"The State of American Aviation"
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House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation U.S. House of Representatives
André Carson
Today is the first hearing with an FAA witness that we've held this year. Mr. Administrator, you've written a few oversight letters, but we haven't received much of the information that we've requested, sir. So, we have a long list of issues we'd like to get updates on: the FAA's ongoing response to numerous crashes this year, including the tragic mid-air collision at DCA and the UPS crash in Louisville; the rationale used to restrict and reduce flights at the 40th largest airports in the country during the recent shutdown, including our very own, the Indianapolis International Airport, which was rated the best in North America for 12 years straight; the alarming loss of technical expertise at FAA due to various administrative actions, including the mass firings and forced buyouts that have hollowed out the agency's ranks; the need for more transparency about the FAA's contracts with clear conflicts of interest; workplace safety issues for flight crews; and finally, the implementation of secondary cockpit barriers mandated to protect the flight deck. There are other issues and provisions, but I hope that after today's first visit to our committee, you won't be a stranger, sir. Thank you, Chairman, I yield back.
Speaker 2
Gentleman yields. I now recognize our leader, the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Graves, for an opening statement.
Sam Graves
Thank you, Chairman Nehls, and thank you, Administrator, for being here. It's always, always good to see you. So it's been an eventful year in aviation, and it started with tragedy, and our thoughts remain with the loved ones of those in the DCA mid-air collision that occurred January 29th last year. And this year, the state of our nation's air traffic control system has been thrust into the spotlight, but it's not a new debate. Our ATC system is outdated and unsustainable, and it has to be modernized for the benefit of safety of all users of the national airspace system.
And I'm pleased that Congress passed and President Trump signed the budget reconciliation bill into law, enacting a historic investment in our nation's aviation infrastructure totaling $12.5 billion for air traffic control modernization. This funding allowed the Federal Aviation Administration to immediately get to work to replace critical telecommunications infrastructure and radar systems, invest in runway safety and airport surveillance projects, and replace antiquated air traffic control facilities. And I look forward to continuing the work with Administrator Bedford and Secretary Duffy and President Trump as we move forward on ATC modernization. Furthermore, I'm proud that this committee worked in a very bipartisan fashion to pass FAA reauthorization in 2024. This bipartisan law addressed workforce challenges, increased funding for airports across the country, and made improvements to the passenger experience, and included the very first ever general aviation title.
And I'm pleased that the FAA finalized the modernization of the special airworthiness certificate rule, which expanded the freedom to fly for every American. And this is something that I pushed hard for and required the FAA to do in last year's FAA reauthorization. For air traffic controllers, the FAA has exceeded the goals set by Congress, hiring 2,026 new controllers in 2025, and the FAA has planned to hire 8,900 controllers by 2008. And I remain committed to ensuring that the FAA and the Department of Transportation work towards full implementation of the law and carry out what Congress intended. And with that, Chairman Nehls, thank you, and I look forward to hearing the administrator's testimony, and with that I yield back.
Speaker 5
Chairman yields, I now recognize ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Larsen.
Rick Larsen
Thank you, Chair Nehls, and thanks for calling today's hearing on the state of American aviation, and Administrator Bedford, thanks for joining us today. We've got plenty to discuss, and I look forward to your testimony. Chair Nehls, I just want to give you a heads up, my, I might be pushing the five-minute limit on this one, so just a bit of grace.
I'll give you a little grace.
Rick Larsen
Thank you for your grace, sir. Next month will mark the one-year anniversary of the DCA mid-air collision where a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines flight 5342 near DCA. It was the first mass casualty commercial plane crash in the US in nearly 16 years and marked the end of one of the longest streaks without such an incident in US history. This accident is a stark reminder of the vigilance we need in pursuit of aviation safety. More can always be done to make air travel safer.
We can. And I want to thank the friends and families of the victims who are here today, including Laura O'Jondra, Amy Hunter, and family. Your presence keeps your loved ones' memories alive and your advocacy reminds us to stay focused on the endless pursuit to improve aviation safety. And in response to the accident, the DOT and FAA took several actions at the time to address pressing issues that the crash exposed, including swiftly banning most non-essential helicopter operations near DCA, reviewing 21 US airports to identify risk factors and safety issues similar to those at DCA, requiring federal agencies that conduct aircraft operations near DCA to broadcast their position using ADS-B Out. Hard questions yet remain and still have yet to be asked, but I look forward to hearing how FAA is developing the new policies, bolstering safety redundancies, and preparing for the NTSB's final report and recommendations and evaluating any systemic issues beyond the purview of the NTSB investigation.
I'm committed to this effort and working with Chair Graves and Chair Nellis and Ranking Member Carson and this committee to fully address the NTSB recommendations and hold the FAA accountable to those recommendations. Now, the aftermath of the accident also put a spotlight on the aging air traffic control system, or ATC system. Modernizing the nation's ATC system is long overdue. Last year, the GAO found that of FAA's 138 systems, 105 are unsustainable or potentially unsustainable. That's why T&I members from both sides of the aisle did in fact support the $12 billion investment in ATC modernization and understand that additional funding will likely be needed.
But before any additional investment, the FAA must show its work and be more transparent about how it's spending this investment. Although the FAA finally selected a prime integrator, Peraton, to oversee its modernization efforts, there are still several questions about next steps. And as the administration moves forward, Congress has to ensure this modernization initiative is data-driven, transparent, and of course, safety-focused. Unfortunately, this is the year, as the Chair noted, that the NAS has been pushed to unprecedented limits. And the decrease in employment numbers at FAA and DOT earlier this year and the administration's early retirement buyouts pushed safety-critical employees to depart the agency, subsequently increasing the strain on the personnel who were left behind and the airspace as a whole.
These actions also resulted in an extraordinary loss of institutional knowledge and technical expertise from the agency, making it more difficult for the FAA to meet its safety mission. And so I've questions as well about personnel hiring and safety-critical mission employment. Now, during the recent shutdown, thousands of air traffic controllers and critical aviation safety workers were forced to work long, stressful hours without pay for several weeks, with many worrying about getting a second job to feed families while protecting travelers. Not only did the shutdown create daily operational disruptions, it also caused long-term stress and uncertainty for the hardworking women and men of the US aviation workforce. The stress of the shutdown was further exacerbated by the unprecedented safety decision to quickly reduce airline flight capacity by up to 10% at 40 high-traffic airports across the country.
And while I agree that aviation safety risks in the NAS had to be addressed immediately, it became apparent that the decision was made quickly, perhaps it had to be, but also without adequate coordination with key aviation stakeholders. Consequently, airlines, general aviation, and other stakeholders had to make big changes to operations with little to no notice, increasing risk in the NAS and increasing other risk in the NAS. So this unprecedented nature of the administration's decision to limit air traffic demands congressional review, an issue I've talked to the administrator about.
That's why I, along with several of my Democratic colleagues on the committee, sent you a letter last month requesting additional information regarding the data used by the agency to reduce flight capacity and return such flight capacity to normal. And you did transmit a response letter late last night. I've reviewed it, only reviewed it, I'll read it in a little more depth soon enough. But I hope that you can shed some more light on that decision today and respond to any follow-up questions that we may have in a member briefing by the by next month. So in conclusion, the appointment of a new administrator gives the FAA a chance to provide long-term stability at a time when it's most needed.
And while the challenges before you haven't been and won't be easy, this committee does share your goal of meeting these safety challenges head-on. So Administrator Bedford, thank you for joining us today and I look forward to hearing from you. With that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Troy Nehls
The gentleman yields. I'd like to now welcome our witness, Administrator Bedford, and thank you for being here. You got a lighting system in front of you, five minutes is what we're asking when you give an opening. I ask unanimous consent that the witness' full statements be included in the record, without objection. I also ask unanimous consent that the record of today's hearing remain open until such time as our witness has provided answers to any questions that may be submitted to them in writing, without objection, so ordered.
I also ask unanimous consent that the record remain open for 15 days for any additional comments and information submitted by members or witness to be included in the record of today's hearing, without objection. And as your written testimony has been made part of the record, the subcommittee asks that you limit your oral remarks to the five minutes. With that, Administrator Bedford, you are recognized for five minutes.
Bryan Bedford
Thank you, Chairman Nehls, Ranking Member Carson, Chairman Graves, and Ranking Member Larsen. I want to thank you so much for the opportunity to be here this morning. It's my first opportunity to appear as the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and I do welcome the opportunity to provide an update for you on the FAA's work to strengthen aviation safety, to modernize air traffic control, and prepare for the future. I'd also like to begin by acknowledging the tragic accident involving PSA flight 5342 at Reagan National. It was a sobering reminder why the FAA exists and why I answered President Trump's call and Secretary Duffy to accept this job.
Our mission is simple but critical: to protect pilots, flight attendants, and the traveling public by objectively analyzing safety data to identify risk and urgently act on the data to mitigate that risk. As you pointed out, immediately after the accident, the FAA did take decisive action to permanently restrict non-essential helicopter operations in the capital region, permanently close certain helicopter routes, eliminating visual separation approaches, and requiring the broadcast of ADS-B Out signals with limited exceptions. Furthermore, we reviewed operational hotspots across the nation where we saw mixed traffic environments creating elevated risk, identified potential threats, and mitigated those threats. With continued support of the National Transportation Safety Board's investigations, we work with them on the recent UPS MD-11 accident. These investigations reinforce the importance of constant vigilance and a willingness to re-examine our processes, our assumptions, and our oversight.
The FAA remains closely engaged in overseeing how Boeing manages design, manufacturing, and quality across its programs, including its production system. I have confidence in the FAA's workforce performing this oversight, many of whom continued to carry out critical safety work during the recent government shutdown. The shutdown placed extraordinary strain on the FAA and its people. Air traffic controllers, safety inspectors, technicians, engineers, and many others who continued to report to work without pay during the 43-day lapse in appropriations.
Staffing triggers reached unprecedented levels, rising from mere single digits prior to the lapse to more than 80 in a single day. Applying the hard lessons learned from the DCA accident, the FAA safety team identified controller workload and system demand as emerging risk factors. As response to this increased risk, we temporarily reduced flight operations at 40 high-traffic airports. The connection between controller workload, system demand, and operational risks was unmistakable. It reinforced the need for the FAA to act decisively when the data demands it and underscored the importance of stable controller funding.
Hiring and retaining a strong workforce remains essential to FAA's safety mission. Under Secretary Duffy's leadership, the FAA met its fiscal 25 hiring goal of adding more than 2,000 new controller trainees. We remain on track to hire 8,900 additional controller trainees through 2028. We expanded the enhanced air traffic collegiate training initiative to 19 institutions, and we continue hiring inspectors, engineers on the spot, offering relocation incentives to place key personnel in critical locations. As we grow the workforce, the FAA must also evolve.
The aviation ecosystem is changing rapidly, and the agency must adapt to keep pace with innovation while maintaining the highest safety standards. President Trump's recent executive orders reinforce the need for modernization, efficiency, and innovation across the FAA. Congress provided a strong foundation through the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. That act directs the FAA to become more agile, more efficient, and I'm pleased to share that implementation is well underway. The FAA is also moving toward an agency-wide system management to ensure lessons learned from accidents, incidents, and near misses are identified and acted upon consistently across the agency.
The national airspace system must be renewed. President Trump has articulated a bold vision for a new air traffic control system within the next three years. That critical work is well underway. We recently selected an integrator to assist in our efforts, we've compressed radar and Intelcom modernization into a three-year timeline, and we've already transitioned more than one-third of the copper infrastructure to fiber. We've deployed our first digital radios and voice switches.
The One Big Beautiful Bill provided a historic $12.5 billion down payment on this critical effort. The DCA tragedy and the government shutdown were defining moments for the FAA this year. They exposed vulnerabilities, but they also drove action and sharpened our focus. Today, the FAA is more proactive and more determined than ever to fulfill its safety mission. We owe the American people a system that is safe, modern, resilient, and built for the future.
That's the course that we're on, and with continued support of this committee, we will achieve it. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Troy Nehls
Thank you, Administrator Bedford, for your testimony. We will now turn to questions from the panel. I'll recognize myself for five minutes. Administrator Bedford, the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, of 2026 includes Section 373, which in my opinion does not improve safety in the DC metropolitan airspace and instead maintains similar operational exceptions that existed at the time of the tragic mid-air collision over the Potomac that claimed 67 innocent lives just 11 months ago. And as written, this provision effectively gives the military very broad, very broad discretion to operate under concurrent waiver authority without enhanced tracking or broadcast requirements that could prevent mid-air conflicts at the low altitudes.
Administrator Bedford, are you familiar with this language, and if you are, do you envision any safety concerns that could arise if it's enacted as currently written?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question, Chairman Nehls. I'm told it's FAA policy not to comment on legislation while it's going through the through the process and I will try to respect that. I will advise the committee that normally when language like this is discussed, it's customary to reach out to the FAA and ask for a technical consult or some form of technical advisory. I can tell you that did not happen in this case. We learned of section 373 essentially when everybody else did last week.
But let me be clear, regardless of what, let me say this, let me be clear that our intent is not to go back to where we were prior to January the 29th. As long as I'm administrator and I believe it's true as long as Secretary Buttigieg is Secretary of Transportation, we are not going to go back into a position of less safe airspace environment. We will monitor the airspace with vigilance and with safety first.
Troy Nehls
Well, I'll put it simply put for me, I do not believe that the military should be conducting any classified training missions or check rides up and down the Potomac River in one of the most congested Class B airspaces in the country. I don't agree. Administrator Bedford, given last week's announcement that Peraton will serve as the prime integrator responsible for overseeing the administration's air traffic control modernization plan, what distinct role do you envision Peraton will be playing and what guardrails do you have in place to ensure that they are being held accountable to the deadlines and efficiency metrics?
Bryan Bedford
Well again, thank you for that question. I think it's on everybody's mind on this committee and frankly within the administration that modernization not turn into another NextGen boondoggle. We need to make sure that modernization gets done, gets done on time and achieves the results that we've set before this committee, which is to deploy new technology within the next three years. That's off-the-shelf technology, not some new technology that may or may not be created over the next several years. So Peraton's mission is to assist the FAA and in frankly to lead us in thinking about how to execute modernization when we get to what I think are extremely challenging issues for us, that is migrating from traditional TDM analog systems into voice over internet protocol digital architectures.
These are not competencies that the FAA has internally. We need assistance from people who've done this before. Peraton brings us that experience.
Troy Nehls
Fair enough. You mentioned it, you talk about the one big beautiful bill, the 12.5 billion, the down payment. You know, it's 4.75 billion for telecommunications, 3 billion radar replacement, 500 million runway safety technology, another 80 million for automated weather observation. I mean, it's all laid out there, 1 billion for the potential with TRACONs, another 100 million for RTCs. How do you how do you feel that is going in?
I mean, where where are we at with the 12.5? I mean, how much have have we spent? I mean, how we doing with the 12.5?
Bryan Bedford
Well, just as a way of giving the committee some insight on how we're thinking about this, you know, we've adopted a mantra of think slow, move fast, understanding what the end state of modernization needs to look like and then determining how best to plot a course to get there as opposed to just let's go out and spend money. So we've spent the last four and a half months plotting out what the end state of the NAS should look like, the National Airspace System, when modernization is accomplished.
And it's an exciting vision, and I'd be happy to get into more detail with you on that. But to directly answer your question, we've committed by the end of this year over six billion dollars of the twelve and a half. That's on telecom infrastructure, new radar surveillance systems, all of which will be deployed over the next two and a half years.
Troy Nehls
I think that's a beautiful thing. I, you know, when we pass this one big beautiful bill, I always talk about quarterly reports. So we pass this in July and it says no later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this act and every 90 days after, the administrator of the FAA shall submit to Congress a report. So we're talking sometime in January of 2026. Are you prepared, are you going to be able to come up and submit a report that says, hey, this is where the 12.5 is being spent and fulfill your commitment here by law?
Absolutely.
Troy Nehls
We're good? All right. With that, Mr. Carson, I yield to you, sir. Thank you, Administrator Bedford.
André Carson
Thank you, good Chairman. Mr. Administrator, after the very terrible mid-air collision this year of a military helicopter and a passenger plane, many of us serving on the subcommittee urged restrictions on military flights around DCA, particularly military training flights at the height of passenger traffic. We strongly warned against helicopters flying dark without transponders. FAA's implementation of some of these recommendations was a step in the right direction. Thank you.
At least until we receive the NTSB report in the coming months. Now, unfortunately, someone in the Senate didn't agree and inserted concerning provisions in the NDAA that passed last week, as you know. Mr. Administrator, will you commit to our committee, sir, that FAA will maintain the stronger safety measures put in place after the crash, sir?
Bryan Bedford
Thank you for that question, Ranking Member Carson. The accident at Reagan National on January 29th, I think, shook the FAA to its core. Safety is our foundational mission. It's what everybody in the agency's focused on every day, on every flight. That's the mission, to complete it safely.
There were gaps that we now see. We can look in the rearview mirror and we can see the gaps that existed, things that tragically had to perfectly line up to enable that crash to occur. As rare as it is, the fact that it could happen at all was a hard lesson learned for the agency. Those gaps have been closed and they will remain closed as long as I'm the administrator.
André Carson
Secondly, sir, will you commit to us that you will use your authority to try and close military exemptions and loopholes that could increase the risk for another mid-air collision?
Bryan Bedford
Well, I think let me elaborate a little bit on that. The military's actually been great partners since the DCA accident. I mean, there's a lot of learning on both sides. And while I think we always strive for more transparency and more collaboration, some of this new muscle memory's a bit unnatural. But I will say that we've had great cooperation from the Pentagon in terms of how we've enabled new restrictions in the capital region airspace.
So I would anticipate that to continue. We're in the process of renegotiating our memorandum of agreement in terms of how we continue to operate with those restrictions in the capital region, and I expect that to continue.
André Carson
Mr. Administrator, the administration opened the now-defunct DOGE office to allegedly cut waste and fraud, but instead very important staffing and grant funding was targeted. Improving airport operations improves aviation safety. I think we can all agree. One example was the very shortsighted cancellation of funding to improve the solar farm at the Indianapolis International Airport. This facility is the largest of its kind, very remarkable, and has enjoyed bipartisan support since it first opened because it improves the operational efficiency of the airport's grid and lowers costs, which benefit passengers and industry.
Mr. Administrator, will you please, sir, provide the subcommittee with a full list of FAA grants that were terminated or not dispersed?
And secondly, please provide the rationale, sir, for the terminations and whether these decisions can be reviewed for the restoration of funding in the future.
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question. I've got the team back here taking notes, so they'll be happy to revert back to you with any answers I'm unable to provide. It's my understanding that whenever there's a change in administration, it's customary for the incoming administration to evaluate the priorities of the prior administration. I believe that happened, that that is something that's been consistent, you know, in many of the past changes that we've seen. And unlike, and not unlike previous changes, this administration has a different view of solar and wind and alternative energy projects.
So while these decisions were taken prior to my installation as administrator, my understanding is that all of the funding programs went through a reevaluation, and more likely than not, that's the reason that the Indianapolis program was terminated. But I'm happy to provide you with a reconciliation of other programs that might have been terminated.
Tim Burchett
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. What, sir, what specific actions has the FAA taken to fully implement the President's directive for nondiscriminatory merit-based hiring across all positions?
Bryan Bedford
Well, simply put, sir, the goal today is to hire the best people, give them the best training and the best tools, and expect the best results.
Tim Burchett
I'd like to say put the best player in, coach. So I appreciate that. Does the administration plan to alter minimum pilot crew requirements in response to increased automation?
Speaker 8
There are no plans today, sir, that I'm aware of to alter the minimum crew complement.
Tim Burchett
Good. How are you going to ensure that hard-working Americans don't lose well-paying aviation jobs?
Bryan Bedford
Well, sir, I can tell you President Trump's executive orders lay out a fantastic opportunity for innovation in the aviation space, whether that's unleashing drone dominance, reasserting supersonic air travel potential, or advanced air mobility through our EIPP programs. I mean, we have a wonderful opportunity to onshore innovative technologies. And frankly, these are technologies that were in fact invented here, but we have to create a regulatory architecture that will enable them to deploy cost-effectively and maintain safety within the national airspace system.
Speaker 11
Yeah. What I'm afraid with these executive orders, though, maybe not so much in this committee, but some of the others, I've seen Congress is pretty gutless to codify those. I've got about 20 or so that are in bill form that won't even receive a peep because we don't have the guts to do what President Trump has really been given a mandate to do. Will automation eliminate cargo carrier pilot jobs?
Bryan Bedford
I don't think automation will eliminate jobs. I think automation will increase opportunity, especially if we think about delivery service convenience to small communities or even within cities. We're today using drone deployment in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We have almost 2,000 drone operations today doing small package delivery, medicines, things that are making it more convenient for consumers to get vital, you know, medications that they need. These are not taking jobs away.
These are simply adding more convenience for American consumers.
Tim Burchett
Thank you. It seems crazy to me that the US has more relaxed requirements for foreign repair stations than at home. Should countries like China have stricter inspection requirements?
Bryan Bedford
Well, I understand the concern over foreign inspection repair services. I think our answer to that should be more workforce development because what we're struggling with here, sir, is a difficulty developing maintenance technicians and encouraging that profession. There's I think a strong desire for American aviation to have that ecosystem here in the United States than it is to seek foreign.
Speaker 11
I agree with you. I think it's these education snobs that have told America that we're not going to do these things anymore and I mean honestly it you're not going to send a clogged toilet to Mexico. We gotta have folks here. I have a degree in technological adult education, we'd call that shop back in the day, but everybody I graduated with has a job, is training people in the trades and it's just it's...
Speaker 11
I think maybe we need to get out of some of these skyboxes at these ballgames and as legislators and start figuring out what the heck's going wrong in the system. Do you think tougher foreign...
Speaker 16
And if I could, I think we need to challenge our aviation partners, our commercial airlines, to be more focused on workforce development as well.
Speaker 11
I agree with that. You know my mama flew an airplane during the Second World War, she lost her brother fighting the Nazis and she daddy was off fighting the Japanese in the Marine Corps in the Pacific. And you know she's seventeen-year-old little girl, didn't have electricity till she's a senior in high school, she's flying a dadgum airplane. When I was seventeen I was trying to figure out how to turn on a microwave oven, you know? So I appreciate that.
Would tougher foreign requirements bring back maintenance work to US shops and help protect American jobs?
Tim Burchett
Would tougher foreign requirements bring back maintenance work to the US shops and help protect American jobs?
Bryan Bedford
So our surveillance is actually on the airlines themselves. So our requirement is wherever they source maintenance it has to meet our technical specifications and our maintenance oversight. So our accountability resides with the commercial airlines who are making those decisions. But again, I do believe if we could build out better infrastructure here our commercial airline users would take advantage of it.
Tim Burchett
Is the administration providing regulatory relief to domestic repair stations?
Speaker 11
I'm sorry, it's my accent. I'm from East Tennessee, it's the only place in America where people don't speak with an accent, so I forgive you for that. Is the adminis... thank you for the laughter. Is the administration providing regulatory relief to domestic repair stations?
Rick Larsen
Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chair. First off, administrator, I mentioned this last night, I just wanted to get have you give me an update on the status of the notice of funding opportunity for aviation workforce development grants. The administration has yet to issue NOFOs for these 2025 grants, Representative Strickland and I wrote a letter to you all about this, do you have an update for me?
Bryan Bedford
Yes, sir, I do think this is an area where we're a little tardy and we need to pick up our tempo on how to get these NOFOs out and funded. Like I was referring to ranking member Carson's question, you know anytime we have a change in administration it's normal to sort of recalibrate what the conditionality of different grant programs are. We did go through that recalibration as I understand it and are now getting the NOFOs out with the intention of fund them as quickly as possible.
Rick Larsen
Well, we'll push you on that, continue to push you on that and even though Mr. Burchett's left, these these particular grants are being used to great effect in my district at repair stations to train the next generation workforce. So please do that. On the next question I have and I'm just going to run through these quickly.
So it's my understanding the FAA and TSA, sorry, this is on BVLOS now, sorry, change the subject. On FAA and TSA, that you have planned to issue separate BVLOS rules. Can you confirm that the FAA and TSA are still going to do that and give us an updated timeline for the FAA's review of comments for its BVLOS rule?
Bryan Bedford
Yes, thank you for the question on BVLOS. I think this is an exciting time in aviation. We've created an ecosystem where we can have drone operations work safely within the NAS, deconflicted from the start. We have worked hard across our government institutions, with the TSA in particular, trying to find a compromise between unleashing drone dominance but also making sure that we're maintaining the highest levels of drone safety. We received 3,000 comments back from our notice of proposed rulemaking.
I think good comments. We're going to sit down with industry and have a session, I think in the next two weeks, where we're going to try to make sure that we can find a rule that meets everybody's needs, especially as it relates to certification of drones and how those going from sort of prescriptive criteria to more performance-based metrics. Again, we'd like to create a rule that allows the FAA to sort of monitor but not be the bottleneck in terms of how we unleash drone opportunities across the country. I can't speak for the TSA. There were certainly some fairly heavy comments that came back as it relates to the amount of training or security protocols that potential handlers of the boxes that might be.
So you can imagine organizations like Walmart are concerned about how much training and security demands are there. But I'm hopeful that we'll get a rule both from us and the TSA that will enable us to deploy drones across the country.
Rick Larsen
On that point, I don't need a comment. I think I'm going to send you a letter regarding my concerns about the counter-UAS provisions in the DOD bill and how they run counter to our counter-UAS provisions that we have in our bipartisan tri-committee bill and we'll get some, hopefully get some feedback from you on that. On air traffic control numbers, the number you gave us in the testimony, is that a net number over time? I'm presuming there will be people who are retiring as well as your hiring, so is your 8,000 plus a net number or is that a number of hires but you haven't factored in the number of retirements?
Bryan Bedford
So as I said in my oral testimony, we've hired over 2,000 trainees this year and the intent is to hire somewhere between 2,200 and 2,500 trainees in this fiscal year. And so the 8,900 is a total over four years.
Bryan Bedford
Well, that is the, that's the challenge. We still see a lot of retirements, we see folks who, frankly, can't take the pace of the work. We have a retention issue within our controller workforce. I think whether this is the appropriate hearing to talk for it, we can talk, I could spend quite a bit of time talking to you about workforce development as it relates to controllers, how we train them and how we deploy them.
Rick Larsen
And then finally, thanks for your letter. We're going to review that letter with regards to the flight capacity reductions. I do think we may have to have a separate time to walk through both the decision-making process you went through and I understand the urgency of the moment, but are there lessons that we've learned from doing that in the event something like this, maybe a shutdown, maybe something more tragic happens in the airspace in the future about how the FAA will go forward in looking at flight capacity reductions in the event of some external factor that forces that.
And I think that's probably a lot what we're looking for in terms of the letter, some lessons learned where we can get where we can go from there. And so your letter's a good I think basis to start to get the answers, but probably not where we probably not where I certainly wanted you to go, so we'll need some follow-up on that in the future.
Bryan Bedford
Yes, I'd like to applaud the safety professionals at the FAA. They did good work bringing this forward. It was not a popular decision. There are clearly lessons to be learned where I think we can be even more proactive than how we responded to this threat.
Rick Larsen
Thank you and I want to thank the chairman for his focus as well on modernization oversight and look forward to that as well. Thank you.
Pete Stauber
Thank you, Administrator Bedford, it's great to see you. I first want to thank you, Secretary Duffy, for the investment in the third oldest air traffic control tower in this nation at the Duluth International Airport. I am extremely excited to see that get built. It's going to help not only general aviation, commercial aviation, but we also have the 148th Fighter Wing, the F-16 group out of Duluth, a tremendous asset to our nation, national security, and our community. So first off, thank you for that.
In December 2023, the FAA recognized the need to reform its current mental health policies and established the Mental Health and Aviation Medical Clearances Aviation Rulemaking Committee, or ARC, to identify barriers to mental health care for aviators and present recommendations to the FAA to address these challenges. The implementation of these recommendations was directed in Section 411 of the FAA Reauthorization Bill that we passed last year. Unfortunately, there was no required timeline for implementation, which is why I've introduced legislation along with Congressman Casten from Illinois, the Mental Health and Aviation Act, to ensure the timely implementation of Section 411. The bill also provides additional resources to recruit and train more aviation medical examiners. And I am grateful that this bill has passed the House and now awaits consideration in the Senate.
Until such time as the bill is enacted into law, could you share what steps the FAA has taken thus far to handle the backlog of medical certifications?
Bryan Bedford
Yes, sir, I can, thank you for the question. I'm going to do a quick shout-out to Secretary Duffy here for unlocking your air traffic control tower resources and also put down a marker because everybody in this committee, I'm sure, has similar concerns with the obsolescence and the age of their facilities. They're woefully inadequate, terribly unsustainable, and we do need additional funding to address it more comprehensively. As it relates to your question on medical certifications, I'm pleased to report that over the last five months, we've reduced the backlog of medical certifications. We had over 5,000 individuals waiting longer than six months to have their cases adjudicated and their medical certifications restored.
We've reduced that number to under 300. So we've made great progress moving the backlog around. As a pilot, I understand this is these are vocational requirements that in order to keep our pilots certified to fly, we need to be more responsive. We've got new technology that we're able to that we're hopefully bringing to market in the first half of next year that will provide more clarity in terms of how we communicate and make the ease of medical certification I'll call them exceptions, make those disputes more easy to adjudicate and work through the process with more clarity for both the user as well as for our medical team.
But I do want to recognize the just the heroic work that the staff in AV Medical has done in order to be responsive. More work to do for sure. Mental health, again, we've I was meet with the APA last week. I think they're pleased at the progress we're making in terms of identifying medications that can now be used without creating stigma.
Pete Stauber
That's extremely important because we know that one in four of us as adults are going to experience a mental health crisis in our life. It should not we should be when the pilots come in for help, that's a sign of strength as you know, Mr. Bedford. So we want them to get the help that they need. It's going to help safety in the skies. It's going to help the pilot him or herself and it's going to help their families.
That's why that's important, so I appreciate you moving forward on that. The last question is, the FAA recently proposed a rule on beyond visual line of sight drone operations. In the proposal of right of way rules, could you clarify whether the FAA has identified any potential safety concerns with the provisions that give unmanned aircraft right of way over manned aircraft? And just that last part of that sentence, unmanned aircraft right of way over manned aircraft. I know it's a proposed rule, can you tell us a little bit about that decision making and why?
Bryan Bedford
Yes, sir, I can. I think the BVLOS rule in and of itself is one of the more impactful things we've done this year to respond to the President's executive order to unleash drone dominance. If you understand how, and I'm sure you do understand how airplanes are separated, what we created essentially was a corridor where drones can operate safely where they're essentially deconflicted from air traffic. You can imagine if we make drones actually transpond, it adds weight and reduces their performance capabilities. However, we can make drones recognize aircraft that are transponding and take evasive action.
So in terms of right of way, essentially anything under 400 feet, drones do have right of way. Frankly, airplanes aren't supposed to fly below 1,000 feet unless they're on an approach to a runway. There are exceptions, however, when crop dusting, for example. Those are where potential conflicts exist and those are the things where we're looking for perhaps some nuance to the current rulemaking process.
Hillary Scholten
Thank you very much. I see my time's up and I yield back, Mr. Chair.
The gentleman yields. I now recognize Ms. Scholten for five.
Hillary Scholten
Thank you, Chair Nehls, Ranking Member Carson, for putting together such an important hearing. Welcome, Administrator Bedford. We are so excited to welcome you to this post and would love to invite you out to my district at some point to see some of our FAA assets that we have out there. Before we get to that, Americans are still reeling from the President's historically long government shutdown, second only to the last shutdown that occurred during his first term. The pain of this shutdown was felt keenly by the traveling public and hardworking aviation professionals.
Unfortunately, not only did our air traffic controllers miss paychecks, but Secretary Duffy threatened to fire air traffic controllers for calling in sick and the President toyed with the idea of holding back pay to federal employees, including air traffic controllers. We all know that we have to boost air traffic controller recruitment to right-size the workforce. But I'm concerned about how poor morale will hinder these efforts and I'm wondering how you might continue to work with this committee to ensure that towers are properly staffed. I have a very specific question for you. I'm not asking you to opine directly on whether those actions were right or wrong by the by the Secretary or the President, but do you have concerns about how Secretary Duffy or President Trump's comments might impact air traffic controller recruitment efforts specifically?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question. And without opining one way or the other, I can tell you that the FAA will work better if government continues to be funded. So if I could encourage a you didn't ask you did ask my opinion, so I'll share it. If you if you ask me, the the default position for if you don't like the current budget should be the current budget just continues, right? And we can
Hillary Scholten
And I agree with that, but specifically I'm asking whether you think the threats from Secretary Duffy or the President will impact the FAA's ability to recruit and have impact on the morale of air traffic controllers.
Bryan Bedford
So as I said in my opening remarks, the FAA was shorthanded prior to the lapse in funding. No one can argue that the lapse in funding was anything other than painful for those federal workers who were called to work without pay during what turned out to be the longest six-week shutdown in history. I don't think anybody's happy about that, and nobody wants to see it happen again. But we do have an obligation to come to work. That's that is part of the obligation we take as federal workers.
I worked without pay for six months. Nobody enjoys that. Sorry, six six weeks. Felt like six months. And it's illegal for our controllers to have a job action.
We saw two facilities at the very end of the lapse where we had ATZ0 because none of the controllers showed up for work. So we do have to ask some tough questions about was that a job action? If it was, it's just not that's not tolerable. So I think there is an accountability, but overall, yes, culturally it's difficult to get the kind of engagement that we want when we can't pay people to come to work.
Hillary Scholten
Absolutely, but specifically about the threats to fire people if if they are sick. I mean, people get sick during a government shutdown, threatening to fire them and making people afraid, you know, forcing them to potentially come to work when they're under the weather. Do you think that has an impact on morale?
Bryan Bedford
I think that's a mischaracterization of what the Secretary was referring to. When we see facilities that go ATZ0 staffing
Hillary Scholten
I think he I think he specifically threatened to fire people if they did if they did take sick time and the President also threatened to withhold back pay. And you know, the question here is whether you think that has an impact on morale. I I've certainly heard from air traffic controllers directly that it has, and and I'm curious if that's risen to your your level. I know that you share our concerns about making sure we want to reach the appropriate levels of staffing. This is truly a matter of public safety.
Bryan Bedford
Yeah, so I clearly the FAA culture needs a reset. And one of the ways we can do that is talk about how can we support our people. Hire the right people. Hire the best people. Give them the best training.
Give them the best tools. And that's what we're focused on doing right now. We're moving into the future. I think it's bright. But look, we have to perform as a management team and as leadership we have to deliver on the vision.
Hillary Scholten
Absolutely, absolutely. And we're willing to work with you there on all fronts. I agree that government shutdowns are disastrous. We are going to work and do everything we can here to avoid them in the future, but we also ask for your partnership in doing everything we can to to boost that morale and make sure that people feel, you know, safe in their workplace as well. Before we go and my time is running out, I do want to, you know, reiterate our invitation to have you come out to the district.
We have a wonderful air traffic control tower that is in need, desperate need of replacement. Gerald R. Ford International Airport would love to talk with you about making sure that we can keep this on track. It has been a number one and number two priority for the FAA. Can the FAA commit to providing GRR with prompt information so it can proceed with construction procurement about the status of the air traffic control tower there at GRR?
Bryan Bedford
I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. We need funding. We need more investment across the national airspace system. So you're not alone. I have family in Grand Rapids.
My dad's family's from there, my mom's family's from there. I'd love to get Senator Peters' tower before he leaves.
Hillary Scholten
We need funding. If we can, if you can help us out on funding, we'll get it done.
Speaker 25
We do, we do. Well, we invite you to Grand Rapids, we'll get Senator Peters out there as well, we can, we can all get lunch. Thank you, thank you so much for what you do in your service to this country.
Thank you, ma'am.
Speaker 26
Thank you, and for the record, Republicans on the Senate side wanted to pay the ATCs, pay all the air traffic controllers, pay all the federal employees, and it was rejected by the Democrats, just for the record. I now recognize Mr. Tracy for five minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Administrator Bedford, thank you for, Administrator Bedford, thank you for being here today. I represent the Big First District of Kansas. Aviation is a critical industry in my state with roughly 100 general aviation airports, several commercial regional airports, and a huge footprint in aviation and aerospace manufacturing, as you're well aware. The FAA Reauthorization Act that we passed included critical provisions to ensure that our aviation industries are able to improve services, bolster the workforce, and promote American innovation, and I'm grateful that we are well on our way to fixing the problems of the past FAA under your leadership. I really appreciate the progress that's been made and that we're wasting no time in getting to a better place.
Just a handful of questions. As mentioned before, the aviation and aerospace industry is incredibly important to Kansas, and I want to ensure that we have a robust and technically skilled workforce for both the FAA and the industry. Can you provide an update on the agency's efforts to maintain and grow a strong technical workforce and provide safety oversight to an industry that is driving innovation and technology? Where are we at on workforce?
Bryan Bedford
Well, if I'm being perfectly honest, sir, I think we're behind. I think there's a lot more work that needs to be done, and frankly, work that can be done. We need to celebrate our community college, colleges across the country, we need to invest in them. We're doing that with our collegiate air traffic control training program. We're giving them the resources, automation technology, simulation technologies, and they're going to be a critical partner in building the workforce of the future for us.
And we need to do that with maintenance technical training, pilot dispatcher training. I mean, there are so many things that we need to celebrate and getting our young people interested in careers in aviation. In my prior life, I spent the last 10 years building one of the largest training infrastructures in the country because we couldn't solve the problems, no offense, counting on Congress to fix it for us, or frankly, counting on the FAA to fix it for us. So industry also has to own this. Industry also needs to invest in the workforce of the future, and I think we can partner with them, whether that's through legislation and funding or just through our bully pulpit and making sure it's in their own self-interest that they realize they have to work with us and invest some of their profits in building the workforce of the future.
Speaker 26
Yeah, I agree. Next question, change topics a little bit, but the FAA Contract Tower Program provides ATC safety and efficiency benefits at 265 airports across the country, including eight in Kansas. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 included a provision for the FAA and the Department of Labor to update long-overdue wage determinations for contract controllers and create a new wage determination category or occupation code for air traffic managers at contract towers. Just like federal controllers and managers, we need to ensure that our contract controllers and managers receive appropriate compensation for the important ATC services that they provide for the national airspace. Can you give us an update on the status of this provision and when we can expect the wage determinations to be completed and the new category for air traffic managers to be established?
Bryan Bedford
Well, honestly, no, sir, I can't give you a specific answer to the question.
But what I can tell you is I've been to a number of our contract towers. I utilize them in my own private pilot flying, you know, so Anderson, Indiana, Muncie, Indiana are both contract towers and, you know, frankly, they're a tremendous resource, especially for our young pilots who are in training to be able to get the experience to have that interaction communicating with tower. We have contracts, of course. I think we can do a better job as FAA of managing the accountability of the vendors that we hire to make sure that they have the staff. I can tell you through our collegiate training programs we have now made those resources available to go into the contract tower environment and we've seen several hundred of those trainees move into the contract tower environment.
So and of course the final element is we're actually looking at several of the higher demand contract towers to move them into our federal tower program. So there's a lot going on there. I know it's more work needs to be done. The work is done. It's important.
We'll get it we'll get it where it needs to be.
Speaker 26
Great. Well, we'll follow up with your office on kind of the timing and and when we might expect something there. And lastly, you know, over the next 20 years, what I've seen is global demand is expected to require over 40,000 new aircraft to be produced. Can you talk a little bit about the importance for our economy here in the US and for safety in general for the industry to get these new aircraft into the hands of the airlines here and also around the world?
Bryan Bedford
Wow, that's a big question. I don't think I can answer that in 15 seconds. I will tell you this. As an agency, we can do better helping manufacturing get where they need to be faster, more efficient, better design. We don't have to be a bottleneck in the process, but we need to collaborate more.
And some people will hear collaboration and they'll think, oh, wait a second, the FAA's going to get in the back pocket of industry. That's not it at all. We need to lead industry to to get to higher levels of quality and safety in the design process as opposed to let them bring us things and then we tell them no. So I do think we can collaborate better. We want Boeing to build that next generation aircraft here in the United States.
Full agreement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Henry Johnson
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Carson for convening this hearing and welcome to this subcommittee, Administrator Bedford. I've been asking these questions since the start of this administration. When will our towers be fully staffed? When will we stop pushing out the professionals who keep planes in the sky and passengers safe? And when will we stop being stretched to the breaking point?
Now, Administrator Bedford, the FAA has tasked a company known as Peraton, which is a privately held for-profit national security and technology company founded in 2017. The FAA has tasked this new company, which has little or no FAA experience, to oversee a 31.5 billion dollar overhaul of our air traffic control system. And earlier, and I should point out that Peraton, founded in 2017, is owned by a private equity firm, Veritas Capital, which ranks 46th in the Private Equity International's PEI 300 ranking among the world's largest private equity firms. So Peraton is owned by Veritas, the 46th biggest private equity company in the world.
And Congress has approved a 12.5 billion dollar down payment to this company, although the total amount to be allocated and spent with taxpayer money to be spent with Peraton, the total amount has not been decided yet. So pretty much the taxpayer pocketbook is wide open for this private equity firm. I don't have a lot of confidence in this working out for the American people. This administration is packed with billionaires, 12 billionaires at the highest echelons of this administration. And while the American people recognize that life is getting more expensive, these 12 billionaires and the one who leads them at the top are telling the people that, hey, don't believe your lying eyes, your costs are not going up, we're having a great time here, this is a wonderful time.
The American people see these billionaires getting richer and richer while they are getting poorer and poorer. And I don't have a lot of confidence that this 31.5 billion dollar overhaul of our air traffic control system being overseen by a private equity firm is in the best interest of the American people. This side, the legislative branch, doesn't even know or care about how Peraton was chosen over a company, Parsons Corporation, that has extensive experience working with the FAA. How Peraton came to get this contract over a company like Parsons is, it seems like a pay-to-play situation, which is in keeping with everything else we know about this administration. Given that air traffic controllers are already stretched thin and that technical failures earlier this year caused massive flight disruptions, how is the FAA ensuring that outsourcing this massive modernization project to a largely untested contractor will not put safety at risk, create further delays, or overburden your already overworked workforce?
Henry Johnson
And before you answer, let me just say to the families of those who perished, those 67 souls who perished in this aircraft disaster, that, you know, our hearts are with you during this holiday period where it's tough, the first holiday period without these 67 souls. And thank you for being here. Yes, sir.
With the Chairman's indulgence?
You can answer the question.
Bryan Bedford
Thank you. Well, you put a lot into that question, so thank you for that. Let me try to take it in the order that you gave it. First, when will we get our towers fully staffed? The honest answer, sir, is if we continue with business as usual, never.
We'll never catch up. The system is designed to be chronically understaffed. And I can break that out for you in more detail later.
You asked about Peraton and a 31.5 billion dollar investment. Thank you for that. While we have not asked for the additional 20 billion, I believe the Secretary will be on the Hill tomorrow with that ask, so thank you in advance for the support. Peraton specifically has an expertise working with the Department of Defense and with NASA doing exactly what the FAA does not have an in-house expertise on, and that is moving from our antiquated TDMI analog systems to digital VOIP and also dealing in native cloud structure applications. They put the entire DOD in the cloud, cyber-secured cloud.
Parsons did not have that experience. Parsons has been a great partner to the FAA. I believe we'll continue to use Parsons as part of our implementation partner on modernization, but Peraton brought a competency that is relevant to what we need. Had nothing to do with, you know, who they knew. The President did not interfere, nor did the Secretary in the selection process.
It was transparent. It was diligent. It was run by both career FAA people. A recommendation came to me. I took that to the Secretary.
The Secretary and I presented it to the President. The President sharpened the pencil by demanding a 200 million dollar reduction in the fee cost, which was remarkable to witness. So say what you will, but the man is effective at what he does, and I think the taxpayers benefit. But having said all of that, you asked another specific question, what is Peraton's role? It is to work with the FAA.
We're not outsourcing the project. You know, I'm the ultimate accountability officer here, and I'm prepared to give you as much transparency and accountability as you desire, sir. And the process is underway, and I can talk to you about the successes that we're already seeing at the agency rolling out modernization as we move from, I mean, we've already converted 35 percent of the old copper to fiber. You know, we're rolling out the first digital voice switches and digital radios. I mean, we're moving.
We've taken the bill, we've deployed over 6 billion dollars of it. We're getting it done.
Burgess Owens
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member. I just want to start off by saying thank you for that very clarifying statement and answer. It's obvious that you are the expert and we are not up here. So appreciate the information, the understanding that we're now going to have as we move forward. We've long prided ourselves on the safest airspace anywhere.
But January's mid-air tragedy near DCA claimed 67 lives, and the uptick in runway incursions have exposed vulnerabilities we cannot ignore. The 2024 reauthorization provided the FAA with a clear roadmap, and the American people placed their confidence in President Trump and his administration to implement it. Folks back home rely on air travel every day, and are feeling strained from near misses and disruptions during the recent shutdown. The progress being made throughout the year in airports large and small are encouraging. We need assurances the momentum is accelerating, not stalling.
The 500 million we directed specifically for runway safety tech, lighting, surveillance in the reconciliation bill represents a serious commitment. We're equipping the FAA to reinforce the gold standards we should expect from ourselves. Now is time for results to prevent another heartbreak for the American families. Administrator Bedford, this is your first time testifying before us. I'm interested in your assessment, how are you ensuring that these tools are being deployed effectively, addressing the NTCB recommendations from the Potomac incident, and integrating lessons learned across mixed traffic airports everywhere?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question, Congressman Owens. I think it's one of the worst kept secrets in government that the facilities that the FAA operates in today are grossly archaic, obsolete, and relatively unsustainable. Of the four billion dollars a year that Congress generously gives the FAA to quote modernize its systems, over almost 90 percent, certainly over 85 percent of that budget goes simply to sustainment. Literally we're putting, you know, lipstick on a pig. So, I was in, I spent my first 100 days on board out in the field, talking to our frontline workforce, seeing the facilities firsthand, literally from New Jersey all the way out to Quinhagak, Alaska, a mile off the Bering Sea.
We have work to do, important work, hard work. It's going to take investment to get it done. I was in Chicago, I don't know, maybe a month ago. We have multiple ASDE-X surface runway radars there. Only one of them was functioning.
And it was one broken part away from being unusable. That's not acceptable. So the allocation of funds in one big beautiful bill to improve our surface runway awareness technology, you can rest assured we are deploying that. We are investing that money and we are going to deploy that technology just as soon as the supply chain will allow.
Burgess Owens
Thank you for that. I appreciate the recent efforts to address our workforce needs across aviation sector, particularly air traffic control. While such of the focus today has been on bringing on new frontline controllers into the system, there have been limited discussions that we've heard so far about strengthening the pipeline of our air traffic supervisors and managers. With so many of the experienced leaders approaching retirement, can you share with us any plans the FAA has in regards to addressing the workforce pipeline needs of the air force supervisors and managers?
Bryan Bedford
Well so, we're blessed to have a wonderful resource in Oklahoma City, you know, our campus, our academy campus out there is doing great work for us, but we can't allow it to be a bottleneck. We do need to increase the number of pipelines that are coming through to produce air traffic controllers. We now are up to nine, we've added five collegiate programs, we need to do more. And as we add those collegiate programs, we create, you know, feeder streams of potential new controllers that can go both to the contract tower program as well as to our federal towers. So we are doing that.
But I will tell you, one of the first things that we spent doing is understanding as an agency how to think about big projects, how to think about the work that we do. And we implemented a process called theory of constraints with the entire leadership team where we're looking for those critical bottlenecks and ways that we can alleviate them and improve the throughput. And that's really, everybody's focused on the input, but what we really need to focus on is the output. How are we getting more people, qualified people through training quicker and deployed in ways that are productive versus counterproductive. So there is a lot of, there are many bottlenecks in the system.
I promise you over the course of 2026, we're going to do our best to resolve those bottlenecks.
Burgess Owens
Well for those of us who are entrepreneurial minded, thank you for innovation, thank you for thinking outside the box. It's so well needed here in this particular space and Americans are going to really appreciate it as we see that. I just want to close by extending a personal invitation for you to visit the Salt Lake City airport, premier, one of the premier airports in the country, gateway of the west. And we talked a little bit before, if you're into skiing, it's snow time in Utah, so we'd love to have you come out and visit with us. Okay?
Yes, thank you for the invitation. Thank you.
Speaker 35
Thank you. The gentleman yields and I now recognize Ms. Foushee for five minutes.
Valerie Foushee
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Administrator Whitaker, for being with us today. It has been made tragically clear that the FAA is facing a dire shortage of air traffic controllers. It's been widely reported that more than 90 percent of US airport towers are understaffed. Furthermore, the chaos of air travel during the recent government shutdown showed us just how important robust air traffic control staffing is.
Speaker 37
In my conversations with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, they have expressed their difficulty in getting updates on FAA staffing levels from either the FAA or the administration. They emphasized to me that they can't know where they are in achieving full staffing without regular updates. Can you commit to us today to provide a timely update to us on FAA staffing levels?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for that question. A couple of things here. First, Nick Daniels, the president of NATCA, has my personal number. So if he needs information, I am available to him and the rest of the team at NATCA. So I think we've got a good relationship.
I'd like to see that continue. More collaboration will be better. We have some serious issues that we need to address within our collective bargaining agreement. Things that they, I think, want to address in terms of pay and benefits, and things that we need to address in terms of staffing efficiencies and training. So there's a lot of work to do there.
There's no magic fix for the challenges that we face on controller staffing. So we need to be intelligent about how we go about it. We need to be collaborative about how we go about it. But certainly, it's going to require a strong partnership between ourselves and the union to get that done.
Speaker 36
Thank you for that. Additionally, I have heard from pilots that the infrastructure in some control towers is so outdated and poorly functioning that they have had to call the air traffic controllers on a mobile phone from the tarmac for instruction. In what ways is the FAA investigating, or investing rather, in modernizing nationwide air traffic control technology and infrastructure to ensure the safety of those on the ground and in the air?
Bryan Bedford
Well, again, thank you for that. That, in a nutshell, is why I took the job. This gets to the heart of how we ended up with an accident like 5342. Infrastructure's inadequate. The systems are based on 1990s technology.
And I don't mean just the phone system or the data system, just the architecture of the system that we have. It's woefully inadequate for the needs of the 21st century. We have a great plan to modernize, and I'd be happy to get into as much detail on that as you'd like in terms of where we're at with telecom, digital to analog, sorry, analog to digital conversions, getting deployment of the technology in the field. But even after we fully utilize this initial 12 and a half billion dollar down payment, there are still going to be fundamental problems with the architecture of the system that need to be addressed in this second level of funding. So the future, if we were to stop, would be a more reliable but still inefficient national airspace system.
If we want both exceptional reliability and exceptional efficiency and safety, we need that next tranche of investment to get that done.
Agreed. And finally, Administrator Bedford, can you explain to us the heightened risks pilots, cabin crew, and passengers are exposed to when air traffic control towers are not sufficiently staffed?
Well, thank you for the question. I know it sounds unnerving that there could be a situation where we don't have adequate staff or the technology is malfunctioning in a way that we lose contact with aircraft in the air. But there are numerous redundancies. We have numerous systems. So a tower is also supported by a TRACON generally.
And so there is surveillance and there still are ways to communicate with towers. And even if we lose two or three levels of redundancy, crews are well trained to deal with these circumstances. So I don't feel we have a safety issue with that. But again, we don't want to find ourselves leaning into the second, third level of redundancy in order to maintain safety. Those should be very infrequent, if ever used, backups.
Addison McDowell
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Administrator Bedford, for being with us today. You know, we've, we've discussed that staffing shortages are an issue and, and while the exact number is debated, it, you know, there's as many as, as 90% understaffing at towers. And so I want to know, or at least I want to talk a little bit about unmanned air traffic control towers, or different technology that has, has come along that we could potentially work with. And so as you know, only around a tenth of public airports have towers. And even with FAA approval, they cost millions of dollars and require a substantial amount of time to actually build.
But digital and remote towers are being discussed as possible cost-effective remedies to modernizing and improving the safety of the national airspace system. And the most recent FAA reauthorization bill directed the FAA to expand design approval and evaluation for digital and remote towers to no fewer than three airports. The budget reconciliation bill that the President signed into law in July included $50 million for the deployment of remote tower technology. So my question is, how will the FAA decide which airports to approve for remote towers?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for your question, sir. I was at our tech agency, our, our tech center in New Jersey week before last, looking at the progress that we're making in terms of certifying this technology and preparing to deploy it. You may or may not be aware that we actually have this system being installed in Bartow, Florida, and a second system getting ready to deploy in Winter Haven, Florida. And we're allowing them to sort of utilize this in a shadow mode as we continue to refine our certification program. So we have identified three deployments.
I'm not at liberty to say where those are at today. We do have a process by which the FAA through their sort of, they have a both a facility condition index program. I'm not going to tell you that science I've signed off on, but they do have it. And they also use a similar tool for how they would want to deploy these in order to look at a, you know, the correct circumstances. So the initial deployments will be on single runways, for example, as opposed to crossing runways or parallel runways.
So this is going to be a sort of crawl, walk, run process as we deploy and learn to make sure that we're not jeopardizing safety. But the technology's actually pretty amazing. I'm excited about our ability to add that layer of safety and use it in ways that will supplement existing towers.
Addison McDowell
So could you see the digital remote towers as being at least a partial remedy to the controller shortage?
Bryan Bedford
So a digital remote tower won't reduce our workload per se. What it will do perhaps is maybe allow us to have workers in a place they want to be and where it makes retention and sustainment of the workforce a little bit easier than perhaps deploying to less desirable places.
Addison McDowell
Sure. Well, I would hope that we could work on that together as it becomes the technology that, that we begin to use.
We're going to deploy it in 2026.
Addison McDowell
Great. Well, I look forward to watching. I'd like to yield the remainder of my time back to Chairman Nehls.
Troy Nehls
Thank you, Mr. Benford. I've heard, you know, Mr. Johnson said 31 billion. I don't think, I think he got 31 and a half.
Yeah.
Troy Nehls
You got 12.5 the down payment. And we keep hearing where, you know, another 20 billion. What is that number and how important is this additional funding? I mean, you got to 12.5, right? And that's going to get us maybe to here.
But will you need that additional money to close the loop? I mean, what can you, can you educate this committee and tell this committee how important is that money for this ATC modernization and the success?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question, sir. It's critical. So, as I mentioned earlier, there's essentially four levels of what we really think of as modernization, both our telcom and our data. The first 12 and a half billion provides for the first three phases. That's copper to fiber.
That's digital equippage replacing analog equippage. And then that final move, which Peraton will help with, actually changing the architecture over from analog to digital. But it doesn't address essentially the compute layer of what we need. Today, all the compute layer for the FAA is in each individual facility. That's 350 facilities that have individual compute power and we have no ability to see across the NAS on what each of those 350 separate facilities are seeing.
We need to lift that layer out of the facility and into the cloud. And that's what we've hired Peraton to help us.
Bryan Bedford
That process for that last leg of modernization is in part and parcel of that next 6 billion dollars of funding.
Speaker 42
6 billion. Would that, would that be your priority then? You need the six?
Bryan Bedford
Look, I'm going to tell you we need it all because the other 14 is essentially the properties and facilities that each member of this House has a stake in the game on. They're woefully inadequate. They're archaic. We're wasting three and a half billion dollars a year to sustain it. We might as well just fix it.
Speaker 43
Got it. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Poe.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and our ranking member Carson. First, before I begin, first of all, thank you, Mr. Benford, for being here. Let me just express my condolences also to the families that lost their loved ones during that horrific, horrible accident and crash that occurred in Washington. As you know, Mr. Benford, I represent New Jersey, home to one of the most complex, congested, and consequential aviation corridors in our country. When aviation fails in New Jersey, it doesn't just inconvenience our residents, it actually impacts our entire national airspace.
For Teterboro and Newark airports, we are seeing chronic understaffing, forced overtime, fatigue, and burnout of air traffic controllers. These shortages across one of the most congested airspaces in the world is a catastrophe waiting to happen. This includes partial shutdowns and regular ground delays lasting hours. We've even had airlines simply cancel flights because the system simply can't absorb another stressor. So it's no surprise that millions of Americans are beyond frustrated with the state of flying in America.
This just past Sunday, I was actually stuck on the tarmac for four hours to only have to be turned around again and I'll leave it there, but the delays were just unbelievable.
So, meanwhile, our Department of Transportation is focused on promoting airport gyms, posting clips of exercise contests. You can't just run away from critical shortage, staffing shortage. You can't spin obsolete radar systems and you can't bench press away delays and cancellations. And a pull-up contest between cabinet secretaries in an airport terminal doesn't help reduce congestion or increase safety. There is nothing more important than safety.
Before the tragedy here in Washington in January, the US had not seen a major commercial aviation disaster since flight 3407 in 2009. As you know, 3407 departed from Newark and took the lives of 49 people when it crashed outside Buffalo. Some of my constituents lost family members that fateful evening. I believe that extraordinary record over 15 years without a major domestic crash can be credited to Congress and the FAA implementing the 1500-hour pilot experience requirement ensuring commercial pilots have the proficiency necessary to do the job safely. So, Mr. Bedford, during your confirmation, you did not commit to supporting the current 1500-hour rule.
Since starting, I want to know if you have seen the benefit of this watershed rule. Can airline passengers rest easier knowing that FAA will continue to uphold this vital standard or is the agency taking any action to weaken this standard?
Bryan Bedford
Thank you for your question, ma'am. Delays and cancellations, yep, there're a lot of them, more than we want to see. The FAA does not own all of those delays and cancellations, but we can do better. We can do our part to not only improve the quality of the service and the reliability of service, but certainly the safety standard of the service. So again, I want to offer a sincere thank you to you and to your colleagues in the House for passing the 12 and a half billion dollar investment.
It's unfortunate, it's beyond unfortunate, it's tragic that the focus that we have today, the attention and our sort of unified galvanized effort to modernize was paid for with the lives of 67 Americans. It's unfortunate, but that sacrifice can't go to waste. We have to deliver for them and for the rest of the American people on modernizing. So sniping on, you know, pull-ups and civility and whatnot, you know, not constructive, but I can talk to you for sure about what we're doing to invest the 12 and a half billion dollars to build the system of the future. But let me be clear, the 12 and a half billion won't get it done.
We'll have a more reliable system, but still an antiquated system. More needs to be done. I'm willing to partner with you to get that done.
Speaker 43
Thank you, Mr. Bedford. Let me just say that I strongly believe that the FAA must continue to support the 1500-hour rule as a critical safeguard for airline safety until such time we have a better system and there has not been any other system proven to be safer.
So it's vitally important. Thank you for that, Mr. Speaker. I yield back.
Troy Nehls
Couldn't agree more, 1500 hours and raise the age. Ms. King-Hinds, you're recognized.
Kimberlyn King-Hinds
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Administrator Bedford, for appearing before the committee and giving us your time. I represent the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the closest mainland airport from Saipan, which is our main hub, is over 6,000 miles away. And I share that to underscore that there is no alternative mode of transportation and that, you know, for us, aviation is not convenience, it is our literal lifeline. And so in every medical evacuation, every shipment of food, every student leaving for college, every tourist who supports our economy, and every service member rotating through the Pacific depends on a single fragile aviation system. So when flights are cut, delayed, or grounded, there is no backup plan unless you know how to swim very good.
Joke. That's why one-size-fits-all policies, right, that may work here on the mainland just does not work out in the territories. And I'll give you an example. Buy America requirements, for example, while very well-intentioned and appreciated, can halt critical airport projects in places like ours where compliant materials are simply unavailable, shipping costs are extreme, and project delays translate into real safety and economic risk. And our ports authority has formally requested a waiver, not to bypass standards, but basically to keep our airports functional.
I've also recently introduced HR 6448, the Territorial Airport Support Act, because the current one-size-fits-all framework does not reflect geographic isolation, limited carrier competition, or the national security role that the Marianas plays in the Pacific. So today, I want to have a conversation about practicable solutions and how we can work together to maintain safety and accountability while recognizing the unique realities of places that suffer from the tyranny of distance like the Marianas. And so my question to you, Administrator Bedford, is, you know, the ports authority has stated has requested a Buy America waiver because compliant materials are often unavailable or just prohibitively expensive. What flexibility does the FAA have to grant project-specific or geographic waivers for territories like ours so that we can move on with these projects?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for your question, and I'm going to confess a little ignorance here. I don't know that that Buy America issue is in my purview and in the FAA wheelhouse or not. I'll certainly take that back to the Secretary and to the administration. I will tell you, in my first 100 days on board with the FAA, I made a dedicated effort to get out into the field, you know, to visit with our frontline workforce, understand the challenges that they're facing, and also to understand the state of our equipment, our facilities, and our technology. In Alaska, I learned that the system that we use to monitor air traffic and manage traffic is different than the system that we use in the continental United States.
And the same is true for Hawaii, Guam, your neck of the woods, Puerto Rico. So if you can imagine a state of air traffic that's actually more obsolete than what we're utilizing in the continental United States, it's where you live. And so here's an early opportunity, I think, rather than try to bring up our non-CONUS facilities to our current older state of technology, to leapfrog.
I think your, your neck of the woods could turn out to be a great testing opportunity for us to bring in, truly usher in the new, most modernized NAS. So trust me when I tell you we're focused on where you're at and how we can meet those needs.
Kimberlyn King-Hinds
And I, and I thank you for that comment and encourage you to please come out and visit the Northern Mariana Islands because, you know, uh, we've recently, well back in 2018, we were hit by a super typhoon that destroyed our airport traffic control tower, right? And because of, of some of these one-size-fits-all policies and requirements, uh, to be able to meet federal standard specs, these projects are being delayed and it's taken some time to just get that air traffic control tower back and operational. I'm going to run out of time, so just, uh, wanted to focus on, uh, my bill HR 6448, which basically asks for, uh, some sort of a moratorium or, uh, a reduced in rate with regards to the AIP, you know, AIP matching requirements. Uh, we have one industry, which is tourism, and it has not recovered since the pandemic, and the ports are barely sustaining itself. And so I, I hope, I know that you're not supposed to be able to speak on these bills that are introduced before the, before the floor, but I'm hoping that we could get some sort of support because we need our ports to be economically self-sustainable.
Thank you for your time and encourage you to please come and visit the Northern Marianas.
Thank you for the invitation.
Laura Gillen
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking Member, and thank you, Administrator Bedford, for testifying, uh, before us today, and my deepest sympathies to the families who have lost loved ones who are here with us today. And, uh, Administrator, really your, the timing of your visit is auspicious because today, in fact, is the 65th anniversary of what was at the time the deadliest crash in the history of commercial aviation. On December 16th in 1960, TWA flight 266 collided with United Airlines flight 826 over New York, leaving 134 people dead, and in, those were, 13 of those were Long Islanders, which is the area that I represent. And this tragedy, after a decade of smaller crashes, is what prompted the FAA to adopt safety reforms, including speed restrictions and the requirement of new technology on commercial aircraft and the issuance of new communications guidelines. And on this painful anniversary and seeing the families here today and the faces on this poster the lady in the front row has of all the faces who we lost, we know that there's still so much more that we need to do.
Um, as I said, I represent New York's 4th Congressional District on the south shore of Long Island, and it is home to TRACON N90, which is the, provides the oversight for the most complex commercial, um, aviation space and congested airspace in the country. And I'm very glad that the administration is devoting more resources to fix our totally out-of-date system, um, but I visited this facility and saw the technology that they are using to oversee the air traffic going into Kennedy Airport, LaGuardia Airport, and it used to be Newark Airport, we'll get to that. And there were literally some floppy disks there. I mean, I think every single person here can agree that nobody should be using floppy disks anymore. So I, when Secretary Duffy appeared before this, um, committee or the larger T&I committee, I asked him to come visit TRACON N90 to see what is going on in that space, um, and he agreed to visit, we're trying to schedule that.
I would encourage you and ask you if you would, um, consider coming to visit too because this is an extremely important facility in terms of our national airspace because even flights going somewhere else sometimes usually dock for a while in New York before they go on some place else. So, would you, um, consider coming with us to TRACON N90?
Bryan Bedford
I've actually had two visits scheduled already, but unfortunately my schedule was changed and I wasn't able to do it.
Laura Gillen
Excellent, thank you. And can you assure me that the administration will prioritize funding for N90 from the $12.5 billion that the administration has invested so far?
Bryan Bedford
So, you're asking a great question, whether you realize it or not, in terms of how we prioritize deployment of new technologies. Earlier I mentioned with relation to digital towers, we take sort of a crawl-walk-run process. And I understand that, you know, we want to make sure technologies are fail-safe before we deploy them in our largest facilities. But that can be a very lengthy timeframe to work through that. And some of these technologies are frankly game-changers for us, and we need to have a line of sight on how we can get them into our top 40 traffic markets.
So, you know, there's work going on in terms of how we can think about deployment and speeding these tools to market. We're going to need partnership with NATCA to get that done because sometimes, you know, there's a little resistance on the workforce, you know, teaching the old guys like me, you know, new skills. It's hard, it's uncomfortable, but we need to get it done.
Laura Gillen
Well, I talk to the folks from NATCA often and I'm sure that we could have a broader discussion and would love to be there when you visit N90 so we could have, you can see what's there and see what's needed. So we'll reach out to your staff.
Laura Gillen
Okay. So again, I spoke earlier about overseeing the most congested airspace. Unfortunately, in the prior administration, there was a decision made that they would take some of the air traffic controllers that oversee Newark Airport and move them to a remote location in Philadelphia instead of keeping them with the air traffic controllers who oversee Kennedy and LaGuardia. All of these planes are traveling in the same nexus, in the same area. There was a big outcry by NATCA and by the folks who work there talking about the risk to safety that this would pose if you had these Newark controllers down in Philadelphia.
When I was there, they were, there's still literally a space in the facility for the Newark people to come back. And over the summer, we saw twice Newark lost all communications with air traffic for 90 seconds, which could be fatal. The controllers in N90 told me if they had lost communication, they could have reached over and said to the people who oversee New York airspace, Kennedy and LaGuardia, and said, "What do you see?" "What's going on?" And they could communicate instead of having to pick up the phone and lose vital seconds that could save lives.
I've asked Secretary Duffy to consider moving those controllers back. I believe you would have the support of the union in doing that. I believe it would make our sky safer. I was very grateful that after we had that conversation, the Department of Transportation Inspector General launched an investigation. And Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter this into the record.
And I would encourage you to continue that discussion of moving those controllers back because I think it will make our sky safer.
Troy Nehls
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Whitaker, thank you for being here. I do just as on a broad level, I'm a little bit troubled that in this town it seems like more funding is always the answer, right? And you know, we're $38 trillion in debt, that'll soon hit $39 trillion of debt. And there's no attention given to the process, to the bureaucracy, to the lack of accountability for obviously the waste that we all know exists.
And in your opinion, sir, in terms of the outdated technology that is obvious, we just heard my colleague talk about the use of floppy disks. I don't even know where you buy floppy disks. We've heard obviously a lot of testimony about the burdensome procurement processes that are in place, certainly the centralized air traffic controller education and recruitment process. What can we do to in some ways cut the leashes off of the administration, your department? How can we help you sort of make things more efficient on a broad level?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you, sir, for that question. 38 trillion dollars in debt, 2 trillion dollar a year budget. We have to be responsible to the taxpayers for the money that you give us. You know, we have to be good stewards of those resources. In fact, you know, we're rolling out new guiding principles, what we call our BEST principles, and the B stands for be good stewards of our resources.
We're all taxpayers, so we want to make sure this investment, and that's what it is, this 12 and a half billion you've given us, gets to where it needs to be the most effective. I will tell you, we're investing, whether you, I don't think it's an investment, but we're spending almost 4 billion dollars a year just to, again, put perfume on the pig, just to keep things running.
Speaker 48
Well, that's my question. How can we help? What can we get out of your way so that you can employ professionals to identify those problems and fix them? I mean, that's outrageous. That's an outrageous lapse on every level.
Bryan Bedford
Absolutely. You have provided those tools. You have provided the administrator unique statutory authorities to procure things outside of the federal bureaucracy. When I onboarded in July, I was handed a book, a 658-page procurement document for how we would roll out one big beautiful bill. I threw it away.
We started over. Think slow, identify the end state, then figure out how we're going to get from here to there. These are not normal government processes, but in industry, this is how we get stuff done quickly and we get it done on budget. And that's the program that we're running for the 12 and a half billion. So I can sit here and confidently tell you the taxpayers will get an incredible return on their invested capital here.
But it's not the end state we want. That next tranche of funding is going to transform, I don't use that word lightly, it will transform our national airspace and make it the envy of the world.
Troy Nehls
Well, we built the envy of the world without a centralized bureaucracy. And it seems from where I sit, sir, that sort of the bureaucratic systems that were written and implemented to prevent failure have all but enshrined failure. When you're still using floppy disks, that makes everybody less safe. That makes the agency less effective. And if there's something that we can do from a legislative standpoint to give you the freedom, the flexibility, I hope you'll let us know quickly so that we can continue to work together.
Bryan Bedford
Again, sir, I think I have it. You just have to continue to encourage me to use it. And I promise you we are using that authority now. It's uncomfortable for the bureaucracy. Some of them will leave.
There will be turnover associated with that as we turn these processes on their head, but it's helpful.
Speaker 48
Good. And just for your knowledge, sir, I'm working with colleagues across the aisle to introduce a bill called the Aviation Supply Chain Safety and Security Digitization Act of 2025. It commissions a study so that we can go through the procurement procedures to really digitize, to remove the paper, the papering of that process. I look forward to your participation as that study is commenced and again I look forward to working with you.
I welcome it, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Eleanor Norton
I strongly oppose section 373 in the defense authorization bill the Senate is expected to send to the President this week. This provision would allow helicopters flying in certain airspaces, including near DCA, to have their ADSB transponders turned off.
Earlier this year, I wrote a letter to the FAA demanding that all helicopters flying near DCA be required to use their transponders. I have yet to receive a response. Mr. Bedford, does the FAA support requiring all helicopters in the airspace near DCA, other than those transporting the President and the Vice President or those in use during a national emergency, to broadcast their position using ADSB out?
Bryan Bedford
Thank you for that question, Madam. It's not customary for the agency to take a position on pending legislation. It is customary, however, when legislation is working through the process, that staff or members will seek the FAA's consulting authority, so a technical consultation or a technical advisory. I can tell you as it relates to section 373, that did not happen. The FAA was not consulted with, or no advisory or consultation was requested.
So we didn't see section 373 until last week. Having said all that, I want to assure you, the members of the committee, the families of 5342, that we are not going to go back to the way the capital region airspace was managed prior to January 29th. All the mitigation that has been put in place to separate mixed traffic, closing helicopter routes, eliminating virtual separations, and separating non-transponding traffic in the rare happenstance, that will continue.
Eleanor Norton
As co-chair of the Quiet Skies Caucus and the member who represents the District of Columbia, which is plagued by airplane and helicopter noise, I am pleased we were able to include provisions to combat aviation noise in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. The FAA has not done enough to reduce and mitigate aviation noise. With this law, the FAA has a mandate to do more to combat aviation noise and engage more with the public on aviation noise. Mr. Bedford, what is the implementation status of the aviation noise provisions in last year's FAA reauthorization law, particularly the Aircraft Noise Advisory Committee?
Bryan Bedford
Thank you for that question. I don't want to get over my skis here, you know, having been in the office for five months. My understanding is that the committee has been formed, that the advisory response that we've gotten is being put into effect. I will say that noise is going to be a continued problem for us. I mean, there's demands to continue to expand aviation resources across the country, whether that's drones, advanced air mobility, soon the inclusion of potential supersonic.
So we have natural conflicts in terms of the economy wanting to grow through airspace and the fact that people are moving closer and closer to airports. It creates some real challenges for us.
I do think modernization gives us our best opportunity to mitigate noise. Let me explain. Today, when we're either short-staffed or our technology can't keep up with the demands, we tend to put airplanes into longer miles in trail, which naturally means that they're flying at lower altitudes longer and at lower power settings over neighborhoods. In a modernized system, we can actually find a precise point in time where that airplane at altitude will hit its arrival gate and they can descend on a low power-off or power-idle descent, significantly reducing noise and also minimizing the amount of time and space they are over local neighborhoods. So I think modernization in and of itself will help us significantly reduce or abate noise, but it's always going to be a challenge and I'm sure we're never going to be able to completely measure up to community's expectations for noise mitigation.
Jefferson Van Drew
Gentlelady yields and I now recognize Mr. Van Drew.
Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Administrator, for being here. You know that we have the greatest, we still have the greatest aviation system in the world, but we also know the truth. Other nations are advancing rapidly, modernizing faster, deploying faster, using new technology faster, and it demands our attention and I know you're on it. The United States of America must not, we cannot, we will not fail, and I know you're on that as well.
And that's why Congress, as you know, is very clear in the FAA Reauthorization Act, something that many of us, a few of us were deeply involved with of 2024. The FAA must not only maintain safety, but has to be responsible for rapidly integrating new aircraft, new systems, new ideas, new technology, all the things you've been talking about all morning. And it's got to be done. Passing the FAA bill was important, but it's a strong start, but it's not enough and we need further implementation and strong oversight from you. And again, Section 206 of this bill created the Airspace Modernization Office to cut through red tape, to deliver results, and provide a clear framework to move beyond years of delay that we did have under what was a great promise, NextGen.
So the question I have for you to begin with is when will the Airspace Modernization Office be formally announced and when will it be fully operational?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question, sir. And I want to give a shout-out to a fellow by the name of Neil Cohen. I was able to convince Secretary Duffy to actually hire Neil before I actually went through my confirmation hearing. He's one of the smartest humans I've ever worked with, one of the best strategic thinkers, and he has embedded himself in and he is the current acting lead of the Office of Modernization. So he's been on board since April of this year and he is transforming how we go about the process of unlocking the potential for modernization.
Jefferson Van Drew
But when do you think we'll see some something that's tangible for folks like us?
Say again, sir?
Jefferson Van Drew
When will we see something that is tangible that we can put our arms around for folks like us, Congress?
Bryan Bedford
You can see it right now. So come with me to the Tech Center, I'll show you how we've already started the deployment of digital radios and digital voice switches. I'll show you the architecture for how we're going to move from an analog NAS to a digital NAS. And I can walk you through the fact that we've already converted over 36% of the copper to fiber in our deployment plan for the next two years.
Jefferson Van Drew
We will do it. We will do it, I look forward to it. And this kind of leads into my next question. The William J. Hughes Technical Center in my district, as you know, I talk about it all the time, for advanced aerospace. Where do you see them?
It's uniquely positioned to test, they have the expertise, they have the people, they have the location. Where do you see them in this whole picture?
And you didn't tell me!
Bryan Bedford
I apologize. I'm going back. So, but the point of being out there last week was to sort of finish our inventory on what was left on the NextGen shelf. And look, I want to send a shout out to the NextGen team. I think we did a bad job as the FAA communicating what NextGen was doing.
We didn't provide the transparency that the committee needed to do the oversight to understand what it was about. But just in a, if I can take 30 seconds, the FAA's innovation cycle runs the same path as Boeing. We're innovating on a 15 to 20 year timeline and that's sort of what NextGen was doing. We need to innovate at the speed of iPads, right? We need to go at the speed of Apple.
So that is the change that we're communicating to our team at the Tech Center. I think they're on board with the mission. We just have to unlock it.
Jefferson Van Drew
Is the emerging technology accelerator a priority for you as administrator? Are you going to be working with Congress in the next budget cycle to see if this can operate at the scale in which it was intended?
Bryan Bedford
I apologize. I'm having a terrible, too much jet engine noise in my career.
Jefferson Van Drew
No problem. Either that or I'm not speaking well. Enunciate, right? Is the emergency technology accelerator a priority for you and do you think you'll need to work with Congress in the next budget cycle on that issue?
Speaker 60
Honestly, rather than hip shoot that, I'm going to take that one back and get more conversant on it and I'd be happy to revert back to you privately.
Jefferson Van Drew
It's an important piece as well. So I appreciate you. I wish you well. Lot of good things going on at the Tech Center. I look forward to working with you there.
I've been deeply involved with that, as you know. I think it was one of the very first stops even Secretary Duffy took was I kind of elbowed him into coming in down to South Jersey and let them know that they were okay. So I appreciate your work.
It is a tremendous resource and I look forward to working with you.
Thank you. Thank you. I yield back, Chairman. Everybody loves Jeff. Everybody loves Jeff.
That's not true. Chairman, everybody loves, we are going to miss the Chairman or what? I mean, I can't believe this guy's my buddy and he's retiring from Congress. You're great.
I recognize Mr. Garcia.
Robert Garcia
Thank you, Chairman and Ranking Member, and thank you, Mr. Bedford, for being here today. From the deadly collision over DCA nearly a year ago to our air traffic controllers feeling the squeeze of the longest government shutdown in history, our national airspace system has been under considerable strain. I look forward to working with the FAA to hold our aviation community to a higher standard of safety. In that spirit, my first question focuses on aircraft minimum crew standards. Earlier this year, the FAA approved American Airlines' request to operate its new Boeing 787-9P with a minimum crew of just seven flight attendants.
This means that not all exit doors will be staffed by the flight attendants to evacuate this wide-body aircraft in case of an emergency. A single flight attendant would be left to evacuate hundreds of passengers through two emergency exits on opposite sides of a wide-body aircraft. The basis of aviation safety is redundancy, yet unmanned emergency door exits undermine this critical concept and could result in panicked passengers operating a door in dangerous conditions. Section 365 of the FAA bill requires the FAA to reassess evacuation standards and how the FAA develops them.
Mr. Bedford, as part of that assessment, is the FAA evaluating the crew-to-exit door ratio on wide-body aircraft and whether too few members can impact evacuation times?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for your question, sir. I want to be careful because I haven't studied this issue in detail, so I don't want to misinform you or the committee. I am aware of the requirement to redesign or to address some of the deficiencies in a previous emergency evacuation study that was done. I'm aware that the National Academy of Science provided the FAA with certain elements of the study that they felt need to be corrected in order to have a better proof of concept on our emergency egress procedures. I believe the results of that study are now being incorporated into what would be another retest, if you will.
I'm not exactly sure when that's going to get done, but I know the work is being done and it's important work. We saw, certainly through the emergency issues with the American brake fire in Denver, difficulty getting folks off the airplane. I think that's as much educating the traveling public that they need to listen to our flight attendants, the safety professionals on board, not to take their personal effects to have an orderly evacuation. So I think we have work to do on public education.
Robert Garcia
Well, thank you for that, and I know that flight attendants and other workers are eager to continue the engagement. Next, I'd like to bring your attention to the workforce that keeps our airports running. Ramp workers, ticket agents, and food service workers play a critical role in our aviation system, but many of them earn poverty wages. That's why Senator Markey and I pushed for the Good Jobs for Good Airports Act in the FAA reauthorization process last time. This bill sought to ensure a living wage for this workforce.
Although this bill was not included, Section 438 of the FAA bill, a provision I helped lead, required the GAO to complete a review of the airport service workforce. Mr. Bedford, are you committed to doing what you can to ensure that airports and the FAA that the FAA oversees are delivering fair wages and benefits to all employees?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for that question. I'll separate it into two responses. First of all, we are critically engaged on airport safety. Critically engaged on how traffic moves around and egresses through the airport, airport infrastructure, all things on the surface we're absolutely focused on and making sure both our frontline team and our air traffic controllers have the appropriate tools, as well as our pilots have the appropriate tools to see traffic and avoid traffic. As it relates to the airport wage worker, of course, I support their rights to collective bargaining, I support their rights to advocate for themselves, but the FAA does not really have a, it's not sort of in my lane here.
Robert Garcia
Thank you. I want to raise a report that was published in the New York Times where TSA is providing a list of multiple times a week to ICE of travelers who will be coming through airports. The program led to the arrest and deportation of Annie Lucia Lopez-Beyosa, a 19-year-old student at Babson College, who was deported despite a court order prohibiting the federal government from moving her out of the US. I understand that TSA doesn't fall under your purview, but this issue does involve airport facilities, so I wanted to put it on your radar for further conversations with you. Your efforts in addressing this would be greatly appreciated.
Speaker 54
Well, I applaud the work that our TSA agents are doing on the frontline to keep our screening safe. So I appreciate what you have to say.
Robert Bresnahan
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the ranking member. Also, Administrator Bedford, thank you for being here, and also to the families, thank you for advocating for safe air travel and for being here. So I'm going to jump right into a few questions specifically to prevent future incidents like this from taking place relevant to the Part 108 and the beyond visual line of sight. And perhaps maybe you can elaborate a little bit more as a helicopter pilot myself and us traditionally operating in and around utility power line work, emergency evacuation helicopters, what will that look like and how far along in the process of the Part 108 is the FAA?
Thank you. I yield back.
Gentleman yields. I now recognize Mr. Bresnahan.
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for your comment. I think beyond visual line of sight, our rulemaking there is close. We've closed comments to the public. We received over 3,000 comments back from industry, generally favorable, I would say. There are concerns over right-of-way that we're continuing to evaluate.
We're going to have an industry stakeholder meeting early January or maybe late December, I'm not sure how my schedule's set up, but we want a collaboration. We want to make sure that we're getting the right rulemaking accomplished to unlock drone operations and drone safety. I will say we've designed a drone sandbox that's strategically deconflicted from 99% of the airspace, but there are these exemptions for agriculture, for pipeline surveillance where we may see drone use and helicopter use in the same airspace. So that still requires some additional thought process.
Robert Bresnahan
Has there been any thought or analysis done around ADSB on the actual drones themselves, or what will that look like? I'm trying to put myself into the position of another helicopter pilot that may come into a situation where they are near an unmanned vehicle where, you know, you don't have the opportunity to speak on an air-to-air channel or to be able to communicate in and around various different airports. But what about broadcasting relevant to unmanned aerial vehicles?
Bryan Bedford
It's a great question, a very relevant question in the rulemaking process. Thank you for that, obviously belies your experience as a helicopter pilot. So you can imagine having drones actually transpond becomes a challenge in terms of drone design, weight, and obviously mitigates payload capability. So, you know, the better course of action would appear to be to have the aircraft transpond, and right now the rulemaking would require drones to be able to see ADSB out signals and avoid and detect, detect and avoid the traffic. So now it's a conversation of how do we talk to the, you know, the crop duster pilot, how do we talk to the helicopter pilot, or how do we block perhaps hospitals, you know, geo-deconflict them for helicopters moving in that space?
How do we get them to broadcast is part of unlocking drone dominance.
Robert Bresnahan
Well, I think that's a great transition to my next question about how close are we to mandating ADSB and having it become mandatory for traditional aircraft?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question. I want to be careful because we're not supposed to opine on pending legislation, and that sounds very close to the Rotor Act. As a pilot, I love it, right? As a pilot, I think we want more situational awareness, not less. More information's always better.
As a private pilot, as a recreational pilot, I do have concerns about the cost if we use traditional FAA methods and say it has to be embedded on an airplane. You know, I'm not going to want to buy a $50,000 upgrade for my, you know, Cessna 172. But if I can get an ADSB out-like device, one with equivalent capability, a portable device I can buy for 99 bucks, I'm encouraged.
Now, there's a second issue on privacy that we need to address. I think a lot of private pilots really don't want their ADS-B information taken and published. So, but I think all of those issues we can address to the entire aviation user's desire, and that would be the end state as a pilot I would like to see, without commenting as my position as FAA administrator.
Robert Bresnahan
Well, I certainly appreciate the commentary on the privacy as someone that does fly and who does broadcast his location. It certainly becomes a safety-sensitive situation, also relevant to privacy. I'm going to, I have 20 seconds left, but I want to talk about and commend the FAA for bridging the gap on workforce shortages relevant to controllers. And I've heard from colleges in my district, including Lackawanna College, Community College, Luzerne County Community College, about wanting to expand the program for the Enhanced Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative, and would love to work with the FAA and our office about looking to bring those programs into Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Thank you. I yield.
Gentleman yields, now recognize Mr. DeSaulnier.
Mark DeSaulnier
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your testimony today and the challenges you have professionally. And what my questions were, how do we measure the success of what this committee's done and your deployment of that? And I've heard a lot of good things here today, but also have some concerns. I entered this when there was a near miss 11 years ago at SFO where we came 54 feet with a, with an air traffic, with an Air Canada flight landing on three loaded planes on a taxiway, and they didn't read the notice to airmen and the whole series.
So the first performance standard is how are we doing on near misses? So when we started this process in reauthorization, and what I'm looking here for is simple measurements, and then I'll have follow-up questions about how we can get in more details. So on simple measurements, if you had a report card on how you're doing and deploying the directions of the assets we gave you, how are you doing and start with near misses? Are we, do we see any success in fewer of those?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for those questions. The first one, if you don't mind, you asked maybe the most relevant question for today, which is how do we measure success? That's such a critical, critical question that we at the FAA, I'll tell you, we still struggle with it. We can look at objective things in terms of we've deployed, you know, 30% of the, removed 30% of the, 36% of the copper is now fiber. We've deployed our first digital switches and voice switches.
And so, and we're going to close a radar acquisition before the end of the year, and we have a two-and-a-half-year timeframe on how we'll deploy that. So I could give you a lot of those objective measures of success. But the real measure of success is are we actually making the NAS safer, right? So and we're studying ways that we can objectively provide evidence that our modernization efforts are paying fruit in terms of increasing the safety and efficiency of the NAS. So again, great question, love to talk more about it with you.
You asked specifically about near misses. One of the data points that we saw during the lapse was an increase in near misses. And we also saw an increase in surface incursions, which is why we took action to deconf-, well, to sort of reduce the workload of our controllers by reducing capacity, reducing system demand in real time. That was a recognition of the risk that we saw. We monitor, we have dashboards now, something I mentioned a fellow by the name of Neil Cohen, you know, he also created this, these same measurements and dashboards that are now front and center of the FAA's weekly management meetings.
So we're looking at the dashboards and looking at our progress on surface runway incursions, on near misses and TCAS resolution advisory. So I will tell you the trend was going down until the lapse, but unfortunately it has taken a turn in the wrong direction.
Mark DeSaulnier
Mr. Chairman, I'd love to work with you and our group just to get sort of a report card on simple, easy to measure... I have it, I'll be happy to share it with you. All right. And in a more detailed, we have over 30 priorities that our office was able to work with stakeholders, but particularly the workforce and retired workforce members, pilots, air traffic controllers. Um, we submitted questions prior to this hearing to see where we were on each of those.
We got a response, but it was, you'd have to have a PhD in aviation engineering and I don't have the staff or the mental capacity. So I'd love to work with you on that to sort of help us understand things like human factors that the chairman brought up that has been a particular interest to me across the board. And in particular, in the procurement process, and we deal with this in multiple levels of government, technology is not matched to the human factors, whether it's the pilots, the air traffic controllers, the machinist. So how we're working on that. We go with the lowest best bid across government, state and federal level, but it doesn't really deal with the deployment and the necessary training with this new technology.
And it was quite obvious in the root cause analysis at the incident at SFO where the pilots and the air traffic controllers had technology, but they had never been trained fully under the circumstances to understand it and deploy it. So I wonder if you could respond to that, how you're dealing with that part of getting the workforce up, getting them trained in par with the, the technology and having the technology companies as part of the procurement pay for that training or fair share of the training.
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you for the question. Um, we have just published, believe it went out yesterday, our roadmap, our flight plan for 2026 that we've sent to the front line. It outlines three key pillars for how we'll have success in 2026. The first pillar's people. Again, making sure we're hiring the best people, giving them the best training and giving them the best tools and achieving the best results.
That sounds simple, maybe cliché even, but we have a roadmap of 20 different deliverables that we're going to execute on next year in order to unlock progress on our people initiatives. And hopefully that'll improve culture. The second silo of course is safety. And there are so many, so much low-hanging fruit that we can bring to bear through some level of FAA reorganization. Today we have safety elements siloed in eight different lines of business.
And they don't talk to each other, sir. They don't collaborate across the FAA agency landscape. In fact, in some ways they compete against one another. We are going to deconstruct that and we're going to create an integrated FAA safety process, one FAA safety management system focused on identifying and then mitigating risks quickly. That's on our to-do list.
And then finally is modernization. These three things will work together to create an FAA that's transparent, accountable, and most importantly, effective. And I think that's really what this committee expects is an FAA that can deliver effective oversight of the aviation ecosystem and assure the traveling public that they're getting the safest travel experience, bar none.
The gentleman yields and I now recognize Ms. Hoyle.
Val Hoyle
Thank you, thank you so much. Administrator Bedford, thank you so much for being here. And, um, I want to thank you and Secretary Duffy for continuing to engage with Congress following the tragedy at DCA. We were just at the Wright Memorial Dinner where we honored the first responders and Jennifer Homendy, um, and, and for their efforts after the US military, US passenger aircraft incursion at DCA.
Speaker 69
And that was the first day that Secretary Duffy started his job, and I know how much that impacted him. Sixty-seven people did not make it home after that collision. Families lost loved ones in an instant in what should have been a routine flight. And it happened in one of the most crowded airspaces in the country. And I'm concerned that we, and I mean Congress, is moving in the wrong direction as they added slots at DCA and then created exemptions overriding Secretary Duffy for military aircraft operating in that same airspace.
In airspace like that, the question is whether the entire air traffic control system, people, technology, coordination, can reliably manage the complexity we've built into it. So we've made a serious down payment on modernizing air traffic control with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but that won't alone finish the job. So my question is, what are we missing? I know this is a priority for yourself and Secretary Duffy. It's also a priority, bipartisan priority for us.
What can we do to further support you in that effort?
Bryan Bedford
Well, thank you so much for that offer of support. The FAA's charge is to maintain the safety of the NAS. You know, that's our mission, and we're going to stay on that mission. And I don't know exactly what was contemplated in terms of some of the legislation that's sort of moving around here, but I want to assure this committee, especially I want to assure the families of 5342, there's no going back. There's no rolling back the safety procedures that we put in place since that horrific evening.
So I'll assure the committee that if you can continue to help us advocate for our mission as being the custodians of airspace safety and design, that would be appreciated. But I can tell you our vigilance isn't waning.
Speaker 67
Thank you. And can you talk about some of the things that you have done and what you intend to do within that air traffic control system to update it, like long overdue update?
Bryan Bedford
So in the, you know, prior to my onboarding at FAA, so give credit to Secretary Duffy and Acting Administrator Rocheleau and the rest of the team. Absolutely. As you said, it was his first day on the job, and I know it deeply moved him. And he is an excellent partner for me, a great boss to have as we talk about modernizing the air traffic control system. His heart, the President's heart are clearly in the right space here, as is Congress.
So thank you again so much for your continued support and advocacy and the checkbook, very much appreciated. The agency quickly moved to deconflict the airspace. No more mixed traffic in the Capital Region airspace. Doesn't happen anymore. Not going to happen in the future.
Let's be clear. Second thing is we terminated all mixed, or sorry, visual separation. We don't allow visual separation any longer. And then of course we've completely cancelled several helicopter routes. So we've essentially moved the helicopter traffic out of the Capital Region.
It's certainly less convenient for people who might otherwise have wanted to take the shortcut, but if they want to fly, they can fly, they just have to simply move around the traffic. So they can still get there, I want to be clear. And I also want to make sure you understand the military has been good partners for us in these changes. We have a memorandum of agreement with the military. They have respected that, they continue to respect that.
I'm not aware of any desire to change that. But again, all of that learning has been embedded in that operating agreement.
And then we took that learning and we went across the nation and we looked for places where we saw mixed-use traffic, Las Vegas, we saw some issues in the Northeast, at some of our high traffic corridors, and we've implemented many of these same mitigations. And we've even found some places where we see conflicts like in Van Nuys and Burbank that we're working on. So again, there's tremendous safety data out there, we just have to unlock it and be proactive with it.
Speaker 64
Thank you very much and although it might be less convenient for military helicopters to get somewhere in a, take them a few more minutes, it's a hell of a lot less convenient when people die because we can't get them back. So I want to thank you and Secretary Duffy for your efforts.
Thank you for your support.
Gentlelady yields, I now recognize Mr. Carbajal.
Salud Carbajal
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I want to acknowledge the families that are here today of those that were impacted and affected by the January 29th tragedy. I'm sorry for your loss and I want you to know that we are committed to improving the safety of our aviation system so that we do not have another tragedy like this. Administrator Bedford, you have a tough job, welcome. In California, communities near both major airports and growing spaceport activity are experiencing increased noise as operations expand.
This is something I consistently hear from my constituents on the Central Coast. How is the FAA addressing the cumulative noise impacts from traditional aviation and commercial space launches, and does the agency believe its current noise standards adequately reflect these evolving operations?
Bryan Bedford
That's a really difficult question, sir, but thank you for it all the same. The cadence of space launches has increased exponentially. We went, it took us 35 years to get to 1,000 launches, we'll do the next 1,000 launches in less than four years. So it's remarkable. We're seeing launch cadence now across the NAS that are multiple launches a day.
It's both remarkable and yet it creates significant demands on what we do to meet the industry's tempo for commercial space development. But it's also a fantastic time to be in aviation. We're seeing the same challenges with drones, the same challenges with advanced air mobility, and let's talk about supersonic in 2027. So the reality is as we unlock all of these new technologies and these new innovations, which frankly for our economy are amazing, and to keep that innovation here in the United States and to develop those competencies here with our workforce, again, tremendous opportunity for economic growth, but it's always going to come at a cost of noise. So I don't know that we have great noise solutions other than what I mentioned earlier as part of our modernization process.
We can keep noise higher in the atmosphere than we do today with modernization. As we go to strategic trajectory-based management, we can actually have airplanes hit a point in space in altitude through power-off descent into the airspace environment and land safely. And I think we can do a lot through our modernization efforts to abate noise, but again, we've got to finish that job.
Speaker 66
Thank you.
I want to encourage you to work with the Department of Defense, who is currently looking at the supersonic noise issue and continue to look at our standards because at the end of the day, if we don't look at the thresholds of sound and the impact that they're having on communities, we may not be mitigating as appropriately and as effectively as we would like to. So I want to encourage you to continue working with the Department of Defense as well. Mr. Bedford, airports support innovative approach procedures such as optimized descent profiles to ease airspace bottlenecks, improve airspace safety, and ease community noise concerns. In congested airspace like Florida, New York, and Southern California, such projects are vital to expanding capacity to meet the growing demand for more flights. How will the brand new air traffic control system address and expedite efforts to improve the airspace navigation across the country?
Bryan Bedford
Well, I hope you appreciate the fact that I actually just answered that question in my previous response, but we're thinking exactly the same. Modernizing is the key to unlocking more capacity and reducing noise. And the way we'll do that, and if I'm being perfectly transparent with you, we're going to need the second level of funding, the second tranche of funding. I know the Secretary's on the Hill today and tomorrow, so let me put a plug in for that. The twelve and a half billion dollars that you've generously given us allow us to do a significant amount of work that prepares the NAS for that final piece of modernization, which is we need to lift the essentially the compute power and the data out of each individual facility.
So today, all of that power resides in 350 separate facilities, and one facility can't see the data that the other facilities have, requiring significant human intervention to tactically deconflict traffic. In the NAS of the future, we will lift that compute power into the cloud, along with an operating system in the cloud that presents an ability to manage traffic strategically versus tactically. And that's what will unlock the ability to do trajectory-based management and those power-off descents that you mentioned in your question.
Salud Carbajal
Thank you. Mr. Chair, since I'm the last one, may I indulge, can I get an extra 30 seconds, please?
Yes, sir, go ahead.
Salud Carbajal
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bedford, it is my understanding that work related to the FAA's rulemaking process, which is critical to safety, innovation, and getting product to the marketplace, was greatly impacted during the recent government shutdown. Can you share how the agency is working to address critical rulemaking priorities that may have been affected and were congressionally directed?
Bryan Bedford
Yes, sir, I can. Thank you. First and foremost, reauthorization 2024 requires us essentially to pull the Office of Rulemaking out of our AVS line of business and put more line of sight for the administrator on the rulemaking process. Sort of early in my tenure to try to understand how rulemaking gets done here, I got the primer, I got the education on it. It's not a pretty process.
I mean, and it's not a process that is solely within the FAA agency realm of influence. So there is a myriad of process management improvement I think we can have a conversation about how to get that done that will lead to more agility and frankly more responsiveness in terms of how we make rules. But we are, we have acted upon the 2024 reauth requirement to lift the Office of Rulemaking out of our AVS line of business, put more line of sight on it. And I think the rulemaking team's done some great work with MOSAIC and now with BVLOS and soon to be supersonic.
So we're there. We want to get it done.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Troy Nehls
Thank you, Mr. Carbajal. We are addressing the the noise with the it's called the Supersonic Aircraft Modernization Act and we're we're going to markup on on Thursday with that. Bipartisan, we have support, so we got to address this outdated restriction. I think 1973. But thank you for your time.
Gentleman yields. Any any further questions, any members? I don't see any. This concludes our hearing. I thought it was fantastic.
Thank you for being here with us, Administrator Bedford. We look forward to working with you, whether the number's 20 billion or whatever the number is. I believe Mr. Carson and I are all about success and safety in in our NAS and and we want to be a a force multiplier for you, sir, so we can see success in the future. With that, this hearing will be concluded. I'd like to thank you again.
The subcommittee stands adjourned.