The airlines have mandatory safety management systems (SMS). Do you see SMS becoming mandatory for all operators? Yes, I would like to see that. Going forward, SMS, along with Organization Designation Authority (ODA) for manu- facturers, is the only way an industry that’s growing the way ours is, with UAS, commercial space, urban air mobility, and all these things—it’s the only way that we’re going to be able to maintain safety, oversight, and regulatory control without strangling a piece of the industry. So yes, I’m a huge fan of SMS. I also am a huge fan of deregulation and not imposing burdensome regula- tions on the industry. One of the issues when we started SMS was that the requirements were so oner- ous that small operators couldn’t afford to do it. We have to develop a better system. I’d like to see us be able to tailor the SMS requirements for the size of the operation.
If the industry would be such that, if you don’t have
an SMS, you can’t play, you can’t compete, then even a voluntary SMS program, such as we have now, would accomplish our goal of improving safety in the system. One of the issues we have is that foreign authorities
don’t recognize a voluntary SMS regulatory regime: they want it to be mandatory. And so even when companies have voluntarily adopted an SMS and that SMS aligns perfectly with what we want in an SMS—because it’s a voluntary SMS and we don’t mandate it, it’s not recog- nized by some foreign authorities. So that’s another wrinkle we need to work out.
Launched in 2015, the Compliance Program moved the FAA from mandatory enforcement actions to a focus on training and counseling for most FAR violations that are not judged to be reckless or malicious. Four years in, is the FAA seeing the results that it wanted? What we find is that repeat offenses are very rare, even on nonenforcement compliance activity, so the Compliance Program is working. When I came in and I was getting briefed on it, my reaction was “Oh, that’s not new.” And it really isn’t. The Compliance Program is an organic outgrowth of volun- tary reporting and safety reporting indemnification for those honest mistakes we make in the system. The FAA does not wait for the accident to make the fix. We’re predictive and we’re proactive. And the only
way you’re predictive and proactive is if you’re getting information from operators. And they have to know that by giving you that information, they’re not going to get violated because it was an honest error or misjudgment. Make no mistake, we still have a very, very vibrant
enforcement aspect to our oversight, but I think it makes more sense that enforcement is for willful, negligent, or criminal acts. The aviation community
may be surprised when they sit down with a regu- lator to review a violation of the FARs and the rec- ommendation is more training. “I’m not gonna be fined?” Well, no. It clearly wasn’t willful, it wasn’t negligent, and you self-dis- closed. When that hap-
“The real issue is how innovation takes place now, in the 21st century. It’s not like any innovation we’ve seen in decades past because the innovation is coming from nonaviation people.”
pens, I think operators will understand the program. Bottom line, the safety record tells the story. We’ve been at this for four or five years. If there was some seismic alteration that the Compliance Program brought to this system, you would have seen it manifested either in increased rates of incidents or accidents. We haven’t seen that. I think the Compliance Program is perfectly in keeping with the FAA’s overall safety philosophy of con- tinual safety improvement.
What are some of your priorities for the FAA? My priorities are first and foremost the President’s and Secretary Chao’s, which are safety, innovation, infra- structure, and accountability. Before I leave this position, I want to see us make some real strides in UAS integra- tion and in the reintroduction of supersonic technology into the NAS. I think we can do it in the right way and make real strides in our relationship with communities, airports, and operators on noise. [Note: On March 19, President Trump nominated former Delta executive Steve Dickson to be the next FAA administrator, pending senate confirmation.]
Has your experience with UAS integration changed how the FAA wants to handle technology innovation? Yes, I want to create an office within the FAA that assim- ilates new technology in a way we’ve never done before. And this goal of creating an Office of Innovation is
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