Speeches and Presentations from Southwest Leaders
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The 31st Annual FAA Aviation Forecast Conference, co-sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration and American Association of Airport Executives, was held at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center on February 28, 2006. The theme of the conference was “Survival and Growth in Today’s World.”
The Boeing Company sponsored the opening day Keynote Luncheon, featuring Herb Kelleher, Executive Chairman of Southwest Airlines. Below are Herb's remarks.
I am honored to be with you today, and I am also extremely grateful to Administrator Marion Blakey for her compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness. Why do I say “compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness”? I say these words because the FAA is the only organization that, after hearing me speak, has invited me back to speak again. So either you are incredibly tolerant or you are collectively undergoing a mass attack of insomnia, which Administrator Blakey knew that my speech would cure—by putting you to sleep. In either event, I am grateful to Marion for the opportunity to be here with you. And I am also grateful to her for being a splendidly knowledgeable and effective Administrator—an Administrator with the courage, determination, persistence, and vision to vigorously attack both present and future issues pertaining to the organization and operation of the FAA and its ATC system. Marion, I am grateful to you for accepting our President’s call to FAA duty.
I have worked closely with the FAA for 35 years. I have also been actively engaged in recommending and supporting a number of Congressional initiatives with respect to the FAA, including personnel and procurement reform; “firewalling” the Aviation Trust Fund; and creating the ATO, performance-based organization, within the FAA. I am very proud of what the FAA accomplishes every day: operating by far the largest ATC system in the world with by far the world’s best safety record. Naturally, the FAA receives widespread public attention only when something goes awry. In that sense, I am reminded of what a Texas Governor said to his appointee to the Liquor Control Board: “Joe, there’s nothing you can do in that position to make me look good; just prevent anything from happening that makes me look bad.” The FAA prevents the “bad” from happening every day, and our nation should be exceedingly grateful to the FAA for its superb accomplishments.
The Wright Brothers invented the airplane, but the FAA invented aircraft safety certification and a safe ATC system. The Brothers Wright envisioned that their invention would prosper primarily through military applications; aircraft manufacturers and the FAA together made commercial use of the airplane possible—and thereby changed the world, and the personal and business freedom and opportunities of its people, for the better.
In that sense, I guess you could say that The Boeing Company and the FAA are responsible for me being in the airlines business—although I doubt that my father would regard any industry that has lost more money than it has ever made as a “business.” At one point I made the tongue-in-cheek statement that I wished the Wright Brothers had invented the toilet instead of the airplane, so that my colleagues and I could be selling toilets, as opposed to periodically going down them. I guess if Wilbur and Orville Wright were alive today, Wilbur might have to fire Orville in order to reduce the cost of operating the Wright Flyer.
Nevertheless, I have had what I call the “Kerosene virus” for many decades and, despite its recurrent vicissitudes, I am extremely proud to be in the business of commercial aviation. It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it. For instance, following that practice brought me to the clear realization that Wild Turkey whiskey and Philip Morris cigarettes are absolutely essential to the maintenance of human life. Similarly, I wish that everyone in America would try to imagine her or himself without any commercial aviation services. Personal and business lives would be impoverished; our economy would collapse; and our global competitiveness would disappear. Commercial aviation is not the ugly stepsister in the kitchen cleaning pots and pans: commercial aviation is a Cinderella sine qua non of modern day America.
And those that don’t have commercial aviation services are dying to get them—be they countries; cities; towns; or villages. Its historic Leadership in commercial aviation is a feat that should make America very proud—and very determined that it will continue.
In reading the latest traffic and activity forecast by the FAA, it strikes me that the forecast is probably realistic, barring the occurrence of unpredictable exogenous events such as pandemics; terrorist strikes; prolonged economic malaise; or huge natural disasters. The unpredictable can occur, but it would be foolish, in my judgment, not to plan and prepare the ATC system for a huge additional influx of passenger traffic, air cargo shipments, and both commercial and general aviation flights in the decades to come. If we do not so plan and prepare, then we run the high probability risk of creating our own, U.S. made, economic catastrophe, as air traffic demand outpaces the capabilities of the ATC system; delays and other inefficiencies horrendously increase operating costs for all businesses; discretionary air travel disappears; aircraft manufacturers and allied industries experience muted demand for airplanes; and the functioning of the global economy becomes, in effect, spastic.
The DOT and the FAA are making excellent progress, in multitudinous areas, in upgrading the present ATC system through 2013, but the interagency JPDO is simultaneously working to develop the next generation ATC system, which hopefully will provide capacity and efficiency far beyond that of the present improvements under way.
The DOT, the FAA, and other agencies have undertaken a massive effort to redesign, rejuvenate, and expand the capacity of the ATC system over the course of coming decades. As a matter of policy, DOT believes very strongly that the FAA needs a dedicated, reliable, cost-based source of funding in order to bring this huge venture—comparable to creating the interstate highway system of the air—to fruition. We, the commercial airlines represented by the ATA, have debated this proposition, and how to effectuate it, during the past 12 months. After sometimes agonizing, and even paralyzing, analysis, colloquy, and argument, we have concluded that we can support, for commercial aviation, a specific, Congressionally-defined formula of dedicated, mandatory, cost-based user charges, apportioned among air carriers pursuant to an agreed formula that does not produce discriminatory, anti-competitive effects and thereby subvert the unprecedented unity of our industry.
The ATA proposal, adopted unanimously at our Board meeting last Thursday, is an historic breakthrough on the part of the ATA Members. We have fought over commercial aviation user fees, and their possible discriminatory and anti-competitive effects, for more than a decade. Today, we are unified on our specific proposals for commercial aviation. That is an event—a crossing the Rubicon experience—that I had thought I might never witness. I am fervently hopeful that the Administration and the Congress will be receptive to the ATA proposal.
In light of the fact that our commercial airline user fee proposal has just been adopted and not yet formally submitted to the Administration and the Congress, I will refrain from giving you more details with respect to that proposal. I, however, am pleased that Jim May, the superlative ATA President, and I have been able to bring you a favorable and unprecedented news bulletin today.
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