Testimony of James A. Viola
President and CEO, General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA)
U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Aviation, Space, and Innovation
“Close Calls: Improving Safety Across the National Airspace System”
June 23, 2026
Chairman Moran, Ranking Member Duckworth, and members of the Subcommittee on Aviation, Space, and Innovation, on behalf of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), thank you for inviting me to testify on how aviation safety can be enhanced through technology in the air and on the ground. The general aviation sector is a leader in safety innovation, and I am privileged to represent general aviation manufacturers and maintenance providers who are at the forefront of these efforts to prevent close calls and safety incidents. While I firmly believe flying is safe, recent events have justifiably raised the public’s concern, and GAMA appreciates the subcommittee’s focus on this topic.
I have an extensive background in aviation that is relevant to the conversation about improving aviation safety including addressing recent close call incidents. My career began with the United States Army, with much of my military flying done in the 82nd Airborne Division and in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. My final military assignment was as Division Chief for Army Aviation, Current Operations in the Pentagon. After my military career, I served at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as a Senior Executive in the position of acting Deputy Associate Administrator of Aviation Safety, and Director of General Aviation Safety Assurance. In this role, I was responsible for maintaining consistency and standardization in the application of safety oversight activities for the general aviation community.
I am also strong proponent of general aviation and a frequent user of its products as a pilot in the U.S. airspace. I fly an R-44 Robinson Helicopter and an AG-5B Tiger airplane. I also hold airline transport pilot ratings for helicopters and airplanes and am a dual-rated certificated flight instructor, having flown more than 80 make and models of aircraft. I have accumulated over 8,000 flight hours, which includes 1,100 hours with night-vision goggles.
I was appointed the President and CEO of GAMA in 2025. GAMA is an international trade association representing more than 130 companies across the general aviation manufacturing and services sectors. Its members include the world’s leading manufacturers of general aviation airplanes, rotorcraft, advanced air mobility powered-lift aircraft, engines, avionics, components, and related technologies. GAMA members are also providers of maintenance and repair services, fixed-based operations, pilot and maintenance training, and aircraft management companies. In the U.S., general aviation supports $339 billion in total economic output annually and 1.3 million total jobs[1]. General aviation contributes to the economies of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with GAMA companies having facilities in 49 states.
General Aviation and a Multi-Faceted Approach to Safety and Culture
Given my experience in the military, at the FAA, and as a general aviation pilot of both fixed-wing airplanes and rotorcraft, I want to again express my condolences to the families of those affected by the tragic accident at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January of 2025 as well as others impacted by recent accidents and incidents. These events are a reminder that we all must strive for a stronger aviation safety culture and better outcomes. This includes building on past efforts and prioritizing the ongoing work of government and private entities that collaborate to improve aviation safety.
GAMA applauds the commitment and leadership of the Senate to respond to the tragic accident at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last year. GAMA values the work being done to foster technologies developed by aviation manufacturers to advance safety and operational improvements. As the Senate and House continue their work on their response, GAMA stands ready to be a resource on technology developments, certification, and related issues to further progress important aviation safety initiatives.
GAMA is focused on helping foster aviation safety and I would like to highlight several of our initiatives in this area. GAMA and our members continue to support the development and implementation of Safety Management Systems (SMS) for manufacturers. A mature SMS is a significant contributor to a positive culture that drives a continuous focus on safety. Ahead of the May 2027 deadline for implementation of an SMS for production and type certificate holders,[2] manufacturers have made meaningful progress implementing SMS, building upon voluntary SMS initiatives that our industry has undertaken over the past few decades to meet international obligations. Our members have approached building an SMS with a spirit of collaboration, including with operators, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and suppliers, learning from challenges and sharing how to continuously evolve a positive safety culture. We appreciate the work of this Committee in supporting these efforts, including for the FAA.
GAMA is also a longstanding leader, along with industry colleagues, of the General Aviation Joint Safety Committee (GAJSC).[3] This is a public-private partnership, in collaboration with the FAA, that since 1997 has sought to reduce the general aviation accident rate and improve aviation safety through data analysis and identification of systemic issues. We also support similar work under the United States Helicopter Safety Team (USHST)[4], a companion effort between industry and the FAA focused on reducing the rate of rotorcraft accidents.
An early initiative under the GAJSC was to facilitate policies for providing improved situational awareness to general aviation pilots. Work in the late 1990s placed focus on the FAA facilitating digital display equipment installation, specifically to provide terrain data to pilots to prevent Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT).[5] Providing pilots with the ability to see the terrain in which they operate around, as well as obstacles, using installed displays and portable devices has resulted in a reduction in the CFIT fatal accident rate in general aviation operations by approximately 80 percent. This is without the FAA taking any regulatory action but instead enabling use of installed and portable equipment in general aviation operations. The GAJSC and USHST have continued to make progress on issues like pilot medical fitness, maintenance practices, risks associated with accidental flight into instrument meteorological conditions (UIMC), and midair collision risks (MAC).
GAMA also works with our member companies to facilitate and support conferences that advance safety and technology adoption. For example, last week my staff and I were privileged to help facilitate and attend the annual FAA and European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) International Aviation Safety Conference where regulators and industry met collaboratively to discuss and advance aviation manufacturing and safety. The conference agenda focused on certification and validation of aircraft and systems, including how to manage equipage approvals across U.S. and foreign states of design to address mandates such as for new datalink communications, 25-hour cockpit voice recorders, and radio altimeter systems. The conference also discussed work over the past decade to equip aircraft with Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) Out across U.S. domestic airspace and in foreign jurisdictions and Runway Overrun Awareness and Alerting System (ROAAS) to learn lessons that can guide future work, as well as establishing appropriate level of involvement, and utilization of bilateral partners, especially amongst the four leading States of Design: Brazil, Canada, the European Union, and the United States.
In the wake of the accident at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the aviation industry collectively came together to form the Modern Skies Coalition[6]. GAMA is a proud Steering Committee member along with others assembled here today. These stakeholders, including airlines, operators, manufacturers, labor unions, and airports are working collectively and collaboratively to support increased aviation safety through air traffic system modernization. We remain a strong proponent of the coalition’s efforts to support targeted investments in critical aviation technologies and infrastructure which will provide certainty for the aviation sector in the near and long-term. GAMA and its members thank policymakers for their past support of this initiative and continue to urge congressional focus to support further investments for the entire aviation sector and flying public.
General Aviation Safety Status Today
There are many factors that play into general aviation statistics on safety, culture, and operations that merit being highlighted. First, general aviation aircraft are well-equipped with safety enhancing technology thanks to a strong array of products in the marketplace today. The U.S. general aviation and on-demand Part 135 accident rate has improved over the past dozen years from 1.12 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours of flight time to 2025 when the FAA preliminary estimate of 0.58 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours of flight time. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will provide the official update for last year in the next few months. [7]
The improvements in safety have not come from one initiative, but from newer and safer aircraft being introduced into the fleet, the introduction of risk management into primary flight training through the deployment of new Airmen Certification Standards (ACS), and the continued investment in new technologies, including the mandate for ADS-B Out equipage and enabling improved situational awareness in the cockpit.
As of January 1, 2026, over 171,000 aircraft have been equipped with ADS-B Out equipment with approximately 160,000 of those aircraft being in the general aviation fleet.[8] This is important because ADS-B Out enables the use of ADS-B In application.
FAA statistics on ADS-B In equipage show that somewhere between 143,170 and 158,358 general aviation aircraft leverage this solution through installed equipment.[9] This includes aircraft that receive ADS-B Out messages from other aircraft or transmitted from the ground to receive ADS-B In on either the 1090 MHz or 978 MHz spectrum link, or both.[10] Basically, of those aircraft that are equipped with installed ADS-B Out for operation in certain airspace, the vast number also made the independent choice to equip with ADS-B In to take advantage of the safety benefits from seeing other traffic. Additionally, many also chose to leverage FAA’s uplinked Flight Information Services Broadcast (FIS-B) data using the ADS-B surveillance ground infrastructure to provide weather and other safety information
Notably, these statistics do not reflect the other general aviation aircraft that access ADS-B in situational awareness applications via electronic flight bags (EFBs) also referred to as portable devices. Widely used by general aviation pilots both by those with installed ADS-B In displays and those without an installed display system, EFBs and portable devices are used for a variety of situational awareness and other purposes including access to navigational charts, checklists, operations manuals, weather, and for algorithmic functions like weight and balance, performance, and fuel calculations, as well as terrain information and other traffic.[11] They can be portable, attached to a mounting device, or have a receiver installed on the aircraft which transmits the uplinked data, such as ADS-B Out, to the tablet using Bluetooth or other capability.[12]
While the statistics and technologies highlighted illustrate an array of solutions found in the general aviation marketplace, there are some unique challenges for specific aircraft in their quest to utilize and derive the overall safety benefit from everyone having ADS-B In. This underscores the importance of solutions like EFBs and portable devices which can provide flexibility and utility while maintaining safety. Any policy effort in this area must reflect the reality of general aviation’s leadership in ADS-B Out and ADS-B In equipage over the past dozen plus years.
We are also starting to hear conversations about “electronic conspicuity” (EC) and its potential role in the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). The “EC” term describes a broad umbrella of technologies, but most are rooted in ADS-B and the capabilities brought to the aviation industry by making aircraft more electronically conspicuous, hence the term. The initial focus has been on how to use a portable ADS-B Out solution for aircraft that cannot practically install ADS-B Out equipment, such as those without electrical systems or where the installation simply is not practical. Congress directed the focus on this work in Sec. 810 and 906 of the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act and we are eagerly looking forward to the release of the reports called for in the law.
These initial efforts have grown and now encompass efforts sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to explore the use of EC for drone integration. The FAA has advanced a proposal as well as the Part 108 Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) rulemaking project. Additionally, foreign aviation regulators including Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom are fleshing out what EC will mean to them, sometimes based on ADS-B and the protected aviation spectrum while others are using cell phone technologies and unprotected spectrum.
For GAMA, EC may serve a role to improve see-and-avoid between pilots of manned aircraft. More work will be needed to flesh out the potential role of EC for purposes of UAS integration, including establishing a certification threshold appropriate for an application that is more complex than what was originally envisioned for ADS-B Out and ADS-B In technologies.
An Illustration of Technology in General Aviation
Numerous general aviation ADS-B In applications exist today. FAA—working with industry—has enabled several applications focused on enhancing situational awareness of the pilots including cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) and related applications for airborne operations as well as those that improve surface and runway safety using GPS and ADS-B Out generated data.
The safety benefits they yield are important to aviation safety and traffic management in the air and on the ground and in many cases build off the data and situational awareness provided by ADS-B. This includes applications that further runway and taxiway safety, situational awareness and collision avoidance, and improved delivery of clearances.
Other technologies are also provided by these avionics system vendors to facilitate the reduction of runway incursions, runway excursions, avoiding other aircraft while airborne, and providing pilots with an improved weather picture. And, of course, they also make traditional collision avoidance systems such as TCAS I, and TCAS II as well as Traffic Awareness Systems, technologies still in wide use across the fleet today and complemented by ADS-B Out and In systems as well as next generation Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) technologies.
These initiatives focus on many different areas from:
- Precise enroute spacing yielding better airspace management;
- 3-dimensional depictions of traffic obstacles, terrain, and flight plan overlay during challenging weather as an aid to pilots; and
- Runway technologies increasing flight crew awareness and providing alerts during taxi, takeoff, and landing helps to address runway incursions caused by nearby airborne aircraft, aircraft on the ground, and ground vehicles.
We are also looking for more effective communication between controllers and pilots at more airports in the aviation system. Mobile clearance technology builds on work at 78 larger airports that now have the capacity via a terminal data link to provide pre-departure clearances on installed systems. While installed systems have been embraced in the general aviation fleet with close to 6,300 general aviation airplanes and business jets[13] having voluntarily upgraded their aircraft with this capability to utilize these services at the 78 airports over the past half-a-dozen years, as of last week. The mobile clearance program shows how this same capability can be brought to portable devices and using over-the-air internet to facilitate similar functions for the NAS and the larger general aviation fleet.
This technology enables clearances to be delivered digitally, instead of via voice communication, reducing read back and hear back errors. These advancements enable safer and more efficient traffic management in a more consistent and precise manner, and we appreciate the partnership of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) with this work. We appreciate the support of the U.S. Congress in supporting this program (Section 614) in the recent FAA reauthorization and we have high hopes for this program and its expansion.
Challenges with Innovation Reaching the General Aviation Marketplace
Furthermore, this discussion on new technology underscores how critical FAA certification and its work with other regulatory authorities plays in the adoption of technology and safety into the general aviation cockpit. Simply put, if the FAA does not have the focus, resources, workforce capacity, and technological expertise to provide appropriate oversight and approval, it may inhibit safety enhancements from reaching the marketplace in a timely manner. Modernization of FAA certification processes to keep pace with innovation enables safety through new products and technologies and is critical given the current state of innovation and other regulatory demands that are increasing. Additionally, depending in the policy path chosen, certifying and equipping aircraft with new airborne technologies will take time, making it essential that the direction that the United States will take, especially if there are changes needed to aircraft and their systems, is known years prior to any requirement entering into effect.
Another important component to developing and certifying safety enhancing equipment is FAA participation and collaboration with industry and global standards bodies to achieve technical consensus for new products and technologies. Development of these standards takes considerable effort and can vary based on the complexity of the subject matter. In addition, like FAA policy and guidance, these standards must be routinely reviewed and amended to keep pace with change. For this reason, continuous engagement by both industry and FAA in standards development for certification is a key component of getting critical safety technologies into the general aviation cockpit. The FAA must remain an active partner with standards bodies, other regulators, and industry partners to help promote harmonization of standards for products in the global marketplace.
Once a new safety technology has met the appropriate standards and is certified by the FAA, product availability moves to the forefront. Like other industries that are complex, the aviation sector has experienced challenges associated with its supply chain. First, FAA certification of safety enhancement is followed by production approval of the product and individual parts and equipment. As such, if there is a supply chain impediment with a part it can impact the ability of the broader safety enhancement getting to the marketplace. Second, aviation supply chain and operations are international, so broader domestic or international trade policies can potentially impact or constrain the marketplace.
Installation of equipment is the final step in this process. Aircraft are routinely serviced and inspected to ensure safety and airworthiness. Today, many of GAMA’s member companies who work in the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) space share that they are nearing or at capacity with existing work. For this reason, any additional mandatory or voluntary equipage requirements put forward by policymakers or regulators will necessitate coordination and facilitation with the MRO community to be implemented effectively. As an example, the FAA’s ADS-B Out equipage rebate program[14] that provided an incentive for installation was coordinated with the MRO community and avionics providers to effectively manage parts supply and maintenance capacity. Moving forward, this example serves as a model but also highlights the need for collaboration amongst government and industry to enable safety solutions to reach the cockpit.
Conclusion
On behalf of GAMA and its membership, I am hopeful that the safety efforts on behalf of our industry, the overview of general aviation adoption, and the examples of current technologies and challenges are beneficial to understanding how our sector is working to address close calls and improve safety. This includes continued collaboration and engagement with regulators, technical experts, policymakers, and industry on both a domestic and international basis to build upon and advance the solutions highlighted. General aviation manufacturers and maintenance providers will also continue to design, certify, and install new safety technologies that aim to address the challenges we collectively all desire to address. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look forward to elaborating on these topics and addressing any questions you may have.
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[1] Contribution of General Aviation to the U.S. Economy, PwC, February 2025
[2] Aircraft Certification Safety and Accountability Act (P.L. 116-260)
[5] General Aviation (GA) Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) Joint
Safety Analysis Team (JSAT) Final Report
[7] FAA on-demand Part 135 and general aviation survey
[8] AC 20-165B – Airworthiness Approval of Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast OUT Systems
[9] General Aviation and Part 135 Activity Surveys | Federal Aviation Administration
[10] ibid
[11] AC_91-78A – Use of Electronic Flight Bags
[12] ibid
[13] FAA Data Communications Implementation Team (DCIT) Briefing