Electric Aircraft, Safety Systems, Financing Options for Students and DPE Appeals Panel Key Topics for Conference Attendees on Second Day |
The final day of the 2022 Flight School Operators Conference included some additional breakout sessions and three full panel sessions focussed on potential future utilization options for electric aircraft in the flight training industry, safety management systems, and financing options flight schools can utilize for infrastructure and their equipment.
Electric Aircraft
There is no doubt that electric aircraft will be implemented in some way in the future of flight training, but there are also challenges that need to be managed in the implementation of these new technologies. Discussion of utility time, weight considerations, and charging mechanisms were a few of the concerns that were addressed. While this technology is developing, it is also doing so quickly. Flight training providers are likely to be early adopters of electrically powered aircraft due to the size of the aircraft. A significant potential per hour operating cost is possible in these aircraft, especially as the technology develops, matures, and acquisition costs decrease over time.
Safety Systems
Flight training cannot be done with zero risk, but the mid-afternoon panel focused on ways to implement safety management systems (SMS) into the flight training market. Some providers have already done this in various versions, many others are just beginning to try to implement such systems. Sharing the information between attendees represents a way the FSANA hosted conference attendees can learn from each other to improve their own safety systems and implementation of safety practices.
Financing Options
Wrapping up the conference, attendees had an opportunity to hear from bank and finance company representatives, aircraft leasing providers, and large flight training operation providers about some of the options that might be leverageable for financing their infrastructure needs or for their students' training costs. The cost of flight training and its provision is not cheap, but it typically does have a good return on investment. FSANA is dedicated to providing as many resources as possible to the flight training community to leverage to keep the business of flight training growing and vibrant.
With two days of active meetings, presentations, and collaboration between flight training industry participants, the event was successful at bringing together the flight training industry.
“FSANA thanks all those vendors and attendees who joined us at this year’s 13th annual Flight School Operators Conference,” said FSANA Ceo and President, Bob Rockmaker. “There is so much value in bringing together all the participants in this industry,” he continued. “We look forward to being able to do this again at the 2023 conference that will return to Orlando next year, but know that between now and then we have many takeaways from this year’s conference, and much work to do. Our industry is vibrant, growing, and critical to the aviation industry.”
|
|
|
|
FSANA Launches DPE Termination Review Board |
A small, but critical part of the aviation training landscape is the population of individuals who are designated by the FAA to conduct practical tests for airmen. This privilege is granted to experienced individuals who have been selected, trained, and are overseen by FAA staff to "do the work of the FAA", specifically by providing practical tests in the capacity of Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE). To do this requires these individuals to comply with FAA policy and guidance along with an ability to administrate regulations and training standards.
Currently, there are approximately 950 individuals who do this. The best way to think of these dedicated professionals is as a "force multiplier" for the FAA. While not FAA staff, they conduct some of the work that years ago might have been done by FAA staff. For efficiency reasons, the FAA allows appropriately trained individuals to do some of their work. In the case of most flight training operations, this is most often encountered when an applicant for a certificate or rating needs to complete a practical test.
The role of the DPE is sometimes confusing for those who are not deep in the trenches of training. One thing that is important to know, however, is that DPEs serve at the pleasure of the FAA. It isn't a certificate or rating that is granted and afforded the same protections from revocation a pilot credential maintains. In fact, the FAA can choose for any- or no reason to terminate a DPE at any time. This leaves DPEs in the position of having very little perceived stability in this line of work.
The good news is that terminations of DPEs are not common. Most DPEs that stop doing the work choose to do so for the pursuit of other career opportunities or retirement. In rare cases, however, the FAA does terminate a DPE's ability to continue service. In these cases, there are times when differences of opinion create bitter circumstances.
Because a DPE authorization is not protected like a pilot credential, a DPE who is terminated is left with little recourse when they are terminated.
FSANA is standing up a new DPE review board to be utilized in any cases where a DPE feels they have been wrongfully terminated from their abilities to provide the services. The board will include representatives who are DPEs, the flight training industry, and from aviation associations who can serve as a review panel to whom a DPE may appeal a termination decision.
FSANA knows that some terminations of DPEs are fully deserved. Bad actors need to be weeded out of the system. Training standards cannot be compromised. But we have also heard of some cases where a DPE may have been terminated and the reason is less clear or contended. At this time, a DPE has no outlet to request appeal "for cause" of a termination; they can only appeal "if the process by which the FAA has terminated a DPE" meets guidance. FSANA feels that it is important also to have the potential to review if a DPE may have been terminated unjustly.
As such, a review board is being developed to which a DPE can appeal, document, and present a case to refute a termination decision. This panel at this time does not have any official standing with the FAA, something we hope will change over time and would be in alignment with recommendations from the recent DPE ARAC, but it certainly can provide a recommendation for further review upon completion of a review process to FAA representatives.
As a part of this effort, FSANA is open to interested parties who might want to serve on this panel. If you or someone you know would like to serve, please email us at [email protected] with the subject headline "DPE Review Board" and we will reach out to you as we continue the development of this effort.
|
|
|
|
Paul Burger Addresses Conference Attendees about the Wings Industry Network (WIN) |
During the luncheon session of day two, conference attendees were addressed by Paul Burger regarding the efforts of the Wings Industry Network.
The WINGS Industry Network (WIN) is an alliance of many dedicated aviation organizations and individuals whose passion for general aviation safety shows through the many investments they make to help reduce the accident rate.
WIN works to combine members’ resources to build higher levels of awareness to more effectively promote GA safety practices and proficiency.
The WIN produces WIN Insights, live-streaming WINGS-approved broadcasts, distributes a newsletter to industry members filled with news, tips, safety successes, and the path they took to promote GA safety, researches and develops new tools to make access to proficiency training easier, works closely with the FAA Safety Team (FAASTeam) leadership to assist efforts to improve usability and participation of the content of the FAASTeam WINGS Pilot Proficiency Program (WINGS) and continues to support the Paul and Fran Burger $10,000 WINGS Sweepstakes.
|
|
|
|
Paul Burger is a general aviation safety philanthropist and 2,500-hour ATP, past chair of WIAC, and member of the AOPA Air Safety Institute Hat in the Ring Society. In 1997, Paul gifted $550,000 to the AOPA Air Safety Foundation to support GA safety. In 2004, AOPA dedicated its Safety & Philanthropy Report to him.
FSANA is hopeful that more flight training providers will support the efforts of the WIN with their staff and customers. A dedication to safety and a culture of improvement is what is required to reduce incident, accident, and fatality rates. FSANA supports the efforts of this organization and challenges all of those reading this email to join us.
|
|
|
|
Culture is critical to safety. In any industry. There is no doubt that this is the case in aviation, and certainly in aviation training.
FSANA knows that pilots, instructors, and students don't typically start a flight with a willingness to accept "a few crashes periodically" in their operations. We all approach our operations with the expectation that we will be safe and return home to our family and loved ones without having an accident or incident each day. But that isn't how we have approached aviation safety in training historically.
For too long we have measured "reductions" in accidents rates and fatalities or "accident rates" and been satisfied if they are not increasing. We have been proud of our work if they drop even a little bit year-to-year. This approach has led us to acceptance of certain levels of incidents, accidents, and sadly, fatalities as "just a part of flying."
It's time to change that.
FSANA will be working on an effort to promote a goal of Zero GA Accidents. We are hopeful the rest of the aviation industry will come with us on this journey. We should never become accepting of the loss of our aviators. Each loss is someone one of us knows and a loss to the industry. But even worse, acceptance of certain loss levels is allowance of the risk factors that cause these events. When any of them occur, it is our job as a training industry to try to make sure the same accident never happens again.
We learn from incidents and accidents, and we modify our culture. That is a big part of the effort FSANA is going to be making in the GA Zero Accident goal. This is an effort to change the culture of acceptance of "some" incidents, accidents, and fatalities. Our goal is going to be focused on eradicating as many potential causal factors as possible in the flight training community.
This goal is important, and support has already been expressed for this effort by Jennifer Homendy, the new chair of the National Transportation Safety Board on a recent call with FSANA. Jim Viola, President and CEO of the Helicopter Association International (HAI) has additionally given his support. The effort is also supported by Paul Burger of the Wings Industry Network. FSANA will be working to build a coalition of members to support this effort.
FSANSA will be publishing more on this topic in the near future, addressing our desire within our work on the General Aviation Joint Steering Committee (GAJSC), and asking our members to help promote this effort. Join us on this journey to reach a GA Goal Zero for general aviation accidents.
|
|
|
|
Highlights from 2021 FAA Airman Certificate Data |
By Jason Blair
Each year the FAA issues U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics that can help the industry track trends in airmen certification. Some of this data is of real interest to the flight training community since this is where airmen are trained. A couple of major trends that are worth some attention include the following points.
Overall Pilot Certificate/Rating Production Remains Strong
Even with many of the challenges that we all have experienced in the past two years, overall pilot certificate production remains strong
|
|
|
|
When we look at specific ratings, the primary ones being for Private Pilot, Instrument Ratings, and Commercial Pilot certifications, we see these specific ratings are still continuing to have relatively strong numbers of certificate issuances. In fact, pre-COVID numbers were actually lower than we saw even during COVID restriction affected time periods. |
|
|
|
Another good measure tends to be the number of student pilot certificates issued. We can see that while there was a dip for a few years, the number of student pilot certificates being issued in recent years has increased again. This is an indicator that there are people in the training pipeline working their way through certification efforts. This is our future pilot population as it is being trained. |
|
|
|
ATP Pilot Certificate Production Increasing, ATP Population Aging
When we look at the production of ATP certificates, we see a significant dip in overall numbers in 2020 and much of 2021 as the effects of COVID restrictions and reductions in airline operations took place. The most recent data on a month-by-month and yearly basis show that this is returning and potentially increasing.
From the following tables, we can see the overall ATP pilot production numbers and the age representation of certificate holders:
|
|
|
|
CFI Certificate Production Increasing, Total Numbers of CFIs High, Population Aging
The yearly production of CFI certificates continues to remain strong. We can see that it has actually increased over the past few years from the levels seen over the previous decade also.
|
|
|
|
In a sense, this is a good thing. But with this has also come very active hiring by airlines of those CFIs who gained experience as required to serve in airline pilot operations. One consequence of COVID-related reductions in airline operations was that many CFIs were not being hired over the past year due to reductions in airline training classes. As airlines hare returned to heavier flight operations and restarted training classes, many of them are heavily hiring from the CFI population. This has caused greater than normal turnover of CFIs at many training operations; some of them reporting 70-80% turnover of CFI staff in the past 6 months. This certainly will have an effect on these training providers' ability to continue to provide stability in their training programs.
One thing that many flight training providers know intuitively though is that most of the CFIs that are employed doing the bulk of training are younger and transitional in their time serving as a CFI. Most of them are using the job as a stepping stone to get to other professional career flying activities. As a result of this, we have found that a small percentage of the total number of CFIs are actively engaged with signing applicants off for certificates and/or ratings on a yearly basis. This is illustrated in the following table:
|
|
|
|
Female Pilot Certificate Trends Still Slowly Increasing
While still certainly not at a level that equals the representative percentage of the overall population, the issuance of student pilot certificates and holding of pilot certificates continues to increase year-to-year. This trend is slow but positive. It is good to see that the trend of representation of females in our overall pilot community continues to grow.
|
|
|
|
All of this data seems to indicate that the flight training community continues to work hard despite challenges and those flight training providers are delivering the next generation of pilots. We know you are all working hard out there and it shows.
Those are some of the high-level highlights that I think might be of interest to the training community. There is so much more data than we could dive into, but to do so would take up much more space than we have in this particular newsletter. I invite you to check out more data I provide if you are so inclined, and if you have other data you can share, please do so with us!
You can see a more detailed analysis I have provided recently on some of the updated data by clicking here.
|
|
|
|
NAFI Releases Professional Development Courses |
As a part of its continuing effort to release content to improve the quality of instruction, the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) recently announced the release of the final five courses for its Professional Development Program (PDP), available exclusively to NAFI members. The release of these courses signifies the completion of the full curriculum of 30 courses. The program provides the flight training community with valuable education to enhance technical and teaching skills, strategies to interact with students, and develops and mentors mastery of core concepts in aviation education and leadership.
The new titles are:
-
Training Pilots in Command, by Karen Kalishek, DPE, NAFI Board Chair
-
Tips and Tricks of Online Ground Training, by Ned Parks, CFII-A, CFI-H, AGI, IGI, ATP
-
Plan Now or Pay Later, by Rick Bartle, Senior Advisor, Stratus Business Development
-
Aeromedical Factors, by Victor Vogel, MD, CFII, AGI, IGI, NAFI Board Member, and
-
Pilots and Medications, by Victor Vogel, MD, CFII, AGI, IGI, NAFI Board Member.
"Completing the first 30 courses in NAFI's Professional Development Program (PDP) is a significant step for NAFI and provides a great opportunity for our flight instructor community,” said Karen Kalishek, NAFI board chair. She continued “These thought-provoking courses add depth to any CFI's knowledge and promote continuous learning, leading to a safer pilot population. Flight instructors have responded enthusiastically to the PDP and NAFI will continue to expand the program as part of its flight training excellence mission.”
PDP topics include business techniques, leadership development, communications, human factors, and more. Recognized by the industry as a commitment to self-improvement, the PDP also serves to prepare CFIs for future growth in the aviation industry. NAFI will present members with a Professional Development Program Certificate of Completion when all the courses are completed. For more information visit https://www.nafinet.org/professional-development-program. |
|
|
|
FAA Video Features Careers of Women in Aviation |
The FAA has recently released a video highlighting the careers in aviation of women in the FAA entitled U.S.-Singapore: Inspiring Women in Aviation. The video is episode five of FAA's Connecting: Aviation Leadership Series.
In the video, FAA Air Traffic Organization COO, Teri Bristol, and Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) legal director, Tan Siew Huay, share their career journeys to inspire other women in aviation. The FAA and CAAS have established a strong international training partnership.
Watch and find other FAA videos on Youtube.
|
|
|
|
Input Requested on Designated Pilot Examiner System by MTSU |
In response to the increased national need for pilot check rides, the Reauthorization Act of 2018 required the FAA to assign to the Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC) a review of current Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) policies. The ARAC in turn assigned this task to the Designated Pilot Examiner Reforms Working Group (DPERWG).
The DPERWG delivered its recommendations to the FAA in June 2021 (see DPERWG Final Report.) Their recommendations include:
- Changes to the DPE application process, the development of an applicant feedback system,
- Changes to the number of events per day which can effectively be conducted,
- A national DPE oversight model versus the current FSDO oversight model,
- The treatment of oral and flight tests as separate events, and
- The effectiveness of the DPE locator on the FAA website.
To provide greater insight to stakeholder perception of the current DPE system as well as feedback on the major DPERWG recommendations, Middle Tennessee State University faculty are conducting a research study via electronic survey. Survey participation is requested by both flight schools and DPEs nationwide. To ensure a robust data set for both groups, your participation in the appropriate survey is encouraged.
|
|
|
|
Michigan CFI of the Year Awarded to CAP Pilot |
The 2021 Michigan CFI of the year was recently awarded to Maj Roy Kauer. A ceremony was held today in Flint in his honor with attendees both live and virtual. Maj Kauer was commended by many who have been his student, colleague, or friend over the years. CAP and the Michigan FAA Safety Team were honored to recognize his service to both senior members and cadets.
|
|
|
|
 |
ARTICLES OF INTEREST FROM THE INDUSTRY |
|
|
|
|
|
FSANA has been collecting DPE names who have expressed a willingness to travel to help flight training providers secure practical tests.
An up-to-date List of Travel-Willing DPEs with contact information is available on the FSANA website. If you are a flight training provider who is finding a challenge of scheduling DPEs in your local area, feel free to reach out to these individuals. They may be able to serve some of your local testing needs.
While this effort is being made in general, it is even more relevant as many DPEs self-selected to delay a return to providing practical tests during this period of COVID-19 uncertainties.
If you are a DPE who is not on this list but would like to be, please let FSANA know by emailing us at [email protected] with your name, city, state, email and phone number and we will add you. |
|
|
|
|
FLIGHT SCHOOL BUSINESS EXCHANGE |
|
|
|
|
|
|
College of DuPage seeks full-time, tenure track faculty member/s to teach Aviation courses starting in Fall, 2021. Faculty duties include classroom instruction, assessment, curriculum development, advising students, professional inquiry, committee work and engaging with instructional technology.
Teaching responsibilities may include both stand-alone developmental writing courses and co-requisite, accelerated, or paired sections of developmental and first-year college writing. Teaching assignments may include various delivery modes, such as face-to-face, on-line, hybrid and/or blended formats during days, evenings and weekends. Click here for more information.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Flight Instructor Wanted - Potential to Transition to SIC Charter Work in Navajo
Teach basic and advanced flight and ground training with university affiliated school in Tobyhanna, PA at Moyer Aviation. If interested, contact [email protected].
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
International CFIs Available to Work
International CFIs available to work immediately with two years of work authorization in the United States. Most of the candidates have both CFI and CFII. Please contact Brett Hart (503) 726-8378 or email [email protected] if you have any openings.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
University Air Center Flight School, Gainesville Florida Looking for Certified Flight Instructors-Instrument for a full time busy flight school. We fly Piper Warrior, Cessna 172 (G1000), Cessna 182 (Garmin glass), Cessna 210 and Piper Aztec. We have the option of time as flight instructor then move into the Caravan for Part 91 operations then to our Charter department flying Citation Jets. Come join the UAC team! Email resume to [email protected].
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Flight School Needs Cessna 172 Aircraft Ocean City, Maryland
If you have Cessna 172 aircraft that might be useable in a flight training program, contact Mike at [email protected] to discuss possibilities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Email Feedback Concerns about FAA Practical Tests to:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tell us what is important to you as a school owner, manager or chief flight instructor. We will share comments in an upcoming edition of Flight Training News. Send your thoughts to [email protected].
|
|
|
|
|
|
FSANA SUPPORTING PARTNERS |
|
|
|
V I S I O N A R Y •• P A R T N E R S
|
|
|
|
D E V E L O P E R •• P A R T N E R S
|
|
|
|
B U I L D E R •• P A R T N E R S
|
|
|
|
L E A D E R •• P A R T N E R S |
|
|
|
2021 BRONZE CONFERENCE SPONSOR |
|
|
|
Established in 2009, the Flight School Association of North America (FSANA) is the first and only association of its kind dedicated solely to the flight training industry. FSANA represents flight schools, firms that provide products and services to the flight training or aviation industry, and other supporting partners.
The Mission of the Flight School Association is to support, promote and advocate for the business of flight training; to provide knowledge, programs and services that help its members thrive and better serve their customers and communities; to foster best business practices; to educate and inspire youth; to increase the global pilot population; to improve general aviation safety; and to work in alliance with the aviation and aerospace industry.
|
|
|
|
|
|
