Some Air Safety Institute courses to sunset

The courses that will be removed starting in January all operate on Flash. The Air Safety Institute has been preparing for this transition for years, and has taken steps to make sure the relevant information in most of the affected courses will continue to be available for free to pilots in other ways.

“Apple’s announcement in 2010 that it would not support Adobe Flash on its mobile devices was a game changer for the entire e-learning industry as content providers scrambled to find a suitable alternative to Flash,” said Paul Deres, director of education for the Air Safety Institute, adding that "how people consume e-learning content has changed significantly in the past decade with the advent of mobile technology. Most would prefer to watch a quick video on their smartphone instead of sitting in front of a computer for an hour taking an online course.

“We’ve seen a steady decline in online course completions over the years and a significant rise in video views. In response to these influencing factors, we created a plan years ago to refresh and rebuild our most popular Flash courses only, and then gradually shift our focus to create more content that’s optimized for mobile devices like videos and podcasts.”

Many of the popular online courses like Do The Right Thing, Runway Safety, Know Before You Go, Essential Aerodynamics, and others have already been converted from Flash to a new iPad-compatible format and will not be affected. Topical safety information in the courses that will sunset will continue to be available through other products such as safety videos, Accident Case Studies, Real Pilot Stories, safety quizzes, safety advisors, live seminars, and safety spotlight pages. For example, the Weather Wise series of courses will be removed, but much of the vital information will be included in new interactive mini-courses that are being developed.

In addition, the Air Safety Institute continues to produce popular new safety videos, podcasts, and other educational materials to help make pilots safer. The institute’s safety education programs were viewed more than 5 million times in 2018.

Here is a list of the online courses that will be phased out starting as early as January 2019:

SkySpotter

Weather Wise: Air Masses and Fronts

Weather Wise: Precipitation and Icing

Weather Wise: Thunderstorms and ATC

Aging Gracefully

Flight Risk Evaluator

Engine and Propeller

IFR Chart Challenge: ILS Approach

GPS for IFR Operations

Pneumatic Systems

IFR Insights: Charts

GPS for VFR Operations

IFR Chart Challenge: VOR Approach

IFR Chart Challenge: RNAV Approach

Pneumatic Systems for Mechanics

Pinch Hitter