'Live' safety seminars at your fingertips

'Live' safety seminars at your fingertips

By AOPA ePublishing staff

The benefits of live safety seminars are now available to you from any computer.

The AOPA Air Safety Foundation has introduced the ASF SafetyCast, a series of Web-based general aviation safety seminars. A first in aviation safety training, the initial 17 hours of free webcasts were recorded from the foundation's acclaimed live safety training sessions. They cover a range of vital flying topics for all pilots worldwide, 24 hours a day. And more are on the way.

Funded entirely by a generous grant from Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp., a worldwide leader in aviation, the ASF SafetyCast series uses professionally produced video and audio recordings of live seminars as presented at AOPA Expo in October 2007.

Presenters include recognized GA experts such as aviation author and humorist Rod Machado, Air Safety Foundation Executive Director Bruce Landsberg, AOPA Medical Certification Services Director Gary Crump, and AOPA General Counsel John Yodice. The ASF SafetyCast webinars are also excellent introductions to the foundation's live seminars and to the extensive array of additional online training courses available on the foundation's Web site.

"No longer do pilots have to physically be near the location where we present our live seminars, or even in the same time zone. ASF SafetyCast webinars put pilots in the seminar room virtually where they can see and hear the course materials, the give-and-take between the presenters and the audience, and even the camaraderie between the pilots sharing their love of flying and commitment to safety," said Landsberg. "This is the aviation equivalent of an online Ivy League education with the best professors at the best universities and making it available free to anyone."

Premiering during the week of the Air Safety Foundation's fifty-seventh anniversary, the ASF SafetyCast webinars expand the foundation's long-standing tradition of researching problem areas, then funding the production and distribution of high-quality training materials through pilot and industry donations. Most Air Safety Foundation programs are available free of charge to all pilots and to the public.

November 15, 2007