Flight Safety Technologies CEO Speaks About His Company

On January 14, The Wall Street Transcript interviewed William B. Cotton, Chief Executive Officer of Flight Safety Technologies, Inc. (FLT). Key excerpts follow:

TWST: What is Flight Safety Technologies?

Mr. Cotton: We are a 10-year old technology development company focused on filling the most pressing capacity and safety needs in the aviation industry. We have four technologies currently under development. These are the Aircraft Wake Safety Management System [AWSM], SOCRATES, which is a wake sensor intended as a part of AWSM, the UNICORN collision alerting and ground proximity warning system, and our TIICM counter-MANPADS missile defense system for aircraft. We are working in an industry, the aviation industry, that is very robust and to fill needs that are very clear. Our capabilities are directed at fulfilling those needs. We have patents in place on some of our technologies and patents applied for in the others.

TWST: If we were speaking around 12 months ago, what was the list of things to do, the agenda for the company? What did you achieve?

Mr. Cotton: One of the things we have done during the last 12 months has been to establish our relationship with the FAA as the government entity responsible for aviation technology development. What has happened is that NASA had been the government organization responsible for sponsoring the development of these technologies. NASA has largely withdrawn in their aeronautics program from building things for the FAA. So we have been pursuing our relationship with FAA itself, which now has the responsibility for developing the components of the next generation air traffic management system. In addition to that, we have been granted an Air Force Small Business Innovative Research or SBIR contract to develop the UNICORN technology. That's for aircraft collision alerting and ground proximity warning intended both for manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. We are just about finished with Phase I of that contract and have applied for a Phase II contract under that SBIR. We also were instrumental in securing government funding for continued TIICM development leading to a live fire test of that technology.

TWST: What's the agenda for the next 12 months? What would make that time frame a success?

Mr. Cotton: During the next 12 months, we are hoping to achieve both government and private funding for our technology developments to accelerate their completion to become marketable products. It requires that we bring them to a more mature technology readiness level. Our prime focus is bringing their technology readiness levels up to where they need to either market the technologies to one of the major aerospace manufacturers and system integrators or in the case of some of the technologies, to have them produced and marketed by ourselves.

TWST: Are there growth areas beyond that present agenda?

Mr. Cotton: Beyond that, we still have other technologies that we've been just keeping on the back burner and extensions of the work that we've got going right now. Each of these technologies independently has a tremendous market potential. And any or all of them will put us in a very good position indeed. I believe that our strengths are in knowing the aviation industry, understanding its needs and being able to respond quickly with technology solutions that our people understand very well. To fill those needs, we can be more adroit at getting that accomplished, being in the right place with the right solution more quickly than any of the big companies can. They are just too bureaucratic for that and tend to wait until the government statements of requirements are totally finalized before getting involved. I think that in this current environment the FAA is under extreme pressure to do something about the lack of air traffic system capacity which manifests itself through inordinate delays that air travelers are currently experiencing. They know that this next generation air traffic system needs to move forward rapidly, but they are struggling with how to make that happen. Because of our experience in the industry over the decades, we know what the critical problems are that need to be addressed first. We are focusing our efforts to fill those and to make the FAA aware that we can provide those things and at an earlier time frame than anyone else.

TWST: What's the financial snapshot of Flight Safety Tech today, balance sheet, and P&L? What are the strengths? What items are you focused on for improvement? Are there funding requirements to address?

Mr. Cotton: We are debt free as we always have been. We try to get as much from government funding as possible to actually fund the development of our technologies. We have just under $2 million in the bank at the moment. We are actively seeking private source funding in addition to the government contracts that we now have, for one of the developments, that's the UNICORN development, through a private placement into an R&D company. That will provide those investors with R&D tax credits and Flight Safety Technologies will enter into a contract with that company to perform the research and development of the UNICORN technology. From the beginning of funding, the Unicorn development itself will last about 27 months taking Unicorn through certification to the point of marketability. It's a combination of private and government funding that we are seeking simultaneously in order to complete these developments.

Comments

[John J. Tor...:]

Here in Rockland County, New York, we are livid that NASA and the FAA now appear to have acted in concert towards a common goal of concealing vital air traffic safety information from flyers and others on the ground. In solidarity with a call for further Congressional hearings by Chairman of House Science and Technology Committee, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), our environmental activist group “Quiet Rockland” has called upon Congress and its investigative arm the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine and compel correction of NASA’s “Air Safety Survey”. We ask that all other American communities do the same. This is our government, our airspace – and OUR safety at stake and currently in peril.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin admitted that his agency’s release of the Survey’s data occurred late on New Year’s Eve. He then assured all of us that NASA “didn’t deliberately choose to release on the slowest news day of the year”. Griffin and NASA doth protest too much. The NASA survey data was issued in a redacted and deliberately-indeciphe... manner. NASA previously sought to withhold the totality of this same data at least once before, when NASA rejected a prior AP FOIA request for it. Of course NASA sought to bury its New Year’s information-release amongst the champagne corks and the dropping ball. Griffin’s suggestion otherwise insults the intelligence of the American public. He insults me and he insults all of you.

In response, Quiet Rockland scheduled its written call discussed above, to arrive on what was one of the busiest back-to-work news days of the new year. 2008 will be the year that we mandate transparency of government. We cannot trust NASA management to communicate fairly or candidly to the American people. It is pathetic that this once-majestic agency of the Apollo era, no longer able to put astronauts on the Moon, and facing difficulty keeping a number of its recently-launched spacecraft intact, now cannot even terrestrially adopt precision or seriousness of purpose beyond that of Captain Anthony Nelson, Major Roger Healy, and Barbara Eden’s “Jeannie”. How dare NASA play space games with our safety!

The organizational ineptitude of NASA management is particularly threatening in light of yet another recent runway incident between two planes over the Holidays, once again at LAX, involving pilot miscommunications with an air traffic controller. NASA’s ostensible collaboration with its cousin-agency FAA towards concealing safety information from Americans, is confluent with the overall objective of the aero-mercantile complex to over-schedule flights and over-saturate our skies. With focus only upon the almighty buck, these un-checked rogue agencies continue to act at the expense of citizen and environmental safety and health. FAA’s “NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign” is another component of this same harmful aviation special-interest plan. That Redesign must be and will be defeated by citizen outcry such as that voiced by “Quiet Rockland”, not to mention the pending federal court litigations and Congressional action against it, taken in the interests of making our skies and our homes safer.

NASA and Administrator Michael Griffin initially indicated that they had no intention to analyze or study, much less further report to the public or press upon the 16,000-plus pages of raw data in the “Air Safety Survey”. “Quiet Rockland” therefore has asked that Congress and the GAO: (1) audit and investigate NASA’s purposeful mishandling and cheeky and contemptuous New Year’s Eve issuance of purposefully-obfuscate... and misleading data; and (2) order NASA to marshal and digest the Survey data and report to Congress, the GAO, and the media on it, in a fully-intelligible writing, within thirty calendar days after the January 2, 2008 date of Quiet Rockland’s written call. Given NASA’s proclivity to hide from the truth, Quiet Rockland suggested Groundhog Day as the most fitting date imaginable for that next report’s issuance.

Of the current Survey, Griffin was quoted as saying “It’s hard for me… to see any data the traveling public would care about or ought to care about”. Quiet Rockland has since assured Griffin and NASA that anecdotes extracted from the current Survey such as “pilot difficulties in talking to controllers in busy airspace’; air traffic control “capacity inadequate to handle traffic load”; “too many people on the frequency…causing a safety problem”; and perhaps worst of all, “pilots asleep” on the “flight deck”, are most definitely “cared about” by the traveling public - and will indubitably also be “cared about” by the many travelers who comprise Congress, the GAO, and the federal judiciary.

2008 Jan 15 02:14 AM

[John J. Tor...:]

Here in Rockland County, New York, we’re fed-up with stone-cold anti-environmentalists threatening our homes with unrelenting commercial jumbo-jet overflights. We’re incredulous that an eight-term Congressman would support the already-failed, chronically-unsafe regime of FAA Acting Administrator Robert A. (“Bobby”) Sturgell. So our environmental group “Quiet Rockland” has called for the resignation of hard-core extremist conservative Representative John L. Mica (R-Fl.) from the U.S. House Transportation Committee and the House Subcommittee on Aviation.

It’s time for Mica to flake himself off from the American political landscape. His harmful transportation legacy includes the Minnesota bridge collapse and Alaskan “bridge to nowhere” fiasco each occurring under his watch. Mica’s bald plugs for the FAA and aviation over-expansionism are as tiresome as an “Apply directly to the forehead!” TV commercial – as well as hazardous to innocent American people.

Through long-distance cyber-contribution to the political process, ‘Quiet Rockland’ will afford every assistance to help the informed electorate in Florida’s Seventh District chip Mica and his cronies away from elected office in November. Any vote ‘for Mica’ would be a vote for Mica’s vacuous petro-plastic culture. Yet aviation safety and the environment require an approach far less inanimate, and one far more sentient and human. John L. Mica is incapable of anything so organic.

As career mouthpiece for the FAA and the rich aero community, Mica recognizes no value beyond the smell of spent jet-fuel and the crinkled-paper sound of a handed-over almighty Dollar. We embrace the wisdom of clean open space and peace-and-quiet, in lieu of further Mica-forced inhalation of fossil-fuel for the sake of someone else’s quick-and-dirty paper profit. The governmental function of objective aviation regulation must be reinstituted. The stewardship currently feigned by Sturgell and Mica must be scissored out. Costs of their ouster should now be for the airlines to pay.

Mica has been ‘kept’ in office for 15 years by a staid homogeneous constituency in northeast and central Florida. Mica’s 7th District includes wealthy businesses of the greater Orlando area, and others with a keen special interest in maximizing their own revenues by over-scheduling flights and over-saturating our skies. Seeking to protect only the living rooms of his well-heeled campaign donors from any airplane noise, John Mica meanwhile abuses his influence and position on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Aviation Subcommittee to further placate those same aero-loyalists.

Mica shills for the FAA and its would-be head ‘Bobby’ Sturgell, and even road-shows for Sturgell’s ill-conceived wasteful $53.5 million boondoggle known as the ‘NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign’ aimed directly at our homes in the Northeast. While Congressman Mica is Ranking Member of the Transportation Committee, what’s truly ‘rank’ are the Mica-extruded conflicts-of-interest while he purports to further the cause of air safety.

Replete with hypocritical chutzpah is Mica’s recent accusation that others in Congress played special-interest politics when resisting Sturgell’s late-year quest for a fast-track confirmation hearing as FAA head. That would be like Ike criticizing JFK for having a receding hairline. Mica doth project too much. His patterns are too easily read.

Though dimmed at the edges by the current opaque duplicitous FAA with which Mica regularly allies, crystally-clear transparent is Mica’s brazen pandering to wealthy elements of the aero-mercantile complex who got him elected and keep him in office. Parts of Mica’s Federal Election Commission list of political contributors at ‘http://fec.gov’ read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of aviation-industry operatives. Campaign donors include airlines, PAC-shielded FAA managers, and even failed former FAA head Marion Clifton Blakey herself. Mica’s own aviation machinations are as flaky as Blakey.

While the cue-ball with which Mica ran the political pool-table 8 times to date, will sink by November - that’s not soon enough. John Mica should step down from the Transportation Committee and Aviation Subcommittee for the sake of the safety of this country and all air travel within it. While many in the Northeast have considered moving to Florida simply to vote against John Mica in the next possible election, in the meantime Rocklanders today launch a website to similar effect called ‘http://anyonebutmica.com’.

‘Quiet Rockland’ encourages citizens interested in defeating those that would harm our environment and our homes, to please access that website. For too long John L. Mica has been provided a rug of cover by aeronautical special interests. It is now time for Mica to come out from under that rug.

2008 Jan 15 02:15 AM

[User 141796:]

I am very familiar with Flight safety and believe in time it has the possibility of becoming a major niche player in the aerospace industry.Im surprised the company has yet to be merged or bought by a major entity.Personally bought a little stock in my IRA recently.

2008 Jan 18 01:35 PM

[John J. Tor...:]

Quiet Rockland of Rockland County, New York is enraged over the callous criminal disregard for safety and human life demonstrated by Southwest Airlines (NYSE: “LUV”) and the FAA. We today call for: (1) a nationwide traveler and consumer boycott of Southwest, and (2) a federal criminal investigation of Southwest and “failed regulator” FAA to be spear-headed by the United States Attorney General and a special prosecutor.

The persons that should be flying Southwest at this point, should be only those referred by Doctor Kevorkian. Although the depraved Southwest spin-machine audaciously ‘assures’ us Southwest’s six (6) cracked-fuselage aircraft were “never a safety problem”, Southwest should tell that to the victims of the 1988 Aloha Airlines disaster. There, metal fatigue on an aging Boeing 737 caused 18 feet of fuselage to be ripped off the plane causing grievous injuries and loss of life. House Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar in his press conference Saturday, posted on “www.cspan.org”, presented detailed evidence incriminating Southwest and “Bobby” Sturgell’s failed FAA. The incriminating events occurred while “Bobby” Sturgell was Deputy Administrator and Acting Administrator of the FAA. On Saturday, Representative Oberstar thereupon rightfully excoriated the aero-perps for their long-standing “tombstone mentality”. Although criminal and morally reprehensible, and now apparent after a many-month detailed Congressional investigation, Southwest and FAA are clearly in the insalubrious business of making those tombstones happen, in addition to simply reacting to those tombstones post facto.

As recently as last year, Southwest Airlines, with the complicity of supposed federal regulator FAA, on at least 47 of Southwest’s Boeing 737 aircraft, on between 1,451 and 60,000 flights, over a period of two-and-one-half years, deliberately put approximately 200,000 or more unsuspecting travelers in harm’s way - making them fly in un-inspected, non-compliant, aged, and in some cases fuselage-cracked commercial aircraft. Southwest knew the names and faces of their potential victims. Southwest gladly took their money, and for that matter at this point Southwest owes each of them at least a rebate in full of their ticket prices. This was not mere negligence. Irrespective of what forensic lesser charge might technically ultimately apply once further Congressional investigation concludes, the acts and omissions of Southwest and collaborator FAA were tantamount to attempted murder, on a massive scale.

This WILL not stand.

Quiet Rockland asks and encourages those Southwest employees tired of subscribing to their company’s tombstone culture, to leave their sinking airship now to find other and better employ at a responsible airline that actually acknowledges the dignity of the individual human traveler. We further ask every American consumer to now act in solidarity - cancel all flights and other business with Southwest – boycott the airline which we today re-name “Air Kevorkian” - and just say “No” to Southwest, to FAA, and to the greed of the aeromercantile complex that continually and habitually puts profits over people’s lives.

And, as to Southwest stockholders? Vote your conscience.

John J. Tormey III, Esq.
Quiet Rockland

2008 Mar 13 12:34 AM