Airport Regulatory Forum

As professionals in the industry know, airports are highly regulated entities. During the session, "Airport Regulatory Forum," airport operators got to hear from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Acting Associate Administrator Winsome Lenfert and Transport Canada's Chief, Flight Standards-Standards Branch, Pierre Ruel, as they discussed ongoing regulatory reform efforts from both agencies.

Lenfert mentioned that the top issue at the moment for the FAA is addressing the increasing number of wrong surface landings at airports. The FAA is working to assemble a team to mitigate these risks associated with taking off and landing at airports. In Canada, Ruel noted that Transport Canada is working to engage stakeholders on their regulatory efforts as well as consider the social economic factors in regulating smaller airports.

"Do we regulate the small airports?" Ruel rhetorically asked. "Or, keep regulations to the large airports? Where do we draw the line?"

From environmental and policy initiatives to airport funding, airports also had the opportunity to weigh in with these regulators on the challenges facing their airport operations.

Noise was an issue brought up from airports in both the United States and Canada. Lenfert admitted FAA could have done a better job educating local communities on noise and the roll out of NextGen.  Learning from the past, they are now doing more outreach with communities and working with the airport industry on how to best communicate noise with the public and local communities.

"As long as you have airports, you are going to have noise," said Lenfert. "But, we need to make sure we are having those conversations on noise."

Similarly, Ruel stated that NAV Canada is doing everything they can to undertake how to best mitigate the noise problem surrounding airports.

The engaging and informative session highlighted the number of regulations facing North American airports and both agencies stressed the need for collaboration with their airport partners to address these challenges in the near future.

"When we are working together I think it makes it a lot stronger for communication on safety issues," said Lenfert.