WASHINGTON, DC, February 16, 2010 – During its Annual Industry Review and Market Outlook Briefing today, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) called attention to policies that will be instrumental in ensuring a robust recovery of the general aviation manufacturing industry.

GAMA’s President and CEO, Pete Bunce, expressed the Association’s continued strong support for air traffic control modernization through coordinated government-industry development of NextGen and the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) initiative.  “The FAA made important progress in the implementation of NextGen in 2009 with initial deployment of the ground infrastructure and the publication of technical standard orders (TSOs) for Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B),” said Bunce.  “Now, one of the crucial factors in the acceleration of this modernization effort is to equip aircraft with the avionics needed to utilize these new satellite-based technologies.  We see a public-private partnership to incentivize equipage as fundamental to achieving NextGen safety, capacity, and environmental benefits at an earlier date.”

During the press conference, Bunce also stressed the industry’s commitment to partner with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  “Over the last year, the general aviation community has worked cooperatively with TSA to make tremendous improvements to the original Large Aircraft Security Program proposed at the end of 2008.  We call on the TSA to publish a supplemental rulemaking proposal in the very near future that properly assesses security risks and reflects appropriate mitigations.”

Bunce concluded, “As we work our way out of this severe recession, pro-growth, pro-manufacturing measures and policies, such as bonus depreciation and improving credit availability, will be crucial to allow our industry to bring back lost jobs.  The right policies will have a profound impact on the success of thousands of companies and communities that rely on general aviation through the more than one million jobs that our industry supports.”