 Welcome everyone, my name is Fred Kaiser and I'm your host here at the Fast Team National Resource Center, FAA Production Studios at the Summit Funding Complex here at Lakeland, Florida. I know this is going to be just an absolutely exciting time because our next presentation is called Meet the FAA. And without any further delay because I know you guys just from talking to you have a lot of questions, I'd like to bring out Mr. Doug Murphy who is a Southern Region Administrator for the FAA. Doug. Well good afternoon and welcome to Meet the FAA at the 35th Annual Sun and Fun Fly-In. You're sitting today not only in the FAA's Production Studios but you're at for this week the world's busiest airport. It's a great treat for us today and those of you that had the opportunity to join us last year will remember that we had a distinguished member of Congress come and visit us and he's back with us again this year, Congressman Vern Ehlers, member of Congress, he's also member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but he has some exciting things to say and I'd like to mention that the Congressman based on his strong support for aviation, general aviation in particular and the partnership with the FAA has taken on an interesting challenge in the last day called the General Aviation Caucus and I'll let him explain a little bit more to you what that is. So without further ado it's a privilege and an honor for me to introduce Congressman Vern Ehlers. Congressman Ehlers. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I came last year and I'm hooked so I came again this year and I keep seeing things that I didn't see before so I guess I have to come back again next year. As you heard I am on the Aviation Subcommittee. I'm very interested in flying. I learned to fly when I was a student at the University of California many years ago and gave it up as so many do when the children came and the wife of course first just got to be too much of a burden on the budget but later in life I'm back again taking lessons but I'm just very very interested in aviation and very proud of general aviation. As you just heard we just formed this week the General Aviation Caucus. Now I don't have the time to really explain what that means but it's just a group of like-minded individuals who get together on issues and so I'm signing up people who are interested in aviation. The reason I got into this is I was astounded at some of the comments made by some of my colleagues and I won't say any names but both House and Senate at the time the folks from GM flew into Washington and their private jets and there was a storm of protest about that a lot of people didn't know any better extended that to everyone in aviation so I decided I had to start fighting back and make sure the truth got out there. Some of the absurd things I heard I won't pass on to you but I decided many members of Congress don't really know what aviation is and I was worried about spreading because I don't know if you've heard this but already the state of Oregon has had a bill introduced to declare an airplane a luxury and Illinois has a bill introduced to make airplanes a luxury which wouldn't mean that much except that it allows them to be taxed as a luxury and I was afraid that would start spreading so anyway I decided it was time to take action of finding some like-minded individuals to form this caucus we will bring in speakers we will bring in pilots hope we can bring in Harrison Ford to talk to my colleagues and explain what aviation is all about particularly general aviation. I also by way of introduction to the FAA employees who are going to be speaking here. I know sometimes when I'm trying to warm up a crowd back home before I get in the speech I always say well I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help you that's guaranteed to bring a laugh from the audience I would never say that but the FAA in fact it doesn't apply really to the government because they all work very hard to try to do their duties but the FAA particularly impresses me not only are they dedicated to the job they are dedicated to aviation and just listening to the conversation on the plane coming down here all of them are pilots or have been pilots they really understand aviation they were knowing what they're doing and their goal is to improve aviation so keep that in mind whenever you have a complaint about aviation and particularly the FAA just stop and think about I'm going to put the faces on it that you hear today these are people who love aviation want to make everything safe for you to fly anywhere anytime that you want to as long as you meet the the statutory requirements and the rules so I'm proud to be associated with these federal employees who work for the FAA and I hope all of you will really take advantage of this opportunity to not only quiz them on what they're doing and why they're doing it but also thank them for what they do because they work very hard long hours trying to improve aviation I will not by the way defend the transportation safety agency which comes up with all these silly rules about what you can do with your airplane what you can't do the latest one is to require you to have passenger manifest just the way the airlines do when you get on the airliner and so we're fighting that now but the FAA we've always worked closely with and we hope it won't take too much longer before we settle the next gen problems and find the money to get started on that so thank you for being here thank you for being a fellow pilot and it's all yours Doug thank you very much let me introduce to you now the the panelists for today they'll be joining us shortly and we've got a great turnout not only the people that you'll have on the stage but those in the audience we've got standing room only at the back I hope that's a testimony to the quality of this session and not the fact that we're air conditioned and it's 88 degrees outside or maybe it's both but let me ask the panelists to join us now and I'll introduce them and then say a little bit about the format for this the first gentleman on my right is John Duncan who's a manager of the air transportation division FAA headquarters second is Randy fierce he's a director of Airport Compliance and Field Operations for FAA we have Dennis Roberts who is the director of the flights service program and this is kind of an interesting dynamic for us because it's the first time we've had somebody that can talk with you about the flight service program we also have Kim Smith with us she is the manager of the small airplane directorate and very actively involved in these aircraft that are near and dear to everybody here in the audience and finally Wes Timmins who is our national director for for runway safety so these are five panels I'll let you sit down for just a moment and let me introduce on the front row here and I hope I can catch everyone ask you to stand just briefly representing the FAA we have Suzanne Alexander who's the acting director for enroute and oceanic operations for the eastern US John McCartney who is the area director for terminal operations for the eastern third of the US we have and I'm kind of coming through my notes here Terry Bristol Terry is the new vice president for technical operations for the FAA she has a minimal responsibility she's responsible for making sure every piece of equipment and in the whole country is working and working safely and productively so one of those low low profile jobs not much involved with that and we're certainly happy to have Terry Jean Crabtree is with us Jean is our acting director for technical operations for the FAA southern region we've got Anne Graham with us Anne is the division acting division manager for general aviation and the commercial division and we have Dr. James Frazier who is the deputy federal air surgeon perhaps you caught his session earlier today Don Beach who is the flight standards division manager for the FAA southern region Dr. Susan Northrup who is our southern region flight surgeon and finally Susan Parson Susan is the editor of FAA aviation news so we've got got a great panel today as oftentimes happens that the staff provided me with about a 10 page speech I'm going to dispense with that because we've got a full audience and we want to hear from you in addition to giving giving you an opportunity of a snapshot of what's going on we just say a couple of things we talked about the world's busiest airport an average of 40,000 operations during Sun and Fun in Lakeland it's also the world's largest aviation trade show 500 exhibitors and there are more than 400 forums and training sessions during this week so it's a great opportunity to come and to learn and to spend some time and provide your energy to the general aviation community we're looking at a couple of challenges still when I talked with you last year we talked in terms of waiting for a our next FAA administrator to be identified that has finally happened Captain Randy Babbit who has a distinguished career in aviation and aviation law and labor relations has been nominated by President Obama to be the next FAA administrator he is going through the confirmation process and we anticipate that his confirmation hearing will occur in early June so we're looking forward to Captain Babbit's confirmation so that we can start calling him FAA administrator Babbit we're still working with the reauthorization aspect of FAA making sure that we have a steady funding stream for the future and we're currently in our ninth extension of the authorization by Congress since it expired the end of September in 2007 the extension it goes till the end of September the end of this fiscal year but we're encouraged because it appears the Congress both the House and the Senate are scheduling hearings and discussions probably as early as next month to move this forward to a productive conclusion so a lot of interesting challenges but let me stop at that point because we've asked each of our panelists to keep the remarks short three to five minutes and what we're going to do we're going to do things a little bit differently this year after one of our panelists is finished we're going to allow some of your questions and then we'll move on to the next panelist we may have to cut the questions off if they get too lengthy but what we will do I will commit to you at two o'clock which is when the air show starts and we conclude this session if you still have questions or comments we will stay and entertain those questions so without further comments on my part let me introduce our first speaker Dennis Roberts is formerly the regional administrator in our northwest mountain region he and I worked together for a number of years and he has recently taken on a new challenge as a director for flight services operations for the FAA Dennis thank you Doug and I have to say it's a real honor to be here at Lakeland this year for the Sun and Fun this is my first opportunity to come to Sun and Fun I'm happy to say I had the opportunity to get down here I've been to Oshkosh probably more times and I want to think about but it it's always a great privilege my roots really are within general aviation I spent about three and a half years working for the aircraft owners and pilots association with Phil Boyer and have been a general aviation pilot since I was about 17 years old so it's a real privilege and honor to be here it's kind of ironic that I'm in this new position which I started just about the first of January this year because it was during my days and years working at AOPA that we actually started on Phil's request to look at the actual cost in the services that the FAA was providing to us as general aviation pilots from the flight service perspective and we did a close analysis of what actually it cost the FAA to give us a briefing versus what we as the general aviation community were paying for that service and it was about a 10 to 1 ratio it was about $22 to provide the briefing and the general aviation community was providing about $2 back so we recognize that it was it was the one area within the FAA that we as general aviation pilots were very susceptible and very exposed to the cost of the service so it was at that time that we had made the recommendation that it was possible and because particularly the fact that private industry could come forward with new technology at a much faster rate than the federal government could do that it might be an opportunity to consider outsourcing that program that was followed shortly by a program and a process that the office of budget and manage management budget do which is called the a 76 process and that's a process for evaluating and outsourcing federal government programs into the private sector and as you all know back in 2005 that was completed and that that contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin Corporation. Lockheed Martin now has the responsibility for providing flight services programs on the lower 49 that's all the lower 49 plus Guam without the state of Alaska however still being provided by the FAA and our own personnel up there. Lockheed has 10 continuing sites for flight services around the country and three hub locations as well one in Ashburn Virginia one in Fort Worth Texas and the other one in Prescott Arizona. Through that service my office and my responsibility and my job is to manage and oversee their performance and to assure that they're giving the types of quality and services to you as a general aviation flying public that's that's needed. As I said from the GA perspective I hope I can bring a sense of reality to what those really those needs are. We have 22 different performance metrics that Lockheed has to adhere to. We also have what we call credits and awards where we assess penalties to them for any types of service that they do not meet the standard on and in those cases where they exceed the standard they're eligible for an additional payment. But I'm happy to say that at this point we have of those 22 items that we have that we measure them on every month. They are in the green. They're meeting 18 of those 22 and we're working really hard with them to get the additional four up. The other thing that we do in our office that we're very happy and we continue to provide and that's through the Duots vendor. Many of you are using Duots and it's a service that I used at its inception back in the early days that DTN had it and they still are one of the two contractors that have it today. That's our internet portal that you can you can come on to from your home computer. You can do your own weather briefing. You can insert your flight plan and then get into the system just like you would normally. The other last thing that I'll just touch on and that is the fact that our folks and friends up in Alaska we're in the process of upgrading the backbone or the network system that we have in Alaska which is called Oasis and that will continue to be provided by the FAA employees and FAA operations in Alaska into the foreseeable future. It's extremely critical to aviation safety. All you have to do is look at the dramatic reduction in the accident rate the fatal accident rate particularly for general aviation in Alaska over the last five to six years and you see how valuable and critical of these new technologies are. So with that I'll stop and I'll look forward. You want to do questions now Doug? Okay and I'd welcome any questions that any of you might have and as Doug said I'll be around for a while afterwards to talk with you individually if you'd like. Yes sir this is probably an answer I don't want to hear but it was 10 to 1 ratio of cost to expenses before you went with Lockheed Martin. What's the ratio now? The ratio now I don't have the exact dollar number it is now but I can tell you that we track this every month and that is the cost savings with regard to personnel and equipment cost and lease costs. Over the 13 year period of the Lockheed contract we are on track right now to achieve our projected savings of 2.1 billion dollars over the federal cost. To give you some perspective when we started the evaluation on the A76 we had 2,600 FAA employees providing flight service station services across the country. At the time three years later when Lockheed took the project over that number was down to 23 and right now Lockheed is doing the same services with just slightly over 800 people. So they're using a lot of the technology and the high speed internet and the connectivity through their 10 continuing sites and the three hubs with a significantly smaller number of people than we had at the FAA with much higher reliability. Okay all right okay thanks. Okay thanks and we will entertain some additional questions on these subjects later I just want to manage our time so that each of our presenters can give you a flavor for what's going on and as I said we will stay after the session's over if you'd like to hear more. Next presenter is Randy Fierce. Randy is the Director of Airport Compliance and Field Operations FAA Headquarters. His organization has been one that's been involved in this thing called Recovery and Grants. I think we're in the process of finishing up 1.1 billion dollars in grants and let me stop and turn it over to Randy. Thank you Doug and thank you all for inviting me to speak with you this afternoon. As Doug mentioned I am I do represent our airports division. Our airports division has really three different functions. The first is to provide grant money to pay for capital improvements in airports. The second is the regulation safety regulation and inspection of airports and the third of which I'm responsible for is airport compliance so in other words to make sure that those airports that take federal money comply with the responsibilities that that entails including access of course to all of you as general aviation pilots. I just very briefly wanted to go through a couple of issues that are very very topical right now to us in the airports. The first as Doug mentioned again is the stimulus money that we received. We did receive 1.1 billion dollars to fund airport capital improvements through the AIP airport improvement program process and we're going to spend this money through the same requirements as existing AIP discretionary grants program and we're going to determine which projects get funded through the existing competitive process in our national priority system. In addition to that all of the projects that we're funding under this program have to be completed within two years which means they have to be shovel ready at this time in other words they're beyond the planning that they are really right ready for bid right now so that they can put this money to work as quickly as possible and as of April 22nd we have allocated of the 1.1 billion dollars that we were that we were provided we've we've allocated just over one billion of that so that's very very quick and we're very pleased and we believe that the the full 1.1 billion dollars is going to generate 30,500 jobs and 5.5 billion dollars in economic activity. The second area I just wanted to touch on is of course also very topical and that is our bird strike database that you may have seen in the news very recently as you may be aware since 1990 we've been collecting information on bird strikes in a database that had not been made public it was a voluntary disclosure database and our FAA believe that we would get more reporting if this was information that was that was that was kept within the agency however as part of the normal process that we have on these things we did go out with a public comment period for 30 days recently to solicit what what what you all were thinking what was the industry thinking about this database that period closed just this week and there are a number of as you can imagine many comments we received and most of those comments were in favor of making the database public so based on those comments and of course FAA input the secretary transportation made a decision this week to make that information that database public and I believe as of today that database has been made public in addition to that we're going to be working to actually make the data a little more searchable and understandable because it wasn't originally developed as I said to be a public database so when if you were to access it right now you would see that there's a little more work to do in order to make it more more searchable as I mentioned the final thing that's in the news again just this week FAA is has a role to play in the congressional airport pilot privatization program which allows up to five airports in the United States to be privatized one of those may be a large hub airport one of them has to be GA and then there's three additional slots in there FAA's role is not to not necessarily to to support that program in a sense we're not pro or against the privatization process this is a this is a pilot program to see how it would work we're of course interested to see if there's a way to bring more private money into airports because that allows the government money that there is to be distributed even further so we've been working with the city of Chicago on the privatization of midway airport really for the last two years and they had selected a bidder last fall that bidder been working to try to pull together the financing on that transaction and this week the bidder decided because of the current financial markets that they were not going to be able to do that so that transaction has has fallen through for the time being so that's those are three things I wanted to bring up right now and ask if you have any questions thanks Randy our next speaker is a very interesting job as manager the small airplane director at Kim Smith gets involved in a lot of activities but she's involved in that one activity with the challenges and general aviation and everything going on that we're actually seeing some growth and some positives occur so let me introduce to you Kim Smith Kim thanks it's really good to be here again I've been here a few years and I have to tell you for a second year in a row wow I just love congressman Ehlers kicking this off it's really nice to know that there's somebody in our congress who understands this community and appreciates what GA brings and especially given the turbulent times we're going through I think it's good in the interest of time I think I have just one one bright spot I want to talk about that I think it's very interesting that we're doing with an aircraft cert and and the whole AVS organization and that's our GA Joint Steering Committee and when I say Joint Steering Committee I do mean joint this this team is led by industry and the FAA and in fact the industry leader is AOP is Bruce Landsberg of the Air Safety Foundation so it really is an opportunity for us to go out and find a pro act to be proactive and looking for safety solutions right now there's three subgroups we have the personal aviation subgroup it's doing a lot of work amateur built and also the turbine operations group so it's something that we're doing to be proactive to try and enhance safety and with a focus on non-regulatory ways I think you're used to us getting up and talking about rules we want to impose there is a lot we can do through education and awareness and reaching out and and some of the great work that's already been done and new projects put out so there's things to do your community is helping us move forward and if you have any thoughts let us know and I know we're short of time so how about I call that it see if there's any questions okay all right thanks Kim I would have thought you would have had a question or two maybe later all right let me introduce to you again John Duncan he's a manager of the air transportation division FAA headquarters and he's got some interesting insight into what's going on in his area John good afternoon first of all I'd like to say on behalf of Peggy Gilligan the associate administrator for aviation safety that she wanted to be here she planned to be here and she was looking forward to it and unfortunately she was pulled off on another project and couldn't make it uh John Allen the director of flight standards would love to be here as well he couldn't make it so they came to me and they said would you like to go to sun and fun and I I actually contained myself and said yes only once because I got to tell you folks I feel like I'm at home I grew up on the on the east coast of Florida near the space center that's where I started flying uh when I was in high school over there we uh I participated in building a breezy how many people know what a breezy is okay good you know what a breezy is um I've still got a few scars I flew that airplane a couple hundred hours I've still got a few scars from bug strikes those weren't those weren't reportable then never hood of goose but it was because it didn't go fast enough to catch one is the is the primary reason but I wanted to I wanted to tell you that I'm I'm pleased to be here there are a lot of other people uh with the same interests that I have working within the FAA particularly in the general aviation division uh that Ann is is now running and we are behind the general aviation community and solidly behind and we're continuing to uh to support uh also wanted to talk just a minute about uh amateur built uh amateur built is uh the only category of uh of general aviation now that is uh where accident the accident rate is going up the trend is up the the uh as you probably know the the um amateur built fleet amounts to about 30 000 plus airframes I think you went over 30 000 last year at Oshkosh and that amounts to and you're doing about three and a half percent of all the flying that's going on and you're also having a large percentage of the uh of the accidents that are occurring much greater than any other segment of aviation more than half of those are loss of control accidents uh stall spin that sort of thing some of them are associated with power failure but but for power failure it's a perfectly good airplane uh when when the accident occurs so I would uh what I would ask you to do is is uh continue uh to increase your vigilance to use the EAA flight advisor programs to use those things that are available to you to do recurrent training to make sure that you are current and and that you can support that segment of the aviation community by flying safely and uh and getting where you want to be when you want to be so thank you very much for the opportunity to be here I look forward to spending some more time with you any questions John thanks uh you've heard me say and our next speaker who's joined us now for a couple years have said that uh when you think about aviation the one place where you have the highest probability for something bad to happen is on a runway uh Wes Timmons is the director of runway safety for the FAA uh he's we've had some challenging times but I think uh even though those challenges continues he'll have some good news for you as well Wes thanks Doug uh this is the second year I've been here last year I came down and I talked to you about what was going on in in the industry what was going on with runway safety runway incursions and uh gave you a briefing and talked a lot about the called action I thought I would tell you where we're at so far kind of give you an update and unlike the rest of them I do have a few slides and I'm going to take all the time they didn't use and I'm going to take all your question time and I'll be up here for the next four hours because now can I change okay um so very quickly this is where we were in the past looked like we were having pretty stable times and it looked like an 07 thing started to go south on us and as you may recall that was when we had the call to action for runway safety when we combined and looked at this data surface incidents and runway incursions and put it all into the same definition that we're using now which I said last time that as of beginning of FY08 we started using the IKO definition which was included things we hadn't included in the past you can see that over the last few years there had been a steady increase in the number of surface incidents that are now reportable and in fact last year we had a thousand and nine over a thousand runway incursions in the U.S. the serious runway incursion rate although 07 was the best year of record that we had ever had we in fact had at the end of the year an upward trend and that trend was continuing and that called us to have the call to action in which we brought a lot of people into Washington and said okay some of these events are so close if these aircraft actually collided we'll do something different tomorrow than we will today and what is that going to be let's figure it out now and do it now before two of them run together so one of the main things that you're going to see at all 139 airports is enhanced taxiway centerline marking you may see any combination of this runway guard lights I mean the whole line lighting runway guard lights above ground you've got the enhanced taxiway centerline which is the double dash on each side of the taxiway 150 feet before the whole line and in some cases you're going to have runway guard lights going all the way around across the intersection this is going to be accomplished by 2010 at every part 139 certificated airport the cast the commercial aviation safety team did a study of risk factors that lead to runway incursions and here's the eight risk factors they thought were common to runway incursions so as you look at things like airport complexity and taxi diagrams and hot spots there's a lot of information that's going to be coming out on this bottom line get a taxi diagram out know where you're at on the airport air traffic procedures we looked at what air traffic was doing that might contribute to runway incursions and we in fact were taking on the six of them that we're looking at and doing the safety analysis on two of which already been have already been implemented so now when you get a taxi to you no longer get just taxi to you're actually getting specific taxi routing and you're also going to have a clearance to cross all intermediate runways before you get a clearance to take off on your departure runway some of the other things that are coming relatively soon I expect this fall although I don't have a firm date I expect the U.S. to change its terminology from position and hold to line up and wait which is in line with the international civil aviation organization standards and we're also looking at explicit runway crossing clearances I mentioned that we started at FY 08 as a horrible year we had 10 serious runway incursions in the first quarter and we were able because of the call to action and all the emphasis and this has been the most intense 18 months on runway safety that I have ever seen in the 40 some years that I've been flying we actually were able to arrest that upward trend and finish the year almost as safe as we were the previous year I'd love to take credit for it but in fact I'm out there in my plane trying to cause runway incursions it really is a tribute to everybody in this room and everybody in the industry for stepping up to this number one cause of runway incursions continues I said we had 109 last year as of yesterday we had 479 so far in the country 74% caused by pilot deviations 70% of those caused by general aviation pilots almost all of them is acknowledging a hold short instruction and then not complying with that hold short instruction almost all of them where we're at today very quickly we actually for the first time in the last eight years actually last 11 years are seeing a slight decrease in total number of runway incursions they're trending down at about 4% right now and I hope that's not just a reflection that nobody's flying anymore and on serious runway incursions we've had four so far this year an unbelievable year all of those are GA two of which are in the southern region we're going to talk about that but and three of those are pilot deviations in one operational error very quickly some of the technology you may have heard that we've turned on runway status lights at LAX they're going into Boston next year and by 2011 we should have runway status lights at at least 22 airports in the US these are a series of lights which not only alert the controller but our direct input to the pilot to say it's either unsafe to take off or it is unsafe to enter across a runway from a taxiway so we're working on those that's kind of a picture of what they look like on the left is a sample of the taxiway lighting and on the right is the runway lighting I talked fast no one's supposed to be any questions Mark but go ahead go ahead can you explain to me why you anticipate that the wording line up and wait will be more effective than the current wording position and hold well it's uh because global aviation it is a global business and it doesn't so much hurt when foreign pilots come to the US but internationally there's a term called taxi to the hold position which is amazingly like position and hold in fact they call it the whole point now because when they first started it their terminology was hold position and they changed that because it was so close to position and hold they use a term now taxi to the whole point well a foreign pilot operating in the US is told position and hold if they get confused and think it's a whole point they'll taxi shorter the runway and stop but internationally US pilots when they're told to taxi to the whole point if they confuse that with position and hold they go out on the runway in front of another aircraft so as we as we work in this global environment we need to standardize and harmonize to the extent we can and this is a situation where primarily US pilots are having a problem in Europe and causing runway incursions and several of them very serious in Europe it's more of a failsafe coming this way but that's the reason we're doing it okay thank you very much thanks Wes and certainly in this part of the country the H state southern region we are having some good results this year runway incursions caused by operational errors are down the big one for me runway incursions caused by pilot deviations are down and vehicle and pedestrian deviation incursions are running on about a par with last year so the numbers are better we're making progress but it's something that we have to work at as Wes is well aware every day one other item in the safety arena the FA has taken on a challenge to reduce the fatal accident rates over the next 10 years by 10 percent and that's measured of course we do this with the measurement of per 100,000 flight hours I will tell you that we're doing better than than the goal that we set we're actually an improved number over that and still moving in a positive way and when you stop and think about it there are some very positive things happening today in aviation let me just mention one to you I'm wondering how many people recognize the name Doug White how about Easter Sunday Southwest Florida Airport Fort Myers starting to see a few heads shake beach beach 200 King Air departed Marco Island pilot slumped over the controls and in the right seat was a general aviation single engine rated pilot with 200 flight hours which started flying in 1991 that gentleman was Doug White and I think if you stop and think about the results of that pilot with his wife and daughters in the back an incapacitated pilot who later of course was determined had passed away on the flight but this individual because of his piloting skills had the presence of mind to contact the air traffic controllers to work with them a relay from a pilot familiar with this particular aircraft through the controllers and this pilot was up in Danbury Connecticut but the system worked as it was an envision to work this individual is able to land that aircraft safely with one loss of life of course not related to the flight but for medical reasons so you have some some great stories in the the counterbalance some of the other things that happened as well let me open it up now we've got a few minutes left and we're going to make a presentation here probably the last five minutes of our session I'm a big believer in what I like to refer to as catching people doing things right and then acknowledging them for it and we have a very special recognition that we want to do the last five minutes but let me open it up now to see if there are other questions for any of our panelists that you'd like to ask it's like there's one in the middle there we're not here I don't think we've got a mic on if you got an on switch there head check have to do with aircraft maintenance uh they field approval processes are anyone here that adjust that can address that situation from an operation standpoint the the answer really is we don't I don't think we have anybody here who can deal with it directly but we'll take your question go ahead with your question and we'll take it back in aircraft maintenance we in general aviation in the past have been had good relations with the the general aviation district offices which now are the FISDO whereas they would approve maintenance to an airplane which was covered by a 337 form and that process has been mostly discontinued and it's a very burdensome situation when it comes to maintaining airplanes and I wonder what caused the federal aviation agency to decide that they do not want to have the responsibility of approving a field service I mean a field approval of a maintenance on an aircraft and I it's it's incomprehensible to me I've been in aviation and flying since 58 and maintaining maintaining airplanes and it's a it's a burden and I wonder why thank you I can tell you that um let's see I was I was in the Alaskan region up until 2006 division manager there when when uh probably in 2005 I think we took a look the our maintenance folks took a look at the way field approvals were being done in conjunction with folks in in Kim's shop and looked across the country to see how those were being done and we felt that uh that the parameters that were set then were being exceeded in some places so the guidance was rewritten in order to try to bring that back in line and I know since that time there's been a considerable amount of heartburn across the country but the the right folks are out there I think to straighten that out if you have specific questions I would suggest that you get them back through your physdo to to the regional office and and pursue those questions if you think that something should be field approved and is eligible field for field approval work with those folks I know in the past we work with aircraft cert at a field level looking at at specific modifications or repairs to determine whether they do meet field approval criteria that's the basic reason you want to add anything to that Kim I think the only thing I'd add is kind of going like that when we looked at what was happening in the field approval process there were a lot of modifications being made that really rose to the level of supplemental type certificates stcs and so we're trying to find the right balance I'm not sure we're a hundred percent there but we do have a very good relationship between the uh the physdo's and our aircraft certification offices and how we can have engineers step in and help with some of the data of approvals for some of the repairs but you can still do field approvals for the minor kind of things so it just depends on where you draw the line and your local physdo's and the regional offices can help if you think that line is not being drawn correctly if you if you still have some questions or some specifics don beach our flight standards division manager in southern region is here and we'll we want to be sure that we fully respond to that don you have any comments you want to make at this point okay great thanks other questions well let's move on to our presentation and then we'll come back and if you've got a question we can cover that as well but as I said it's it's really great when you we can recognize people doing some some great things in aviation and we have an opportunity to do that today let me turn it back over to John Duncan and we've got a presentation here and bread you want to come up you go ahead and open it up you know it's kind of exciting John doesn't tell all the story John doesn't tell the story that he in fact was my 200 he was my boss in Alaska and he's such a modest man but truly you know when we look at things how many of you ever wish that you could emcee the academy awards anybody here okay well today i have a chance to do that and what i'm trying to find of course is a powerpoint presentation which may allude me um yeah there we go we have a number of awards out there for pilots and no matter who you are where you're at today just three letters can invoke all kinds of emotion in you and those three letters are f a a okay no matter where you're at no matter what you've done no matter what you've seen they invoke three emotions in you and we'll see if this thing loads up if not we'll just continue going on with it the uh i want you all to pay attention to this okay and for you guys up here you can see your monitors here on both sides of you okay and um and you know when you when you stop and think about where we've gone and and and what we've done we've covered so many miles today we're going to honor the guy that's covered so many miles in fact the guy that's spent over 50 years in aviation as a pilot as an instructor as a mentor and it just it just goes to show you that in in so many ways there is a synchronicity in aviation there is a thread of a of all of us in aviation the Wright brothers master pilot award is what we're here for today it's named for the creators it's a lifetime achievement for pilots much like the the academy awards are for an actor and it was first authorized in 2003 and i'm going to go through this kind of quick because i know everybody wants to get outside 50 consecutive years as a c a f a pilot up to 20 years can be credited as military u.s. with us in the whole time and a current flight review which means he has to be still an aviator after 50 years i don't think i want to do that a clean pilot record no revocation civil penalties or suspensions three letters of recommendation from the f a pilots must apply to the f a can download the forms of course the award can be awarded up to two years after posthumously special issue f a certificate and you'll see that shortly a lapel pin a lapel pin for his spouse and the name is described in a roll of honor in f a headquarters now the reason the lapel pin for the spouse is so important is because behind every successful man is a hugely successful woman all right and you'll meet that woman today a distinguished chairman of honor larry w miller larry come on up here i want you to please be seated okay because i could sit here and read a bio of this man but i'm not i'm going to read the three letters of recommendation to you from his peers i'm writing this letter in regards to laurence d miller i met mr miller around the early 1960s he trained me as a cfi for my private certificate early 1970s i've been around mr miller in the field of aviation and good friends for ages to my knowledge mr miller has been associated with flying aircraft well over 50 years a safe and extremely competent pilot and a mentor for as many years of service and aviation we are a great debt that comes from a mark p shaffer during the past 20 years both in flight schools and far 135 operations i work closely in phoning cockpits with mr miller during this time i witnessed his ever relentless pursuit for the safety of others an innovative teacher and precautions pilot larry miller has become a mentor and a role model for many pilots who were fortunate enough to fly with them fred longi excuse me it's such an honor to do this i get choker from time to time i've known mr miller for over 40 years i've known him to be a fine pilot and an extraordinary instructor and mentor during this this 40 year period he owned an fbo in in michigan where i started flying 40 years ago absolutely wonderful mentor i feel stronger that he should be awarded this award for over 50 years of flying and to keep it short let me run through something real fast either some pictures he said okay just real quickly him and his family and of course right there but like i said behind every successful man is a very successful woman congratulations larry we appreciate you now i'm going to ask a couple more people to come up here okay because this is very important like i said the fAA is a team we're a family we do what we do because we have a passion and i'd like for Doug would you come up here and stand please with him all right and i would like for don come up and stand here please and i'd like for james king jim king who are you at to come over here our mission is possible because of these people you see standing up here and i would like for you to give them a round of applause to thank them for who they are a very courageous man i've saved the best for last okay i'd like to have kevin clover come up here all right kevin clover is the idea of brainchild behind my team called the fAA safety team the fast team i'm sure you've heard of us and we're putting a brand new face on aviation in fact he doesn't know this yet but we're called the next generation okay and anyway this is all possible again by these people wherever you see these guys thank them because they make our jobs possible thank you guys