Source: United States Senator for Illinois Tammy Duckworth
June 15, 2023
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Today, U.S. Senator and pilot Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)—member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (CST) and Chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, Operations and Innovation—delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor on the importance of upholding the strong pilot certification standards, such as the 1,500-hour rule, in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act of 2023 and warned her Senate colleagues of the deadly consequences of complacency in aviation. Duckworth’s floor speech comes amid a recent surge in disturbing near-misses and close calls that prompted the FAA to hold an unprecedented safety summit and spurred an ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to determine whether these frightening incidents may be precursor events that, left unaddressed, are a sign that the Part 121 system is vulnerable to a horrific crash. In her speech, Duckworth also explained that weakening pilot certification requirements would not solve our nation’s need for more pilots, but instead only produce less-trained pilots that would make us more prone to flight accidents and put the safety of the flying public at risk. Video of the Senator’s remarks can be found here.
Key quotes:
- “I would not be alive today but for my experienced copilot who, through many hard-earned flight hours, was prepared and ready to respond to a life-threatening emergency with a level head and swift action.”
- “There has never been a worse time to even consider weakening pilot certification requirements to produce LESS experienced pilots… we’ve witnessed a disturbing rise of near-deadly close calls that led the FAA to convene an unprecedented safety summit where the Acting Administrator warned that the entire aviation industry need not to grow complacent—because complacency kills.”
- “A vote to reduce the 1,500-hour rule for pilot training will mean blood on your hands when the inevitable accident occurs as a result of an inadequately trained flight crew.”
Duckworth’s full remarks as delivered below:
- Mr. President, I rise today as both Chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, but more importantly, as a pilot who is only alive because of the swift actions of an experienced flight crew.
- I have lived the experience of piloting a Blackhawk that was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in flight and entered into flight conditions immediately that flight simulators taught me would be catastrophic, but experience-gained flying in the toughest conditions showed me that that was not the case.
- I have probably spent more hours in the most sophisticated flight simulators than any other Senator of this body short of, of course, Senator Kelly, our astronaut.
- In my over a decade of training as a military pilot, every time, every single time, that we simulated total loss of all aircraft avionics, would follow on total loss of hydraulic power, we died in that simulator.
- And we did this every year; and we simulated it over and over. It was not survivable.
- And we never simulated an RPG explosion in the lap of one of the pilots that any of the crew could survive.
- Why did we never simulate that condition? Nobody ever imagined that it would ever happen and have the crew survive or that the aircraft would not break apart in flight.
- And yet, on that day in Iraq, on that day when that rocket propelled grenade landed in my lap and exploded, we did. The aircraft held together, and we survived it.
- And we were ten feet above the trees and we looked and we had no avionics and we could tell that the hydraulics were next. And if we had relied on our simulator training, we would have done what dark pilot humor always said, which was “we’re going to die anyways, let’s change spots and leave a mystery for the accident investigators to figure out what the heck happened.”
- But we didn’t.
- We fought to fly that aircraft, because our training, in the cockpit, in real world flight conditions, taught us that we could do it. And led by the expertise of my pilot in command, we landed the aircraft and saved our entire flight crew.
- I would not be alive today but for the in-cockpit experience, gained through many hard-earned flight hours over a decade of training.
- It was actual, real-world experience, not a flight simulation that made us prepared and ready to respond to a life-threatening emergency with level heads and swift action. With instinct.
- Of course, my experience is not unique.
- When the Hero of the Hudson, Captain Sully Sullenberger implores Congress to understand that the combined 40,000-plus flight hours between him and his First Officer were critical in saving 155 lives on that January 15, 2009 day, we should listen.
- Do you think that prior to that day there were any flight simulations of a dual engine failure from bird strike followed by ditching in the Hudson river? By any airline? By any flight school? No!
- In fact, when that very simulation was run after the miracle on the Hudson, even with the flight crews experiencing and expecting the scenario, they still crashed time after time that simulated emergency. It was pilot-in-cockpit flying experience that saved the miracle on the Hudson.
- My experience as both a pilot, responsible for the lives of my crew and passengers in the most hazardous conditions, along with my commitment to my leadership role on the Aviation Safety Subcommittee means that I cannot be complicit in efforts to compromise on safety for the flying public.
- There has never been a worse time to consider weakening pilot certification requirements to produce less experienced pilots.
- 2023 has already been a chilling year for our civil aviation system.
- We’ve witnessed a disturbing rise of near-deadly close calls that led the FAA to convene an unprecedented safety summit where the Acting Administrator warned that the entire aviation industry needs not to grow complacent—because complacency kills.
- NTSB is treating the recent uptick in near misses as a national crisis and investigating these incidents to determine whether systemic problems are a root cause.
- Some observers believe the surge in hiring that was necessary to address the perfect storm of pre-pandemic buyouts and the post-COVID travel boom has simply resulted in a less experienced workforce more prone to mistakes.
- We must treat these unnerving near-misses as red flags and be proactive in strengthening safety requirements to make sure that these close calls do not become precursor events for a catastrophic incident.
- The last thing we should be doing is weakening Part 121 certification standards. We’ve had 7 close-calls most recently and the answer is not “let’s reduce pilot training.” It’s the pilot who prevented those close-calls from becoming accidents in the first place.
- As a pilot, I learned the value of real-world experience. Trust me, hours in that cockpit, in the sky, matter.
- Simulators are a valuable training tool; I applaud them, I have made use of them. But they are no substitute for the real thing.
- Life-saving instincts are earned through hours of hard work and dedication to the craft of piloting a real aircraft with real stakes.
- Look, I know we’ve experienced a perfect storm of major carriers buying out thousands of their most-experienced pilots, followed by a post-pandemic surge in air travel demand that has created a temporary shortage of pilots and first officers, especially for regional airlines. The consequences for communities, especially in rural airports, have been real and painful. I see them myself in my home state.
- I understand the temptation to cut corners or chase the false promise of a “quick fix” to a systemic challenge.
- But weakening a pillar of our post-COVID reforms won’t magically solve the need for more pilots.
- Believe me, I’ve asked for the specifics: “if we reduced the minimum flight hours from 1,500 to 1,000—how many more pilots would be available in the following calendar year? What about 800 hours? What if we dropped it to 500 or 250? How many more pilots would you have then?”
- And yet, to date, I’ve received no precise estimates, let alone any credible projections.
- At this point, I question whether the special interests pushing to weaken the 1,500-hour rule even have a methodology or model to measure the relationship between certain certification standards and the availability of pilots.
- I’m not the only one who has stress-tested the industry assertions and come away with more questions than answers.
- Last year, FAA rejected a petition for an exemption to the flight hours requirement, and explicitly stated, and I quote: “the FAA has previously concluded the argument that an exemption would serve to address a pilot shortage is overly simplistic and does not present a persuasive argument.”
- Foreign carriers not subject to the 1,500 hour rule also experienced workforce challenges post-pandemic, and yet they’re not reducing their requirements. This bolsters FAA’s conclusion.
- Simply put, reducing hours—even just for restricted ATPs—represents a serious risk with no reward. It represents an unacceptable backsliding, a dangerous complacency in an industry where complacency kills.
- As Chair of the Aviation Safety Subcommittee, as a professional aviator, as a private pilot, I am holding the line on safety.
- I want to encourage my colleagues to focus on the long list of other, more urgent aviation issues facing our country. Now is not the time to go backwards on our post-COVID safety system. And there has not been a single aviation fatality due to pilot error since the 1,500-hour rule was put into effect.
- Now is not the time to put corporate profits ahead of the lives of our constituents who may want to board a commercial flight in the future.
- A vote to reduce the 1,500-hour rule for pilot training will mean blood on your hands when the inevitable accident occurs as a result of an inadequately trained flight crew.
- I urge my colleagues to uphold the 1,500-hour rule. I yield the floor.
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