is aging as well. It\'s a problem

14 in NASA, it\'s a problem in the Department of

15 Defense.

16 The scientific community in the

17 military services is aging and so we know we have

18 an issue that cuts right across the industry.

19 At the same time as our workforce is

20 aging, the nature of aviation is changing

21 dramatically. When I was a young lad and I came

22 into the air force, I remember very clearly in

23 the early 1960\'s going to the officers club on

24 Friday night and listening to the majors and

25 lieutenant colonels tell me about flying B-17s

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1 during World War II and Mustangs and those kinds

2 of airplanes.

3 And if you look at the kind of skills

4 that you needed to be a B-17 pilot in the eight

5 air force in World War II compared to the kind of

6 skills that you need to fly an F-117 today,

7 they\'re dramatically different.

8 We\'ve moved a long way from basic

9 stick and rudder skills to systems management

10 skills and avionics management and lots of other

11 issues.

12 So we have a great panel this morning

13 that can help us understand some of these. What

14 I\'m going to do is to introduce them one by one

15 and let them make a few comments.

16 I have some questions that I will ask

17 to the panel to bring out what I think are some

18 of the issues in the industry. And then at some

19 point when we\'re about 15 or 20 minutes away from

20 the deadline, person will appear over here with a

21 little card and hold it up and that will be my

22 signal to turn it over to you in the audience.

23 So I hope that if you have a question,

24 you won\'t be bashful, that you will take a minute

25 and ask us what we think or if maybe you just

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1 want to make a statement and let us react to it

2 because we do have a wonderful panel today.

3 And we\'re here to serve you and to

4 help all of you understand this problem. So to

5 begin with, the fella here to my left is a co-

6 conspirator of mine that we\'ve been working

7 together in trying to solve many of the problems

8 that face our industry and civil aviation.

9 I was telling him a few minutes ago

10 that when I came into the industry back in the

11 early 1960\'s, 85% of the sales of the industry

12 went to the Department of Defense.

13 And that\'s gradually declined over the

14 years to right now only about 40% of our sales go

15 to the Department of Defense and Space and 60% of

16 our sales are to the civil aviation community.

17 And our backlog in the manufacturing

18 part of the industry has gone from around \$200

19 billion over about a 10 year period in the last

20 two years it shot up over \$350 billion and 74% of

21 that is civil.

22 So in a couple of years, the aerospace

23 and defense industry in the United States is

24 going to be an industry which is about 75% civil

25 aviation and only 25% defense and space and

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1 that\'s going to make a radical change in the

2 whole environment, how we design things, how we

3 do civil military integration and so on.

4 But, Jim is now the President, Chief

5 Executive Officer of the Air Transport

6 Association of America, ATA, which is the

7 nation\'s oldest and largest airline trade

8 association.

9 And Jim joined ATA in February of

10 2003. He\'s had a very distinguished career in

11 all kinds of interesting things. He\'s worked for

12 Coca-Cola company and PepsiCo company.

13 And he was Vice President of Public

14 Affairs for Coca-Cola in New York back in the

15 \`80s and he went in the mid-80\'s over to PepsiCo,

16 came to Washington to be Vice President of Public

17 Affairs and the manager of State Public Affairs

18 for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, Jim?

19 MR. MAY: Yes.

20 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: That\'s a title

21 for you. And, he\'s \-- in 1976 he was the Eastern

22 Washington State Coordinator of the President

23 Ford Committee and a candidate for the U.S. House

24 of Representatives in Washington\'s Fourth

25 Congressional District.

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1 And he served on President Ronald

2 Reagan\'s transition team. And my favorite thing

3 about him was that back in our youth, when I was

4 in the air force and sitting over there in Tan

5 Son Nhut, he was a captain in the United States

6 Marine Corps and he was an infantry company

7 commander.

8 And those skills he learned in the

9 United States Marine Corps, he has brought to the

10 many jobs that he has had as a civilian and he\'s

11 a great person for our industry and a great

12 person to work for. Jim.

13 MR. MAY: Thank you John, I appreciate

14 that kind of introduction and I\'ll have a few

15 comments to make about aging workforce in just a

16 minute.

17 I think I probably aged more in this

18 job than any other I\'ve ever held in my career \--

19 (Laughter)

20 MR. MAY: \-- with some of the

21 challenges that we\'ve got. You know, we had

22 Thanksgiving weekend just a week ago and it\'s the

23 first time I\'ve had an opportunity to see the

24 administrator.

25 And I saw Hank Krakowski in the back

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1 of the room, and I think we couldn\'t let this

2 opportunity go by without publicly thanking

3 Bobby, the whole FAA team, our air traffic

4 controllers, Hank Krakowski and his ATO operation

5 for a really terrific job over Thanksgiving.

6 So I\'d like to lead the applause for

7 a good job well done.

8 A couple of just general comments,

9 opening things up. One of them has been

10 mentioned already and I think it is the hallmark

11 and that is we\'ve got the safest record in

12 aviation that we\'ve ever had and if we don\'t do

13 anything else, we need to maintain that.

14 Second comment that was made is

15 there\'s a huge demand growing in the system.

16 Giovanni Bisignani talked about the demand for

17 aircraft.

18 We know that we\'re moving over 750

19 million passengers a year right now, that\'s going

20 to grow to a billion passengers a year in the

21 very, very near future.

22 We know we\'ve got demand for new

23 pilots, so we anticipate, you know, probably

24 3,500 new pilots for the mainline system between

25 now and the end of \`08.

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1 But at the end of the day, all of that

2 is dependent upon whether or not we adopt a

3 system that promotes growth or fosters some kind

4 of constraint.

5 And I think we all have to keep in

6 mind that we can talk all day long about new

7 hiring, we can talk all day long about new

8 demand, we can talk all day long about all the

9 other facets.

10 But if we don\'t promote growth through

11 our systems technology, if we don\'t promote

12 growth through a next generation air traffic

13 control system, if we don\'t promote growth by

14 staying away from artificial constraints on our

15 system at the airport level and in specific

16 regional airspace systems, then I don\'t think

17 we\'re doing ourselves, as an industry, the right

18 kind of service that we should.

19 So I\'d like to sort of open with that

20 thought and then John, we can certainly address

21 all of the individual issues that you want to

22 along the way.

23 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: All right.

24 Thanks John. Our next panelist is John Prater

25 and he\'s a captain and he is the eighth president

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1 of the Airline Pilots Association International.

2 He was elected by the union\'s board of

3 directors on October 18, 2006 and began a four

4 year term on January 1, 2007.

5 John is a 28 year veteran of ALPA

6 having served extensively at all levels of the

7 organization from strike committee chairman to

8 master chairman, to vice chairman of the

9 international alliance, the Wings Alliance.

10 He brings a wealth of experience to

11 ALPA. His background includes union fights

12 against notorious airline management figures \--

13 (Laughter)

14 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: \-- like Frank

15 Lorenzo, Carl Ichan and Dick Ferris. I\'m reading

16 from his bio folks, so.

17 (Laughter)

18 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Frank, wherever

19 you are, I didn\'t call you notorious.

20 PARTICIPANT: Yes, I know.

21 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Prater was

22 furloughed from Continental Airlines, returning

23 just three weeks prior to its bankruptcy in 1983

24 and he became one of the pilot group leaders

25 during the association\'s 25 month strike.

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1 He\'s currently a 767 captain. He\'s

2 flown all kinds of aircraft. The 272, DC-8, A-

3 300, 757, 777. He\'s worked for passenger and

4 cargo carriers during a 35 year career.

5 He\'s worked for companies like

6 Buckeye, Skyway, Wall Street Journal, United and

7 done contract freight operations for UPS Airborne

8 and it says here that in the beginning of his

9 career, he flew night freight in World War II air

10 propeller airplanes.

11 And, John, I just want to comment a

12 little bit about something has been of interest

13 to me over the years.

14 You know, I have a very good

15 relationship with Tom Buffenbarger, who\'s the

16 head of the machinist union and it has always

17 struck me that when you can get manufacturers or

18 in this case operators that you work with and are

19 organized labor people, to work together,

20 everybody wins.

21 And, I think you deserve a lot of

22 credit for positive approach that you\'ve taken to

23 things and as Tom does. And so we\'re eager to

24 hear how you see these issues of brining new

25 people into the industry.

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1 CAPTAIN PRATER: Thank you John.

2 First, I\'d like to make a suggestion to my good

3 friend Nick Sabatini that next year we hold this

4 in a 777 and I can speak to you through the PA

5 because then I know I\'ll have your attention when

6 you\'re at the controls of a 777 and you\'re all at

7 the back.

8 But I thank you for giving me the

9 opportunity to address some of the issues from

10 the cockpit.

11 There is \-- this isn\'t a bargaining

12 conference and the CEOs aren\'t here, but the

13 statement I have is that airline pilots did not

14 take a vow of poverty to fly airplanes.

15 Now, it\'s been a difficult five or six

16 years since 9/11 and the restructuring of many of

17 our companies and that has felt \-- it\'s been felt

18 very hard by our professionals.

19 It\'s not only how we bring in new

20 aviators to become the future airline pilots,

21 it\'s how do we retain the ones we have right now.

22 Now, many of us learn how to fly

23 because we wanted to. We would hold up the sign,

24 I\'ll fly for food, I\'ll clean your airplane if

25 you let me fly it for an hour.

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1 Those days I think are past, not for

2 all, there are still those young men and women

3 that see an airplane go overhead or they listen

4 to Gene Cernan or they go to the Aviation Space

5 Museum and say, I want to do that.

6 But why do they want to do that? What

7 kind of career is it to be an airline pilot

8 today? Yes, that\'s the subject of collective

9 bargaining and we try to improve that.

10 We try to make careers out of being an

11 airline pilot. Being gone from your family 18,

12 20, 25 days in a row sometimes, right now we have

13 people landing in Afghanistan and Baghdad taking

14 supplies to the troops and we have people leaving

15 Washington National to fly 50 people up to New

16 York.

17 What kind of job is it? Why do people

18 \-- why would people want to fly airplanes? Is

19 there a pension in it? No, that was lost. Are

20 you going to be reimbursed for being gone from

21 your family so much? No, that has changed.

22 So our job is to make this a career

23 that young men and women want to do. It\'s great

24 when you think you can see the world. But I\'ll

25 ask you the next time you go through an airport

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1 and see a \-- maybe a passenger huddled under a

2 blanket and you think, well it\'s either a bum in

3 the airport or it\'s a displaced passenger.

4 I\'m here to tell you, it may be the

5 captain on your flight tomorrow, because they\'re

6 staying for six hours with no place to rest.

7 This is an aviation safety conference.

8 What is the best safety tool out there? I

9 believe it\'s a well experienced, well trained,

10 well rested pilot.

11 So we have to ensure that, that\'s what

12 our industry has. From the cockpit, we certainly

13 respect and want to honor our industry, our

14 profession. We want to be here.

15 Now, how do we make that next

16 generation of young aviators? How do we make

17 them want to come into our industry? I think we

18 have to share with them the dream that it has to

19 be a good solid profession, that it\'s not a job

20 that you have a job one day and get laid off the

21 next, and have to go to Baghdad the next day to

22 find more work.

23 So if we can provide that stability,

24 that career potential, I think we won\'t have any

25 problem bringing the brightest and best into the

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1 cockpit of tomorrow. Thank you John.

2 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Okay. Our next

3 panelist is Luisa Ragher and Luisa is presently

4 the head of section in charge of transport energy

5 and environment at the delegation of the European

6 Commission in Washington.

7 She took up here position in August of

8 2006. Prior to joining the European Commission,

9 she was Government and European affairs manager

10 of Ford Motor Company in Europe where she advised

11 corporate headquarters on EU legislative

12 developments in the environmental field and

13 contributed to the definition of corporate

14 policies.

15 She\'s also worked for European affairs

16 consulting firm in Brussels and for the Assembly

17 of European Regions in Strasbourg.

18 And Lusia, as we begin this, as you

19 know, today the countries that make up the

20 European Union are not only the United States

21 closest allies in terms of national security, but

22 they\'re also our largest trading partner in

23 aerospace products and they are our largest

24 competitor in the global economy for aerospace

25 sales around the world.

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1 So we have huge stakes in cooperating,

2 but we also have some areas where we compete

3 vigorously. And we hope that you can help us

4 understand how some of these human capital issues

5 are effecting Europe as well as how they effect

6 the United States. So we\'re eager to hear what

7 you have to say.

8 MS. RAGHER: First of all, I would

9 like to thank for the invitation and I would like

10 to say that we rather cooperate than compete.

11 This is the message I would like to leave here.

12 Since we\'re being starting speaking

13 about pilots, let me say a word on what the

14 situation of pilots is in Europe, which is

15 probably slightly different than from the

16 situation in the United States.

17 First of all we do not have a

18 homogeneous situation across Europe. We have had

19 waves of employment and non-employment of pilots

20 in Europe.

21 But the situation is still varied. We

22 have a certain surge of pilots in a country like

23 Belgium we have conduct on the press. Brussels

24 Airlines claims that they are losing 10 pilots a

25 month to the Gulf countries mainly and then we

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1 have a surplus of pilots in countries like Spain,

2 young pilots.

3 And also I would like to say that the

4 state called us, in this case I have not yet

5 contacted us rang the bell to say we are lacking

6 new workforce.

7 We are also facing a trend which is

8 coming from the United States as well the

9 emerging economies don\'t have the training

10 capacity for the pilots they need.

11 I\'ve seen that the similar aviation

12 administration of China has declared that they

13 will need 9,000 pilots by 2010, but they can only

14 train 7,000 so they need 2,000 from somewhere

15 else.

16 The training capacity and the training

17 patterns have changed in Europe. At the moment,

18 the companies would rather looking for trained

19 pilots that pay their own pilot license.

20 Some companies would then offer the

21 final training provided they can get the money

22 back in the first salaries. And according to the

23 Cockpit Association of Europe, this is a

24 impediment for the access to the profession.

25 We have also reviewed a survey

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1 conducted in the United Kingdom on the pressure

2 of the pilots are going under. And 48 of the \--

3 48% of the pilots that have been interviewed

4 declared that they will work in 2007 at least one

5 more day per month than they used to work on

6 2002.

7 The European Union, at community level

8 has now set maximum working hour for the \-- for

9 pilots and other categories and that is entered

10 into place at the beginning of the year. So this

11 is the good news and this is inline with the

12 safety focus of this conference.

13 Now, since the question here is what

14 will we do to attract more people, I have to make

15 a decision, the community which I represent does

16 not have the power neither to train nor to

17 educate workforce.

18 We have one power, which is to ensure

19 the safety of the workforce. And we do that

20 through licensing of personnel. We are at the

21 moment adopted licensing for ATM personnel and

22 licensing for maintenance personnel.

23 We are in the process of revising the

24 mandate of the European Safety Agency and the

25 revised mandates will include also licensing of

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1 pilots, pilot trainers, aero-medical personnel

2 and cabin crew.

3 So, I don\'t want to say that we will

4 increase the number of pilots, but the message I

5 want to leave is that we will provide equal

6 qualification for the aeronautical personnel we

7 have in Europe.

8 And those qualifications will be the

9 highest safety standard and we\'ll allow to create

10 a common market for the aviation personnel in

11 Europe and slightly beyond Europe because these

12 rules will also apply to Norway, Iceland,

13 Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.

14 And it will apply to all those

15 countries that will take \-- accept the rules and

16 are members of the European Community Aviation

17 area. So Europe enlarged.

18 Now, as I said, we will not produce

19 more, additional professionals by that, but we\'ll

20 ensure maximum flexibility of highly qualified

21 personnel and this is the power that the

22 community is.

23 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Okay. Thank you

24 Luisa. Last, but certainly not least of our

25 panel is Eustacio Fabrega. And Eustacio has been

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1 a private pilot since 1965 with over 4,000 hours

2 of flying time.

3 He\'s the proprietor of an air

4 fumigation services company, he\'s General Manager

5 and shareholder of a regional airline company.

6 He\'s Director of the Panamanian Civil

7 Aviation Authority from 1994 to 1999, President

8 of the CLAC, which is the Latin American Civil

9 Aviation Commission from 1998 to 1999, Director

10 of the Panamanian Civil Aviation Authority from

11 July 2006 to the present time.

12 He\'s the President of the CLAC from

13 November 2006 to the president \-- to the present

14 time. So, welcome, we\'re delighted to have you

15 and hope that you can share with us, you know,

16 the view of how these issues are unfolding in

17 Latin America.

18 MR. FABREGA: Thank you John. Listen

19 I want to use some of our technology, which is

20 here. I\'m going to speak in my native language.

21 I believe that this type of forums

22 enable us and I will give you time to put your

23 headsets if you wish.

24 Are you going to listen in Italian?

25 PARTICIPANT: I don\'t think we have

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1 Italian.

2 MR. FABREGA: We don\'t have Italian

3 interpretation someone said. As I was saying, I

4 believe that this type of forums enable us to see

5 that many of the items that we speak along the

6 hallways may be said in front of true

7 personalities and widely recognized people in the

8 field of aviation that we speak with candor and

9 that we say things as they should be stated.

10 In this aviation conference, we have

11 discussed about the SMS, the human technical

12 resources, the joint work to be deployed, the

13 safety culture and sharing the transparent

14 information to share in this management and the

15 fluid communication between the regulators and

16 the regulated and data sharing.

17 But it is important to bare in mind

18 that in this field of endeavor, we deem that

19 indeed they are very several actors among those

20 we have the regulators and the industry itself.

21 The regulator has objectives which are

22 very different from those of the industry the

23 objectives of the regulator have to have air

24 transportation as a development instrument of the

25 state.

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1 The industry uses air transportation

2 as a means in order to gain wealth. It is

3 obvious that the industry has changed, has

4 evolved.

5 Yesterday during the luncheon, we

6 heard Captain Eugene Cernan, a man who because of

7 the way in which he expressed himself yesterday,

8 I believe that actually motivates flyers.

9 He himself was a pilot, he was a flyer

10 himself and we were the changes, the

11 technological changes we have witnessed today, we

12 realize that the romantic aspects of aviation

13 seem to have disappeared, they\'re far behind.

14 I recall many years ago when I started

15 flying, when I would fly from Panama City to

16 Miami, and I had to spend four hours and 30

17 minutes in the cockpit of a small twin engine

18 plane maintaining the altitude, maintaining our

19 direction, making corrections using a magnetic

20 compass, using navigation systems, which

21 indicated me that I was in a certain position and

22 that I could established triangulation to another

23 point where there was a radio broadcasting a

24 station in Honduras and another one in Jamaica

25 communicated with a Pan American Airlines plane

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1 that would tell me where I was so that I was able

2 to report where I was actually located.

3 It would seem that the change that has

4 taken place, if I were to fly a plane today

5 between Panama and Miami where I just use three

6 or four buttons and I forget about maintaining my

7 altitude, the direction, making wind corrections

8 and the plane is going to take me directly where

9 I wish to go.

10 I believe that Joe went through this

11 aspect in aviation, John I think that went

12 through the transformation from this to the pilot

13 who sits on the plane, punches three buttons and

14 then is dedicated to doing other things, such as

15 guaranteeing flight safety at administering and

16 managing the systems.

17 That plane, at this point in time, may

18 have 30, 40, 100 computers which are doing the

19 job that formerly we used to do ourselves.

20 Let us go into the regulatory aspects,

21 where do we find ourselves are regulators? We

22 have to focus in our presentation and in the

23 speeches we will be making here taking the side

24 of the regulator because the industry is far

25 ahead from us in the utilization of technology if

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1 we recall.

2 And we look back, we realize that we

3 have been always supporting the EASA program

4 established by the FAA, perhaps because this made

5 our authorities at a given point in time to react

6 vis-a-vie the fact that we have to support air

7 transportation authorities in each one of our

8 regions and each one of our authorities.

9 And even their approach perhaps was

10 wrong, I believe that one of the reasons that

11 motivated the FAA to commence a program, which is

12 the EASA program, I am aware that in January of

13 1990, there was an accident of an Avianca plane,

14 a Columbian airline going between Bogotá and New

15 York.

16 The plane was arriving in New York

17 Kennedy, spent an hour in a holding pattern and

18 this resulted in an approach and the approach was

19 a failed approach, it ran out of fuel and the

20 fuel \-- the plane stalled and dropped.

21 If we see this tells us clearly that

22 one of the most important reasons why the

23 accident, the Avianca accident took place was a

24 result of a communication problem.

25 There was a communications issue.

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1 This is why the EASA program has truly

2 transformed the system.

3 It has placed us today to work and

4 think that if I meet or do not meet with the

5 standards of the FAA or that the FAA tells me

6 that I should be at least meeting the minimum

7 requirements established by ICAO.

8 Yesterday, one of the speakers said

9 something which to me is truly the future. The

10 future is here today. We must focus on the

11 issues of operational safety above and beyond the

12 minimum standards.

13 I thank you very much for the comment

14 that you made yesterday because it is \-- that is

15 the approach we ought to follow.

16 I believe that the industry ought to

17 begin by working in greater unity, industry and

18 regulators, both. We both face the same

19 problems.

20 There, where we are the ones who set

21 the policies, the people we hire, the

22 professionals who work under us, they must be and

23 should be the systems managers who are the ones

24 who in the future will be regulating those who

25 are in charge of the systems on board the planes.

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1 This happens not just at the level of

2 the industry and the airlines, but also airplane

3 manufacturers as well.

4 Recently, when we thought in terms of

5 an airplane factory, first we saw it in black in

6 white, then we saw a woman with a handkerchief

7 who was putting the rivets on the surface.

8 Now, this is done by machines, it is

9 the actual computers that are manufacturing the

10 aircraft and the frames.

11 In our region we started taking

12 certain measures to change the mind set.

13 Yesterday I was hearing a discussion in one of

14 the panels as to whether we ought to establish a

15 true safety culture and whether we can measure

16 such safety culture.

17 Whether we call it culture or

18 priorities or approaches, what is relevant is

19 that we are thinking in terms of safety, and

20 issue which is non-negotiable.

21 Safety is an issue which is above and

22 beyond any possible economic benefits. Safety

23 will guarantee that our industry will totally be

24 profitable and economically viable.

25 So John, I believe and with this, I

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1 can leave you now. I believe that the actual

2 future of our professionals is that of being a

3 systems manager, a systems administrator.

4 Modern technology has made for

5 aviation to be safer. That is something that

6 cannot be denied and we believe it may be safer

7 if we can use technology adequately.

8 Perhaps what is missing and this is at

9 the level of our region, I say to have some

10 entity, some body, some organization that will us

11 when do we have the technology that we ought to

12 be using.

13 Because now a days, those who produce

14 new technologies are putting within our reach,

15 many things. But I don\'t know which is good,

16 which is bad and all of these are tremendously

17 expensive.

18 And in our region, we don\'t have a

19 surplus of resources to invest in that endeavor.

20 And we must make certain that whenever we invest

21 in having new technologies, that this will be the

22 best suited technology.

23 And we are certain that we will be

24 able to thus have a better relationship between

25 the industry and the regulators.

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1 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Thank you

2 Eustacio, I enjoyed your comments about flying

3 from Latin America to Miami.

4 Miami is my hometown and my father was

5 a naval aviator and he loved to fly and he flew

6 into his late 70\'s and he used to take me up in

7 his airplane and fly me around the Caribbean and

8 it always worried me a little bit because I was

9 afraid to get in an automobile with him, much

10 less his airplane.

11 (Laughter)

12 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: And so I know a

13 little bit about being lost over the Caribbean

14 and having to call in and find where you were.

15 But, I appreciate your comments. I also

16 appreciate your comments about the management of

17 technology.

18 One of the huge issues, of course, in

19 the technology that\'s going to go into the next

20 generation air traffic control is how do we bring

21 that technology to the big commercial operators

22 who can afford to put it in a 747 and have that

23 same level of technology available for people who

24 are in general aviation who fly much smaller

25 airplanes and can\'t afford the cost of some of

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1 the high technology systems.

2 So that\'s an issue here in the United

3 States.

4 MR. FABREGA: I believe that indeed,

5 I believe that today there is a very good

6 relationship between our regulators in our region

7 that is and the airlines, the important airlines

8 which have developed in our region.

9 But what we do realize is that many a

10 time, we are reacting vis-a-vie the needs of the

11 airlines and this is something which makes our

12 task much more difficult.

13 The airlines are going to try to seek

14 out the technology that will make it more

15 efficient. And when we realize it, we see that

16 we the regulators are being requested to be able

17 to use that new technology.

18 Who benefits from this? The airlines

19 indeed. They\'ve got their times, they\'ve got

20 their distances, they record savings.

21 And in some way or the other, through

22 that good communication that ought to be

23 established between industry and the regulator,

24 we should be in a position to respond to the

25 actual needs of that business, which takes place,

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1 that deal by developing those new technologies

2 and by the best and most adequate means.

3 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Now, that\'s a big

4 issue here in the U.S. as well. Let me start the

5 questioning by asking Jim and John, from both of

6 your points of view.

7 We know that it\'s a cyclic industry to

8 a certain degree and we\'ve all seen situations

9 where we\'re in an up cycle like we are now.

10 And we \-- the manufacturers that I

11 represent have from time to time been burned by

12 the fact that we load a lot of people on to our

13 payrolls in order to get the airplanes out and

14 only to find that a few years later that we\'re in

15 a down cycle and we have to let them go.

16 Boeing\'s been through that, Airbus is

17 actually having some issues with that right now

18 in Europe.

19 Is there a human capital shortage in

20 the operational part of our industry is my

21 question for the two of you and then Luisa, you

22 and Eustacio may want to comment.

23 MR. MAY: All right. John, I think

24 that there\'s certainly a demand for human capital

25 in the business. We think that there is not a

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1 shortage yet when it comes to the pilot\'s side of

2 the equation, Captain Prater may or may not agree

3 with me on that front.

4 As I indicated in my opening comments,

5 we\'re going to hire about 3,500 pilots for the

6 mainline carriers between now and the end of \`08.

7 We recognize there is extraordinary demand

8 worldwide, China, India, the Middle East,

9 elsewhere.

10 And so we\'re going to have to work

11 hard to keep up with that demand, but at the

12 immediate time there\'s not a shortage. Now, I

13 think our friends in the regional community may

14 have a little bit tighter squeeze than we do on

15 the mainline side.

16 When it comes to technicians, more

17 broadly defined, and it\'s not just the mechanics

18 side of things, but broadly defined, I think we

19 are \-- we have that reason for real concern

20 because those skills are so transferable to

21 other industries.

22 And whether it\'s IT managers or

23 systems engineers or whatever the case might be,

24 I think we\'re going to \-- there\'s a growing

25 demand we have to find ways to train people to

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1 meet that demand, whether it\'s through greater

2 investment starting at the high school level and

3 then growing into colleges and technical centers.

4 I think it\'s open to question as to

5 how we best go about that, but there\'s a very

6 clear demand. This \-- there is a cycle in this

7 business.

8 We have to learn how to manage that

9 cycle better so that we can take out the peaks

10 and valleys of it and meet those challenges that

11 we\'ve got in front of us.

12 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: We have \-- John,

13 before you jump in, I just hitchhiked on that. I

14 can tell you from the manufacturers point of view

15 there is a big difference between the demographic

16 issues that Boeing faces, for example, one of our

17 bigger manufacturers or Lockheed or Raytheon you

18 can go down the list.

19 And a small company that maybe employs

20 200, 300 people in Upstate Connecticut, you know,

21 that\'s up there building parts for redundant

22 technology.

23 They don\'t have access to the same

24 national reach that the bigger companies do to

25 pull in talent and the bigger companies in some

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1 areas they even have global reach.

2 So, we in manufacturing, see a

3 significant differential in how human capital

4 shortages effect our industry and so it\'s

5 interesting that you bring that up Jim that it

6 was between the regionals and the big ones.

7 John, your thoughts?

8 CAPTAIN PRATER: Thanks John. I\'ll

9 disagree with Jim in just this manner. I don\'t

10 break down or we don\'t down the industry the same

11 way that the financial analysts do.

12 We think if the people on this side of

13 the room are flying home tonight in a 50 seat or

14 70 seat RJ and the people on this side of the

15 room are going home in the back of 777, you aught

16 to have the same quality of captain and first

17 officer flying your airplane going home.

18 There is no difference to you when

19 you\'re sitting in the back of that man or woman\'s

20 airplane.

21 So there is a shortage. Now, do

22 people gravitate towards the better paying jobs

23 and in terms of better paying jobs it\'s been the

24 legacy type carriers, many of which have \-- are

25 now gone in our lifetime, the Braniffs, and the

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1 Pan Am\'s, but we do have four or five of the

2 legacy hub and spoke carriers.

3 Yet, our regional industry, the 50,

4 70, 90 seaters are flying, what 30, 35% of

5 domestic capacity. There is a shortage of pilots

6 coming out of the schools, coming out of the

7 military willing to take those jobs.

8 Those jobs pay 17,000 to \$23,000 a

9 year, there\'s a problem there. The pilots who

10 are flying for the regionals, do want to get out

11 of the regional, out of the 50 or 70 seater

12 because they want a career.

13 I believe what we lost, when we lost

14 the national carriers that we used to have,

15 believe it or not when they were Ozark, North

16 Central, Frontier they were career jobs.

17 You had your 25, 30 year experience

18 because they stayed there. So we\'ve made this

19 two dynamic. We\'ve made it an industry where

20 people want to hopscotch over and over and get

21 out of a job.

22 We need to make the regional industry

23 into a career type job to make sure that those

24 people going home over here in the back of that

25 airplane have the same that these have, that same

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1 experience. That way, we can attract that new

2 human capital to want those jobs.

3 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Luisa, we see in

4 Europe, I don\'t know how many of our audience

5 have lived in Europe, but I\'ve lived in Europe

6 for a number of years and organized labor has \--

7 plays a different role in Europe than it does

8 here in the United States.

9 I mean, we\'ve just seen in the

10 headlines some of the labor issues that are going

11 on in France and their transportation system. Is

12 there a different approach in Europe to the way

13 Jim and John have laid this out?

14 MS. RAGHER: I think I can really

15 support what Jim has said so far. We don\'t have

16 a shortage at the moment, so we don\'t really see

17 that as a pressing issue.

18 At the other end, we expect that 75%

19 increase of traffic between now and 2020. So am

20 I sure that in 2020 we would not have a shortage,

21 maybe yes.

22 But at the moment, none of the

23 categories have come to us to say, do something

24 governments or European institutions because we

25 are going to face a big problem.

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1 Now, when you talk about young, old

2 people, attracting young people, we have a

3 general European problem. Europe is becoming

4 older, but this is not the aviation industry,

5 this is the society in general.

6 And it\'s becoming older much quicker

7 than the U.S. is becoming older. The average age

8 is increasing much more rapidly.

9 Now, I would really leave it to that.

10 For the moment, we do not have these immediate

11 pressing problem, neither in the regional

12 carriers.

13 I\'ve looked at statistics which said

14 that our local carriers have increased from 1,000

15 employees in \`97 to 19 \-- 18,000 in 2007. So

16 they have found the people, neither in the legacy

17 categories.

18 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Luisa, another

19 issue in Europe that effects our industry is the

20 manufacturing, source of people for

21 manufacturing. And we know that Airbus right now

22 is \-- has very rapidly had to increase its

23 workforce, now it\'s decreasing its workforce, but

24 it still has a huge order book.

25 And \-- so, we can see that Airbus is,

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1 you know, trying to regulate its workforce. Do

2 you think this will have an impact on how young

3 people in Europe look at the manufacturing part

4 of the industry this up and down?

5 And also, there are new countries in

6 the EU coming in from the east, are you seeing

7 differences in how these new countries are

8 bringing their assets in to the European labor

9 pool as compared to the older members of the EU?

10 MS. RAGHER: First of all on the up

11 and downs of the industry. This is a business

12 decision, it\'s not a regulatory decision. So if

13 Airbus decides to layoff and to hire and doesn\'t

14 give the stability, this is a decision of the

15 company.

16 Now, what regulators like us can do is

17 to make sure or to promote the stability of the

18 industry and to make \-- and to promote these

19 industries. And the way Europe has chosen to do

20 that is through normalization.

21 We want this industry to become more

22 competitive, we have liberalized, we would

23 continue to liberalize and in order to make this

24 industry more competitive and more effective for

25 young people.

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1 But the decision of an industry and a

2 specific company to hire or not hire is a

3 business decision, it depends from the others, it

4 depends from the people they are, the way they

5 are structured. So that is not something we

6 influence.

7 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Eustacio, how

8 about Latin America? Is your, you know, what\'s

9 your thoughts on how these things are effecting

10 your workforce?

11 MR. FABREGA: In the region, we

12 defiantly have some serious problems as far as a

13 shortage of pilots and I\'m talking in general

14 terms, not at the regional airline level or

15 specific airlines, just overall there is a

16 serious shortage of pilots.

17 With this resurgence or re-emergence

18 rather, of new airlines throughout the world we

19 are constantly finding people from new airlines

20 from India, from other countries that come and

21 stay in our hotels and they are hiring pilots in

22 our countries and they\'ve done that in our region

23 with known standards.

24 This is a question that has been asked

25 of me on several occasions, John, what are we as

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1 regulators doing about this? And look, the only

2 thing that I can say is that we accept that we

3 need to recognize our pilots who are flying in

4 other places.

5 We are responding as regulators, the

6 only thing that we have to be sure of is that the

7 person who is going to occupy that position,

8 replacing the pilot who left to fly in another

9 country, we need to make sure that that training

10 is the same, that the skill level is the same.

11 That\'s our responsibility. Perhaps

12 it\'s a problem of motivation. What makes a young

13 person, someone who is in high school today, what

14 makes that person aspire to be a pilot?

15 It\'s as of the only thing that we\'re

16 finding today are economic motivations, financial

17 motivations.

18 Now that we have seen that this issue

19 comes up in the press throughout the region where

20 they talk about the pilots from some airline in

21 the region are leaving to work in Asia or India,

22 et cetera because they are getting paid this

23 much.

24 That\'s a message that young people in

25 high school here, they see that and they say, oh

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1 look, that\'s a profession that I can aspire to, I

2 can try to earn a lot of money that way.

3 But there\'s something that concerns

4 us, we have seen how in aviation from its very

5 origins, aviation is always changing. We had the

6 bush pilot for example, bush pilots who never

7 transition to the new technology who remained

8 bush pilots.

9 We have those who were born to be bush

10 pilots and then they transitioned to the new

11 technology. We have those now who are born with

12 the new technology.

13 And now we have a new group of

14 professionals that we are seeing that do not have

15 aviation in their blood.

16 These are people who know that with

17 one or two years of training, they can apply for

18 a job in the cockpit of a plane, they can earn a

19 pretty decent income, a good income, they get to

20 know the world, and they have time after all of

21 that to find a new profession.

22 That is what is concerning us, that

23 this new generation of pilots that we\'re getting

24 today who seem to be purely motivated by economic

25 considerations, and we\'re talking by the way,

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1 exclusively about pilots, I don\'t want to go into

2 other jobs where you\'ve mentioned for example,

3 Airbus has their ups and downs in hiring.

4 Me, as a regulator, what am I going to

5 do to try to interfere about that. And also

6 young people are not going to want to work in

7 that industry where they could be fired after six

8 months.

9 So it looks as if there is no

10 motivation, we as regulators, we as industry,

11 need to look at \-- as for incentives. Perhaps,

12 the U.S. movie industry that for many years, they

13 used to have the hero of the movie was the pilot

14 who got the pretty girl at the end.

15 Perhaps, we should go back to doing

16 that, right? We should find some kind of

17 motivation so that people can start feeling it in

18 their blood.

19 (Laughter)

20 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: You know \--

21 PARTICIPANT: Well John, tell us about

22 that.

23 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Eustacio\'s

24 comments about the movies reminds me of that the

25 same issue relates to scientists and engineers

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1 here in the United States.

2 It used to be the scientists and the

3 engineers who were the heroes in the old space

4 horror movies and things, they are the ones who

5 saved us from the aliens who, I don\'t know if you

6 wall are science fiction fans, but, you know,

7 occasionally on late night TV, you\'ll see one of

8 these, like \"The Day the Earth Stood Still\".

9 It\'s always \-- it was the brilliant

10 guy that ran the lab that saves the world. You

11 look at the modern movies today and look at the

12 aerospace engineer in the movie \"Spiderman\", he\'s

13 the guy that\'s going to take the world and ruin

14 the whole thing.

15 And so, you\'re right Eustacio, there

16 is an issue about motivation. We found in the

17 manufacturing industry a few years ago, that we

18 ask our employees, would you recommend the

19 industry to your son and 70% of them said no,

20 they would not or to your daughter, son or

21 daughter.

22 And, the reason for that was the

23 instability. So there is a lot of work to do.

24 One of the things we\'re doing in the

25 manufacturing part of the industry is we have

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1 this rocket contest for kids where we \-- for

2 middle school kids to get them interested in the

3 industry.

4 And NASA is a partner, the Department

5 of Defense is a partner and Bobby, we\'d encourage

6 FAA if you want to join, help us get kids into

7 this industry through the rocket contest, we\'d

8 love to have you as a partner.

9 Well let me ask John and Jim a

10 question that relates to what Eustacio has been

11 brining up about the role of technology in this.

12 And that is that as Eustacio has said, in the

13 early days there was a lot of romance about being

14 a pilot or even being associated with the

15 industry and the skills that led to success were

16 basically stick and rudder skills.

17 And today, we have all this technology

18 to manage and it seems to me that probably we

19 have an issue of managing a broader range of

20 technology.

21 We were talking briefly out in the

22 coffee area there that this cuts both ways.

23 Sometimes pilots will be trained on the older

24 systems and then they have to learn how to deal

25 with all of this new technology.

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1 But sometimes, they are trained from

2 the get go on flying with all the new technology,

3 as Eustacio says, to pushing three buttons and

4 then they\'re moved to an older airplane where

5 they have to go back and learn the basic stick

6 and rudder skills again.

7 Is this an issue, I mean, are we

8 attracting a different kind of person, is my 11

9 year old who is basically a computer geek and

10 wants to just play with computers, is he more

11 likely to be a pilot now than my other son who\'s

12 the soccer player and, you know, might be the

13 traditional one that would turn out to be a naval

14 aviator?

15 MR. MAY: Depends on which one wants

16 to get the girl.

17 (Laughter)

18 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: That\'s the naval

19 aviator. No question about that.

20 (Laughter)

21 CAPTAIN PRATER: I was trying to think

22 about that. Let\'s see, money, girl, see the

23 world, sounds like a career I\'d like to sign up

24 for, but I\'ve never been mistaken for Dean

25 Martin, so we don\'t have to worry about that.

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1 (Laughter)

2 The issue that John has raised is

3 allowing us to see a different skill set. The

4 young men and women who are coming in with the

5 computer brains, the ones who are already wired,

6 go right to the technology and they can manage

7 the technology.

8 But flying never loses certain

9 abilities. You must have that ability to be a

10 good airline pilot. You can\'t just take somebody

11 who can push the right buttons and make an

12 airplane, whether it\'s an RV model or a UAV or an

13 airplane with people in the back of it.

14 Learn the experience and develop that

15 decision making required in the time when it\'s

16 needed. There\'s always a time in almost every

17 flight where the pilots have to make decisions.

18 Maybe it\'s at 10 feet above the ground

19 when you\'re landing and you hit white turbulence,

20 no computer in the world\'s going to handle it.

21 So what we\'re seeing is, may of the

22 pilots who have come the \-- I will say the next

23 generation, you can put them \-- take them out of

24 an RJ, you can put them into the 777 and they can

25 handle that transition without any problem.

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1 Now, what they didn\'t learn or have as

2 much experience as some of the older pilots is

3 how to do the stick and rudder. Yet, you can

4 have one without the other.

5 You will not have a well trained, good

6 pilot without combining both of those skills.

7 When Continental introduced the DC-10 some 30

8 years ago into service, we found that there were

9 pilots who could not transition from the old

10 technology to that modern DC-10.

11 Each step of the way, we\'ve seen that

12 some people can\'t do it. Likewise, we have seen

13 some people who can\'t do the stick and rudder.

14 That\'s what the training, the checking that we\'ll

15 never get away from.

16 I would say my primary concern is not

17 the fact that we have a lot of low time pilots

18 entering the aviation system, we were all 250

19 hour pilots at one time or another.

20 It\'s what training is that individual

21 need to become an airline pilot in the right seat

22 or even the left seat of that 50, 70, 90 seater.

23 We have to recognize that we\'re having lower

24 experienced pilots, we have to give them that

25 extra level of training at the airline itself.

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1 Maybe, not just 25 hours of initial

2 operating experience, maybe it tales 100 or 150

3 before you turn that individual loose to fly on

4 his or her own. Thanks John.

5 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Eustacio, do you

6 want to go ahead?

7 MR. FABREGA: I\'ll speak English,

8 don\'t worry. The next time you sit on a 777, I

9 would suggest you get this, get a magazine on

10 aviation, get a magazine on cars, you know, and

11 if the first officer is a young man, just put

12 them on top of the panel.

13 Now see, he\'s going to take the cars

14 magazine, he\'s not interested in aviation. You

15 know, this is something we do, we ask our pilots

16 to do just to check who\'s coming in to the

17 cockpit.

18 But, you know, I think the whole thing

19 is motivation. What is going to be the

20 instrument to multi-made people. I mean, we have

21 yesterday an astronaut here that everybody here

22 heard him say, when he was landing on the moon

23 there was a button that if you were to push that

24 button it would have been an automated landing.

25 But, there was no way that he was

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1 going to push that button. I mean, he was proud,

2 he was doing it. That\'s the kind of motivation

3 we need. I mean, we need people with aviation in

4 their blood.

5 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Any thoughts Jim

6 about \-- from your end about how we move in that

7 direction?

8 MR. MAY: John \--

9 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: You\'re doing the

10 rocket contest to teach them how to design

11 airplanes, what are you guys doing in that?

12 MR. MAY: I haven\'t gotten a single

13 rocket contest in my back pocket so don\'t worry

14 about it.

15 (Laughter)

16 MR. MAY: And I think the pilots here

17 have answered that question beautifully John.

18 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Luisa, any

19 comment from Europe on this?

20 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: I defer to the

21 pilots.

22 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Well, let me

23 shift gears then because John mentioned something

24 that I wanted to just put into the mix a little

25 bit here to see how people feel about it.

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1 One of the issues that we have here on

2 the manufacturing side of the industry, is a lot

3 of frustration with the FAA about the fact that

4 they believe that our air traffic control system

5 is moving too slowly on the assimilation of UAVs.

6 You mentioned UAVs John. And, if you

7 look at what the Department of Defense is doing

8 today with UAVs it\'s all kinds of things.

9 And they are gradually learning to use

10 UAVs in much the same way that they\'ve had to

11 gradually learn to use advanced communications in

12 space, you know, to \-- those are called forced

13 multipliers in the Department of Defense.

14 But, I\'m interested is \-- does the

15 future of UAV technology, does it run against the

16 grain of what Eustacio was talking about? I mean

17 is that going to lead us away from this aviation

18 in your blood to a more, you know, sort of

19 mechanical look at it.

20 And also, are we assimilating this new

21 technology into our air transportation system

22 soon enough and is it a safety issue and I\'ll

23 start with you, John.

24 CAPTAIN PRATER: Well there certainly

25 are some safety issues, but let me take it from

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1 the pilot viewpoint that UAV is still being

2 controlled by a pilot but he may be 2,000, 3,000

3 miles away in sitting on the ground flying the

4 computer.

5 Certainly, there is a role for UAVs

6 whether it\'s in the military over airspace that

7 we control completely and we don\'t have

8 commercial airspace through it.

9 There\'s also a huge safety concern

10 about mixing UAVs even at the higher altitudes

11 above commercial traffic, what happens with the

12 engine fails, it\'s coming down through that

13 controlled traffic.

14 So there are quite a few concerns, but

15 I think the FAA is taking it slow enough and

16 thorough enough ensure that that safety does not

17 mix.

18 Right now, I believe there\'s a \--

19 several of them based out in the Guam airspace.

20 Well you happen to have enough room out there in

21 the Pacific to do a lot of things with them.

22 You start putting them over the Texas,

23 Arizona, Mexico boarder, and you start to impact

24 in to the commercial airspace.

25 We\'ve just seen the effect of

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1 releasing some of that military airspace for

2 commercial traffic. So to have to block off

3 airspace for UAV control, I think will provide

4 more of a problem for the commercial flying

5 public.

6 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Jim, do you have

7 any thoughts on this?

8 MR. MAY: John, only in a macro sense

9 that I think the FAA is doing a good job of

10 working on integrating increasing use of UAVs in

11 the airspace in the NAS.

12 We see them used for, as John has

13 pointed out, boarder patrol, we see them used for

14 spotting forest fires, we see them used for

15 security purposes and there are an increasing

16 number.

17 It goes back to the original point I

18 made, which is, are we going have a system that

19 accommodates growth or constraints demand.

20 And one of the challenges that we

21 share with FAA and others is the crying need to

22 accomplish on a very fast track schedule, a next

23 generation air traffic control system that will

24 not only accommodate the extraordinary growth in

25 commercial, but in private, in UAV and other

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1 vehicles that are in the system.

2 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Yes, we all \--

3 that is the uniting factor. Any thoughts from

4 Europe or Latin America about UAVs coming in to

5 the system?

6 MR. FABREGA: Well, I was going to

7 have the visit yesterday in Panama by the people

8 from the U.S. Air Force, they wanted to show one

9 of these \-- what it\'s going to do, but I was

10 here.

11 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Well the military

12 are beginning to use them for a variety of

13 reasons, you know, obviously if you send an

14 unmanned or uncrewed vehicle out into a very

15 dangerous area, you get away from the worry of

16 losing a crew and having a hostage and that sort

17 of thing.

18 So they\'re huge advantages to the

19 military, but they\'re also \-- you need fewer and

20 fewer people because you don\'t have the, you

21 know, the long training cycles and so on. So I

22 think it\'s going to be an issue that\'s going to

23 be with us for awhile.

24 Let me shift gears again and this

25 question is kind of for the whole panel. Again,

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1 if you look at the way technology is being

2 transitioned into the military today, one of the

3 very prominent themes that you see is connecting

4 the design process to the \-- what they call in

5 the military, the war fighters.

6 In other words, don\'t design a machine

7 that looks great, it\'s a \-- it can do marvelous

8 technical things, but it \-- war fighters don\'t

9 know how to use it.

10 In the commercial world, how do you

11 all feel about the new generation of airplanes

12 that are coming out? Boeing is coming out with

13 the 787. Apparently the airlines really like it,

14 they\'re buying them like hot cakes.

15 The A-350 will be coming along three

16 or four years later. We\'re seeing a hole new

17 generation of very light jets and the new models

18 in the regional airline area.

19 Are these new airplanes designed the

20 way they should be from the operators point of

21 view? And I would ask this to all of you.

22 MR. MAY: John, I\'ll start with just

23 a couple of very brief comments. Number one, I

24 think the purchase orders on airplanes like 787,

25 the new 777s et cetera, are proof positive that

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1 the industry is very interested in these aircraft

2 number one.

3 Number two, when we\'ve got fuel

4 selling where it\'s selling today, the

5 efficiencies available with those new aircraft

6 are not only nice to have, but absolutely

7 essential.

8 Number three, there was a session here

9 a little bit earlier this morning where my

10 colleague John Meenan did a spectacular job and

11 it was on the environment. And to the extent

12 we\'ve got aircraft that are more environmentally

13 friendly and efficient, I think that\'s positive.

14 So all of those things suggest that

15 technology as it applies to the business is not

16 only necessary, but really in great demand. We

17 just have to have the dollars to be able to pay

18 for them.

19 CAPTAIN PRATER: And John, from the

20 pilot\'s view point, first of all ALPA

21 participates quite a bit with Boeing, not in the

22 design, but as much as what\'s it going to be like

23 for the pilot.

24 So we have a tremendous relationship

25 with both Boeing and Airbus. And many of our

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1 airline captains who are engineers or have a

2 specific discipline have worked with Boeing as

3 ALPA volunteers to ensure that as many of the

4 issues are addressed from the pilots perspective

5 before the airplane was ever signed off on.

6 So, I had some good fortunate to work

7 on the 787 with Boeing looking, certainly looking

8 forward to flying it. I can guarantee that the

9 pilots that we represent are looking forward to

10 the A-350, the A-380.

11 So the technology in that sense,

12 wonderful. We look forward to making it work

13 better.

14 MS. RAGHER: I can only support the

15 monumental message of Jim. We fully behind that.

16 If we can see amount of new planes, amount of

17 efficient planes in the market \--

18 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: So \--

19 MS. RAGHER: \-- that would be in like

20 with our philosophy.

21 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: So in a way what

22 we\'re saying is that maybe some of these new

23 airplanes will excite the younger generation. I

24 mean they\'re new enough and clearly all of the

25 young people that are coming up today are taught

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1 from the get go to be careful about the

2 environment.

3 So, if they are positive, maybe this

4 is a good trend for the industry. Eustacio?

5 MR. FABREGA: Well, I was just going

6 to comment about, you know, we keep hearing,

7 reading things about what the technology is going

8 to do in the future we are hopefully seeing that

9 in the next couple of years you\'re going to be

10 able to pay so many millions of dollars. There\'s

11 already people that would \-- two or three million

12 dollars \-- they go around the globe. I mean,

13 they go out of the earth.

14 I mean, technology is doing

15 everything. We have to be prepared to use

16 technology, we are regulators.

17 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Right. Okay, I

18 think it\'s time to turn to the audience for some

19 questions. So let\'s do that and I would

20 encourage any of you to \-- that have a question

21 about what to do about the workforce of the

22 future either on the operational side or the

23 manufacturing side.

24 It\'s hard to see up here. Okay,

25 here\'s one over here, yes.

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1 MR. MERHEIM: My name is Hahn Merheim

2 from Suriname, I have a question for Captain

3 John, also Luisa.

4 Looking at each standard of ICAO of

5 pilots 60, 65, I\'d like to hear your opinion how

6 you deal with it within the United States and

7 within Europe.

8 And looking also at technology and the

9 age standard, which ICAO proposed that concerning

10 the age of pilots 60, 65, is this maybe somebody

11 of FAA here can also help me if a decision is

12 already made.

13 And as far as I know, correct me

14 Luisa, that in Europe the age of pilots is now

15 65?

16 CAPTAIN PRATER: Thank you, I didn\'t

17 hear quite all of it because I spent too much

18 time in those World War II propeller airplanes so

19 I don\'t hear quite as well, but the federal air

20 surgeon isn\'t here.

21 I believe mostly the question had to

22 do with two pilots over age 65 in the

23 international environment.

24 First of all, our position as ALPA was

25 that domestically if the rule changes here in the

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1 United States that it was an unnecessary step

2 that two pilots over age 60 and under age 65 as

3 long as they had the required first class medical

4 was sufficient.

5 Now, we understand the ICAO rule and

6 support it, but believe that it should be looked

7 at if in fact the U.S. rule changes, so we get

8 some experience in that area.

9 So, you know, we\'re prepared

10 obviously. The airlines will have a little bit

11 of a scheduling difficulty getting used to it,

12 but no different than scheduling two relatively

13 new pilots together, scheduling one under 60 and

14 one over 65 will be a little bit of a scheduling

15 problem but not that much.

16 So again, if there was more to the

17 question, I\'ll \-- I\'d have to have it restated.

18 MR. MAY: I\'ll just add in. I think

19 it is likely that the Congress of the United

20 States before the year is out will add language

21 in to some omnibus reconciliation package that

22 permits two pilots up to the age of 65 on flights

23 domestically but adheres to the ICAO standard for

24 international flights.

25 And the ATA position is consistent

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1 with that of our good friend from ALPA that we\'d

2 like to see some modifications ultimately of that

3 ICAO standard so that we can have two pilots up

4 to age 65 in the cockpit at the same time

5 internationally as well.

6 It may be that both Canada and Mexico

7 are covered under the domestic approach, i.e.,

8 two in the same cockpit as a result of that

9 legislation early on.

10 MS. RAGHER: As for Europe this \-- the

11 recommendation of the Joint Aviation Authorities

12 has always been age 65 for the pilots.

13 At the moment, following the

14 recommendation not all countries have implemented

15 age 65 and now we have passed a regulation which

16 imposes age 65, which will be applicable summer

17 next year.

18 And my understanding is that there are

19 only two countries that are still transitioning

20 between 60 and 65 and that should happen by next

21 \-- summer next year.

22 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Other questions?

23 There\'s one back there.

24 PARTICIPANT: Okay. We have been

25 hearing about pilots, but maintenance technicians

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1 are as well as aviation professionals. Are you

2 experiencing already a shortage here in the U.S.

3 and Europe or do you expect to have a shortage

4 with the growth that is coming?

5 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: I\'ll let you

6 start with that Jim maybe? Maintenance

7 personnel. The question is, is there a similar

8 shortage of maintenance personnel?

9 MR. MAY: I \-- we commented about that

10 a little bit earlier. Broadly speaking, the

11 category of technicians whether they\'re pure

12 mechanics or have other roles to play.

13 There\'s a huge demand we\'re having,

14 I\'m told, a difficult time filing that demand and

15 so I guess the answer is we\'d like to see more

16 qualified personnel become available.

17 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Anybody else want

18 to comment? I can comment from the point of view

19 of manufacturing. We are finding in

20 manufacturing that more and more companies are

21 changing their human capital rules to allow

22 people at more advanced ages to work.

23 And as a matter of fact, in some of

24 the small companies that you go in, it\'s now

25 quite common to see machine operators who are in

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1 their 70\'s.

2 And that\'s a function of the fact that

3 people are living longer today, they\'re more

4 vigorous in their older years than they were in

5 previous generations and that it is difficult to

6 find younger people who are coming in and being

7 trained on some of these very complex, what used

8 to be called blue collar jobs, which I think Jim

9 probably now the more term would be called, you

10 know, technician jobs.

11 So, as far as the manufacturing part

12 of the industry, we are seeing the, what you

13 might call the ground people working much longer

14 than they used to?

15 Question way back there in the back?

16 PARTICIPANT: Coming back to the pilot

17 shortage. There\'s currently in the developing

18 world in Africa increasing in Latin America, a

19 lot of problem \-- safety related problem.

20 And if you look at the last couple of

21 accidents, you realize that pilots are extremely

22 young, co-pilots with very few hours and the

23 captains often have been accelerated into a

24 position where they are also not really ready for

25 the job.

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1 The reason is that all the good and

2 experienced pilots are currently siphoned away to

3 the Emirates, to India, et cetera because of

4 salary because of double salary in their

5 countries.

6 Now, the airlines in these countries

7 and Africa et cetera, if you look at the cost

8 take offs, they are not much cheaper sometimes

9 even more expensive for the distance.

10 But, the reality is that if that

11 continues, we will start to see more and more

12 accidents with brand new airplanes because of

13 this human capital that\'s siphoned away.

14 And I wonder how can that be addressed

15 accordingly because if not, the consequences are

16 there and we can\'t prescribe salaries, but if the

17 safety oversight let\'s that go, that pilots are

18 not qualified and young, not trained enough in

19 the cockpit, then there is no solution.

20 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Let me pick up on

21 the question and hopefully the questioner won\'t

22 mind if I modify it a little bit.

23 I think there\'s an issue here about do

24 we have a global input output model. In other

25 words, we can all, you can go and talk to the FAA

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1 if you want to and look at where they think air

2 traffic is going in the United States.

3 Clearly, Boeing and Airbus have their

4 models of where it\'s going and so on. So we kind

5 of have an idea of what the demand curve is going

6 to be for pilots, at least here in the United

7 States.

8 I don\'t know if there is a global

9 demand curve, maybe some of you do know. But is

10 there an output model? Do we know where all

11 these people are going to come from?

12 Here in the United States we clearly

13 do not have an input output model for the

14 scientists and engineers that are going to be

15 needed in the future to design the future

16 systems.

17 But as far as pilots, you might want

18 to comment on this question, plus the idea of an

19 input output model from a global perspective.

20 Do you want to start Eustacio?

21 MR. FABREGA: Yes. I think, well I

22 think the information we have, I mean there is

23 how many aircraft manufacturers in the world.

24 You have Boeing, you have Airbus, you have

25 Bombardiers and you have Embraer.

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1 I mean, you know how many \-- they know

2 how many aircraft are coming into the system on a

3 yearly basis so that we should be \-- I mean,

4 there is the information on how many pilots we\'re

5 going to need.

6 I mean, it is the responsibility of us

7 regulators, you know, what his comment on the co-

8 pilot being a young guy with the less hours than

9 it used to be.

10 I mean, it is our responsibility \-- a

11 guy sitting, a first officer, has the experience

12 and he is \-- has the abilities and he complies

13 with all of our international standards on being

14 there.

15 And it\'s our responsibility to, you

16 know, enforce that thing. We have, in some cases

17 in Latin America Airlines, which are counseling

18 operations because the crew was not available.

19 They had no crews. Some of the

20 airlines are having aircraft sitting on the

21 ground because the pilots are gone to work

22 somewhere else. You know, there is really a

23 problem of shortage of pilots.

24 But it is under our responsibility

25 that the people that sit on the cockpit are

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1 qualified.

2 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: John, do you

3 think it\'s a \-- can it be said by the regulatory

4 authorities or is there an economic model working

5 here?

6 You know, I frankly always been

7 shocked when you throw out those statistics, I

8 think I heard you say 17,000 to \$23,000 a year

9 for people in the regional business, young

10 pilots?

11 I mean, you know, you can make more

12 money than that working at McDonalds. And that

13 to me seems pretty out of whack. And so it seems

14 to me that maybe our economic model is not in

15 synch with the regulatory model.

16 CAPTAIN PRATER: That will certainly

17 address some of the issues, but I think globally,

18 we get together once a year with the

19 approximately 100 airline pilot associations from

20 around the world in the International Federation.

21 And we do compare the concerns about

22 everything from regulation to where the pilot\'s

23 coming from. Globally, there\'s obviously a

24 couple of different ways to train pilots whether

25 it be the military systems, whether it be the

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1 civilian systems.

2 But I would say the U.S. and North

3 America probably lead the world in creating

4 pilots through the education, the general

5 aviation world.

6 How can we find and create enough

7 pilots to sustain this worldwide economic

8 development? I think that\'s what we\'re here to

9 discuss.

10 We can motivate pilots with money,

11 can\'t \-- we can\'t motivate them with girls any

12 longer, that\'s taboo.

13 (Laughter)

14 CAPTAIN PRATER: You\'ve taken that

15 away from us, we understand that. The fact is

16 there are plenty of people that want to become

17 pilots if they have that desire, do they have the

18 ability and do they have the means.

19 It\'s an expensive \-- it\'s expensive to

20 train pilots, but it\'s more expensive not to have

21 a well trained experienced pilot in the cockpit.

22 We\'re seeing, if you will, the flow of pilots

23 looks like the flow of capital, it\'s going to

24 where you can make the most.

25 I mean, in this country there\'s \--

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1 they\'re interviewing for jobs in the Middle East

2 right now looking for 777 captains. There\'s only

3 a couple places you can find 777 captains and

4 they\'re over here looking saying, we\'ll pay

5 better.

6 So, hopefully we can address that in

7 the near term and stabilize that. The age 65

8 change, if it does happen this year or next year,

9 it will tend to slow it down.

10 But I can tell you that a lot of

11 pilots do not want to fly to 65, not under the

12 current working environment. A couple of them

13 have said they\'ll go a little longer, maybe 50%

14 will go to 62, but that\'s not going to be the

15 solution to the long term need for pilots.

16 Thanks John.

17 MR. STURGELL: John, why don\'t you

18 take one more question from the audience?

19 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: One more

20 question, our boss is coming up here to take

21 charge. Is there one back over here?

22 MR. MICHAELIS: Is it on? Yes, sir,

23 I\'m Mike Michaelis, I\'m the Chairman of the

24 National Safety Committee for the Allied Pilots

25 Association, the union representing pilots of

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1 American Airlines.

2 Hopefully I won\'t make too much of a

3 soapbox on this. I\'m generally in agreement with

4 Ernesto\'s motivational techniques. I have no

5 argument against that. I am in agreement with

6 Captain Prater, that\'s kind of been taken out of

7 the loop now.

8 One of the things that we see now with

9 the increase or attempt to increase the amount of

10 pilots available as the pilot shortage has not

11 loomed on the horizon is to lower the means.

12 We used to say in the air force, if

13 the men wanted the men, it wouldn\'t be the men.

14 But now we are seeing pilots being hired on at

15 the 250, 300 hour level into our regionals into

16 any place they can get them so that they can

17 provide the pilots.

18 We want to have 865 because we\'ve got

19 a pilot shortage. What\'s the easiest way to do

20 that? Well, increase the amount of pilots that

21 you got available that cannot retire or have to

22 retire at a later age.

23 We have a requirement for the FAA

24 controllers to retire less than 60 because of the

25 work stress that they encounter. If they\'re on

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1 the ground when we\'re flying in the weather and

2 seeing all the things going on up there.

3 One of the things that we have to do

4 when we\'re looking for a new process to motivate

5 these people and I agree that rocket academies

6 are a great thing, my 10 year old and six year

7 old actually fly now, they\'re motivated to fly,

8 they love flying, it\'s a passion.

9 But the passion has to carry on beyond

10 that. When I got out of the air force and got on

11 with the airlines, I took a 70% cut in pay.

12 I served active duty for six months at

13 the beginning of this year. When I went back to

14 the air force, active duty, I made more than

15 after being a 767 international first officer

16 with American Airlines.

17 There\'s something wrong with that.

18 The reason is, now it\'s not wrong, I\'m glad that

19 the military is getting the pay, but the

20 economics of it is that you want a Wal-Mart

21 society, a Wal-Mart travel experience, but you\'re

22 not willing to pay for the experience and the

23 safety level of that provides.

24 I have yet to see the airplane that I

25 can push three buttons to take off, land, deal

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1 with all the decisions. I flew the F-4 in the

2 air force and the F-16. We were always, pilots

3 are always systems operators.

4 The technology has increased the

5 workload on a pilot. When we go to the level and

6 start looking at generating new pilots, we have

7 to keep that in mind when we\'re looking for the

8 same level of safety.

9 Hence, the means have to come up. The

10 requirements for training have to come up. So

11 any solution that is involved requires a serious

12 look by the regulators at the minimums and the

13 qualifications and the training programs that are

14 provided to the airlines and provided by the

15 airlines to the pilots to ensure our traveling

16 public whether they be on that side of the isle

17 taking a 70 to 90 seater or coming with me on a

18 777.

19 They need to have the same level of

20 safety and I\'m in total agreement with Captain

21 Prater\'s comments. Thank you very much.

22 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Anybody want to

23 comment before we turn it back to Bobby?

24 CAPTAIN PRATER: Yes, I think I would

25 for just a moment. Certainly in agreement with

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1 much of what the captain said and I think that\'s

2 what we\'re trying to do.

3 I\'d like to take it one step further.

4 I\'d like to say that the airline that sells you a

5 ticket should be responsible for ensuring that if

6 they provide a different provider.

7 If I buy a ticket on American or Delta

8 or Continental or Northwest, and I never see a

9 Delta or Northwest or American flight because

10 they have sold that service to someone else, I

11 believe it\'s not just the duty of our regulators

12 to ensure that safety, I believe it\'s duty of the

13 operator.

14 The individual airlines selling the

15 ticket to the public should guarantee that, that

16 same level of safety and experience and quality

17 comes with the 70 seater, the 90 seater or the

18 300 seat 777. Thanks John.

19 MODERATOR DOUGLASS: Okay. Thank you

20 all.

21 MR. STURGELL: Well it\'s defiantly a

22 provocative and at times emotionally charged

23 issued for this panel. But I\'d like to thank

24 John and the panelists for a very engaging

25 discussion, thanks.

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1 Before I close, I just want to take a

2 few moments here number one to acknowledge Nick

3 Sabatini and his team, Virginia Krone, Nancy

4 Angelo and the Safety Forum Committee for once

5 again putting together a great, great safety

6 forum for everybody. So thanks very much

7 Mr. Sabatini.

8 And these kinds of events, again are

9 not possible without the support of our sponsors.

10 Our co-sponsor Jim, you and the Air Transport

11 Association as I said from the beginning with us

12 four years in a row now.

13 So I appreciate that, the

14 international sponsor IATA, as well as our

15 donors, the Boeing Company, Airbus North America,

16 General Electric Aviation, the National Business

17 Aviation Association, American Airlines, Booz

18 Allen Hamilton, FedEx, Honeywell, Southwest

19 Airlines, TIMCO Aviation Services, UPS Airlines,

20 JetBlue, SAE International, SAIC, TDG Aerospace

21 and Zuckert Scout & Rasenberger. Thank you all

22 very, very much. Appreciate it.

23 Well, I\'m sure that everybody\'s aware

24 that earlier today there was a fatal accident of

25 a Turkish airline and certainly our thoughts and

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1 prayers go out to that country and to the

2 families that have been impacted.

3 But that\'s a reminder of why we are

4 here today and just how important our safety work

5 is. We must move people safely, it does not get

6 anymore important than that.

7 Yesterday morning, I opened the

8 conference and spoke about the hundreds of

9 attendees from around the world. Those were just

10 words, now I have faces and issues and concerns

11 to go with those words.

12 And I would like to acknowledge a

13 couple of new faces this year and welcome them

14 into and back to the aviation community globally.

15 Mr. Peter Griffiths from the United

16 Kingdom and Senor Alamando from Brazil. You know

17 the issues and concerns seem to get tougher and

18 tougher each year like those of Brian Desouza and

19 Vivian Hanenberg from Suriname a country with the

20 flag carrier with two airplanes.

21 But, you know, how do you perform

22 trend analysis and detect precursors from a

23 carrier with 20 pilots.

24 Well, Mr. Liu from China Civil General

25 Aviation Administration of Civil Aviation.

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1 Aviation\'s growth in China is phenomenal, yet as

2 Director General Bisignani pointed out, last year

3 the number of accidents in China, zero.

4 The Middle East also faces growth

5 challenges. And I was glad to have had an

6 opportunity to briefly discuss those with his

7 Excellency Rehami from Saudi Arabia.

8 And with respect to safety, the Deputy

9 Secretary, Admiral Barrett, framed our discussion

10 aptly when he said that we in transportation have

11 a history of looking into the rear view mirror.

12 The forensics approach has certainly

13 served us well over the years. And again, you

14 can just point to the remarkable safety record.

15 Yet we all agree that we need a preventive, a

16 prognostic approach.

17 You can say that what aviation needs

18 in addition to that rear view mirror is a crystal

19 ball. As we progress through the plenary

20 sessions and panel discussions, you know, that

21 crystal ball did not seem to be such a stretched

22 goal after all.

23 We do have the components, we have the

24 talent and we have the will. That is what we

25 really need and SMS will help us achieve a safer

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1 future.

2 What\'s less easy is this, as Nick

3 said, there\'s no off the shelf SMS in a box. And

4 we heard from Merlin Preuss up to our north who

5 told us that implementing SMS takes time and its

6 been a long path for regulatory authorities.

7 Billy Yantiss agreed at United they

8 call it a journey and it\'s a journey that doesn\'t

9 end. And in yesterday\'s afternoon panels,

10 experts from around the world addressed some

11 specifics that lie ahead.

12 At the panel on risk management we

13 heard about the challenges of getting

14 information, analyzing information, sharing

15 information. But most critical, making sure we

16 get the right information.

17 The panel on data sharing and metrics

18 addressed what Jay Pardee called the frontier of

19 safety. How do we sort through the data, and

20 there is a lot of it and make sure we do get to

21 that right information.

22 Ken Hylander from Northwest Airlines

23 said it certainly is hard work and we need robust

24 systems. And as Giovani said, those systems have

25 to have rigor, especially in training and

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1 auditing and we do need transparency, which we

2 heard a lot about over the last couple of days.

3 And Dr. Demuren from Nigeria made a

4 pretty compelling case for sharing data and

5 lessons learned globally. And you have to be

6 ready to use data that you didn\'t think you need.

7 In the midst of this discussion about

8 sharing data, this panel pointed out that many

9 are not doing enough with their own data, you

10 know, safety does begin at home.

11 In another panel, Nancy Graham led a

12 diverse one that went from Oakland to Queens to

13 Trinidad and Tobago, Ethiopia and Singapore to a

14 one, this diverse group is all committed to

15 safety management systems, but they have

16 different starting points, but their destination,

17 the journey is the same.

18 And there was great interaction on

19 that panel on whether and how to measure your

20 safety culture. This morning\'s panel pressing

21 environmental issues at the global and local

22 level with Bob Shuter and Director General Gohain

23 pointing out that global impact of things done

24 locally, like night curfews.

25 Australia\'s Rob Porteous put it well

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1 when he said the role of government is to balance

2 the needs of the many against the few. And ICAO

3 will defiantly plan an important role globally

4 and the U.S. is committed to helping lead and

5 find a solution.

6 Balance is the word when talking about

7 environmental responsibility. ATA\'s John Meenan

8 captured the challenge of balancing local, nation

9 and global demands and Renee Martin-Nagle

10 emphasizing the role of local zoning and land

11 use.

12 These are very real issues with

13 emissions, noise and air quality, but just as

14 challenging as Billy Glover noted, are the

15 perceptual issues that go along with the

16 environment.

17 And again here, the last session, as

18 the gentleman who asked the question at the

19 environmental said \-- at the environmental panel

20 said, these are safety issues. The human capital

21 issues are huge and they are safety issues.

22 Recruiting and retaining not just

23 pilots, but controllers, technicians, engineers,

24 maintaining quality training and standards,

25 especially as the industry becomes global.

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1 And as \"Chachi\" Fabrega said, finding

2 people with aviation in their blood. Listen, no

3 one said it would be easy. Aviation is a

4 powerful economic engine, 32 million jobs and

5 \$3.5 billion in annual economic activity.

6 To sustain that, to enable growth, to

7 as Jim May emphasized, start with the premise of

8 building a system that accommodates growth, our

9 assignment is clear, we must maintain and improve

10 our safety record.

11 You know Gene Cernan was right, we can

12 do it if we want to do it badly enough. We have

13 to have the passion. The passion that is

14 characteristic of those who started this industry

15 and those who continue to dedicate their lives to

16 it today and we do.

17 SMS is the right thing to do and if

18 there\'s anything we\'ve learned this week, we need

19 to do it together. Thanks very much for being

20 here. We\'ve got a lunch buffet and please don\'t

21 forget our exhibitors downstairs. Thanks again.

22 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter

23 was concluded at 11:51 a.m.)

24

25

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