Doug Carr, NBAA’s senior v-p of safety, security, sustainability, and international operations, is responsible for steering the association’s regulatory and policy agenda. He has held numerous roles since joining the association in April 1998 and has been deeply involved in a range of issues concerning Congress, the FAA, the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, and other government agencies. He also has helped with commercial and non-commercial aircraft operator issues. A graduate of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale with a degree in aviation management, Carr spent six years in the U.S. Navy, where he worked on a nuclear-powered submarine and was responsible for many aspects of its propulsion system. He also has served with the National Air Transportation Association.
Carr spoke with AIN about the heightened attention to safety resulting from the several close calls that have captured public attention this year.
The FAA, Congress, and the general public are shining a spotlight on aviation safety this year following well-publicized runway incursions and other incidents. What are your thoughts and concerns about them?
There's a significant acknowledgment that things aren't going as we expected based on these near collisions. And fortunately, we've got this multilayered safety system that has prevented some of these collisions from happening—whether it's FAA technology in support of airport operations, whether it's aircraft technology directing pilot action as a last course of action, or whether it's something else. But there's a decent amount of “almost happens” and that has got everybody's attention right now.
Regardless of where you are—airlines, general or business aviation, airports, or the FAA—everybody's pretty focused on how we address this and what we're able to measure in a way that keeps the system operating but makes us better. That's going to come from a lot of different areas with a lot of folks trying to all pull in the same direction.
What's been happening and what's causing this?
The safety data is showing a bunch of information in little bits and pieces. I think there are several things that are potentially playing a role in why we're seeing this.
One, we have a workforce that is in the middle of a transition. During Covid, we saw the opportunity for senior members of the industry to retire. And what went with them is all those decades of experience, whether it be in the flight deck, on the maintenance floor, in the air traffic control tower, or elsewhere. All that experience walked out the door, and we didn't necessarily have a good transition of that knowledge to those who would come in after them. We could have relied on having our newer workforce being mentored and led by our senior workforce to ensure some of that transfer of knowledge, but [with Covid] we didn't have that opportunity.
Another data point is we're seeing operations today that are at or above where we were before Covid. The system itself is being fully utilized, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It was designed to handle all of this. But combine a workforce with perhaps less total experience with a system that is now operating at near capacity and, in some cases, the lack of sufficient resources to manage it effectively. I'm looking at areas around the system where the FAA has acknowledged that staffing isn't where it should be. Now, we're opening those Swiss cheese holes and we're allowing some of those errors that would have normally been captured by experience…to escape, leading to some of these last lines of defense such as automated systems. In some cases, it has been luck.
So, I think there's pretty wide acknowledgment that we are experiencing the additive effects of challenges [stemming from the pandemic]. We've got to find a way to close [those holes] and get our system risk back to historic levels based on experience, workforce, and training levels that we're used to.
What has the response from the aviation community been?
This year was the first time the FAA has brought together the industry for a safety roundtable in over a decade. That, I think, was an emblematic movement by the FAA reflecting the state of the system. We are seeing near collisions. We are seeing data points in the system that are indicative of something greater. So, let's sit down and see if we can figure out what the data is.
I think many of us felt that we still had a good sense of what the problems could be. But how do we address them and how do we fix them? I think [the roundtable] has given the industry the opportunity to double down on the areas that it feels it has an opportunity to impact.
With that, our safety committee took the output from the summit and really looked at its areas. And what you will see on the NBAA website are our top safety focus areas. Those are being updated as we speak. I expect that the new list will be ready by the time we get to NBAA-BACE.
What are some of the issues specific to business aviation that NBAA has concentrated on?
Business aviation does have some unique areas of operation that I think we are trying to figure out. One of them is circling approaches. Just because you're doing a circle-to-land approach in a simulator flying out of Memphis and JFK [John F. Kennedy International Airport] doesn't mean you're necessarily prepared for circling approaches in the real world.
There's an opportunity for training to really double down to create realistic scenarios for our community. And that gets into economic issues for everyone involved, whether it's the operator paying for the training, whether it's the trainer paying to develop his scenarios. There are factors involved in developing what would be effective realistic training scenarios for business aviation. And there are even some regulatory challenges.
What are some of the things that the business aviation community can do?
There are a number of things. We've got three broad buckets that our safety committee is focused on.
These include preventable accidents. A lot of those areas are likely to remain similar to what's on our website. Those include things like loss of control and runway excursions. A lot of those are things that we've seen in the last 12 months for sure, also including controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), ground operations, maintenance, and ramp rash. But we're going to make a few changes to reflect some areas in the “here and now” that we believe are important.
A second area is operations, including fitness for duty. Fitness for duty encompasses a whole host of unique topics that can range from fatigue to mental health, medical certification for pilots, and others. It's a pretty big bucket of topics.
Are we making progress in the area of mental health?
As we look at dispelling some myths associated with mental health and the pilot community, we believe there is a great opportunity to provide solid direction for pilots and others who need a medical certificate to do their jobs, provide them with much more clarity on what it means to get help that keeps you safe, that keeps you healthy, that keeps you alive while reducing the risk.
I think that's one topic that permeates most of aviation, which is putting your hand up to say that you need help. [People fear that] getting help could put your entire livelihood at risk. That challenge we face is that insurance coverage frequently requires a diagnosis, and that diagnosis is what risks the pilot's medical certification, even if it's “I'm feeling short-term depression because of a major family issue and need to talk with somebody about that.” The rumor mill about what happens if you go to talk to somebody about that is what leads to many pilots self-medicating or self-diagnosing and remaining in a flying status with a condition that really should be treated.
The Federal Air Surgeon has done a tremendous job getting in front of pilot groups, getting in front of AME communities, to begin addressing this head-on. That's where change is starting to be felt with the FAA expanding the number of approved medications that pilots can be on for depression and giving AMEs more latitude in certifying pilots with some of these conditions that previously required a deferment pending an additional FAA review. That's where we are seeing some real leadership coming from the FAA on getting ahead of this.
It's going to take the industry to get behind this. People avoid getting the help that they need, and we need to correct that. We need healthy, smart trained pilots on the flight deck. That'll be an area that you'll see more coming from us.
Where else is NBAA focusing in the operational arena?
Another area that we're dealing with is the workforce. Bringing our next generation of pilots, maintainers, flight attendants, schedulers and dispatchers, and leaders into the industry has to be a priority or we're going to find ourselves without enough people to do the job. And we're going to need to compete with a whole host of others out there for that talent. So, providing clear pathways and expanded pathways for today's students to be tomorrow's leaders in business aviation is a priority.
We're going to be doing things that we haven't historically done to highlight how business aviation should be a part of every student's consideration.
And we’re looking at training. Making sure that our future workforce is trained and knowledgeable about how we succeed in business aviation is a big part of what we're working on as well.
Are there other issues that fall into the operational bucket?
Human factors, which I think is a perennial issue for us. That will continue to be a priority, including things like procedural noncompliance. It remains a factor in many of the accident reports that we read.
In fact, it was an issue in the [July 26, 2021, Challenger 605] accident in Truckee, California, where this circling approach got really unstable and there was no indication that a go-around or let's-try-it-again was ever on the minds of either of the two pilots. So that will continue to be an issue for us to focus on.
And the other area is single-pilot operations, which is where we're seeing not an insignificant number of accidents and incidents. The Cessna Citation V that overflew Washington, D.C., a few months ago was a single-pilot operation. So, bringing a little bit more insight into resources available for owner-operators. These are usually single-pilot operations, where the leader of the business is also the pilot.
That creates interesting, unique challenges to try to address where business needs to complete a flight, but safety needs may suggest something else. How do we balance those two competing pressures? We haven't yet found a good solution for it, but [we are looking at] what is the process, what is in place in a single-pilot operation to reinforce a safety-based no-go decision.
You know what that is in a larger operation. The pilots have full support from the operation to say, "No, we're not going to go based on whatever the safety risks are today," but in a single-pilot operation, what is that reinforcing system process, that backup that allows the use of a safety-based no-go decision to stick? If we can crack that, we have done some great work.
What is the third major bucket NBAA is focused on?
The mitigation: What are some of the products that we're putting in place to assist with this? Those things include topics like SMS [safety management systems] and how is that going to help us to address some of the challenges.
I think SMS will continue to be a tool that if effectively structured for the operation will play a significant role in improving safety. But if it's a binder on a shelf that collects dust, then [it would not be] a tool to help them succeed and we haven't moved the ball at all.
Also, in mitigation strategies, how do we improve owner and leader support of safety expenditures? So, I've got a bucket of money dedicated to safety in an operation, and that safety money manifests itself through things like training or technology as opposed to just simply safety. How do we ensure that where needed, safety resources are provided to address the risks that our processes identified?
We're going to be doing some work to help with that messaging, whether it's up to the flight department leadership or whether it's in a smaller operation with a single pilot. There are also audiences beyond that, such as the insurance industry, that would benefit from understanding how safety investment can be used.
The final area is focused on data. There can't be enough said today about the value of data—collecting it, measuring it, improving it, and what gets measured and gets improved. We're hoping to move the needle on safety in any of the areas that we're talking about such as loss of control, runway excursions, CFIT, ground operations, and ramp rash. We've got to know where they're happening and what's causing them and find a way to incorporate data into all of this.
We have renewed energy to become smart about data and what it's telling us in a way that leads to the development of resources to identify what we can do to reduce accidents and incidents. It's not just going to be NBAA’s role in pushing this. We've got to bring the FAA along with us and we’ve got to bring our members along with us and help and learn from the data.
At its core, data really is driving much of the safety equation these days. Lacking data capability really puts you on the trailing edge of trying to define the future of the industry.
Are your members pretty savvy about these initiatives?
For the most part, we see a pretty broad acknowledgment. There are a few places I go where people on the front lines aren't measuring or sharing. But broadly, business aviation is figuring out that that data is good for understanding [safety parameters], puts each operator on a path to doing better, and helps everybody get better. Figuring out what we do with that combined data in terms of insight analysis and strategies is where we really start seeing the magic happen.
What’s planned for NBAA-BACE this year?
You're going see a safety strategy at our convention that will look familiar but with a renewed emphasis on the issues of the day.
Our event on Monday will begin with our Single-Pilot Safety Standdown, dedicated to owners and operators, talking about issues with them, by them, and for them. We're going to have single-pilot experts talking about safety and data, loss of control, and CFIT, and all the things that we see the data telling us are risks for the single-pilot community. That will be a half-day event. We will close our show on Thursday with [sessions that are part of our] National Safety Forum—again, a broader safety-focused event on issues that affect everyone [that will be held throughout the week].
We will get into some of the pilot mental health topics, SMS, and other issues that have a more general appeal during the week. We will have several safety sessions that will go into more depth on some particular areas. We expect the NTSB to join us out there and for FAA support.
So, there’s going to be safety content every day. We'll be talking about where our industry is doing well, where we have an opportunity to improve, and what can help with that improvement either through industry best practices, NBAA tools, product services, or other resources that may be out there.
Doug Carr, NBAA’s senior v-p of safety, security, sustainability, and international operations, is responsible for steering the association’s regulatory and policy agenda. He has held numerous roles since joining the association in April 1998 and has been deeply involved in a range of issues involving Congress, the FAA, the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, and other government agencies. A graduate of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale with a degree in aviation management, Carr spent six years in the U.S. Navy, where he worked onboard a nuclear-powered submarine and was responsible for many aspects of its propulsion system.
Carr spoke with AIN about the heightened focus on safety resulting from the several close calls that have captured public attention this year.
The FAA, Congress, and the general public are shining a spotlight on aviation safety this year following well-publicized runway incursions and other incidents. What are your thoughts and concerns about them?
There's a significant acknowledgment that things aren't going as we expected based on these near collisions. And fortunately, we've got this multilayered safety system in place that has prevented some of these collisions from happening—whether it's FAA technology in support of airport operations, whether it's aircraft technology directing pilot action as a last course of action, or whether it's something else. But there's a decent amount of “almost happens” and that has got everybody's attention right now.
Regardless of where you are—airlines, general or business aviation, airports, or the FAA—everybody's pretty focused on how we address this and what we're able to measure in a way that keeps the system operating but makes us better. That's going to come from a lot of different areas with a lot of folks trying to all pull in the same direction.
What's been happening and what's causing this?
There are several things that are potentially playing a role in why we're seeing this.
One, we have a workforce that is in the middle of a transition. During Covid, we saw the opportunity for senior members of the industry to retire. And what went with them is all those decades of experience, whether it be in the flight deck, on the maintenance floor, in the air traffic control tower, or elsewhere. All that experience walked out the door, and we didn't necessarily have a good transition of that knowledge to those who would come in after them.
Another data point is we're seeing operations that are at or above where we were before Covid. The system itself is being fully utilized, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It was designed to handle all of this. But combine a workforce with perhaps less total experience with a system that is now operating at near capacity and in some cases, the lack of sufficient resources to manage it effectively. Now, we're opening those Swiss cheese holes, and we're allowing some of those errors that would have normally been captured by experience…to escape, leading to some of these last lines of defense such as automated systems.
We've got to find a way to close [those holes] and get our system risk back to historic levels based on experience, workforce, and training levels that we're used to.
What has the response from the aviation community been?
This year was the first time the FAA has brought together the industry for a safety roundtable in over a decade. That, I think, was an emblematic movement by the FAA reflecting the state of the system. We are seeing near collisions. So, before we get to something greater, let's sit down and see if we can figure out what the data is.
I think many of us felt that we still had a good sense of what the problems could be. But how do we address them and how do we fix them? I think [the roundtable] has given the industry the opportunity to double down on the areas that it feels it has an opportunity to impact.
With that, our safety committee took the output from the summit and really looked at its areas. And what you will see on the NBAA website are our top safety focus areas. Those are being updated as we speak. I expect that the new list will be ready by the time we get to NBAA-BACE.
What are some of the things that the business aviation community can do?
There are a number of things. We've got three broad buckets that our safety committee is focused on.
These include preventable accidents. Those include things like loss of control and runway excursions. A lot of those are things that we've seen in the last 12 months for sure, also including controlled flight into terrain, ground operations, maintenance, and ramp rash. But we're going to make a few changes to reflect some areas in the “here and now” that we believe are important.
A second area is operations, including fitness for duty. Fitness for duty encompasses a whole host of unique topics that can range from fatigue to mental health, medical, and others.
Are we making progress in the area of mental health?
As we look at dispelling some myths associated with mental health and the pilot community, we believe there is a great opportunity to provide solid direction for pilots and others who need a medical certificate to do their jobs, provide them with much more clarity on what it means to get help that keeps you safe, that keeps you healthy, that keeps you alive while reducing the risk.
I think that's one topic that permeates most of aviation, which is putting your hand up to say that you need help. [People fear that] getting help could put your entire livelihood at risk.
The Federal Air Surgeon has done a tremendous job getting in front of pilot groups, getting in front of AME communities, to begin addressing this head-on. That's where change is starting to be felt with the FAA expanding the number of approved medications that pilots can be on for depression and giving AMEs more latitude in certifying pilots with some of these conditions that previously required a deferment pending an additional FAA review.
It's going to take the industry to get behind this. People avoid getting the help that they need, and we need to correct that.
Beyond mental health, where else is NBAA focusing in the operational arena?
Another that we're dealing with is the workforce. Bringing our next generation of pilots, maintainers, flight attendants, schedulers and dispatchers, and leaders into the industry has to be a priority or we're going to find ourselves without enough people to do the job. And we're going to need to compete with a whole host of others for that same talent. So, providing clear pathways and expanded pathways for today's students to be tomorrow's leaders in business aviation is a priority.
Are there other issues that fall into the operational bucket?
Human factors. That will continue to be a priority, including things like procedural noncompliance. It remains a factor in many of the accident reports that we read.
In fact, it was an issue in the [July 26, 2021, Challenger 605] accident in Truckee, California, where this circling approach got really unstable and there was no indication that a go-around or let's-try-it-again, was ever on the minds of either of the two pilots.
And the other area is for all the single-pilot operations, which is where we're seeing not an insignificant number of accidents and incidents happening. The Cessna Citation V that overflew Washington, D.C., a few months ago was a single-pilot operation. So, bringing more insight into resources available for owner-operators. These are usually single-pilot operations, where we see where the leader of the business is also the pilot.
That creates interesting, unique challenges to try to address where business needs to complete a flight, but safety needs may suggest something else. How do we balance those two competing pressures?
What is the third major bucket NBAA is focused on?
The mitigation: What are the products that we're putting in place to assist with this? Those things include topics like SMS [safety management systems]. I think SMS will continue to be a tool that if effectively structured for the operation, will play a significant role in improving safety. But if it's a binder on a shelf that collects dust, then [it would not be] a tool to help them succeed and we haven't moved the ball at all.
Also, in mitigation strategies is how do we improve owner and leader support of safety expenditures? How do we ensure that where needed, safety resources are provided to address the risks that our processes identified? We're going to be doing some work to help with that messaging.
The final area is focused on data. There can't be enough said today on the value of data. We're hoping to move the needle on safety in any of the areas [such as] loss of control, runway excursions, controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), ground operations, and ramp rash. We've got to know where they're happening and what's causing them.
We have renewed energy to become smart about data to identify what we can do to reduce accidents and incidents. It's not just going to be NBAA’s role in pushing this. We've got to bring the FAA along with us and we’ve got to bring our members along with us. At its core, data really is driving much of the safety equation these days.
What’s planned for NBAA-BACE this year?
Our event on Monday will begin with our Single-Pilot Safety Standdown dedicated to owners and operators, talking about issues with them, by them, and for them. We're going to have single-pilot experts talking about safety and data loss of control and CFIT, and all the things that we see the data telling us are risks for the single-pilot community. That will be a half-day event. We will close our show on Thursday with our National Safety Forum—again, a broader safety-focused event on issues that affect everyone.
We will get into some of the pilot mental health topics, SMS, and other issues that have a more general appeal during the week. We will have several safety sessions that will go into more depth on some areas. We expect the NTSB to join us out there and for FAA support.
So, there’s going to be safety content every day. We'll be talking about where our industry is doing well, where we have an opportunity to improve, and what can help with that improvement either through industry best practices, NBAA tools, product services, or other resources that may be out there.