FAA Safety Briefing in Your Community

As we close this aviation community-themed issue of FAA Safety Briefing magazine, it seems appro-priate to sharpen the focus on what this publication can contribute to your personally-curated “kaleidoscope” coterie of organizations and resources.

Safety Policy Voice

The FAA necessarily devotes significant resources to the commercial sector — airline, corporate and, increasingly, commercial drone operations — because that segment of the aviation world affects the greatest number of people. As the masthead indicates, though, our fundamental mission is to serve as the safety policy voice for non-commercial GA. We are all passionately committed to this mission, and to the non-commercial GA community that we seek to serve. As you may already know, the members of the magazine team are all “citizens” of the non-commercial GA community. We take pride in our unique role, and in the trust and credibility we have worked to earn with fellow denizens of the personal aviation community.

Consistent with our stated mission, our role is to provide solid, authoritative information on safety and regulatory topics that affect personal aviation from both operations (flying) and airworthiness (maintenance) perspectives. Through an editorial approach built around specific themes for each issue, we seek to present current information in a broader and deeper context that enables their “shelf-stability” and utility as longer-term references. Examples of policy-related focus issues include those devoted to aeromedical issues, most recently the July/August 2017 magazine on BasicMed. Another that readily comes to mind is our January/February 2016 issue, which provided detailed information on the FAA’s Compliance Philosophy. Still another — a topic we’ll cover even more extensively in 2019 — is ADS-B, which we last addressed in the March/April 2017 “Ins and Outs of ADS-B” issue.

FAA Resources

A second aim is to put a spotlight on GA-relevant FAA resources. The FAA is a big agency, and its website is also extensive. We seek to help our readers know what is available, where to find it on the FAA website and, again in keeping with the goal of serving as the safety policy voice for non-commercial GA, how these resources apply to the kind of aviation activities common to this community. Given the rapid expansion of drones, our “You and UAS” focus for May/June 2017 offered pointers for operating these new entrant aircraft and for helping to integrate remote pilots into the aviation community. This issue also highlighted some of the extensive resources this agency has developed to help drone pilots.

Another example of this function is the information we regularly provide on the ongoing transition from the Practical Test Standards (PTS) to the integrated Airman Certification Standards (ACS) format. In the July/August 2017 issue, for example, we combined an update of our periodic student pilot guides with detailed information on the ACS. In the same vein, we have created several issues intended to help connect flight instructors to relevant FAA resources; the most recent of these is the September/October 2017 “Flight Instructor Refresher.”

Proficiency and Continued Training

Some of my favorite issues arise from our goal of encouraging our fellow airmen to raise the bar on safety and proficiency through continued study and training. We’ve published lots of content in this area, but the most recent examples include virtually all of our 2018 issues: “Back to Basics” in January/February 2018, the second edition of our GA Flying Companions Guide in March/April 2018 and, of course, the Casablanca-themed “Round Up the Usual Sus-pects” review in July/August 2018.

Because Style Matters …

To paraphrase an announcement you often hear on airline flights, we know you have lots of choices. So we aim to frame the content for our specific mission in interesting, engaging, and (we hope) creative ways. We, in turn, have provided lots of choices for you to get this information. Paper subscriptions are available, but we now offer FAA Safety Briefing in three (free) electronic formats, and we are active in the social media community.

We are happy to be part of the non-commercial GA safety community, and we hope you will continue to make us a part of yours. (FAA Safety Briefing – SepOct2018)