It’s been 100 years since the first woman earned her pilots license. To celebrate this anniversary, Mireille Goyer had a vision of introducing 2010 new girls and women to aviation this year. For all who signed up, only 25% followed through. She’s a bit short of her goal with only a little over 500.

In 1910, Raymonde de Laroche was the first woman pilot to earn her pilot’s license? During that year, only 3% of all pilots were women. Throughout the years there have been a multitude of firsts for women. But, today, women still only represent 6% of all pilots.

Mireille would love for you to sign up and register on her website so she can send you information and track your progress. Her website is full of all sorts of useful information.

Listen to Karlene talk about the event in this 6-minute audio.

Every entrant, pilot and passenger, will receive a digital certificate. Your flight will be posted on her websight. Trophies will be given for:

• Most women friendly airport.
• Person who introduced the most non-pilot women and girls to aviation
• Most unusual introduction, aircraft type, location, registration, or passenger uniqueness

To support the program, and in honor of the 100 years of licensed women aviators, Karlene’s giving away $100 bill to one person who introduces a girl or women to flying:

Rules:

• Fill up your plane with a women or girls. Balloons. Gliders. Blimps.
• Take them to work, if you teach in a Full-Flight Commercial Simulator.
• Take a photo of your logbook entry of the flight.
• Take a photo of your passengers, or the women in the seat of the simulator.
• Write up a flight report in word format with women/girls names, the uniqueness of your flight, and a little about you.
• Sign up to follow this blog and then….
• Email everything to Karlene and Mireille

More comprehensive details are available on Karlene’s blog.

A FREE flight for females in Sydney

Any lady or young lady that would like a free flight in Sydney, Australia, should contact me throught the contact form on this website. It’ll be great fun and I promise you’ll have a good time… and at the same time you’ll be supporting this great initiative and earn your place in history as being part of this unique event. We have until the end of the year so, with time running out and my crazy airline schedule, you’ll have to be quick.

How can YOU support the program?

If you can support Karlene and the Centennial of Woman Pilots’ in any way it would be greatly appreciated. You can link to Karlene’s blog (or this post) on your website; if you’re a pilot you can register and take a female flying; you can make contact with Karlene and host your own local event… or you can post the above audio in your website or a blog post. you can simply copy the code below or visit this page for a choice of players.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Help us support the Centennial of Woman Pilots

I’ve always been a fan of John and his efforts to raise awareness of aviation safety – particularly that of private pilots in general aviation – so it was an absolute joy to talk to John about Risk Management, Threat and Error Management and Decision Making. Incidentally, we spoke to Dick Rutan in episode 6 who – after telling us tales of a career spanning over 40 years – talks about decision making and the risks involved in letting emotion cloud otherwise logical decision making. The two episodes are quite complimentary. Of course, the schedule of Dick’s episode may vary slightly based upon a chat we’ve had with a pilot that ties in more closely with recent and current events.

John’s not afraid to address specific issues of concern. In his opening statement he makes a referenced claim that, despite popular belief, aviation is dangerous. He states that we are seven times more likely to die in a light aircraft than we are in a motor vehicle, and most of these accidents might be prevented by applying more effective risk management strategies on the ground as part of pre flight planning. Who hasn’t heard of the 5 “P’s”? Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. John advocates that pilots become more prudent with preflight choices so as to eliminate the need to make much more difficult in-flight decisions.

John tells us that effective decision making begins with a somewhat pessimistic anticipation… or thinking about what could potentially go wrong well before it does (he calls it being a cockpit conservative). He says that be maintaining a mental lookout during preflight preparation we’re better positioned to identify in-flight threats when they present themselves, and we’ll be in a better position to mitigate our behaviour.

“Superior pilots use their superior judgement to avoid situations requiring the use of their superior skills” – Anonymous

John tells us what most professional pilots already know: “…the way we teach risk management in aviation is flawed… the problem with learning by experience is that the test comes first and the lesson comes afterwards. Many pilots and their pilots never survive the test to learn the lesson”.

John and Martha have developed a simple risk-assessment mnemonic for pilots to incorporate into their pre-flight planning – PAVE. It’s designed to assist pilots in identifying personal and external pressures and/or limitations that may adversely impact upon a successful flight.

P – Pilot (illness, fatigue, limitations, pressures etc)
A – Aircraft
V – Environment (weather, wind etc)
E – External pressures (get-there-itis, meetings, passengers etc)

PAVE essentially forces pilots to consider various risks associated with their flight so they’re in a better position to mitigate behaviour and avoid using those “superior flying skills”.

Pilots are goal orientated people; we have a destination and we often believe that we have the skills to get there despite weather and circumstances potentially conspiring against us. In episode 2 of Flight Podcast we spoke to Andy Thorley who planned to fly an ultralight from northern New South Wales to a small private strip about an hour drive west of Sydney. To end a long story, Andy found himself over the suburbs of Sydney at night (in an aircraft without lighting or certification in anything other than daylight conditions) with low fuel. His aircraft ultimately ran out of fuel and Andy was forced to make an emergency landing in a field in complete darkness. Andy’s trip is a good example of Reason’s Model in action (Swiss Cheese Model). He had countless opportunities to identify the risks of continued flight yet his goal (or mission) orientated behaviour led him to believe that he had the ‘superior skills’ necessary to reach his intended destination.

It was interesting that Andy referred to his flight as a mission from the beginning of our talk. “Mission” is a military term that normally relates to a pass or fail task – normally implying death or defeat in military terms. In general aviation we don’t undertake missions… we go on “trips”. Departing with a mission mindset, or adopting a mission mindset during a flight when presented with mounting adversity, increases risk.

We recently wrote about a Red Bull Air Race competitor, Matt Hall. Matt had posted a stream of messages to Twitter and Facebook on the morning of a flight broadcasting an illness he hadn’t completely recovered from. He posted, “…feeling a little better today, though still very fatigued. Looking forward to 2 successful flights, then off to bed.” A few hours later he was lucky to escape death when he g-stalled his aircraft off a knife edge manoeuvrer and impacted water in front of family and spectators. Matt impacted the water relatively flat so ‘bounced’ off and managed to recover. Had he applied John’s simple checklist he would have been forced to assess both his illness and fatigue. Clearly, he wasn’t fit to fly. It’s also likely that Matt knew his competency was compromised by illness but decided to fly anyway.

Matt Hall is an ex military fighter pilot so it’s quite possible that his military style “mission” mindset translated into his civilian (career) flying. It’s also fair to say that the nature of sponsored competitive air racing meant that a mission mindset would have applied anyhow. A dangerous mix.

PAVE is intrinsically connected with the principles of Threat and Error Management (TEM). What is threat and error management?

Threats are events or errors that occur beyond the influence of the line personnel. They increase operational complexity and must be managed to maintain the margins of safety.

Errors are generally defined as actions or inactions by the line personnel that lead to deviations from organisational or operational intentions or expectations. Unmanaged and/or mismanaged errors frequently lead to undesired states. Errors in the operational context thus tend to reduce the margins of safety and increase the probability of an undesirable event.

Undesired states are generally defined as operational conditions where an unintended situation results in a reduction in margins of safety. Undesired states that result from ineffective threat and/or error management may lead to compromised situations and reduce margins of safety aviation operations. Often considered the last stage before an incident or accident.

Does TEM have a place in general aviation? Absolutely. In fact, TEM was introduced as part of Line Operation Safety Audits (LOSA) flights where crews would be assessed on CRM and, to a lesser degree, physical operation of the aircraft. In general aviation we have Biennial Flight Reviews (BFR’s) where an instructor essentially does the same thing. Instructors have an obligation to ensure that they don’t simply assess a candidate on ‘flying an airplane’… they should ensure that the candidate applies a range of principles that enables them to better ‘manage an aircraft’.

It’s easy to let somewhat academic concepts cloud otherwise obvious principles. When we spoke to Andy about his ultralight incident he claimed that these TEM principles either didn’t exist or weren’t taught at the time of his incident. Sure – that is partly true – but risk management is something that ‘professional’ pilots have always considered. It takes me back to Eric Moody’s comments with reference to CRM – “common sense and airmanship are not that far apart.”

Failing proper planning or preparation, or as a result of a threat that wasn’t considered or known at the time of planning, it’s often necessary to implement a formal decision making model to assist with making a choice the best decision that will lead to the safest outcome. We talked to John about decision making models but we reverted back to simple risk management strategies after John made it clear that this was an area where most pilots make the majority of mistakes.

I’ve often believed that private pilots can often find themselves perpetually un-current… or dangerously safe. They often find themselves, to quote Top Gun, “writing cheques their body can’t cash”. Personally, I’m sick of hearing fancy sayings, simple expressions and rules of thumb as a means of true and effective risk management. Flying can be dangerous, and the risk of error is often inversely proportional to the attitude of the most likely ‘component’ in the aircraft to fail – the biological lump sitting in the hot-seat.

It was an absolute pleasure talking to John about some of the serious deficiencies in general aviation safety. John’s had over 40 years involved with all facets of aviation with an emphasis on training and safety. When he speaks up the way he did, it’s in the interest of all of aviation to listen. To ensure you get a link as quickly as possible, we suggest you subscribe to the Flight Podcast mailing list or subscribe to our program us in iTunes.

You can read the show notes for episode 5 from our podcast website.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Our talk with John King of King Schools

A Qantas captain living in South Perth suggested we make audio available for inclusion in websites and blogs. He went one step further and asked me make some of the audio packaged into CRM e-lessons. This was something we had considered but it was nice to hear it from somebody else. We’ve since partly adopted his idea and sent him a $275 voucher for his simulator ride just in time for Christmas.

Include our audio on your website or in a blog

There were some important criteria we wanted to do fulfil in making audio available.

1. We wanted to make a snippet of code available that would always render the most up to date episode.
2. We wanted to make single episodes available so they could be included in blog posts and so on.
3. We wanted to provide people with a growing list of audio players.
4. We wanted to provide people with a single line of simple JavaScript code rather than chunky multi-line embed code.

We think we’ve accomplished what we set out to do, except we haven’t come close to providing the number of audio player options that we would like. At the moment we’re providing three player options via their own single line of code… but when we provide more than this we’ll update to a single line of JavaScript with the player defined by a variable (such as latest-episode.js?player=1). The code below will always work, even after we implement a new means of calling the audio.

How to include the latest episode on your website

The following code will play the latest episode of Flight Podcast as each new episode is released.

The G Player

The G-player is simple and elegant and loads very quickly. It is 400 pixels wide by 27 pixels in height. It features buttons to progressively seek through the track, a timeline slider and volume control. It will read the length of the audio as soon as it loads.

WPS Player

The WPS Button is one of the more common audio players on the web. Although simple, it renders a timeline, volume control and pause button.

     

Simple Button 1

Simple Button 1 is as the name implies. Simple. It does nothing other than play and pause.

Include individual episodes on your website or blog

A lot of the time you will always want a singular episode on your website that doesn’t change – handy in blog posts if you’re addressing specific episodes. You can find the audio/player link on the Flight Podcast website.

We would appreciate a link back to the Flight Podcast website if you choose to include audio. We’ll reciprocate with a link back to your site.

Flight Podcast albums

We’re in early stages of testing a number of audio players that will showcase a Flight Podcast album. An example is provided below:

Although this player isn’t overly good, it does give you an idea of what we’re doing. You can include the above player with the following single line of code on your website (as this one was done).

Now, like with everything we seem to do, we sit back and wait how long it is until others do the same thing.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Add Episodes of Flight Podcast to your website or blog

The show notes are quite comprehensive and can be viewed here. You can listen to the audio and story – told for the very first time - below. Comments on the Flight Podcast blog with your thoughts are appreciated.

There’s a download to some extras on the Flight Podcast blog that weren’t included in the production release of the program. A more comprehensive blog and report telling the story of NWA Flight 41 will follow soon.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Bo Corby & NWA Flight 41 (Podcast)

The second series is released as part of Qantas’ 90th Anniversary birthday and cover the history of the organisation dating back to the 1920′s.

These podcasts are included in many of the airline’s IFE systems, and they provide a great insight into the airline.

Plane Speak Series

QF 90th Anniversary Series

Source: Qantas.com.au

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Qantas IFE Podcasts

This is some information provided to us by a Qantas A380 check pilot detailing just some of the damage and consequences of the damage. It is by no means exhaustive and, for that matter, should be considered to be incorrect or, at the very least, a work of flight.org fiction..

• Massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (A380 has 11 tanks, including in the horizontal stabiliser on the tail)
• Massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank
• A hole on the flap canoe/fairing (big enough to climb through)
• The aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel transfer functions
• Fuel jettison had problems due to the previous problem above
• Large hole in the upper wing surface
• Partial failure of leading edge slats
• Partial failure of speed brakes/ground spoilers
• Shrapnel damage to the flaps
• Crew experienced a total loss of all hydraulic fluid in the Green System (A380 has 2 x 5,000 PSI systems, Green and Yellow)
• Crew were required to perform a manual extension of landing gear
• Experienced a loss of 1 generator and associated systems
• Aircraft had a loss of brake anti-skid system
• Crew were unable to shutdown adjacent number 1 engine using normal method after landing due to major damage to systems
• Crew were unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using using the fire switch. Therefore, no fire protection was available for that engine after the explosion in number 2
• ECAM warnings regarding a major fuel imbalance caused by the fuel leak on left side It was unable to be fixed with cross-feeding
• Fuel trapped in Trim Tank (in the tail). Therefore, there was a real possibility of a major center of gravity out-of-balance condition for landing.

Captain Richard De-Crespigny was in the left seat and the First Officer was in the right seat. The second officer was in the 2nd observer seat (right rear) and had access to his own radio management panel – so he likely had a part in communication with the ground. Captain Dave Evans was sitting in the 1st observer seat (middle). Captain Evans is a Check & Training Captain who was tasked with the training of Harry Wubbin (who was undergoing an assessment as a check captain himself). Captain Wubbin was sitting in the 3rd observer seat (left rear).

Captain Richard De-Crespigny

The First Officer was responsible for dealing with over 5 pages of ECAM messages.

The findings of the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau will be interesting.

We will produce a podcast dealing with Airbus issues and this incident when appropriate timing presents itself. In episode 4 of Flight Podcast, we briefly discuss the generic nature of uncontained failures.

Qf32 Damage	‘Shutting down’ #1	QF32 Flight Path

Original post and comments from: flight.org

QF32. Aircraft System Failures…

Janine Shepherd was a champion cross-country skier in training for the Winter Olympics when her life was suddenly and irrevocably altered during a training bicycle ride to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. A speeding utility truck struck Janine and shattered her body as well as her dream of Olympic representation. She broke her neck and back in six places, broke 5 ribs on her left side, broke her right collar bone, broke her right arm and multiple bones in her feet. Her body and skull was ripped open exposing lumps of gravel. By the time she was airlifted to the Prince Alfred Hospital she had lost 5 litres of blood – more than somebody her size would hold. Her blood pressure was 40 over nothing. She was not expected to live.

Janine tells us that she was presented with a choice; live life or give up. She chose the former. Despite her critical injuries, her 6-months in hospital and intense rehabilitation, Janine refused to accept her diagnosis. She would walk again.

Janine was ultimately able to walk again, albeit with a slight limp, and has three children (despite what she was told by doctors). She gained her pilots license within a year of the accident, and went on to gain an instructor’s license, eventually becoming an aerobatics flying instructor with an elite Sydney based flying school. Janine’s commitment to aviation was rewarded when she became the first female (and youngest ever) board member of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

Janine tells us that her story is not about learning to learning to fly, or learning to walk again… it’s a story about learning to live again.

Janine is now a motivational speaker and author. She travels internationally speaking to thousands of people.

You can listen to the Janine episode below or visit the show notes at flightpodcast.com

You can visit Janine’s website at JanineShepherd.com or follow her twitter account at @JanineShepherd.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Janine Shepherd

In our latest episode of Flight Podcast we talk to four great guests.

First, we talk to Andrew Thorley. Andy was ferrying a Hughes Lightwing tailwheel ultralight (light sport aircraft) from Ballina in northern New South Wales to the Oaks airfield west of Sydney when he, at the latter stages of his flight, found himself over the northern suburbs of Sydney with low fuel… at night. Andy eventually suffered an engine failure due to fuel exhaustion and was forced to conduct a glide approach into a ‘black hole’ in darkness. It’s an intriguing story with multiple layers that addresses countless and rather complex issues relating to human factors.

We intially recorded an interview that lasted almost two hours that we deemed inappropriate for inclusion into the podcast. We later recorded a shorter interview but we’ll make the full audio on this website when we find time to edit it. Subscribe to the mailing list and you’ll be the first to recieve it.

We then talk to flight.org regular Kirsty Ferguson of Pinstripe Solutions. Kirsty is recognised worldwide for her expertise as an interview coach and her knowledge of the behavioural interview process. We touch on a number of areas of interest to anybody that’s looking at any kind of interview – not necessarily related to aviation.

Mary Kirby, often best known as Runway Girl, is a senior editor at Flight International and aviation blogger at FlightGlobal.com with a focus on in-flight entertainment, connectivity, regional aircraft programs and aircraft interiors. Mary will talk to us regularly on the program with an emphasis on the passenger experience. On this episode, we are introduced to Mary’s history in aviation journalism and her blog. We touch on a number of current issues that impact upon the passenger experience.

Finally, we talk to Chris Williams of Command Software. Chris talks to us over a brief 5-minute chat about the history and future of the product. We’ll be giving away a copy of Command Flight Planner to an Australian pilot. All you have to do is follow the podcast on Twitter or Facebook and we’ll make details available soon.

There’s quite a few bloopers at the end of the program… so you may want to skip them if you’re pressed for time!

You can listen to the program below.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Flight Podcast Episode 2

The three primary people behind flight.org and its subsidiary websites are heavily involved in a number of other projects – including a pilot for Australian TV, podcast, and a few other websites currently in development – and, for that reason, we’ve sadly neglected content here over the last couple of weeks. We should be back to daily posts in a few days.

Podcast News

We’re thrilled to introduce a number of aviation experts as regular contributors to FlightPodcast.com. They’ll have their own segment on the program giving us much more of a variety style show; and at the same time producing the best aviation audio content on the web.

Mary Kirby blogs for Flight Global as Runway Girl. Mary is a Flight International senior editor and aviation blogger with a focus on in-flight entertainment and connectivity, and aircraft interiors. Marty will talk about the latest in IFE, cabins and airline news.

David Parker Brown writes about aviation in a way that is interesting to those who work and have an interest in the airline industry. David is also syndicated by Seattle PI.

Kirsty Ferguson is one of the world’s most highly regarded interview coaches. She writes for Marie Claire Magazine, Australian Flying, Retail Pharmacy Magazine, flight.org and other syndicated magazines. Kirsty will talk about recruitment, interview techniques and other matters related to human resources in aviation.

If you haven’t already, sign up the Flight Podcast mailing list or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

We’ll be back to regular posts in a couple of days. In the meantime you can listen to our first podcast below. Keep in mind that it was very much ‘experimental’… so subsequent programs will have a vastly superior production quality and diverse content.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Flight Podcast Update

Eric is most famous for experiencing a 4-engine failure in a British Airways Boeing 747 as a result of volcanic ash cloud near Jakarta in 1982. The story has been told a few times before (and I’ll certainly be publishing another version of it here soon) so – although Eric shared the nature of the story in ‘brief’ – we refrained from probing him for information that was already public record. Instead, we focused on the more aviation specific questions that many of us have. Eric also gave us a commentary on his accomplished career prior to his command on the 747-200.

Eric’s responses were interesting, enlightening, inspiring… and, at times, somewhat controversial by modern standards.

Eric has quite a unique perspective on crew resource management – saying that “common sense and CRM aren’t that far apart”; and we discussed the nature of handing off duties to non-flying crew so the Captain can better handling emergencies. Eric replied at some length, and recalls that he had a lot of time to let his mind wander while he was flying. He said that he had so much spare time he thought of the wasted 250 pounds in his back pocket! “What a waste of money’, he said.

Eric said that he’s amazed that people are interested in incident 28 years later after it occurred. I would suggest that people are just as interested in Eric as they are in the incident itself; he is a motivating, inspirational, brilliant and captivating speaker. He noted that “…we’ve missed the glorious days of aviation.” I would say that we’ve missed the glorious people like Eric that go with it.

We have some magnificent speakers lined up for upcoming episodes and would encourage anybody interested in aviation to subscribe to our mailing list at flightpodcast.com – we’ll have the final website up soon. You can also follow our new twitter account, @FlightPodcast.

The bloopers themselves from this episode are just as entertaining as the episode itself. Eric’s certainly an entertaining gentleman with a typically dry British sense of humour. I have to apologise to Karlene for our Aussie sense of humour… but she quickly adapted, and I have no doubt that she’ll be drinking Aussie beer and telling inappropriate toilet jokes before too long. The dynamics of our group worked really well.

Compiling the 90-minute interview into a workable 40-minute edit will be a challenge.

Original post and comments from: flight.org

Interview with Captain Eric Moody