Steve Cohen: “I oppose this amendment which would require the FAA to make an independent assessment of each notice to air mission, or…”

“I oppose this amendment which would require the FAA to make an independent assessment of each notice to air mission, or NOTAM, request from a non-Federal entity. Many NOTAMs are simply for general awareness, a temporary crane has been erected in controlled airspace, or a runway at an airport with no traffic control tower being repaved. Some NOTAMs increase airspace awareness for pilots in the area alerting them about drone operations or balloon flights--some of them from China. Some of them result in actual flight restrictions, like over sports stadiums during NFL and MLB games or when a concert is going on. Sometimes FAA requires an operator or an airport to file a NOTAM prior operation in order to provide safety information for other airspace users. These are submitted through a special controlled access system. NOTAMs are issued for all kinds of reasons. As we all know from the NOTAM system outage earlier this year, there are many of them, which can be a blessing, and it can be a curse. For example, French Valley Airport, which is a small county-owned public use general aviation airport in Riverside County, California, currently has 80 active NOTAMs within a 10-mile radius. There are tens of thousands of big, medium, and small airports and heliports all over the country--consider the magnitude of bureaucracy this amendment creates. Requiring the FAA to independently verify every single NOTAM would bring an already cumbersome system to a complete standstill.…”