Finding the Opportunities Hidden in Uncertainty

Catherine M. Lang Catherine (Kate) M. Lang has served as FAA's deputy associate administrator for airports since August 2003. Previously, Lang served as the director of FAA's Office of Airport Planning and Programming for almost four years and the deputy director for two years. Prior to joining the agency, she worked for the city of Chicago as assistant commissioner of the Department of Aviation.

On Valentine's Day, President Obama signed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, a 4-year authorization, ending 41/2 years of split Airport Improvement Programs (AIP) and a record 24 congressional extensions. While the legislation did not make the sweeping changes hoped by some and feared by others on airport-related programs, airports and communities all over the country feel relief with the predictability and stability this bill provides for airport planning and development. Despite an environment of serious budget cuts, the AIP authorization level remained robust at $3.35 billion.

With reauthorization finally behind us, we can all focus on the opportunities and challenges at hand. Front and center, the economy continues to fuel the important national debate on what we can afford and who pays. While the economy has stabilized and begun the long road to recovery, we still see evidence of the course correction sorting itself out. Last year saw yet another wave of airline consolidations and a bankruptcy.

Periods of economic uncertainty necessarily prompt greater caution and frugality and can be instructive in sorting out what are our most essential priorities and how to most effectively leverage our investments. All over the country, airports are going through the healthy process of recalibrating development plans and energetically looking for non-aeronautic sources of revenue to fill in the financial valleys. In some cases, airport operators are discovering that major programs previously projected to be bundled and constructed in compressed schedules can be phased and stretched into usable but more affordable blocks, better managing both uncertainty and risk. In other communities, local officials have made the tough decisions to mothball new airports or runways urgently needed five years ago, but are now not needed in the foreseeable future as aviation forecasts have changed.

The decade behind us was driven by the goal of adding capacity to meet aggressive forecasts of aviation growth. The decade before us is about ensuring aviation system reliability and efficiency during a period of slower growth. Amid all the uncertainty and belt-tightening, new opportunities will emerge if we continue to look beyond the challenges or setbacks at hand and ask new questions. At FAA, that's just what we're doing:

• How do we take safety to the next level when considering the wide range of risk and economic constraints among airports?

• How can we assist airports to improve their ability to raise non-aeronautic revenues while preserving long-term aeronautic development?

• How can we adjust airport rates and charges policies to expand the financial toolbox, considering the changing dynamics of the airline industry?

• How can we harness NextGen technologies to make better use of existing airport infrastructure and offer greater flexibility and affordability on future infrastructure?

• How can NextGen technologies make airports safer for operators and better for neighbors?

• How do we adjust our planning tools to better manage uncertainty and risk, enabling incremental choices implemented over longer time?

• How can we encourage airports to adopt new technologies and alternative fuels that will provide dual benefits to the environment and financial bottom line?

• How do we ensure that airports of all sizes have the infrastructure they need to achieve critical public goals and flourish as integral parts of sustainable communities?

• How do we improve the connectivity and synergies between various modes of transportation to make limited dollars go farther and advance shared, mutual goals?

You get the idea. In tough economic times, collectively we have to ask and probe the value questions. Sustained public investment requires sustained public confidence that we are all responsible stewards of the public trust. To do this well and get it right means we must engage in constant, constructive dialogue and partnership as an aviation community, focusing first on the tactical problems we need to manage today while looking strategically toward the goals we aspire to achieve.