[00:00:00] Michael Whitaker: The FAA has tried to be forward leaning into allowing the drones. These are small vehicles that are replacing often dangerous functions. So you think about bridge inspection, windmill inspection, search and rescue. So it's your usual risk case is a little bit different. You're not just evaluating, hey, is this thing going to fall on somebody's head? But you're also looking at the fact that a lot of these vehicles are saving lives.
[00:00:28] John Ramstead: Welcome to Hangar X Studios where former fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
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Welcome to the Hangar X Studios podcast and this is where innovators and leaders and investors in aerospace and the vertical economy come first to get the information that they need to make decisions that are shaping our future.
And today we have Mike Whitaker, former FAA administrator on the podcast and we have so much to talk about, from Powered Lift to beyond Line of Sight with drones, to regulations to infrastructure, and how everything is starting to come together publicly and privately to enable and accelerate these transformations we're seeing in airspace. So Mike, first of all, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:55] Michael Whitaker: Great, John, thanks. Glad to be here.
[00:01:57] John Ramstead: Now, some things that people might not know about you is before the faa, you are truly just an aerospace veteran. You've been in the industry and I think there's been few leaders to step in to shape policy from a government side that come from industry. Like you did. You were the chief operating officer at Supernal, correct?
[00:02:17] Michael Whitaker: I was, yes. Spent most of my career in the airline industry, about 30 years overall in various aspects of it. So government has not been a major part of the career, but certainly an interesting part of the career.
[00:02:30] John Ramstead: Yeah. But I love that you brought that perspective in. But also inside of the faa, you were one of the people that we're all aware of, especially in our community, that spearheaded the SFAR on Powered Lift.
You did a lot of work on advanced PV loss beyond visual line of sight for drones and the rule making around that and standardization. And we just had somebody on who's in charge of strategy for the army for their entire drone program talking about actually how beneficial that is, even for their work inside of the dod.
And, you know, we're going to also dig into where the industry, you know, where the US Is leading and where there are some places where, you know, we got some work to do, I think, to unlock this potential of this vertical economy that's happening across airspace.
VTOL platforms, AI flight control systems, advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, rapid prototyping. There's these technologies that are all springing up that are foundational to rapid advancements that are going to affect humanity. Disaster relief, our war fighter, connecting communities that are more remote right now. There's just so many benefits. But here's maybe where I'd like to start, because when I think of the government and I think of the, you know, I used to be part of the government. I was in the Navy for quite a while. But you think of the government, you think of regulation, and you don't think of efficiency.
And you came out of supernal and you came out of the industry.
And I'd love to ask you this question is when you kind of think about, you know, these two pieces together, what are some of those things when it comes to what the FAA was doing that either stifled or was able to spark aviation progress? And what are some things that still need to be done?
[00:04:15] Michael Whitaker: So, great question, and I guess I would start, you know, safety and efficiency is what you'll find on the website of faa. And really, the FAA does two completely different and unique things. One is they are the safety regulators. So they make the rules, they make sure you're following the rules, they enforce the rules, and they keep the system safe. They certify airplanes.
And the second thing they do is they run the air traffic control system. And I know we're going to talk about that a little bit as we go into this. So I like to keep those two things in separate buckets because they're such different activities that I think they need to be treated sort of differently.
[00:04:55] John Ramstead: And when you're also talking safety, you're also talking about certifications.
Everybody building new airplanes has to certify to a certain level. And after certification and entry into service, you're still there. You're making sure everything is compliant. And if there's any upgrades or changes, there's a process.
Because, I mean, the number one thing is we want the air traveler to know that he can get on that airplane. They're going to get at their destination, and the only thing they get to do is enjoy their time in the new city.
[00:05:20] Michael Whitaker: I mean, as you know, the system is incredibly complex. There are different kinds of actors. But anybody who's involved in that system is regulated by the faa. So if you're a pilot, a mechanic, a flight, flight school, air traffic controllers, airlines, manufacturing, they all have a set of rules. And the FAA's role is to make sure everybody's following those rules and try to keep those rules up to date and keep up with technology. So that's really, I think, the right way to look at it.
[00:05:47] John Ramstead: And in that. So between the safety and the efficiency, what are some things, you know, coming out of industry? Going into that role, were you able to affect some changes that allowed maybe a little more, I guess, efficiency, especially on the certification side, There's a lot of people in our community that are investing in building from EV tolls through XVTOLs, through. Through drone technology.
[00:06:12] Michael Whitaker: So. So I did two tours, two tours of duty at FAA. I was the deputy administrator from 2013 to 2016. And then in that role, I spent a lot of time on certification and efficiency initiatives. So part 23 is something that we developed during that time period to make it easier to have aircraft certified. I also spent a lot of time, I will say, pretty unsuccessfully, trying to make the air traffic system more efficient by getting rid of towers, for example, or staffing towers, and a midnight shift when there's no service scheduled into an airport, eliminating a job category called weather observers that still existed, even though we have a lot of technology, that means we don't really need weather observers anymore. And there was a lot of pushback on any initiative to try to streamline the nas. And someone told me that there's a saying that every VOR has a mother and every mother has a member of Congress. And if you try to mess with that vor, you're going to hear from somebody. And that is really true. So there's a lot of inefficiency that comes from, you know, how the system is overseen by Congress, if you will.
But, you know, it's been a struggle to try to. That's one of the things that holds back the air traffic modernization. It's a struggle to get rid of the old systems after you implement new systems and get them up and running.
[00:07:35] John Ramstead: Well. And I'd love to ask you this too, because you were the driver behind this SFAR for powered lift. So I'd love from your words to describe what that is and what made that possible.
[00:07:45] Michael Whitaker: You were there, so I'm going to give credit where credit's due. There was a head of the safety organization named David Bolter who really had the vision for both the SFAR and the BV loss rule that we're going to talk about.
And he was doing some really great work when I, when I joined. The SFAR rule, I think does some really good things. It listened to industry.
It recognized that these AAM vehicles.
[00:08:12] John Ramstead: Are.
[00:08:12] Michael Whitaker: A completely new type of aircraft. So they're not fixed wings, they're not rotorcraft, and they needed their own rules. So the SFAR rule actually creates a third type of aircraft, which is the first that's happened since probably in 80 years since rotorcraft became a thing.
And it recognizes that you need to have some flexibility in how you train pilots, and you need to have flexibility in how you look at fuel minimums, depending on whether you're on wing or you're in a rotorcraft.
And it gives the operators the flexibility to develop their own policies and procedures that the FAA can approve for operations. So it's designed to be very flexible and allow this new type of operation to come into existence.
[00:08:59] John Ramstead: Yeah. And you know, that also addressed pilot training in there in the transition and some of the certification.
Here's a question for you because I've had this conversation with a couple people in the industry building a longer range veto with the fuel's in the wings, but it is a vertical takeoff. So is it part 23 or does it get certified under the helicopter? Because what that company is being told by the FAA, it's going to have to do the 50 foot drop test with no leakage, even though the fuel were in the wings, which is really designed for helicopter, and they can't get an answer. So it's kind of delaying their engineering. So when there is like some conflict or ambiguity, you know, you got a good FAA team, but you still can't get an answer. You know, having led that organization, what advice do you have with, you know, this community who's trying to move things forward but might hit some roadblocks?
[00:09:52] Michael Whitaker: Well, I think the faa, the SFAR rule came out really in recognition that folks were building part 23 aircraft, but you weren't really going to be able to operate these things very effectively. So we were sitting there watching these aircraft be built without a sort of operational rule to let you use them effectively.
So the FAA sort of switched its theory of the case, if you will, from part 23 to part 21 and came up with these different alternatives. It doesn't mean you're not going to run into some difficulty with some folks used to doing it the old way and you might have to kind of raise it up the Food chain, but it is designed to be a lot more flexible going forward.
[00:10:38] John Ramstead: Well, okay, so with that flexibility then you also got involved with. Well, I do want to say this though, just recognizing that, you know, the FAA saw this powered lift, the investment coming into this category.
I think there's been almost 200 companies now that we've been able to track that have some kind of viable product, either viable design or something flying. But the faa, to be able to move on that, to give some credibility and some credence and honestly breathe a breath of life into this whole community. Not only I think the enthusiasm in the organizations, but also investment into those organizations. So I just want to give you guys kudos. That was a job very well done.
[00:11:19] Michael Whitaker: Well, and I think to your earlier point, what is a regulation in the airspace? By law, everything is prohibited unless it's specifically permitted by some rule. So when you come up with some new technology, whether it's advanced air mobility or drones, the regulations aren't designed to be punitive or restrictive. They're actually designed to enable you to operate because you can't operate without some sort of a rule to govern that. So a lot of the regulation that's happened in the past decade or so has been enabling regulations and like Park 23, efforts to reduce the burden of getting an aircraft certified. So I think it's an important distinction that you flagged early on.
[00:12:04] John Ramstead: Yeah.
And you guys have also worked with in working toward BV loss, which is beyond visual line of sight.
I'd love from you your perspective of the faa. Just describe what that is for people that might not be familiar with it and why it's such a focus and importance right now. Mike?
[00:12:21] Michael Whitaker: Well, you know, it's interesting I mentioned I had been deputy about 10, 12 years earlier and when I started that role, drones were not an issue. They were not anywhere on the table. And by the time I left three years later, it was about half of what I was doing. So they really kind of came out of nowhere.
And you know, it's interesting because these are small vehicles that are replacing often dangerous functions. So you think about bridge inspection, windmill inspection, search and rescue.
So it's your usual risk case is a little bit different. You're not just evaluating, hey, is this thing going to fall on somebody's head? But you're also looking at the fact that over a lot of these vehicles are saving lives because we know people died every year doing those types of dangerous and often dirty jobs.
So the FAA has tried to be forward leaning into allowing the drones and over time, what we've seen is not very many risks that we were concerned about or hadn't anticipated. So they are not presenting unusual risks or risks that we hadn't presented anticipated. So the BV loss rule is designed to create a framework to allow waivers on a massive scale to allow operations like food delivery, medicine delivery, delivery of goods and services at scale while the rule is being put together.
That rule, frankly, was ready to go at the end of last year.
And then you may recall, there was this hysteria in New Jersey over drones. Everywhere you look there were drones and it was at the Chinese.
[00:14:05] John Ramstead: Hey, hey, what's the truth behind that, Mike? I'm sure you're in the know, you.
[00:14:09] Michael Whitaker: Know, I can't, I can't, I can't add anything to it except there, there really was no there, there. I think there were a lot of people with drones out looking for the drones, and then people were seeing the drones looking for the drones, and then, you know, I mean, if it's, it's. It was. I had not seen an event like that before.
It was quite interesting. And from where I was sitting, all the members of Congress who had been pushing us to hurry up and get that BV loss rule all of a sudden were asking, where'd all these drones come from and whose idea was it to let this happen? So I think that stalled the issuance of that rule at that time, but we certainly expect it to be out soon. It's a good rule and it's going to, it's going to facilitate an awful lot of delivery that you're seeing, for example, in places like Texas on a pretty large scale already. And I think that's just going to really take off once that rules out.
[00:15:02] John Ramstead: Well, yeah, and while like China has a rule like that in place and they're scaling it up and using it to great effect, they're using it to actually start, prove out and in this race toward advanced air mobility deployment, actually.
So what do you think is holding us back at this point in how urgent does this need to be for us?
[00:15:21] Michael Whitaker: Well, we don't typically tend to benchmark our safety regimes with China, so I think we have a different approach and different expectations.
I think once this BV loss rule comes out, I think it's going to be one of those things where it seems like it's taking forever and all of a sudden it's everywhere and that's going to be that phenomenon. Advanced air mobility is a different set of issues.
I mean, really, you could have built these aircraft just under part 23 without any additional sort of regulatory structure.
But as you are well aware of, the battery challenges tend to be really one of the long poles in the tent. How does this get to commercial viability and ultimately cost is going to be a challenge because I know from my experience in this space the, the target price for these aircraft is a lot lower than what's happening in reality. So there are some, still some challenges, but it's clearly going to get there. We're going to start to see these vehicles in the market and then hopefully over time, like many new technologies, that price will come down and you'll have wider acceptance.
[00:16:33] John Ramstead: Yeah. Now in this, you know, we're talking about advanced air mobility. So there's a lot of both technologies and platforms. It's a core, quite a spectrum.
How do you think about advanced air mobility and where do you think it's going to find its first beachheads? We've heard a lot about air taxis.
You know, drone is, you know, all the way down to drone as first responder, I think regional connectivity, you know, between urban areas and out into the country with longer range VTOLs, we're calling those XVTOLs extended range VTOLs past 100 miles, 100 to 1,000 miles of actual range to logistics. So, you know, if you could put on like your prognosticator hat, three to five years, where do you think this is going to get traction the first and why?
[00:17:19] Michael Whitaker: Well, I think, you know, I always start by saying, and this was from some of the design discussions I was having when I was in the private sector.
How many miracles are you going to try to get certified? Right. Because you have a lot of new technologies that are at play here. You've got electric propulsion, which is a new technology.
You've got this transition from rotorcraft to fixed wing, which we know has, has been a challenge for decades for the industry.
You've got automation, you've got autonomous operations.
So I think the businesses that are going to have the most success are probably trying to solve for fewer miracles than, than some of the others. So fixed wing electric seems like a very viable business model. It seems like car or even hybrid electric. Hybrid electric.
[00:18:09] John Ramstead: I think that big thing, hybrid electric in these vehicles has a, it's basically an almost an off the shelf or a novel technology, but fairly off the shelf components into an existing certified, you know, platform. Right.
[00:18:23] Michael Whitaker: I think I'm a big fan of that, a big fan of electric. Although the range is, you know, a challenge, but less of a challenge with fixed wing and cargo would be a really excellent use case because, you know, the risk profile is, is a lot different. And you've got some companies that are focusing on cargo.
Autonomy is certainly, you know, far out there, but it'll probably happen in cargo before it happens in passengers. So it really kind of depends on, on, you know, how, you know, how much technology you're trying to push through.
[00:18:57] John Ramstead: I think everyone's with the autonomy. We interviewed the CEO of Elroy Air and, and also Terror Dynamics. Right. And there's other ones, but you know, they have some great autonomous cargo solutions and there's more coming online. But that's a perfect example of what you just talked about.
[00:19:13] Michael Whitaker: And we've of course seen autonomy in aircraft for decades and drones that operate without pilots that are in the aircraft for decades. So you know, it's a lot easier problem to solve than self driving cars. Right, because you've got more decisional time, you've got more space.
So it's certainly coming. But public acceptance is going to be a challenge in that space.
But I think the early use cases we're going to see will be airport transportation in crowded cities, that type of thing, higher end of the market adaptation, and particularly until the price comes down. I would love to see some solutions for regional air service. I think regional air service in this country has been decimated since, since deregulation all the way back in the 70s. So it would be great to find new ways to utilize the 5,000 airports that we have in this country.
So I'm long term, I'm an optimist that there'll be some, some great solutions that come into play.
[00:20:13] John Ramstead: What would a solution like that look like for you? Like, okay, hey, they're onto something. If what was happening?
[00:20:19] Michael Whitaker: Well, you know, the, a lot of the people in this space will tell you that until you get to autonomous operations, it's hard to make the numbers work.
Until you get a vehicle down in the million dollar range, it's hard to make the numbers work. But you could certainly, you could certainly imagine a business model that operated not that much differently than an Uber or a Lyft where you could book flights and they could come to a convenient airport in a pretty small vehicle to take you where you want to go. I mean, that would be the, that would be the ideal. I live in Vermont. It takes me an hour and a half to get to a class C airport. It takes me, you know, two hours and 20 minutes to get to a class B airport. Driving, you know, that's, you know, obviously the most dangerous leg of the trip Too. Right. So you'd love to see some air service that could, that could shorten that out.
[00:21:05] John Ramstead: Yeah, I think there's a big use case there for not only regional air mobility, but also connecting communities. We were talking with Danny Sittenham from Helijet. It's up in Canada, but you know, the remoteness of some of the indigenous populations up there, their lack of access to services beyond the range of a helicopter. But for there, they don't have airports that an airplane can really fly into easily.
But having that regional connectivity of something in this VTOL space, something can take off like a helicopter, but can go fly 500 to 1,000 miles with a decent payload, can completely change from urban mobility or regional mobility like you're talking about, to even remote areas like that.
[00:21:48] Michael Whitaker: Yeah, I think it would change the demographics of the country in a pretty significant way and I think in a positive way. And you would insert a lot of vitality into some regions that are a little marginalized now.
[00:22:00] John Ramstead: So now, big question for you, atc.
ATC has been in the news a lot. You know, I've been a pilot for 35 years, so I've been working with air traffic control for a very long time and it's very mature. And I know exactly what to expect taking off from an airport if I'm filing IFR and flying or flying vfr. But now we're looking at adding on a whole layer of aircraft that are flying from drones from up to a couple hundred feet to VTOLs, up to maybe 1,000ft to longer range. VTOLs are going to be using the existing airspace class, you know, ABC airspace.
There's going to be hundreds, if not thousands of more aircraft thrown into the skies over the next few years. So communicate. I'm just thinking about even the air taxi environment, you know, flying around LA with LAX and the helicopter traffic that's already there. So what do you think has to happen for ATC to keep up with and provide the service that's going to be needed as this vertical lift category when she starts to mature? Mike, I'd love your thoughts on that.
[00:23:06] Michael Whitaker: Well, I'll start with the punchline.
I think that the only hope to actually get to a more modern ATC system is to move the ATC to a separate independent agency to get it away from Congress, frankly, so that decisions can be made based on what the system needs and not, you know, if you look at the current system, it was designed to be really inefficient. 21 high altitude centers spread throughout the United States.
We've got a faa, has a research facility in New Jersey. They've got a campus in Oklahoma City. They've got a new technology incubator in Texas. It all gets decided by Congress how to spread it out as far and wide as you can get. And any attempt to take out old technology or try to consolidate facilities meets vociferous opposition in Congress. So if you think about the base consolidation that happened, you know, 30 years.
[00:24:04] John Ramstead: Where does that, where does that opposition come from?
[00:24:06] Michael Whitaker: It comes from anybody that's going to lose a job in their district.
And, you know, it's back to my VOR comment. You know, there's just. There will always be someone who says, you know, that I've been using that VOR for 50 years and it's not safe if you don't have it there. And so the safety card gets played right away. And so Instead of having two layers of redundancies of systems, you've got like six layers from DMEs to VORs to ILS to GPS approaches, and none of the old stuff ever goes away. And you have towers that are in airports that don't need towers. And I'm sure you've seen this plenty of times, a lot of lonely controllers out there looking at airfields that can have one or two movements an hour, and you just don't really need to have towers there. So you have that very inefficient management approach. And you need to have a more focused approach that really focuses on the congested airports, the core 30 airports, putting, you know, consolidating facilities, building automation tools for controllers, you know, and frankly, getting off the voice and over to data for all these routine transmissions that we all make.
[00:25:16] John Ramstead: Yeah. What would it take for that to happen? Is this current administration, do you think, predisposed to move this into an agency could be a little bit more nimble or how would that. I mean, privatization is an option, but I don't think that would ever get through Congress.
[00:25:32] Michael Whitaker: But, yeah, I mean, last Trump administration, they tried the privatization approach.
That didn't succeed. I think for this very reason that members didn't want to let go of control of, of of what they have in their districts.
It's a lot easier to just set up a separate government agency than to try to privatize. You don't have to figure out what happens to pensions. You don't have to figure out who owns what. You can just set up a separate government agency and give it a board of directors of people who know what they're talking about and let them make decisions like a normal entity would in the private sector, but it can still be a government agency. But frankly, the FAA's number one job should always be safety. And since the FAA oversees the air traffic organization, it ought to be separate anyway. So you're not regulating yourself, which is an awkward situation.
[00:26:20] John Ramstead: Yeah. What technologies do you think need to come into this? You know, think about it. It's low altitude, it's going to be much higher density with everything coming in. So what do you think needs to happen in addition to what the infrastructure we have now to augment this and allow the safe flight?
[00:26:38] Michael Whitaker: Well, I think we, you know, we have an infrastructure that has to be upgraded no matter what you do. So the comms infrastructure, radars, things of that nature. But I think the, I think the key, what you want to achieve is you want to be able to operate in IFR conditions at the same rate as you would have in VFR conditions.
And you can do that if you have, for example, ADS B. If you have ADS B in your aircraft, you can see other aircraft in your aircraft. So you're pushing out some of that surveillance to the pilot in the aircraft. And so you can keep closer separation coming into IFR conditions if you have that visibility in the cockpit. So that would, that would be one example. And I think, you know, automation tools that effectively allow you to file and fly. And you're only really going to have interactions with ATC if there's a deviation from, from that anticipated plan, you know, for non.
[00:27:32] John Ramstead: Well, yeah, and I might want to file and fly literally from my backyard, right. To pick up an IFR clearance to go to the airport or file ifr because I can go high enough from a field where I picked up a life flight victim in Montana, and I want to fly to a hospital in Denver, but I want to access the, you know, the, you know, the high altitude jetways or, you know, low altitude jetways.
[00:27:55] Michael Whitaker: And you shouldn't have to pick up your cell phone and call a number to get your clearance. Right. I mean, we should be able to.
[00:28:00] John Ramstead: Do this or take off and fly special VFR until you can get on the radio to a center controller to get a clearance. Because then you got to stay below the clouds, dodging the clouds until you get that clearance.
[00:28:14] Michael Whitaker: And I actually think, John, the technology is the easy part because I think we all know how it ought to be. Having been in the system, I think it's, it's getting the ability to execute on that. So, for example, if you're going to, if you want to build out a new system. It's a multi year process right now. FAA waits every year to see if the government's going to shut down, are they going to give us our budget. They can't do long term planning because of that sort of stop and start cycle.
And you're not able to sort of make execution decisions based on what's best. You have to worry about what the ramifications are going to be from the Hill. So I think getting it away from, you know, the board of directors is effectively 535 people. The House and Senate, they need to be gone and you need to have a different board of directors that is focused on what the system needs and executing that is it.
[00:29:02] John Ramstead: You know, a question for you, Mike. Is there an initiative underway? Is there anything this community, Hangar X community can do to reach out to say, hey, this is happening and we support it, we want it to happen?
[00:29:14] Michael Whitaker: I think there's a lot of support for the administration's call for a new system. And this last budget had a $12 billion allocation for the FAA, which is extraordinary. But it's going to be more than that. And again, we have to get it away from Congress making the decision about how each of those dollars is spent.
It's probably going to cost 30 or 40 million dollars to build a new system. So it's really 12 billion. That's going to help us with, with radars and the comms network and the like.
But there's a long way to go and at some point you have to start getting specific about some of these changes that not everybody's going to like. Right. So if there's consolidation of facilities, that's going to raise issues with the controllers, that's going to raise issues with members of Congress who are going to lose facilities in their districts. So some of those hard decisions have to have to be made.
[00:30:07] John Ramstead: Yeah, well, thank you for that. And I'd like your perspective on this too. I know you've done a lot of work in India, you're currently on the Indigo board and a good friend of mine, Salim, was actually ran Indigo, was there from its inception.
But what do you see as the role for, let's say US led companies in manufacturing as we're developing solutions for advanced air mobility?
What are some of those opportunities globally, especially some of these markets where there's some real gaps in mobility and there's a real need?
[00:30:41] Michael Whitaker: Well, I'll give you a really an interesting example.
If you're talking about advanced air mobility, I think if anything, the use cases are even more compelling in cities like Delhi or Bangkok because the travel times are so unpredictable and long to get to the airport.
So I think those markets will be really appropriate markets for advanced air mobility.
Drone delivery, on the other hand, is a different situation.
In the US Drone delivery companies often talk about a target of a target price of $5 per delivery, and that number starting to come down a little bit to $4 per delivery. In India, that number is $0.70, because $0.70 is the current cost of delivery because India has a very, very extensive delivery system that's based on people on bicycles. So you're competing in a very, very different market and have a very different price point. So I think in that sense, bullish on AEM and less so on the drone delivery.
[00:31:43] John Ramstead: No, that makes total sense. Now, let me ask you this.
This vertical economy, with all these, some of these seven pillars that we talked about, it's happening. There is a transformation in aerospace that's going on right now. What do you think is going to allow the US to lead in the vertical economy? What are some of the decisions, priorities, initiatives that we need to have right now, both publicly and privately, that we need to be executing on?
[00:32:13] Michael Whitaker: Well, I think the good news is we have the best long storied history of aerospace and in aviation in this country. So we have that infrastructure already in place. I think the regulatory pieces are coming together. The technology's still dragging, I think, on the military front, and this is out of my wheelhouse, but clearly the role of drones in the modern military is something that has been underappreciated.
So there's a lot of work to do in that space, but I don't see any reason why we can't be in the forefront in all of those areas.
[00:32:54] John Ramstead: Well, I completely agree with that. And there's a lot of great things happening here in this country right now. And as we wrap up, Mike, I think with your time in industry and then the faa, I mean, our community are people that are passionate about this vertical economy, about aerospace, about the transformations that are going on right now.
I think from somebody that's been the inside of the machine, that does create this safe environment, which is critical.
Right. There's no such thing as a minimum viable product in an airplane. It's either certified or not.
[00:33:25] Michael Whitaker: Right, Right.
[00:33:26] John Ramstead: It's either going to be. We know the FAA knows it's going to be safe, and we'll let you sell it, which is great. That's the way it should be. But love, just any final thoughts that you have for our whole audience just stepping out of this role as director of the FAA administrator.
[00:33:41] Michael Whitaker: Well, I think I'll end hopefully where I began, which is on safety. And I think one of the things I've learned that I didn't appreciate when I was in industry for three decades was how safety management systems have developed, how they've been embraced by many segments of our industry, airlines particularly, being a lead.
And a lot of startups and startups that I've been involved with have built in safety management systems into their.
Into their business model that, you know, that is what keeps us safe. And none of these technologies are going to. Are going to have viability if we can't keep them safe. So I think we've seen what happens if you don't have a good safety management system, and I think we just need to keep spreading the word. That is our motor oil for this industry.
[00:34:29] John Ramstead: I would concur. That's what allows everything to keep working and moving forward. And you know what? The public trust in this new technology is absolutely critical to adoption.
[00:34:38] Michael Whitaker: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:34:40] John Ramstead: 100%. Well, Mike, you think. Thank you for your service at the FAA and for your time here. This has been great, and you're welcome to come back on anytime. There's actually a couple ideas I had as you talked that if you come back, I'd be willing to either do an episode or be part of a panel. But we'd love to have you on here and just share your views with our audience.
[00:34:58] Michael Whitaker: Great. I appreciate the opportunity and thank you for your service.
[00:35:02] John Ramstead: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Have a great one.
