The event is scheduled for October 15-17 on the campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

“Last year’s summit was successful because of the strong technical program delivered by industry leaders and experts. This year will be the same,” said NAFI president Paul Preidecker. “But instead of addressing six themes as we did last year, this year we decided to bring more focus by supporting three very important ones: training the trainer, mentorship, and peer support, and pilot health and well-being.”

The event—which has the slogan, “Come to NAFI Summit, go home a better CFI”—is an opportunity for instructors of all levels and varying backgrounds to meet with their peers and discuss educational techniques, learner challenges, and opportunities to enhance their careers.

There will be 28 educational sessions during the two days. Among the topics to be discussed will be specific strategies instructors can use to “reach” their learners, as well as more technical topics such as the appropriate uses of autopilot during IFR and teaching emergency procedures in the most effective manner.

According to NAFI, there will be 21 exhibitors at the event, including Sporty’s Pilot Shop, King Schools, Avemco Insurance, and Redbird Flight Simulations. Several online training courses will be represented, as well as manufacturers of safety wearables, designed to enhance the educational experience.

Celebrity guests are also expected, and include keynote speakers Dr. Susan Northrup, FAA federal air surgeon, and Bruce Landsberg, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association senior safety adviser and recently retired National Transportation Safety Board vice chairman.

Northrup will be discussing the FAA’s rulemaking committee report. Instructors are tasked with knowing the rules and where to look them up and teaching this practice to their learners.

Landsberg will focus on how instructors can best teach fundamental aviation concepts to their learners.

On the evening of October 16, a dinner will be highlighted by aviation educators and instructors John and Martha King. The Kings have more than 50 years experience as aviation instructors. 

Registration for NAFI Summit is $350 for nonmembers and $300 for NAFI members. Further discounts exist for Master CFIs and DPEs, as well as active military attendees.

There is also reduced pricing for flight schools that sign up as a group and bring at least three instructors or a maximum of 10 to the event.

Additional information, including how to register, may be found here.

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My airplane has similar issues. I shouldn’t be surprised. We were both made in the same year: 1972. She’s serial number 9046. I’m somewhere around 108 billion. The Bonanza has evolved a lot faster than humans have. My knees are still Gen 1, and my electrical system hasn’t been upgraded to 28 volts. Not holding my breath either. My autopilot works just fine, but that’s not considered a desirable attribute in a human.

Last week I departed Los Angeles for New York. I flew straight back to Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0) in New Mexico to clean up some additional squawks that surfaced post-annual. These aren’t things Fernie missed, rather just additional groans and signs of aging that my bird is exhibiting. Fernie cared for her immediately and got us going in just a day. By comparison, my doctor has a “first available” three months out, and my squawks are quite a bit more difficult to address and repair.

As a young man, I sustained plenty of injuries taking part in the many extreme sports I was drawn to. To alleviate the depression of being sidelined by an injury, I would tell myself that the treatment was going to make me stronger than I was before. I believed that my double meniscus surgery would make my knees like new again. It didn’t. You could make a case that the multiple fractures I’ve endured have possibly healed stronger than they were pre-break, but the calcified bump on my foot over the fifth metatarsal makes it impossible to wear ski boots now.

I have similar fantasies when parts are replaced on my airplane. Unlike my knees, this is less of a self-deception. When Joe and Brian from ACE Aircraft Cylinders & Engines overhaul my Continental 550, I am flying behind an engine better than the one it replaced. I breathe easier knowing that Kevin O’Halloran refurbished my landing gear motor. The list goes on. These craftsmen are the equivalent of doctors for our airplanes. They keep our machines healthy.

The squawks I returned to Moriarty with seem to dovetail with my own physical issues. Stay with me here:

• N1750W developed a small oil leak from a flex joint on the breather tube.

• I cough up phlegm most mornings apropos of nothing.

• My Bo’s vernatherm isn’t functioning properly as the oil never seems to get up above 150 degrees at cruise altitudes.

• I’m in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the moment and couldn’t breathe on my run this morning here at 7K feet msl. I hid behind a bush to avoid the embarrassment of another jogger asking me if I needed help.

• The double-sided tape on my window scoop let go during taxi the other week, sucking the entire assembly out of the window and forcing me to shut down, exit the airplane, and run back to get it. No joggers witnessed this event.

• My knee let go on a tennis court in Griffith Park last month. I snapped it back into place, took an “L” on the match then went and got tacos.

• Lately, there is the faint smell of gas in the cabin.

• Lauren has been complaining about the not-so-faint smell of gas coming from my “cabin.” Neither issue has been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.

I grew up in the 1980s with Steve Austin. “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology…Better. Stronger. Faster.” Nope. At 50 it feels more like: Slower. Dumber. Crankier. You take things for granted when you’re young. Now, your health is first and foremost. I used to throw my body around. No stretching. No thoughtfulness. Treated myself like a workhorse: ridden hard and put away wet. I imagine buying a new airplane (something I’ve never done) must allow a similar lack of concern.

Many manufacturers cover basic maintenance for a time, and the warranties are substantial, covering most everything that could go wrong. So a pilot behind a new aircraft flies with mechanical abandon, knowing they likely aren’t going to have anything go wrong—notwithstanding their own deficiencies.

My overhauled engine in the Bonanza has 400 hours on it. I’m right in that sweet spot between the infant mortality stage and the still-distant 1,400-hour TBO. I am not worried about my engine. I can imagine flying past TBO—something I intend to do—but it won’t be the same. Crossing Lake Erie will feel differently with 1,800 hours on the Hobbs. At some point, something will fail. Just like my body. At a certain point, there is only decline. You can try and fight it, but you will one day lose. The best we can do is manage it. This isn’t meant to be morose. I believe the ephemeral quality of life is meant to have us appreciate our time here in a way we could not if we were granted immortality.

The Six Million Dollar Man comparison doesn’t hold water in regards to my body. But in some ways it does hold true for my aircraft. The Garmin suite of avionics I have in my airplane make it far more capable than it was when I first bought it with its steam gauges and a VOR receiver as its sole means of navigation. But there is a law of diminishing returns at play here. The airframe is aging. Metal fatigues. Magnesium pits. Floorboards rot. At some point, and it may not be for years, you’re putting lipstick on a pig.

This is where the comparison between myself and the airplane has its limits. I am deteriorating at a faster pace than my Bonanza. Sadly (or not), N1750W will outlive me. With proper care, she still has many years ahead of her. Me…I’m entering what is effectively the last third of my life. Don’t worry: I’m still sending it. I have no intention of slowing down. But I’m aware that time is ticking. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep applying that lipstick. Appearances must be kept.

This column first appeared in the August 2023/Issue 940 print edition of FLYING.

The post Time Is Ticking on My Youth—and My Airplane’s Too appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

According to multiple media reports, Emerson said he had been dealing with the mental illness for years when he found himself riding in the jumpseat on a flight between Seattle and San Francisco. He stated, “I’m not OK” and reached up to pull both of the engine fire extinguisher handles of the Embraer E175. If not for the crew’s quick intervention, the action would have shut down both engines and turned the jet with 83 souls on board into a glider, possibly resulting in an accident. Emerson was removed from the cockpit and restrained by his request in the back of the aircraft. He allegedly told law enforcement that he had not slept in several days and was depressed over the death of a friend.

In the weeks that followed, the FAA announced a new Mental Health Aviation Rulemaking Committee that would “provide recommendations to the FAA on ways to identify and break down any remaining barriers that discourage pilots from reporting and seeking care for mental health issues.”

Meanwhile, on December 6, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy hosted a safety summit entitled “Navigating Mental Health in Aviation.” The summit, which ran all day, the first session for more than 90 minutes, brought together safety experts from the aviation industry, government, academia, and mental health professions to examine the “unintended consequences of the current system for evaluating mental fitness in the aviation workforce.” That’s a fancy way of saying that if an aviation professional seeks help for a mental health challenge, anything from anxiety to depression, it could cost them their medical certificate, grounding them for several months if not longer.

Homendy noted that in the aviation world there is a fear that disclosing mental health struggles can lead to pilots losing their professional identity—their jobs—and exposing themselves to stigma.

Dr. Emanuel Robinson, representing the American Psychological Association, noted that aviation is a high stress field similar to law enforcement, the military, and fire and rescue, where the culture is to “suffer in silence.”

Robinson noted that in 2018 approximately 18 percent of adults surveyed reported seeking mental healthcare. In 2021 that number grew to 23 percent.

“The pandemic exacerbated things, and we are still seeing the after effects of that,” he said, adding that the people who do try to get help to address mental health concerns can wait three months or more before seeing a medical professional.

• READ MORE: Mental Health Services Crucial for All Pilots

Testimony

The first testimony came from Dr. Anne Suh, who was accompanied by her husband, Dr. Alan Hauser. Their son John was a flight student at the University of North Dakota (UND) when in October 2021 he committed suicide by intentionally crashing the airplane he was flying. He had wanted to be a pilot since he was a child and paid for his private pilot certificate by himself. In a letter to his parents he described feeling trapped, knowing if he sought help for the depression that could ground him forever.

“I want to get better. I really do,” he wrote. “But I knew in order to do that I will have to give up on aviation, and if I have to do that, I would rather not be here.”

John Hauser begged his parents to lobby the FAA to change the rules on pilots seeking help with their mental health, saying, “I know it would change a lot of things for the better. It would help a lot of people out.”

The testimony was filled with anecdotes about pilots who do not seek mental health support or who do not report it when applying for medical certification (which is a violation), because they have heard of the challenges pilots who do report encountered when trying to obtain their medical certificates. Self-reporting leads to months or even years of additional tests and expensive evaluations from medical and psychiatric doctors, which are often paid for out of pocket by the applicant.

Tim Sisk, an aviation safety inspector, mentioned the packet of information he has submitted to the FAA to regain his medical certificate after he self-reported being on an FAA-approved psychoactive drug. Sisk told the audience he has been fighting to regain his medical for over 21 months and has spent more than  $10,000 on medical specialists, assessments, and legal assistance, resulting in 297 pages of medical records that he was required to submit to the FAA.

There were months of waiting for a reply. “Then the FAA replied they wanted to see the records from the VA (Veterans Affairs),” Sisk said. “I am not a veteran. If the FAA had looked at those 297 pages, they might know that.”

Former NTSB vice chairman Bruce Landsberg, who described his decision to ground himself after the death of his military son from complications of PTSD, echoed Sisk’s frustration with the FAA and the “black hole of waiting” that happens when a pilot sends their packet to the agency for medical special issuance and then has to wait months for a response of any kind.

“If you are required to respond within 60 days, why isn’t the government required to respond within 60 days?” he said.

The summit concluded with the message that so many in the aviation industry, from ground service crews to dispatchers to ATC and pilots at all levels, struggle and avoid receiving the care they need because they feel trapped within the system.

According to Landsberg, the FAA rules and certifications go back to the 1950s “and those are based on standards from World War II.” He noted that technology, both in aviation and medicine, has changed quite a bit, but the FAA has not kept up.

“We should be much more enlightened at this point,” he said.

The post NTSB Hosts Panel on Mental Health appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I caught the coronavirus this past October on a commercial flight returning home from Denver. My aisle seat was toward the back of the sold-out flight with an airline that refused to keep middle seats open. By hour two of the flight, there was a line for the bathroom. All those people standing over me, breathing down my neck—I’m not an epidemiologist, but I’m going to guess that didn’t help. I also took off my mask for a few moments during the flight to inhale a bag of pretzels and guzzle a can of ginger ale, so I may be complicit in my infection.

Scratch that. My complicity is without question. It goes back a few weeks earlier when I purchased the ticket itself. What was I thinking? Travel was a well-known risk. The disease was widely understood to be dangerous. My friend is a doctor in a New York City hospital, and he told me in great detail about the COVID-19 patients he was unable to save, the refrigerated trucks behind the hospital. Another friend lost her father to COVID-19. I was primed. Educated. Vigilant.

I spent an extremely cautious first six months of the pandemic hiding out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I remember the first time I ordered takeout after the shutdowns started. I gave the woman in the drive-through window at Frank’s Famous $40 in cash for a $28 fried-chicken bill. I told her to keep the change. She felt like a hero to me at the time. I felt a first-responder level of respect for her. “Are you sure?” she asked me. I told her I was. “Thank you so much!” She thought I was being generous. I was just scared to accept the paper money in change.

I took the food home and opened the takeout packages in the garage on the concrete floor, carefully transferring all of the contents onto plates and bowls from inside the house. A friend was there handing me clean utensils and tossing the takeout containers into sealed garbage bags. We wore masks and nitrile gloves and moved so deliberately, I imagine we looked like the cleanup crew at Chernobyl.

And yet, here I am in the new year, unable to smell the 100LL I put in my tanks. Thanks to COVID-19, I’ve lost my sense of smell completely. And I’m lucky. Four days of what felt like a bad flu and body aches akin to some of the worst racing get-offs I’ve had on a motorcycle. In the weeks following 9/11, I worked at ground zero, and I have suffered respiratory problems ever since. COVID-19 never progressing to my lungs feels like pure luck.

I did not need to get sick. I have an airplane. A damn near perfect one. With the small sacrifice of an extra day of travel, my Beechcraft Bonanza would have put me in Moab, Utah, with the same cost as a business-class seat. There was also a paved landing strip not 1,000 feet from the rental house. All this to save some money. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

We were in Moab for my birthday. Five friends and I rode dirt bikes out in Canyonlands National Park, which is properly in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t get the coronavirus from them. We all flew home; I tested positive and they did not. I knew I could blame the flight, not my friends.

I got sick because I got complacent. Period. We read about it all the time in these pages. Complacency often turns up in the I Learned About Flying from That column—or worse, as an accident report in Aftermath. The way some brains work (as mine did as a younger man) is that once we come out of a dangerous situation unscathed, we don’t think about how close we were to a bad outcome. Instead, the takeaway is: We must have been operating within our limits if nothing terrible happened. This shifting baseline is often observed around weather avoidance with pilots who continue to erode their safety margin until their number gets called: “Twenty miles around a thunderstorm? That seems a bit conservative.” And it may very well be—until it isn’t. Complacency is like coastal erosion. It happens slowly, until one day you’re standing in salt water wondering where your house went.

Read More from Ben Younger: Leading Edge

I mention my younger self because I have more recent success avoiding these kinds of errors. I keep 20 miles away from convective cells. I ground the airplane when I fuel. I bend my knees when I lift heavy things. I have become a cautious man in middle age. Yet despite all my caution, the coronavirus sneaked up on me. When I got sick, I felt like the proverbial frog in the pot of slowly warming water: cooked when I thought I was out for a swim.

In training for my private pilot certificate, my instructor, Neil, went over the proper use of takeoff trim with me. He was diligent and articulate. And still, six months after getting my private ticket, I took off solo with 12 degrees of up-trim from my previous landing. The plane ballooned straight up into the air. On the verge of a stall/spin straight back onto the ground, I shoved the control column forward and frantically spun back the trim wheel. I’ve never once taken off with an airplane out of trim since. I told Neil about the mistake, and he smiled at me, as if to say this fright happens to everyone. Once.

I’m grateful the trim scare happened to me. The experience cost me nothing but imprinted upon me intensely. I always check the trim wheel before taking off. I always will.

After catching the coronavirus, I found myself thinking back to my behavior in those early days of quarantine back in Albuquerque. I was sufficiently scared by the idea of getting sick to take precautions, but after time, with no infection, I started to see my precautions not as a measure of their success but rather as an indication that they were unnecessary. Unlike the trim incident, the fear imprint had a half-life.

Even in my relatively short tenure at this magazine, I’ve written at length about approaching personal limits using all sorts of analogies—pro boxers, racing motorcycles, hot stoves. In those columns, I claimed that with time and maturity comes the ability to listen to others who walked the path before you and to trust that the stove is indeed hot.

I still got COVID-19. I flew closer and closer to that proverbial thunderstorm until my number got called. Now I have a disease with long-term effects still being evidenced in its victims every day.

Mistakes are measured by the cost we pay for them. The rationalizing that makes us feel safe means nothing once we step over the line. As pilots, we must remember that it is fine until it isn’t. Then it might just be too late.

Ben Younger is a TV and film writer/director, avid motorcyclist, and surfer—but it’s being a pilot that he treats as a second profession. Follow Ben Younger on Instagram: @thisisbenyounger.

This story appeared in the March 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

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