Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen called on his agency to be more “predictive” when it comes to enhancing aviation safety.
“Every day we have to challenge ourselves to find even more ways to reduce and eliminate the risk inherent in aviation because we all know too well that it has little tolerance for mistakes,” Nolen said during EAA AirVenture last week. “Rather than responding to incidents, we are getting better at predicting them through the careful analysis of data. But we need to do more of this—especially in general aviation—and we need to get better at it. Being preventative is no longer enough; we must become predictive.”
Nolen stressed the role of private-public collaboration in improving safety. “I like to think that the GA community sees us as a partner in the journey to make this community safer, more secure, and ready for the future. The safer we are, the more freedom we have to fly.”
He further pointed to the joint efforts of the FAA Safety Teams, Runway Safety Teams, and General Aviation Joint Safety Committee. "As the result of a lot of hard work by government and industry, we’re making progress in reducing fatal accidents in general aviation. Our target since 2008 has been to reduce the fatal accident rate by one percent per year, and we’re on track again this year to meet or exceed that reduction.”