Evidence of meeting #14 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was helicopter.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Somen Chowdhury  Executive Committee Member, International Helicopter Safety Team
Sylvain Séguin  Co-Chair, Canadian Joint Helicopter Safety Analysis Team, International Helicopter Safety Team
Kenneth Dunlap  Director, Security and Travel Facilitation (Global), International Air Transport Association

9:05 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, meeting number 14, and the orders of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the study of aviation safety and security.

Joining us today from the International Air Transport Association is Kenneth Dunlap, director. From the International Helicopter Safety Team, we have Somen Chowdhury and Sylvain Séguin.

There is a presentation. We'll start the process now and then proceed to questions.

Please begin.

9:05 a.m.

Somen Chowdhury Executive Committee Member, International Helicopter Safety Team

Good morning. It's a privilege to be among our legislators.

We're going to discuss a subject as interesting as helicopters. You may have flown in them, but you may not have delved deeper into the helicopter flight system. The topic today will be the creation of an organization called the International Helicopter Safety Team. We will talk about the background of the IHST, why we did it, the outcome of the analysis we have done, what the recommendations are, and how the analysis applies to Canada.

I'll be sharing the presentation. I am Somen Chowdhury and I work for Bell Helicopter as manager of research. My colleague Sylvain Séguin works for Canadian Helicopters Limited as VP of safety and marketing.

The helicopter, as you know, is not a very simple machine to operate. A very complex aeromechanical system allows the helicopter to fly in two-dimensional mode, which very few means of transportation can do. A fixed-wing aircraft does not have the manoeuvrability of a helicopter, so this is kind of the realization of a dream of flight, but all benefits come with their own risks.

The helicopter flies within an envelope within the terrain, within the boundaries of the earth, as we say, at very low altitudes. It flies in all weather conditions. It does all kinds of missions that could not be done otherwise, so it comes with situations that are fraught with more danger than any other mode of transportation. However, I want to emphasize that the helicopter is not an unsafe system or vehicle.

But when you look at the statistics, as shown in our graph, you see that from 1991 to 2005--the red area is the U.S. data--the accident rate for helicopters was steady at 200. The numbers have not decreased. The world average was about 550 to 600 over that period of time.

While we have succeeded in bringing down the accident rates of other modes of vehicles, particularly in air transportation, the numbers for helicopters have remained the same. Mind you, these numbers are not big, but the fact that they have remained stable, steady, is what has drawn our attention.

So we as an association, the American Helicopter Society, and members of the OEMs all sat down together to discuss this and decided that we needed to do something, whether the government initiated something or not. We got together and decided to take action, not because the numbers were high, but because they have remained steady over the years.

Just to give you an idea of what an accident looks like, an accident is not a pleasant thing to watch or experience. It is catastrophic. It's very hurtful in terms of human life, harm done, equipment lost and everything. One accident is enough to take care of all the investment we have made in safety. Safety is not a money investment issue. It's not a concern about whether we should spend money or not. It has to be done.

In 2005 we all got together, and I organized a conference in Montreal. Again, Canada took the lead. We had about 265 of the world's helicopter folks there, including the regulatory people: the National Transportation Safety Board; ICAO; and accident investigation authorities from France and all over the world. The operators and the OEMs also came. We all agreed that we had to do something.

We set up the International Helicopter Safety Team and set up a mission for ourselves. It is totally voluntary. There was no requirement set up for us, but we all got together and took up a mission to say that we would provide industry and operator leadership to develop and focus on the implementation of an integrated data-driven strategy, which is very important--it must be data-based--to improve helicopter aviation safety. So the team is a result of cooperation among three partners, of their own volition.

Then, the vision was that we must achieve the highest level of safety in international helicopter operations. Our goal was very specific. We always talk of safety, but never take action. Here we decided that we needed to reduce helicopter accidents by 80% over 10 years. It was a very targeted goal for the year 2016, because we started in 2006.

So the IHST was formed. We had an executive committee of about five or six members. There are two co-chairs. One, from the FAA, is Mark Schilling, from the southwest region of the Rotorcraft Directorate. One, from the industry, is Matt Zuccaro of HAI, Helicopter Association International.

I'm a member of the executive committee. We also have Bob Sheffield from Shell Aircraft. We have, from AHS, Rhett Flater. We have Fred Jones from HAC as a member sitting here, and we have Jean-Pierre Dedieu of Eurocopter.

So then we created the worldwide JHSATs, which are the joint helicopter safety analysis teams, so that we can start analyzing the data. You can see in our chart here that we had one in Canada, one in the U.S., one in India, and one in Australia. In Europe, the EASA got on board. Now we are working with Japan, Russia, and South Africa, and we're trying to expand our role across the world because it's an international team.

The main thing is that the OEMs are here. Bell Helicopter, Sikorsky, Eurocopter, Agusta: these are the OEMs for helicopters. But their helicopters fly all over the world, so anybody's accident is our accident, and that is critical. There's no “you” and “us”. If you make a mistake or you don't make a mistake, your accident is our accident. That's the way we looked at it, and that's how we formed these teams.

Now, I must bring to light here that the Gore commission, in 1996, set up a committee called CAST, the Civil Aviation Safety Team. Its mandate was to look at an airline's transportation fleet accident fatality rate and reduce that by 80% over 10 years. This meant that from 1996 to 2006 they had to reduce their fatality rates by 80%.

CAST took up a database of accidents and made a system of analysis that we looked at very closely. We found that it fit into our scheme of things and our thinking, so we adopted their analysis modes and their approach. It's a data-based, date-driven approach.

In this model, as we are showing you here, you have the JHSAT, the analysis team, and the JHSIT, the implementation team. The analysis team will study the accident data, come out with the causal factors, and develop a mitigation strategy. The JHSIT will take up this mitigation strategy and implement it through the operator base, the regulators, and the government entities.

A data analysis team is being set up to look at the effects of the implementation strategies and to feed them back to the analysis team, implementation team, and executive committee, close the loop, and make the changes necessary in the process.

Now, any accident we see is just the tip of an iceberg. It's just an event that has happened. To make this event happen, there are a whole bunch of systemic issues that lead to it. These systemic issues are never seen. They're below the water level. We really have to address these systemic issues, which we call “standard problem statements”, to eliminate this.

In this analysis we are doing, we look at an incident or an accident, then go through the standard problem statements, and then analyze what caused this accident. That is the analysis we have done.

Normally you have about 1,200 situations that could lead to one visible accident. That's the average statistic. This is the story of the airline transportation industry. In 1941, the accident rate was eight to nine per one million departures. They have brought it down, through various interventions, to virtually zero per one million departures. Per one million departures, the accident rates for air transportation have come down drastically. We want to replicate this in the helicopter world.

I will work with you and show you some of the data that we are proceeding with.

This is the result of the U.S. analysis study, the JHSAT work from 2006 to 2009. For the year 2000, they found that 197 accidents had been reported by the NTSB, and in 2001, about 200 accidents had been reported by the NTSB. We studied that through the JHSAT team in the U.S. You can see that from year to year the blue and the yellow shown here just don't differ. The pattern is exactly the same.

If you look at the causal factors, pilot judgment and action have become the common...80% of the accident situations have something to do with pilot judgment. Lack of data in accidents also dominates as a major issue that we have to take care of. The safety management system is predominant as well. The absence of a safety management system is a contributing factor to many accidents.

So when we looked at the standard problem statement, this is how it lined up for the U.S., and it does not vary from year to year. It's pretty much the same. I'll show you the results from across the world as we stack up this data.

These are the intervention strategies that we came up with from those causal factors.

We found that simulator-based training and instruction is critical to solving most accidents. Today in the helicopter world, particularly for light helicopters, there are no simulators at all and there's no requirement to have simulator-based training.

If you don't have simulator-based training, you cannot fly to the corners of the envelope. You cannot simulate the risk situations and the what-if scenarios: what do you do in the fraction of a second that you're flying if this light comes on? You have to make critical decisions. That's where pilot judgment and action come into play.

This is true for aviation because you're flying at speeds, in the helicopter world, of between 250 to 300 kilometres an hour, very close to the ground, with all kinds of terrain and boundary conditions around you. You have to react, and you have to react fast, and you may not react the right way. In all the accidents we see, even the Cougar accident, where it ditched into the water, in the east.... It's not about blaming people for judgment and action.

But the fact is that the reality of the situation requires more training, and more simulator-based training rather than training on light Robinsons, which are prone to the most number of accidents because of the role it plays. Our strongest recommendation is that the safety management system be implemented.

Lack of data in an accident is critical. We need to have devices on board that collect the data so that in the event of an accident we can go back, look at what happened, and can take mitigation action. Today we can't do that for light helicopters. Only very big sophisticated helicopters have a flight data management system.

Maintenance is an issue. It's not as major a role player as the other items, but it is an issue.

We looked at the systems and equipment. This is the additional equipment that needs to be on board to provide additional situational awareness to the pilot to support him in his judgment decisions. It means that the more systems and equipment you put in a helicopter, the more expensive, more weighty, and less cost-effective it becomes. There's a balance for light helicopters in how to put in more equipment at lower cost and still provide the necessary input to the pilot.

Regulation plays a role, but it's not critical.

Infrastructure, of course, is important. By infrastructure, I mean weather conditions. When you are flying helicopters at a low level, very close to the ground, you don't have a microlevel weather prediction capability imparted to the pilot who is going from A to B and who sees an icing cloud forming between the two.

These helicopters are not certified to fly in icing conditions. What do they do? Do they fly through and reach a safe condition? Do they fly around? Or do they come back? They just don't know. When you are caught in icing, you don't know how to react either. That's just one situation.

There could be thunderstorms. There could be lightning. Weather is a major player, particularly when you're in offshore conditions and you don't have the microlevel weather prediction capability.

I'll show you another scenario here, if you could watch this, please.

[Video Presentation]

If you look at this accident, you'll see that this is a military naval helicopter with the capability to float and ditch. Its hull is designed to ditch. Helicopter hulls are not designed to ditch unless they are specifically designed to do so. We can ditch in the water with flotation devices, but we cannot crash into water. That's how it is certified.

Let me go back to this one here. I want you to notice that the pilot took off, had a power failure--or a simulated power failure, I don't know--and ditched back into the water, doing does everything safely and nicely. Then what did he do? He made a decision to fly back up again. I don't know from this whether he had enough power back, but he recovered power. He tried to fly up and he applied his cyclic, which means that he tilted forward and he ditched...he shouldn't have done that.

But can you tell him now, looking back, that he shouldn't have done that? Anything with this kind of power that goes into a rotor--

9:20 a.m.

A voice

[Inaudible--Editor]

9:20 a.m.

Executive Committee Member, International Helicopter Safety Team

Somen Chowdhury

Okay.

So this is a pilot judgment situation where the pilot took the wrong decision.

Let's look at this scenario, which shows an air show in Dubai.

[Video Presentation]

This accident relates to pilot situational awareness, where they did not know how close they were. When they're doing formation flying, this is part of the training. You have to know how far you are. There have to be devices to let you know. This could have been avoided had appropriate action been taken.

If you look at the world data shown here, you can see the pattern of trends. The pilot's judgment for action comes on top worldwide, even in Canada. For the Canadian part of this study, Canada has been put in here. The pilot's judgment of action comes on top; then there are data issues.

Internationally, all the accidents studied have the same trend. On the mitigation strategies, again, training and instruction come out as the topmost requirement as a mitigation device for the simulator-based training, and the implementation of safety management systems comes out on top.

The U.S. studies resulted in these recommendations: the safety management systems; simulator training; systems and equipment to enhance pilot judgment action and situational awareness; data-based information for accident recovery; maintenance; regulatory recommendations; and infrastructure.

One thing is very important here. You can see that 85% of the North American fleet is made up of small operators with five aircraft and below. That's where most of the accidents are. It's not in the big operators like CHL, CHC, Bristol and PHI; it's the small ones. Of the fleet, 85% are the small operators, and they are not tuned in yet to a structured safety process, or in other words, implementation of safety management systems, training, and all that. We need to reach them and make things happen.

I will skim through this fast because of time. This chart shows a decrease from 2006 right now; this is U.S. data. It shows that we started off with 9.3 per hundred thousand flight hours. Our goal is 80%--down 1.9--and over the years, we are coming down. From the 2009 data you can see substantial decreases in the U.S. This chart shows the worldwide average. We started off there and we wanted to go down to 1.9. There is a decrease. That's the trend being shown.

Whether this is due to anything we're doing, we don't know, but at least we are talking and people are listening, and that's having an impact. We haven't started implementing our strategies yet, so we should see more changes when things are implemented.

The Canadian data is superimposed here on this chart and shows Canada being above the world average. We started with 11.93 per hundred thousand flight hours, so 80% down is 2.4. Last, in 2006, it was 12.8. We are estimating eight per hundred thousand flight hours in 2009. Sylvain will address this in much more detail.

So we want to set up these filters so that we can catch the accidents before they happen below the waterline, as I showed you. We've come out with three tool kits so far: the safety management system tool kit, designed and targeted at the small operators; the flight data-monitoring system tool kit; and the simulator-based training tool kit, with syllabus.

Sylvain can take over.

9:25 a.m.

Sylvain Séguin Co-Chair, Canadian Joint Helicopter Safety Analysis Team, International Helicopter Safety Team

Just very briefly, there are only a few more slides showing the Canadian data that we've analyzed. Basically, we looked at the commercial and private aircraft, but we didn't look at the experimental ones. The Department of National Defence has been participating in this analysis, so we also looked at the Department of National Defence occurrences. In 2000 we analyzed 52 accidents, which included one from DND.

This slide just briefly shows you the number of helicopters in Canada. In total, if we look at the year 2000, at the bottom, there were 1,449 aircraft. In 2008, there were 2,356; the biggest segment is single-engine turbine helicopters, which went from 888 to almost 1,400 aircraft. That's because of the demand in Canada, especially in the mining sector. It requires more single-engine types of turbine helicopters for exploration.

The accident rate in Canada is the same as the world's. Basically, it's been flat. We've been averaging about 50 accidents per year, and 8 or 10 fatal accidents per year as well. Again, it's a requirement for bettering the systems out there.

The next chart is just the exposure rate: the flight hours that the industry is flying. The data we had was up to 2007. There is a definite increase. We know that the economy was doing well. The mining was very strong and there was an increased demand in helicopters. Again, the single-engine turbine helicopter was the one that had the highest demand.

In accidents, it also indicates that the single-engine turbine is number one. However, the single-engine piston aircraft, which is used in training--private aircraft or private use--is right behind. Based on the exposure rate, it has a higher accident rate. So, again, single-engine turbine and single-engine piston.... This is just a cross-segment, but the majority of the flying that we see in Canada is, again, in mining. We see a number of EMS aircraft, but mining support and forest fires are the types of activities that we see the most.

As we near the end, from the precursors and the problem statements that we have seen, pilot judgment is number one. We've compiled our data with the European and the U.S. data and it's the same thing: pilot judgment is at the top. Basically, there are data issues. The mission risk is number three, and it's probably higher in Canada than in other countries because of the type of terrain and type of work that we do.

We'll have these slides available for you a bit later on. This is a wrap-up slide.

9:25 a.m.

Executive Committee Member, International Helicopter Safety Team

Somen Chowdhury

In conclusion, I want to wrap it up quickly.

We are a voluntary organization, the IHST, set up by the helicopter industry. We follow a purely data-based approach, using a method developed by CAST. Analysis shows that causal factors worldwide are similar, including those in Canada.

We have come up with seven major recommendations. We have published tool kits on SMS, simulator-based training, and flight data-monitoring. We are in the process of implementing this practice in the industry worldwide. We're deeply engaged in this whole process with the FAA and EASA and with international participation.

Just to close, I will show you one little thing about SMS, about how it is cultural. Look at this scenario, please.

[Video Presentation]

The safety management system that has to be implemented has to take care of the culture of the situation, the people, the behaviour, and the environment in which you are implementing it. Just putting rules in place and putting practices in place doesn't work.

Thank you.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed

Thank you very much. Just for the advice of the committee, we do have a handout that's being translated, along with the slides that were presented here today.

Thank you.

Mr. Volpe.

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON

I'm going to share my time with Ms. Crombie, starting now.

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON

Okay. I want to thank you, gentlemen, witnesses for--

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed

There is one more presentation. I'm sorry about that.

Please go ahead.

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON

I'm not going to share my time with them--

9:30 a.m.

Voices

Oh, oh!

9:30 a.m.

Kenneth Dunlap Director, Security and Travel Facilitation (Global), International Air Transport Association

That's quite all right.

I'm changing topics to airline security.

Good morning, members of the committee. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

IATA appreciates the leadership of the committee in addressing critical aviation safety and security issues. It's our hope that today's discussions further a much-needed dialogue on the future of passenger screening, not only here in Canada, but globally as well.

Today I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about passenger security screening and also introduce you to IATA's five recommendations for aviation security. I'd like to begin with aviation screening.

As the committee reviews events after the incident on December 25, we expect that many will seek short-term fixes to our security checkpoints. In fact, some procedural changes are probably warranted. However, simply dropping new technology into existing checkpoints is not the answer for the future and doesn't guarantee improved security at our airports. Even the best technology we have cannot detect bad people.

Governments cannot allow calls for new equipment to mask the fact that long-term changes are required for security checkpoints. IATA and our 230 U.S. and foreign member airlines have a vision of future passenger screening that's based on a paradigm shift in the principles behind checkpoint operation. We believe that next-generation checkpoints have to look for bad people, not just bad things.

I'd ask you for a moment to consider our vision of an effective security checkpoint that focuses on finding bad people rather than bad things: passengers are treated with dignity; babies and children with names similar to adults on no-fly, selectee, or the passenger protect list pass through screening uneventfully; and toenail scissors and nail clippers don't trigger an interrogation.

In this scenario, the airport security checkpoint is no longer a first line of defence, but a second look. The dots are connected by intelligence agencies before passengers reach the checkpoints. Plots are disrupted long before the airport. Screeners look for behavioural clues warranting a closer inspection of the passenger.

IATA believes that today's checkpoints work and we certainly are not advocating to this committee to immediately discard Canadian checkpoints for the next-generation checkpoint. However, the day is rapidly approaching when the 40-year-old concepts that serve as their underpinnings, and those of nearly the entire aviation system, will become obsolete.

We believe that the next checkpoint should rely on thorough and pervasive behaviour detection. We believe that highly trained behaviour detection officers who question passengers and observe their mannerisms throughout the screening process would add a strong layer of detection. Tomorrow's checkpoint would enhance behaviour detection by providing screeners with contextual background information on the traveller to assist in the questioning process. This type of intelligence-based behaviour detection would increase both the fidelity and the objectivity of screening.

The system I'm describing here envisions security for tomorrow's passengers as a road bump in their journey, rather than the mountain they confront today. We believe the components of this checkpoint are available, but they require the will to be assembled and delivered to our airports.

Now I'd like to spend a few moments talking about security technology.

I think that security and technology are often confused. IATA remains concerned that new technology is being viewed as the silver bullet for the future, and there is no silver bullet. For every technology with exciting detection capabilities, there are complementary vulnerabilities.

I note that in its deliberations the committee has been discussing body scanners or whole-body imaging with a variety of experts. IATA cautions against viewing this technology as the solution to our most serious vulnerabilities. It is not.

It is interesting. It has novel capabilities. It could be part of future passenger screening. However, it would be wrong to install these scanners in airports and break out the champagne and conclude that we have fixed aviation security, for we would not have done that.

Also, we must not overlook the process through which technology moves from the laboratory to the airport. Fundamentally, this journey takes too long. It's tainted by changing regulatory requirements. And unfortunately, it produces products that don't work in the real world.

Now I'd like to devote a few words specifically to Canadian airport security, based on feedback from IATA's member airlines.

Going through a screening checkpoint has become the number one problem for Canadian passengers. I'm sure I don't have to remind the committee that after the December incident, Canada's airports experienced the longest security delays in the world. In some cases, IATA airlines reported that security delays were up to five hours and 30 minutes for some passengers. On average, in the two weeks after December 25, we recorded delays of three hours across all Canadian airports.

Certainly we can't let this happen again. Passengers deserve better than having to show up three hours early for a 50-minute flight or having to travel with only one carry-on.

But I think there is a path forward.

First, Canada and the United States need to foster better security cooperation. With over 180,000 flights per year between these two countries, coordination can't be left to chance. We think governments let the travelling public down in the aftermath of December 25 because this coordination was not in place.

Second, frequent traveller programs such as NEXUS and Global Entry need to be used for security screening. It makes little sense that passengers extensively pre-screened by law enforcement agencies under these programs get security-screened the same way everyone else does.

Third, CATSA needs more transparency and engagement with industry. This includes service level expectations, staffing, and crisis planning.

We do have a framework for the future that I'd like to introduce to the committee: the five recommendations for aviation security that IATA has provided to the International Civil Aviation Organization. These five specific recommendations apply equally to Transport Canada, CATSA, and regulators across the globe.

First, there needs to be formal consultation between governments and domestic and foreign airlines. Regulators have to understand that aviation is a globally interconnected enterprise, and they have to write security regulations that reflect this reality.

Most often, new rules are written without industry input and review. This deprives the regulatory process of the operational insight and the expertise that industry can provide to regulators. Certainly, greater collaboration would ensure more effective and efficient security measures.

Second, we need to refine the issuance of emergency orders to better address the international environment. Airlines operate across the globe under extremely different environments. Laws, infrastructures, and cultural diversity need to be taken into account when security regulations are being made.

Airlines have hands-on experience in these different environments. However, emergency orders that impose one-size-fits-all measures often force carriers to be placed in a position where they can't comply with these in certain airports, countries, or regions.

Third, we need to eliminate inefficiencies in passenger data collection. IATA believes the key to future screening lies in the leveraging of all of the passenger information currently collected by a government before the start of a trip. Data collected in the name of customs and immigration needs to be merged with data collected for security. And then this comprehensive data should be analyzed by government intelligence agencies before a “cleared to board” decision is issued.

Fourth, we need to strengthen government-to-government outreach to harmonize and coordinate on security issues. Governments around the world have to reach out to each other. One way to do this is to use ICAO's Aviation Security Point of Contact Network. This would allow states to effectively evaluate whether a new procedure is feasible at the world's airports.

Fifth, over the long term, we need to focus on developing a next-generation checkpoint. The December 2009 incident demonstrates that in the future aviation needs smarter, faster, next-generation passenger screening measures to confront new and emerging threats. While our current screening systems are serving us well, their underlying operational concepts and architecture are beginning to show their age. They need to be replaced.

IATA is asking governments to begin to look forward to field a new checkpoint. In the interim, we need to enhance the capabilities of the current system to extend its usable lifetime and its detection capabilities.

In conclusion, as this committee reviews events post-December 25, we expect that many in Ottawa are going to seek short-term fixes to security checkpoints. However, new technology can't guarantee better security, can't detect bad people, and is not the only solution for the future. IATA believes the solution lies in a paradigm shift in how we screen and protect our passengers.

Thanks.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed

Thank you very much.

Mr. Volpe.

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your presentation. I found the issue of the helicopters particularly engaging.

Mr. Dunlap, throughout your presentation I couldn't help but think that somewhere in your boardroom you're probably asking what the Canadian government is doing spending $11 million for these scanners, which one of your members decries as just adding layer of technology upon layer of technology and doesn't really produce the result that's intended. Is that a wrong impression?

9:40 a.m.

Director, Security and Travel Facilitation (Global), International Air Transport Association

Kenneth Dunlap

I certainly think the question has to be asked: what is the biggest threat to commercial aviation today? Many of us believe that it's a threat posed by explosive devices. The capabilities and the detection strengths that whole-body imaging has are not necessarily the same strengths that are needed to detect explosives. So it might be using the wrong tool for finding the next-generation threat.

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON

Thank you.

I'm going to share the rest of my time with Ms. Crombie, but I couldn't help but refer to all of the data Mr. Chowdhury presented to us. I know that my colleague is going to go there for me, but it's an impressive piece of study.

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON

Thank you, Mr. Volpe.

Actually, I just wanted to say “amen” to Mr. Dunlap as well.

I'm a big proponent of behavioural screening as well. I don't know if I look like a high-risk passenger or a terrorist. I'm a frequent flyer and a member of Parliament. I know that I am scary looking, but three times this weekend, I was pulled out for random secondary screening--three times. I almost made an earlier flight except for the secondary screening.

I'm not sure what you can suggest for people like me who are randomly picked out of the lineup all the time and patted down, despite wearing pantyhose. I don't think it's a good use of our resources, frankly. There has to be a better way that is more efficient for everybody.

9:40 a.m.

Director, Security and Travel Facilitation (Global), International Air Transport Association

Kenneth Dunlap

You have two programs here, between the United States and Canada, that we certainly believe need to be leveraged more. As I discussed, you have NEXUS and Global Entry.

It would occur to us that the more information passengers are willing to give to a government regulator to identify themselves and to establish their backgrounds, that reduces the risk those travellers pose at the security checkpoint. So as a member of Parliament, I would think that your entire life history is on the public record.

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON

I would have thought so. I don't want to belabour this point.

The Israelis, as we know, use a trusted traveller program. Is that something similar?

9:40 a.m.

Director, Security and Travel Facilitation (Global), International Air Transport Association

Kenneth Dunlap

It's very similar, yes.

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON

I have to move on to the helicopter association. I apologize, but I just wanted to throw that in. I was quite frustrated this weekend.

Obviously, we are very impressed with the amount of data you've been collecting.

We had the Helicopter Association of Canada here last week talking to us about their experiences. They've been discussing best practices that need to be set up to help regulate and monitor the industry. I wonder if you want to comment on best practices.

9:40 a.m.

Co-Chair, Canadian Joint Helicopter Safety Analysis Team, International Helicopter Safety Team

Sylvain Séguin

Certainly. Part of the safety management system means that the industry has to develop industry best practices so that companies can then take them and develop standard operating procedures.

The way aviation is structured, especially in the single-engine type of operation, is very broad. A pilot becomes a bit of a generalist. One day you might fly a passenger on an exploration. The next day you're doing a photo flight. The next day it's seismic activity. This is where industry best practice, from an association's point of view, becomes very important. It guides the industry and the various companies in exactly how to structure their operations to make them safer and how to provide increased oversight.

9:40 a.m.

Liberal

Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON

Is this a Canadian initiative or is this being done internationally as well?

9:40 a.m.

Executive Committee Member, International Helicopter Safety Team

Somen Chowdhury

This is an international initiative. We issued the SMS, the safety management system tool, which describes exactly for small operators how to practise safety management systems in your organization. The big ones have it. For the small ones, we have structured it to make it simple.

SMS, for your information, is a mandatory requirement, through the regulatory framework, of Canadian certification requirements.