‘You need the brightest defending your self and your loved ones. That’s what we’re going to do with the division,’ Sean Duffy stated.
Days after the deadliest U.S. aviation accident in additional than 20 years, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated on Feb. 2 that many Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) techniques are outdated and must be up to date amid a lingering scarcity of air visitors controllers.
Talking with Shannon Bream of “Fox Information Sunday,” Duffy stated that whereas America’s skies are nonetheless the world’s most secure, the FAA’s techniques are in want of main enhancements.
“Now we have the most secure skies in the entire world. Touring by air is the most secure mode of transportation,” Duffy stated. “It’s not simply air visitors controllers, however we do have applied sciences on airplanes to maintain them separated. … That is the most secure system.”
Duffy stated his objective is to coach a brand new era of recruits in air visitors management.
“You possibly can’t concentrate on variety, fairness, and inclusion while you attempt to rent air visitors controllers; you concentrate on the perfect and brightest,” the transportation secretary stated.
“Some folks could wish to have this dialog round fairness, but when it’s your pilots or if it’s your air visitors controllers, you need the perfect. You need the brightest defending your self and your loved ones. That’s what we’re going to do with the division.”
On Jan. 30, Duffy wrote a put up on social media platform X vowing to reform the FAA, at some point after an Military Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airways flight heading into Ronald Reagan Washington Nationwide Airport. All 67 folks aboard each plane died within the catastrophe, which occurred on his first day on the job.
“I’m within the technique of creating an preliminary plan to repair the [FAA]. I hope to place it out very shortly,” Duffy stated. “Tomorrow, I’m going to the FAA command heart and restoration hangar. I’ll proceed to maintain the households and the general public updated with what we’re doing on this scenario and each different scenario that falls beneath [the Transportation Department].”
Todd Inman, a member of the Nationwide Transportation Security Board, which investigates aviation incidents, stated throughout a Feb. 1 briefing that night coaching flights sometimes embrace evening imaginative and prescient goggles.
“We have no idea presently if the evening imaginative and prescient goggles have been really being worn, nor what the setting could also be,” he stated. “Additional investigation ought to have the ability to tell us if that occurred and what issue it could play within the total accident.”
In keeping with knowledge, an air visitors controller warned the helicopter of the industrial jet, a CRJ700, two minutes earlier than the crash.
Officers stated the aircraft’s cockpit recorder captured the pilots’ “verbal response” one second earlier than impression.