By Calvin Biesecker
It will be another year before the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issues a final rule requiring all pilots to be issued their airman certificates that include a digital photograph, allowing the agency to finally meet a seven-year old congressional mandate to include a biometric identifier on the certificates, an agency official said yesterday.
The new certificates might also fulfill the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) requirements for helping to verify a pilot’s identification, Peggy Gilligan, associate administrator for Aviation Safety, told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
In the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Congress required the FAA to include a digital photograph and or a biometric identifier such as a fingerprint of a pilot on their certificates, which are used to show that a person is a qualified pilot. The certificates are not used for identification.
TSA this month said it would begin a three-month test program enabling pilots on a volunteer basis to use their airline-issued identification documents to get expedited screening at security checkpoints at seven airports initially (Defense Daily, April 6).
However, in a briefing memo outlining background issues about yesterday’s hearing, the House panel says the Known Crew Member program will not use biometric identifiers. TSA, to the contrary, has said that as part of the process at the checkpoint a pilot’s photo and employment status will be verified.
The committee also said that using the airline IDs for Known Crew Member has “flaws.” For one the IDs are not federally issued and don’t meet federal standards for personal identity verification. And the fact that they are issued by multiple airlines means “the lack of a cohesive and interoperable standard.”
Once the final rule on the FAA airman certificates is published, it will take five years to phase in the issuance of the modified certificates to all pilots, although the agency expects most airline pilots and flight instructors to have the digital photo-equipped certificate within two years and most other pilots within three years of the final rule being published, Gilligan said.
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the committee chairman, said he’s “at wit’s end” over the delays in getting the new certificates, which Congress wanted phased in beginning in 2005.
Gilligan told Mica that the FAA was already in the process of transitioning the certificates, which previously were paper, to a tamper resistant card, when Congress mandated the biometric identifier be incorporated. But slowness on the FAA’s part combined with a lack of experience for using biometrics, contributed to the delays, she said.
The FAA has been looking to others within the federal government, particularly TSA, for guidance and expertise in working with and managing biometrics, Gilligan said. But that expertise “hasn’t been forthcoming,” she said, adding that the FAA continues to have discussions with other agencies and to “push for closure on what should the standards be and how should we create the infrastructure around the country to take advantage of that.”
Gilligan said that FAA has 170 enrollment stations to equip its 70,000 employees with biometric-enabled credentials that meet federal standards. She said that providing 700,000 pilots nationwide with a means to do biometric enrollments, including protecting the data, is a “daunting task.”
TSA, which manages a program called the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) that provides maritime workers around the country a biometric-enabled smart card so that they can enter secure areas of ports, has nearly 1.7 million enrollees. The agency has 130 TWIC enrollment stations.
TSA Administrator John Pistole and his program manager for TWIC were invited to testify at yesterday’s hearing but declined because the committee doesn’t have jurisdiction over the agency.