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Floor Speech
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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I come to the floor today in support of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. This has been a truly bipartisan, bicameral endeavor, and that is how it should be. It has taken longer than we had hoped, but the final product is worth it.
This bill will empower the FAA to aggressively address the aviation system safety crisis, make our aviation system more accessible for passengers with disabilities, provide historic investments that will enhance our Nation's capacity to recruit and train the next generation of aviation workers, and do so without lowering, weakening, or watering down the post-Colgan safety system, including pilot qualification standards.
There are many important provisions in this bill, but I want to highlight just a few today. First and foremost, this bill takes important steps to address critical safety challenges facing our aviation system. During the pandemic, retirements and buyouts drained critical experience from our aviation workforce, both in the Federal Agencies, like the FAA and the NTSB, as well as in the commercial aviation sector.
The post-COVID surge in demand for air travel put a huge strain on our system and stretched the remaining aviation workforce thin. Near misses and close calls became so frequent that the FAA was forced to convene a safety summit.
Despite this, the close calls keep happening over and over and over again. Just last week, a Swiss Air flight had to abort takeoff at JFK when four other planes were crossing the runway at the same time. The week before that, a Southwest jet crossed the runway at National Airport right as a JetBlue flight was starting its takeoff roll.
The need for Congress to act is urgent, and this bill takes important steps to address safety-critical challenges.
Importantly, our bill also preserves an important pillar of the post- Colgan safety system: the 1,500-hour rule for first officer flight training. As both a commercial and a private pilot, I know how critical real-world experience is in the cockpit. It can mean the difference between life and death. As demand for air travel continues to grow, we will continue to need more pilots. But putting safety first demands that Congress always reject industry efforts to lower pilot qualification standards, and that is why I worked so hard to make sure that our bill left the 1,500-hour rule intact.
Air traffic controllers and surface detection is a key component of the FAA reauthorization bill also. Our legislation will also give a much needed boost to our air traffic controller workforce.
Coming out of the pandemic, our air traffic facilities are understaffed and our controllers are overworked. Last year, only 3 of 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet staffing targets, while controllers are working 60 hours a week to keep up.
This is dangerous. These are highly stressful, safety-critical jobs under the best of circumstances. Growing this workforce is a safety imperative, and this bill takes aggressive steps to do so. It will set a minimum hiring target equal to the maximum number of air traffic controllers our academy can accommodate. It will also require a more accurate staffing model going forward to ensure that there will be enough air traffic controllers to meet the growing demand and keep the flying public safe.
The bill will also expand deployment of surface detection technology to more airports to help prevent near misses or, worse, actual collisions.
Our bipartisan compromise also advances passenger safety by requiring the FAA to finally update aircraft evacuation standards to account for real-world conditions. Federal regulations require that, in the event of an emergency, passengers can evacuate an aircraft within 90 seconds. However, recent FAA in-person evacuation simulations used only able- bodied adults under the age of 60, in groups of just 60, on a plane with no carry-on baggage and nobody under the age of 18.
On a typical 737, you would see more than twice that number of passengers. I think it is safe to say that you would also probably see a couple of backpacks--maybe 100 backpacks--and probably some senior citizens, children, and passengers with disabilities too. All of these folks were left out of the latest FAA simulation.
So the fact is, we don't actually know if an aircraft can be evacuated in 90 seconds in real-world conditions, and that is what is so dangerous. The Miracle on the Hudson took more than twice that long to evacuate--3 minutes.
In January, when a Japan Airlines crew miraculously managed to successfully evacuate nearly 400 people from a burning Airbus A350, it took closer to 18 minutes from the point of impact and, overall, 5 minutes from the point of when the plane had stopped moving.
In 2016, it took more than 17 minutes to evacuate a 767 at O'Hare, after the plane came to a stop, well short of the 90-second threshold.
Carry-on bags slowed down that evacuation; and since then, the NTSB has been recommending FAA take a closer look at this issue.
The bill before us today includes a provision Senator Baldwin and I championed to require the FAA to finally do just that: along with mandating the Agency, actually consider other real-world conditions like the presence of children, seniors, and passengers with disabilities.
The FAA bill will also make much needed progress in transforming commercial air travel to be safer and more accessible for passengers with disabilities.
I was proud and honored to work with individuals and organizations in the disability community when drafting this portion of our legislation.
And while we still have a long way to go to ensure equal access for millions of people with disabilities when flying, if passed, our FAA Reauthorization Act would be one of the most significant leaps taken over the past decade towards improving the air travel experience for the disability community.
Our work builds on a yearslong effort by my colleague Senator Baldwin. And I would like to thank her for her leadership on the Air Carrier Access Amendments Act, which has been a priority of the disability community for years.
And today, I am happy to say that several important provisions from that Baldwin bill are included in this reauthorization.
Today's bill also includes a new grant program to upgrade airports to make them more accessible for passengers with disabilities.
Two bipartisan, bicameral bills are also included: the Mobility Aids on Board Improve Lives and Empower All Act--or MOBILE Act--which I worked on with Senator Thune and Representatives Steve Cohen and Pete Stauber, and the Prioritizing Accountability and Accessibility for Aviation Consumers Act, which I worked on with Senator Fischer and Representatives Steve Cohen and Brian Fitzpatrick.
I want to thank my colleagues across the aisle and in the House for working with me to show that even in this divisive political moment, we can--and we must--still legislate in a bipartisan fashion on issues that impact Americans throughout every inch of this country, in States that are both red and blue.
This bill will also help grow the next generation of pilots, aviation mechanics, and aviation manufacturing technical workers by expanding the FAA's Aviation Workforce Development Grant Program. This is critical to meet future demand, which is expected to grow tremendously. The FAA estimates the 696 million mainline enplanements we saw in 2023 will grow to more than 1.1 trillion enplanements by 2044.
I want to thank Senators Moran, Klobuchar, Thune, Kelly, Fischer, Warnock, and Capito for working with me to secure the highest level of investments forever for these grants.
I want to give a special thanks to Senator Moran, who has been such a pleasure to work with, and also to my colleagues in the House and especially to our chairwoman of the committee, who has been so generous in working with me as the subcommittee chair.
While this initiative may be relatively new, in its short history, it has already proven incredibly popular with educational and training institutions, with the demands for training grants vastly outstripping supply.
Our bill will fix this imbalance by drastically strengthening the capacity and capabilities of our Nation's aviation education and training organizations, with the goal of successfully recruiting and preparing the next generation of American aviation workers.
Before yielding, I want to say a brief word about Boeing--a company with a proud heritage in American aviation. This bill does not fully address our many vexing issues that have come to light since a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight midair in January of this year.
Congress must look more closely at these issues and assess what additional legislation may be needed.
As Chair Cantwell has indicated, we will be conducting vigorous oversight, but that will take time. And this bill contains urgently needed fixes to address immediate imminent safety risks. We must not delay passage of this FAA reauthorization while we continue our oversight of Boeing and all aviation manufacturers.
So let's pass this bill.
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