President's Perspective

Right from the very first flight lesson, even before you climb into the cockpit, your instructor emphasizes safety. The preflight is a safety precaution. The fuel checks, the touching and testing, and the checklist are all for one purpose-to assure a safe flight. Half of what the instructor teaches is how to do it, the other half is how to do it safely.

As every good instructor will reiterate time and time again, a good pilot is always learning. It's the soundest advice in aviation-that's why we've made it the motto of this magazine. And it's taken seriously by even the most highly trained pilots-the professionals. Airline and corporate pilots, military pilots, and other professionals in dozens of general aviation fields all continue to train and learn throughout their flying careers.

Most of us don't have an airline or corporate flight department to pay for a week at FlightSafety International, Simcom, or SimuFlite once or twice a year, nor do we get the continuous training provided by Uncle Sam. But we do have other resources.

The leading provider of continuing pilot education is the AOPA Air Safety Foundation (ASF). It conducts hundreds of free Safety Seminars each year and offers a remarkable array of safety publications, most of them free. Even CFIs go in for continuing safety education. ASF offers the country's top-rated CFI recurrency course, the Flight Instructor Revalidation Clinic (FIRC). Attendance at a 16-hour FIRC conducted by ASF satisfies the biennial FAA requirement to revalidate a CFI's instructor certificate. The course materials ASF developed for the FIRCs are so good that flight training institutions across the country have asked permission to use them. ASF's free Safety Seminars, conducted by respected and experienced pilot education specialists, cover situations and procedures that can make trouble for pilots. A few examples: weather tactics and strategies, operations at towered and non-towered airports, GPS for VFR operations, airspace refreshers, single-pilot IFR, collision avoidance, and "Never Again"-learning from the mistakes of others.

For you recently certificated and student pilots, I want to emphasize that you don't have to be a high timer to attend and benefit from these seminars. You can attend while you're still in basic training-even before you begin flight training, in fact. You'll benefit not only from the seminar leader's insights, but also from the comments of the more experienced pilots around you.

For three of the five decades that ASF has been conducting topflight pilot education activities, one course has endured, year after year. The Pinch-Hitter? Course acquaints non-pilot spouses, friends, and business associates with basic flying techniques and teaches them how to take over the controls and land an aircraft in the event that the pilot becomes incapacitated. The Pinch-Hitter course has been credited with saving lives, and it has made flying more enjoyable for thousands of frequent-flying companions.

If you're learning to fly, or want to, and your favorite companion is less than enthusiastic about the idea, you might consider the Pinch-Hitter course as a gift. (Many Pinch-Hitter participants-including my wife, Lois-have gone on to get their pilot certificates!)

All the courses and publications ASF offers are high caliber productions, created by some of the liveliest minds in the business. See the current seminar schedule on page 17 and on AOPA Online (www.aopa.org/asf/schedules/sssite.html). The Web site also carries course descriptions and a listing of currently available ASF publications.

For a broad array of ASF seminars in one place, attend AOPA Expo, our annual convention and trade show. You can choose from 90 hours of seminars covering aviation safety, new procedures, and technical issues. AOPA Expo '99 will take place in Atlantic City, New Jersey, October 21 through October 23. We expect about 10,000 people to attend, so there will be plenty of experienced pilots there, swapping hangar tales sprinkled with piloting wisdom.

In all of its activities, the AOPA Air Safety Foundation has but one aim-to make flying safer. And ASF's half-century of dedicated work in this field has helped to bring about general aviation's steady improvement in flight safety.

I urge all pilots to be good pilots-that is to always be learning. Learn from your instructors, this magazine, more experienced pilots, and ASF seminars and publications. If career professionals with 10,000 plus hours continue to train and pick up tips from fellow pilots, the rest of us should not be too proud or too shy to follow their example. Keep flying, keep learning!