GAO Report on aviation Safety

Our collaborative relationship with the FAA includes safety reporting systems, such as the Air Traffic Safety Action Program, and we have been proud to work with a broad group of aviation stakeholders to improve runway safety for the past several years. In fact, just this week, NATCA participated in a runway safety seminar hosted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the FAA and the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations (IFATCA). NATCA also recently served as industry co-chair of the Runway Safety Council.

The level of communication with the FAA to address safety on our nations runways is at a premium.

The most important piece of the GAO study is this: the FAA has taken several steps to further improve safety at and around airports.

We take this report very seriously, and we are working every day to ensure Americans safety in the skies. This includes implementing procedural and technological changes to improve runway safety, collecting more data on safety incidents, finding ways to share usable safety information down to the local facility level and shifting toward risk-based analysis of airborne and surface aviation safety information.

The GAO reports, the nations aviation system is arguably the safest in the world. We take that even further: our nations aviation system IS the safest in the world.