FAA Statement

FAA air traffic controllers operate the safest and most complex air traffic system in the world.

They handle more than 130 million air traffic operations a year, and 99.99 percent of those

operations occur normally and in full compliance with FAA safety regulations. The FAA builds

robust safety margins into the air traffic system and relies on a series of other safety layers to

achieve that high level of safety. The FAA uses sophisticated tools to identify and address safety

risks and has promoted a non-punitive safety culture that encourages employees to identify

safety issues. As a result, the FAA is collecting significantly more data about safety issues than it

has in previous years.

The FAA fully analyzes every identified loss of the required separation between aircraft and

develops corrective actions to prevent similar events from occurring in the future. Even with the

large increase in data collections, the number of events identified as high-risk has gone down,

dropping from 41 in fiscal year 2012 to 25 in 2014. The FAA developed corrective actions for all

of those events that included retraining, procedural changes and outreach to pilots. The FAA

monitors incidents across the system on a daily basis to detect and analyze any potential safety

trends.