Infallible me

“Safer Skies Through Education.” That is the line that appears at the top of the FAA Safety Team’s website. And it’s a good one. Education is the key to being proficient and aware in any line of endeavor.

The FAASTeam is a sizable collection of FAA employees and volunteers who collaborate to present educational seminars throughout the year. Their goal is simple: To help pilots become more competent and safer for the benefit of themselves, their passengers, and the rest of us who share the skies.

The seminars are free. They don’t cost you a dime. And they often have cookies, too.

In theory the FAASTeam’s efforts are laudable. The seminars they present focus on a wide variety of topics that reflect every aspect of aviation. From weather, to systems, to stall recovery, to collision avoidance, and anything else you can think of, there is a FAASTeam representative ready to put on a seminar about that very topic.

The failure of the system isn’t the FAASTeam’s fault. It’s not even within their purview to affect the necessary change. Yet they try. They persist. The managers and representatives and members continue to put in their best effort year after year with unsatisfying results.

The crux of the failing is so pervasive, a common expression has cropped up to describe the issue. It goes like this: The pilots who need to be at safety seminars aren’t the pilots who come to safety seminars.

In my experience that sad but true statement sums up the situation nicely.

My most recent FAASTeam Safety Seminar was conducted at a meeting room at the Skyborne Airline Academy in Vero Beach, Florida. I’ve presented there for years, often to a packed room filled with dozens of pilots of all ages and experience levels.

Even so, those in attendance tend to be the pilots in the least need of a refresher. They’re sharp, they’re curious. To a man or woman they make the trip to learn something — anything — they didn’t know before. Something they can pack into their mental flight bag to improve their skills, enhance their level of safety, and maybe even enjoy their flying experiences more as a result.

Occasionally, and I mean that in the strictest sense, a pilot who really could benefit from the material shows up. Too often they have a bit of an attitude about the whole thing. They take the “you can’t make me” approach to their flying life. It seems the skies are theirs to use at will, in whatever way they see fit.

This is a dangerous attitude that raises the risk of accident and injury for all of us. My past experience suggests these renegade pilots don’t care. They’re infallible. Never wrong. Always well within their rights.

Speaking of rights, piloting an aircraft isn’t included. Flying is a privilege, not a right. You may have noticed the FAA refer to privileges and limitations that come with every level of pilot certificate and rating.

I mention this because of an exchange I had recently on the Mad Props Aero channel, which streams on YouTube. A viewer wrote in response to a video about the importance of following the rules when we fly. The viewer’s perspective was that we don’t need to obtain a certificate or rating because the Constitution grants us the right to travel freely.

Uh, that’s almost true. For all its genius the Constitution does not confer on us the right to fly, or drive, or pilot a boat. Those are all privileges we can earn if we meet educational requirements designed to protect us and those around us. Those privileges understandably come with limitations.

If you own an airplane, can you fly it anywhere, anytime, just because the urge strikes to do so? Of course not. Can a new pilot sell tickets to haul vacationers out to the barrier islands in a rented airplane? Nope, that’s not gonna work.

None of us is so special we get to do anything we want, any time we want, regardless of the situation. Just as none of us is so well informed that we know all we need to know on any given topic. Ignorance is our natural state. We have to put in a fair amount of effort to overcome that universal constraint.

As pilots our mission is not to fight the power and push back against regulatory agencies to prove our infallibility. Rather, it is to train, to learn, to practice, to put our safety and the safety of others at the top of our personal checklist. To do all that we can to enhance safety while mitigating risk. The joy of flight will come naturally, provided we conduct ourselves well within the self-imposed restrictions necessary to achieve safe flight.

Disagree if you must, but I find it hard to believe anyone enjoys the final minutes of a flight that overstresses the airframe, causing a failure of the structure, and a near vertical return to earth.

A better, more productive use of your time might be to visit FAASafety.gov to register for FAASTeam seminar announcements pertinent to your interests. Pick a seminar and go.

If the indignity of admitting your own ignorance is too much for you to bear, just tell your friends you went to graze the snack table.

If you learn something — anything — that’s a step in the right direction. We all win.