During Wednesday’s Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) questioned Franklin McIntosh, the Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the Air Traffic Organization at the Federal Aviation Administration, about ongoing issues of close proximity between aircraft at DCA.
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00:00Chairman. Thank you. Senator Moran. Chairman, thank you. Thank you and Senator Cantwell for
00:05having this hearing and what is clearly occurring at a critical time. I want to first indicate that
00:14your subcommittee on aviation and space intends to have a DOD, FAA, and NTSB discussion roundtable
00:22once again. The date we've zeroed in on is June the 11th, in which we have another understanding
00:28from the investigator and the FAA and the Department of Defense what is transpiring since the incident
00:37and tragedy of January the 29th. I also want to indicate that I've introduced legislation
00:44that may be of interest to others on the committee to join, and that would require all aircraft
00:51in Class B high-volume airspace to utilize ADSB in and out, something that was a significant
01:03item of discussion and concern on the night of January the 29th in regard to the Blackhawk.
01:12Let me ask a question, an issue that bothered me in the past, and I highlighted this in
01:20our last hearing. NTSB's, and I suppose this is for you, well, let me leave it open to whoever
01:28wants to answer it. NTSB's preliminary investigation highlighted 15,214 events October 21 to December
01:3724, of commercial planes and helicopters that were separated by less than one nautical mile.
01:46That information that NTSB provided came from the computer records of the FAA, and that, those numbers,
01:55as well as other statistical facts that were told to us demonstrated to me a continuing problem,
02:03a continuing circumstance in which there is close proximity between aircraft at DCA. And the troubling,
02:11that's troubling in and of itself, but troubling to me is if it's in the FAA's computer records,
02:17is that something that the FAA monitors to know the trends so that actions can be taken to reduce
02:25the risks? I don't know whether that's... Mr. McIntosh, you seem to be on the seat today.
02:32Yeah, so, Senator Moran, if it's okay, both myself and my colleague Ms. Baker will
02:37tack-team this question to make sure we give you an appropriate answer. Reference FAA databases,
02:44we are required, any loss of separation, we are required to enter what's called a mandatory
02:50occurrence report for further review. Anything that's considered to be a near-mid air collision
02:55must be investigated. Any pilot reports of close proximity, we investigate. And we do keep records
03:02of that. We also keep records of our voluntary safety reporting program, or our ADSAPs, that come
03:08from our controllers and analyze that. I will say that I am concerned and I acknowledge that we missed
03:16something at DCA. Our mitigations failed because we do have quality assurance and quality control
03:24processes where, through the data analysis, we are supposed to develop corrective action plans.
03:31I know that Acting Administrator Roeschlow talked about what we'd like to do to ensure that we have
03:36better analysis of our data trends, and I'm going to follow up with exactly what he said, which is
03:40updating the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing tool with artificial intelligence and machine
03:48learning to do a better analysis of the trends that involve mixed aircraft types, helicopters and fixed wing.
03:59When we look over 10 years of data, I think if you get a report once per month or something like twice per month,
04:06over the year of 10 years, I think some trends may escape someone. And I think some of these tools that
04:11we have available to us will help us spot these trends better so we can be more proactive in our
04:16mitigations versus reacting to an event because that's really what a safety organization is supposed
04:21to do. So I really want to make sure that we continue to quantify the data and make surgical
04:26improvements to our safety processes and those surgical having the biggest benefits on making sure that
04:32we have better processes and better procedures in place to ensure safety to the flying public.
04:36Would you say that, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying, that that data
04:41is sufficiently alarming that it should have raised more awareness and action than it did?
04:46Yes, sir. Thank you. Anything else, Ms. Baker?
04:50I just wanted to add that holistically we are looking at data across the FAA, both how do we,
04:57Mr. McIntosh describes specific data sets within the air traffic organization, but what we want to do is
05:02bring together data sets across the FAA. That requires more computing power because more data
05:07sets just require more computing power to bring them all together, but we also need to apply
05:13artificial intelligence type tools and large language models to help us spot emerging trends
05:17that may not be visible to individuals on a one or two incident basis over a multitude of years,
05:23as well as we have a lot of reports that are text-based, and right now those have to be reviewed by
05:28analysts. So the application of large language models helps us sort through those things and bring
05:32together related information faster. Does the Secretary's announcement have any,
05:37is there any consequence to the ability to do what you just described with the resources that
05:41are being talked about, or is that going someplace else to the absence of this need?
05:47We are already committed to that, and this announcement doesn't impact the resources there.
05:51Let me just finally say that this is, if it's a problem at DCA and there are helicopters and fixed
05:58wing aircraft at many airports across the country, I assume that the FAA is also doing the same kind
06:07of examination and soul searching across the country, not just totally, not just focused on DCA. Is that true?
06:15That is 100 percent accurate, Senator. We have, we're looking at right now 10 airports or 10 cities
06:24with airports that have charted airport routes, and we have done, I feel it's a very important body of
06:30work to your point, and what we're doing is we're assessing that data and we're already having actual
06:35items. Case in point, Las Vegas. Las Vegas has got some charted helicopter routes that are close to the
06:41international airport. Based on our analysis and what we saw, we've already established lateral
06:47and vertical boundaries for those helicopter routes to keep them separated from aircraft landing and
06:52departing the airport, as well as working with our labor partners to work on making sure that traffic
06:58advisories are well-timed and well-placed so that the helicopter pilots and that the commercial pilots
07:04know exactly where the helicopter routes and have situational awareness. But the biggest thing is the
07:09the lateral confines of those helicopter routes to make sure that they're separated from our
07:13arriving and departing aircraft. That's big for us, and that is an example of what I expect from our
07:18data sets to lead to the appropriate corrective action plans that we want to see put in place
07:23to actually mitigate any potential issues on the front side, and that's where we need to be. Thank you.