Steering for Safety
By James Williams, FAA Safety Briefing Magazine
Any regulated industry has its inside baseball events, and aviation is no different. A product of that metaphorical contest is a host of acronyms representing various groups or interests. You’re probably familiar with the big ones like the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). You might even know others like the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) or the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA). But one you may not have heard about, in part due to a recent name change, is the General Aviation Joint Safety Committee (GAJSC), formerly the General Aviation Joint Steering Committee. Composed of a mix of government, academia, and industry members, the GAJSC is designed to use a data-driven non-regulatory approach to reduce risk in the GA world. Its mission is to steer GA flyers toward a better understanding of the risks they face and how to mitigate them. To do this, the GAJSC has several risk mitigations, or safety enhancements (SEs), covering flying, maintenance, and aircraft design. Here are a few that are pertinent to instructors.
Change, Change, Change
It’s pretty basic that change can introduce risk. But change is a given fact of life. That’s why the GAJSC has SE-05: Transition Training. This SE draws together resources for pilots and instructors doing transition training. These web-based tools help pilots prepare for training and instructors design proper training to ensure pilots are ready for their new aircraft. The GAJSC’s input is also encapsulated in Advisory Circular 90–109A, Transition to Unfamiliar Aircraft, which provides best practices for pilots and instructors.
Additionally, SE-07, Utilization of Type Clubs, is a crucial resource for pilots transitioning to a new aircraft. Type clubs are great hubs for aircraft-specific information. From maintenance recommendations to flying tips, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when organizations like type clubs have already done the work. Any instructor who flies extensively in a specific aircraft type would be wise to get involved with a type club.
Brushing the Rust Off
Another area of keen interest for instructors should be getting pilots back into the sky safely. From time to time, many pilots have had to take a break from flying. One of the first steps back is to work with an instructor to sharpen those flying skills back to a functional state. That’s why SE-08 covers Flight Training After a Period of Inactivity. Another critical topic in this arena is SE-21, Risk-based Flight Review. SE-21 is complemented with an FAA resource, Conducting an Effective Flight Review, developed by a GAJSC collaborative team (PDF download). This subject fits hand in hand with SE-08 — in that the flight review should be tailored to the pilot, and this is especially critical when the pilot has been away from flying for a while. In such cases, a simple flight review may not be sufficient to address the risks involved, and as an instructor, you should work with your students to ensure they understand why. Setting clear expectations early in the process can help avoid problems later.
Setting the Tone
As an instructor, you are the vanguard of GA. It’s important to remember this when working with students. It’s easy to fall into complacency and relax on issues since it probably won’t be an issue for this flight. But your students are watching. They don’t see skipped steps or procedures as a time-saving measure based on a reasonable decision, but as a general approach that devalues the skipped procedure. You may not feel you need to preflight the airplane as thoroughly if you just finished a flight in that airplane 15 minutes ago. You may not need to get a weather brief from an airport you just arrived from, which is only a short flight away. You may be right, but what you’re modeling isn’t. SE-03, Aeronautical Decision Making (ADM), and SE-33, Safety Culture, touch on these circumstances. Safety culture relies on you setting a good example, and skipping procedures may limit opportunities to practice ADM in training, which is a critical skill. Be sure to check out the new FAASTeam course on safety culture at bit.ly/ALC-1175.
The current name for GAJSC is a better representation of what the organization focuses on, which is safety. But the previous name did emphasize that we’re only steering with advice and resources and need the help of aviation educators to get the safe outcomes we all want.
