Safety: How a Strong Safety Culture Can Elevate Your Flying Club

Welcome to the Safety Section of the Flying Clubs Newsletter, Club Connector!

Every month we provide resources for flying club safety officers to keep their clubs informed and safe. We include links to PowerPoint presentations (and smaller PDFs) that we use at our own meetings, so there is always a topic ready for your club’s next safety meeting. Along with the presentations, we also provide links to relevant articles, videos, and other media that you may also find useful. You can find this month’s safety article and the full archive, here: https://youcanfly.aopa.org/flying-clubs/flying-club-newsletter/safety

So, let’s get on with this month’s safety topic!

January Safety Topic of the Month: How a Strong Safety Culture Can Elevate Your Flying Club

Background:

In this month’s safety topic, we will talk about how having a strong safety culture within your club is crucial to being successful. The definition of culture is a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize an institution or organization. To be blunt regarding a flying club…” the way we do things around here”. Within a flying club there must be a positive attitude towards safety. We find many low hour pilots are fearful talking about their mistake with more experienced pilots. Air Florida flight 90 could be used as a great example. The first officer made multiple requests to the captain that takeoff could be dangerous due to icing on the wing, breaking Boeing recommended procedures with reverse thrust at the gate, and failure to use engine de- ice systems on the airplane. During the takeoff roll, the first officer said three separate things that according to Boeing, would force the captain to abort the takeoff. The 737, sadly crashed just a few seconds after takeoff. The captain demonstrated all five hazardous attitudes during this short flight. The captain had close to 10,000 hours of flight time and the first officer only had about 1800 hours. Sometimes, it’s the less experienced pilots who may be more informed about issues in the aviation world. In a flying club environment, this can be even more elevated, as pilots are close with one another, potentially judgmental about problems, or cocky. Also, we are all financially responsible for that aircraft one way or another. We really want to encourage open communication between all pilots within a flying club. Maybe someone saw something that they didn’t like? Bad landing, rushed preflight, or clearly buzzing the pattern while basically in the clouds. These types of events can be solved with a quick conversation. “Hey, I saw that landing the other day. Maybe I can give you some tips or send an Air Safety Institute video about crosswind landings?” Anything critically dangerous or in violation with a FAR should be brought up with the club president or safety officer. Many fatal general aviation accidents have been attributed to poor safety culture.

Learning points:

There are five key ingredients to an effective safety culture

1. Informed culture: Collect and act upon a wealth of human, technical, organization, and environmental factors.
2. Learning culture: Constantly evolving and improving response to safety information gleaned from monitoring operations and robust reporting cultures.
3. Flexible culture: Encourage effective relationships that support mission objectives. They are often organized as groups of professionals working together to achieve common goals rather than hierarchies of managers and employees.
4. Reporting culture: Reward reporting and discussion of errors. They use information discovered in the reporting process to improve safety processes and procedures
5. Just culture: Forster an atmosphere of trust by encouraging and rewarding the disclosure of safety information while maintaining accountability and clear distinction between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Well, how does all that relate to pilots?

1. Informed Pilots: Gather all available information before flight and identify hazards that may compromise safety. Before takeoff, they eliminate or mitigate the risk those hazards pose and continuously update their assessments with new information enroute.
2. Learning Pilots: Keep abreast of regulatory and technological developments. They participate in proficiency training activities, and they employ lessons learned to improve their flight and ground operations.
3. Flexible Pilots: Are flexible in their relationships and in their mission planning and execution. They are willing to adapt to changing conditions and priorities but only if they can maintain an equivalent or higher level of safety.
4. Report culture pilots: Do not hesitate to discuss and learn from errors they make. They strive to report objectively and without bias. They seek guidance and coaching from flight instructors and peers.
5. Just culture pilots: Understand that errors are inevitable and that they have a responsibility to disclose them to provide information useful to crafting more effective processes and procedures. They expect to be treated fairly but also to be held accountable for their actions- especially those that are in violation of a regulation.

A great safety culture is when people continue to fly safely and do the right thing while nobody is watching.

The FAA published a risk management handbook with a phenomenal way to learn about mitigating risk. The FAA has this book free to view online at the link below. Sporty’s Pilot Shop also sells the book for $16.95.

https://www.faa.gov/regulationspolicies/handbooksmanuals/risk-management-handbook-faa-h-8083-2a

Remember from your private pilot training? Think about these before and during your flight. Five hazardous attitude and their antidotes…

1. Macho…Taking chances is foolish
2. Resignation…I can make a difference
3. Anti-Authority…Follow the rules, they are probably right
4. Invulnerability…It can happen to me
5. Impulsivity…Not so fast, think first

Check out the Safety Management System regarding general aviation safety from AOPA’s Air Safety Institute. https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/Scalable-Safety-Framework. The FAA is preparing to put a heightened focus on general aviation SMS this year. Currently, airline operations tend to be the focus of SMS.

Our safety community involves pilots (yes, even student pilots), instructors, maintenance technicians, the FAA, and the Air Safety Institute from AOPA.

The entire Flying Club team at AOPA are FAAST team members and we are happy to host a safety webinar for your club. The Wings credits that your members will get can be a huge motivator to get members to attend. Also, some insurance companies will lower rates if they are aware that your club is hosting FAAST meetings.

Other Safety Resources:

Here is a reminder of just some of the safety resources available to all pilots:

FAASTeam:

faasafety.gov

The FAASTeam website is the portal to a vast array of courses, videos, links, and much more. Remember that WINGS not only encompasses knowledge activities, but also flight activities. Use the search options to narrow down to say, flight activities for a basic phase of WINGS, and you’ll be able to find a syllabus and often a worksheet for various flight activities. Use WINGS to keep you proficient and think of the flight activities as a progressive flight review—earnt over 12-months, rather than at the end of 24-months.

Wait…you don’t do WINGS?

That’s a big shame—you are missing out on a free pilot proficiency program that will help you enjoy your flying even more, allow you to earn a flight review every 12 months just by flying, and may provide insurance discounts.

The FAASTeam WINGS pilot proficiency program is the best way for general aviation pilots to ensure they are competent, confident, and safe in their flight operations. Oh, and being perpetually proficient will save you money in the long run.

If you are interested in using the FAASTeam WINGS program for your personal flying or with your flying club, create an account on the FAASTeam website, http://www.faasafety.gov, and explore the collection of courses and flight activities. Also, feel free to contact me (Cade Halle, WINGS Representative), and I’d be pleased to walk you through the program. More on “WINGS for Clubs” can be found here in Flying Clubs Radio Episode 8 and the May 2020 Question of the Month.

Other FAA Resources:

Don’t forget to regularly revisit these FAA safety gems, as new material is frequently added:

Pilot Minute

57 Seconds to Safer Flying

FAA Safety Briefing Magazine

From the Flight Deck

AOPA Air Safety Institute:

https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute

AOPA’s Air Safety Institute (ASI), which by the way is funded by the AOPA Foundation just like the Flying Clubs Initiative, is packed with exceptional content, including exceptional videos, podcasts, accident analysis, online courses, recorded webinars and more. Completing ASI activities may also earn WINGS credits. Of particular interest to flying club safety officers is the updated Safety to Go section. There, you can download a selection of topics, each coming with PowerPoint slides and speaker’s notes!