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Remarks of the President in FAA Announcement (12/7/00)

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                              THE WHITE HOUSE

                       Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                December 7, 2000


                         REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                            IN FAA ANNOUNCEMENT


                             Presidential Hall
              Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building


11:28 A.M. EST


          THE PRESIDENT:  Well, Keith, thank you for telling everybody why
I'm trying so hard to get something done about this.  (Laughter.)  Thank
you very much for the work you do and for being here with us today, as
Exhibit A.

          I want to thank Secretary Slater and our Administrator Jane
Garvey for all they have done in these last several years.  And I want to
thank John Cullinane and Sharon Patrick for being here, and our NTBS
Chairman, Jim Hall -- thank you very much, Jim for your work.

          As Secretary Slater said, when the Vice President and I took
office in 1993, among other things that were troubled in this economy, we
found a very troubled airline industry.  And in my first -- Rodney
mentioned the trip I made to Everett, Washington, to meet with the leaders
of the airline industry at the Boeing plant near Seattle.  That was the
first trip I took outside Washington as President.  I did it because I knew
that we had to turn the airline industry around if we wanted to turn the
American economy around.

          Out of that meeting was born the Baliles Commission, headed by
the former governor of Virginia, Governor Jerry Baliles, and a set of
recommendations that helped to power the airline industry back to health.
Thanks to those recommendations and to a booming economy, the airline
industry is strong again, and I think have benefitted from the work that
has been done in this administration by the Vice President and Secretary
Slater and Administrator Garvey.

          We have basically pursued a three-pronged approach:  First, we
want to preserve and enhance domestic competition so that our people
continue to reap the benefits of deregulation.  Second, we want to open
more foreign markets so that our airlines can compete better
internationally.  And third, we want to improve the efficiency of our
infrastructure, particularly air traffic control, to keep pace with the
phenomenal growth in air travel.  Now, that's what were here to talk about
today, because, frankly, we haven't been able to do it.

          Our infrastructure is just as important to us today as the
railroads were in the 1800s, or the interstate highway system was in the
second half of the 20th century.  Just as those advancements made us
competitive in the 19th and 20th century economies, a modernized air
traffic control system will help determine our ability to compete in the
21st century.

          The fact is, the FAA's 20-year effort to modernize its air
traffic control technology simply has not been able to keep pace with
either the emergence of new technology or the growth and demand for air
travel.  And while we've made significant progress, as the horrendous --
and I don't know how else to say it -- just the horrendous flight delay
statistics demonstrate, we have not done nearly enough.

          This is no reflection, I don't hesitate to say, on the leadership
of the FAA or the dedication of its employees; they are very, very good.
They operate the largest, busiest and safest air travel system in the
world.  It orchestrates 93,000 flights every day, more than one every
second.  They also oversee the safety of the entire system, which has a
remarkable record, as all of you who are involved in it knows.

          Despite the extraordinary efforts of these people, however, the
rapid growth in air travel is simply racing ahead of the limits of the
FAA's aging infrastructure.  Flight delays have increased by more than 58
percent in the last five years; cancellations by 68 percent.  In addition
to widespread passenger frustration and anger, which I hear about wherever
I go, these delays are costing airlines and passengers more than $5 billion
ever year.

          Part of the problem is due to outdated technology.  We're working
with Congress to speed up the upgrade of facilities and equipment at
airports and air traffic control centers.  But a more fundamental problem
is also how the FAA operates.  It must be better structured to manage the
high-tech, high-demand operations of a 21st century air traffic control
system.

          David Osborne, who popularized the phrase "reinventing
government," when he wrote a book by that title, sums up the problem in his
new book, the Reinventor's Field Book.  In it, he says -- and I quote --
"air traffic control is a massive, complex technology intensive service
business, operating within a conventional U.S. government bureaucracy.
It's like putting a Ferrari engine into a dump truck body, and still
expecting it to win races."

          We need to put the Ferrari engine of FAA excellence into a new,
more streamlined, more efficient body.  To accelerate our efforts to reduce
passenger delays and improve air traffic control efficiency, I am taking,
therefore, the following actions.  First, I am directing the FAA to create
a performance-based organization, the Air Traffic Services Organization, to
manage the operation of air traffic control.  This semiautonomous
organization, located within the FAA, will have the incentives and tools
necessary to operate more effectively and efficiently.
          Second, Secretary Slater is designating five outstanding business
and management leaders for appointment to the Air Traffic Services
sub-committee.  The group will function as a board of directors to oversee
the management of the FAA's air traffic control organization, to make sure
it operates more efficiently.

          They are, former United States Senator and Chairperson of the
sub-committee on aviation, Nancy Kassebaum Baker; John Cullinane, who's
here with us today, President of the Cullinane Group and a pioneer in the
computer software industry; Leon Lynch, the international Vice President
for Human Affairs at the United Steel Workers; Sharon Patrick, President
and Chief Operating Officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. is
here with us; and John Snow, a former Department of Transportation
administrator and current Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
of CSX corporation.  It is a distinguished group, and I think they'll do a
fine job.

          I am also directing the Department of Transportation and the FAA
to review the impediments to the use of airport congestion pricing and
other market mechanisms to reduce airport delays.  Let me say, I asked
about this years ago, and it turns out there are a couple of federal laws
which make it hard to do.

          But if you think about how much business travel there is, and how
much travel travel there is, and how much flexibility we might build in the
system if we just had some market mechanisms to more uniformly use the
airplane and airport infrastructure that we have out there, I think that we
really missed a big opportunity not to try to take more advantage of this.
And I think we could rather quickly level out and maximize the use of our
facilities and our planes in ways that would dramatically reduce delays and
cancellations.

          But there are some, apparently, some actual statutory impediments
to doing it.  So we're going to do what we can to identify them and leave
them in good shape for the next administration, and given the level of
anxiety about this in the country, I think we could get some pretty quick
action.  I hope it will happen next year.

          I hope that all these actions will accelerate much-needed reform
of the air traffic control system.  But they are not enough.  Congress
still has to reform the way air traffic control service is financed, and
move from a system financed by passenger taxes to one in which commercial
users pay the costs of the services they use.

          The airline industry is at a crossroads.  We can continue on the
current course and continue to experience crowded airports, flight delays,
and even higher passenger frustration.  But if we act decisively now to
improve our infrastructure, we can ensure that air travel in the 21st
century is the safest, most cost effective, most efficient in the world.

          I can hardly think of anything else the government does now that
the consumers feel more directly.  And I certainly hope that what we're
doing today will help.  I believe it will.  And I will try to wait
patiently in those lines next year for Congress to do its part.

          Thank you very much.  (Laughter and applause.)

                           END       11:39 A.M. EST


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