SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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74–380 PS
2001
RUNWAY INCURSIONS FOCUSING ON THE TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT COLLISIONS
(107–28)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
AVIATION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JUNE 26, 2001
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice-Chair
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
STEPHEN HORN, California
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JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JACK QUINN, New York
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
SUE W. KELLY, New York
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio
JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana
JOHN R. THUNE, South Dakota
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
JERRY MORAN, Kansas
RICHARD W. POMBO, California
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
MIKE ROGERS, Michigan
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia
MARK STEVEN KIRK, Illinois
HENRY E, BROWN, Jr., South Carolina
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
BRIAN D. KERNS, Indiana
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DENNIS R. REHBERG, Montana
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey
SAM GRAVES, Missouri
C.L. (BUTCH) OTTER, Idaho
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
ROBERT A. BORSKI, Pennsylvania
WILLIAM O. LIPINSKI, Illinois
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
BOB CLEMENT, Tennessee
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia
JERROLD NADLER, New York
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
CORRINE BROWN, Florida
JAMES A. BARCIA, Michigan
BOB FILNER, California
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
FRANK MASCARA, Pennsylvania
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GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, California
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
MAX SANDLIN, Texas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
NICK LAMPSON, Texas
JOHN ELIAS BALDACCI, Maine
MARION BERRY, Arkansas
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
BRAD CARSON, Oklahoma
JIM MATHESON, Utah
MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
RICK LARSEN, Washington
(ii)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION
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JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
STEPHEN HORN, California
JACK QUINN, New York
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama
SUE W. KELLY, New York
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana, Vice Chairman
JOHN R. THUNE, South Dakota
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
JERRY MORAN, Kansas
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
MARK STEVEN KIRK, Illinois
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
DENNIS R. REHBERG, Montana
SAM GRAVES, Missouri
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas
BUD SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
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JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
DON YOUNG, Alaska
(Ex Officio)
WILLIAM O. LIPINSKI, Illinois
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
JOHN ELIAS BALDACCI, Maine
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
CORRINE BROWN, Florida
JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, California
MAX SANDLIN, Texas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
NICK LAMPSON, Texas
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
BRAD CARSON, Oklahoma
JIM MATHESON, Utah
MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
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JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
TESTIMONY
Boyer, Phil, President, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
Carmody, Carol, Acting Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board
Carr, John, President, National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Davis, William S., Director, Runway Safety Program, Federal Aviation Administration, accompanied by Mr. Steve Zaidman, Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions
Mead, Kenneth R., Inspector General, Department of Transportation
Rutty, John G., American Airlines Captain (retired)
Ryan, Jack, Acting Senior Vice President, Aviation Safety and Operations with the Air Transport Association of America
Woerth, Captain Duane, President, Air Line Pilots Association
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
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Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois
Lipinski, Hon. William O., of Illinois
Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Boyer, Phil
Carmody, Carol
Carr, John
Davis, William
Mead, Kenneth R
Rutty, John G
Ryan, Jack
Woerth, Captain Duane
ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD
ADSI, Inc., statement
Cargo Airline Association, Stephen A. Alterman, President, statement
Exchange of letters between Rep. John L. Mica, a Representative in Congress from Florida, and Carol Carmody, Acting Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board
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Garvey, Hon. Jane F., Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, letter, December 27, 2001
Huthoefer, Gerald W., Air Traffic Controller, Gulfport-Biloxi, statement
AMASS updates, chart
RUNWAY INCURSIONS, FOCUSING ON THE TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT COLLISIONS
Tuesday, June 26, 2001
House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Aviation, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:17 p.m., in Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John L. Mica [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. MICA. Good afternoon. I would like to call this hearing of the House Aviation Subcommittee to order.
I apologize for the delay in beginning the proceedings today, but we did have votes. Hopefully, we will be able to go for about an hour and a-half here without further interruptions.
The order of business today will be opening statements by members, and then we have two panels to hear from. Of course, the topic of today's hearing is runway incursions, and we are focusing on technology to prevent collisions.
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I will go ahead and recognize myself for an opening statement and then will yield to other members as they join us.
Today, as I said, we have convened this hearing to review an important safety issue, and that is the growing problem of airport runway incursions. Runways incursions, in fact, are one of the most significant hazards of aviation today. In fact, the accident that caused the greatest loss of life in aviation history was the result of a runway incursion. I am speaking of course of the 1977 collision on the Canary Islands in which 583 people lost their lives.
The FAA has published four plans in the past decade designed to reduce the number of runway incursions and accidents. In spite of these plans, the number of runway incursions in the United States, unfortunately, has been steadily increasing. We have had an increase from 186 in 1993 to some 431 in the year 2000. Already in this year, 2001, there have been 166 recorded incursions. The numbers of incursions continue to rise.
With more airport congestion, with more takeoffs and landings, I believe we are courting disaster if we do not get the problem of runway incursions under control. One near collision occurred just last month at Reagan National Airport. Another occurred recently at Dallas-Fort Worth, when an American Airlines jet nearly collided with a cargo plane. This latter incident illustrates what we see in so many cases, that a loss of situational awareness by a pilot can have tragic results. Controllers had, in fact, cleared the cargo plane to cross the runway, but after doing so, the pilots made a wrong turn back onto the runway. The American flight, with 60 people on board, had to lift off before reaching the proper takeoff speed because the cargo plane was in its path. The American flight crew estimated that they missed the other aircraft by just 20 feet, 10 to 20 feet. Pretty close call.
Compared to the advanced technology that is available for airborne operations, the technology for surface navigation and communications unfortunately remains quite primitive. Pilots still navigate using paper charts of airport layouts, looking out the cockpit windows for taxiway and runway signs to guide them. Again, pretty primitive procedures in a day of unlimited technology. At most airports, controllers still control surface traffic by looking out the tower window to determine the identity, location, and the movement of aircraft on the taxiways and on the runways.
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The purpose of this hearing today is to focus on where we are with technology development and what it will require to deploy modern technology to assist pilots and our air traffic controllers.
DOT's Office of Inspector General has just completed an in-depth audit on this subject and will be announcing the results of that audit at our hearing today.
The only technologies that the Federal Aviation Administration has commissioned to date to help prevent runway incursions are the ASDE-3 radar and the Airport Movement Area Safety System, also known as AMASS. Like other air traffic control modernization programs, unfortunately, AMASS is behind schedule and grossly over budget. After nearly ten years of effort, the FAA announced last month that they approved the AMASS system for deployment to some 34 airports.
Unfortunately, the version of the AMASS that is currently being commissioned is, in fact, a shadow of its former self. The system has not achieved the capability that was originally intended. And the NTSB says that the current version will not eliminate all runway incursions or even all runway collisions. Not only does AMASS deliver less than was originally intended, its delivery has been delayed and its costs have soared.
In 1993, the FAA estimated that it would cost $59.8 million to provide 40 AMASS systems, with the last supposedly to be commissioned in 1996. In 1997, however, this subcommittee held a hearing where FAA testified for the record that the 40 AMASS systems that, again, had just been promised, would cost some $74.1 million and be commissioned by last August. The FAA insisted, and let me quote their words, this is their quote from that hearing, ''We see no significant risks on the horizon today. The programs are proceeding on schedule and we have confidence that these dates will be met.'' Despite this statement of confidence, only two AMASS systems have so far been commissioned. It now appears that AMASS will not be fully commissioned until November of 2002, and will cost in fact about $150 million, almost double the estimate given us in 1997. This, unfortunately, sounds familiar.
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We have got another vote pending. They have called five minute votes, so we are going to have to recess the hearing for about ten minutes. When we come back I will finish my opening statement and we will proceed. I apologize.
[Recess.]
Mr. MICA. I would like to reconvene the hearing.
I was in the process of concluding my opening statement. Basically, I have said that the AMASS program is some six years behind schedule and dramatically over budget. I know that some of this will sound familiar to members of our Aviation Subcommittee who have attended our recent oversight hearings on other FAA systems, such as STARS. Unfortunately, AMASS appears to be yet another example of an FAA system that takes twice as long, does half as much, and costs three times what it was originally projected.
But some form of AMASS at least is being deployed at last. We are eager to have this opportunity today to discuss both its capabilities and shortcomings, as well as other technology that might be used in the future to prevent runway incursions.
We will also hear today from Captain John Rutty, who has been working on anti-blocking radio equipment for some 20 years. Everyone from the pilots to the FAA to the NTSB seems to agree that blocked radio transmissions are a significant safety problem. But nothing seems to have been done to deal with this problem or to fix it. I think we are interested in learning why.
I would also like to recognize at the outset that the composition of our first panel, a rather large and distinguished group that is gathered here today, includes two agency heads and one non-agency head. I want to thank Acting Chairman Carmody and Inspector General Mead for their indulgence in this matter. We have put the panel together in this order, not for preference of rank or to rankle anybody's rank, but to expedite today's proceeding. We appreciate your working with us to allow this hearing to proceed in this fashion.
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I look forward to the witnesses' views and the testimony of our two panels today.
I would like to recognize at this time Mr. Lipinski, our Ranking Member.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We on the Democratic side will put our statements in the record. And I yield fifteen seconds to Mr. Ehlers.
[Laughter.]
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you for yielding. I appreciate that. I just wanted to say I am very happy to have this hearing, but I also wanted to mention this topic is one of the few that we consider that does have a solution, one that we can do and that we must implement. I am confident that we can resolve the problem; it is just a matter of developing the system that will deal with it. It is certainly more tractable than a lot of other things we deal with here. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. LIPINSKI. I take back my time and I yield back my time to the Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. MICA. Are there any other opening statements?
[No response.]
Mr. MICA. Being no further opening statements, we will get right to the business before us.
Our witnesses on our first panel consist of Carol Carmody, who is the Acting Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board; we also have Kennedy R. Mead, the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation; and we have Mr. William S. Davis, Director of Runway Safety at the Federal Aviation Administration, and he is accompanied by Mr. Steve Zaidman, Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions for the FAA. I think Mr. Davis brought some of his family members. Maybe when we recognize him, he can introduce them for the panel.
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Let us start first with Carol Carmody, Acting Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Incidently, I think some of you have been here before, but if you have not, if you have lengthy statements or documents you may want made part of the record, please indicate a request and they will be included as part of the record. We would like you to summarize your oral testimony before the subcommittee, if possible.
So with that, let us recognize Carol Carmody. Welcome.
TESTIMONY OF HON. CAROL J. CARMODY, ACTING CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD; HON. KENNETH R. MEAD, INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; AND WILLIAM DAVIS, DIRECTOR, RUNWAY SAFETY PROGRAM, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, ACCOMPANIED BY STEVEN ZAIDMAN, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR RESEARCH AND ACQUISITIONS
Ms. CARMODY. Thank you, Chairman Mica. Good afternoon, members of the committee. I would ask that my formal statement be included in the record and I will summarize.
Mr. MICA. Without objection, the entire statement will be made part of the record. Please proceed.
Ms. CARMODY. Thank you. According to FAA data, there were 431 runway incursions in the U.S. in 2000. That is more than twice the 200 incursions that occurred in 1994, and represents a significant increase from the 321 in 1999. As of yesterday, June 25th, there were 200 runway incursions plus two that are still under investigation. That compares to 198 for the same period of time last year. So the numbers are not going in the right direction. Just yesterday, there were four events that occurred—one at Washington National, one at O'Hare, one at Tucson, and one at JFK which is under investigation.
As requested by the committee, I would like to show a simulation or an animation of a runway incident that occurred at Chicago O'Hare International. We are showing it because it emphasizes some of our concerns. This incursion occurred on April 1, 1999, when an Air China Boeing 747 deviated from its assigned taxi route and mistakenly made a left turn back onto an active runway from where it had just landed. At the same time, a Korean Air Boeing 747 was taking off and approaching rotation speed on the active runway. The Korean Air pilot saw the other aircraft, abruptly rotated, lifted off early, and banked to the left to avoid a collision.
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First, you will see an overhead depiction showing the location of the two aircraft, then we will begin the animation and you will see the Korean jet as it proceeds down the runway, spots the Air China jet, and takes off early to avoid a collision. You will hear the sounds of the radio transmissions, first the taxi clearance for Air China and their acknowledgement, then the clearance for Korean Air and their acknowledgement. I think if my staff is ready back there, we can go ahead and start.
This is the depiction of where the aircraft actually were. On the right is the Air China. It should have gone up to the runway on the right of the picture. Instead, it made a left turn and was crossing the actual runway. Going straight up is the Korean 747.
Now we can move to the actual simulation.
[Control tower/Air China conversation played.]
Ms. CARMODY. What you heard was advice to Air China and their acknowledgement. In a moment you will hear the Korean Air.
[Control tower/Korean Air conversation played.]
Ms. CARMODY. Now you have just heard the tower clearing the Korean jet to take off and their acknowledgement. In a second or so, you will see the aircraft start to roll down the runway, it will gain speed, and fortunately it acquired enough speed to take off when it saw the Air China jet coming in from the right. Before long you will be able to see the Air China jet, on the right, starting to enter the runway. You will also hear the controller shout ''Stop.'' when he saw the Air China jet approaching. Even so, the Korean jet passed over Air China, with 75 feet to spare. The two aircraft held 390 people.
Had there been an AMASS, which there was not, the alert would have sounded at about the same time as the controller shouted. In just a few seconds more here you will see, on the right coming in, the gray shape of the Air China jet approaching the active runway. The comptroller, ''Stop.''
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[Control tower/Korean Air conversation played.]
Ms. CARMODY. There was discussion saying what happened there. Now this is one last view. Air China is on the left and coming towards us will be the Korean jet. This just gives you a better picture of how close they were.
Following that runway incursion, the Safety Board asked the FAA to demonstrate how AMASS would have performed had it been available. The simulation showed that the oral and visual alert parameters currently used would not have provided controllers and flight crews enough time to react and intervene to maintain a safe separation.
Since 1991, the Safety Board has recommended that the FAA expedite funding, development, and implementation of technology to prevent runway incursions. The FAA indicated their primary weapon to do so to reduce incursions was the AMASS system, which stands for Airport Movement Area Safety System. In March 2000, nine years after our original recommendation, and based on the FAA's response and progress, the Board classified this recommendation as ''Open-Unacceptable.'' The Board simply does not believe, Mr. Chairman, that AMASS as currently designed meets the safety goals of the original system. You said so in your testimony as well.
The video you have just seen was important because it illustrates graphically the importance of alerting pilots as well as controllers of impending incursions. Something as simple as stop bars installed at O'Hare would have alerted the pilot before he crossed the runway.
In July 2000, following a special public hearing on runway incursions, the Safety Board recommended that the FAA require a ground movement safety system that would provide a direct warning to pilots as well as controllers. Split seconds count in these instances and the crew needs to have as much time as possible to take action. As you saw in Chicago, there was not enough time. Last summer we made five additional recommendations that dealt with operational measures designed to improve safety, such as: requiring separate clearances for each runway crossing; not holding aircraft on active runways at night or in periods of reduced visibility; not issuing multiple landing clearances; and using standard ICAO phraseology. The FAA has not implemented any of these recommendations.
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Mr. Chairman, the FAA has done much on the subject of runway incursions. They have taken numerous actions in response to the Safety Board recommendations, as well as to recommendations by the DOT Inspector General. But it is disconcerting that the numbers are still increasing. Progress is not being made.
Despite a decade of research and development, six FAA administrators, millions of dollars, and six runway incursion program managers, this issue is still not being adequately addressed. Unless more is done soon to prevent runway incursions, it is just a matter of time before we have a disastrous runway collision.
That concludes my testimony, Mr. Chairman. I will take any questions.
Mr. MICA. Thank you. We will withhold questions until we have heard from all of the panelists.
Let me recognize now Mr. Ken Mead, who is the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation. Welcome, and you are recognized, sir.
Mr. MEAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is important at the outset here that we understand that these extreme cases of runway incursions require radical instantaneous action to avoid a collision between aircraft. This is the third report that we have issued on this subject since 1998.
As my colleague, Acting Chairman Carmody, notes, reducing runway incursions has been on the National Transportation Safety Board's 'Most wanted'' list of transportation safety improvements for a decade, and with good reason. Runway incursions, in our opinion, are probably the most serious safety issue facing the aviation system today. They continue to increase year after year. I think the aviation community, the travelling public has been most fortunate there has not been a tragedy of the magnitude that happened in Tenerife when two 747s collided in 1977.
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Before overviewing what FAA has been doing about runway incursions and, more importantly, what more FAA ought to be doing, I would like to give the perspective of some statistics.
This chart going up over here, I do not expect you to see the numbers, but the blue bars on that chart show the disturbing and growing trend line for runway incursions. I will read the numbers for you: 431 in 2000; 292 in 1997; 200 in 1994. So they have doubled since 1994. The blue bar for 2001 shows we are headed for another year like 2000. The yellow bar shows what the FAA's goals are, which there is no hope at all of meeting this year. About 60 percent of runway incursions on the blue bar are due to pilot error, Mr. Chairman. The remainder are about split between air traffic controller errors and vehicles being where they ought not to be on runways.
Mr. Chairman, after more than five years of this disturbing trend line, FAA started classifying runway incursions by degree of severity this year. This is long overdue but it is going to better position FAA to better set priorities and take corrective actions. In its report of last week, FAA said it was encouraged that the great majority of runway incursions are relatively minor and that they pose little chance of a collision. That observation though ought not to obscure the fact that about 20 percent, or 256, of these runway incursions were close calls, so close that a collision was barely avoided. Here is a chart on close calls. As that bar chart shows, the number of close calls has not gone down. They are staying in the neighborhood of 59 to 66 a year for several years. This chart also shows that at least one commercial airliner, represented by the blue bar, was involved in 65 percent of the very close calls in the United States.
Now our audit work shows that for the past several years FAA has, indeed, placed substantial management emphasis and focus on reducing runway incursions—more dollars, more training, better runway signs and lighting, procedures for operating in poor visibility, three runway incursion reduction plans, runway incursion summits, and numerous conferences. So why are the numbers all headed in the wrong direction? What can be done to reverse the trend?
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We found two significant factors that are severely constraining FAA's progress that need to be corrected. First, they have not done enough to provide technologies to airports with runway incursion problems. Second, there has been little continuity or stability in the runway safety program director. There have been six directors in five years, and that director has little authority to ensure that initiatives undertaken by FAA employees responsible for runway safety are actually completed, or that those employees are held accountable for their performance. I would like to elaborate briefly.
The very slow pace of fielding technology, the failure to move forward expeditiously with promising new technology is a major part of the problem and, hence, must be focused on as a major part of the solution. Airports with runway incursion problems need technology. Since 1991, as you pointed out, FAA has been developing the Airport Movement Area Safety System, AMASS for short, at 34 of the largest airports. That is really a software enhancement to a radar that is designed to alert air traffic controllers of impending runway conflicts. It has experienced $86 million in cost increases and is about six years late, mostly due to software development and operational problems. The radar to which it is attached was itself many years late and millions over budget.
This month, FAA commissioned its first two systems at San Francisco and Detroit. There remains uncertainty as to how well it is going to work and it is doubtful, in our opinion, whether FAA's deployment schedule at additional airports will be met. One concern area is that AMASS experiences problems with false alerts, which in itself can present a safety problem.
Anyway, FAA has made progress with this problem at San Francisco and Detroit. But there are 32 airports left to go and each airport presents its own particular issue with this technology.
Now I would want to stress that most of FAA's major technology efforts have focused on helping controllers prevent accidents, although pilot error continues to be the leading cause of runway incursions. FAA needs to expedite technologies like in-cockpit moving maps and Automatic Dependent Surveillance, called ADS-B for short. These technologies in fact have the greatest potential for reducing these incursions. And the pace here has been too slow.
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Why is this particular technology so important? Well, because they recreate a redundancy, it is a second set of eyes, by including pilots in the loop to help the pilot see where they are and where other objects are on the runway. Currently, pilots are largely dependent on the controller to alert them to collision hazards. The current situation is somewhat analogous to being in a car and receiving a cell phone call to watch out for a truck that you cannot see.
Lastly, improvements in program oversight are needed. Initiatives are not completed on time, completed initiatives are not evaluated to determine if they are working. An important factor here is that the Runway Safety Director has little authority to ensure that employees from other lines of business in FAA are fully supporting the Runway Safety Program mission. The director, in our opinion, ought to have the ability to hold people accountable and provide input on their performance appraisals and on the decision of whether or not they get a bonus. That, we think, would be consistent with FAA's efforts to establish itself as a results-based organization.
As for the recommendations in our report, Mr. Chairman, FAA agreed to most of them. But there are two in particular that I would like to cite.
FAA's response to our recommendations on expediting new technologies and strengthening the director's authority over the Runway Safety Program and holding people accountable was ambiguous, noncommittal, and we have no idea what their milestones are for implementing those recommendations. So we will be requesting the FAA Administrator to reexamine those issues and provide some specific dates for implementation.
That concludes my oral statement, sir.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
We will recognize now Mr. William S. Davis, Director of Runway Safety for the Federal Aviation Administration. Welcome, and you are recognized, sir.
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Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to take the opportunity to introduce my wife, Karlyn, and my son, Tommy, who are in the audience.
Mr. MICA. I am going to ask them stand up. Is that them in the back there? Thank you.
Mr. DAVIS. I asked them to attend today so they could fully understand the problem that we are up against. I have submitted a formal statement and request that it be entered in the record.
Mr. MICA. Without objection, your entire statement will be made part of the record. Please proceed.
Mr. DAVIS. Chairman Mica, Congressman Lipinski, members of the subcommittee, my name is Bill Davis, I am the Director of the FAA's Runway Safety Program. I am happy to appear before you this afternoon to testify on this important issue regarding runway safety.
Administrator Garvey is committed to a better understanding of why runway incursions happen. We feel that better information on runway incursions will help us be more effective in determining how the risk can be reduced. Despite continued efforts by the FAA to reduce the number of runway incursions in the past years, the total number of runway incursions has increased and the number of major runway incursions, those that pose the most significant threat to safety, have remained steady. Everyone agrees that this is unacceptable.
The FAA recently released a report on runway safety that analyzed every reported runway incursion that occurred from 1997 through 2000, a total of 1,369 incidents. Every incursion that we looked at had a common thread—human error, whether the error was made by a controller or a pilot, a driver or a pedestrian. This is why the problem of runway incursions is so difficult to resolve. As we have long known, to err is human, and always will be. Our challenge is to minimize the results of human error so that the risk to safety is limited.
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One of the reasons we feel that the recently released report is important is that we believe we can better manage what we can better measure. The analysis in the report represents a different, and I believe better, way of measuring runway incursions by the risk they impose. By focusing for the first time on the severity of incursions, we can better target our resources. If we can bring down the number of major runway incursions, the category A and B events I described in my prepared statement, that represent about 20 percent of all incursions, safety will be improved, even if the overall number of incursions remains the same. That is where technologies like AMASS and ASDE-X will be helpful. They will not prevent incursions, they will help controllers better recognize developing situations and improve overall runway safety.
In addition to technology, we are working with our partners in the aviation industry on education, communications, training, and procedures. We are working with airports on runway signs and lighting. We are committed to exploring all initiatives that have the potential to effectively improve runway safety. The more information we have the better we can understand the problem and target our solutions.
Over a thousand runway safety improvement ideas were collected at a recent National Runway Safety Summit held in June of 2000. Out of these thousand recommendations, 50 roll-up initiatives were created and 10 near-term initiatives were identified. Of the ten near-term initiatives, four are complete, two will be complete next month, two will be complete by the end of the fiscal year, and the remaining two will be complete in the Spring of 2002.
My office was created to focus even greater attention on the issue of runway incursions and how best to improve runway safety in our Nation. For the first time, we are categorizing runway incursions based on the level of risk they pose. For the first time, we have nine runway safety program managers in our regional offices to work on our National Runway Safety Program at the local level. For the first time, we are developing more comprehensive reporting requirements to obtain data that will not only tell what happened, but tell why runway incursions happen. Understanding the whys of runway incursions is the key to reducing both the severity and number of events.
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Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate that the issue of runway safety is a top priority for the FAA. I have accepted this job because I want to make a difference in an area that needs improvement. I look forward to working with this committee as we start to better understand runway incursions and implement what needs to be done to improve runway safety.
As mentioned, with me is Mr. Steve Zaidman, the Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions. We will happy to answer any of your questions. Thank you.
Mr. MICA. Thank you.
Let us get right into some questions, if I may. First of all, the AMASS program sounds like it is not atypical of some of the other programs that we have in FAA where we are trying to develop a technology to assist in air traffic control—behind schedule as far as development and over cost. Mr. Mead, I have heard conflicting reports about how much over budget this is. Did you say three times the initial cost?
Mr. MEAD. I think this was initially supposed to come in around $50-$60 million. Now it is up to about $150 million.
Mr. MICA. And I am told that it is six years behind schedule, approximately.
Mr. MEAD. Yes. And this is really a software attachment for radar, a radar called ASDE. And ASDE itself was many years late.
Mr. MICA. Is this just developed for commercial use, or is this also a military developmental project?
Mr. MEAD. Well, this I believe was started as an FAA project in response to runway incursions. The original Airport Surface Detection Equipment, that is the model, its original cost was projected at $83 million. Its current cost is around $250 million. Part of that number includes an increase in the number of units. The AMASS system, the software, that was originally $59 million, and now it is projected at $146 million. And each one of those was late by many years.
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Mr. MICA. The other thing, too, I found that we have some FAA and departmental responsibility for the delays, and then we have some vendors. Now what is the history of the vendors on this? Mr. Zaidman, maybe you can tell us. Who is the contractor now, who has had it, what is the history of the contracting?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. The current contractor, Mr. Chairman, is Northrop Grumman Corporation.
Mr. MICA. How long have they had it?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. That contract was awarded when they took over from Westinghouse.
Mr. MICA. From the beginning?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Let me start at the beginning, if I may. In 1996, we initiated a contract with Anordon Corporation in Connecticut. That corporation was subsequently bought out by the Westinghouse Corporation in the mid-1990s, which several years later was then bought out by Northrop Grumman.
Mr. MICA. So we have been through three vendors at least.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Yes. But the contracts are the same.
Mr. MICA. Have there been subcontractors in this too, or does Northrop Grumman have the whole enchilada?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. There are some minor subs, but basically Northrop Grumman is the principal contractor.
Mr. MICA. Okay. What is the problem for the developmental delays? Maybe, Mr. Mead, you can give me your observation, and Mr. Zaidman. Usually I find that FAA has some responsibility in changing the specs or the vendor has some responsibility in not completing the package. Mr. Mead, maybe you can tell me, have you looked at this?
Mr. MEAD. Yes. We looked at both the underlying radar and the software enhancement that provides alerts. There have been software development issues with each of them, as there are with many software intensive acquisitions, whether they are done by FAA or anybody else. But also in this case, one of the problems has been that the AMASS is supposed to provide an alert to the controller of an impending runway incursion or a collision situation. And a false alert can be just as bad as no alert at all.
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Mr. MICA. So is this a problem of the contractor developing something that does not meet the specs, or is this a problem with FAA not being specific enough in the product they wanted to be delivered? What is the developmental problem? Mr. Zaidman?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. I will be happy to give you my perspective. I think there is a shared responsibility, both FAA's and the contractor's.
Mr. MICA. There usually is. Tell us how it goes.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Yes. On the FAA's side, I believe we were overly optimistic in attributing what the technology could or could not do in terms of anticipating a future event, such as a runway accident or even an incursion. We misread the amount of anticipation that the technology could give us and, therefore, expected more from AMASS than the system could legitimately deliver in terms of predicting.
The problem on the contractor's side is, AMASS depends, as Mr. Mead said, on a radar which was specified for this application. Radar was the only technology that existed at the time that was able to tell where the aircraft were on the airport. The problem that the vendor and we have is that radar is not designed to look down on the ground.
Mr. MICA. Is there a plan to also incorporate global satellite navigation with this?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. In the next phase, when you get into ASDE-X.
Mr. MICA. Not with AMASS?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Not with AMASS.
Mr. MICA. We have two of these commissioned AMASS and some others in test phase. Are there just two commissioned; is that correct?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. We commissioned the first two earlier this month.
Mr. MICA. But Mr. Mead says that while not delivering what it was supposed to deliver, it also delivers false alerts which can, Ms. Carmody shook her head, is also a potential problem.
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Mr. ZAIDMAN. Correct. One of the problems with a radar-based technology, of which ASDE and AMASS are examples, is you do get false returns, phantom targets that are projected on the airport surface. Sometimes they are projected on the runway when actually no aircraft exists. That is a basic radar problem that comes from reflecting off of hangars and buildings and other airplanes.
Mr. MEAD. One concern, Mr. Chairman, with the San Francisco installation is that even though it is commissioned, in order to minimize the number of false alerts, they turned off some functionality at an intersecting runway. So you will not get an alert at this intersection point.
Mr. MICA. One more question. Mr. Davis, you are the sixth Director of Runway Safety in five years. Is that correct?
Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. MICA. How long have you been on the job?
Mr. DAVIS. Two months and a week.
Mr. MICA. Two months and a week.
Mr. DAVIS. And two days.
Mr. MICA. It would not be fair to pick on you yet, but we will get there.
Mr. DAVIS. I have been studying hard; talking slow and reading fast.
Mr. MICA. The problem, as I analyze it, I see the same problem with your position as I do with others in FAA, is you are given certain responsibility that is sometimes undefined and not the adequate authority to actually carry out the mission. Is that sort of the problem that they have had with the position in the past? And do you see that as sort of the crux of your problem?
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Mr. DAVIS. That is one of the dilemmas to the position. It is the dilemma really to any matrix style organization. This has been raised to both my Associate Administrator as well as to the Deputy Administrator for the FAA. We intend to discuss this issue as a part of the safety oversight organization which is now under review at the FAA.
Mr. MICA. Well, just in conclusion, I do not think it is unique to your position. I have found this, again, just in the last five or six months, in examining the management structure lines of organization and responsibility throughout FAA. We are going to have to look at some way to get that straightened out, including your position. So we will be talking with you in that regard.
Let me yield at this juncture to our Ranking Member, Mr. Lipinski, for questions.
Mr. LIPINSKI. And I yield my five minutes to Mr. Baldacci.
Mr. BALDACCI. If that is okay, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Ranking Member for yielding me such time. I would like to ask Ms. Carmody, you mention in your testimony six additional recommendations on runway incursions made to the FAA on June 6, 2001. You listed three of these recommendations being in ''unacceptable'' status. Could you explain that.
Ms. CARMODY. Thank you. That was based on the FAA's response to our recommendations. As I recall, one of the ones that was in ''unacceptable'' status was our recommendation that standard ICAO phraseology be adopted. The FAA responded they were looking into this but they were not particularly inclined in that direction. I believe they cited concerns about the general aviation population having to be re-educated in different phraseology.
Another recommendation we made was to cease the practice that the FAA has of issuing multiple landing clearances and to adopt the ICAO procedure for landing clearance, which would be not to clear one aircraft until the other has already crossed the runway threshold. FAA responded, as I recall, that it would complicate operations and would probably slow things down.
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There was one more, and Ms. Rolett, can you help me with what the third one was? It had to do with issuing—we recommended that individual runway clearances be issued each time a runway was crossed. The FAA again said that would add to the complexity of the controllers job and might lead to further complications and further incidents.
So those were the three.
Mr. BALDACCI. It just seemed to me from reading the testimony that a lot of things just are not necessarily technology-driven. Some of the recommendations that you bring up are just sort of common sense. And I was reading one of the pilot's comments was that a lot of signage needs to be improved out on the runway. That is not any new technology that is necessary or any scientific research and development that needs to be developed, but just better signage out there.
One of the other recommendations your Board made was it recommended that the FAA require the use of the standard ICAO phraseology for airport surface operations and periodically emphasize the use of that phraseology to controllers.
Ms. CARMODY. Yes.
Mr. BALDACCI. What benefit would this have?
Ms. CARMODY. The ICAO phraseology is International Civil Aviation Organization phraseology. That is the U.N. body that sets aviation standards internationally. They have a standard air traffic language that everybody else in the world uses. There are certain recognizable phrases in the ICAO regulations that other nations use, FAA does not.
Our point in this was that many of the pilots that are involved in these incursions are pilots whose first language is not English. If they are hearing phrases that they do not understand in a language that they are not sure of, it just increases the possibility of misunderstanding. So we have said why not go with the ICAO phraseology, and while you are at it speak slowly.
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Mr. BALDACCI. Well I want to second that, because in watching this particular incident with the Chinese carrier and a Korean carrier, to be able to recognize that maybe they do not all speak the same language, if it is going to be a split second decision, you would like to think they are going to understand exactly what is taking place out there. And just about that particular incident, it was kind of striking to me, I know how tight the air space is, the pilot who did the banking to get away from the aircraft coming on, was the stop by the controller to the pilot going down the runway, or was it to the pilot coming across?
Ms. CARMODY. The stop was to the pilot that was starting to cross the runway, the Air China pilot that had been told to go to another runway, and when the controller saw he was encroaching on the active runway, it was to that plane he was shouting stop.
Mr. BALDACCI. Because it was not clear to me who is he saying ''stop'' to and whether the person could actually understand ''stop.''
Ms. CARMODY. Maybe the tone of voice was sufficient.
Mr. BALDACCI. The only other thing would have been the banking itself, knowing how limited the airspace is, if that could have created a possible near-collision. I am not sure. You would not be aware of whether there was any opportunity for any of that to happen?
Ms. CARMODY. Not anything at that time, evidently. There was no report of anything else.
Mr. BALDACCI. I would like to thank the Ranking Member for yielding me the time, and the Chairman. I look forward to working with you as we try to develop the technology but also the common sense approaches. It would be unfortunate if we had to mandate it, but I think that we need to realize that not everything is going to be technology-driven. We have got to recognize that it is a global economy and we are going to have to be a little more user-friendly. I thank the Chairman.
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Mr. MICA. Thank you.
Let me recognize the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Ehlers.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was very interested in the testimony. First of all a comment. It seems to me that a major problem that we have always had with air traffic control issues and with the FAA is a consistent under-estimation of the difficulty of writing software and handling the situation. And since I have written a fair amount of software in my life, I can certainly sympathize with that. But the point, it seems to me, would be to recognize that going in.
I also have a philosophy of life that you do not try to crack walnuts with a sledgehammer when you can do it with a nutcracker. And it seems to me that the AMASS approach may be a sledgehammer approach. The testimony says that the problem is pilot error. And I am not sure the best system is to have the controller find out there is a problem and then have him then warn the pilot. It would be much better to have a warning for the pilot immediately.
I can think of a lot of very simple, direct methods of handling this without software, such as whenever a runway is cleared for take-off, that you could have on all the taxiways crossing it the bumper bars, as Ms. Carmody called them, or something that automatically pops up and prevents anyone from crossing the runway. An even simpler one, since you use lights extensively in runways, taxiways, and so forth, is have very bright flashing red lights as soon as a runway becomes active so that the pilots can immediately see that. It is pretty hard to ignore that day or night, and all of us are trained to stop when we see red lights. There are a number of simple methods and I think we should use those.
I would also certainly support the suggestion of Ms. Carmody that air traffic controllers might speak more slowly. I fly in the cockpit occasionally, as many members of this committee do, and I am just astounded at the difference between controllers. I have found that invariably when they have a controller who speaks slowly and clearly there is never a request to repeat. I have heard others where there is constant requests to repeat. Clearly, in an emergency situation you do not have time to repeat.
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My question is addressed to Ms. Carmody, and Ken Mead, if he wishes to answer. Carol, your agency does a lot of good analysis of events such as this or accidents. Since most of this is pilot error, have you analyzed at all the pilot factors that might come into this, such as: the experience that the respective pilots have had in each incursion; the training that they might have received; is there a difference between foreign pilots and American pilots in terms of the number of incursions and potential accidents; and something else we have looked at here before, of course, and that is fatigue. The Air China pilot most likely came in from a very lengthy flight. Was there a fatigue factor in any of these flights? Have you looked at the variables, and I am sure there are others you could identify, and have you picked out what really might be the major contribution to the pilot error?
Ms. CARMODY. Yes and no. When there has been an accident we look at all factors and, in some cases, and I may defer to Mr. Haueter, who is the Deputy in Aviation, in some cases some of the factors you have mentioned are germane. With respect to runway incursions, we have not done an intensive look at each one with respect to the pilots. We do know that most of the incidents occur because of errors that pilots made due to misunderstanding instructions, due to not seeing something, due to misunderstanding the clearance, or sometimes they get a perfectly good clearance and then they proceed, as this pilot did, and do the wrong thing. We have not gone in-depth into those reasons for all the incursions.
I will ask Mr. Haueter if he wants to add to that. No? Essentially, no.
Mr. EHLERS. All right. I think that would be well worth looking at if we are really going to take a serious effort to reduce it.
A final comment to the FAA. Take a look at the light idea. That is incredibly cheap. It would be less than 10 percent of what you have already spent and would fit with the other patterns around an airport. It would not be at all hard to do.
Mr. DAVIS. Sir, we are doing that. We have added that as an ongoing R&D initiative. It was tested previously several years ago. There were problems with the activation of the lights and the lights not being reliable, indicating basically the wrong signal.
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We have also issued a note to all of our controllers to speak in a more intelligible manner, particularly when they are speaking with crews where English is not a primary language.
Mr. EHLERS. Frankly, you are going to have to reinforce that because it is an ingrained habit and you are really going to have to crack down on some. But I cannot understand why there would be a problem with lights. That is something that you can clearly solve.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. May I?
Mr. EHLERS. Yes.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. We did some experiments at Boston Logan and now we are using some new technology in Long Beach. The problem that we had at Boston Logan is the surveillance of the aircraft was not reliable based on radar, which was the triggering mechanism for the lights. The lights were going on and off incorrectly when, in fact, no aircraft were on the active runway. So they were going on when they should not have gone on. And because of that, it was more of a safety risk to introduce the technology.
At Long Beach Airport, what we are experimenting with now are magnetic strips under the pavement similar to the kind that trigger red lights or green lights at intersections. That seems to be much more promising in terms of a reliable indicator to trigger the lights.
Mr. EHLERS. Okay. I am talking about something even simpler. That the tower, when they say ''cleared for takeoff,'' they push a button and red lights go on along every runway to stop any taxi at—
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Yes. We had one experimental program at John F. Kennedy Airport to do that, too. In addition to the controller workload issues, there were also human factor issues of erring at incorrect times and turning the switch on and off. It is a very complex airport, as you are aware, and it got to be too much for a human to comprehend all the movements there. So I think it is a very worthwhile suggestion which we are pursuing, but one that we have come to know is a very complex issue.
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Mr. EHLERS. Well, I will be happy to talk to you further and give you other simplifying ideas.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. We would love to talk to you about them.
Mr. EHLERS. I have spent years working in labs and I think I might have something to offer. Thank you very much.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Thank you.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
I recognize the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Johnson.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I use one of the airports listed here for these incursions, one of the top ten, and it does cause some concern.
You indicate that most of the incursions are caused by pilot error. I have a whole pile of letters in my office wanting to extend the retirement age, and I know why the age cap has been placed there. Is there any correlation between the pilot error and physical condition deteriorating from natural aging?
Mr. DAVIS. Congresswoman, we do not know that. One of the projects that we are undertaking as quickly as we can is in an effort to improve the data collection, so that information such as age, flight hours, fatigue, time in the air, topics that were mentioned, which we would like to capture can be captured. We do not necessarily have all that information now.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you.
Mr. MEAD. May I add something to that?
Ms. JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. MEAD. Between March of 2001 and March of 2002, FAA was running a pilot program where they would offer pilots immunity and they would thereby get to the root cause of some of these incidents. I think that is probably one useful way of collecting information along the lines you describe. However, I think it is unfortunate, but, although the Runway Incursion Office at FAA wanted to continue that program, FAA has since discontinued it anyway.
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Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you.
Mr. DAVIS. If I might just add one more thing to that. We have recently resurrected that in the Runway Incursion Office, and we have every confidence that we are going to be able to turn around and reissue the program.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. What about congestion? Is pilot error more common when it is a very congested airport?
Mr. DAVIS. The data were very interesting on this. We rank ordered all the airports in a study, from the very busiest all the way out to the least busy, and then we compared that identical rank order with the number of runway incursions at each airport. We found that there was a general correlation to volume, but not a specific correlation to volume. I could give you a few examples. Dulles Airport, with which you are all familiar, is a very busy airport, one of the top 32 that we studied. It has a very low incidence of runway incursions. Other airports that have slightly increased volume, for example, Kansas City, has a similar volume, but has significantly greater number of incidents.
We believe that volume is somehow generally related, but there are other factors that are involved. Those factors include airport design, the type of traffic mix at the airport, local climate, and those kinds of things.
Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady.
Let me recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Isakson.
Mr. ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Carmody, during the showing of the Korean Air and Air China flight, you made a statement, and I want to make sure I heard it right, that when the controller yelled ''Stop,'' it was about the same time AMASS would have, if it were in operation, notified the controller of an incursion. Is that right?
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Ms. CARMODY. Right.
Mr. ISAKSON. Assuming the controller had not seen that, and assuming AMASS was in place and sounded the alarm in that incident, what would he have done? Would he have done the same thing, yelled ''Stop.'' Would that have been about all he could do given the proximity of that?
Ms. CARMODY. Probably given the time. One of our concerns is that six seconds is a very short time for a controller to recognize what the problem is, decide what to do with it, communicate with the aircraft. He probably would have done the same thing.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. Davis, I believe your testimony said that about 20 percent of the reported incursions are considered major and that we had about 65 a year for the last 4 years. Is that right?
Mr. DAVIS. That is correct.
Mr. ISAKSON. Are all of those 65 incursions two different aircraft. You are not talking about ground equipment or anything, you are talking about aircraft?
Mr. DAVIS. It is a combination of aircraft and ground vehicles, two aircraft, aircraft and individuals.
Mr. ISAKSON. I want to sort of make an observation here. If, in fact, pilot error and I am sure sometimes controller error may have contributed to these incursions, it would also seem that since none of them resulted in a collision, which I assume is correct, none of those 65 each in the last four years, then the other pilot who was not in error kept it from being a collision. That was obviously true in the Korean Air example. Is that a fair statement to make?
Mr. DAVIS. That is. There were actually three accidents which were recorded during the period of the study. They were folded back into the data to ensure we would capture them in the most conservative way as a Category A, the most severe rating of runway incursion.
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To answer your other question, there are a number of safety redundancies in the system. One of them is controller training. By and large, controllers provide extremely reliable and excellent service. Another is pilot training. Another is the design of aircraft. And what you saw in this case was a case where a rapidly unfolding event was recognized, but not quickly enough by the controller. A pilot, expertly trained in a well-designed airplane, was able to muster his resources and avoid the accident. Flying over 25 years in the system, I believe that this level of redundancy is the reason that we do not have more events.
Mr. ISAKSON. I guess the comment I was going to make, I think you said we have spent $243 million on AMASS, is that right? Who said that? Somebody said some number. Anyway, it just seemed to me that if AMASS in its operational mode could have done no more than that controller did in that incident between Air China and Korean Air, you could do a heck of a lot of controller and pilot training for $243 million that might be better spent. I think what Mr. Ehlers said is true, you appear to be using a sledgehammer to solve a problem where you need some fine tuning. That is the only observation I am making, but I am not an engineer and I am not a pilot.
Mr. DAVIS. As the program manager but not as a technical expert, I would recommend and strongly suggest that we do proceed with AMASS because it will do a lot of good. The system is not perfect, we recognize that, but it will provide increased situational awareness and increased alerts to the controllers, and it will provide benefits, in my view, which exceeds the cost, the $35 million or so of additional cost that is required to put out the remaining 32 sites. The return to the public is sufficient that I believe we should proceed. I would want it for my family, and I would want it for your families, and I want it for the Nation.
Mr. ISAKSON. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
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Let me recognize the gentlelady from Nevada, Ms. Berkley.
Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you having this hearing.
This question is for Mr. Davis. Two of the airports in my district were cited in the FAA Runway Safety Report. McCarran International was found to be among one of the safest major airports in the country for runway safety. I believe in the year 2000 there were only two incursions. We are very pleased with that given the fact that McCarran Airport's takeoffs and landings have increased by 10 percent. North Las Vegas Airport, on the other hand, ranked in the top five for runway incursions. In a four year period, North Las Vegas had 26 runway incursions. Six of the ten airports that are ranked among the worst in the country for runway incursions are receiving upgrades to either ASDE-3 systems or the AMASS system.
I have been an advocate for increased funding for runway safety. Is North Las Vegas Airport going to be upgraded in the near future any time soon for either one of these systems?
Mr. DAVIS. I have been in discussion with the Inspector General about this airport and several other airports that are not scheduled at the present time to receive ASDE or AMASS. My intent is to have a team go look at North Las Vegas and take a look at what type of technologies will best meet the problems of the people, principally the general aviation community, who operate out of the North Las Vegas Airport.
Ms. BERKLEY. Do you know when you are planning to do that? If at all possible, I would love to coordinate my schedule to be there because I am very concerned about this.
Mr. DAVIS. I have agreed to do it within the next calendar year. We can certainly advise you when it is scheduled and you are more than welcome to attend.
Ms. BERKLEY. I would appreciate that. Now if one of these systems is not put in place or is not recommended by you, I do not know whether one of these systems would be a sledgehammer or a nutcracker, but I am wondering if there is any other solutions you would suggest or methods that you could offer to North Las Vegas?
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Mr. DAVIS. There are several that we are looking at. Last year we put out a broad area announcement and are reviewing six technologies that were brought to our attention. We have also added another technology that we are reviewing. We hope to complete the reviews in the next year and to try to put some prototypes out there. So in light of the technologies that we are reviewing under the broad area announcement, in addition to possibly the ASDE components, our hope is that we are going to develop and determine low-cost solutions that are appropriate for many airports around the country.
Ms. BERKLEY. And if I could urge you to come sooner in the year than later. My air traffic controllers have spoken to me numerous times about this issue and they are very, very concerned. Las Vegas is not a bad place to visit, I might add.
Mr. DAVIS. Message received.
Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you.
Mr. MEAD. I might just say, I think FAA has responded to our recommendation that they evaluate places like North Las Vegas, that are currently scheduled to receive nothing, that they should receive something.
One of the interesting statistics on this airport, North Las Vegas, is that substantially, not all, but substantially all the incursions there were pilot error-caused. It is a fairly unusual profile.
Ms. BERKLEY. How do you account for that? Because I do not think there are many non-English-speaking pilots landing at North Las Vegas.
Mr. DAVIS. It is one of the factors that we will have to look into. I know it is a large general aviation airport and it is a busy general aviation airport. We have agreed to partner with AOPA to increase the awareness, increase the training, and work as a team to reduce the number of runway incursions that the general aviation community experiences across the entire Nation. North Las Vegas would certainly benefit from that, in addition to the visit we intend to do next year.
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Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady.
Let me recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Hayes.
Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me review just a minute. Was it you, Mr. Mead, that said runway incursions are the most serious problems that we face, or was that somebody else?
Mr. MEAD. That is what I said, sir.
Mr. HAYES. Okay. Is that what you meant?
Mr. MEAD. Yes.
Mr. HAYES. Mr. Davis, you are a pilot, right?
Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir, 25 years in the system, 30 years managing airplanes.
Mr. HAYES. Okay. I am about the same level of experience and if I were to go fly today, runway incursions are not the most serious problem I would face. So I just wanted to make sure that we were clear on that.
Of the listed incursions on your charts, what percentage of those incursions occurred when visibility was a mile or less?
Mr. DAVIS. I am not able to answer that. The data that we have available to us are not reliable enough to give you an answer that I could stand behind.
Mr. HAYES. Do you know, Mr. Mead?
Mr. MEAD. No, I do not.
Mr. HAYES. Okay. The reason I ask is because there is a very distinct difference between runway incursions when visibility is good and when it is bad. As far as I am concerned, the only time this very expensive equipment is really going to pay dividends for you is when you cannot see. Now my question, the guy in the Air China airline, why was he sitting on the left not looking out the window and seeing the other aircraft coming? He must have been dead asleep. No pun intended; I did not mean to say that. But as Mr. Baldacci said, common sense is going to go a lot further than anything else we talk about here.
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Mr. Ehlers he took away my idea. Think of having an additional ground controller who is in the cab of the tower watching for potential incursion situations but not have to have a high level experience. It would be a good way to come into the system. He is the one in the tower watching to see if this is going to happen. He could be a far better alert than an electronic device that is going to be erratic because of the nature of taxi it up, hold short. Clear it into position and hold, the lights go to yellow, as Mr. Ehlers said, clear it for take off, the lights go to red. Very straight forward. Very simple. What do you think of that idea? Anybody who wants to comment.
Mr. MEAD. I would just say that I think that FAA's technology focus needs to emphasize what you are speaking of as well as letting the pilot see what is going on around that plane. Currently, pilots do not know what is going on around their plane. They are dependent for that information on the controller.
Mr. HAYES. That is not true at all. That is not true at all. If I am cleared for takeoff on runway 15 at National, the first thing I am going to do is look out the left window at what is happening on the north-south runway.
Mr. MEAD. Are you going to see what is behind you?
Mr. HAYES. What is behind me? I am going to see that when I taxi onto the runway. But the more pressing problem, the situation that you illustrate here, was the guy that looked down the runway. If I am taking off on 15 and I look over there and someone is on short final or someone is already rolling, I am going to say did the controller make a mistake. I am responsible for some of the things that I do. I think part of what we are missing here is the whole nine yards. If you want to raise awareness, there are a number of ways to do it. I am not opposed to the expensive equipment but there are a lot of quick fixes available. One would be if you simply add to your approach ATIS the message ''Be Aware, Heavy Ground Traffic,'' ''Be Aware of Incursions.'' We put on there about noise abatement. That is not nearly as big a safety issue as runway incursion. What are the practical common sense things that we can do when we leave here this afternoon that are going to make a difference.
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Mr. Carmody, you talked about re-educating general aviation pilots. I did not hear the rest of that story. Was that going somewhere in particular?
Ms. CARMODY. Only to a question about phraseology. One of the reasons the FAA gave us for resisting changing to the international phraseology, the ICAO phraseology, was the concern that general aviation pilots would have to be re-educated, reinstructed in phraseology.
Mr. HAYES. Well, that is important. And the FAA does a good job of safety seminars, AOPA does the same thing. I think general aviation is very responsive and would be very eager to participate in anything that is going to improve safety. The only term I have heard in, gosh, I do not even remember how long, 30 years of flying was in Canada one time and the guy says ''Go for the button.'' Anybody here know what ''Go for the button'' means? I assumed it was go for the numbers. But that is the only time. There are not that many unusual terms that are used, and we are certainly ready to respond.
I guess my point in all of this is the personal responsibility issue is oftentimes pushed aside as we go into all these gee whiz computer-generated things. You cannot take the place of an aware pilot, a professional controller, and proper coordination between the two. We have had all these discussions, Mr. Chairman, about runway incursions and more concrete and increasing availability of air space, but it comes back to training and let us make sure that we have got that extra controller in the tower and that we have got the intelligent, educated pilot. That is going to get us to the finish line.
Mr. Davis?
Mr. DAVIS. Yes. I would like to add a couple of things. Reference the ICAO discussion that you were just having, that is an issue that is under review right now as a part of a phraseology group that we have conducted and are coordinating. That group is due to report out this year. One of the things that they are looking at, among other things, is the ICAO phraseology.
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Other things you mentioned. With regard to the multiple takeoff clearances or landing clearances, we intend to model some of those options next year in our next fiscal year budget. The suggestion on ATIS, I have taken a note on that and I will try to get you an answer. I would also offer that the controllers' association is going to be with us as part of the next panel and I think they could offer some expert insight into some of the suggestions that you had regarding activation of lights.
[The information received follows:]
The suggestion concerning the use of the Automated Terminal Information Broadcast (ATIS) system to provide runway safety information to pilots is well founded. However, the current thinking about providing runway safety information to pilots through ATIS, is that ATIS broadcasts are already considered by many pilots to be too long, especially at busy airports. Adding additional information (such as runway safety information) would adversely impact the ability of aircrews to obtain critical airport information when it is needed. Hence, this could create an unintended safety liability.
FAA is looking at alternative methods to spread the runway safety message to pilots by examining and enhancing outreach efforts with pilot organizations and trade publications.
Mr. DAVIS.Finally, the only thing that I could add is that some of the airports that we have are very, very large and it is difficult to see parts of those airports from the control tower. So that is one thing we have to keep in mind as we integrate the human factor into our solutions. Sometimes we are pushing humans to the edge of their limits.
Mr. HAYES. Do not call me till you get to the fire house. They cannot see me when I am on Signature's ramp, but, again, you are paying attention. That is no big deal. Thanks for your testimony. I am from the Government. I am here to help you.
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Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
Let us hear from the lady from California, Ms. Millender-McDonald.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you and the Ranking Member for convening this hearing. It is extremely timely. As I have spoken a couple of weeks ago with some of my air traffic controllers out in California, and as I look at this report that you have provided for us, four of the ten airports with double-digit incursions occurring are in California. So that becomes extremely problematic for me as a Member representing California.
I agree with the gentleman who spoke before me who said sometimes it takes common sense in order for us to try to alleviate some of the problems. In looking at the chart, it suggests to me that a lot of these runway incursions have been done by pilot deviation, in fact, the majority of them, with the exception of 1994. Yet, Mr. Davis, you intimated that traffic mix along with design perhaps have been part of the concerns or the problems. When you look at this, you look at California, especially Los Angeles being one of the large airports that you speak of and you sometimes cannot see, what in the sam hill can we do about this if not signs that direct some of that traffic on the ground? It says here that vehicle/pedestrian deviation is one where a vehicle or individual enters a runway without the air traffic controller's approval. And you are suggesting that sometimes high up you cannot see down on the ground. What can we do in this traffic mix to try to alleviate these incursions?
When you have 33 runway incursions at Los Angeles Airport and 25 at Long Beach, those are dead in my district, I am going to have to hear from someone as to what we are going to do to alleviate this problem. It has been frightening to hear about it from the air traffic controllers' standpoint, and now I am reading about it and I need to hear some answers from you and others who are on this panel today. What can we do? And if, in fact, California's airports are among the first to get this AMASS and ASDE systems going? And that is for all of you who can speak to that question.
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Mr. DAVIS. We can do a lot and we are doing a lot. We readily admit that we need to do more. I just wish we could do it faster. One of the things that we need to do for the very busy airports is we need to implement the technology that we have available to us now as quickly as we can. AMASS, although not perfect, is an improvement. It is what we have now. It is better than not having AMASS. Similarly, we need to implement ASDE-X as rapidly as we can. It will not be perfect, but it will provide a significant benefit to the travelling public.
Other things that we are doing are also important. For example, in training, we have recently issued a circular to standardize ground operations. Working with our Flight Standards staff, my office will be working with airlines, all sorts of air carriers, and general aviation operators to improve ground operations. There are several hundred thousand people who are licensed to drive on the Nation's airports. We have recently issued a video and are sending it to airports and to our Flight Standards people who do that kind of training for us to improve the knowledge and awareness of the people who operate vehicles on the Nation's airports.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Davis, that sounds good, but how immediate can we start providing whatever is necessary, the high-tech, expand on what you are doing, to help us to decrease these incursions that are taking place? Your numbers are higher than the numbers that I got from my air traffic controllers just a couple of weeks ago.
Mr. DAVIS. For the technology waterfall, as we call it, I would like to defer to Mr. Zaidman. But regarding the communications, the training, the other outreach efforts that we are doing, we are doing those now and we are doing them as aggressively as we can. I have talked informally with many groups, all of whom have responded. AOPA, ALPA, many groups have responded, airport groups included, that want to cooperate. Nobody wants this problem to get worse. Everybody is on board and wants to solve the problem. It is just a very difficult problem given the number of operations in the system, the millions and millions and millions of them, and the large geographic nature of the 450-plus towered airports with which we work, the 600,000 pilots, and so on.
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Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. And before high-tech were signs. Signs will not help us in this? There is an argument that the high-tech will not really be the immediate but signs would be an immediate answer to alleviating some of the problems.
Mr. DAVIS. Signs will be helpful and we are looking at ways to improve the conspicuity, the word we use, for example the visibility of signs. We need to attack this on many different fronts because we are going to get marginal improvement from lots of different areas.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. And that cannot be. You cannot do marginal improvements. You have got to do improvements that will be substantial.
Mr. DAVIS. I would agree. But we will get substantial improvement by the addition of lots of incremental steps. We do not yet see, a technology out there that will solve this problem for us.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. We have yet to see that?
Mr. DAVIS. We do not have that technology on our scope yet. But we are working hard to try to identify such a technology. In the meantime, we work and make progress everywhere we can.
Ms. CARMODY. Congresswoman, I would just like to underscore what I said in my testimony, that the NTSB believes that unless there is a way to notify the pilot of impending incursions, we are going to continue to have this problem. Most of the incursions are caused by pilots. If they are not notified of what is coming at them, there are going to be more of these. Whether that is a complicated system like an AMASS system enhanced, or whether it is something simple as we have discussed earlier, whether it is lights or cross-bars on the runway, something to alert the pilots is crucial.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I must say, we are at the year 2001 and it certainly seems to me that there should be something that we can do, working with the pilots, to help them, and to help us who are in the air twice a week going back and forth to our districts, and I am speaking about the 52 Members who make up the California delegation. This is troubling when four out of those ten airports are in California and we are still trying to figure out the right formula or do not have in place the technology. We must do something, if it is increasing funding for R&D or whatever it takes for research and development of a program and a system that is going to help to diminish these numbers of incursions in California.
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Mr. Davis, you said that you had someone who would speak to some of the questions I have raised.
Mr. DAVIS. Yes. Mr. Zaidman. Our goal is to decrease both the frequency and the severity of runway incursions. Those are separate strategies. Mr. Zaidman is an expert in the technical end of it. I think that he has a lot to offer on this.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Zaidman?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Just very briefly, Congresswoman. Los Angeles is scheduled to get two AMASS systems because of the size of the airport. That is scheduled for August of this year. So they are very high on our waterfall. So that is good news.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Great.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. In addition, Mr. Davis previously mentioned some broad agency announcements which are intended to pull low-tech solutions, but affordable developmental solutions early and quickly. One system has been approved for Long Beach Airport using radar gun-like technologies to detect aircraft. And the other one, which I mentioned before, involves magnetic sensors underneath the concrete, like we have at intersections, to detect aircraft. That is also now installed at Long Beach Airport.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. It is now installed?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. It is currently there, yes.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Okay. Fine. And so the numbers that we have seen were out before we installed the system that you are speaking about?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Well, one is installed at Long Beach, one has been approved to be installed at Long Beach. The AMASS system will go in Los Angeles. Those are just three examples.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Okay. Fine. In other words, we are trying to get systems in place at both Los Angeles and Long Beach Airports that would help us in reducing the numbers?
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Mr. ZAIDMAN. That is correct.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. One other question, Mr. Chairman, and that is to Ms. Carmody. You said that you have listed three recommendations that have not been accepted. Accepted by whom, and why not?
Ms. CARMODY. By the Federal Aviation Administration. We made a number of recommendations last summer and then we asked for their response to these recommendations. There were three of those that they chose not to fulfill. One was adopting the standard international phraseology, which they said they were going to study. One was the practice of holding aircraft on active runways at night or in periods of reduced visibility. We said we did not think that was a good idea. They thought that they could manage it and that it would complicate the system and the controller's job if they discontinued that. And the third one was that the FAA cease issuing multiple landing clearances and go with ICAO practice, which is not to issue a landing clearance until another plane had cleared the threshold. FAA said doing that would complicate the system further.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. You have not heard a comment back on those as to why they are not accepting the recommendation?
Ms. CARMODY. Yes, we did. FAA had said that it would increase the complexity of the controller's workload and they thought it might lead to further problems.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. And the third one, which is a critical one, that response from the FAA was?
Ms. CARMODY. That was the same.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Same response?
Ms. CARMODY. Yes.
Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we send another letter or perhaps have the FAA Administrator come in to talk with us about that given the severity of these incursions that are taking place, especially in the State of California. I do have a statement that I would like unanimous consent to submit for the record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. MICA. Without objection, your entire statement will be made part of the record.
I thank the gentlelady.
Let me yield to the gentleman from California, Mr. Horn.
Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mead, as Inspector General, you have given testimony that the Federal Aviation Administration originally estimated the cost of AMASS to be $60 million. Is that correct?
Mr. MEAD. Yes, sir.
Mr. HORN. In 1997 this was raised to $74 million. I am curious, Mr. Mead or Mr. Davis, what are you projecting the cost to be today?
Mr. MEAD. The current projection for that system is about $150 million. It has an extraordinarily aggressive implementation schedule. They have done San Francisco and Detroit, but that is six years late. There are 32 airports to go. They want to do that over the course of the next 14 to 15 months. I think it is doubtful whether FAA can sustain that type of deployment schedule across the United States. The longer it extends on, the costs will go up, sir.
Mr. HORN. You and I have been around here to remember the computer situation in terms of the radar that went from $1 billion to $2 billion, to $3 billion, to $4 billion, and they finally pulled the plug. Are we in this kind of situation? How confident are you that they know what they are doing in terms of a management sense?
Mr. MEAD. No, sir, I do not think we are in the situation that you referred to. What you are in, though, is the promise that was initially behind this technology. I do not think you will realize the full dividends that you thought you would, even though the price has gone up. I think people were looking to this alert system as though it would be a panacea or something of a cure-all, and it will not be. It will be I think a net positive once we get it in, but I think people will be mistaken if they think it is going to be the answer.
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Mr. HORN. Mr. Davis, do you have any thoughts on the subject as to what the projection might be?
Mr. DAVIS. The cost projections, sir, I would have to defer to Mr. Zaidman for that information.
Mr. HORN. Fine. Mr. Zaidman?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. I think $152 million, which is our current estimate, is pretty much right on. The reason for our raising it from $60-odd million to $74 million in 1997 is because that is when we issued the production contract and we just had better numbers from the vendor. But since that time, due to the challenges that we have had in executing the system, we had an increase in costs.
I will also say that I am a little bit more optimistic than Inspector Mead on this, because 33 of the 34 AMASS systems have already been installed. Now there is a difference between installation and commissioning; it requires training, it requires optimizing the system for the particular airport. But, indeed, we have 33 of the 34 systems physically in place today.
Mr. HORN. So it is about one-third?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. It is almost 100 percent of the systems. The 34 systems are the total buy of the system. Thirty-three of those thirty-four are in place but they are not yet commissioned, they have to be optimized, the controllers need to be trained. But that is why I am pretty optimistic on that final cost number, sir.
Mr. HORN. How many do you think might pop up on the screen? Because I look at last week the Federal Aviation Administration published a study that found that while the overall number of runway incursions was increasing, the number of serious incursions was holding steady. How was it decided which incursions were classified as serious and which ones were not? Can you enlighten us, Mr. Davis and Mr. Mead?
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Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir. My office commissioned a study. The study looked at all of the runway incursions that had occurred between 1997 and 2000—1,367 events, as I recall.
A group was put together of people who represented the various aspects of the aviation industry: controllers, pilots, people who work in airports.
In addition, there was a person from NASA or people from NASA, their Aviation Safety Reporting System were there. In addition to that, we had people from MITRE and Booz-Allen. MITRE and Booz-Allen provided staff to do the study and produce the report for us.
These people achieved a consensus on each of the events and scored them, ''A'' being the most serious, ''D'' being more of a technical violation.
Mr. HORN. Well, that is helpful because I was wondering how subjective this would be. You say it came from an outside consultant. Did that make sense to pilots and others when you showed them this particular criteria?
Mr. DAVIS. What actually occurred was each of the events was analyzed. They were different types of events and they were not analyzed sequentially, for example, pilot incursions from 1997 were analyzed by the group.
Then they jumped to vehicle or pedestrian incursions in 1999 and they would move around to ensure that there was fairness of the analysis and reporting as the process continued. In order to score an event, they actually would get the airport chart. They would read narratives. They would find whatever data they could, recreate the events, discuss them among themselves, where they thought the event should be scored.
Their reports to me were that the more serious events, the category A and B events, were actually the easiest to score and the more difficult to score were the category C and D events.
Mr. HORN. Is Captain Rutty still here?
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Mr. MICA. He hasn't testified yet.
Mr. HORN. Okay. We will save on that, then.
My last question is: The Inspector General says there have been six Runway Safety Directors in five years, Mr. Mead. Why is that?
Mr. MEAD. One reason is almost certainly the frustration, I think, of the position. We point out in our testimony that the position has an enormous amount of responsibility, but not a lot of authority.
We think that the position should be enhanced by giving the Director, in this case Mr. Davis, the responsibility for providing input into people's performance appraisals and bonus decisions.
It is not realistic to have the Runway Incursion Director in charge of all the runway incursion initiatives. You can't have everybody reporting to the Runway Incursion Director. You would practically have all of FAA. So, you do have a matrix management situation.
I think you need to build some accountability into this position. You would have to ask the individual directors as to whether they had their own reasons in addition to that.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Davis, I am not going to ask you how long you plan to stay. But some days you probably want to leave.
Mr. DAVIS. This has been one of my better days.
Mr. HORN. That is great. So, thank you for coming. We appreciate all that the FAA does on this.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
Let me recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman
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Ms. Carmody, you state in your testimony that the National Transportation Safety Board believes that a key element missing from the AMASS system is direct warning to pilots and vehicle operators of a possible collision. You have said that a number of times during the course of today's hearing.
Is there any technology available that can be used to give such warnings?
Ms. CARMODY. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski. I think there are several. There are some simple ones like cross fires that could be installed on the runway that would light up and alert the pilot when he was starting to cross them that would indicate what was an active runway.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Is that the stop bars we were talking about with the lights earlier?
Ms. CARMODY. Like the red lights that would be activated when a runway is live and then any plane approaching that on a taxiway would see that.
Then there are more sophisticated ones like the ADS-B, which is the technology that provides a heads-up display in the cockpit. It is based on satellite information. It gives positions to the pilots of every aircraft, every vehicle on the surface and it identifies those vehicles by aircraft number.
There are probably a number of others. There are various hoops and magnetic detectors. But I think they can go from the simple to the complex. What we think is important is that there be one.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Mr. Davis, I know you have recently taken over, but is there any reason that you know of that we haven't put an emphasis on trying to get something that would directly communicate with the pilots?
I don't understand why we continually go through the air traffic controllers to tell the pilots. If the air traffic controllers see something, they tell the pilots. I don't know why we don't have more direct communication with the pilots.
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Mr. DAVIS. I would like to answer from the program point of view and then pass it to Mr. Zaidman for the more technological aspect of this answer.
From the program point of view, we concur. We would like to move in this direction. I sit as a co-chair on what is called the Joint Safety Implementation Team where one of the technologies that is looked at regarding runway incursions is cockpit-moving maps.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Let me interrupt just for a second. I don't mean to be rude. I understand we all would like to move in that direction.
I was wondering if you had any ideas why we haven't moved in that direction.
Mr. DAVIS. Part of it is that the technology is not fully designed yet. I liken it to, and I will pass it to Mr. Zaidman for the technology end, we are kind of at the early laptop stage. We know the technology is going to do many additional tasks in the future. We have to figure out now how to design the equipment that we want to install and design the infrastructure that we want to install now to be able to evolve to additional capacity and capability in the future.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. If I may, one bright spot and one cautionary note. We have two demonstration airports that we work with in FAA, Memphis and Louisville, where we are demonstrating these cockpit technologies. One of them is a moving map display like Ms. Carmody talked about.
The good news is that we are now at the point where the avionics manufacturers will be applying to FAA as early as this January for approval to install those moving map displays in the cockpit.
The cautionary note I would add is that we still have to learn about the human factors in the cockpit. We don't have all the answers yet. I think it is akin to using cell phones in a car or using a moving map display or GPS in the car, while the primary focus should be looking out the window.
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So, there are theoretical inherent risks with these technologies. The good news is the technologies, I believe, are ready for the moving map displays. A cautionary note, again, is learning a little bit more about the human factors and how that impacts in the real world.
Mr. LIPINSKI. It seems to me, if we would initiate more things towards directly communicating with the pilots rather than having the air traffic controllers communicate with the pilots, it would advance the whole safety of the system a lot faster.
The stop bars, the running lights, you talked about them earlier. I really don't understand. It doesn't seem to me that the technology would be that greatly advanced with regards to coming up with some kind of system to have lights flashing on telling people to stop.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. That is what we all want to have. I think the experts generally agree that that would make a significant contribution to reducing runway incursions.
Not by way of an excuse, but the challenge is finding the right censors that reliably do that. I think there are some. They are known as ADS-B kind of technologies, which are the next generation. In fact, we have issued a contract for that for another 25 airports.
What that technology does is that it reads what is called an aircraft transponder and identifies where that aircraft is. It gets away from the inherent problems we have seen with radars. So, last year we issued a contract to test this technology at 25 airports. We call it ASDE-X. We believe it will provide the reliable surveillance tools that we need to power the lights.
Mr. LIPINSKI. How long have we been trying to come up with a way to do this? Do you have any idea?
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Mr. ZAIDMAN. Oh, going back to the 1980s. We were looking at another sensor technology other than radar. In the 1980s we considered radar as being the best technology there was for detecting where the aircraft are.
Only until recently with GPS and what is known as multilateration or triangulation have we been able to begin to take the next step.
Mr. LIPINSKI. It just seems to me that the National Transportation Safety Board comes up with these recommendations. They go to the FAA and it seems like all of a sudden there are vendors all over the place rushing in. They have a solution to the problem. Because the FAA is under pressure because it is a safety situation, they accept these vendors, that they have the solution to the problem.
Then we find out we spent four times as much money as we were going to and it is about five or six years down the line and we switch to something else. It doesn't seem to me that in regards to this simple stop and go light we could have on runways which would improve safety, it doesn't seem like we have gone very enthusiastically into that, which I believe is a very common sense approach to the problem.
But we will move on because my time is very limited.
Ms. Carmody, in your testimony you state that the AMASS visual and audible alert parameters were not based on human performance studies, but were empirically determined based on tests conducted with a prototype AMASS system. Please explain why this is a problem.
Ms. CARMODY. I am going to defer that one to Mr. Haueter. My understanding was that the simulations were not accurately reflecting the real situation. Mr. Haueter is the Deputy for the Office of Aviation Safety.
Mr. HAUETER. You have to take a look at timing. The controller has to be notified. He has to recognize which aircraft is having the incursion. He has to notify that aircraft. The pilot has to recognize what is going on, stop or maybe accelerate out of the situation.
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So, there is a whole group of factors in terms of reaction time and understanding what is going on that has to be fed into the process. All those add time. As we saw in the incident in Chicago, AMASS would have provided six seconds. In six seconds the aircraft was already onto the runway and the other aircraft was accelerating for take-off.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Mr. Davis, do you have anything to add to that?
Mr. DAVIS. No. That is a very difficult case for us. We struggle with that case. It is a human factors issue. Information in the cockpit such as moving maps would help with that. I think we would all like to have that. We are trying to work with industry to develop that technology and spread the technology as quickly as we can.
What is most important to us, though, regarding whatever solution that we consider is that it needs to be predictably reliable, because today we have a problem on the ground and we need to keep this problem on the ground.
If we have systems which are not reliable and we start having aircraft that are on short final having to do missed approaches, then we start moving the safety issue back into the air again, in a terminal area where we least want it. This is where crews are arriving after a long flight and they may be tired, where aircraft have come down from altitude and are using the most gas.
You introduce a lot of other dissonance, if you will, into what is normally a very smooth flow of aircraft into and out of an airport.
So, part of our solution is to look at the entirety of the safety picture and make sure that whatever we do doesn't move the problem, from the ground into the air or to another segment of the flight envelope.
Mr. LIPINSKI. It seems to me that many of these improvements that we come up with as far as technology is concerned in the aviation field, it seems to me like they are developed in a laboratory and often times when they are put out in the practical arena they don't work and that is where we get into trouble.
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But I am going to move on because the Chairman over here is getting impatient with me. But I have to ask Mr. Mead one question.
Mr. Mead, do you have confidence that the AMASS will work and the controllers will use the system?
Mr. MEAD. No. I can amplify.
Mr. LIPINSKI. No. That is wonderful. I think that is perfect.
Mr. MEAD. I think it is too soon to tell.
Mr. LIPINSKI. But you said ''no'' first of all.
Mr. MEAD. I think it is too soon to tell. No, I don't have confidence yet. I am going to have to see the track record at Detroit and San Francisco and see how much the controllers are actually using it at the two installations we have waited so long to get them installed at.
There are 32 to go in the United States. Mr. Zaidman says it is installed. It is, but the devil is in the details. The proof is in the pudding. We will see once they get operational and the controllers start using them, how much reliance they place on them. We will be able to tell you more a year from now.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Mr. Zaidman, you said they are installed, but what was that word you used, they are not ''commissioned?''
Mr. ZAIDMAN. They are not commissioned. We still have training to do. We still have to modify all the software parameters for every airport because they are configured differently. The runways are configured differently. So, we have some work to do. It is an aggressive schedule.
Sir, I will say that our experience in San Francisco has yielded data on the AMASS that it is providing an average alert of 22 seconds in advance of an event. That is an average. In some cases it could be as little as six seconds and in that case AMASS won't work. Other examples are that it yielded 40 seconds of advanced time. In those situations AMASS will work.
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So, I believe the controllers will use it, but recognizing that it is not a panacea, is not a cure-all. It has situations where it will work and situations where, unfortunately, it will not work.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Well, I think the Federal Aviation Administration does an incredible job on things, but in this particular area, it just seems like we have had, you know, very, very little progress. I am extremely disappointed in that, as I am sure people in the FAA are disappointed in it.
I am going to conclude by saying I think that Mr. Mead's answer to my question a few moments ago is a perfect fitting end to the questioning of this panel. Thank you.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.
Let me recognize another gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kirk.
Mr. KIRK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It seems that we welcome the official AMASS deployment to O'Hare in September 2001, I understand. It appears to me, coming out of my part-time work in the intelligence community, that the AMASS technology overlaps considerably with other MTI platforms that the U.S. taxpayer has paid for, particularly J-STARS.
Have you worked with the Department of Defense or the Intelligence community at all in looking at the advances that we have there with ground tracking indications systems?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. We have been in contact with DOD. We generally share our programs and technologies. I am not perhaps familiar with all the relevant technologies that DOD has. We have been working very closely with them on the communications systems that can be used at airports, what we call data-link.
We have consulted with them when we installed the ground radar to see if there was a technology that could specifically be used for the data link application. In fact, we did learn something from the DOD in the design of this radar in terms of its performance.
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We can always learn more and we rely on advanced agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Air Force and especially NASA to provide some of the seed-technology for us, not only for runway incursions, but also in other areas of aviation safety.
Mr. KIRK. I would just be encouraged if the Administrator would talk to Director Tennent to make sure that the number of classified payloads that we have, where the quantum leap that I have seen on what we have been able to look at on the ground from Desert Storm to Kosovo, it certainly would seem that the taxpayer has expended a considerable amount of resources on this problem, but I am not sure if the civilian side knows what the intelligence side has got.
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Well, probably not. I will note that GPS is one particular example where we are exploiting, if I can use that term, DOD technology in this application as well as other aviation applications.
Mr. KIRK. With the deployment of AMASS, does that have implementations for the rapid, re-allowing LAHSO operations? For us at O'Hare, up to 20 percent of our delays could be eliminated by reinstituting land and hold short, having an upgraded technology of this kind, would it help in the deployment of LAHSO?
Mr. ZAIDMAN. Well, we are working to do the safety analysis with the industry on land and hold short operations, particularly in Chicago.
LAHSO represents one of the operational challenges for a system like AMASS which is a predictive tool. So, the technology, the computer, is ''dumb'' and it needs to know when an aircraft will land and hold short and when it will land and not hold short. That is one of the challenges for technology such as AMASS.
Therefore, in cases like land and hold short, technology cannot be the only answer. Better signage, better training, better awareness by both the pilots and the controllers are the obvious solutions to those issues.
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Mr. KIRK. Mr. Chairman, I vote for Mr. Lipinski's idea for stoplights.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MICA. In conclusion, I have a couple of quick points here. Ms. Carmody, if I make an illegal left-hand turn, I get fined if I am driving my car.
We saw some vivid video here and audio that we had a pilot make a gross error. Is there a fine penalty for that action?
Ms. CARMODY. There probably is. I will defer that to the FAA. As you know, the NTSB has not enforcement authority.
Mr. DAVIS. In the case that was modeled for us, enforcement action could possibly be taken. I think, in my estimation, that was a genuine mistake. So, I don't know that enforcement action would have been taken.
Mr. MICA. Again, where there is some negligent action, we are going after these pilots, fining them, suspending their licenses or whatever appropriate action may be necessary. Is that correct?
Mr. DAVIS. We always have the right to do that. The FAA always reserves the right to do that.
Mr. MICA. But are we doing that?
Mr. DAVIS. What we are trying to do is extend the program where we do not pursue legal action, in return for pilots fully divulging what led up to the event; what they were thinking about, what their concerns were, what they knew, what they didn't know, so we can better understand what is going on.
Mr. MICA. Are these being properly investigated then, Ms. Carmody? You don't make a recommendation on fault, or do you?
Ms. CARMODY. If we investigate an accident and we make a determination—
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Mr. MICA. Well, these aren't accidents.
Ms. CARMODY. Well, then an inci