Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015--Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I was not going to be talking right now, but I understand some of the people who are going to be reserving time are not yet here.
PILOT'S BILL OF RIGHTS 2
Mr. President, I want to remind my colleagues on the floor that we have a piece of legislation that is coming up that no one is really plugged into right now, but it is going to be coming before us in a very short period of time.
Back in 2011, I introduced a bill and passed a bill called the Pilot's Bill of Rights. It was something that was very meaningful to a relatively small number of people, but these are single-issue people, and it strove to correct a problem in our justice system that existed for as long as I could remember.
Having been an active commercial pilot for the last over 50 years--and there are not too many in the Senate; and in our delegation in Oklahoma, I was the only one until a couple years ago--it is only natural that I receive comments from a lot of people concerning problems they have with the FAA.
There are a lot of great people in the FAA, and a lot of them I have worked with for many, many years. But there are also some--and this is true with any regulatory body, anyone who has authority over individuals. I remember back many years ago when I was the mayor of Tulsa. We had a great police force. But all it takes is two or three of them who are the bad guys. We are seeing some of that around today, and that gives a bad reputation to a lot of people. The same thing is true with some of the people who are working with the FAA.
I can remember helping others, and I always did come to their aid when they felt they were not getting proper justice. But it really did not register with me until it actually happened to me. Back about 3 years ago, flying an airplane into a Texas airfield that is not a controlled airfield, there was an activity going on on the runway without any NOTAMs that had been advised--and nobody actually had any way of knowing this--and with permission I landed on that runway. This is a runway in far South Texas called the Cameron County Airport. It has a 9,000-foot runway. They were working on just a couple thousand feet of it, so it was very easy to come in.
Now, because of certain individuals who had some other reasons to be critical of me, all kinds of things happened as a result of that. In fact, just recently they have even had some cartoons talking about how I landed on a runway and was chasing people off the runway. None of that was true.
But this is what happened. They proposed to have a violation against me, and I was totally helpless, knowing--and many hundreds of others have had this experience; I never had--that I could lose my license on the whims of one individual in the field.
Now, it would not have been as critical for me. That is not how I make my living. But look at some people who do make their living that way. They could lose their license just because of one individual who did not like them. Bob Hoover is a good example. Bob Hoover, who I guess is in his nineties now, arguably was the most gifted pilot I can ever remember. He was the one, I say to the Presiding Officer, who would put a glass of water up on his dash and do a barrel roll and not spill the water. I have been with him when that happened. Well, one guy in the field did not like him for some reason, and they staged a violation. He could have and did lose his license.
Now, I had to come to this body--and it took a year and a half--to pass a bill to allow Bob Hoover to get back in. That is an extreme example, but nonetheless, that happened. And that is what was happening to me.
So anyway, we passed the Pilot's Bill of Rights. The main thing there and what we are trying to do is to extend to pilots the same protections under the law that other people have. We have heard the phrase many times: You are guilty until proven innocent. Well, in one area in our society that is true--it has historically been true--and that is for violations or alleged violations against pilots.
So anyway, we passed this. We corrected some things that have not really come to fruition. For example, what is called a NOTAM is short for a notice to airmen. A NOTAM is something that has to be published. It is supposed to be published by the FAA if there is anything going on at an airport such as construction on a runway that would create a hazard.
So the pilots have to look up the NOTAMs. The problem with this is, there are no guidelines as to where they can find a notice to airmen. So we corrected this, we thought, in the Pilot's Bill of Rights. However, it was not as good of a correction as we thought it would be.
So now we are coming back with a Pilot's Bill of Rights 2. By the way, I have to tell you, Mr. President, I had 67 cosponsors out of 100 Senators. So this is something that was very popular and passed with overwhelming majorities.
So what we are doing now with the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 is about four things.
First, the medical certification process is one that is kind of interesting because there is no uniformity. Someone can have a physical problem, a medical problem, and he might be in Chicago, IL, or he might be in Tampa, FL, and they will have a completely different interpretation by the medical examiner as to what should be the remedy of that person's problem. So this puts uniformity back in there.
Then it does something--and this is going to be something that people who do not understand and are not listening to me right now might state that this would be something that could be a hazard or might be some kind of a danger--and that is, we passed in 2004, a rule creating a medical exemption for pilots of light ``sport pilot eligible'' aircraft. That is for airplanes that weigh under 1,230 pounds and only have 2 seats. There are about 34,000 of them around. It has been over 10 years since FAA issued this exemption, and since then the medical safety experience of these pilots has been identical to those with medical certificates, which begs the question of the value of this expensive and burdensome requirement for pilots who fly for recreation.
A joint study was done by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the AOPA, and the Experimental Aircraft Association, the EAA, on the 46,976 aviation accidents that occurred from 2008 and 2012. Of those 46,976, only 99 had a medical cause as a factor. That is less than one-quarter of 1 percent of all accidents. And of those 99, none would have been prevented by the current third-class medical screening standards and the medical certification process. So it does not offer any protection. It does not serve any useful purpose.
Now, we are proposing in the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 to extend that medical exemption that is currently in place for light sport aircraft to include planes weighing up to 6,000 pounds with up to 6 total passengers, including the pilot. That would add airmen and aircraft to an existing FAA-approved medical standard without degrading or creating substandard safety.
What I am saying here is that of all these almost 47,000 aviation accidents, only 99 had a medical cause, and of those 99, not one would have been prevented by the current third-class medical screening standards and the medical certification process. So this is just another burden on the public--not individuals, but specifically on pilots, and it does not accomplish anything.
What we will do now is have consistency in the application of the medical certification process, and it is something that is overdue. It should not be a problem getting that bill passed, and yet it does need explanation.
The second thing it does is extend the due process rights preserved in the original Pilot's Bill of Rights bill to all FAA certificate holders--not just those who are certificate holders who fly airplanes. There are others who are examiners and work in other fields. They should have the same benefits.
What it does is--and this is kind of hard to explain--but if someone is accused of a violation, that individual has a process that has been in law prior to the Pilot's Bill of Rights; and that is, you go through and the FAA makes a judgment. Then you can appeal it to the NTSB. The NTSB historically has been a rubber stamp for the FAA. So it does not really qualify anything.
What we did in the Pilot's Bill of Rights 1 is allow an individual then to go into the court system and get what they call a de novo. A de novo means they have a whole process that starts from scratch. They do not just take what the FAA says, the NTSB says, but the courts treat it as a new case and look at it. This has not been happening. So we put some teeth in that so that will be something that will be workable.
So I really feel we are going to be able to do this, and it is really getting the things done that we tried to do in the Pilot's Bill of Rights, but there have been some problems getting the courts to understand it. In fact, in two separate cases, the Federal district courts ruled that my original bill did not require a full rehearing of the facts. This legislation explicitly spells out the option to appeal an FAA enforcement action to the Federal district courts for a guaranteed de novo trial. But they have not been doing it. So this puts teeth in it so they are going to actually have to do it.
By the way, there are things that are in there that people are not aware of. For example, in my case, I allegedly did something that was not in compliance with FAA rules and regulations, but they did not say what it was. They did not give the evidence. So you did not have access to your evidence. The new bill ensures that is going to happen.
The third thing is on NOTAMs. A NOTAM is a notice to airmen. It is a pilot's responsibility--this has been true for decades--to know if a NOTAM has been filed by the FAA. That is a notice to airmen. But there is not any way of knowing where to find that. In my case, they claimed there was a NOTAM saying that the runway at Cameron County Airport was closed. That was a lie. There wasn't. There was no NOTAM out there. Finally, we proved that was the case.
So now we are going to have it enforced so we know where these notices to airmen are filed, and it is going to be the responsibility of the FAA to put them in a central location where they would have access to them. This is something that was addressed in the Pilot's Bill of Rights, but somehow it was not specific enough. The teeth we put in this bill is that in the event they do not have it, the NOTAM is published where it can be found in a central location. Then the FAA cannot use that as an enforcement action. That will get the job done.
The fourth thing it does is to extend the liability protection to individuals designated by the FAA as aviation medical examiners, pilot examiners, and this type of thing. What this does also is address what we call and most people would refer to as the Good Samaritan law. I have a lot of pilots--and I have been in the same situation--who want to help. They want to get a patient to a doctor in an emergency situation.
I can remember one time many years ago when a tornado went through and destroyed the island of Dominica, north of Caracas, Venezuela. I got 12 pilots together with 12 of their airplanes, and they volunteered to take all the medical supplies down there. Now, if something had happened in the meantime, they would have had no protection. Yet out of the goodness of their hearts, at their own expense, they were out there trying to save lives. I was there. I know.
So this actually is one that is going to give liability protection to individuals other than just the pilots--other people who own FAA certificates--and at the same time give protection to those people who are trying to help other people.
So I believe this bill should be coming up in the next couple of weeks. It will be going to the commerce committee. I would encourage Members to--and particularly those 67 Members who were the cosponsors of the original Pilot's Bill of Rights should be on this one too. In fact, most of them are right now. I know Senators MANCHIN and BOOZMAN were the first two to get on. They happen to be the chairmen of the General Aviation Caucus in the Senate. By the way, we have equal support over in the other body, in the House of Representatives.
Last summer, at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh fly-in convention--that is the largest fly-in convention anywhere in the world--I hosted a public forum to solicit input for the legislation we are having, the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2, and I received over 400 comments from individuals.
These are people who were present at the Oshkosh event.
So we have solicited their input, and we have all the organizations behind it. I would say, insofar as the one that might become controversial; that is, the exemption on a third-class medical--doctors have unanimously voted in favor of it--they are called the doctors in aviation--and others.
This is one of these rare opportunities we have on a bipartisan basis to pass something that is going to offer legal protections to one class of people who currently don't have it and have not had it in the past.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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