Duncan Faircloth: “the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security is going to present its recommendations to the President…”

“the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security is going to present its recommendations to the President today, and I commend the commission for its work and support most of its recommendations. Aviation safety should be a prominent feature on the list of bipartisan issues upon which we can find common ground this year. There are 22,000 commercial flights every day in the United States. The American air traffic control system served 550 million passengers last year. Mr. President, in my home State of North Carolina, 22 million people last year passed through the Charlotte airport. The safety of literally millions of Americans hangs in the balance of our commitment to aviation modernization. I have a rather personal interest in this issue. I was in a plane crash in 1983 and wound up in a lake surrounded by fire in an airplane without wings. I want to stress the importance of the commission's call for rapid modernization of our air traffic control system. These efforts to upgrade the system will necessitate certain costs, and no one in this city is more concerned about the taxpayers than I, but the system is decades old and on the verge of collapse. Mr. President, one of the better-kept secrets around Washington seems to be the $1.4 billion that we have squandered on a failed effort to upgrade the aviation computer network over the last several years.”