The Civil Air Patrol has established a safety education partnership with the FAA that will provide CAP members with automatic education credits for completing safety education within the FAA’s WINGS Pilot Proficiency Program.
The WINGS program is designed to address accident-causing issues that plague the general aviation community. The FAA hopes the program will help reduce the number of accidents it sees each year resulting from the same causes. CAP members will benefit from this relationship by receiving credit toward CAP safety education requirements upon completion of FAA-approved courses.
The WINGS program helps aviators and aviation enthusiasts construct an educational curriculum suitable for their individual flight requirements. It emphasizes flight proficiency by using the FAA’s Practical Test Standards.
CAP requires all members to complete safety education at set intervals, which has helped improve the organization’s overall safety results in air and ground operations, officials say. Providing increased awareness through education complements CAP’s safety management system.
“We are proud of our relationship with the FAA,” said CAP National Commander Maj. Gen. Chuck Carr, adding, “recurrent training programs like this one help all pilots reach their highest potential and maintain a high level of safety and proficiency.”
Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with more than 61,000 members nationwide, operating a fleet of 550 aircraft. CAP, in its Air Force auxiliary role, performs 90 percent of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and was credited by the AFRCC with saving 54 lives in fiscal year 2011. Its unpaid professionals also perform homeland security, disaster relief and drug interdiction missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. The members play a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to nearly 27,000 young people currently participating in the CAP cadet programs. CAP received the World Peace Prize in 2011 and has been performing missions for America for 70 years. For more information: GoCivilAirPatrol.com
