But of course, relatively speaking, vision is easy. Following through on your vision is the hard part. And execution is paramount. None of us can afford to have our customers, shareholders, employees or anyone else describe us that way, which means we have to do more than just talk about leadership, we need to demonstrate it, day in and day out, through our execution. Plenty, because when you look at the six areas I mentioned safety, product, service, technology, culture and network there isn t one element of the American Airlines plan that, in its execution, doesn t create enormous challenges for our maintenance organization.
Safety is obviously first and foremost, because without safety, none of the other stuff is possible.
As I said, at American our objective is to lead the industry but the reality is that there is no competition when it comes to safety safety is a collaborative endeavor and a responsibility shared by the entire aviation community. And I m very pleased to say that as an industry, we the airlines, the MRO community, the FAA have done, and are continuing to do, a very good job of working together and taking a mode of transportation that s already the safest in the world and making it even safer. It s certainly not news to anyone here that we ve faced a barrage of Airworthiness Directives from the FAA the past few years. But when you step back and look at the innovations of the past several years from digital flight recorders, to smoke detection and fire suppression systems, to enhanced ground proximity warning systems, and many more it s clear that we have made aviation even safer. And all of us in the aviation community including the FAA, and all of you ought to feel very good about that.