Name: Still Using ‘Slips of Paper,’ Archaic Systems, FAA Unfit to Handle ‘Next-Gen’ Aviation: Sen. Cruz
Uploaded: 2023-03-30T20:17:26.000Z
Description: The American aviation sector is abuzz with talk of air taxis, hypersonic airplanes, and cheaper, cleaner, “sustainable” fuel sources.

NTD Newsroom comprises teams of reporters, editors, and producers assigned to cover breaking news and other stories.


NTD Newsroom

NTD Plus

News

News you can trust from the U.S. and around the world. Critical information and insight. We cover the stories that others don’t. NTD News Today airs Monday–Friday at 11 a.m. ET.

NTD News Today

Pentagon Scraps Deployment of 4,000 Troops to Poland

9/11 Memorial and Museum Adds 7th Moment of Silence

AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Launch Joint Venture to Tackle Dead Zones

Stefania Cox is an NTD News anchor and national correspondent based at the network's global headquarters in New York City. Stefania anchors "NTD Newsroom," and co-anchors "NTD News Today" weekdays at 10:00 am ET.

Stefania Cox

Trump Committed to US Defense, Prosperity, Amid China Talks: Expert

Jerome Powell Ends Tenure as Fed Chair

US Government Sues Chick-fil-A Over Religious Rights

Melina Wisecup is NTD's congressional correspondent based in Washington, covering Capitol Hill and campaign politics.

Melina Wisecup

California Gubernatorial Candidates Make Closing Pitches to Voters 

Jason Blair is a national correspondent for NTD News based in California. 

Jason Blair

Federal Judge Partly Blocks Texas Immigration Law

Trump Announces National Garden of American Heroes Plans

Top Officer: Navy Funding Could Lapse by July

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 15)

Paul Greaney is an NTD news anchor and producer. Since joining the company in 2018, he has anchored the station’s flagship Evening News broadcast, launched the NTD Business show, and produced documentary reports on pointed issues. 

The highlight of Paul’s time in the field was his coverage of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Paul Greaney

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 14)

Kevin Hogan is an NTD News data reporter and national correspondent based at the network's global headquarters in New York City. Kevin covers breaking news, as well as U.S. and global current events. He conveys the news through data visualizations and investigates pressing issues.

Kevin Hogan

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 13)

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 12)

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 11)

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 8)

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 7)

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 6)

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 5)

NTD News Today Full Broadcast (May 4)

Fast, compelling, first-hand news from China. China in Focus airs Monday–Friday at 8 p.m. ET.

China in Focus

China Sends Warships to Pacific Drill as Tensions With Japan Rise

Reuters is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages.

Reuters

We present news that is truthful and based on facts, outside of the political fog. Instead of focusing on the negative things happening around us, our mission is to give our viewers a good morning with empathetic and uplifting stories. Our aim is to provide an antidote to negativity by shining a light on the best side of people. We speak to inspiring people who positively impact communities, pursue topics that represent our common human values, and will never miss an opportunity to bring you heartwarming stories.

NTD Good Morning

2 US Embassy Personnel Assigned to Cartel Case Killed in Car Accident

The Associated Press is an American not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. 

The Associated Press

US News

Gunman Kills 8 Children, Including 7 of His Own, in Louisiana Mass Shooting

Flora Hua is a reporter based at NTD's global headquarters in New York City, where she covers China news, U.S.-China relations, and human rights issues. Flora primarily contributes to NTD's "China in Focus."  

Flora Hua

Trump: Seized Iranian Ship May Have ‘A Gift From China’

Joseph Lord is a congressional reporter for The Epoch Times.


Joseph Lord

Aldgra Fredly is a freelance writer covering U.S. and Asia Pacific news for The Epoch Times.

Aldgra Fredly

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani Hospitalized in Critical Condition: Spokesman

Wildfires Across Georgia and Florida Have Destroyed Nearly 50 Homes and Are Forcing Evacuations

US Warns of China Hacks via Routers, Smart Devices

Juliet Song is an international correspondent exclusively covering China news for NTD. She primarily contributes to NTD's "China in Focus," covering U.S.-China relations, the Chinese regime's human rights abuses, and domestic unrest inside China.

Juliet Song

2 Americans Among Suspected Communist Rebels Killed in Clashes With Troops, Philippine Officials Say

Ryan Morgan is a reporter for The Epoch Times focusing on military and foreign affairs. He was previously a news writer for NTD. 


Ryan Morgan

Mari Otsu is NTD's White House correspondent based in Washington. 

Mari Otsu

World News

Middle East

Iran

3 US Warships Fend Off Iranian Attacks, Trump Says Ceasefire Still Holds

Health News

3 Dead in Suspected Hantavirus Outbreak on Cruise Ship in Atlantic Ocean: WHO

The American aviation sector is abuzz with talk of air taxis, hypersonic airplanes, and cheaper, cleaner, “sustainable” fuel sources.

But a cloud hovers over that sunny, futuristic forecast. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) remains woefully behind the technology curve. The agency also remains entangled in its own bureaucratic web, according to statements made during a U.S. Senate committee hearing on March 29.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held the “Advancing Next-Generation Aviation Technologies” session in Washington. That session is part of congressional work on a five-year spending and policy plan for the FAA, called a <a href="https://arsa.org/legislative/issues/aviation-policy/faa-reauthorization/">“reauthorization.”</a>

The committee’s latest hearing opened on an optimistic note. Its chair, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), said: “This is about winning a competitive race for the future … Today’s research will get Americans moving faster.”

She advocates tripling spending for research on “clean” energy sources for aviation.

An Air France Boeing 777 aircraft takes off at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Roissy-en-France, France, on March 16, 2020. (Benoit Tessier/File Photo/Reuters)


<h2>Critique From Cruz</h2>
But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the committee’s ranking member, struck a cautionary note.

He’s leery of spending taxpayer dollars to prop up emerging technologies. Cruz also doubts the FAA can support innovative new modes of travel. He said the agency is using outdated systems and cannot even handle existing users, let alone new ones.

“Right now, the air-traffic control system is essentially using technologies designed in the 1950s,” Cruz said. “It’s using radar technologies; it’s using little slips of paper … They’re not using GPS widely.”

Cruz also took a shot at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who oversees the FAA.

“Just last week, Secretary Buttigieg asked airlines to cut their schedules in New York by 10 percent because the FAA couldn’t keep up with the traffic. That’s a failure of the job given to the department,” Cruz said.

The Epoch Times has sought comment from Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation.

Considering the FAA’s deficiencies, “it seems to me that many of these new technologies will hit a major roadblock if our air traffic system can’t handle the operations,” Cruz said.
<h2>‘Can’t Get Our Act Together’</h2>
<a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/5D41D490-187B-4F6B-8002-184B08760161">Marc Scribner,</a> a senior transportation policy analyst at the nonprofit Reason Foundation, said all of Cruz’s characterizations of the FAA were correct.

He said discussions about revamping the FAA started during the administration of President Bill Clinton, who served from 1983–2001.

But little progress seems to have been made since then because of “status quo bias” within the FAA, Scribner said.

Marc Scribner (L), senior transportation policy analyst with the Reason Foundation, speaks to a U.S. Senate committee in Washington, on March 29, 2023. (Janice Hisle/The Epoch Times via screenshot of live video)

Clearly frustrated by the FAA’s technology deficit, Cruz said, “What was once supposed to be a transformative upgrade to our air-traffic systems has become a tech-refresh effort, plagued by delays and cost overruns, with limited benefit to the flying public.”

He also cited another glaring problem at the FAA. Cruz said that companies seeking approval for new technologies get so frustrated that they leave the United States. They head for less-complex “regulatory sandboxes” in nations such as Australia or the United Kingdom.

One high-tech aviation company pulled up stakes after nine years of being hindered by the FAA, Scribner said.

“This is antithetical to America’s ethos of innovation,” Cruz said. “And it’s frankly embarrassing for businesses to be lost to other countries when we can’t get our act together.”

“We must hold the FAA accountable for its role in certifying new aircraft and its failure to give clear and consistent regulatory guidelines,” he said.
<h2>‘Sustainable’ May Be Costly</h2>
Cruz said there was a “profound” risk of wasting taxpayer dollars anytime government subsidies are provided.

“We’re already seeing this happening with sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, in last year’s wasteful tax-and-spend reconciliation bill,” he said.

According to the <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels">U.S. Department of Energy,</a> SAFs can be produced from crops such as corn, various “fats, oils, greases,” and even manure.

But SAF costs up to eight times more than traditional jet fuel, Cruz said. Few people could afford air travel if this added cost were shifted entirely to the flying public.

Yet, he said, “Congressional Democrats provided nearly $300 billion in grants and a special tax credit varying between $1.25 and $1.75 per gallon for the SAF. Without these government handouts, SAF would not be commercially viable.”

“ESG goals, driven by politics, should not be used to harm the American consumer,” Cruz said. “Our priorities in aviation must be safety, reliability, and affordability.

However, both <span style="color: #000000;">Cantwell </span>and the chair of the aviation subcommittee, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), expressed continuing support of SAF. The two Democrats in the Democrat-controlled Senate expressed an opinion opposing that of their Republican colleague, Cruz.

“One of the most important things we can do to make American aviation more sustainable is increase American-grown, American-made” SAF, said Duckworth, a pilot.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) speaks during a committee hearing in Washington, on March 29, 2023. (Janice Hisle/The Epoch Times via screenshot of live video)

“SAF presents an incredible opportunity to support a critical industry in our nation’s heartland,” she said. Farmers and “blenders” of the fuel benefit “while also reducing our carbon footprints across all modes of transportation.”

Cantwell also said that the aviation industry and the federal government have agreed to strive for “net-zero aviation emissions by 2050.”

Reaching that goal will require new fuels and “building aircraft made from lighter-weight thermoplastics and composites,” she said. More research is needed to develop and test those materials.

“We feel like we must seize on the opportunity with this FAA reauthorization to strengthen America’s competitiveness in aerospace,” Cantwell said.
<h2>Hydrogen on the Rise</h2>
Jon Gordon, a co-founder of California-based <a href="https://hydrogen.aero">Universal Hydrogen,</a> testified that there seems to be a fallacy surrounding SAF.

Those fuels “have a carbon footprint no better than the fossil fuels they displace,” he said. Yet hydrogen is still playing second fiddle to SAF in U.S. government agencies.

“This mindset is especially risky given that the EU, UK, and China are all developing hydrogen-powered aviation,” Gordon said.

Just weeks ago, three years after his company began, Universal Hydrogen “achieved the historic first flight” of a 40-passenger regional aircraft,  he said.

Universal Hydrogen completes first taxi tests and is granted an experimental airworthiness certificate by the Federal Aviation Administration for a hydrogen-powered regional aircraft in a news release dated Feb. 7, 2023. (Courtesy of Business Wire via Universal Hydrogen)

“This is the largest aircraft ever to fly powered with a hydrogen fuel cell and the largest aircraft ever to fly principally on hydrogen,” Gordon said. “To some, the promise of emission-free flight may seem a distant vision. But I hope our first flight brings that reality to each of you.”

Interest among airlines for hydrogen fuel is high, he said. So far, 16 airlines in 12 countries have committed to purchasing more than 250 aircraft.

“Within a decade, you will see our hydrogen-powered aircraft flying in nearly every region of the globe,” Gordon predicted.

“Furthermore, we have made our hydrogen fuel tanks modular. This allows us to fill them up off-site,” he said, and then transport the tanks to an airport and load them on and off aircraft, “all with existing infrastructure.”

“Every airport in the world is now ready to support hydrogen-powered flight. We are on the verge of a revolution in how we power aircraft,” Gordon said.

“This is good for the economy as well as the environment. We must take the right steps now to ensure that the United States is prepared.”
<h2>‘Desperately Far Behind’</h2>
To achieve this, the FAA needs more resources to “ensure that the door to certification is only open to those upholding the highest safety standards.” He also suggested that government leaders must put hydrogen fuel on par with FAS. “At a recent aviation conference, participants were asked what technology will fuel the future of flight. The clear winner was hydrogen.”

Yet, he said, the recent White House report on national aeronautics priorities “dismisses” hydrogen-powered aviation and favors SAF.

Jon Gordon, a co-founder of California-based Universal Hydrogen, testifies to a U.S. Senate committee in Washington, D.C., on March 29, 2023. (Janice Hisle/The Epoch Times via screenshot of live video)

Another change is needed, Gordon said. While he has spoken with various government agencies, “they listen with interest,” but “there is no follow-up.”

“No department, agency, or division is directed to focus on hydrogen aviation. If the U.S. is to remain a global leader in the future of aviation, then all relevant federal agencies must work together to create the proper safety certification and operational frameworks to ensure its success right now. We are desperately far behind.”

Gordon suggested that the U.S. follow Japan’s lead and establish a “hydrogen-hybrid and electric aviation task force,” separate from the “entrenched status quo interests who only see SAF as worthy of consideration.”

“Our industry faces a tipping point,” he said. “We must either innovate or fall behind.”

Another witness, Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Competitive Enterprise Institute, testified that Washington experts “are not as good as we think we are at identifying the next big thing.”

“The truth is we can’t know where the technology is headed and what the next breakthrough is, and how resources should best be allocated,” Lieberman said.

“That’s a process that’s best left to the free market rather than attempts at central planning.”

<em>From <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/still-using-slips-of-paper-archaic-systems-faa-unfit-to-handle-next-gen-aviation-sen-cruz_5157604.html">The Epoch Times</a></em>

china

TECHNOLOGY

Videos

Politics

04_Top Stories

Latest Clips

aviation

Janice Hisle reports on former President Donald Trump's campaign for the 2024 general election ballot and related issues. Before joining The Epoch Times, she worked for more than two decades as a reporter for newspapers in Ohio and authored several books. She is a graduate of Kent State University's journalism program. You can reach Janice at: janice.hisle@epochtimes.us

Janice Hisle

Daniel Monaghan is a reporter for NTD News covering culture, social issues, and education. He holds a BA in Political Science and Government.

Daniel Monaghan

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

Congress

Latest and breaking news, documentaries, movies, and lifestyle content on NTD+.
 
Empower your knowledge and elevate your spirit with NTD+, your go-to destination for truthful news, insightful documentaries, and captivating lifestyle content that enriches your life.