On Thursday, Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) questioned the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on speed train construction during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The gentleman yields. Ms. Titus is recognized for five minutes for questions.
00:05Thank you very much. Mr. Secretary, it's nice to see you again. Thank you for your patience
00:10and waiting for us to come back and vote. It was great to have you in District 1 as we announced
00:16the speed train to California. That's going to create a lot of good union jobs and it's going
00:22to be funded right out of that bipartisan infrastructure law. So thank you for working
00:27with us on that. You know, you've heard from many of my colleagues and I agree with them that
00:32Boeing's safety track record is a problem. In fact, I saw a cartoon in the paper the other day
00:39that said that airlines were given extra mileage points if you'd sit in the exit row and hold the
00:44door on during the flight. That is not the image that we want to project because we've always been
00:50the leader in safety. But another safety issue that I wish you would address is the number of
00:55air traffic controllers. I've heard you say that it's a problem. We have a real shortage. There's a
01:01hiring target of 2,000 in the fiscal year 2025. I worked with Mr. Yackam on an amendment to the
01:09FAA bill to do maximum hiring through the FAA Academy. Could you talk about those deadlines
01:16and if there's anything we need to do to help the Academy with resources or changes that will help
01:23us to try to catch up to this shortage? Thank you for your attention to this issue. We share that
01:30concern. Over many, many years the number of air traffic controllers qualified and working has
01:35gone down. The good news is that's finally stabilized and begun to go up a little bit,
01:40but the problem is we need it to go up much more quickly. In order to do that, we've requested,
01:45as you mentioned, funding to hire 2,000 in the coming fiscal year. We would welcome your support
01:51for that funding. We've also worked to increase what we call the force multiplier of CTI,
01:59collegiate training initiatives that can work alongside, never at the expense of, but alongside
02:06our excellent facility in Oklahoma City to help get more controllers qualified quickly. I'm
02:11certainly eager to continue working with you both to implement all the provisions of the FAA
02:15reauthorization and just to make sure that the funding and the recruiting stays on pace. I was
02:20going to ask you about the recruiting. How have you beefed that up? Where do you recruit? To whom
02:26do you recruit? So we get a remarkable number of applicants every time we open a cycle and we're
02:33encouraging people from all walks of life to consider a career that can be rewarding and
02:37lucrative. It's very rigorous though and not everybody who comes through the door even makes
02:41it through the first few steps. Of course, that rigor is a good thing and I should assure you
02:46none of the measures we're taking involve reducing that high bar of qualification, but we do want to
02:51make sure we support those applicants and help them meet those high bars so that they can have
02:55a great career and we can have the numbers we need in our air traffic control workforce. Well, thank
02:59you for that. If I can shift gears a little bit to the drone industry, domestic drone industry,
03:06and the rulemaking that has occurred in the past for the line of sight issue. We had 90 experts
03:14who submitted a report saying we need to do this and they made some recommendations to
03:20the FAA. A rule was put forward. I worked with Mr. Graves who chaired the aviation subcommittee
03:27hoping to get something by September. Can you tell us kind of how that process is going? Will you
03:31meet the deadline? Are there any problems we need to address? We certainly understand the importance
03:37of that rulemaking. There's complexity in this, the novelty of this issue. We also see the
03:42growth of these drones and we know there's going to be more and more of them entering the national
03:46airspace. So, I know the team is hard at work at that. I'll try to get you more of an update. We
03:51are conscious of the reauthorization provision, excuse me, creating a time frame for that work
03:56to get completed. I just don't want to see us fall further and further behind other places,
04:01Europe, Australia. Understood. Well, thank you. If you'll let me know, I appreciate it. Will do.
04:05Thank you.