Hearing lasts an hour and 45 minutes. Were a couple minutes but will get started. The subcommittee on safety aviation will come to order. I want to welcome everyone to our hearing today addressing close calls to improve aviation safety. This may be the most important hearing we have all year and i want to thank chair cat well, Ranking Member cruz and moran in their help to making this hearing happen. The near misses weve been seeing recently are not normal and are a warning our Aviation System is under stress. And today we will have an opportunity to hear from several Key Stakeholders about why were experiencing so many near misses and what we need to do to increase our safety margins. Well hear from National Transportation safety chairwoman jennifer hamady, chief operational officer tim worrell and rich santa, Airline Pilots association, captain jason ambrossy and former administrator randy back out. While disagreements tend to garner more coverage than compromise, its worth noting i remain proud of the biden reauthorization act we introduced together and remain committed to finding a path forward to passage. Since in any nonbiased opinion, the cantwell crew is far superior than the alternative. Safety Must Come First and why i say this may be the most important aviation hearing i hold this year. Our nation is experiencing an aviation safety crisis. Near misses are happening way too frequently and i refuse to be complacent in waiting to act until the next runway incursion becomes a fatal conclusion. A wave of buyouts drained the United StatesAviation System and coupled with a surge in demand created essentially a perfect storm that took the safety margins down to a unsafe level. In far too many near misses, the difference between a close call and deadly disaster has depended on a single individual taking Emergency Action along with some good luck. According to the new york times, in a recent 12month period, there were 300 accounts of near collisions involving commercial carriers, thats almost one near miss per day so far. I think weve got some images behind us here. The darker image is a video of a individual riding in the jump seat of a jetblue flight landing at boston airport and shows a hopper jet charter flight crossing the runway about to land on and shows how the plane came within 400 feet of the jet crossing in front of them while taking off superan intersecting runway. Despite that hopper jet receiving instructions to line up and wait. Logan airport installed a surface system that notified air Traffic Control when the charter flight began its unauthorized takeoff roll and this layer of safety was critical in empowering the controller to provide jetblue with the go round instructions that diverted disaster. That same month at Austin Bergstrom airport we witnessed how the lack of equipment drastically shows the catastrophe. A worker working on an overtime shift cleared the plane to run on the southwest 737 had been cleared to take off from. It was foggy in the early hours and the controller could not see the runway with its own eyes or see the runway and was on the ground when the other plane went through the clouds. 131 souls came close to dying that day. The following animation demonstrates what it looks like when a 757 comes within 100 feet of a landing 737. These two aircraft came within 100 feet of another. And a. T. C. Did not see how close those came and it was the pilot who called for the goaround and initiated his own goaround and told the other aircraft that he notified the other aircraft that they almost came in contact with one another and the air Traffic Controller never saw it. The air Traffic Controller also was on an overtime shift. Unfortunately, the near misses keep happening. Last month an Alaska Airlines flight executive flight executing a goaround in oregon veered into a flight path taking off from a parallel runway. The f. A. A. Congress and Aviation Industry must treat these near misses as precursor events if left unchecked will result in a deadly catastrophe. We have many layers of safety in our Aviation System. The first layer is the pilot controller readback and the second layer is the airport designs and markings. Next is a runway safety lights that turn red when the runway is active alerting a crossing pilot to not cross. In ideal situations, the fourth layer is a ground radar tool. And of course the last line of defense lies with the flight crew, especially the captain and first officer. Despite multiple layers of safety its come to the last line of defense. And the bottom line, pilots take Emergency Actions to save lives is either a broken system or one overwhelmed by new risks. Such new risk could be the aggregate loss of experience and forces the industry to confront a work force overall thats less experienced from pilots to controllers to technicians and other personnel. It appears weve been fortunate to have experienced pilots in many of these instances who prevented a close call from becoming a disaster but continuing to count on such good fortune is neither sustainable nor responsible. I hope well hear more from this about our witnesses. The one thing we already know now is not the time to weaken or water down the postcovid era Safety System. Now is the time to strengthen it. This includes prioritizing one of the most vital pillars of our aviation Safety System, air Traffic Control. Look, every air Traffic Controller has the privilege and pressure of working in a road thats inherently stressful even on a good day. That reality is no excuse for our current status quo which forces controllers to regularly work 60hour weeks because an estimated 99 of airports are understaffed. In addition to many airports lacking important runway technology, as both a pilot and passenger i refuse to accept the status quo that places the lives of our constituents in the hands of Civil Servants that are overworked and utterly exhausted. More than a decade ago the aviation established a new pilot rest rule. This aligned with a growing body of language shows optimizing performance, you need rest and recovery. The stakes could not be higher for a. T. C. F. A. A. Prioritizes the problem of fatigued controllers and Congress Wants to ensure a. T. C. Staffing levels are sufficient to end once and for all the error of controllers to work regularly 60 hours per week and often without the benefit of Vital Safety Technology and tools. I look forward to hearing from our Witnesses Today how we can enhance safety and get our margins back to where they need to be. I recognize now Ranking Member moran for his opening statement. Representative moran thank you for your cooperation and working with me and others to see this subcommittee and whole committee accomplishes its task in regard to aviation. The f. A. A. Manages one of the worlds most complex Aviation Systems, in fact the most complex Aviation System that overseas more than 44,000 flights a day and almost three Million Airline passengers. Safety is so important. But it is an evolving process and we must continually reevaluate our system to make sure we have the most safe possible in play. We must determine how to prevent certain instances like runway incursions and near misses so im pleased to join you in having this hearing and we need to ensure these incidents are not indicative of a underlying issue. We know the demand for aviation is expected to grow and we have new entrants into our airspace. F. A. A. Is directly involved in 1. 5 million jobs and 1. 5 trillion in g. D. P. In the worlds economy. Our job is determine the pressure points on our system now so it can be ready to meet the demands not only today but in the future. Dangerous incidents also further highlight the need for congress to pass f. A. A. Reauthorization. Im pleased and agree with you we have a bill thats worthy of action by the full committee and action from the United States senate and looking forward so seeing it does. Earlier we confirmed an f. A. A. Administrators, one of the most important tasks we could do and also one of the basic roles of the United States senate. Im pleased the administration nominated and the United StatesSenate Confirmed a new f. A. A. Administrator we look forward to working with and have faith he will perform his task well. I do hope we get out of the series of reauthorizations weve had in years past and look forward to a long term reauthorization of the f. A. A. The f. A. A. In my view is at a critical juncture and perhaps that could be said at many times in our countrys history but we face many challenges and the f. A. A. Is front and center and ought to do everything in our power to ensure the United States remain as leader in Aerospace Innovation and in everything we do, we do it safely. Thank you, chairwoman. Ms. Duckworth i want to turn it over to ms. Cantwell for her opening remarks. Ms. Cantwell thank for you your comments and senator moran for this important hearing. I cant think of two People Better prepared to lead the safety charge and aviation charge on our committee than the two of you so thank you for doing this hearing and i so agree with both of your comments. I think you outlined exactly why were here this morning, that it is a constant task to be on top of innovation and safety and competitiveness. I want to thank the witnesses for being here, too, because i think that they are very illuminating of the challenges we face in the past and how we met them and thank them today. The safety accountability act outlines new ways to improve safety and one of those was to basically say we should have a trend report every year to better listen to some of the safety trends. This hearing this morning is really a reflection of thatits about what were doing and what we can do to fix it. I want to applaud the ntsb on the near misses and think theyve sounded the alarm and think youre sounding it again today and one of the reasons why, as senator moran said, is we need to get an f. A. A. Authorization bill because we have tools in this bill that will help us meet that challenge. First and foremost, ntsb director hamady is saying in her testimony for controllers weve cited staffing shortages and fatigue, lack of or deficient supervisory oversight, distraction, ineffective scanning, and the need for valueadded training. Thats an end quote there, a summation of hers. That is why we need the additional f. A. A. Air Traffic Controllers that are in the f. A. A. Bill of over 3,000 people to help us meet this balance. We cannot have people working six days a week. We need people who have the ample amount of rest and capability to deal with, as my colleague senator duckworth said, probably one of the most stressful and challenging jobs there is. Secondly, i think she also outlines correctly the important attributes of the air surface detection Equipment Program which is the ground radar and Electronic Technology that allows controllers to Craft Movement of vehicles and in the airports where we have this technology, guess what . Things have worked well. The areas where we havent, this is why we need this legislation because we are authorizing 18. 2 billion to make sure that all of our large and mid size airports have this technology and have this technology deployed. So im sure were going to hear other comments and other answers but two of them lie right in front of us and im with senator moran, we should get this job done and continue to move forward. Im a believer, as he is, that aviation is going to continue to grow. And we want it to. And that the International Competition is also going to be there. We have to lead and get it right and show we have the capacity in the future and get it to be the safest system in the world. With that, thank you, madam chair, for this important hearing. Sen. Duckworth in the meantime well go ahead with witness testimonies. I would like to go ahead and recognize the chairwoman of the National Transportation safety board for your comments. Thank you. E. Thank you for leading on this issue and having me here today. I want to start by emphasizing our incredible Safety Record. We have the safest airspace in the world, period. The critical efforts of everyone in this room have contributed to our reputation as the worlds Gold Standard for aviation safety. We have a lot to be proud of. But we can make aviation safer. As you can see from this chart, there were 23 serious runway incursions in fy23, up from 16 from fc22 and 11 from a decade ago. Runway incursions are happening more the last decade and all runway incursions and the most serious. While these events are incredibly rare, our Safety System is showing clear signs of strain we cannot ignore. The ntsb has opened investigations into seven runway encoringses alone and over half of the aircraft got within several hundred feet of each other. We also opened an investigation into a runway collision between two Business Jets that occurred two weeks ago in houston. Combined, these events put more than 1,300 lives at risk. Thats on top of three wrong surface landings we investigated. Thankfully no one was hurt or seriously injured in any of these incidents, but they could have been. It only takes one. It only takes one missed warning to become a tragedy, one incorrect response to destroy Public Confidence in a system thats been built over decades. These incidents must serve as a wakeup call before something more catastrophic occurs. This isnt the first time weve seen this. We issued this same warning in 2007 and we issued the same warning after the 2017 incident at s. F. O. Where an a320 came close to colliding with an a340 and three other airliners on a taxiway. The incident aircraft flew over the a340 at an altitude of 60 feet before it began climbing which resulted in only 10 to 20 feet of vertical separation. All told, more than 1,000 people on the taxiway that day were in imminent risk of serious injury or death. I know youre going to want to talk about our open investigations and get details on those. The ntsb is incredibly careful to gather all the facts and evidence around an incident before drawing conclusions or making safety recommendations. While i cannot discuss the details of our open investigations, i can share a few of what were seeing. In the wake of the pandemic, were experiencing a massive insurgence of air traffic but also seeing significant a. T. C. Shortages resulting in mandatory overtime, fatigue, distraction, and less opportunity for meaningful valueadded training. On the flight deck, fatigue and distraction are leading to deviations from federal aviation regulations. Across the entire industry, we have a newer work force who need training and mentorship and were seeing people that are struggling with Significant Mental Health challenges. All of this is compounded by a lack of technology to ensure redundancy and protect against human error. Redundancy is the foundation of our stellar aviation Safety Record and has served as the model for preventing accidents and crashes in all other modes of transportation. All that to say the current strain on our Aviation System and its work force cannot be underestimated. Before i close, i want to thank all of you for being staunch supporters of the ntsb. But now i need your help. The ntsb needs the resources to carry out our vital safety mission. We received 145 million in the president s fy24 budget which is included in the house mark. Had the senate is at 134. 3 million. We need the that to match that number of 145. Our agencys staffing and funding levels have remained somewhat stagnant since 1997. The small increases have gotten to well deserved pay increases for our staff. But since ive become chair, weve accomplished a lot. Weve eliminated our backlog spinally entirely. We boosted staffing and made significant efforts in i. T. Thanks for your continued support and im happy to answer your questions. Chairman duckworth i want to recognize the chief operating officer, f. A. A. Thank you chair duckworth and cantwell and Ranking Member moran. Thank you for the opportunity to testify along with my fellow professionals on an issue thats been referred to as close calls and near misses. I appreciate you holding this hearing for your continued oversight because transparency and commitment to a Continuous Improvement are keys to improving aviation safety. Youre familiar with the statistics, the u. S. Aviation system as chair homedy said, is the safe nest the world and theres not been a major crash involving a major u. S. Airline since 1989 but in my years of Public Service dedicated to aviation safety, ive come to understand safety isnt a number or static place but a journey of Continuous Improvement and eliminating risk before it becomes a statistic. Any significa