CAA: Airport News, "US DOT: Remarks as prepared for delivery U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater; International Aviation Club and Aero Club joint meeting Washington, D.C."

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@cwnet.com>]

Friday, February 4, 2000

US DOT: Remarks as prepared for delivery U.S. Secretary of Transportation
Rodney E. Slater; International Aviation Club and Aero Club joint meeting
Washington, D.C.


FEB 4, 2000, M2 Communications - As we break bread together at today's joint
luncheon of the International Aviation Club and the Aero Club, our thoughts
and prayers continue to be with the passengers and crew of Alaska Airlines
Flight 261, and with their families and friends. The employees of the U.S.
Department of Transportation and I join President Clinton, Vice President
Gore and all Americans in expressing our profound sadness over this tragedy.

I also want to take this opportunity to publicly thank Admiral Tom Collins
and members of the Department's U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Aviation
Administration, along with our U.S. Navy colleagues, for their rapid and
massive search and rescue efforts Monday night and yesterday, as well as the
continuing recovery operations.

These painstaking efforts will help Chairman Jim Hall and the National
Transportation Safety Board determine the cause of this tragedy, so that we
can all work together to prevent future crashes.

I respectfully submit that any discussion of the future of transportation or
aviation in particular must begin with a focus on safety. The tragedy of
Flight 261 is a sobering reminder of that fact. Despite having already
achieved the safest skies in the world, we must as 'visionary and vigilant'
transportation professionals, continue to raise the bar on safety. Safety
remains President Clinton's top transportation priority and the "North
Star"guiding our work at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In support of this commitment, I can report this afternoon that the
President will propose an increase for aviation safety in next week's budget
message.

Passage of this increase will help us reach the ambitious aviation safety
goal announced by Vice President Gore in April 1998, of reducing fatal
accident rates for U.S. commercial aviation by 80 percent by the year 2007.

It is also vital that the Congress quickly pass the FAA Reform Proposals we
submitted last year. The FAA is at a critical crossroads. Aviation activity
is growing, aviation technology is changing rapidly, and the business of
aviation is becoming increasingly complex. Over the past decade, six
separate government commissions -- three commissioned by this
Administration -- as well as numerous private sector experts have warned
about the risk of gridlock in our skies unless reforms are put in place
quickly.

With reform, FAA will be better able to advance safety and security, enhance
competition and increase the capacity and efficiency of our aviation
enterprise.

Reform will also allow the FAA to institute management and financial reforms
enabling it to operate more like a business and to be more responsive to
customers.

Although we must be proactive in reaching compromises that will allow us to
proceed with this vitally necessary legislation, the time for action is now.

Passage is vitally needed to maintain the momentum for growth currently
enjoyed by both domestic and global aviation.

To support a reinvigorated FAA, I am pleased to announce the President will
propose a 22 percent increase in federal funding for facilities and
equipment in his Fiscal Year 2001 Budget, a total of approximately $2.5
billion dollars.

This additional level of investment will be needed. More than 650 million
passengers flew on U.S. airlines last year. That number will rise to a
staggering 1 billion travelers by the year 2010. Travel and tourism is
already the world's largest industry, directly and indirectly driving 10
percent of global jobs, GDP and investment. Moreover, the U.S. aerospace
industry is already America's largest manufacturing exporter, employing more
than 2 million people. Finally, within the decade, the direct economic
impact of this industry is expected to approach $2 trillion dollars.

When President Clinton and Vice President Gore took office, our nation was
gripped by economic distress, social decline and political gridlock. And the
aviation industry was off course. The airlines, collectively, had lost $10
billion dollars over the prior three years. Eastern and Pan Am were already
out of business and other airlines were on the verge of bankruptcy. This
industry seemed to be sinking into an economic abyss.

President Clinton and Vice President Gore took immediate action to get the
economy back on track. The President gave his personal attention to this
industry by flying out to Everett, Washington, to meet with industry
leaders.

His laser-like focus paid off for both aviation and the economy.

As of yesterday, February 1, 2000, the current economic expansion became the
longest continuous period of economic growth in American history. We begin
this new century and new millennium with 20 million new jobs; the fastest
economic growth in more the 30 years; the lowest unemployment rates in 30
years; the lowest poverty rates in 20 years; the lowest African-American and
Hispanic unemployment rates on record and a 46-year low in the unemployment
rate for women; the highest home-ownership eve -- and the first back-to-back
budget surpluses in 42 years.

This prosperity, to be sure, required the hard work of the American people.
But our prosperity would not have lasted so long, were it not for the
President and Vice President's policies of fiscal discipline and their
programs fostering strategic investments in our people through support of
innovation in education, health care, the environment, technology and
transportation -- and their work to open new markets to U.S. goods and
services around the world.

DOT's role in supporting this strategy is to be visionary and vigilant
stewards -- along with you and our other transportation partners -- of our
transportation enterprise. In formulating our strategy, with you, our
partners, we have created strategic and performance plans that have been
praised as "the best in government."We have created a new conceptual policy
architecture for transportation in the 21st century -- an architecture that
will help us create the transportation system the nation needs for a new
economic era.

International aviation has a vital role to play in this new era. As the
President said, in his State of the Union, "To realize the full
possibilities of this economy we must reach beyond our own borders "I am
convinced that aviation will be for America in the 21st century, what the
Interstate Highway System was for America in the last half of the 20th
century.

Just as the Interstates connected the communities and states of our nation
together as One America, so will aviation connect our communities, cities,
states and One America with communities and countries around the world.

It was in support of the President's vision that we hosted the Chicago
Conference, "Aviation in the 21st Century -- Beyond Open Skies"last
December, bringing together the first world-wide conference of transport
ministers since the historic first Chicago Aviation Conference in 1944.

We prepared the groundwork for this global conference with a series of
regional ministerials and listening sessions, including the Western
Hemisphere Transportation Ministerial in New Orleans in December 1998, and
the first-ever African Transport Ministerial, which took place in Atlanta
last September.

Our seven domestic listening sessions, which focused on "Aviation in the
21st Century,"were held in Seattle, Miami, New York City, Phoenix,
Rochester, Wichita, and Memphis.

Our preparatory sessions heightened interest in the Chicago meeting. Over
900 people and 93 countries were represented in Chicago, including the
transport ministers or officials of comparable rank from more than 90
countries.

International, regional and trade organizations were also represented --
including the European Commission, ICAO, IATA, ATA, the European Civil
Aviation Commission and the International Chamber of Commerce.

I know that many of you in this audience -- or your organizations -- were
also in Chicago -- major U.S. and international airlines, airports,
organized labor, aviation-related organizations, trade associations,
manufacturers and others as well.

Much was achieved in Chicago. Among other things, we issued a major report
on the global deregulation of our industry, entitled "Global Deregulation
Takes Off."We formally signed Open Skies Agreements with Italy and
Argentina; and Administrator Garvey and I announced DOT plans to establish
Code Share Safety Guidelines to assure that U.S. code-share service on
foreign airline partners of U.S. airlines meets international standards for
safety and security.

I am pleased to report that we are close to completing the guidelines,
however developing guidance on security and dangerous goods has proven to be
a more complex undertaking and will take longer to complete.

We also joined NASA Administrator Dan Golden in issuing the National
Research and Development Plan for Aviation Safety, Security, Efficiency and
Environmental Compatibility at the Chicago Conference. This plan will help
us attain critical aviation and air transportation goals by serving as a
blueprint for Federal research investments.

We adopted a Joint Statement on Open Skies.

And we issued a Ministerial Declaration that endorsed our continuing efforts
to work together and with ICAO on a variety of matters, including a new
policy architecture of International Aviation in the 21st Century.

How do we plan to follow up on the Chicago Conference in the months ahead?
Our ultimate goal following the Chicago Conference remains what it has been
for some time now. It is our hope that the nations of the world will move
forward on the issue of worldwide aviation liberalization and establish a
true international aviation network capable of fully supporting the emerging
global economy.

Our strategy is to advance on any practical front in arrangements that are
bilateral, plurilateral, regional or global. We intend to continue our
efforts to pursue open-skies markets for U.S. airlines with bilateral
partners. And after the Chicago Conference, we moved immediately to act on
the Conference declaration of intention by traveling to Central America and
the Caribbean, where we visited Honduras, Panama, Jamaica and the Dominican
Republic.

With regard to bilateral negotiations, let me turn briefly to the subject of
our relationship with the United Kingdom. I am profoundly disappointed by
the fact that recent talks in London ended without an agreement, first, to
restore service to Pittsburgh. This is a market that enjoyed nonstop service
for years that has proven its ability to support this service and has a U.S.
carrier seeking to provide it.

The unwillingness of the British government to permit this service to
continue or to consider a broader expansion of our aviation relationship is
regrettable.

Regrettable not only from the perspective of aviation policy, but also
because it ignores the vital needs of U.S./UK communities, U.S./UK economies
and U.S./U.K. citizens.

The United States will continue to look at its options to bring about ge a
more open and responsive relationship with the UK. We must not and will not,
however, let this issue deter us from our ultimate goal of progressively
moving forward with those partners who share our vision for aviation in the
21st century.

The rest of the world is enthusiastically embracing liberalization. Over the
past five years we have achieved spectacular success, reaching a grand total
of 41 open-skies agreements -- 6 in the Asia/Pacific region; 17 in
Europe/Africa; 6 in the Near East/Central Asia and 12 in the Western
Hemisphere.

The pace is picking up. In FY 1999 we reached five new agreements; this
fiscal year we have already signed five more.

We also intend to make as much use as possible of existing regional forums.

APEC has already embraced air transportation liberalization and the subject
is on the agenda of its upcoming March 2000 meeting. We intend to table a
draft text for a multilateral air transport agreement for consideration and
discussion by APEC members.

The European Commission has invited the United States to enter into a
dialogue toward creating a "transatlantic aviation area."This dialogue could
be the prelude to a future regional agreement. I am pleased that the
Association of European Airlines recently released a paper supporting
U.S.-EU discussions in this regard.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is
currently examining both liberalization and multilateralization of air cargo
services.

The OECD intends to circulate a draft multilateral agreement in March, with
plans for a workshop for member countries to discuss the proposal in June.

The United States has invited the countries of the Caribbean (CARICOM) to
discuss a regional Caribbean-U.S. aviation agreement. The date of the
meeting is still pending but we plan to meet soon.

A draft multilateral agreement between African countries is being circulated
and will be taken up by heads of state later this year, with workshops
planned in advance of the meeting of leaders to agree on details. The United
States will ask to use one of these workshops to discuss international
aviation liberalization.

Notwithstanding our strong position that aviation services not be included
under GATS, the World Trade Organization will address this issue during the
current year 2000 review. We plan to use the occasion of these meetings to
explore alternative concepts for a multilateral regime with interested
partners and coalitions.

Additionally, I also have several regional trips planned over the next
several months to keep up the momentum of Chicago. I will be traveling to
Asia later this month, with stops in Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, and
Tokyo. I will also visit the State of Hawaii during the trip. In March, I
will visit Brussels (and possibly Amsterdam) and I plan several additional
trips to other regions later this year.

Lastly, we are working with our colleagues within the Administration, with
D.C.

Mayor Anthony Williams and with others to host an International
Transportation Symposium here in Washington in the fall of 2000. The
transportation system of the 21st century will need to be safe and
sustainable to be sure, however, it will also be required to be
international in reach, intermodal in form, intelligent in character and
inclusive in service. The creation of a climate of transportation innovation
is critical in this regard.

One of the major new emphases this coming year will be a stepped-up effort
to promote innovative technology, an area that both the President and Vice
President have indicated they want to emphasize.

Let me illustrate in one technology area -- e-commerce: The growth of
e-commerce is one of the reasons why we expect the value of cargo shipped by
air to triple in value by 2015. You can order "Steaks from Omaha"on line,
but you can't download them to your plate. Overnight delivery still requires
planes, as well as trucks and highways, to move a product from the warehouse
to your house.

E-commerce will not only stimulate more air traffic, it will also provide us
with new ways to simplify and speed up operations. Adding machine-readable
bar codes to boarding passes can cut the boarding time for wide-body
aircraft by as much as 50 percent.

Next week in Atlanta, we will explore this important issue at an executive
forum on e-commerce sponsored by The Council on Competitiveness, United
Parcel Service and The Georgia Institute of Technology.

I will join some of my DOT colleagues to meet with Georgia Governor Roy
Barnes and key transportation experts from government, business and
universities to discuss how we can facilitate and realize the potential
benefits of e-commerce.

We will talk about how we can work together to take advantage of existing
and potential innovations and create new ones to ensure the continued growth
of this industry.

However, aviation itself is more than just an industry. It is a critical and
driving force for our economic well being in this new century and new
millennium.

Aviation can even help newly emerging countries to "leapfrog"decades --
perhaps centuries - of traditional infrastructure development.

Formulating an aviation policy appropriate for the 21st century is
difficult.

But the prize before us is clear. We have an opportunity, if we but seize
it, to give people on every continent the chance to strengthen their own
lives and our global economy in this new century and the new millennium.
Transportation is truly "the tie that binds"us to this new vision.

*****************************************
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