UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

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FEDERAL AVIATION AUTHORITY

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1ST ANNUAL FAA INTERNATIONAL AVIATION

SAFETY FORUM

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PANEL C

JEFFERSONIAN SALONS II, IV & VI

WE HAVE AN OUTSTANDING SAFETY RECORD:

ARE WE JUST \"RESTING ON OUR LAURELS?\"

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THURSDAY

SEPTEMBER 23, 2004

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CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA

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The session was held at the Westfields

Marriott Conference Center, 14750 Conference Center

Drive, Chantilly, Virginia at 1:30 p.m.

MODERATOR:

SUSAN COUGHLIN

President, Aviation Safety Alliance

PANEL MEMBERS:

ELLEN ENGLEMAN CONNORS

Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board

NICHOLAS A. SABATINI

Associate Administrator for Regulation and Certification, Federal
Aviation Administration

JOHN LAUBER

Vice President, Safety and Technical Affairs, Airbus North America
Holdings, Inc.

RON SWANDA

Interim President, General Aviation Manufacturers Association

KERRY SKEEN

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Independence Air

GILBERTO LOPEZ MEYER

Director General of Civil Aviation, Mexico

[I N D E X]{.underline}

Introductions and Opening Remarks, Susan

Coughlin, Moderator 4

Comments of Panelists:

Kerry Skeen 10

Nicholas Sabatini 15

Ellen Engleman Connors 21

Ron Swanda 29

John Lauber 33

Gilberto Lopez Meyer 38

[P R O C E E D I N G S]{.underline}

1:52 P.M.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Our panel looks as though it\'s in place, all mic\'d
up and ready to go so, without further ado good afternoon and thank you
very much for joining what we hope will be a worthwhile and
thought-provoking session.

There has been a lot of talk this morning that crept up to the issue
that we\'re going to be talking about today and I found that fascinating
to see the breadth of perspectives that were out there and I know that
our panelists today will add meat to that frame.

I\'m Susan Coughlin, President of the Aviation Safety Alliance and
joining me, I know that all of you know these panelists, but some may
not: Gilbert, Captain Gilberto Lopez Meyer, the Director General of
Civil Aviation in Mexico; Nick Sabatini, AVR \[Regulation and
Certification\], FAA; John Lauber, V.P. \[Vice President\] Technical and
Safety at Airbus; the Honorable Ellen Engleman Connors, NTSB \[National
Transportation Safety Board\] Chair; Ron Swanda, Acting President of
General Aviation Manufacturers; and Kerry Skeen, the Chairman of
Independence Air.

We have been asked to consider the following questions. We have an
outstanding safety record, we are just resting on our laurels and why
should we do anything more than maintain our current performance and
maintain the status quo? And should we feel pressured to constantly
improve our safety record?

At first glance, these questions might be viewed as self-evident and the
answers as self-serving. But in reality each of the questions and
responses are really quick complex.

I hosted a breakfast last week for Ken Meade, Inspector General of the
Department of Transportation and in his opening remarks, Ken offered his
opinion that the remarkable safety record of U.S. carriers today was
worthy of a serious study. How has the United States airline industry
achieved its unprecedented safety record during the very time frame that
it has faced debilitating financial losses, ever-increasing competitive
pressures, and mounting security requirements that divert attention from
other operational safety initiatives? The U.S. fatal accident rate is,
in fact, nothing short of remarkable.

There are, I believe, multiple explanations for the impressive safety
statistics that we enjoy today, not the least of which is the strong
partnerships between the regulatory bodies, the carriers, the
manufacturers through organizations and bodies such as CAST which have
attempted to focus safety improvements in areas showing the greatest
potential for improvement and payoff, if you will, and this type of
strategy really has resulted in better, more focused, constructive
working environments between the regulators and the operators.

In general, carriers have upgraded their fleets and they\'re flying
newer, highly sophisticated aircraft. In the U.S., we have not yet
reached the congestion levels of prior years, so exposure is not as
great. The FAA and industry have developed more sophisticated oversight
mechanisms. Flight crews and air traffic control work forces are senior
and seasoned. But I think there are also some indicators in the industry
that bear watching in the future.

Virtually, every segment of the industry faces an on-going economic
situation that shows no appearance of relenting, particularly among the
legacy carriers. Industry-wide cumulative losses in 2001, 2002, and 2003
were \$23.2 billion and are expected to exceed \$6 billion this year.
Trust fund revenues are expected to continue to drop as a greater number
of regional jets inter-service flying shorter segment lengths and
carrying fewer passengers with the same operational demands on the air
traffic system. Fuel prices remain at all-time high levels, diverting
resources from other areas, including safety.

Delays at major airports are beginning to rise, although they were still
below summer of 2000 levels. Traffic levels are up, thus exposure has
increased. The FAA estimates that total enplanements are expected to
exceed one billion in 2014.

Some question whether FAA oversight of maintenance, manufacturing and
operations is keeping pace with the rate of change in industry and among
industry practices that are becoming more and more sophisticated,
particularly in its ability to oversee remote repair and third party
manufacturing sites.

There are implications for security vulnerability at foreign and
domestic repair stations. Daily aircraft utilizations are rising as
operations attempt to maximize aircraft use which has implications not
only for the equipment, but the crews who fly them and maintain them.

Seven thousand controllers are expected to retire in the next 10 years.
Does FAA have the necessary budget, training and labor distribution
systems in place to manage the need for new controllers?

Air traffic operational errors now exceed 1,000 per year. Runway
incursions, although rare, remain on the NTSB\'s most wanted list for
their potentially catastrophic outcome.

New air traffic systems are slow to come on line or are not affordable
at all. Yet, IFR \[Instrument Flight Rules\] aircraft handled en route
centers alone is expected to grow at an average rate of 2.9 percent
every year for the next decade.

General aviation fleets are expected to grow 1.3 percent for each year
for the next decade, while improvement, in general aviation accident
rates remains flat since 1999 and in 2004, there may be even an upturn
in accidents.

International safety progress has been uneven around the world with
Africa, the Middle East and Latin America leading the whole loss airline
domicile aircraft accident category.

Pilot retirements and layoffs could erode overall experience levels
leaving a relatively junior workforce in the cockpit and in the air
traffic control tower.

So I\'d like to turn to the panelists and with that as a background ask
the panelists to respond to some of the areas that have contributed to
our success and to areas where our outstanding safety record might be
vulnerable and why and how those areas may aid or hinder improvement in
the future.

As we drill down into some of the areas that may have helped us get to
where we are, and areas where you might be more vulnerable, what we\'ll
be looking for is where can we get the incremental change that\'s going
to keep us going in the right direction.

And since Kerry Skeen is sitting closest to me, I\'ll pick on Kerry
first.

Kerry, you\'re a seasoned airline professional, but you\'re essentially
running a start-up operation. There is enormous pressure to perform for
your shareholders. There is daunting pressure from your competitors. The
financial challenges impacting the entire industry also impact you. And
you've got exponential growth to manage in your organization, new
aircraft, new pilots, new ground crews, new facilities, new cabin crews,
new reservation and marketing challenges.

And I guess my question is in view of the safety culture that we all
enjoy right now, how do you brand your safety culture at the same time
that you\'re branding your aircraft?

PANELIST SKEEN: Okay, thank you. I will agree with you there\'s a lot of
pressures out there. I\'m not real sure I\'m seasoned. I have gray hair
though that the industry has given me.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: That\'s what I was talking about.

PANELIST SKEEN: Okay, that\'s what you were talking about. But you know,
we are a unique company. A lot has been written about us being a new
company, but as a lot of you, I\'m sure, in this room know that we\'ve
been around for going on 15 years, coming up on 15 years, running under
a different brand. So we\'re not a typical start-up to where you\'re
developing your infrastructure, all your tools, designing your training
programs, those type things. We\'ve been doing this and I think quite
well over our 15-year history and we\'ve evolved and we\'re doing things
better today than we did it 5 years ago or even 3 years ago. And we\'ll
continue to evolve.

We have \-- when we established the Independence brand, we spent a lot
of time on this externally with customers and advertising agencies and
everything else to determine what your brand was going to be. But we
didn\'t stop there. When we established, okay, this is our brand
promise, this is what we want to resonate with our customers. Then we
went back and made sure that our employees could live the brand and
deliver that brand promise because it\'s very easy to \-- the easy part
actually is saying we\'re going to do this. The hard part is having to
buy into the culture to where your employees actually understand what
the value proposition is and this is maybe getting off track a little
bit.

So we spent a lot of time with our employees in a lot of different
venues in really determining what our values were and how that tied into
the brand we wanted the public to see and over quite a long process
those two merged. And we spent a lot of time with employees on the
values. And the values haven\'t changed in terms of the core value and
that is a safety culture.

I could argue that we actually have a stronger safety culture today than
we did before Independence because we have spent so much time in front
of our employees and again in different venues and basically explaining
the brand and every element of the brand embedding the values and safety
is such an important value there.

And then we re-engineered things. And we re-engineer always \-- we\'re
looking for safety. We\'re looking for improvements in efficiencies and
for the customer and just a few examples that we\'ve done, we\'ve
re-engineered our boarding process at Dulles Airport. We do not have
check-in podiums. You\'ve got to have a boarding pass before you get
through, I mean before you can come through security, so why have a
podium there that people feel compelled to queue up in front of, when
there\'s no reason to queue up because we don\'t overbook, so we don\'t
have standbys at the last minute, those type things.

So if you\'re in our facility, you\'ll notice one big difference. You
may be lost because you don\'t have a podium to stand in front of to
wait for some unknown reason. But we re-engineered every process, but
when you get out to the ramp and as a lot of you know and Nick
definitely knows in terms of boarding from the ramp level, not through
jet bridges, does offer some challenges in terms of safety and how you
get people to and from the airplane. So we looked at how we\'ve been
doing business as Atlantic Coast Airlines and what we could do to make a
better experience for the customer, safer for our employees and safer
for our passengers. And we actually \-- and to fit to our business
model, instead of having ground equipment that was responsible for two
or three parking positions and that\'s the way we used to do things. We
have 36 parking positions at Dulles. We went out and invested in ground
equipment to have it each single parking position to where you\'re not
moving all your equipment from one spot to the other. They stay in the
same location which reduces traffic.

We also are in the process, we\'ve got about half of them up now,
putting covered walkways off of our fingers, actually to the aircraft
and obviously that\'s a big passenger convenience. You keep them out of
the weather, but it\'s a huge safety improvement as well because again
if you haven\'t run an operation to where you\'re boarding people from a
ramp level, not through jet bridges, people can stray out there and
it\'s a constant challenge for our employees, constant challenge in
terms of our training. The whole safety culture is do not let people
stray. And so that is something that again, part of the re-engineering
of Independence.

So I would answer and not being offensive, I think we have a good track
record in terms of our safety culture, but you\'re never there and
you\'ve got to continue to look for ways to improve it. Us launching
kind of a new brand, a new face, I think really gave us an opportunity
to really look at things we were doing and saw ways to improve it and
those improvements embed safety improvements that are inherent with
that.

We\'ve had the typical things that a mature company would have in terms
of robust automation, back-office office system. We just spent millions
of dollars over the last few years on a new maintenance software system.
And so we have things really that most startups would be years away from
having the level of sophistication that we have because we\'ve been
around this long.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Let me take that posture of being a quasi-new start
or new entrant and turn a question to you, Nick. There was a time when
the FAA was primarily concerned with surveilling new starts and then
there was a time when the FAA was primarily engaged or had a major focus
on low fare carriers.

But now the tables have turned a bit and you\'re not only having to
surveil new starts and low fare carriers, but you\'ve got legacy
carriers in distress and this obviously creates workload issues. And
many of us that watch the FAA and have followed the events of the FAA
are aware of the agency\'s on-going budget issues that your own
organization\'s certification and regulation now has oversight for air
traffic safety as well, as well as certifying safety and inspecting
operations and maintenance at virtually every carrier and supplier. And
the workforce issues and budget issues seem never ending.

And I guess I would ask you is, is the FAA able to keep pace with the
number of new entrants, the number of legacy carriers in distress and
the ever-increasing number of remote locations that you\'re required to
travel to in terms of surveilling very highly sophisticated maintenance
and manufacturing practices in the industry. What have you done to keep
pace with industry and how are you doing that in the face of the
budgetary constraints, I can only call them?

PANELIST SABATINI: Well, that\'s a really good question, Susan.
Actually, I believe that the FAA has been very effective in responding
to that challenge, as you\'ve described it. In fact, I know we\'ve been
very effective. But I think to really answer that question, allow me to
put it in a perspective, a context.

In 1998, we introduced the Air Transportation Oversight System \[ATOS\]
which is basically the application of system safety concepts, quality
management systems. As a certification of an air carrier and
surveillance or oversight of an air carrier, for example.

Prior to that time, we were an organization which, in essence, were
conducting inspections and in broad terms looking at an air carrier
system and I\'ll use the air carrier world for the moment, as an
example, inspecting safety into the system.

We recognized that with the challenges as you\'ve described, and the
demand for a continuous improvement in the accident rate and reduction
in that accident rate, we had to think differently and that thinking
differently brought us to the system safety concept.

Prior to 1998, we conducted roughly 400,000 different surveillance
activities across the board. If we had said we\'re going to squeeze more
out of the safety equation by saying well this year we\'ll just do
800,000 safety inspections, I think the answer is self-evident. We would
not have increased the level of safety by that same amount.

So how to approach the world differently? So we started from the
beginning. An air carrier coming into the system today would have to go
through a rigorous process which is different than it was in the past.
In the past, you could have gone to any one of our field offices and
applied for air carrier certification. Today, you can\'t do that. You
can go to the office, but there is a single methodology, in essence, a
national certification team which uses systems safety principles that
have to be embedded and designed into the structure of the air carrier,
in addition to which we use that model as an oversight model. But we
were faced with a challenge. Here we had legacy carriers who evolved
over the course of many years and we may have had system safety, but it
was scattered and not necessarily certain that they had such systems. So
we went about the business of introducing systems safety as a
methodology for oversight and we began to work with those air carriers
and assured that in the design of their systems, for example, for a
particular system, did the person responsible for that system in fact
have the responsibility described for them? That person, did they really
have the authority described in writing that they had the authority for
that? Are there procedures in place to assure that they can carryout
what it is that they\'re responsible and have the authority for? Do they
have the controls in place to ensure that it, in fact, gets done? Do
they have process measures? And most importantly, do those systems
interface?

I\'d like to use the example of where do you best see manifested how
well the systems of an air carrier interface? It is there in the
cockpit. An inspector can go aboard any air carrier and observe how
pilot training, flight attendant training, fueling, maintenance,
dispatching, all those things come together. Are they interfacing? And
that is the key, in essence, with systems safety.

So we went from inspecting safety \-- kicking the tires, etcetera, to
bringing it up a notch. One, it was the carrier\'s responsibility to
conduct operation safety in accordance with the rules. And they were
applying system safety principles to assure that the system that they
have designed is, in fact, producing the intended product. So most of
our attention is devoted to looking at the air carrier systems that in
fact produced the intended product and we do, do some sampling of the
product itself.

So in essence, what we\'re doing is in order to be more effective and
more productive, we are taking our resources and looking at what the
data is telling us. Like Ellen said, look at the data and it will set
you free. It also will point you in the right direction. So we focused
where the risk is. That\'s where we bring our inspectors to focus and
that\'s the approach we\'ve taken.

Now if you read Professor Reason\'s book on managing organizational
accidents he asks a very good question in that sense and it goes
something like this. Are we regulators unwittingly contributing to
accidents? I will bring you to 1998, that too, was a very enviable year
in terms of safety performance. We have a challenge to continue to push
that accident rate down. And I\'ve described how we chose to go about
the business of doing that.

But we\'re part of the safety equation as well. Could we stand the test
of system safety ourselves? The answer that we asked ourselves as a
management team in the AVR organization of certification and regulation
is no, we can\'t measure up to that standard. So we embarked on that
process. Several years ago, we challenged ourselves to say we must be an
organization that is consistent, standardized, is effective, and
continues to produce the best possible product that we can and provide
good customer service. So how do you do that?

Well, rather than re-organizing ourselves and doing the box shuffling,
we said let\'s take a look at how well we managed the white spaces
between the boxes, process-wise. And what we chose is ISO 9000. And I am
proud to say over the past several years we\'ve been engaged in doing
that. We\'ve had smaller units become ISO registered and as recent as
yesterday we were officially registered and that is, the flight
standards organization, all the flight standards headquarters\'
divisions are today ISO certified. So that is a major achievement. That
process continues to be on-going until all of the AVR organization is
ISO registered. That is a major and significant achievement.

So in response to your question, long-winded but nonetheless, we are
more effective, we are more productive. We\'re responsible to the public
expectation. Responsive to the public expectation. We are cognizant of
what they expect to continue to reduce the accident rate and we\'re
sensitive to customer service.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: I\'m going to turn to the Chairman, if I could. The
NTSB, in my tenure and I\'m sure in yours is often in a position of
letting the FAA know areas where they \-- where the Board feels that
they could do a better job.

Are you seeing some of the positive results from the system safety
approach at the FAA and has that made a difference in how the Board
approaches its relationship to the FAA?

PANELIST CONNORS: The National Transportation Safety Board, as you know,
Susan, and all of you in the room know, is a very unique agency. First
of all, we\'re independent and thus, we have a unique way of sort of
sitting on that safety mountain. Because we\'re not a regulator and we
don\'t give out money, what we have is our bully pulpit for safety. And
I can assure you that both myself and the other four Members, Vice
Chairman Mark Rosenker is right there. I know that Member Carol Carmody
and Dick Healing are also here \-- I don\'t think they\'re in this room,
but they\'re at the conference. And I believe Debbie Hursman is on
travel. But all of us are in our own way aggressively pursuing safety in
our role and responsibilities. And we\'re partnered with over 400
experts, if you will, the staff of the NTSB who actually conduct the
investigations and determine the probable cause of accidents. But
that\'s after problems have occurred.

What happens then? Well, we have a unique device called our safety
recommendations. And that\'s where our bully pulpit comes and if you
will, that\'s the report card that we utilize when we\'re working with
the FAA as well as all the recipients of our safety recommendations.

One of the challenges that\'s happened in the past has been two-fold.
The process, and I\'m a big person on process. The process was that we
would issue our recommendations and those consisted of a multi-page
letter that was mailed and then the FAA and other agencies and the
States and organizations would receive that letter and we would wait for
a response. And time would pass and we would wait for a response. And
sometimes 12 years would pass and we would still be waiting for a
response.

And so one of the objectives that I instituted at the NTSB over the last
17 months is called safety with a team or swat approach. Rather than
have a letter go back and wait for a response, we would sit down at the
table and say this is what we intended, how are you doing? And they
would come back and FAA, as well as other modes and DOT \[Department of
Transportation\] and the States, are now talking back to us and we\'re
actually communicating versus letter writing. So 12 years is being
reduced to closing out unwanted things.

I can say that we\'ve had seven meetings with the FAA since July of
2003. We\'ve had 78 recommendations discussed in this process; 36 have
been closed; 18 are being closed, the letters are in coordination right
now. We will have to use a letter to close them, that\'s the problem
with this process. And then 13 have actually moved from an unacceptable
to an acceptable status.

Now what does that mean? Does that mean we caved in? Absolutely not. I
assure you as Nick can attest, the meetings happen right next to my
office and the volume level increases as the hours go by. No one is
caving in on this process, but you know what, it\'s amazing what
communication will do. In other words, this is what we meant by this
5-page or 50-page multiple letter. Is this what you thought we meant? Oh
no. We didn\'t know you meant that. We were thinking you meant this. No.
We meant this. Can you do it? No. Why not? Well, because. Well, how
about this? Well, maybe we could. You get the picture.

It\'s amazing what face-to-face communication will do and so through the
SWAT process and through the leadership of the FAA, through
Administrator Blakey as well as Secretary Mineta, and the NTSB\'s
expertise and dedication to aggressively pursue these, I think we\'ve
seen significant progress and seeing the safety loop close because our
recommendations which in a way is our grading card, all right, we\'re
showing progress in closing the safety loop. And this is why it\'s
really important.

Until the recommendations are implemented, they\'re just words floating
out there. Lives are not saved until the words are put into action. And
so I believe that there is significant action occurring through a
process. Now, that being said, we aggressively pursue all the aspects of
safety and the FAA still has over 300 open recommendations, Nick. And
I\'d be happy to constantly give you that updated list.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Don\'t compromise with safety. Don\'t give away your
bully pulpit.

PANELIST CONNORS: And regrettably the FAA is the number one on our \--
for a number, if you will \-- who is most on our Most Wanted list. And
so we are going to be working together for a long time in the future,
but I have to tell you, unless people want to achieve results, results
never happen. You have to desire resolution and the desire for
resolution is there. We\'re going to continue to argue along the way how
far we\'ve gone and when we\'re there. But you know what, you have to
start from the heart and I do believe that the heart of the FAA will
always seek safety and as long as we have open communication, our
independence does not mean an adversarial relationship. It means a
strong, independent stance but the final job of implementation, we have
to work together and I\'m pleased to say that it is working. And I hope
that Nick would agree.

PANELIST SABATINI: I would agree.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: While we\'re talking about NTSB, the last major
accident investigated, last aviation accident investigated by the NTSB
was nearly three years ago. In that intervening time, the staff at the
NTSB has remained relatively static and given the nature of the dynamic
\-- the dynamic nature of the industry and the technology that drives
the industry, how can the NTSB maintain its competitive and technical
edge and its readiness for when that rare aviation accident occurs?

PANELIST CONNORS: Well, first of all, I wish that we were out of
business, but we\'re not. We investigate over 2,000 accidents every year
because we are a multi-modal agency and general aviation is our biggest
customer, if you will. That\'s true. We have not had the large
commercial airliner crash and we are grateful for that. Our folks have
no problem with doing other work, I assure you. But we are multi-modal
agency and in that aspect, we are always busy. Our folks rarely have a
day off.

As you know, we have very limited staff, about 400 very dedicated
employees who really don\'t have jobs. They have missions. That\'s why
on Christmas Day we had over half a dozen launches that had to occur and
they all left their homes, their children, their trees, their turkey
dinners in order to go out to pursue safety. So those are the folks at
the NTSB.

But that being said, I think one of the things you see reflected in the
Board today and the Board makeup itself is the fact that we are a
multi-modal board. Our background of technical expertise comes from all
the modes. And we are looking at the synergy among the modes. There are
many aspects of safety that are not aviation centric. Human fatigue is
an area that affects all modes of transportation and so that\'s
something that\'s very critical that we\'ve seen in all aspects.
Maintenance and training, that is an aspect of all modes of
transportation and that\'s where accidents occur.

You have these issues that are constantly being seen, a breadth of
safety issues that we need to address. New technology. Let me give you
an example. Some automation technology would seem that would be safer
and yet regrettably, two of the last train accidents we\'ve had
literally were where an automated train ran over the very guy who was
controlling it. I mean run over by a train, your own train. These things
are critical aspects of maintenance training, oversight, supervision.
It\'s very important to look at what we learn from aviation and also
transfer it to the other modes.

I hope, I truly hope that in all modes we will achieve the same level of
safety that we currently have in commercial aviation. I think that would
be wonderful. And I would love to say that some day the NTSB will no
longer have a job. Right now we have 2,000 accidents every year that
we\'re responsible for. We have 42,000 people dying in highway
accidents. We had 600 plus in general aviation. We had about the same in
rail. In marine, we\'re losing people because we can\'t convince folks
to put on a life jacket the way they put on a seat belt. Every aspect is
important.

Let me just conclude without being too long-winded. Here\'s my personal
look on this. Every time someone dies in a transportation accident, the
phone rings at their home and they found they\'ve lost a loved one. I
believe we need to reduce the number of phone calls. So whether you\'re
a passenger on an airliner or you\'re a pilot on an air cargo transport,
whether you\'re a passenger in a vehicle, whether you\'re driving a
school bus, whether you\'re a commuter on a train, that that expectation
that you will return home safely to your loved ones should be met.
Everything else is the detail, but the goal must be when you\'re in our
transportation system safety, when you\'re in our transportation system,
you come home safely.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Ron, a big amount of the workload at the NTSB is in
general aviation and no matter what the measure general aviation
accidents remain a concern in the safety community. Those countries that
have a strong general aviation culture are looking at research and data
analysis and technology for ways of breaking through the glass floor and
forcing the general aviation accident rate down.

What do you think that the general aviation community is doing to reduce
the kind of skill and decision-based accidents that are really driving
the accident rates in general aviation.

PANELIST SWANDA: That\'s a very important question. I thank you for that
too. Let me first say that when I speak of general aviation, I found
that talking to many, especially international audiences, I need to
explain what I mean because we are basically the all other category. So
include everything but the scheduled air carriers and if it\'s
non-scheduled, a 135 operation of general aviation when I speak of it,
mainly because it\'s the same airplanes that we use in Part 91,
nonscheduled. But I also include balloons, dirigibles, helicopters,
rotor craft, whatever you want to call them, sea planes. So it\'s an
extremely diverse segment of aviation that includes all of the pilots,
probably in the world that have ever flown. I like to think of them as
general aviation pilots, even if they make their living flying airlines,
they probably have flown or do fly general aviation aircraft at some
time.

I think the other important thing is the recognition that general
aviation, because of its diversity and in some cases the extreme mission
that it has, for instance, emergency medical evacuation, rotorcraft,
etcetera. It\'s more dangerous than an average flight. And because
you\'re saving lives, perhaps it makes sense that we take more risk. But
that\'s the way that the pilots operating those vehicles feel they want
to save a life, and so they\'re willing to make a little more risk, not
to risk their own life, but a higher risk than you might expect from a
commercial airline scheduled operation.

So having said that, in my mind, there\'s no difference between what we
do in general aviation and what the commercial industry does, working
with our partners at FAA and NTSB. That safety culture, I think, has two
main elements. The first one is that an accident, the purpose of
post-accident investigations is to prevent accidents. It is not to
punish someone who may have made an honest mistake. That\'s essential
and other countries, thankfully not all of them, do not have that
concept. We hope that they\'ll see the light.

Secondly, main concept of a safety culture is that incidents always,
always precede an accident. So we have adopted those into general
aviation. We have a great team, I think, working with FAA at the general
aviation joint steering committee, part of the \-- for many, many years
working on the safety programs. Partnership with all of the
associations, AOPA \[Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association\] has a
great air safety foundation, the safety programs that they institute. We
have the Flight Safety Foundation as well, some business aviation
operations. So it is indeed a safety culture.

And working with the NTSB, any time there is an aircraft accident,
there\'s often many technical questions that only someone who is
intimately familiar with that technology could help the NTSB understand.
We are often asked to be members of the NTSB investigation team to
provide that expertise. We are happy to do so at our own expense, not
the government\'s expense and I might add that that\'s growing, not
shrinking. So our commitment to safety throughout the industry, I think
is stronger than ever. I think it has to be.

The whole theme of this workshop is kind of surprising to me, resting on
our laurels, because frankly I don\'t think anybody in general aviation
and maybe even in aviation really ever thought of resting on our
laurels. Every day a fatal accident occurs in the United States of
general aviation aircraft. That\'s totally unacceptable. However, we\'ve
come a long way.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: And I think the challenge for us in realizing the
value of doing accident investigation in general aviation is how to
deliver the lessons learned to that population. It\'s not a population
that\'s easy to get its arms around and delivering the benefits of those
investigations and those lessons learned, I think is going to remain an
on-going challenge to us.

PANELIST SWANDA: It certainly will. We think that general aviation is
going to have a continuing strong role in our air transportation system.
That means if we don\'t have a handle on safety, people will begin to
mistrust it. So I think it will grow and it\'s even more important.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: And the penalty for not developing that downward
trend in accidents is a greater risk to the rest of the system.

PANELIST SWANDA: Certainly.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: John, a lot has been written about the global nature
of airplane manufacturing. If you read between the lines, there\'s an
implication that this globalization translates into a blind faith, if
you will, that we\'re not sacrificing quality at the expense of sharing
the manufacturing wealth.

As the manufacturing of airplanes does become more global, how do
manufacturers manage quality control over suppliers and sub-suppliers
that in some case might be half a globe away from the point of final
assembly?

PANELIST LAUBER: Well, that\'s an excellent question. Before I answer it
though I want to respond to a comment that Ellen made with regard to an
observation that fatigue is a common element in aviation accidents. I
would point out that there are other debilitating human factors that
affect human performance as well, hypothermia being one of them.

(Laughter.)

So if my answer makes no sense, I\'m going to plead hypothermia.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: We don't buy that.

PANELIST LAUBER: It is awful. A good question, you used the term blind
faith, and I think one of the lessons that we\'ve learned in this
aviation business over the years, many times the hard way, is that blind
faith or assumptions about what\'s going on behind the hanger door or on
the manufacturing floor have no place in our business. Managing safety
actively in the system requires just that. We can\'t rest on assumption.
We can\'t take things on blind faith. We have to actively engage in the
process to ensure the quality and assure the levels of safety that we
have come to expect from this system.

One of the things that we do as the manufacturers, the holder of the
type certificate for an airplane, the manufacturing certificate for the
airplane is to monitor what goes on among our suppliers and vendors. Now
the manufacturing model that you describe where major elements of an
airplane are assembled at outlying stations and then brought to some
central final assembly facility is actually the model that Airbus has
followed almost from the inception. One of the differences is that each
of those major factories that is involved in the assembly of a major
sub-component or part of an airplane happens to be an Airbus factory and
so there are some real advantages in terms of monitoring quality of the
process from that point of view.

And we have on-going quality programs. I have no idea how many people or
how much manpower we devote to the quality process of Airbus, but it\'s
huge. It\'s huge at Boeing as well. It\'s a necessary component of the
whole operation.

With regard to vendors and suppliers, we have auditing teams that go out
to every supplier of every component, no matter how small, to ensure
that in fact those components are manufactured to the specifications
that we have given them, that we have provided that are a part of the
overall design and it\'s a full-time, on-going process. For example,
here in the United States, we have a team and I\'ve kind of lost count
now of what the number is because it keeps growing, but I think we have
six people, engineers, scattered all over the country who are here on a
full-time basis, each of them assigned a group of vendors and suppliers
for Airbus and their responsibility is to deal with quality and assure
quality among those vendors and suppliers. It\'s an active, on-going
process. It\'s one that we have to manage and one that, as I say,
occupies a fair amount of resources in order to make it happen properly.

But in addition to that, then the next part of the answer to your
question is what do we do to monitor the quality of the product that
actually goes into service, that\'s actually carrying people from Point
A to Point B on a daily basis? How do we make sure that, in fact, all of
the components and parts and processes that have gone into that are
achieving their desired effect?

We have a part of that responsibility, the regulatory authorities have a
part of that responsibility. The operators have a part of that
responsibility. We\'ve all heard reference today to the three-legged
stool and this is certainly no exception. And the answer to what we do
there is we gather information. We can\'t make any decisions about the
safety or quality of the product without hard data to crunch that tell
us in real time or in near real time what, in fact, is going out there,
is going on out there with our product line.

We have a network in place to acquire information from the operators on
a daily basis. We have resident customer service representatives at all
of our major customers. One of their primary functions is to collect
information from the operation on a daily basis, feed it to the
appropriate people in Toulouse and Hamburg and elsewhere in the Airbus
system. That gets filtered and an initial screen is made of whether or
not there are genuine safety issues implied or implicit in the event
that\'s been noted.

On a weekly basis we have four process teams that get together to
further screen and further refine those reports. And they look at
operations. They look at manufacturing. They look at design and they
look at maintenance issues. And each group filters further all of those
events that come in and then we make a rational decision as to whether
or not there\'s a design issue, whether there\'s a manufacturing quality
issue, whether there\'s a component quality issue or whether there\'s a
process problem, but the point is that all of the decisions about what
we do to feed back from the operating experience or from line experience
with the product, gets fed back at some point into the process.

So I guess just to conclude and to kind of come back to the theme of the
panel that we were given today, we do have an outstanding safety record
in this industry. In fact, I\'m almost hesitant to say this, but at
Airbus we\'ve gone now more than 1,000 days without a fatal accident on
an Airbus airplane. That\'s a remarkable achievement when you consider
that the number of flight operations involved in a day or a month or a
year, it is a remarkable achievement. But none of us can afford to rest
on our laurels for the reasons that I don\'t want this to get back to
Toulouse, but Alan Mulally said it very well today that we have to be
data-driven and we have to force continuous improvement in our system
and that\'s just part of what we have to do.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Captain Meyer, there was a discussion this morning
in one of the earlier panels about the new approach to safety auditing
being from an international perspective and with the advent of some of
these new international safety assurance programs and audits, and as the
recipient of some of the safety evaluations by other bodies, do you
believe that these oversight programs are actually enhancing safety and
how do you, in Mexico, measure the success of these audits?

PANELIST MEYER: Thank you. Thank you very much, Susan. First of all,
before going into the issue you are talking to me, I would like to say
that if I feel and if you see that I\'m a little bit nervous today, it
is not because I\'m in front of you, in front of these high and very
high level audience. It is not also because I have to sleep just two
hours because I couldn\'t catch my flight yesterday from Mexico City and
I had to go to Chicago and sleep two hours there and fly early in the
morning. It is not for that. It is because I am so close to this very
high level safety seminar.

(Laughter.)

I\'m so worried about my personal safety. That\'s the reason for my
nervousness. Don\'t worry about it.

Another thing I would like to say first is that when I received the
invitation to come here to this meeting, well of course I accepted
immediately. It\'s an honor for me to be here. But when I read the first
question of having an outstanding safety record, are we just resting on
our laurels, is that how you pronounce that? Laurels. Well, I felt
challenged by the question. And I felt a little bit angry from the
question. How can anybody think that we are resting on our laurels?
Isn\'t that the reason why we are here in this discussion because we are
not resting on our laurels?

But once I read the question again and again, I decided to write it down
and put that paper on my pillow because it is so interesting, we people
that work in safety issues, it is so interesting and so valuable not to
forget that question. Are we resting on our laurels? Shall we be asking
this question to ourselves every day on our jobs? Maybe yes.

So I forgot about my anger and I was happy about that.

In thinking about that question and the other two questions that is in
the invitation, I would like to talk a little bit not about what we have
done right, but about what my ideas about what we have not done right.
It is always good to talk about good things, good programs that have
produced good results. That\'s good. But my challenge here today is to
try to give just a few ideas of what we have haven\'t done right. We as
authorities, we as aviation community. That is the best reason for me to
be here.

I was looking at the previous discussion and you were talking, Susan,
about the traditional airlines that are in distress, that\'s the words
you used. And I tried to imagine the life of an airline as a life of a
human being. And human beings normally need a lot more care when they
are very young and when they are very old. And you said Susan that
normally we as authorities take a lot of care when the airlines are
growing up, in the very earliest stages when they are very young. But
sometimes we forget the airlines that are very old. And in these times,
as the times that we had maybe in the 1980s, the early 1980s and I\'m
having hypothermia also \--

(Laughter.)

Unfortunately, there are many possibilities that we will see some
airlines disappearing in the arena in Mexico and the United States and
maybe all around the world. So we as authorities and I have to accept
that we have to make a very serious reflection, very serious thinking
about this issue and about the fact that maybe we are not doing the best
we can in putting absolute obedience on this, unfortunately, failing
airlines. This is an area that of course doesn\'t come up from this
meeting, but makes me think your comments about this serious problem
that we might be confronting very soon.

I would like to talk also about the issue of some other programs that I
will think that we haven\'t done enough. Runway incursions. Runway
incursions is maybe the most potentially catastrophic safety issue that
we have in front of us. The numbers are there. And the numbers show us
that a potentially catastrophic accident in terms of runway incursions
is knocking at our doors. Should be around there any time. We have seen
so many seminars, so many materials, so many things. Are we doing enough
to confront this problem? The numbers doesn't show that. The numbers
shows an increasing rate of incident, serious incidents on this area. So
I will say that there is a thing that we have something to think about
very seriously.

You were talking to me about the international airports. There is an
international efforts in terms of the outreach and programs that are
actually running. There are some countries, well, every country in the
world does not have a system as big as the United States has and there
are so many differences in size and quality and resources and expertise
and training and everything. Only through international joint efforts
are good to try to solve the problems of safety in the aviation
industry. But in some areas of the world, it\'s the only solution.

We in Mexico haven\'t been directly participating in any international
organization. We are very involved with the tri-national effort that we
are putting with Canada and United States through the NAFTA \[North
American Free Trade Agreement\] mechanism which we call the NAT \[North
Atlantic Track\]. In those meetings we have been working for 10 years
with this mechanism and it is very successful. Actually, we are having a
meeting in Montreal next Monday, trying to make invitations to all the
countries to share our success in these mechanisms.

But we have an extraordinary, very successful example of international
cooperation in terms of safety surveillance which is the Central America
example. The ACTS Organization is I will say maybe the most successful
example of international preparation in terms of the safety issues that
we have in the world. And this is right around the street.

These efforts have been so successful, in part, in a big part because of
the international help that has received this organization, especially
from the FAA. So why shall we go farther than that? We have this example
very close to where we are now and there are some very specific lessons
that we can learn from that experience.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: There was a discussion in the early morning panel,
as you know, about the need for those of us who have been fortunate
enough to enjoy the luxury of success in safety that we\'ve had that
there\'s a real need for us to go out and be missionaries, if you will,
to help those that are perhaps lagging behind in the sophistication and
the level of safety that they\'ve enjoyed.

PANELIST CONNORS: Susan, could I just make one quick comment to that? If
there is a risk that we all are facing right now, I think the risk is if
we allow anything to enter that sanctuary of safety and having safety
discussions be protected against intervention by other attempts to
utilize the discussion of safety either for disciplinary issues and
management, to trying to use a safety investigation for other parallel
litigation issues, to try to add a corrosive value so that people are
fearful to talk about safety in an open discussion. That\'s a critical
element to the success of safety in both aviation and in all modes, is
that when people have a safety issue, whether it\'s an incident that
they\'re reporting, whether there\'s an issue of an accident or
knowledge that they have, whether there\'s a safety improvement that
they feel that it is a good idea, whether it\'s talking to an
investigator or talking to a supervisor or talking to a colleague, if
safety is not in an envelope of total sanctuary, then we will corrode
our safety record from inside and so I believe very strongly that as
we\'re looking at all of this, the open discussion in a sanctuary of
safety must be protected vigilantly or we will lose the edge that we
have gained through trial.

The other issue I remind people of when I talk about this is especially
when it comes to litigation and parallel investigations and the like and
many NTSB and safety accident investigations, there are parallel issues
that are on-going. There are parallel investigations which occur. But
those are meant to be parallel. They should not enter or involve the
safety discussions, nor should people attempt to take a safety accident
investigation and utilize it for other purposes.

So that\'s an agreement of trust that\'s evolved and I think that that
is something that we have to protect and constantly be aware of
potential intrusion.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: In the couple minutes that we have left, I want to
ask the audience for their participation and while we\'re sort of
organizing ourselves to do that, I\'d like to ask each of the panelists
to be thinking about if we have one rare opportunity, if you had one
rare opportunity in the future to make a difference, if you think there
is one thing that we could be doing we\'re not and to miss it would be a
missed opportunity to further reduce the accident rate, either in the
United States or world-wide, what would that one thing be? Is there one
thing that comes to mind?

Nick, did you want to \--

PANELIST SABATINI: Yes. I want to pick on what Ellen has said. I
absolutely agree with her that there needs to be a sanctuary around
safety, but the Congress has already recognized the importance of that
and has given the FAA the statutory authority to protect that data or
information which is voluntarily provided to the FAA. And the FAA has
already promulgated FAR \[Federal Aviation Regulations\] 193 which, in
fact, embodies the spirit and the intent of that statutory authority.

And to address your question, I would like to put it in this
perspective. For many, many years, if you look at the accident rate over
the course of time since we began recording accident data, you will find
that we have been what we call the cause and effect of fix and fly
model. And I don\'t know where that bright line may be drawn, but
somewhere along the line we\'ve begun to understand the importance of
working together. The reason why we\'re here together is so that we can
move in a cause and effect and fix and fly and not wait for the accident
to happen, to prevent another one, but rather to move to the front end
of information flow. That cooperation must exist so that we can be
preemptive and address those precursors that lie in that data, those
incident databases that we have and voluntarily provide it either
through FOQA \[Flight Operations Quality Assurance\] or ASAP \[Aviation
Safety Action Program\] and with the manufacturers, with COSP
\[Continued Operational Safety Program\], etcetera. That is where we
have got to mine and make a lot of progress.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Well said.

PANELIST LAUBER: Ellen and Nick have both said it very well and both of
them used the word at one point that I think ties this all together and
that is how do we ensure the constant flow of information so that we
make wise decisions?

When I was at NASA, I received one day a letter probably from a
10-year-old who had obviously just taken a little lesson on why do
planes fly and on this piece of paper he had drawn this carefully shaped
cross section of an air-foil and he put the four fundamental forces of
flight on. They were lift and weight and drag and \"trust\" according to
this label.

(Laughter.)

And I thought the guy was prudent beyond his years.

PANELIST SWANDA: Can I make a comment \-- can I answer that question?
Just a quick one.

The one thing I think that I hear that concerns me and concerns a lot of
people is our willingness to combine safety and security. They are two
different things and safety should always trump security. And if we
don\'t go that road, we\'re going to have big problems.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: It is something that I think that is going to be
debated for a long time.

PANELIST CONNORS: Susan, I\'m just going to do a quick one. I must have
anticipated your question because my concern is, my main concern of what
we could miss is the fact that if we don\'t continue to have the open
discussions. But I think there are two other issues that we\'ve seen in
our discussions. The potential of unintended consequences, I think
that\'s always something that we need to be aware of because we are an
inter-modal, international, interconnected transportation system. And
what happens in one mode does have a ripple effect into the others.

And so it is not \-- you no longer have the ability to be aviation
centric. You are \-- it is a national and international transportation
system that\'s connected.

Secondly, another aspect, there are two ways to look at safety. I think
in the past, as Nick referenced, there\'s some of the fix it after it\'s
broken or moving on to that the prescriptive checklist. If you do
everything on this checklist, then it must be safe. But accidents are
never simple. They\'re usually a complex system that has breakdowns
accordingly and so the systematic proactive approach for safety, I
think, is critical and that means also learning from other modes and
other systems and including all of that.

And then, of course, the key is don't forget your fundamentals as
you\'re focusing on all the new ideas and being proactive and new
technologies, it still boils down to people as well. And so training,
training, training, maintenance, maintenance, maintenance, quality
control, supervision and most of all, personal responsibility that
everyone, everyone is personally responsible in that safety chain, no
matter what their job title, no matter what they do, they have that
acknowledgement of personal responsibility because for want of a nail,
the kingdom can be lost.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. I\'m from the embassy of The Netherlands.
I\'ve been working in civil aviation in The Netherlands before. I have a
question to Mr. Lopez Meyer or Mr. Sabatini. This is an international
conference. I\'m going to the ICAO assembly next week like the Director
General and I did some reading. I saw that ICAO has performed more than
150 safety audits and at the same time I came to the conclusion that a
majority of audits have not been given follow-up based on certain
countries so that is certainly a problem where a number of countries do
not comply with minimum standards set by that organization.

I do recognize what FAA is doing and I listened carefully to Mr.
Sabatini when he said that cooperation with the joint aviation authority
is excellent and he said farewell to Klas Koplin just a few days ago and
I hope that the cooperation with in coming years will be just as good as
the cooperation with.

The question I would like to ask is how are we going to solve this
record on a global basis because obviously ICAO as a global organization
doesn\'t have the instruments. It does technical assistance. It has
excellent plans like global aviation safety plan, but how are you going
to make sure that on the one hand you have countries which do their best
in drafting regulations and increasing minimum standards and a part of
the world has not been able to comply with those standards? How are we
going to solve that particular problem? Thank you.

PANELIST SABATINI: You start off.

PANELIST MEYER: There is no way to assure that. After looking, there is
no way to assure that. There are ways that we can use to try to get
there and of course, the mechanisms are there. Some of them are already
there, international cooperation, international ICAO audits, trying to
develop serious and stable, well-funded, regional organizations.

In my opinion, there is no way to be 100 percent certain. But it is a
risk we all have to take. We are all taking it every day on our jobs
because nothing happens, it doesn\'t happen.

We have to go further and try to get there and we said a degree of
uncertainty of we can do it or we can\'t. That\'s my opinion.

PANELIST SABATINI: Following the Avianca accident in New York, the
United States government instituted a program. It\'s called the
International Aviation Safety Assessment Program \[IASA\]. And it
basically was established to assure that air carriers who serve these
United States were, in fact, complying at the very least with the ICAO
SARPS. And we have set about the business of conducting those audits for
those countries who do serve the United States. There is an economic
disadvantage to those countries who for whatever reason may choose not
to measure up to the international standards. So there is the economic
requirement if they wish to be successful and be part of the global
community and reach the highest levels of safety and that is to measure
up at the very least to the international, the ICAO standards.

There are many other mechanisms by which we can, by collaborating,
working with one another such as a forum as this, where we encourage
other countries, other civil aviation authorities to do what they need
to do to bring themselves up to the standard that is expected from the
global community. We have worked with the George Washington University
where we have invited Director Generals from around the world, Prime
Ministers and Ministers of transportation to visit these United States
and attend these courses which were a week long, basically teaching what
it is that we know, the best information that we have to share again a
in the spirit of getting entities, civil aviation authorities to measure
up and to understand what is expected of them in the global community.

PANELIST MEYER: These are some of the mechanisms of having worked on
these and they have been successful.

PANELIST SWANDA: If I can add an example, there are times when I think
it\'s appropriate for countries not to comply with ICAO standards and
that is the case when they have an equivalent level or means of reaching
that. And a good example I\'ll give you. Many years ago, the FAA used to
prohibit single engine flying in IMC \[Instrument Meteorological
Conditions\]. The FAA decided to look at that rule carefully and we
concluded that most of the accidents \-- many accidents were occurring
because pilots who could not file IFR were, in fact, getting into
weather problems. We have such a sophisticated air traffic control and
airport system and weather reporting system in the United States that
the FAA found that if they opened up IMC flying to those type of
aircraft, that the accident rate actually went down.

Now that\'s probably not true for every country in the world that may
not have the equivalent traffic system that we do. But ICAO standards
require a prohibition of those type of flying.

Now I think that is a very appropriate time for the FAA to have an
exception and say look, we tried it, our accident rate went down. It\'s
up to each country to achieve at least the minimum level of safety that
the ICAO requires. But there are other means in many cases.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Don.

MR. PHILLIPS: This is a question, excuse me, I almost lost my balance
there, for Dr. Lauber and Ms. Engleman.

There seems to be a prevailing, but perhaps somewhat nervous conclusion
here that on-going budget cuts are not affecting aviation safety. First
of all, I guess as former and current Safety Board people, do you agree
with that and if you do for now, how far can the budget cuts go before
the erosion becomes noticeable?

PANELIST LAUBER: I\'ll start, Don. I do agree with that. I think the
data tell the story. Does that mean that we can sustain indefinite
budget cuts or continued budget cuts that drive things below the level
where we achieve the levels of safety that we need? No.

But part of the reason that we can sustain the budget cuts that you\'re
talking about or financial pressures is as Nick said in his response
about FAA surveillance and oversight, we\'re doing it smarter. We\'re
doing it more efficiently. We\'ve developed ways of doing things better
and accomplishing the same ends. So in fact, the answer is no. I think
that on a systems level, we are achieving the levels of safety and
we\'ll continue to do so in spite of financial pressures. However, we
certainly have to keep up the guard and we certainly have to keep
thinking of and inventing ways to do things smarter.

PANELIST CONNORS: Don, from my perspective and this is my personal
perspective, not the five Member Board perspective, because I need to
discuss it with the five Members to give you a formal one, but from my
personal perspective, let\'s think of what you mean by budget cuts or
financial pressures. Part of that depends on how you view a balance
sheet. If you look at safety as a line item that can be reduced, then
yes, I definitely share your concerns. If you look at safety as a line
item in the budget that is sacrosanct and cannot be reduced, then I\'m
going to suggest that the management of any industry is going to have to
find other ways to save money and reduce their costs.

One aspect that\'s come into attention through headlines and public
discussion is the whole MRO, maintenance, repair and overall aspect of
aviation, the move to third party contractors. And that aspect, I think
you have to look at what I was calling the personal responsibility
factor or the quality assurance aspect of it.

If you have a third party contractor versus your own label, if you will,
on your shirt, doing work, you have the responsibility to ensure that if
their costs are lower, their quality is the same or higher.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Ron, did you want to follow up quickly?

PANELIST SWANDA: I\'ll make it a quick one. It is the belief of many of
us in the industry that everything the FAA and the NTSB does is a safety
function. And in fact, we long ago passed the area where we could cut
fat and we have now cut into the meat. And especially in the long-term
projects, research, for instance, we\'re in trouble, and we want to say
that loud and clear so that all the people that are involved in the
process of funding and supporting the FAA can join us as we support
them.

MODERATOR COUGHLIN: Well, thank you very much for your attention. Thank
you to the panelists. We really appreciate you\'re joining us today.

(Applause.)

(Whereupon, at 3:06 p.m., the panel was concluded.)